by Andy Maslen
“Get some sleep, Boss,” Smudge’s disembodied voice called back.
Room at the Top
Lieutenant Colonel Massoud Jamshidi, Deputy Director of MOIS, was used to the leisurely pace of interrogations conducted by his boss. Only the very valuable assets fell into General Razi’s capable hands, and weeks might pass before they were granted their final peace. But even the general needed to eat from time to time. To sleep. To catch up on events outside the four walls of the “pressure cooker” as they called the grimy, windowless, concrete cube where suspects spent their final days.
When his boss didn’t appear for their regular evening meeting, Jamshidi became concerned. He reasoned with himself that perhaps this Wolfe character was going to experience a night like no other in his miserable life. The General was renowned for his cruelty and his ability to work for days on end without apparently needing to sleep. With that thought producing a smile on his moustachioed face, he left for home. Even though they had lost the Israeli woman, the Englishman was the bigger prize.
Jamshidi’s anxiety returned the following morning, when the General was once again conspicuous by his absence from the daily 8.00 a.m. briefing.
He left his office and hurried along the corridor back towards the security desk by the front doors. The soldier on duty snapped to attention, eyes at the prescribed forty-five-degree angle to the horizontal, staring fixedly at a spot above Jamshidi’s head.
“Have you seen General Razi this morning?”
“No, sir. Not since last night.”
“Last night? What do you mean? General Razi stayed here last night.”
The soldier appeared uncomfortable. Contradicting a senior officer was bad enough, but setting yourself in opposition to the Deputy Director would rarely end well.
“Well, man?” Jamshidi barked. “Spit it out.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, sir, the general, he left yesterday at 5.00 p.m.”
“You’re sure? You saw him?”
“Yes, sir. Clear as I’m seeing you, sir.”
Jamshidi turned on his heel and strode back down the corridor towards the door that led to the general-purpose interrogation rooms and “the pressure cooker.” A worm of anxiety was squirming forcefully in his gut. Razi had left without checking in first? It could happen, he supposed. But it hadn’t ever. Not in the five years he had been serving under the General.
He stopped outside the pressure cooker. The door was closed. He tried the handle. Locked.
He pulled his phone out and called Razi. He feared that somehow he had missed the General through an oversight of his own, and that he was about to hear the distinctive ringtone from beyond the door. Instead the phone went straight to voicemail. Jamshidi ended the call without leaving a message. He was starting to feel something was very badly wrong.
Like all senior MOIS officers, Jamshidi had a master key. He fished it out of his pocket now and, with trembling fingers, inserted it into the lock. The tip of the key jittered against the silver lock before sliding home, and Jamshidi swore under his breath.
He pushed the door open wide and stepped through, wrinkling his nose at the smell. Blood, stale sweat, excrement and the sharp reek of vomit. Wolfe, naked, lay face down on the table, his hand nailed to the wooden surface. Despite himself, Jamshidi smiled. Ah, yes, the General’s trademark. He probably gave him the “prophets” speech, too .
Something about the sight of the unconscious prisoner rang an alarm bell in Jamshidi’s mind. He moved a few paces closer. Then his hand flew to his mouth.
The scars on Wolfe’s side, that was it. Rumpled tissue on his left bicep, hip and thigh as if a giant hand had taken a few fistfuls and scrunched the skin between powerful fingers. Jamshidi had seen those scars before. In a Turkish bath on Parisooz Alley. An establishment used by all the senior officers of MOIS. Including General Razi.
He ran to the table and lifted the nailed man’s head back, wincing at the wet sucking sound as it came free of the congealed blood sticking it to the tabletop.
Then he screamed as his brain tried to process the disfigured features staring back at him. The ruined eye. The broken nose. The obscene, red moustache of raw, weeping flesh.
The features, already turning a hideous shade of yellowish-green, screamed back at him.
Yes! You are right! We are the dead face of your boss and Director, General Omar Razi! Now, in the name of Allah, do something!
Jamshidi turned to run, noticing the second corpse slumped behind the door. Just a guard. He didn’t even stop.
Back in his office, he called the commander of the Revolutionary Guards at Vareshabad.
“I’m sending you another hundred men,” he said as soon as Major Darius Esfahani answered.
“Thank you, sir. But why? My men and I are more than capable of protecting the facility with our current strength.”
“Just take them. I want 24-hour patrolling. Put a bodyguard on Darbandi at all times.”
Esfahani’s voice tautened. An experienced soldier picking up on a superior officer’s tension.
“Are you expecting an attack, sir?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I have to go.”
Just the thought of the call he had to make next brought him out in a sweat. He felt himself shaking as he dialled the number for the Minister of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics.
Recuperation
“Gabriel? Can you hear me?”
Gabriel looked up into the eyes of the angel and smiled. If this was death, it wasn’t too bad at all. The angel was beautiful. No, that wasn’t really the right word at all. Beautiful was for actresses or models. The angel was … was radiant. Her face was framed by a corona of red hair through which rays of blinding white sunlight shone, illuminating each individual strand so that he could actually see the life-force pulsing along them like current along white-hot wires. The angel …
… checked her patient’s pulse with two fingers pressed over the inside of his right wrist. She noted his vital signs down from the monitor. Then visually checked the drips feeding into cannulas inserted into veins on both arms. She …
… smiled down at him. In her swirling blue eyes, he could see his own face reflected, small, like a child, dressed in his own white angel’s robe. Or was it a vestment? A raiment? What angels wore, anyway. She spoke from far away, and he believed he had never heard such a loving sound from any woman’s lips in his entire life. Not his mother, not Britta Falskog, not Fariyah Crace, not Eli Schochat. Nobody. He reached out to her, feeling his growing wings tickling beneath his arms as they unfurled, and spread his fingers wide and the angel …
… took his hand gently from her breast and replaced it by his side. She smiled. The morphine was doing its job and the benzodiazepine was joining in with its own tranquilising song. She leaned over him and said …
“… someone’s feeling better. Can you hear me, Gabriel?”
“I’m an angel, too,” Gabriel croaked, smiling up at the radiant creature bending over him. His throat felt dry. And the angel said …
“I somehow doubt that. But you’re on the side of the angels and that’s good. Now, rest.”
And Gabriel closed his eyes and rested. Somewhere, perhaps in his old life, his left hand was hurting. But there was no pain. No pain. He slept.
He woke.
Lifted his head.
The spinning sensation wasn’t pleasant so he lowered his head to the pillow. He tried rolling his head to the side. Better. A window, shaded by a Venetian blind. Closer in, a tower of electronic devices, tubes, wires and fluid-filled bags hooked to a pole.
Beeps. A soft ticking.
The other side.
A door. Its small, square window also shaded.
The room smelled of disinfectant. Like the sickbay at school. But which school? There had been so many. He felt as if he were adrift on the ocean. On a soft inflatable bed.
He looked down. A sheet was pulled up to his waist. He was wearing a white smock, or gown of some kind. Thin
tubes ran into both arms. He followed their sinuous length back to the pole festooned with plastic bags of fluid. His left hand was throbbing, one throb for every beat of his heart. A bandage separated his fingers from his wrist. His watch was missing. Now I don’t know what time it is .
The door opened and slowly he turned his head to observe the arrival of whoever was behind it.
It was his angel. Only now she didn’t seem to shine anymore. Her, what was the word? Her radiance had left her. She was still very pretty. Red hair. He’d always loved that. She came to his bedside. Looked down at him and spoke in a soft voice.
“How are you feeling, Gabriel?”
Gabriel inhaled deeply, then wrinkled his nose at the tang of the disinfectant.
“First I thought I was in my childhood home. Then I thought I was dead.”
“Ah.” She smiled. “That would have been the morphine. Well, that and the diazepam. It’s a common side effect with that combination of drugs. You were on a fairly heavy dose. The doctor thought it best. While you healed. We also had to give you a lot of fluids. You were very dehydrated.”
He looked down at his left hand again. At the bandage, in the centre of which a small spot of red stood out like the bull’s eye of a target.
“Where’s Eli? Is she OK?”
The angel – no, not angel, she’s a nurse – the nurse smiled.
“Eli’s fine. Unlike you, she knows how to take care of herself. A couple of bumps and bruises but otherwise, A1.”
“So they got her too?”
“I couldn’t say. Above my pay grade, as they say. All I do know is she’s here at the embassy and she’s perfectly well.”
“I want to see her.”
“I’ll go and fetch her after I’ve emptied your urine pouch.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“We catheterised you when you came in.”
He shook his head, sending the room spinning for a moment.
“What? But how long have I been here? They only picked me up yesterday. Or the day before.”
The nurse, whose name according to her badge was Hannah, sat beside him, perching on the edge of the mattress. She took his right hand in her own.
“Three days. You’ve been through a rough time. Dr Bedel thought it best to keep you thoroughly medicated.”
Gabriel’s mind was whirling as he tried to process what Hannah was telling him.
“But, you have to get me out of,” he waved his hand over to his left side, at the drug delivery paraphernalia, “all this. Eli and I have important work to do.”
“I know. And I also know that Mr Furnish told me it would have to wait. That you were to be treated. Mended. Your poor hand.”
She stood and gently disengaged her hand from his; he had been gripping tightly.
“Here,” she said, placing a straw inserted into a bottle of water to his lips. “Have a drink. It’ll help your sore throat.”
Gabriel sucked hard at the straw, groaning as the cool water slid over his tongue.
“Let me go and get Dr Bedel,” Hannah said. “We’ll see what he has to say. And I’ll call Eli. And Mr Furnish.”
Gabriel sank back into the soft embrace of his pillow, which folded around his head. Shit! I ballsed that up badly.
Then another thought shouldered its way into his internal conversation.
No you didn’t. They knew your name. They knew we were coming. There is a mole . Who knew about the operation?
He began a list of possible suspects. He began with Don’s name, then crossed it out angrily. Then, reluctantly, added it back in again.
Don Webster.
The members of the Privy Council.
Sam Flack.
The spook, what was his name, Hugh Bennett.
The army officer. James Gaddesden.
Tim Frye on the SIS Iran desk.
Any colleague of Frye’s who’d helped prepare the briefing.
Julian Furnish.
Eli Schochat.
Himself, Gabriel Wolfe.
He reviewed the group’s members and mentally crossed off the ones he trusted with his life.
Don Webster.
The members of the Privy Council.
Sam Flack.
The spook, what was his name, Hugh Bennett.
The army officer. James Gaddesden.
Tim Frye on the SIS Iran desk.
Any colleague of Frye’s who’d helped prepare the briefing.
Julian Furnish
Eli Schochat.
Himself, Gabriel Wolfe.
Great! So a suspect pool of just too bloody many.
As he wondered whether he should really be including Furnish and the SIS people, the door burst open and Eli rushed in. She crossed to his bed in a couple of strides and knelt beside him. Clutching his right hand with both of hers she brought it up to her chest and held it there, leaning forwards to plant a long, hard kiss on his mouth. When she withdrew, her eyes were glistening.
“I thought you were dead. Then when you staggered in here between those guards I thought you were about to. Oh, my poor Gabriel. What did they do to you?”
He shuffled back so he could prop his head up a little.
“It’s OK. I mean, they roughed me up and nailed my hand to a table, but, you know, you should have seen the other guy.”
Eli sniffed and laughed, then coughed.
“I saw part of him.”
“Oh. They picked that up, did they?”
“Well, they could hardly leave it on the path, could they? It was disgusting. Like a, I don’t know, a big hairy caterpillar.”
“It belonged to General Razi, late of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.”
“Was he the one who …?” Eli pointed at Gabriel’s bandaged left hand.
He nodded.
“Good. And he’s not …?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“He gave me a lecture about the right and wrong way to use nails if you wanted to kill a man. I gave him a practical demonstration.”
“We were betrayed, you know that, right? Those four goons back in England were the first attempt. That didn’t work so whoever it is upped the ante. Contacted the fucking Iranians. This is serious.”
“I know. Have you spoken to Don?”
“Yes, but he says the cops have come up with nothing. Or not precisely nothing, but nothing we couldn’t have told them ourselves.”
“So what about Darbandi?”
“He said we had to abort—”
“We can’t!”
Eli smiled.
“He said we had to abort this specific op. Get back to England and meet him. We can’t risk another attempt until we find the mole.”
“I was making a list when you came in. There are too many people. It could be any one of at least a dozen. I say we go in for a second attack. The Iranians won’t be expecting it.”
“Of course they will! You escaped wearing half their interrogator’s face, remember? They’ll have Darbandi locked down at Vareshabad until he’s finished. I would.”
Gabriel slumped back. She was right. Of course, she was. The meds were interfering with his thinking.
“What then?” he asked.
“Like I said. We fly back to England. Regroup. Find the mole. Then we start again.”
They were interrupted by the door opening again. Julian Furnish poked his head round.
“Aha! You’re back with us. Pretty impressive escape, I must say. The Iranians will be spitting feathers. Though not the chap whose tache you pinched, obviously.”
Gabriel grinned.
“He won’t be spitting anything anymore.”
Furnish stood at the end of the bed, hands in pockets, looking as though patching up escapees from MOIS was just part of his daily routine.
“Well, we’ll get you up on your feet and then spirit you and Eli here back to England. No need to worry about the Iranians now you’re here. But I did want to ask you what went wrong.”
Eli
twisted round before Gabriel could answer.
“All we know is our covers were blown. The Iranians knew we were coming.”
“Fair enough. But Gabriel’s been inside MOIS and survived. We’d like to know a bit more about that. It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence. Would you be up for an informal interview later today?”
Gabriel felt he had no option but to agree. They settled on a 3.00 p.m. meeting in Furnish’s office.
Crossing Off Names
At 2.30 p.m. Gabriel gingerly climbed out of bed. The nurse, Hannah, had stopped by thirty minutes earlier.
“We’ll sort you out with some oral painkillers,” she’d said, as she disconnected him from all the tubes and monitors. “But Dr Bedel’s happy with your rehydration, and there’s no infection in your hand. You’re a strong man, Gabriel Wolfe. And a very lucky one.”
He walked stiffly to the adjoining bathroom and closed the door behind him. Holding his bandaged hand above him like someone hailing a cab, he showered, grateful to be sluicing himself free of the filth he felt still clung to him from the torture cell.
Someone, Hannah, he assumed, had laid out a razor and a can of foam on the sink and he spent five minutes carefully shaving, relaxing for the first time in days, and enjoying the sensation of the blade sweeping across his skin. Lastly, he cleaned his teeth.
He dressed in the clothes that had been laid out for him on a side chair. Underwear, navy chinos, a soft white shirt and a pair of tobacco-brown boat shoes. Thanks, Eli .
At ten to three, he left the sick bay and walked along a short corridor, following signs to reception.
“Yes, sir,” the receptionist, a young woman with olive skin and huge brown eyes, asked. “How can I help?”
“I’m meeting Julian Furnish at three o’clock. Could you point me in the direction of his office, please?”
“Certainly, sir. Take the lift to the second floor and Mr Furnish is third door on the left.”
Gabriel thanked her and made his way to the lift.
Outside Furnish’s door, he inhaled once, then knocked briskly and entered.
Sitting behind the desk, Furnish looked like an everyman middle manager. Only the array of telecoms equipment on the righthand corner of his desk gave a hint as to his true profession. A slim, tanned, athletically built woman in her early forties wearing a cream silk suit sat facing Furnish. Her hair, the colour of polished teak, was cut short in a sleek bob. Both she and Furnish stood and smiled at Gabriel.
