Beside the Syrian Sea

by James Wolff

  The phone buzzed again. Another text from Meredith: “Pls reply as discussed.” He kicked himself; he hadn’t even considered the possibility they were using a code. One that involved “cargo”. How should he reply? “Cargo safe”? “Cargo in one piece”? “Cargo secure in container”? He mirrored her language and went with “Apologies. Cargo intact.” But when the phone started to ring thirty seconds later he knew that he’d got it wrong, that someone would already be on their way to the hotel to check on them. He didn’t have long. He went into the kitchen and looked through the knives, testing their blades for sharpness against his finger.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jonas didn’t have much time. He tore down a curtain, overturned a chair, pulled the lampshade free from its stand. It took two blows with a heavy glass ashtray to shatter the television screen. He dragged Naseby’s body into the centre of the mess he had created and pushed at his hips so that they were twisted and his legs splayed and placed one arm flung out to the side and the other palm outwards on his chest as though he had been attempting to defend himself. Naseby stirred and retreated into the foetal position; it took several minutes to get him back as Jonas wanted. He still wasn’t satisfied. He had to avoid any hint of the neatness that had characterized Meredith’s attempt at theatre. It was always the unexpected, hard-to-explain detail that made things look real; the corpse had been put to sea carrying an identification card that was deliberately out of date, since that was how life worked. Jonas found a half-eaten cheese sandwich in the fridge and added it to the scene. He removed one of Naseby’s shoes, tore the bottom three buttons off his shirt and pulled down his trousers so that his pubic hair was exposed. Jonas stood at the entrance to the room and surveyed his work. It would do. He picked up the knife and took several deep breaths to steady himself.

  The first sensation as the knife sliced deep into his palm was one of heat. The pain came soon afterwards. He would have to work quickly before he became dangerously light-headed and passed out. The blood poured from his hand on to Naseby’s chest. He tried to divide it equally over the cuts in the material. It occurred to him too late that his blood might be either too bright or too dark to be consistent with multiple stab wounds to the chest. He tried to remain standing to maximize the flow to his hand and felt a tingling in his arm and a buzzing in his head that were almost pleasurable.

  When the doorbell rang his head was between his knees and his hand was held aloft, wrapped in a towel.

  “Hello? Mr Naseby? Hotel management, sir.”

  It was Harvey’s voice, he was sure of it. After all, he had been in this position before, listening to Harvey speak from the other side of a door. On that occasion Jonas had been hiding from sight, and Tobias had been trying to keep him at bay, and there hadn’t been a man covered with blood on the floor. He crossed the room as quietly as he could and looked through the peephole to confirm his suspicions.

  “Is that you, sir? Hello? Please open the door or we’re going to have to use our own key.”

  It was a bluff. He had a few minutes. Harvey was a military man, according to Raza: there was no way he would announce he was planning to walk through a door into a potentially unsafe environment. Jonas grabbed the phone and began to photograph Naseby’s body from different distances and angles, focusing on those that took in the smashed television screen and upturned chair in the background, as though there had been a struggle. His audience had been raised on Hollywood films, the same as everyone else. They would want to see the action unfold in their minds, they would want to see a fight. The way he’d left those bloody palm prints on the wall, the way he’d pulled the curtain from its rail as he went down. He moved Naseby’s hand to cover the notional entry wounds – and confuse the fact that no exposed bone or torn flesh was visible – as though he had died trying to staunch the flow of his own blood.

  “Last chance, sir. We’re coming in.”

  The door handle rattled and Harvey pushed at it twice with his shoulder. Jonas put the phone along with Naseby’s passport in his rucksack. His head was spinning and he found himself sitting down abruptly in the spot where he had just been standing. The phone started vibrating in his rucksack. It was Harvey. He let it ring out.

  “It’s me,” he heard Harvey say quietly in the corridor outside. Jonas crawled on his hands and knees to press his ear against the door. “Nothing. I heard someone moving around, though, and I think his phone’s still…” – his voice faded as he walked off but then became audible again – “…problem, no problem. Leave it with me. I’ll offer him twenty bucks or something. Call you back in ten.” Then, “Hey, buddy. I’m up on the eleventh floor outside room 1129. Yes, that’s right – Mr Naseby. British embassy, correct. Can you come up here with a key, please? Yes, a key. A key to his room. Yes, please. Well, he’s a very heavy sleeper. I’m his doctor and I need to give him an injection. An injection. You know – a needle, a jab, pointy thing in his arm, for God’s sake. Yes, I know it’s four in the morning. Listen, make it quick and I’ll give you fifty dollars. Yes, cash, what do you think this is? Of course you can come in with me. You want to go in first, that’s fine too. Okay, okay, ten minutes.” And then, after he had hung up, “No wonder they put you on nights, buddy.”

  Jonas knew not to assume he had ten minutes. Either the man from the front desk was coming up, in which case he’d be there to collect his fifty dollars in less than five minutes, or he wasn’t, in which case it didn’t matter. He grabbed his rucksack and was halfway to the bedroom when he realized he was leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him on the carpet. There was a noise in the hallway outside. He took off his shoes. The towel was still wrapped around his hand. He switched off the bedside lights and drew the curtains so that it was dark and stood in the corner behind a tall lamp so that he could see down the length of the hallway. A closed door would look suspicious; he wanted Harvey to think that Naseby’s attacker had left.

  The front door began to open and then suddenly stopped as a hand came through the gap to take hold of the edge and stop it moving any further.

  He heard Harvey’s voice.

  “I’ll take it from here, buddy. No, that’s very kind of you but it’s better if you wait out here, doctor–patient confidentiality, you know how it is. Fifty dollars more, sure, why not? Now run along.”

  A short, athletic, crew-cut Chinese man in a black hooded sweatshirt and cargo trousers stepped into the hallway. He closed the door, pressed his back to it and looked around. If he took one step forward he would be able to see into the kitchen on his right and the living room on his left, where his friend’s body lay sprawled on the carpet. But he just looked straight ahead down the long hallway, allowing time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It seemed to Jonas that he was staring right at him.

  He took one step forward and looked at Naseby’s body and then at the kitchen. And then back at the body, down the hallway and into the kitchen again, moving only his head. He repeated this several times. His hands were open and held loosely at his side. Jonas wondered why he didn’t go to Naseby. It could be that he assumed Naseby was beyond the reach of first aid, or that his instincts told him not to do the one thing he would be expected to do, or that he had been trained to identify threats in the vicinity before attending to the wounded. Whatever the reason, he didn’t approach Naseby’s body. Instead he started walking down the hallway towards the bedroom.

  Naseby broke wind noisily. Harvey stopped and stood still. He peered into the darkness of the bedroom. Jonas was fewer than ten paces from him. He looked back at the living-room door. This was getting annoying, Jonas thought: hurry up and do something. Harvey turned and walked back into the living room, leaving the hallway clear.

  Jonas stepped out from behind the lamp, put his shoes back on, tightened the straps of his rucksack and approached the bedroom door. He had no more than a minute at most. It wouldn’t take a person – even one without experience of combat in Iraq – very long to establish that Naseby was essentially
fine. He took a step into the hallway.

  “Desmond, Desmond, are you okay? Desmond? Desmond? Desmond?” Harvey’s voice, the sound of slapping. “What’s that sick fuck done to you, where does it hurt, where’s the blood coming from, Jesus Christ, that’s it, that’s it, just breathe nice and easy, here, is your neck okay, good, let’s put this under your head, that’s it, let’s get this off you and have a look, where did he cut you, Desmond, where’s the blood coming from” – the sound of someone throwing up – “oh, oh, that’s all right, get it out, what’s that colour, man, what have you been drinking, Desmond, talk to me, where have you been cut, is it your arms, your hands, where did he cut you, Desmond, where’s the fucking entry wound, where’s the wound, Desmond, what the fuck’s going on here?”

  Jonas was at the front door.

  He had to do this in one fluid motion. He turned the handle and pulled it and only then saw that Harvey must have thrown the latch to keep out the night porter. The door opened several inches and then stopped. He was amazed at how quickly Harvey turned, how quickly he moved. The front of his black sweatshirt had turned green with Naseby’s vomit and Jonas could suddenly smell it and feel it on his own skin as Harvey collided into him, as they tumbled to the hallway floor. The pain in his hand was unbearable. Harvey swung a punch into him and grunted as it landed high on his forehead. Jonas tried to grab him by the hair but it was short and silky; his hand slid away. Then Harvey was on top of him with his head covered by his arms and it was impossible to find anything other than a hard edge until he opened up to throw a punch and Jonas got in there first with the heel of his hand under Harvey’s jaw and his head snapped upwards. But he came back like one of those toys that rights itself when you knock it over. Jonas didn’t know what was happening. Harvey was trying to turn his shoulder or reach for something but he didn’t feel any discomfort. And then he felt a sharp pain in his neck and realized that Harvey knew what he was doing, that the small Chinese-looking kid who grew up to join the army had learned all sorts of things along the way, including pressure points and grappling manoeuvres, and then Harvey was scrambling for his hand, wrapped in the bloodstained towel, as though he was worried there was a weapon concealed in there, but as he worked the towel loose Jonas realized that it was worse than that, that he was going to put an end to any resistance by applying pressure to the wound, and he barely had time to prepare himself before Harvey made a claw with his fingers and tore at the cut across Jonas’s palm.

  He almost passed out from the pain. It was easy enough for Harvey to drag him into the kitchen and secure the door from the outside with a chair or a table. For a while it was quiet all across the eleventh floor, apart from the sounds of his own laboured breathing and an occasional car horn from the street far below. He found a tea towel in one of the drawers and wrapped it round his hand to stop the bleeding. He could hear Harvey talking with Naseby, making him more comfortable, bringing him a glass of water from the bathroom. It sounded as though Naseby was crying.

  Someone knocked on the kitchen door.

  “Hey. Talk to me. Say something so I know you’re okay,” said Harvey.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Listen to me. If you go quiet in there I’m going to assume you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing. If that happens then I’m going to have to come in there, and if I come in there I’m going to assume that you’re armed with a kitchen knife, and that means I’m going to come in with a weapon of my own and this is going to a whole other level where you’re going to end up being cut much worse than a scratch across your hand. Don’t fuck with me, Jonas. Knives are my thing.” He kicked at the door as though he was the one who had been locked up.

  Jonas looked around the small kitchen. On the one side two white waist-high cabinets, on the other a small fridge, a hotplate and a microwave. A frying pan, a saucepan, a set of three plates, bowls, plastic cups, mugs. He tried to open drawers and cupboards without making a noise. Standard cutlery and a collection of utensils clearly bought by someone who didn’t understand what a hotel kitchen was actually used for: a whisk, a cheese grater, two plastic ladles and a potato peeler. High up on the wall facing the door was a small window fitted with an extractor fan.

  There was a noise in the living room and then Harvey’s voice.

  “Hi, it’s me. Yeah, I know, more than ten minutes. So they’re both still here. Looks like he drugged Desmond with something. No, no, he’s okay. Thrown most of it up. He’s sitting up and speaking, sort of. Not making much sense just yet. We’ll take him to the hospital for a check-up. There was blood all over him but he’s got no wounds. Trousers half-pulled down, shirt torn. Yeah, I know. No, doesn’t look like he threw it up, it’s not mixed with anything. Other guy’s got a deep cut across his hand so it’s probably his. I’ve locked him in the kitchen. Christ knows. Maybe he tried to drug Desmond, Desmond realizes what’s happening and does something, they fight, the other guy gets cut with the knife and Desmond passes out. There’s some blood on the wall, TV’s smashed up. There’s a cheese sandwich too. Don’t know how that fits in anywhere. Yeah, good idea, didn’t think of that. Poison in the sandwich. Desmond never turned down an offer of food, we both know that.”

  Jonas climbed on to the kitchen cabinet beneath the window. It creaked each time he shifted his weight. The glass around the extractor fan was covered with enough grease and dirt to delay sunrise by an hour at least. Another building was under construction in the plot next door. It was one floor lower than the hotel but still rising, its rooftop scattered with abandoned tools and wooden beams and concrete pillars with metal rods coming out of them. Two screws had been fitted to secure the window handle in place. Jonas bent down to select a knife from the kitchen drawer at his feet.

  “Still there, Jonas?” shouted Harvey from the living room.

  “Still here,” he called back.

  A portion of cool morning air slipped between the motionless blades of the fan. The screws weren’t turning. He spat at the heads, scraped away at the dirt surrounding them with his thumb and tried again. Nothing. It was as though he was filing away at the bars of his cell with a smuggled nail file but instead of months and years of unsupervised nights he had at most twenty minutes. He selected another knife from the drawer. Someone flushed the toilet down the hall. He appreciated Harvey’s hostility towards him – he respected it. Everyone else had gone out of their way to say that they understood how difficult it must be when a family member was involved. Everyone else had smiled sympathetically and suggested that Jonas should let the government do what it could while protecting its wider interests, as though they were the same as his. The woman in the embassy had even suggested that loyalty to family and loyalty to country were expressions of the same thing, just different in scale, like Russian dolls. Only Harvey understood the truth, which was that loyalty to one’s family was not a distilled version of loyalty to one’s country, it was a threat to it, in the same way that any kind of love is a threat to the state. The bottom screw moved.

  Harvey was outside the door again.

  “No, no entry wounds. I’ve checked all over. Plenty of blood but none of it his. Yeah, bright green. He’s hallucinating, keeps calling me ‘Daddy’ and talking about some train that’s due to leave in five minutes or something. He can stand but he’s a bit shaky. Okay, okay. One minute.”

  He kicked at the door.

  “Hey. What did you give him?”

  Jonas squatted down on the kitchen counter so that his voice didn’t sound as though it was coming from too high up.

  “Methaqualone.”

  “How much?”

  “Six tablets.”

  “Is the packet in there? Push it under the door.”

  The counter creaked as he stepped down to the floor. He had to take out the pills and flatten the box to fit it under the door. Harvey read out the details over the phone and hung up.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Jonas asked.

  “What do you care, you sick prick?�
��

  He heard Harvey walk down the hallway and then come back to stand outside the kitchen door.

  “I don’t know how you ever got a job, you’re such a fuck-up.” He punched the door hard with his fist. “All your plans and you end up locked in the kitchen like a naughty dog that’s taken a beating from its owner for shitting inside the house. Bad doggy, Jonas.” He delivered a volley of punches to the door. “You don’t get to do what you want, is that coming through loud and clear? You don’t get to break the house rules.” He hammered on the door with his fist between each word as he said, “Have you learned your lesson now? You’re supposed to be house-trained. You sit when we tell you to sit, you fetch what we tell you to fetch, and if you bring back the wrong stick we snap your tail off and whip you with it. You’re like a dog that’s run full speed to the end of its chain and been yanked through the air to land on its back in the dirt. Now we’re going to snip your balls to keep you quiet and fly you in the cargo hold somewhere in Eastern Europe and your boys will take it from there.”

  Harvey walked down the hallway to the bathroom and turned on the taps. Soon afterwards there were sounds of physical exertion from the living room. “Come on, Desmond, on your feet.” Something fell over. “It’ll wake you up,” he heard. And a minute or two later, as Harvey shuffled Naseby down the hallway towards the bathroom, “Oh, Jonas? Your father’s dead. It happened last night.”

  “Daddy?” asked Naseby. “Daddy’s dead?”

  “No, Desmond, your father’s fine. I was talking to the doggy in the kitchen.”

  “Bertie?”

  “Yes, Bertie. He’s been a naughty boy.”

  “Bertie, Bertie!” called Naseby. He tried to whistle. “Come here, boy!” Then a shout and sounds of furious splashing as he was lowered into the cold bathwater.