Samarkand Hijack

by David Monnery

  She didn’t answer for a moment, being absorbed in circumnavigating a goat which had strayed into the middle of the road, and now seemed transfixed by the car’s headlights. ‘What did you say?’ she asked, once they were past the belligerent-looking animal.

  He repeated the question.

  She smiled to herself. ‘Just a dinner date,’ she said.

  ‘Who was the lucky man?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘Mind your own business,’ she retorted. ‘What did you have planned?’

  He grunted. ‘Nothing much.’ Another evening staring at the walls and wondering who he was staying sober for. He glanced across at Nurhan, whose black hair was now gathered at the nape of her neck and held by an elastic band she had found in one of the tourists’ rooms. Marat had known of her for a long time, occasionally run into her when their professional duties overlapped, but he had no real idea of who she was. Rumour had it that she’d screwed her way to the position she currently held, but in the predominantly male world of the Samarkand NSS such an explanation of her success was almost inevitable. Marat doubted it was true. She didn’t seem like the scheming sort. Or the sort who wanted to be beholden to anyone for anything.

  ‘How did you get into this work?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s in the family blood,’ she said. ‘My grandmother was in the Chekas during the Revolution.’

  ‘Tell me about her,’ Marat said.

  She glanced across at him. ‘It’s ancient history,’ she said. ‘Why would you be interested?’

  ‘It’s going to be a long ride,’ he said. ‘Humour me.’

  She shrugged. ‘She was my mother’s mother. Her name was Rahima Asankulova. She was the wife of one of the first Uzbek Bolsheviks, a very young wife. Of course he treated her like any Uzbek husband treated his wife in those days, and in 1921, when she was only about nineteen – she never knew exactly which year she was born in – she ran away to Moscow, to the headquarters of the Party women’s organization, the Zhenotdel. There was a big fuss, but six months later she came back as a Zhenotdel worker, one of the first in Central Asia. You know what they went through?’

  ‘I imagine they weren’t too popular.’

  ‘That’s an understatement if ever I heard one. They campaigned against the veil, and for an end to the selling of brides, and in favour of education for women…the usual. Some were stoned to death, some were thrown down wells, one woman was actually chopped up. All these murders were committed by fellow family members, of course.’

  Glancing to his left, Marat could see her staring angrily ahead.

  ‘And your grandmother?’

  ‘She survived until the thirties, then died giving birth in one of Stalin’s prisons.’

  ‘To your mother?’

  ‘No, she was born in 1928. She worked for the Party too, though not for the KGB. She was a union representative for the Tashkent textile workers. She’s retired now, but she still lives in Tashkent…’

  She broke off as two headlights appeared round a bend in the mountain road.

  ‘It’s a lorry,’ Marat said, rummaging in his pockets. A hand emerged holding a tube of mints. He offered her one.

  She took it, wondering if she had been wrong earlier in assuming that the mint on his breath had been a cover for the smell of alcohol.

  ‘I’ve just given up smoking,’ he said, as if in answer to her unspoken question.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said.

  He rearranged himself in the seat and asked her why she had joined the KGB.

  She was silent for a few moments. ‘I think the main reason was that I couldn’t think of an alternative,’ she said eventually.

  ‘You’re joking…’

  ‘No. I got accepted at Moscow University, and could hardly believe my luck. I really wanted to get out of Tashkent. To get out of Central Asia, full stop.’

  ‘Why? You’re Uzbek…’

  ‘An Uzbek woman. I don’t expect any Uzbek man to understand…but for anyone brought up the way I was there’s not many chances of fulfilment in this culture.’

  ‘So why did you come back?’

  ‘I missed the place.’ She laughed. ‘But that’s only part of the story. I don’t know how you feel about what’s happened in the last few years…’

  ‘Ambivalent, I suppose.’

  ‘That sounds about right. I hated it in Moscow – it was so obvious there that the system only worked for a few people at the top. Back here it was different. Oh, I know it was far from perfect, and every time I turn on the TV now there seems to be some new horror story about what’s been done to the environment, but…well, look at the place compared to what it was before the Revolution. We have education for everyone, and health care…’

  ‘I saw what this place must have been like before the Revolution,’ Marat said. ‘In Afghanistan.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘I guess I wanted to preserve some of what had been achieved.’

  ‘And the KGB seemed the best place?’

  ‘One of the best. Advances in things like women’s rights are enshrined in the state law. Which is what we’re supposed to protect, among other things.’

  ‘You’re not too worried about the other things?’

  ‘If you mean locking up fundamentalists, no I’m not. They’re not interested in democracy.’

  ‘What would you do if they came to power?’

  ‘Leave, I expect. What would you do?’ Islamic Republics were alcohol-free zones, after all.

  ‘Probably the same. Though I’ve no idea where I’d go. America maybe, if there was a way to get in.’

  ‘If they declared an Islamic Republic here I expect the West would bend over backwards to take in political refugees.’

  He grunted with amusement. ‘Maybe I should be voting for the bastards. If we ever get another vote, that is. As our beloved President is so fond of pointing out: “Do not destroy your old house until you have built another.”’

  ‘Makes sense to me,’ Nurhan observed.

  ‘Maybe. But only if people are allowed to start work on the new house. Bakalev is putting anyone who tries in prison.’

  She looked at him. ‘You’ve given up hope, have you?’

  He smiled. ‘Let’s just say I’m not expecting too much from the next few years.’ He put his hands in his pockets to conceal the fact that the left hand had begun to shake. Looking out of the Volga’s window at the mountains and star-filled sky he had the sudden conviction that the ancient Greeks had got it wrong – Orion was holding a bottle opener, not a sword.

  Simon Kennedy had left Tashkent about half an hour after Nurhan and Marat’s departure from Samarkand. The main road between the two cities wasn’t bad, and he reckoned he would be in Samarkand not much later than two in the morning. He didn’t expect there would be a great deal he could do before daylight, but at least he would be on the spot.

  Driving, in any case, was something he always enjoyed, especially at night. He had done quite a lot of it lately, usually with Janice, who seemed much more happy indulging her sexual appetite in some desert lay-by than in either of their rooms at the Hotel Uzbekistan. Kennedy wasn’t complaining, though he did sometimes wonder what the local police would make of it if the two of them were ever caught in the act.

  Janice had a brain, though, and he was inclined to trust her judgement in this business with Sarah Holcroft. There probably was something funny going on in Samarkand. Either way, he supposed he would know by morning.

  The tour bus had been travelling for slightly more than three hours when it finally reached its destination. Its occupants had seen no other vehicles during the journey, and passed not a single light, either beside the road or off in the distance. They could have been driving across the moon.

  ‘Please stay in your seats,’ Nasruddin said.

  ‘Until the plane has come to a complete stop,’ Docherty added under his breath. He wondered if there had ever been such a courteous hijack as this one.

  ‘The women will leave the
bus first,’ Nasruddin told them. ‘They will have separate quarters from the men.’ There was a muted wail of fright from Elizabeth Ogley at this news.

  ‘There is no cause for alarm,’ Nasruddin said, almost indignantly. ‘On the contrary – such an arrangement is in accord with Islamic tradition.’

  And will make it harder for any rescue operation, Docherty thought. He wondered what sort of ‘quarters’ were awaiting them outside in the darkness.

  ‘The women will now leave the bus,’ Nasruddin announced.

  For a moment no one moved, as if in instinctive mutiny against the demand. Alice Jennings was the first to stand up. She leaned over to kiss Sam on the forehead, murmured something to him, and started down the aisle, head high. Docherty didn’t see the look she gave Nasruddin, but their former guide looked as if he had been slapped.

  One by one the others followed. Sarah Holcroft and Sharon Copley both looked frightened, Elizabeth Ogley close to panic. Brenda Walker showed no emotion, encouraging Docherty to believe that she was indeed what he had suspected. With any luck she would have the same training as he had in dealing with hostage situations.

  Isabel was last, her face stern as she disappeared down the steps at the front of the bus. Docherty prayed to any possible gods that might be up there that he would see her again.

  Nasruddin disappeared, leaving just the clean-shaven man with them. The AK47 was held loosely, but its barrel was pointed right down the aisle between them. There was no sign of carelessness, and the previous hint of nervousness had given way to a watchful confidence. This man has seen military action, Docherty thought.

  Several minutes went by. The men didn’t speak, but their shared glances were eloquent enough. What a fucking mess, Copley’s expression said. This can’t have happened to me, was written all over Ogley’s face. The Zahid men were trying to hide their anxiety behind stoical exteriors and failing. Their sons, like Sam Jennings, could not conceal the absurd sense of excitement which was bubbling up through the fear.

  ‘Talib,’ a voice said from outside, causing the clean-shaven man to prick up his ears. Words in a foreign language followed.

  Talib gestured with his left hand for the men to follow him, and retreated down the steps. Docherty stood up quickly, intending to position himself at the head of the procession, but then thought better of the idea. A time might come for him to assume some sort of command responsibility, but it hadn’t arrived yet.

  They filed off the bus, stepping down on to a gravel surface. Ahead of them was a long, one-storey building with dim lights showing in two of the windows. Two men with automatic rifles stood on either side of the twenty-metre path which led to the front door, channelling their passage. Another two waited by the door. Since Nasruddin was not among them, this raised the number of the hijackers to at least seven.

  While making this simple calculation, Docherty was also taking in the panoramic sweep of countryside to either side. Though moonless, the clear sky offered enough illumination to make out the jumble of slopes which receded into the distance. The lodge had been built at the back of a wide shelf, at the upper end of a deep valley. Behind the building a bare rock-face rose almost sheer, while from its front the folds of the valley stretched away into the darkness. In the few seconds he had left before reaching the door Docherty searched for and found the North Star, low in the sky away to his left. The building faced west.

  Not that it mattered. They seemed to be a long way from civilization. In more ways than one.

  The interior of the building, though, exceeded all his expectations. It seemed to have been decorated and furnished to a higher standard than most of the Central Asian hotels they had stayed in, which perhaps wasn’t saying much. Docherty had a glimpse of a large living-room with bear rug and open hearth, before passing down a long corridor full of closed doors. At the end they were ushered into a dormitory room. It was reasonably large, about four metres by six, with two-tier bunks on three of its four walls. Otherwise the room was empty, save for the cheap rug which covered most of the floor. Docherty was still wondering what the place was when he heard a bolt slam shut on the outside of the door. And then another.

  He looked round at his fellow-captives. The two elder Zahids had begun talking animatedly in Urdu, with their sons looking on anxiously. They suddenly looked no older than adolescents, Docherty thought.

  Ogley was sitting on one of the bunks with his head in his hands, Copley pacing up and down. ‘Where do you think the women have been taken?’ the builder asked nobody in particular.

  ‘A room like this one,’ Docherty said.

  Copley looked at him with worried eyes. ‘You don’t think they’ll…’

  ‘No I don’t,’ Docherty said shortly. A year ago there would have been more inner certainty behind the denial, but the mission to Bosnia had shaken his sense of how much evil was loose in the world. ‘If they’re Islamic fundamentalists then we can expect some sort of moral code,’ he added, with more conviction than he felt. But one of the worst things that could happen here would be for the men to sit around imagining what was being done to their wives. If they were to get out of this alive then they all had to remain rational and reasonably focused. Fear and anger led in the opposite direction.

  ‘How do you know they are Islamic fundamentalists?’ Ogley asked.

  Docherty shrugged. ‘The Trumpet of God doesn’t sound like a bunch of communists. What else could they be?’ He turned to the Pakistani contingent. ‘Mr Zahid,’ he said, addressing the elder brother, ‘have you heard of these people?’

  The mullah shook his head dismissively. ‘They must be Shiites,’ he said angrily. ‘Lunatics from Iran. That is all I can think.’

  ‘Hey, look,’ Copley said from behind Docherty.

  There was another door in the fourth wall. Copley tried the handle and it opened to reveal a bathroom and toilet. Admittedly the former comprised just a tap and the latter just a hole in the floor, but a full bucket of water was standing by one wall.

  ‘I think we must be on a Magical Mystery Tour,’ Copley said. He at least seemed to be recovering his composure.

  ‘I wonder which of us is the Walrus,’ Docherty murmured.

  ‘Will you two stop gibbering,’ Ogley snapped behind them. ‘We’ve been kidnapped, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Tell us something we don’t know, Professor,’ Copley said drily. ‘You know,’ he went on, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it, but I actually feel hungry.’

  ‘So do I,’ Sam Jennings agreed. ‘Do you guys mind if I take one of the bottom bunks?’ The Zahid fathers had already laid claim to two of the four.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Docherty said, wondering what the place was normally used for. Maybe it was a youth hostel. Or a barracks for border guards.

  He noticed Ogley sitting with his head between his hands, sighed, and went over to him. ‘Are you OK, Professor?’ he asked.

  ‘I am not a professor,’ Ogley said. ‘And what do you care anyway?’

  Docherty chose his words carefully. ‘I care because experience has taught me that in a hole like this people need to pull together. I want to be alive a month from now, not a name in an obituary column.’

  Ogley looked at him sideways, rather like a schoolboy who wasn’t sure if he was being kidded. ‘So do I,’ he agreed slowly.

  ‘Good. Now is that the bunk you want?’

  The women’s room was a mirror image of the men’s, situated at the opposite end of the lodge. Once the bolts had clanged shut behind them, Isabel went round checking all the more obvious hiding-places for listening devices. She wasn’t expecting to find any, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

  Once she was reasonably certain there weren’t any, she asked her five companions for a conference. Both Elizabeth Ogley and Sharon Copley seemed close to hysteria, and Isabel thought developing a sense of solidarity could only help.

  She also had something vital to ask. ‘Sarah,’ she began quietly, ‘no one’s mentioned it, but I think we all know
who you are – or maybe I should say we all know who your father is…’

  ‘I don’t,’ Alice Jennings said, surprise on her face.

  ‘He’s the British Foreign Minister,’ Sarah Holcroft said.

  ‘Oh boy,’ Alice said softly.

  ‘The point is, do they know?’ Isabel asked, jerking her head in the direction of the door.

  Sarah looked surprised. ‘I…I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Did Nasruddin ever say anything to indicate he knew?’

  ‘No. At least, I can’t remember…But he must have known, mustn’t he?’ A hint of a wry smile crossed her lips. ‘He did live in England.’

  Alice Jennings snorted. ‘They’re always doing polls in America that show eighty per cent of Americans don’t know who the President is.’

  ‘Nasruddin seems a serious young man,’ Isabel said. ‘The type who would read the Guardian rather than the Mirror. And your picture would have appeared in the tabloids, not the qualities.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’ Brenda Walker wanted to know. She had been eyeing Isabel with suspicion ever since their arrival.

  ‘It’s simple. Maybe they don’t know who Sarah is. In which case we have to be damn careful not to let them find out.’

  ‘They must know,’ Elizabeth Ogley said, ‘or why would they have hijacked us?’

  ‘That would be a coincidence,’ Alice Jennings agreed.

  ‘They happen,’ Isabel said. ‘They may have hijacked us for no more reason than that we’re British. Most of us, anyway.’

  ‘But what difference will it make whether they know or not?’ Elizabeth Ogley asked.

  ‘Their demands will be higher if they think they have someone important,’ Isabel said. ‘And the lower they stay the better our chances of getting out of this.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about this type of thing,’ Brenda Walker interjected.

  Isabel was about to say that her husband had a lot of experience in these situations, but stopped herself in time. There didn’t seem any point in letting Docherty’s SAS background out of the bag. ‘I do have some experience of this kind of thing,’ she said. ‘From the other side.’