Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

And all of a sudden everything made sense. The free holiday. The people watching him, taking his photograph. He hadn’t been imagining it. He wasn’t paranoid. He was seeing things as they were. Hamoud had been manipulated into being in this very place at this very time. His presence was being documented. Because then, when the horror happened, he would be the scapegoat. A former Guantanamo inmate, a man looking like him, at the site of a horrific terror attack. An accomplice to the crime. He thought of the presidential rally he had watched on TV: those white faces with their American flags and their fists punched in the air. Who among them would believe Hamoud was not involved? Not a single one. He was the perfect suspect, oven ready. And would they believe him when he declared that he had been set up? Of course they wouldn’t. A dead suicide bomber would soon be forgotten. But a live accomplice, dragged through a sensational trial and awarded a lifelong prison term or even a death sentence? Hamoud would become a symbol, a focus for their bile. Living, breathing proof that their hatred of outsiders was justified.

Hamoud looked at his watch. Ten past nine. The fireworks would start in five minutes.

He took Rabia’s hand. Held it between his. ‘You have to go,’ he said.

She frowned. ‘Hamoud . . .’

‘No,’ Hamoud said. ‘Do not talk. I beg you not to argue with me. Take the children and go. Now. Get out of the park. Get as far away from here as you can. Do not look back. Run if you can. Don’t stop running, even to look at the fireworks. Especially to look at the fireworks.’ He bent down to Malick and Melissa and embraced each of them with a fierce hug. ‘Look after your mother,’ he said. ‘And remember that I love you.’ He stood again. ‘Now go!’

Rabia obviously understood his urgency. He was grateful that she didn’t try to talk him round, or tell him he was paranoid or unwell. He could see his own panic in her face. She took the children, one in each hand, and squeezed back through the crowd, earning some shouts and unkind comments from those whose good humour did not extend to letting through this brown woman and her children. For once, the comments didn’t anger Hamoud. For once he was pleased that people didn’t want to be too close to his family. It meant they passed through the crowd more quickly. They were out of his sight within seconds.

Hamoud moved just as quickly. He half considered jumping into the fountain and splashing across its diameter, which was only about fifteen metres wide and so was the most direct route to the steps. It was not a possibility, of course. To do that would draw attention to himself, and that was the worst thing he could do. So he squeezed his way around the perimeter, ignoring the same comments and complaints that his family had received. He kept the man on the steps in his peripheral vision. Hamoud didn’t want him to see that he was under observation, nor did he want to lose sight of him. He saw the man take another step down towards the fountain.

Classical music filled the air, a tune that Hamoud recognised but couldn’t identify. He knew what it meant, though: the firework display was about to start.

He was sweating heavily. His palms were more irritated than they had ever been. He scratched them with his fingernails whenever he was not using his hands to clear a path around the fountain. The scratching brought no relief. It increased the irritation. By the time he had made a semicircle and was standing in front of the steps, his palms were burning. The sweat felt like blood.

There was a heart-thumping series of bangs. Hamoud felt them at his very core. He thought, for a sickening moment, that it had happened. Then the crowd oohed and aahed, and the sky lit up a multitude of different colours, and the fireworks continued with their squeals and cracks and techicolour explosions. Hamoud zoned it all out. He heard nothing but his heartbeat and the rise and fall of his lungs. And he focused in on the only other person in the vicinity whose eyes were not raised to heaven.

The man with the long face was still scanning the crowd. He had reached the fountain and was looking across it. He was only four metres from where Hamoud was standing, and as a red firework burst overhead, Hamoud saw beads of sweat on his forehead, reflecting the glow. Thanks to the curve of the circular fountain wall, Hamoud saw that he was muttering to himself. Although no lipreader, he could make out what the man was saying.

Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar.

Hamoud hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment.

A moment in which he thought about his family. His children. How he knew that they would always bear the stigma of their father’s imprisonment. How they would always be under suspicion. The children of a man everybody thought was a terrorist, even though he was not.

But what if he could alter the story for them? What if, instead of being the children of a pariah, they grew up as the children of a hero. What if he gave them the one thing Hamoud had looked for but never found: a new life.

He raised his eyes. The fireworks bloomed above him and he felt, for the first time since the camp, serene. His palms had stopped itching. His breathing was steady. His heart beat at its usual rate. He kept gazing up, but edged around the perimeter of the fountain, keeping the man in view. His awareness had never felt so heightened. He saw and heard everyone and everything with complete clarity. An elderly couple, hand in hand. A baby cooing in a stroller. Twin girls, no more than ten years old, in identical outfits. All these people unaware of the threat in their midst.

He was only two metres away now. The music swelled. The man with the long face turned so that his back was facing the fountain. Hamoud realised what that meant. The blast would come from his front and he didn’t want the deserted area over the fountain to take the brunt of it.

There was no point being a suicide bomber if you didn’t take as many people with you as possible.

Hamoud could see his right hand. It was clenched, as though he was grasping something. The pad of his thumb was circling. It looked like he was preparing to press a button.

Hamoud took another step towards him.

They were just a metre apart.

The man with the long face closed his eyes. Hamoud hesitated. He saw the crowd, a blanket of raised heads spread out around the fountain and far beyond it. He saw the sky, a riot of light and colour and smoke. He saw, from the corner of his eye, the glowing fairy-tale castle, and he made a wish: that what he was about to do would make his children’s dreams come true.

And then he did it.

Hamoud stepped in front of the bomber, facing him. He wrapped his arms around the bomber’s abdomen, as tightly as if he was holding on to his own children. He was aware of rapid sequence of firework explosions overhead, and of someone shouting nearby, and of the bomber roaring in frustration as Hamoud forced them both over the edge of the fountain. He was aware of a splash as they hit the water and a muffled cry of anger as he twisted hard, so that the bomber was lying face down in the water, and Hamoud was beneath him, face up, submerged.

And then he was never aware of anything, ever again.

The fireworks were loud, but the explosion of the suicide bomber’s homemade device was louder. The kind of deep boom that vibrates the core and deadens the hearing. The kind of shock that paralyses the muscles and the senses, for a few seconds, until the panic starts.

The panic started.

There were screams, of course. They mingled with the fireworks and the classical music, and were a catalyst for more screaming, which radiated through the crowd from the epicentre of the suicide bomber. Within seconds people were screaming and running without knowing what they were screaming about or running from.