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  I held on to the sporty hand grips as he jumped over to lethal lane five. On cue a black BMW surged toward us, flashing its lights at 180kph, refusing to slow down.

  He didn’t have to. Martin giggled uncontrollably and stamped the accelerator. The pedal touched the floor and we powered ahead. Moments later the black car closed on us. Martin kept the pace. I looked at the speedometer, 200kph, 1kph away from a reckless driving fine.

  Martin grinned like a pick-pocket in an empty cloak room. We hit a speed camera. It flashed. In the rear view mirror the man in the dishdash and plain white head dress driving the BMW beamed back at us. He laughed, gave us a friendly little wave, and zigzagged across the lanes to the next junction.

  Martin hooted. ‘What a riot!’

  I tried to smile but sensed something wasn’t right.

  I saw them in the wing mirror first.

  ‘Hey look out, there’s some nutter behind us, no lights, it looks like…’

  The Dodge lurched ominously as the car accelerated into the back of us.

  ‘…shit, like they’re too fucking close,’ I said.

  Martin grimaced and pushed the car as fast as it would go.

  I watched the clock shoot through 220, 250, 280…when it hit 300kph I stopped looking and checked behind us. Three serious young men, nothing friendly about them, were right on our tail. They were so close I couldn’t even see the insignia on their bonnet.

  ‘Pull over,’ I yelled.

  I could see the men talking between themselves and the driver looking to the lane beside us, his co-drivers advising him what to do if we switched lanes.

  ‘I can’t,’ he yelled back. ‘Look at the fucking traffic.’

  ‘Well slow down then.’

  ‘I’d love to. Only they won’t let me.’

  I looked desperately for an escape route, at that speed the lane beside us was effectively bumper to bumper. Any gaps filled up quickly as Martin flipped his lights and hammered his horn, warning the cars ahead to get out of our way.

  We sped towards junction two, the Business Bay and Downtown districts behind it. After that junction one, defence roundabout and the skyscraper end of Sheikh Z, where traffic usually came to a standstill.

  We were being driven into a pile up.

  ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Martin said. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Try and slow them down, we’ll squeeze out at the next break in traffic.’

  Martin squirmed. ‘Huhhnnh!’ he said, controlling his panic. ‘Okay.’

  I opened my window a notch and tried to look over the cars to my right.

  ‘There, after the yellow car, they’re pulling into the next lane, there’s your gap,’ I called to Martin, ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The two passengers in the car behind prompted the driver, his eyes darted to the gap ahead. ‘They better not….’ I said to myself.

  I turned to Martin, he tensed, and made his move, the car behind accelerated, grazing our bumper, the Dodge’s front end floated dangerously toward the central reservation. Martin brought us back under control and tried again, they sped into the same space we were aiming for, Martin hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Look out!’ I shouted.

  He swung back into the fast lane narrowly avoiding a collision. For a moment both cars drove side by side. We checked each other out. They were intensely focused on us and grinning with malevolent pride. Their move had worked. We screamed abuse at them.

  Unfazed they pulled expertly back in behind us blocking any opportunity for us to slow down.

  ‘Who are these guys?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll just stop and ask them shall I?’

  ‘No time, look!’ I said, pointing ahead. Hazard lights blinked across all lanes. The traffic was slowing. That could mean an accident and the ghouls were cruising for a better look at the carnage, or just another traffic jam.

  Either way we only had seconds to find a way out. But we couldn’t slow down and there were no gaps.

  ‘We’ll have to force our way through,’ I shouted, ‘just pick the biggest space between cars and go for it.’

  ‘What? There aren’t any spaces.’

  ‘Do it, we’re dead anyway.’

  A few hundred meters ahead the lane had come to a complete stop. Lane four beside us continued to move, but slowly.

  ‘That truck up ahead, it’s moving off, hard right in front of it.’

  Martin started to argue.

  ‘Just do it.’

  He eased off the accelerator and aimed the car, a narrow space opened up ahead of the truck as it lumbered to catch up with the rolling traffic.

  Martin shrieked, and then floored it.

  The car howled through the gap. Martin slammed his foot on the brake and wrestled the steering wheel as he tried to control the spin.

  We made it across two lanes before anything hit us. The impact slowed our rotation and mercifully the car stayed on the ground.

  On the first 3600 we saw the car chasing us hit the same gap. It left the ground when the truck hit the car’s front wing.

  On our second spin we glimpsed the car completely vertical, but only briefly, like a snapshot it appeared to float in the air above the lines of traffic.

  We finally came to a spinning stop on the dust between the side of the road and the Downtown development. The half built Burj and a hundred busy cranes towered above us.

  We sat immobile for what seemed forever, a moment frozen in time. The car was completely shrouded in dust. I could only see airbag. I pushed it down and looked at my right hand. The dented metal of the door curved over it. Jagged aluminum scars shone through the shredded upholstery and fresh paint. Shattered glass covered me. That new car smell still permeated my senses.

  Martin hollered, ‘Are we okay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I tried to say, but he had already unbuckled himself and begun to climb out. The passenger door was wedged shut, so I clambered over to the driver’s side and out after him. Martin patted himself up and down, testing each joint, bending limbs, trying to find a break, a pain, a hemorrhage.

  ‘I’m alright,’ he said. ‘I’m alright. I’m not even dead.’ He ran over and began examining me. ‘How are you? Are you okay? Bryson!’ he said urgently, ‘I said are you alright?’

  ‘I’m terrified. But I think I’m okay.’

  ‘You look a bit strange, are you sure you’re not hurt?’

  I sat down on a hump, exhausted and shocked. The shakes hit my hands first, bloodied from the small shards of glass embedded in them. Then the rest of my body began to shiver uncontrollably in the afternoon heat.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I finally managed. ‘I’m too scared to check. Look.’ I said and pointed.

  On the road we saw the other car upside down, its roof crushed flat. The family in the 4x4 beneath it appeared afraid but unhurt. I could only guess about our three pursuers. A dark bloody stain trickled out from what had once been a passenger door.

  ‘Who were they?’ Martin said.

  As if sat courtside at Wimbledon the eyes of our rubber-necked audience darted back and forth between us and the upturned car ‘I don’t know. But I don’t think they liked us.’

  ‘Oh well, we’re alive and they’re dead.’ Martin said. ‘Insha’allah.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said and passed out.

  ***

  The sensation of spinning out of control woke me with a nauseous lurch and a trace image of the other car in mid-air scarred across my mind’s eye.

  When the hyperventilation finally stopped I found I had no memory of arrival in the hospital. It didn’t even look like a hospital; only the familiar antiseptic smell gave it away.

  Spacious glass walls, dark, intricate Arabic furnishings and the svelte blacks and silvers of high-priced electronics cocooned me in my bed. An expensive clash of cultures designed to make the patient feel better knowing they could afford the finest possible healthcare.

  I knew I couldn’t and felt instantly worse for it. The pulsi
ng throb in my head didn’t help much; neither did the sharp stabs of pain up and down my right side.

  A red button in a cabled box hung next to the bed, I pressed it repeatedly and was bitterly disappointed to find it wasn’t some kind of self administered morphine drip.

  While I waited for help I gazed out of floor to ceiling windows over a panoramic cityscape of thrusting towers and lithe architectural shapes that glistened with modernity in the late afternoon sun – a futurist’s wet dream. This place made my apartment look like a dormitory.

  The nurse entered through a concealed door that stood invisibly flush against one of the panes of expansive glass.

  Seriously, who was paying for this?

  ‘Mr. Bryson, you are awake,’ she announced, just in case I hadn’t realized. ‘Any pain?’ she said, busily examining the leather bound notes at the foot of the bed ‘Yes,’ I said, my mouth tinder dry from lack of water.

  ‘Tell me where please Mr. Bryson?’ she said, as if talking to a needy child.

  ‘My wallet possibly,’ I said looking around for something to drink. She poured and handed me a glass of iced water from the jug on the sideboard.

  ‘I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I don’t think I should be here.’

  ‘You’ve been in a very serious car accident Mr. Bryson, you’re extremely lucky to be alive. I should say hospital is just the right place for you to recover, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea. What’s wrong with me?’

  She scrutinized me sourly. Then busied herself plumping pillows, tucking sheets in, topping up my glass.

  ‘There’s some bruising on your right side where the door crushed you, possible whiplash, possible concussion and a large bump on your head. We’ll be keeping you in overnight to monitor you. Doctor’s orders I’m afraid.’ She smiled with counterfeit concern. ‘I’m sure you just want to get back in your car and go driving off like a lunatic again?’

  Missing her nuance I lifted a hand to scratch my neck. I hadn’t even noticed the neck brace they’d put on.

  ‘I’ve been given painkillers?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’ She said, jamming a thermometer into my mouth.

  ‘Really? Can I have some more?’

  ‘In one hour.’ She wrapped one of those blood pressure monitors that look like a tire's inner tube tightly around my arm. Too tightly.

  ‘You see this kind of thing all the time I guess?’ I said, the thermometer waggling from my mouth like the tail of a swallowed dog.

  She raised a skeptical eyebrow. ‘Every day,’ she said. ‘The patients on this floor can afford not to scream. Downstairs I’m afraid it’s quite a different matter. I grow tired of waiting for young men to die on my gurneys so that I can use them for someone else to do the same thing. No insurance, puny little beards and big ideas about what it is to be a man. It’s pathetic.’

  I realized what she was driving at. ‘What happened to the men in the other car?’

  ‘Boys,’ she said. ‘Teenagers. They’re dead Mr. Bryson,’ she sighed. ‘I expect you’re going to tell me it wasn’t your fault?’

  ‘It wasn’t.’ I said.

  She deflated the inner tube and whipped it from my arm. ‘Blood pressure normal,’ she snapped.

  ‘If they weren’t actually trying to kill us they did a bloody good impression of it.’ I said. God, that sounded something like Martin would say.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure they were. Driving fast were we?’

  ‘Ah, well…yes, just a bit.’

  She yanked the thermometer out of my mouth and examined its reading.

  ‘Ow,’ I said in protest.

  ‘Well it looks like you are okay, Mr. Bryson.’

  ‘I wasn’t even driving.’

  Both eyebrows shot up. ‘Very good Mr. Bryson, everything is all right then isn’t it?’ she said with a half hearted smile. ‘You seem well enough to talk to the police, shall I send them in?’ She turned to walk out leaving me with my mouth open.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘no problem, seeing as I didn’t do anything wrong,’ I called after her.

  More police. Damn. Did I do anything wrong? I didn’t think so. Two traffic cops took a moment to find the concealed door handle and then pushed their way in.

  ‘Mr. David?’ they began in unison.

  ‘Yes, of course, please come in,’ I gestured for the comfortable arm chairs on the other side of the room. They sat down, obviously feeling uncomfortable and out of place in their crumpled green uniforms and distinctive white sleeves.

  Dubai’s traffic cops had a rough time. When the emirate’s main arteries became clogged with mechanized death these men were the unfortunate cleanup crew.

  ‘Listen guys, before you begin, please, please, tell me something. Just who is paying for this room?’

  ***

  ‘I’ve brought whisky!’ he said after the police had left.

  ‘Martin, how the hell can you afford this place? If you’re expecting me to get down all fours after this sort of treatment, think again.’

  ‘David, David, David,’ he said sleazing his way into the room. ‘Why so defensive? Would I do that to you?’

  ‘In a heartbeat, so come on, what’s going on? So far I’ve had an unpleasant evening with pimps, whores and gangsters, night time fun and frolics in the cells of Dubai’s finest, and a near death experience with my least favorite editor. I’m tired, I’m bruised, I’m in pain and I haven’t had any decent sleep or food in about two days. So just tell me.’

  ‘Dodge are paying. After you passed out I rang their PR people and told them to send a photographer down pronto. Just think about it. Their car survived a pile up on Sheikh Zayed Road at nearly 300kph. The driver and passenger are left virtually unscathed. Now there’s a marketing opportunity. How Dodge saved My Life by Martin Newman, they loved it, or at least they’re going to. We got some great pics. The car looked pretty good considering what it had been through. We can syndicate the arse out of this story.’

  My mouth was open again, ‘We?’

  ‘Well, me.’

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said.

  ‘Deadly. After bailing you out of jail David I have some profits to claw back. This should do it.’

  ‘How much for my freedom?’

  ‘20,000 dirham, just over three grand. You bloody well owe me,’ he said jabbing a finger in my direction.

  ‘Like hell. I was on a job for you in the first place. Did they say what they had arrested me for?’

  ‘No they said that you had been held for questioning after soliciting prostitutes. They were threatening to arrest you for quite a few things. I didn’t so much bail you out as buy you out.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Don’t take the lord’s name in vain David,’ he said gasping with feigned horror.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christos Martin, I think I upset lots of people last night.’

  ‘Oh good,’ he said brightly, ‘you have been doing your job then.’

  ‘Do you think those guys were trying to kill us today or were they just really, really bad drivers?’ I said.

  ‘Difficult to say,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think they were after me, do you?’

  ‘What did you tell the police?’

  ‘Nothing. That if they weren’t trying to kill us they did a good impression of someone trying to.’

  ‘That’s what I told them. But why didn’t they slow down and save themselves?’

  ‘A healthy protestant work ethic perhaps? Maybe they did slow down, just not enough.’

  ‘True. We only stopped because someone drove into the side of us,’ I said.

  ‘Well my boy, we’re not going anywhere tonight until we figure this out,’ he said patting the bottle of whisky. ‘Let’s order some mixers and get them to send up a laptop. First we’ll see who’s trying to make a smear out of you and then we can put your prostitute story to bed.’

  ‘Martin, I’m exhausted, and you have got to be kidding?’

 
‘Course not, if someone does kill you who’s going to finish my article?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Martin cracked open the whisky and demanded I tell him what I’d done to cause so much trouble.

  I explained how the day before I’d used Yasmin’s list to find my way around Dubai’s sex industry sweat shops and store fronts. The list had been exhaustive, during Yasmin’s six year career I could have found her in any one of the following places: Shopping malls (all of them).

  Convention and exhibition centers.

  Yacht clubs, members only clubs, sports clubs of every kind, and the gym.

  In the background of every five-star restaurant, bar and night club.

  In the rooms, foyers and bars of every hotel and apartment in the Bur Dubai and Deira areas of ‘old’ Dubai.

  On the streets of those same areas, especially around the souks, bus station and transient money areas such as Al Nasr Square and Yousef Baker Road.

  These were just the places where you could have found her touting for business. If you had one of the numbers of the various pimps operating in Dubai you could have had her anywhere you wanted.

  Bile burned my throat when I read the list for the first time imagining what she had to do in all those places. The familiar surge of doubt overwhelmed me. Yes, she was intoxicating and gorgeous. Yes, I felt like I was floating on air whenever I was with her but just look…so many men. Could I ever get past that?

  ‘Please do,’ Martin said and demanded the details.

  ***

  I had procrastinated all morning, putting off the inevitable unpleasantness of the task. Action always generated inspiration I told myself, not the other way around. I just needed a place to start.

  What was my story?

  An expose on prostitution, painted with broad strokes.

  Another wonderfully vague brief from Martin Newman.

  A long-term expat, an investment banker, once told me that prostitution had originally kick-started tourism in Dubai. It had been a quiet place to run a business with little restriction, a few stalls, a busy creek, and enough prostitutes to service the needs of sailors and locals. As more and more people came to do business there from around the region, especially from ultra-conservative countries like Saudi Arabia, the demand increased. Visitors soon came just for the women. What did I think all those endless conferences were about he asked? Business? No. Sex? Abso-fucking-lutely. Dubai was a city built on its back, legs open to receive the world and regularly screwed over by its richer neighbors. Things had changed though he told me. Dubai now gave as good as it got. But the prostitutes hadn’t gone anywhere.