The Devil`s Feather

by Minette Walters

  I had no proof it was MacKenzie—although I never doubted it—but I couldn’t persuade the hotels to take me seriously. It was impossible for a non-resident to enter guests’ bedrooms, they said. And what was I complaining about, anyway, when no thefts had occurred? It was simply the chambermaid doing her job. My colleagues merely shrugged their shoulders and quoted the “thief of Baghdad” at me. What else could I expect in this god-awful city?

  The only person who might have taken my fears seriously was my boss, Dan Fry, but he’d chosen that week to go on R&R in Kuwait. I thought about phoning him and asking if I could transfer to his flat, but I was afraid I’d be even more isolated there than in a hotel full of journalists. There was no point in going to the police. Obsessed with suicide bombers and hostage-takers, they wouldn’t have given me the time of day. And in any case, I thought Alan Collins was right. The police were the last people to talk to.

  I didn’t sleep. Instead I lay awake, clutching a pair of scissors, and watching the door with burgeoning paranoia. After four nights of it I was so exhausted that, when I returned to my room after a press conference to find my knickers with the crotches cut out, my nerve snapped completely and I applied for immediate sick leave on the grounds of war-induced stress and mental breakdown.

  I hadn’t spent more than two months in the UK since I’d left Oxford in 1988, but in Baghdad in early May 2004 all I could dream about was soft summer rain, green grass, narrow hedge-lined lanes, and fields and fields of ripening corn. It was an England I barely knew—drawn as much from fiction and poetry as real life—but it was the safest place I could think of.

  I can’t imagine why I was so stupid.

  * * *

  >>>Associated Press

  >>>Sunday, 16 May 2004, 07:42 GMT 08:42 UK

  >>>Filed by James Wilson, Baghdad, Iraq

  Reuters Correspondent Snatched

  Just three days after Adelina Bianca, a 42-year-old Italian television reporter, was taken hostage by Muntada al-Ansar, an armed terrorist group, it’s feared that Connie Burns, a 36-year-old Reuters correspondent, has suffered the same fate. Snatched while on her way to Baghdad International Airport yesterday, Connie Burns’s whereabouts are unknown. Her Reuters car was discovered, burnt out and abandoned, on the outskirts of the city. As yet, no group has claimed responsibility for her kidnapping.

  Muntada al-Ansar, believed to be led by Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a senior al-Qaeda operative, was responsible for the savage execution on video of American civilian Nick Berg. They have now posted video footage of a distressed and blindfolded Adelina Bianca on the same website, with threats to behead her if Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s Prime Minister, continues to support the coalition.

  In the wake of these atrocities, Amnesty International has issued the following statement. “The killing of prisoners is one of the most serious crimes under international law. Armed groups must release immediately and without any precondition all hostages, and should refrain from attacking, abducting and killing civilians.”

  Colleagues of Connie Burns are devastated by her abduction. She is a well-known and popular correspondent who has reported on wars in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, and a graduate of Oxford University, she worked on newspapers in South Africa and Kenya before joining Reuters as an Africa specialist.

  “With the help of religious leaders in Baghdad, we’re doing all we can to find out who’s holding Connie,” said Dan Fry, the agency’s bureau chief in Iraq. “We ask her captors to remember that newswire correspondents are neutral observers of conflicts. Their job is to report the news, not devise the policies that make it.”

  The last piece Connie Burns filed before she left for the airport was a moving tribute to Adelina Bianca. “Adelina’s a courageous journalist who never flinches from asking the difficult questions. As a powerful voice on the side of suffering, her writing has stirred consciences around the world…any attempt to silence her will be a victory for ignorance and oppression.”

  * * *

  * * *

  >>>Associated Press

  >>>Wednesday, 19 May 2004, 13:17 GMT 14:17 UK

  >>>Filed by James Wilson, Baghdad, Iraq

  Reuters Correspondent Released

  The surprise release of Connie Burns, the 36-year-old correspondent abducted on Saturday, was announced by Reuters this morning. “We received an anonymous phone call yesterday telling us where to find her,” explained Dan Fry, her bureau chief. “She had a difficult time, and I took the decision to fly her out of the country before making the details public.”

  He went on to say that Connie had been in fear of her life before she was abandoned in a bombed-out building to the west of the city. “When we found her she was bound and gagged with a black hood over her head. We believe her treatment was in revenge for Abu Ghraib and we ask both coalition and dissident forces in Iraq to remember that all abuse of power is a crime.”

  “Connie’s first thoughts were for Adelina Bianca,” the agency chief told a press conference. “She was informed by her captors that Adelina was beheaded on Monday and was warned to expect the same fate. She reacted emotionally when we said that to the best of our knowledge Adelina is still alive.”

  It was a measure of Connie Burns’s courage, he went on, that she spent three hours helping police before flying out of Baghdad airport. “Her greatest regret is that she was unable to give them any useful information. She was blindfolded after being snatched from her car by masked men when her driver left the airport road and took her into the al-Jahid district.”

  Police have issued a description of the driver. “The car was hijacked minutes before it collected Connie from her hotel,” said Dan Fry. He confirmed that Reuters have issued tougher guidelines to their correspondents. “In future, no one should assume a vehicle is safe,” he warned. “It’s easy to become complacent when you’ve been a passenger in the same car several times.”

  He refused to give further details of Connie Burns’s captivity. “At the moment her primary concern is for Adelina Bianca. Connie is determined to say and do nothing that might jeopardize Adelina’s release.”

  The armed group holding Ms. Bianca issued the following statement. “The fate of Adelina Bianca will be decided by the Prime Minister of Italy. While he gives sustenance to American soldiers to occupy the sacred land of Iraq, the mothers of his country will receive only coffins from us. The dignity of Muslim men and women is not redeemed except by blood and souls.”

  It is now over a week since Adelina was taken hostage, but the passing of Monday’s deadline for her execution offers a glimmer of hope. There is considerable concern among moderate Iraqi religious leaders that the escalating brutality of hostage-takers is further damaging Islam in the eyes of the world. “Islam does not wage war on innocent women and children,” said one. “In face of these atrocities, the shocking abuse at Abu Ghraib prison is being forgotten. These groups are handing the moral victory to America.”

  * * *

  3

  I WATCHED ADELINA’S release on the television in my parents’ flat after the crowd of reporters and photographers who’d thronged their road finally departed. By that time, a week after I’d left Baghdad, my own story was dead. I’d eluded the Reuters welcoming committee at Heathrow, failed to show up for a press conference and buried myself in an anonymous hotel in London as Marianne Curran—an agoraphobic woman with no appetite and frequent nosebleeds, who never left her room, and whose stay was paid for in cash by the sugar daddy who visited her every evening.

  God knows what the hotel made of me. The only request I made of them was the address and telephone number of the nearest STD clinic. Otherwise, I wouldn’t let the chambermaids into the room, smoked like a chimney, spent hours in the bath and ate only when my father ordered sandwiches on room service. I put on a good show for him whenever he appeared, but I could see it concerned him that I only ate crumbs.

  The story I gave him for my refusal to meet the press was t
he same as Dan had offered in Baghdad: I didn’t want to speak publicly about my captivity for fear of jeopardizing Adelina’s chances. For his private peace of mind, I told him I’d been blindfolded throughout and had never seen my captors, but had been treated reasonably despite being terrified.

  I don’t know if he believed me. My mother certainly didn’t when he smuggled me into the flat at three o’clock one morning. She was shocked at how much weight I’d lost, worried by my preference for darkened rooms and deeply suspicious of my refusal to talk to anyone, particularly Dan Fry in Baghdad and Reuters in London. However, as I locked myself in the spare bedroom every time she tried to question me, my father put pressure on her to let me deal with things in my own way.

  Adelina Bianca was my single excuse. As long as she remained in captivity I had a reason for keeping quiet, so it was with mixed emotions that I watched her uncertain steps on television as she emerged from a mosque in Baghdad, dressed in a heavy black chador. Beside her was the imam who had negotiated her freedom. She was so hidden beneath the veil that I couldn’t read anything from her face, but her voice was strong as she thanked everyone who’d helped her. She denied that the Italian government had paid a ransom.

  Twenty-four hours later I sat glued to the set again as she gave a press conference in Milan. It was a bravura performance which left me ashamed of my own inability to talk about what had happened to me. I didn’t have Adelina’s courage.

  AS SOON AS ADELINA was released, I scoured websites for rented property in the West Country. Of course my mother was unhappy about it, particularly when I told her I planned to take a six-month lease and asked if I could use her maiden name again. Why did I want to do that? What about Reuters? How was I going to live? Why did I keep telling her I was fine when I so obviously wasn’t? What was wrong? And why was I going into hiding the minute Adelina was free?

  Once again, my father stepped in. “Let her be,” he said firmly. “If she doesn’t know her own mind at thirty-six, then she never will. Some wounds only heal in fresh air.”

  I could—probably should—have told them the truth, and I wonder now why I didn’t. I was their only child and we had a close and supportive relationship despite the often huge distances between us. But my father had so many regrets about abandoning the farm in Zimbabwe that I hesitated to burden him with mine. If he hadn’t been married, he’d have stayed put and barricaded the house out of bloody-mindedness, but my mother forced his hand after one of their neighbours was murdered by Mugabe’s Zanu-PF thugs.

  My father never forgave himself for what he saw as capitulation. He felt he should have fought harder for what his family had bought and built, and what was rightfully his. He landed a reasonably paid job in London with a South African wine importer, but he hated the insularity of England, the claustrophobia of city life and the modest rented flat in Kentish Town that was a quarter the size of their farmhouse outside Bulawayo.

  I take after my mother in looks, tall and blonde, and my father in character, determinedly independent. On the face of it, my mother appears the least secure of the three of us, yet I wonder if her willingness to admit fear shows that she’s the most self-assured. For my father, running away was an admission of defeat. He thought of himself as strong and resolute, and I realized in the summer of 2004 how humiliating it had been for him to cut and run. He hadn’t found the courage to confront Mugabe’s bullies any more than I could find the courage to confront mine…and we both felt diminished as a result.

  The excuse I gave them of wanting time and space to write a book was partially true. I’d produced an outline while still in Baghdad (in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib revelations) and had been offered a publishing contract on the back of it. I saw how twitched I and my colleagues became when the West lost its sheen of moral respectability, and my idea had been to chart the world’s trouble-spots through the eyes of war correspondents. I particularly wanted to explore how constant exposure to danger affects the psyche.

  The original advance offered was a pittance but I renegotiated it on the basis that the book would include a full and free account of my kidnapping. It was straightforward fraud, because I signed the contract knowing I would never reveal the truth. Indeed, I couldn’t see myself writing a book at all—I seized up every time I sat in front of a keyboard—but I had no conscience about persuading the publishers I was committed. It was the pretext I needed to take myself out of circulation while I stitched my tattered nerve together again.

  I found Barton House on a Dorset agent’s website and chose it because it was the only property available on a six-month lease. It was far too big for one person but the weekly rent was the same as for a three-bedroomed holiday cottage. When I queried this, the agent told me that holiday lets were unreliable and the owner wanted a guaranteed regular income. Since I could afford it, I accepted his explanation and forwarded a money draft under the name I’d used in the hotel, which was my mother’s maiden name—Marianne Curran—but even if he’d told me the truth, that the house was in a poor state of decorative repair, I would still have gone ahead. I was obsessed at that stage with removing myself from the world.

  I don’t know what I expected—to be part of a small community where I could close the door when I felt like it, perhaps—but that wasn’t the reality. All the arrangements had been made by email and telephone until my collection of the key from the agent’s office in Dorchester half an hour earlier. The photograph of Barton House on the website had shown climbing plants across a stone façade, with the roof of another building to the side (a garage as I discovered later). I had assumed, since the address was Winterbourne Barton, that this meant it was within the village boundaries.

  Instead, it stood behind high hedges, well away from the nearest house, and with most of it invisible from the road. An absence of crowds was exactly what it promised—even isolation—and I halted my newly acquired Mini at the entrance and stared through the windscreen with anxiety fluttering at my heart. The human maelstrom of London had been a nightmare during the three weeks I’d spent with my parents because I’d never known who was behind me. But surely this was worse? To be alone, and hidden from view, with no protection and no one within calling distance?

  The hedges cast long shadows and the garden was so wild and unkempt that an army could have been lurking there without my seeing them. Since the moment I’d landed at Heathrow, I’d been trying to conquer my fears by reaffirming what I knew to be true—I was no longer in danger because I’d done what I was told—but there’s no reasoning with anxiety. It’s an intense internal emotion that isn’t susceptible to logic. All you can do is experience the terror that your brain has told your body to feel.

  I drove in eventually because I had nowhere else to go. The house was pretty enough—a low rectangular eighteenth-century construction—but, close up, its tattiness showed. The sun and salt winds had taken their toll of the doors and window frames, and so many of the tiles had slipped that I wondered if the roof was even waterproof, despite the agent’s assurances on his website that the property was sound. It didn’t worry me—I’d seen far worse, most recently in Baghdad, where bomb damage left whole buildings in ruins—but I began to understand why Barton House compared favourably with three-bedroomed cottages.

  Does any of us know our breaking point? Mine was when the large iron key to the front door jammed in the lock and five mastiffs appeared out of nowhere as I tried to find a signal on my mobile. I was pointing it towards the horizon and only realized the dogs were there when one of them started growling. They took up guard around me with their muzzles inches from my skirt, and I felt the familiar adrenaline rush as my autonomic fear response kicked into action.

  Half a second’s thought would have told me there was an owner around, but I was so petrified I couldn’t think at all. It didn’t even register when I dropped my phone. You can reinforce your confidence as many times as you like, but it’s a futile exercise when your fear is so real that a single growl can reawaken night
mares. I’d never seen the dogs in the Baghdad cellar but I could still hear and feel them, and they inhabited my dreams.

  I didn’t notice the owner until she was standing in front of me, and I mistook her gender until she spoke. I certainly didn’t take her for an adult. She was wearing denims and a man’s shirt that was too big for her slight body, and her curiously flat features and slicked-back dark hair made me think she was an adolescent boy who was still growing. If she weighed a hundred pounds I’d have been surprised. Any one of the mastiffs could have crushed the life out of her just by lying on her.

  “Keep your hands still,” she said curtly. “Birdlike movements excite them.”

  She gave a flick of her fingers and the dogs ranged themselves in front of her, heads lowered.

  “You look like Madeleine,” she said. “Are you related?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, and didn’t care anyway because I couldn’t breathe. I dropped into a squat, head back, sucking for oxygen, but all I achieved was to set her dogs growling again. At that point I gave up and scrabbled on all fours towards the open door of the Mini. I dived in and pulled it to, clicking the lock behind me, before leaning back in a desperate attempt to get some air into my lungs. I think one of the dogs must have charged the car because I felt it lurch, followed by a sharp command from the girl, but I’d closed my eyes and wasn’t watching.