by Chris Ryan
‘Thanks for the encouragement,’ growled Porter.
Stanton laughed. ‘When you’re stationed in Beirut you learn to be a realist.’
The Volvo swung left, down a slip road that took them into Sidon. It wasn’t much of a place, Porter noted. It was mid-afternoon now, and the skies were still grey and over-cast, with just a few rays of sunshine breaking through a mile or so out to sea. Although it nestled into a snug cove on the Mediterranean shoreline, there was nothing picturesque or charming about the town. No point trying to get this place into one of the travel supplements in the Sunday papers, thought Porter. Too many armies had marched through it for that. The main bay was dotted with a few fishing boats and a couple of large cargo vessels, but you could also see the damage to the quayside where the shells must have landed. Many of the traditional houses had been destroyed, their place taken by hastily built concrete shacks. Some of the roads had been broken up into rubble by the shelling, and nobody yet had the money or inclination to fix them. Maybe they don’t reckon there’s any point, thought Porter. The next war will be along in a minute. There’s no point in making things easier for the Israeli tanks.
The bus station was just beyond the main square. About five buses, each one painted a pale green, were parked next to it. Stanton pulled up the Volvo next to them, killing the engine. ‘The Jezzoine bus leaves in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Then again, punctuality isn’t rated as very important around here. It’ll probably leave when they’ve got all the chickens they’re taking with them to sit down nicely.’
Porter slung his bag over his shoulder as he stepped out of the car. He paused, smelling the stiff breeze blowing in from the nearby shore, its salt flavour mixed with the fried oils, nuts and spices from the row of six food stands lining the edge of the bus station. It was good to smell the Med one more time, he told himself. He wanted to savour as many experiences as possible. When you were almost certainly going to die in the next twenty-four hours, then you saw the world with a fresh eye. It was like being a kid again. Everything seemed funny, interesting, challenging: the desire to embrace the world was all the more intense for the knowledge that you were about to leave it.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Porter.
He walked over to the food stands, and got Stanton to order a couple of snacks: tiny chicken and lamb meatballs, mixed with chickpeas and a spicy sauce, and served wrapped up in a pitta bread with a bottle of iced tea to wash it all down. Porter ate them in a couple of bites, then asked for another. ‘Any advice?’ he said.
Stanton hesitated before replying. He was scanning Porter’s face, looking, Porter reckoned, for traces of fear. But he wasn’t going to find any. He’d been scared before in his life. Going into combat had turned his stomach into jelly the same way it did for all the men. Taking a beating out on the streets had been just as bad. But he wasn’t scared now.
‘Turn in your resignation,’ said Stanton. ‘Take a holiday. Phone in sick …’
Porter smiled, but remained silent. He walked slowly towards the bus. A couple of women were climbing on board, buying their tickets, talking to each other. Porter handed across a Lebanese ten-pound note, collected his ticket, then nodded towards Stanton. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he said tersely.
The bus was already running ten minutes late by the time it pulled out of Sidon and started wheezing its way up the hill inland. Porter had positioned himself near the centre of the bus, keeping himself as inconspicuous as possible. The two women in front of him were still chattering away: there were obviously a lot of unfaithful husbands and disloyal daughters in Sidon to catch up on, thought Porter. There were a few old men, a couple of families, and several schoolchildren scattered around the vehicle. Some of them were talking. But mostly, just like Porter, they were looking out of the window and keeping themselves to themselves.
The journey took just over an hour, twisting along the only main road that led up into the mountains that ran along the spine of the coast then down again into the valleys and plains below. There were some farms you could see stretched along the side of the road, growing dates, oranges, lemons and chickpeas, with the occasional herd of goats chewing the grasslands between the orchards and the fields. But the evidence of war was everywhere. Farms that had been abandoned were slowly being taken over by weeds, trees and scrub. Barns and houses that had been broken up by RPGs and mortar fire, roads that had been smashed to rubble, and the occasional burnt-out husk of a tank, or the familiar dugouts used to shelter a machine-gun crew, littered the side of the road.
That’s what soldiers leave behind, thought Porter to himself. Lots of shattered communities, and broken lives. Not much of an advertisement for the trade.
Jezzoine wasn’t the last stop on the route but it was where Porter was getting off. He climbed from the bus, and out onto the tarmac of the bus station, glancing quickly around. The clouds were heavier now. It was just after five in the afternoon, and although sunset was still some way ahead, the light was already growing murky. Sidon may not have been much of a place, thought Porter, but compared with Jezzoine, it was Biarritz. There were just three buses waiting at the station, and the tarmac was pitted with holes: some of them might have been left there by shells, but most of them were there because nobody had bothered to fill them up at any time in the last fifty years. The ticket office had shut, and a dog was prowling around it menacingly. Glancing across the street into the town, Porter could see a couple of beatenup cafés, with a group of surly-looking men outside, sipping cups of thick, black coffee, and one shop selling some food, hardware and car parts.
Not many tourists, thought Porter. I’m going to stand out like Victoria Beckham in the local Primark. I’m probably the first white guy mad enough to come here in years.
He checked the bus schedule. The Sidon bus had rolled into town ten minutes late, but he still had twenty minutes to spare before the next bus headed out to Anjar. Take in the sights, he thought to himself with a grim smile.
Walking across to the shop, he took a bottle of water from the cooler cabinet, chose a couple of bars of chocolate, and handed across a Lebanese twenty-pound note to pay for them. He didn’t say anything, and although the woman serving could see he wasn’t local, she didn’t seem to care. A small boy was emptying out his pockets, seeing if he had enough coins to buy a packet of sweets. He glanced suspiciously at Porter, then looked away. Porter took the coins he’d been given in change, and handed them down to the boy. He started to say something in Arabic, but Porter just shook his head and turned round.
No need for the thanks, mate, thought Porter as he walked back towards the bus stop. Where I’m going, I won’t be needing any loose change.
I’m dealing in a harder currency.
Blood.
Another hour, another bus station.
Porter stepped down from the ten-year-old Mercedes vehicle and glanced around. It was gone six now, and the skies were growing darker: back in England it would be pitch black by this time, but the days were longer out here. The journey had taken longer than expected. His bus had left twenty minutes after the scheduled time, and had taken fifteen minutes longer than it should have done to get to Anjar: the driver had picked one woman up, then turned round and gone back again when it turned out she had forgotten something. The waiting was driving Porter crazy. Just get on with it, he muttered to himself. I want to get stuck into this mission.
There were two food stands at the far end of the bus station, and a couple of guys were hanging around the ticket office. One of them, Porter noted, very obviously had some kind of gun tucked inside his leather jacket. They glanced at Porter, but neither seemed very interested. All through the journey, Porter had been watching, wondering whether the Firm had put some kind of tail on him. It was, he well knew, their most obvious move. After all, he was going to lead them straight to Katie Dartmouth’s kidnappers. Follow him, and they’d find her. All they would have to do then was rustle up a crack unit from Hereford to go and get her out. The only risk was,
if the tail was spotted, Porter would be killed on the spot. Then they would have nothing. If there was a tail, he had to spot it before Hassad did.
As much as he scanned the bus and the streets for evidence of anyone keeping tabs on him, he felt certain he hadn’t seen the same face twice throughout the whole journey. He hadn’t seen anyone acting suspiciously. There was nobody lurking in the shadows. And no passing of the watch from one person to another. Not that he could see anyway.
Either they are not here, or else they are bloody good.
He started walking towards the bar. It was just a single room, built into a ragged concrete structure on the street directly opposite the bus station. There were a couple of cars parked alongside, and a few plastic tables and chairs. About a dozen guys were sitting around outside, drinking coffee and tea, and there were heaps of dog ends at their feet. Sandwiched close to the Lebanese, Syrian and Israeli borders, it was hardly surprising Anjar didn’t exist as anything more than a brutally fought-over dot on a map. Why the hell would anyone want to live here? Porter wondered. There was nothing to tie you to the place except for war, poverty and anger.
Crossing the road, he paused before the entrance to the bar. It had no name, just a dirty brown awning that would provide some shade when the sun was shining. Still, there was no mistaking the place. Anjar only had about four proper streets and two of those appeared to have been abandoned. It had a couple of shops, but this was the only café or bar. Porter started to step inside, yet for a brief moment he could feel himself hesitating. This is the line, he thought to himself. On one side, there’s this world. On the other a different one, probably the next world, if that happens to exist.
Cross it and there’s no going back.
Sod it, he told himself with a grim smile. There’s nothing to go back to. And the next world probably isn’t so bad. There’s bound to be a place where a bloke can doss down for the night. Who knows, you might even be able to get a drink.
The only trouble is I wouldn’t ever see Sandy again.
The guy at the counter looked around thirty, with a black T-shirt, and blue jeans hanging loose over his white trainers. There were a few men inside the bar: where they stashed the women in this place, Porter had no idea, but he hadn’t seen any apart from at the shop and on the bus. The men were all drinking tea and pouring over a single copy of a newspaper. There was some kind of discussion going on, but whether it was about sport, or politics, or business, Porter couldn’t tell. He nodded towards the barman. There were some beer bottles in the cooler, and Porter felt tempted. A beer was just exactly what he needed right now. Lebanon was a Muslim country, but it wasn’t dry like some of them. Still, the locals hardly ever drank, and ordering a beer would only attract attention to himself. And that was the very last thing he wanted.
‘A coffee,’ he said in English.
He’d learnt a few words of Arabic back in the Regiment, but he didn’t want to try them out now. The barman looked at him, his expression puzzled. Not many English guys up here, thought Porter. The only foreigners you ever got around this place were probably Israelis and they didn’t usually get out of their fighter jets to say hello.
‘You speak English?’ said Porter.
The man nodded. ‘A little,’ he said. ‘You want coffee?’
‘That’s why I asked for it,’ said Porter.
The man went to the machine behind the bar. ‘Where you from?’
Porter took the small white china cup that had just been placed on the counter, and flicked away two flies that were sitting on the sugar bowl next to it. He pushed a couple of Lebanese one-pound coins across the bar. For a moment, he thought about lying. The British weren’t popular in Lebanon: they never had been, and they’d got a lot less so since the Iraq war kicked off. He didn’t need to get into any kind of argument with the locals. He could pretend to be Australian or a Kiwi: the trouble was they would probably recognise the accent. And who knows, they probably hate the Aussies as well. ‘England,’ he said.
A couple of the men from the group around the newspaper looked at him. One of them had narrow eyes and a thick scar that ran down the side of his cheek and into his neck. He spat the half-smoked cigarette from his mouth and ground it beneath the heel of his boot. You don’t need a translator to figure out what he’s saying, thought Porter. He’s tooling up for a fight. And the next thing he wants to put underneath that boot is my face.
‘You hear about the English girl,’ said the barman. ‘The one who got kidnapped?’
Christ, thought Porter. It’s even a big story out here.
‘Something,’ he replied tersely.
‘What they think of that back in London?’ said the barman, with a smile.
‘Maybe they get their soldiers out of our country now?’ said the man with the scar, standing up and walking over to the bar.
‘We’re not in your country,’ said Porter.
‘The Arab nation is one nation,’ said the man. His scar quivered slightly as he spoke, as if it was the wound talking. ‘You occupy one land, you occupy all our lands.’
Shit, thought Porter. The last thing I need here is a bar-room brawl.
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t really know anything about it. I’m just getting a coffee while I wait for the next bus.’
‘What are you doing here?’ said the man with the scar. He had edged a foot closer to Porter, and he could smell the cheap cologne and the nicotine clinging to his skin. ‘There are no foreigners up here.’
Porter paused for just a fraction of a second. ‘Family business,’ he said. ‘A Lebanese family in London, they need some land sorted out. I’ve no interest in politics.’
He walked past the man, sitting down at a plastic table at the far end of the bar. Taking two sugars from the bowl, he stirred them into the thick black coffee, then discreetly took out the tiny bottle of Johnnie Walker he had taken from the plane and poured half of it into the cup. He sipped on the small cup, and could instantly feel the rich mixture of caffeine, sugar and alcohol all hitting his bloodstream at the same time. He could feel his head start to spin, and his eyes were getting dizzy, but the whisky worked its magic, the way it always did, and he could feel his head start to clear and his spirits reviving. The guy with the scar had gone back to his group of mates, but he was still looking occasionally across at him, a glint of anger in his eyes.
If only you knew what I was really here for, thought Porter with a grim smile, you’d kill me on the spot.
He glanced at the clock. Six twenty. Hassad hadn’t given the Firm any precise time for the pickup. But they expected him to be getting to the bar around five thirty, so they should have scheduled the collection for shortly after that. Maybe it’s a set-up, thought Porter. Maybe they are just going to leave me, and then let that bloke with the scar cut my throat open as soon as it gets dark.
A man walked up to the bar. Late forties, Porter noted, with a linen jacket, a bald head and one of those Saddam Hussein moustaches that men wore throughout the Middle East. Is that my contact? wondered Porter. For a moment, he could feel his muscles tensing with anticipation. But the guy just ordered some chilled water and tea, and went to sit outside by himself. Porter emptied the rest of the Johnnie Walker bottle into his coffee cup, and knocked it back in one gulp. Much more of this and I’ll be looking for somewhere to spend the night.
Six forty. Porter took out the book the Firm had packed into his bag. Pretty good, he decided, after a few pages, but it was difficult to concentrate on reading anything. One of scarface’s friends had left the bar, but the rest of them were still arguing over the contents of that day’s paper. The barman had switched on the radio, and as the news came through Porter caught the name of Katie Dartmouth, but the presenter was talking so fast in Arabic he couldn’t begin to translate what he was saying. Who knows, thought Porter, maybe the bastards have already killed her.
‘Mahmudiyya,’ said a voice behind him.
The instant he heard
the word, Porter could feel his heart thump against the walls of his chest. This is where it all kicks off, he realised grimly.
Porter looked up. There were two men standing right next to him. The taller of the two was almost six foot, slim with slicked-back hair, around thirty, with the hardened face and the muscles of a man who’d been in plenty of fights. The shorter man was about five eight, with thin dark hair, a face that was running to fat even though he couldn’t even have reached his mid-twenties yet. A pair of sunglasses were wrapped around his eyes, and there was a gold chain glinting through the black hairs on his chest that were visible through his open-necked shirt.
This is it, thought Porter. He drained the last few dregs of his whisky-soaked coffee and stood up. Time for the kickoff.
‘Let’s go,’ he said quietly.
The two men remained silent. They turned on their heels, heading towards the door. Scarface and the barman were watching as he left, their jaws dropping slightly, but neither of them moved from their spot. Do they know these goons? wondered Porter. Do I …?
A black Toyota 4x4 was parked outside on the tarmac. It looked new to Porter. The smaller man opened the back door, revealing the dark leather seats and blackened-out windows inside. Porter was about to climb in when the taller man touched his arm. ‘Wait,’ he said.
His tone was low and controlled, with a slight accent, but Porter could tell his English was good. ‘Here,’ he added.
There was a strip of black cloth in his hand. Porter knew instantly what it was.
A blindfold.
‘OK,’ he said.
He turned to face the car. The taller man stood behind him, and his height gave him at least three inches over Porter. He was stretching the cloth in his hand, then laid the strip across Porter’s face. The skin on his fingers was rough, like a builder’s, but his touch was as soft as a little girl’s, and Porter could feel himself growing nauseated by the sense of the man’s flesh touching his. He wrapped the blindfold around, once, twice, three times, so that the top half of Porter’s face was completely covered. The light totally vanished, and Porter could see nothing. A hand pushed him down into the back seat of the Toyota, and as he sunk back into the leather, he could hear the ignition turn, and feel the surge of power as the car started to move out into the street.
