James Herbert

by Sepulchre

  Quinn-Reece moved to the centre of the platform, drawing up his legs, denying to himself that this was happening, certain it was a nightmare, wondering why he could not wake.

  The cracked band of white vanished.

  Terrible blackness around him once more.

  Nothing at all to be seen.

  But he could hear those things tapping towards him.

  'Felix, please!' he implored, for he knew that Kline was responsible, that Kline was punishing him for his betrayal. But he didn't understand how this could happen, for he realised it was no nightmare, the pain in his lower lip, where his teeth had clamped down, too sharp to be dreamt. He shrieked this time. ' Please!'

  A chuckle from somewhere behind.

  And a clicking close by as the first of those creatures scrambled over the edge of the dais.

  Some time later, the doors to the white room opened and Khayed and Daoud slipped in. They went straight to the dead but unmarked body spread across the low dais, lifted it between them, and carried it out.

  When the doors closed behind them, the room swiftly regressed to black.

  KHAYED AND DAOUD. DISPLACED AND FOUND

  They were not truly Jordanians. Asil Khayed and Youssef Daoud were born, in fact, as displaced persons, their families having fled Palestine when the Independent State of Israel was declared in May 1948. Their parents were of the same clan and came from the same village, which was close to Jerusalem. They had been led to believe by those who had their own political motives that the Zionist forces would destroy their homes and meagre crops, would slaughter their children and livestock, would rape their women, would torture and murder the men. Flight to the River Jordan was their only hope.

  They came to the refugee camp at Ein es Sultan, one of many such sites scattered around the city of Jericho and along the West Bank. There the two Arab boys were born within weeks of each other, to be raised in the squalor of a vast tent city containing tens of thousands of grieving migrants, where there were no toilets, kitchens, or medical facilities, and where most days were spent awaiting the arrival of water trucks and supply convoys from Damascus and Amman. The tents provided by the International Red Cross were of thin canvas which, unlike the tough Bedouin tents of animal skins and furs, were virtually useless against the rains and sandstorms. Their beds were nothing more than light sleeping mats. Running, open sewers and hills of rotting garbage were everywhere, attracting flies and mosquitoes by the millions.

  Severe dysentery was rife. Cholera, typhoid and other diseases claimed thousands of lives. Fierce rainfalls and then intolerable heat brought in by hamsin winds from the desert weakened all.

  The muktar of their old village, whom the clans gathered around, could offer no comfort, for his spirit had been broken by the ignoble flight of his people and the hopelessness he saw all around. Hate with all your heart, he could only tell them, despise the Zionist dogs who have brought you to this. Nurture the hatred, live for revenge against the Jews.

  Typhoid took Youssef's father, along with his two older brothers and a sister. That the young baby and his mother survived was no miracle, for death was indiscriminate. The widow and her child came under the protection of Asil's father, there being no energy for jealousy among the women. And the Koran, which spoke severely against adultery and fornication, also preached the blessedness of caring for cripples, idiots, blind men and widows. The boys grew up together and became closer than natural brothers.

  Although rough hovels of mud bricks gradually replaced the tents, a form of rough villages taking shape along the Jordan, the rule of kaif—a passivity that might be described as idleness prevailed. Few businesses were set up, no industries were started. There were no schools for the younger exiles, no games or activities organised for them. The demoralised Palestinians relied on the charity of others, as if content to wallow in their own hatred for the Jews and the foreign powers that had betrayed them. The Moslem Brotherhood were eager to exploit the persecution and never tired of stoking the fires of vengeance against these infamous 'invaders', while at the same time extolling the virtues of martyrdom for the great Arab cause of repatriation.

  Asil and Youssef were children of a nibbled ghetto, existing on whatever was sparingly given, thriving on bitterness which was generously supplied. When Asil's father was killed in a riot against the reviled Arab Legion of Jordan's King Abdullah who, along with certain leaders of other Arab states, saw the political advantages in keeping the Palestinians a nation in exile rather than welcoming and absorbing them as true brothers (acceptance of the State of Israel would be a threat to his own power in the Middle East), the boys took on the responsibility for their family. By then the United Nations had taken charge over the welfare of the refugee camps and at least some progress was taking place in these humble villages. In Ein es Sultan there were mosques, a ritual slaughterhouse, stores, warehouses and food distribution centres.

  The boys were lucky enough to find jobs as coffee vendors, passing from shop to kiosk with their trays bearing coffee finjans, cups and sticky sweets, often trekking out to the lines of lorries awaiting customs clearance at the Allenby Bridge.

  For pleasure they hung around the cafes and listened to the elders reminiscing about the old life in their villages, of the main square always awash with the aromas of pungent spices, cardamom in coffee, incense, and camel, donkey, sheep and goat dung. They spoke of important feasts, sighing over the exotic foods once served, while the boys would drool at their mention.

  The elders' conversation would turn to memories of the houses they once dwelled in, solidly built with mud bricks and dung, brightly whitewashed to deflect the sun's rays, with a single colour outlining doors and windows, the roofs flat for collecting water during the rainy season. They spoke of village tradesmen, the potter, the carpenter, the sandal-maker, the basket and cloth weavers. Their eyes brimmed with tears as they remembered what had been lost to them. How life once centred around the village square with its well and ovens, the store and cafe where they could listen to the radio all day while they watched the passing activity, the cameleers, the pedlars on their loaded donkey carts, the knife and scissor grinders—the veiled women going about their daily tasks.

  Eventually, when nostalgia held them in its soft-edged grip, they would boast of their feats in battle, their bravery, their cunning. And they would dismiss the Arab defeat by the Jews as a misconception, for they had been tricked by the agents of the devil, jinn—evil spirits—in human form. The Jews were not a worthy enemy. The Jews had an alliance with unholy forces. Mohammed, himself, had declared that the Jews had been led away from the edicts of Allah, and for that their punishment would be burning.

  Asil and Youssef listened and absorbed. They wept for their homeland and for the life they had never known but missed dearly. They seethed with hatred for these people who called themselves Israelis.

  The boys grew and became wise in the ways of survival. Schooling, even under the auspices of the UNRWA, was little more than a revolutionary training ground, the Arab tutors organising their students into cells, each with its own aggressive title, incitement against the so-called State of Israel and its treacherous allies the main lesson of every day. Physical education included weapons training, knife fighting, tracking and the negotiation of assault courses.

  Black-marketeering became the most profitable occupation, stealing and intimidation a second best. Asil and Youssef became the runners for dealers in hashish, then lookouts for raids on supply depots.

  Crude and boastful chatter between the two boys of the sexual delights they would bestow upon females soon faded when awareness took on physical actuality and they discovered their true yearning was for each other, their experiments resolving in glorious consummation. Asil and Youssef could imagine no other form of lovemaking surpassing the pleasure they had given one another. Although males were allowed to hold hands and kiss in public, homosexuality was frowned upon generally in the Arab world; Asil and Youssef kept the intimate side of the
ir relationship to themselves, the illicitness adding to its deliciousness.

  As with other Palestinian youths, they were pressured into joining the fedayeen when they were old enough, its members' violence and unruliness directed towards the jihad, the holy war, and against the oppressor. The Jordanians encouraged guerrilla raids into Jewish territory, the killing and maiming perpetrated in the name of Allah, and the more youths lost in such expeditions, the more martyrs the Arabs had to hold up to the world. A mark of manhood for the fedayeen recruits was to bite off the heads of live chickens and snakes, or to strangle puppies and cats.

  Never considered outstandingly bright by their superiors, Asil and Youssef's performance in the field and their cunning in fighting was impressive. And the elders were suitably struck by the youths' cruelty.

  Their missions into enemy territory became more frequent and more hazardous. It was on one such expedition that they discovered for themselves the extent—and the true nature—of their own barbarity.

  Avoiding Israeli patrols, they had slipped across the border, their venture more of a test than a serious assault (the fedayeen were considering the two youths for important work in the revolutionary movement), their destination a kibbutz some miles from Ofra. Dunams of marsh and swampland there, as at countless other settlements in this relatively new state, had been skilfully irrigated and cultivated, so that what was once barren land had become areas of rich soil suitable for vines, orchards and grain. The fields were protected against incursion with nothing more than fences of cactus and thorny jujube, although the living quarters themselves were behind a tall stockade. Asil and Youssef's intention had been to blow up one of the kibbutz's water towers located outside the compound with explosives readily supplied by their Jordanian hosts. But as they broke through the crude boundary under the cover of darkness, they came upon a young Israeli couple, a youth and a girl, who had found a remote spot where they could make love without being disturbed.

  The couple were lying beneath a eucalyptus and it was their murmurings that caught the attention of the two Arab intruders. Asil and Youssef looked at each other in surprise, their eyes wide and clear in the star-lit night, then crept closer to the source of the breathed sounds. The things they saw the youth doing to the girl sent shivers of excitement running through them, for never in their lives had they witnessed such wantonness, and never before had a female's hidden flesh been exposed thus. Because of the urgency of their lovemaking, the young couple did not hear the Arabs' approach.

  Asil quickly disposed of the girl who, apart from curiosity over her secret places, held little interest for them. Ire slit her throat while Youssef rendered her lover unconscious with a hefty stone picked up from the ground. Between them they dragged him back through the opening they had made in the rough perimeter fence. Once they were a safe distance away they tore strips from the Israeli's clothing to tie and gag him. Then they enjoyed themselves with his body.

  But they did far more to him than they had ever done to each other.

  Their sadism was spoilt only by his abrupt finish, a lesson well learned by them, for in later years they practised curbing their extremes so that the exquisite pleasure would last for hours, if not days. The corpse was barely recognisable as human when they had done, and their coup de grace was to cut off their victim's private parts and bring them back in a goatskin pouch to their masters in the fedayeen (who, although irritated that their orders to destroy the water tower had not been carried out, realised the dismemberment and castration of a Jew held true significance).

  Asil and Youssef had proved they were worthy soldiers of the jihad, as well as revealing their skill in passing through well-guarded enemy lines without detection. It wasn't long before they were sent to a terrorist training camp in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. There they lived in a cement shack and were taught how to use Russian firearms, rocket-launchers and mortars, how to make bombs and use them with altimetric, movement and time detonators, assassination techniques, how to enter locked buildings quietly, stalk their prey through the streets, and methods of escaping pursuit. They ran six miles every morning then did four hours of physical training. All this was followed by daily indoctrination classes.

  They were taught that their destiny (not merely their duty) was not only to kill Zionists and their close allies, but members of any nation showing friendliness towards the non-State of Israel. Within a year or two, Asil and Youssef were travelling to other countries as an efficient and respected assassination team.

  However, they had a weakness they strove to keep from their associates (although not as cleverly as they thought; fortunately their masters allowed certain indulgences as long as operations were never jeopardised). That ecstatic thrill of their first sadistic murder of the Israeli youth at the kibbutz near Ofra had never been forgotten They sought to relive and refine that excitement time and time again in the foreign capitals they visited. There are many hundreds of missing persons reported in cities all over the world every year, and most of them never appear again. At least not ,alive. It was relatively easy for Asil and Youssef to pick up men or hogs, or sometimes even girls (for the two terrorists, the latter was a perversion of a perversion), and lure them to some quiet place where they could abuse, torture, and finally kill their prey. And sexual crimes, where there is no other motive involved and no previous connection between victim and murderer, are perhaps the most difficult to solve.

  The bomb had gone off prematurely.

  Asil and Youssef had left the package with its quietly ticking contents beneath a bench at the Gare du Nord, leisurely strolling away from it through noisy and earnest-looking travellers towards the arches that led out to the streets of Paris. The explosion from behind stunned everyone into an eerie three-second silence (or perhaps the roar had deafened ears to the screams). Pandemonium broke loose, commuters and tourists curling up against walls, running out into the streets—incredibly, some going towards the source of the explosion—or clutching at each other and waiting for the worst to happen.

  The two terrorists knew that the European clothes they wore and the fact that they were among a cosmopolitan crowd would not help if they panicked and rushed from the scene, even though others around them were doing precisely that. At that particular time, Parisians were regarding any Arab or Algerian 'type' with suspicion, for the French authorities had arrested a known PLO activist a few weeks before under a charge of conspiracy; an ultimatum had been delivered by Al-Fatah that unless the

  'hostage' was released and allowed to leave the country, then France could consider itself at peril. The French authorities had a reputation in those days for 'going soft' under such pressure, and the bomb planted at the Gare du Nord was meant to show how serious the terrorists were.

  Asil and Youssef forced themselves to walk calmly away from the train station. Unfortunately it was their apparent coolness that gained the attention of an astute gendarme who was making his way into the station. The police, including the CRS and CSP, hod been put on special alert since the arrest of the terrorist, and this particular gendarme had taken note of his pre-duty briefing on exactly what to look out for before and after an outrage such as this. He hurried after the two smartly dressed Arabs, stopping them with a sharp, 'Alors, messieurs!' when he was close.

  The mistimed blast had considerably shaken Asil and Youssef, for if the bomb had exploded just a few moments earlier, it would have been their own bodies spread across the station concourse. Now they were being apprehended by the police! Without even waiting to be questioned, Asil drew a knife from a hidden sheath in his jacket and stepped towards the uniformed man. He was expert with the blade, as Youssef had become expert with the garotte, and knew that the policeman's belt and buttoned tunic might prevent a clean thrust into the stomach. The heart was equally as difficult, because their pursuer had raised his left arm across his chest, intentionally or unintentionally blocking a lunge. Asil went for the next best target, aware that it would take his victim a minute or so longer t
o die, but at least he would drop instantly and lose consciousness within fourteen seconds. The knife slashed across the gendarme's upper left arm, the thrust outwards and deep, severing the brachial artery. The wounded man stared in disbelief, then fell to the pavement.

  A woman screamed, but in the hubbub of similar cries and the blaring of sirens, no one took much notice. The Arabs fled, no longer concerned whether or not they were more noticeable. They ducked into the metro, hastily purchasing tickets and anxiously waiting on the quaff for a train—any train—to come in, expecting shouts from the barrier at any moment. When one arrived, Youssef shuffled along beside it, pulling at the latch which opened the compartment door before the train had fully stopped. They collapsed into seats, praying to Allah that the doors would shut and the train move off before any blue-uniformed men tumbled in after them. They changed at the next station, Gare de l'Est, going on to Chaussee d'Antin, and from there to Montmartre. They had journeyed no great distance, but enough to throw off any pursuers and not long enough for the police to set up checks at metro exits (even if that were possible with so many stations). They emerged into the soft glow of evening and the distant sounds of sirens.

  They strolled down the wide, tree-lined boulevard towards the river, mingling with tourists, their hearts still beating wildly, although outwardly they managed to appear nonchalant. They passed streetside restaurants, sniffed at roasting meat and spicy sauces, politely declined when approached by smiling prostitutes, not stopping until they reached the Seine where they watched the passing bateaux-mouches crammed with sightseers.

  Only then did they look slyly at each other and giggle.

  They had a 'safe house' to go to, an apartment in one of the small courtyards in the Rue Mouffetard area close to the outdoor market just across the river. Hut there was no need to make their way back yet; indeed, training had taught them it was often better to stay lost in the crowd for as long as possible.