by Nick Louth
‘Good to finally meet you, Chris,’ she gasped. ‘I’ve been trying to track you down all over.’
‘So I noticed. My junk mail is full of your attempts. Well, now you’ve managed it. Full marks for energy and determination, Katherine.’
‘Call me Kat. So we’re off to the hospital then?’ she said, her eyes wide in excitement.
Wyrecliffe sighed. ‘One would imagine. But in Cairo, who knows?’
It was a tight squeeze inside: four men, two women, the injured man, one very harried paramedic, a BBC reporter, and now Kat Quinlan. At the first corner, a sharp lurch led to one man who had been riding shotgun on the rear step falling off into the road. Two runnels of blood from beneath the gurney raced to the open back doors, through which one of the protesters waved to his recently lost friend. ‘He’s okay. He’s up,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Time to close the doors before we’re all bouncing out on our arses,’ she said.
‘We’ve tried. The catches are bent.’ Wyrecliffe watched the bloody runnels reverse as the ambulance braked sharply, and soon the entire floor was smeared. Over the wail of the siren, a bellowing argument continued between the paramedic, attempting to insert an I-V into the patient, and two of the protesters, who were bracing against the gurney to avoid falling. One crying woman was holding the hand of the injured man, and attempting to mop up the blood which continued to ooze from his chest. Wyrecliffe had a tenuous grip with one hand on a window frame and with the other keeping a good grip on the Olympus. The ambulance turned sharp left, braked, and the doors slammed shut then open again. Kat was thrown against Wyrecliffe’s midriff. ‘Omigod, this is like a Saturday night taxi in Cork,’ she giggled, her arms locked around Wyrecliffe’s waist, her blue eyes looking up into his.
‘But surely we’d be pissed?’ said Wyrecliffe, gently turning from her embrace and clicked the recorder. ‘I’m trying to record, so if you don’t mind.’
Kat pressed a finger to her lips in mock guilt, as Wyrecliffe began to intone.
‘Demonstrators come to Tahrir Square in their tens of thousands. They are injured in their hundreds, but only the lucky few find an ambulance. This one is taking a badly injured demonstrator to hospital, a man called Mustapha who is fighting for his life. He seems to have a gunshot wound, and is bleeding badly from…’
The truck braked again, Kat slipped on the bloody floor and clashed her head painfully with Wyrecliffe’s mouth. The recorder fell from his hand and under the gurney, and somehow ricocheted out of the back of the truck and onto the road.
‘Whoops,’ said Kat.
‘Christ on a bike!’ yelled Wyrecliffe, holding his aching teeth, and watching the silver dot on the road recede. ‘That’s everything for From Our Own Correspondent.’
‘Well, it’s a long way from anyone’s correspondent now, to be sure.’ Kat fished in her pocket, and brought out her own Olympus, a newer and smaller model. ‘You can use mine,’ she said brightly.
‘How kind,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘But I think we’ve missed the moment somehow.’
The road became smoother for a while with fewer turns, but then the ambulance came to a dead stop.
‘Are we at the hospital?’ Wyrecliffe asked. The paramedic looked through the window to the cab and shook his head. ‘Police.’
The ambulance was directed to a different location, and shadowed by an unmarked van driven by plain clothes officers. The dreaded mukhabarat. The convoy drove for an hour into a quieter area of Cairo, fear gradually seeping into the bones of all on board.
They arrived inside a wire-fenced compound. Before anyone could get out, the back door was opened and a canister fired inside. The fizzing metal projectile poured caustic, burning white smoke. Women screamed, men gasped. Wyrecliffe, blinded and unable to breathe, tried to push open the doors, but they were held shut from outside. Just as suffocation threatened, the doors opened and everyone was roughly pulled out. Blinded by burning tears, he heard the unmistakeable sounds of beatings: implosive breaths and cries of pain. Kat screamed, somewhere close by.
After a minute, he was pulled to his feet, and shoved and jostled into a building, his hands cuffed tightly behind his back. He was separated from the others and his pockets emptied. Wallet, phone, watch. Everything was taken. The concrete floor of a hot, airless cell came up, smack, to meet him. He spent the next fifteen minutes retching and trying to clear the tears from his vision. The cell was windowless, blank and grey with a recessed fluorescent light, no bed and no blanket. An old blood stain in one quarter, and some scratched Arabic graffiti were the only marks of humanity.
He could no longer hear Kat. Stupidly, he felt responsible for her safety. Even though she was clearly a thrill-seeker, there was no knowing what might happen to her here. He desperately wanted to wipe his burning eyes, but with his arms behind his back he was almost helpless. Lying retching on the floor, he recalled the last time such a thing had happened. It was during a BBC course he had been forced to go on before being considered for Middle East assignment. HEFAT, Hostile Environment and First Aid Training, was a six-day residential course run in a piss-poor hotel with no beer on the edges of Hereford, and led by former Royal Marines and SAS sadists. He recalled during the anti-rape role play, where he was playing a Afghan tribesman, he was energetically kneed in the groin by a woman from the BBC Urdu Service, who was about to go out to the tribal areas of Pakistan. Six days of no beer and bruised bollocks. At least in Cairo he’d managed to protect his balls.
* * *
Morning came cold, noisy and early in the detention centre. The sound of rhythmic screams, both men and women being beaten, had haunted the night, echoing down the corridors, making true sleep impossible. Wyrecliffe was now sharing the cell with five others, all Egyptian men who had been thrown in at various times during the night. Two were impassive middle-aged members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and three were young men in their twenties, each of whom had been far more badly beaten than he. They lay like sardines on the cold floor, trying to get some sleep. One of them had a serious head injury that was still wet with blood, and moaned softly all night. By the smell, someone had fouled themselves.
At some point the door was unlocked, and two officers called Wyrecliffe’s name. When they pulled him out his legs were so numb, that he could hardly stand. They yanked his handcuffed arms high, sending shockwaves of pain into his shoulders, then pulled his jacket up and over his face so he could see nothing but the floor.
‘I am a BBC journalist, officially accredited with the Interior Ministry and I demand to be released. You are also holding a young woman whose name is Katherine Quinlan, an Irish citizen who…’
The shriek of duct tape and the binding of his mouth stilled his words. After being bundled along several corridors, and dragged up a set of steps, he was deposited in a brightly lit room. Several voices, the smell of tobacco. He was placed on a metal chair, and his plastic handcuffs were released and then reconnected over a metal bar high on the chair back. Only by leaning far forward on the chair could he relieve the pressure. Finally, the jacket was pulled back down and he could see. He was at a desk, behind which were two plain clothes mukhabarat, smoking. Two uniformed officers stood to attention behind them. To his left, Wyrecliffe could see Kat Quinlan, also handcuffed to her chair, and shaking with muffled sobs. Part of her hair was matted with blood. One of the mukhabarat, a fat man with a thin moustache, signalled to a guard. The tape was torn off his mouth, along with what felt like a significant chunk of his beard. Kat’s mouth was also unleashed, allowing a torrent of angry invective to pour out.
The fat man read from a clipboard in front of him ‘Christopher Hugh Wyrecliffe, UK citizen, yes? And Katherine Mary Quinlan, of the Republic of Ireland.’
‘Yes,’ Kat murmured.
‘You cannot detain… Wyrecliffe started.
‘We can do exactly what we please, Mr Wyrecliffe, I assure you. Egypt as you know is run under emergency powers. To tackle dissent, to curb revolutionary i
deas and dangerous religious extremism. We act in the interests of stability and calm. You, it seems, act as a provocateur of chaos and disorder. Now, if you answer my questions, it will be quicker and easier for you both,’ he said. ‘First, we have established that you are a journalist, Mr Wyrecliffe. But that this young woman is not.’
‘Yes I am,’ Kat said softly. ‘I work for the Observer.’
‘Then why are you not on that newspaper’s accreditation list, which I have right here in front of me? Why don’t you have a journalist identity card from the Ministry of the Interior? Why don’t you have any of the usual identification that we expect?’
‘She’s just a freelancer,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘Starting out. I’m sure it was just a well-intentioned piece of initiative on her part.’
‘And you,’ the fat officer said, wiping his forearm noisily under his wide nose. ‘Why were you involved in the hijacking of a reserved ambulance?’
‘I played no part in any hijack. I was merely trying to follow the story of a man wounded in Tahrir Square from the place of injury right through to what I hoped would be medical care.’
‘This man, in the ambulance. He was a troublemaker. You were mistaken in thinking him an innocent protester.’
‘Well, if I can see him to verify...’
‘That is not possible, unfortunately. His injuries were quite severe. There has been an unfortunate outcome.’
The second officer, younger but stern faced, got up and showed them both a sheaf of Arabic documents. ‘You must sign these before being released.’
‘Not unless I get a translation,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘It’s very simple. That you were treated well after your arrest. And in the case of the young lady, that she also agrees she was not raped by police officers of the Egyptian state.’
Wyrecliffe looked at her. ‘Kat? What happened?’
‘Some woman doctor inspected me. Internally. Said it was a virginity test. I don’t think I passed on that score, but I wasn’t raped, thank God.’
‘This whole thing is an outrage!’ Wyrecliffe roared. ‘You have not heard the last of this.’
The fat officer stood up and walked right up to Wyrecliffe, and then bent down until their faces were very close. ‘Don’t threaten me. BBC or no BBC, we have dealt with more powerful people than you, I can assure you. The Western Desert is a big place. Your body would never be found.’
* * *
The officers left. But it was only when tea and sweets were brought in an hour later that Wyrecliffe knew for certain they were going to be released. The interrogators had been replaced by a uniformed officer, a tall thin police inspector, who undid their handcuffs and apologised for their detention. But the documents, he insisted, still had to be signed before they were released. They both signed. Their possessions, all carefully inventoried, were returned to them.
‘You know that compared to others, you have been treated very kindly here,’ the officer said.
Wyrecliffe grunted. ‘A lesser cruelty is not the same as kindness.’
When he emerged, squinting into the sun, his wrists grazed and sore, it was to see fixer Nimr Mustapha and camerawoman Shami Shalwaz waiting by the BBC car.
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ said Shalwaz. ‘Why didn’t you let either of us know you were going out last night?’
‘I thought I was only going out for a few minutes,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘To get some sound background for Radio Four. I thought you’d be fast asleep.’
‘It took ages to locate you in the police system,’ Nimr said. ‘So many people have been arrested.’
After the introductions were over, Wyrecliffe and Kat Quinlan inspected their injuries. Wyrecliffe’s biggest and most painful bruises were on his jaw. Kat had a nasty cut on her scalp from being dragged into a cell door.
Wyrecliffe invited Kat to join him for a lunch at his hotel. Shami and Nimr went to rejoin Jim Moore who was preparing for the next piece to camera for the BBC’s One O’Clock Sunday news.
‘So did you fund yourself to come out here?’ Wyrecliffe asked Kat, as they sat sharing the Egyptian national dish, a hearty plate of spicy broad beans, known as foul but pronounced fool.
‘Yes,’ Kat said, nervously deciding to keep all mention of Rifat’s money out of it. ‘I’ve got a massive overdraft, but I really want to get into foreign reporting.
‘And is the Observer really taking your pieces?’
‘Ah well. Probably not. I’ve sent the first one, and I need to get this one finished too. If the Internet wasn’t still down I’d know by now. Any idea when it is due back on?’
‘I’m afraid not. With the satellite truck we can manage without, just, but I expect it is a real pain for you.’
Kat looked out of the window, wondering how to phrase the idea that was coming into her head. ‘Chris. May I ask a favour? I’m feeling a bit nervous about my hotel. I’m the only Westerner staying there, and the cops have now got my room number and everything. Would it be okay if I came and crashed on your floor? I’ve got a sleeping bag. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse and won’t bother you at all, I promise.’
‘You won’t bother me?’ he laughed. ‘That’s the most outrageous lie I have ever heard. And I’ve seen some, believe me. It won’t just be the room. It will be “Hey Chris, can I use the satellite Internet link to upload my story” or “Hey Chris, can I borrow your laptop.” Maybe it will be “Hey Chris, is it okay if my boyfriend crashes over as well?” I have to say, you’re not short on nerve, young lady, are you?’
Kat grinned and shot him her most winning smile, batting her eyelashes theatrically at him. ‘Pretty please, Mr Important BBC Man. I’m a poor helpless damsel in distress.’
‘There’s nothing poor or helpless about you,’ he said, looking sceptically at her. ‘Well, alright,’ he sighed. ‘But no boyfriends. No pestering me for technical help. If you want to borrow some kit, charm your way into some other hearts. The hotel’s full of journalists. You won’t need a spare sleeping bag by the way. There are two beds.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
When Rifat logged on to his laptop on Tuesday morning, February 2, he had some good news. The GPS signal from Kat’s phone was active again, having been down for several days. The signal showed her to be in central Cairo, on the edge of Tahrir Square. The Hotel Cleopatra, according to Google Maps. She sent him an e-mail saying that she had now tracked down Chris Wyrecliffe, and was staying in his room. In his room? Rifat was amazed. He had been unable to get close to Wyrecliffe, yet here was this student girl who had managed to charm her way into his hotel room. Was she using sex? From what he had seen of Katherine Quinlan, and the thinly veiled invitations she had given him, the girl had no more regard for the jewel of her womanhood than a rutting animal does. But it showed once again the wisdom of Irfan Tiwana. The imam had said: ‘the guile of women can achieve much that a legion of jihadis cannot.’ He was right. Tanoli had his flight booked to Egypt. A suitable hospital had been located, though unfortunately not in Cairo. With a little help from Yemen, he could now put the next phase of the plan into operation.
* * *
Qaladar Tanoli had been in Egypt just four hours, and his sense of foreboding had gradually grown minute by minute. He had left the cool, clean and ordered British Airways business class cabin and by degrees had sunk into the chaos of Cairo. The pot-bellied driver who met Tanoli at arrivals had a card with a badly-spelled version of his name. With his stained shirt, cheap sandals and copious cologne he seemed more like a seller of tourist tat than the well-connected fixer he had been promised. The driver hurled them both out into Cairo’s traffic, one languid arm dangling out of the window, while bellowing an impromptu tourist voiceover. They were held up in the heat by endless roadworks on the highway to Alexandria, while the car’s gutless air conditioning was incapable of shaving even a degree off the desert heat. Finally, they had reached their destination, and the cardiac consultant’s foreboding lurched down into horror. Rifat had promised him a top
quality facility in an Egyptian teaching hospital, but as they drove into the litter-strewn grounds of the El Waleed Psychiatric Hospital, he knew that he would be disappointed. The hospital wing had in theory been mothballed five years ago, but in fact all the equipment was at least thirty years out of date. There were signs of cockroach infestation in the theatre, and the sterilization oven didn’t appear to work. He’d been given enough cash to get a few vital supplies, but still no self-respecting doctor could work from such facilities.
But then he was no longer a self-respecting doctor.
* * *
Cairo
February 4, 2011
Kat was sitting drinking a coffee in the grand lounge on the mezzanine balcony of the Cleopatra Hotel feeling quite pleased with herself. She had just been out alongside a BBC crew, to cover an enormous peaceful rally in the square, in which demonstrators had demanded that Mubarak, having sacked his ministers, resign too. It was the first time that she felt she had done a proper, balanced and professional reporting job, without fearing for her own safety. Now she was typing it up on her laptop, having included TV reports just coming in of an attack on the Al Jazeera TV offices in Cairo, blamed on ‘government thugs.’
She had been sleeping in Wyrecliffe’s room for two days. She had been hanging round with journalists and photographers day and night. Her meals had been added to Chris Wyrecliffe’s bill. The BBC’s John Simpson had bought her a drink. She had her eye on Christian, a dishy French freelance photographer with dark wavy hair and a knowing smile, who had shared a sandwich with her when they were watching a late-night demonstration from the hotel balcony. She had finally obtained proper interior ministry accreditation, thanks to Chris Wyrecliffe’s intervention. That was the good news. The bad news was that the Observer had not used either of the stories she had sent in, though she had received a vaguely encouraging e-mail from the deputy foreign news editor. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.
Chris Wyrecliffe burst into her reverie. ‘Come on, get your laptop. We’re off to Alexandria.’
