‘And yours can?’
‘It’s the best chance you have. You know how difficult the terrain is – and the lines between the factions keep shifting. Then there are the thousands of refugees on the move. Jordan has closed its border. Many people are desperate to cross. It’s chaos, absolute chaos.’
‘Then you can smuggle her out more easily …’
‘Yes and no. The camps have their own hierarchy, their own watchers. The Jordanians are terrified of infiltrators. There’s enough support in the country already for the black flag.’
‘I don’t want to hear about problems. Give me solutions.’
‘And I’m not one of your junior staffers at the National Security Agency.
Remember that, Harry.’
They looked at each other in silence.
Jones leaned forward. ‘I want you to remember something. I may have exceeded my brief here. I may have crossed the line in doing a deal with you. But unlike you, I can fight my case in a system that has laws and procedures. You don’t have that luxury. Screw it up and you’ll be enjoying the Vladivostok nightlife for the rest of your days.
Think about it. Don’t fuck with me Vitaly.’ Harry sat back. ‘I want to know who your operative is in the field.’
‘One of the most effective we have anywhere.’
‘Has he been ordered to go in – is he preparing the op, getting his team in place?’
‘And I told you, Moscow is handling it.’
‘Christ almighty!’
Harry got up to go, but Yanayev reached out his arm to stop him.
‘Listen, my friend. I need to ask you this …’ He paused for a moment as if searching for words. ‘If we can’t get her out for any reason – whatever it is – is there anything else you want us to do? You said she has valuable information about you. It may come to this.’
‘You mean kill her? Jesus, Vitaly … I’m going to try and forget you asked that. Don’t ever speak that way to me again.’
Yanayev raised an eyebrow. There was a look in Harry’s eyes that he hadn’t seen before. It was, he reflected later, a rare glimpse of the man’s other identity, the one so often obscured by the old-world charm, the good manners and tweed jackets. For all that, this was the president’s enforcer-in-chief.
A man with some very jagged edges.
WESTERN SYRIA
Something had changed. Nothing you could see or hear – but it felt different. Normally when the guns went silent, people would come out into the streets – even late – just to see who was still alive, exchange a greeting, cuddle a child.
But not tonight.
The clouds were racing by, hounded by an easterly wind and only the rubbish and the sand danced in front of her.
Mai took a side street, pulling the dead man’s jacket tight around her, searching for lights, a house with a car, a way out of the torturers’ town, whose name she had no means of knowing.
As she looked back two pickup trucks were speeding fast through the deserted streets. Two was a bad sign. One driver could get lost, come home late, risk the streets at night. But two was something else. It signalled purpose and intention.
Mai was close to the outskirts of the town when she saw the light. Single light in a small window, half covered by a blind. It glowed for at least ten seconds so she hadn’t imagined it. The one-storey villa was concrete and brick. To the front: a scarred, uneven drive-in, and an old Nissan Sunny, probably as old as her, shunted into the shadow of a tree.
She checked both directions. Behind her in the distance she could hear a dog barking angrily and then there was silence.
Perhaps the light had come from a bathroom window, but why had it flickered and gone out? Power cut? That was possible. No other lights burned in the vicinity.
Whatever the cause, she couldn’t wait any longer. She checked the gun in her jacket and made for the door at the back of the villa.
What kind of people would live here? She didn’t know, but it was certain they’d be armed. The country had more guns than people.
She drew the pistol and knocked hard on the wooden door. There would be no element of surprise. She would talk her way in with whoever was there and kill them if she had to.
I’m down to my last throw …
Two windows along from the door, Mai saw a blind move. For a second, she thought of opening fire, but it was too risky.
A moment later she heard a bolt being drawn back and the door opened slowly.
The first thing she saw was the darkness inside the house and it was only when her eyes lowered that she caught sight of a child, standing just beyond the threshold.
A girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen, with twisted, blonde hair and an enormous dark pullover, many sizes too big for her, that stretched almost to the floor. She looked up at Mai and the voice was calm. Her right hand clasped a kitchen knife with a serrated edge.
‘What do you want?’ she asked quietly.
Instinctively Mai knelt down on the concrete floor beside the girl and reached out a hand to her cheek. The skin was cold and damp. A ray of moonlight caught the sunken, bloodshot eyes. The child was weak and seriously undernourished. She stood at a strange angle, the feet rooted and immovable, eyes locked in the middle distance.
‘I need help,’ Mai whispered to her. ‘Please let me in.’
The girl said nothing but beckoned Mai into the darkness and shut the main door behind her. Only then, with the kitchen knife still in her hand, did she switch on a single light.
The hall was in chaos, half-open boxes lay strewn across the flagstones. Clothes, dumped in a pile, a spare tyre …
Mai could feel the tiredness blurring her vision. Pain clawed at her stomach and abdomen.
Ahead of her, the girl pushed open a door to the kitchen. Instantly, there was the pungent smell of rotting food – but there was something else that drew Mai’s attention.
The dead figure was lying on a sofabed in the corner, wrapped bizarrely in a yellow dressing gown, a check scarf across the face. Mai leaned forward but couldn’t see if it was a man or woman.
‘My father,’ said the girl simply. She was watching from the doorway, her face expressionless. ‘He died about three hours ago. I was sitting with him, holding his hand. He was very cold. I tried so hard not to let him go.’
Mai turned towards the kitchen table and sank down on a dark, wooden chair.
The girl stood awkwardly beside her. ‘He’d been away for weeks. Came home yesterday.’ She spoke in a low monotone, as if she had learned a script. ‘There was blood everywhere. He’d been shot in the stomach. I don’t know where it happened. He didn’t say. I tried everything to get a doctor, but there are none here. Everyone’s dead or gone. Dad kept asking, “Where’s mother? Where is she?”.’
Mai put her head in her hands. ‘Did you find out?’
The girl lowered herself painfully to the floor. ‘My mother disappeared. Left a week ago to look for him. She knew he’d been hurt. Said she’d be back soon, but I’ve heard nothing. When you banged on the door, I thought it might be her. It’s the only reason I opened it.’
Outside Mai could hear a siren. She must have flinched because the girl seemed to notice a reaction.
‘Are they after you too?’
‘Maybe. I was kept in the town. Days and nights. I don’t know how many. You don’t want to know what happened.’
‘I know what they do.’ Said so simply.
Mai wanted to add something but the words wouldn’t come.
Perhaps, she thought, this is how the world looks just before it ends – a place where even the kids have run out of tears; where their parents die in dark kitchens in front of them, where they wrap the still warm bodies in scarves and coats, where outside, day after day, civilization is rolled back and obliterated.
My last throw …
And then there’s nothing left.
Many hours later, she remembered how quiet the room had become, how much she had wanted to lay her head on t
he rough, wooden table, with the long, deep scars and scratches – but she was unconscious way before it hit the surface.
WESTERN SYRIA
In the fading light, the contact examined the man beside him. The beard was falling asleep. They were both exhausted.
‘Tell me again how this machine works.’
‘I told you a hundred times. You tell it to hunt for words from the mobile phone networks, and it does it. It’s pretty new stuff. European companies brought it first, then the Americans. Then they gave it to the fucking Arab governments so they could spy on everyone and torture them.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘But if you feed it the wrong words it won’t deliver.’ He turned to face the contact. ‘Maybe you gave it the wrong words.’
‘Then give it what it needs. You have forty-five minutes to get me what I want. After that I’ll destroy your machine and cut off the little finger from each of your hands. Enjoy!’
He smacked the man hard across the head. The beard yelped like an animal but he bent again over the screens, his fingers stabbing wildly at the keyboard. From outside the room, they could hear the policeman, snoring on the floor.
WESTERN SYRIA
The man had been weeping for hours, crying to God and his dead father, alone and helpless in his terrible misfortune. Gone were the swagger, the confidence and the fine, straight back. The finely pressed shirt was creased and dirty, and the smooth, shaven face, on which he so carefully removed each unwanted hair and treated each blemish, was tear-stained and swollen.
For days he had worked on the American woman, calibrated the pain he would inflict, stepped up the pressure to get a confession. Another day, another two at most, and she would have cracked.
He had been looking forward to it. The confession would be recorded on High Definition video. He would have stood next to her, masked of course, but proud and steadfast, having done his duty to his God and his people. And then in a final flourish, and on a signal from his commander, he would have produced the knife from behind his back and cut off her lying head.
He had practised with a cat he had captured the previous week. And when it came to it, he had been certain he would be capable of the task. There would have been back-slapping and congratulations. Already he had visualized the smiles on the face of his compatriots. Youssef, the hero, they would have called him. Youssef, who had humbled America and whose masked face and proud bearing, would strike terror into the heart of the ‘kuffar’ scum.
But life had cheated him. A small unit from the Free Syrian army had fought its way into the town and it had taken hours to push them back.
Pinned down by gunfire, Youssef had been unable to get back to the house where they had left the prisoner. He had assumed that the guard would have kept her locked up and secure. But the guard had been shot, apparently by a sniper. Youssef had seen a single wound in his chest. Another question mark; the dead boy in the woman’s room. He had no idea how he had got there – or why he had died.
For ten minutes he had stood in the house and wailed against the injustice of it all. And then, with his heart exploding, he had run to the commander’s house and confessed what had happened. Youssef, in his black trousers, streaked with dirt, apologies tumbling from his lips, overcome by the fear of what would happen to him next.
The commander had stared at him in disbelief. And then in fury he had lashed out at Youssef, first with his fists and then anything else he could find – a stick, a bottle. He had fully intended to kill the man where he stood but a thought had stopped him.
What if he too might have to explain to his superiors what had gone wrong? Better therefore to keep Youssef alive. A live scapegoat was worth a great deal more than a dead one. Let them all interrogate and harangue him, humiliate the worthless idiot, and when they were done, they could set on him and tear him to pieces. Perhaps that would sate their appetite for blood.
Abruptly, the commander stopped his assault and held out his hand to the frightened man.
‘I’m sorry, brother. Forgive me. The heat of battle – enemies everywhere. What has happened is regrettable, but it’s not your fault. I reacted badly. We will find the woman, search every house, every farmyard – whatever we have to do. She won’t get far.’
He pulled Youssef to his feet, tried to dust him down, offered him water.
Youssef drank gratefully and mumbled his thanks.
‘Go home now.’ The commander patted him on the back. ‘Go home, eat something. Tell no one and stay away from your phone. We’ll call you when there’s news. All will be well.’
Youssef had found himself alone on the street and had taken more than an hour to walk home. The commander’s words had reassured him at first, but by the time he had eaten a small meal of bread and soup, he felt considerably less confident.
He remembered one of his friends objecting to the commander’s treatment of a young girl. She was the daughter of a traitor and had been singled out to pay for her father’s crime.
Without any warning, a group, led by the commander, had taken her from her schoolroom and raped her, one by one, in the yard outside in full view of everyone who passed.
Youssef’s friend had tried to intervene, to reason with them. They had smiled at him, put their arms around him in a gesture of love and solidarity – and then strangled him where he stood.
If the woman was not found soon, Youssef knew he too would be dead.
He got up from the kitchen table and took his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. The commander had said he should call nobody, but he could wait no longer.
Only one person would understand what had happened – the colleague who had worked with him on the American woman. He was smart, lucid, a little older than Youssef and well in with the commander. He would know what to do.
Youssef couldn’t help the tears as he dialled, couldn’t help the feeling of utter hopelessness and the fear that was building inside him.
When his colleague answered the phone, he blurted out the news in hysterical shrieks, hoping, begging for mercy, calling on anyone and everyone to hunt the prisoner down.
Almaraa mafqoudah … almaraa mafqoudah … Outhoruw alayha wa ouqtulouha amama al jamee …
‘The woman is missing; the woman is missing. Find her and kill her on sight.’
Youssef switched off the phone and sank to the floor. His colleague had sought to comfort and placate him. The commander was not a bad man. Not at all. He had a family himself. Moreover he was steeped in prayer and piety and would look after his loyal subordinates, just as God dictated he should.
Youssef felt relieved. After all, the escape had not been his fault. How could he know that the town would be attacked and the woman’s guard shot dead? He had worked diligently for days, carrying out all their instructions. His loyalty was surely beyond question.
He shut his eyes and tried to sleep.
They both heard it. The contact jumped to his feet and punched the air. The Beard grinned stupidly, shook his head and wiped away a tear. He hadn’t enjoyed the previous few hours with the strangers, pushing him around, threatening him, drinking his coffee. For a while he had even feared for his life.
The policeman had woken at the noise and he too was grinning.
‘Where’s the voice coming from?’ he asked.
‘I’m trying to get a fix …’ The beard played with his software. ‘I can maybe get an approximation …’
‘Be accurate, my friend. It’s important.’ The contact squeezed the man’s cheek, in an effort to ingratiate himself.
After ten minutes the Beard wrote down some figures on a piece of paper and gave it to the contact. ‘My best estimate. I have done all I can for you. Now pay me and go.’
The contact threw a thousand dollars onto the table. It occurred to him that perhaps he should destroy the man’s equipment after all. But he didn’t know if he might need him again, or whether Ahmed himself might want to pay him a visit. Besides, there was other business to transact.
The policeman drove in s
ilence back to his house. When they got there, he excused himself, but the contact had no intention of leaving him alone. Quietly he followed the man into his dismal bedroom and watched as he rifled his drawers, apparently looking for his weapon.
The man glanced back, saw the gun in the contact’s hand and shrugged in submission. ‘I should have killed you last night when I had the chance.’
‘You were too drunk.’
The policeman grinned. ‘It’s true. I meant to do it. The whisky … I thought, I’ll sleep for ten minutes and then I’ll finish you off and pinch the money. But I just went on sleeping …’ He looked up at the contact. There was silence for a moment. ‘Maybe you could just walk away. I won’t tell anyone you were here …’
‘Until someone else comes with a gun and makes you talk.’
The policeman nodded. There was no point denying it. He looked around the room, took in the rubbish, the old papers in piles, shelves that had fallen off the wall, smashed crockery, the remains of some bread. For years the place had been falling down. He remembered so many decisions he’d made to rebuild it, paint it, repair the roof, somehow get it all straight and put things in order. But it had never happened and never would. Life – and now death – had got in the way.
He turned back to the contact and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’m tired of all this. Why don’t you just get on with it? What the fuck do I have to live for anyway?’
THIRTY MILES FROM THE JORDAN/SYRIA BORDER
Mai slept on, her breathing so faint that the little girl had to press an ear against her chest to make sure she was still alive.
She was entirely unaware that the girl had wrapped her in a blanket and covered her face, that she had taken so much care to leave an airhole through which Mai could breathe.
She knew nothing of the girl’s foresight and ingenuity.
She didn’t hear the truck that flew a black flag, skidding to a halt on the rubble outside or the banging and shouting that followed.
She could not have known that, on opening the main door, the little girl had pointed to a single fighter and beckoned him to follow her down into the kitchen.
Fatal Ally Page 16
