Marine F SBS

by Robin James

  It took them fifty-five minutes to get down, by which time Carolyn felt as weak and shaky on her legs as a newborn foal. Relief to have made it alive surging through her, she sunk down on to the hard, grassy ground, hands between her legs, head drooping, breathing heavily.

  ‘Here.’ Arsenio unscrewed its silver-plated top, pulled out its cork and handed her a hip-flask. She looked dubiously at it, then at him.

  ‘What is it?’

  He grinned, and she caught the grin in the faint light. It was the first time she had seen him exhibit any trace of humour; shocked at herself for doing so, she noticed that he was unusually attractive with his grin.

  ‘I’m hardly going to poison you at this stage of the game,’ he told her. ‘Have a sip, you need it. It’s twenty-year-old Chivas Regal whisky.’

  And he had offered her the flask first, she noted. Somewhere behind this desperate man there lurked a gentleman. She remembered as she drank, spluttered, then drank some more before handing back the flask, that he had rescued her from rape. Her fear seemed to have subsided enough to allow her to look at her captor as a man and not simply as a dangerous criminal who was trying to trade her life for money. Suddenly realizing how sore her left foot was, she took off the trainer and sock. There was a blister, split and angry, on the ball of her big toe.

  ‘Shit,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’ He dug in his bag and fetched out a tin of sticking-plasters, opened it and handed her one, then took off his own right shoe and sock.

  ‘Now what?’ she asked, when their feet were patched up.

  ‘I told you – we’re walking to Portugal. It isn’t far.’ He took a slug of whisky and offered the flask to her again. She shook her head.

  ‘Yes – but then what?’ she persisted.

  ‘Then,’ he said, screwing on the top and putting the flask away in the flight bag, ‘if all goes to plan, we meet my team and we find somewhere to hide you until your daddy coughs up.’

  ‘Team? Is that what you call them? They’re not exactly sportsmen.’ The two stiff swigs of whisky had gone straight to her head, emboldening her.

  He shrugged. ‘What do you want me to call them? My murderous bunch of thugs?’

  ‘Well, they are, aren’t they?’

  He stared blankly at her. Yes, they are, he thought. And I’m a thug too, sweetheart. Whether I like it or not. And I don’t very much, but that’s what I am. That’s life in my jungle. Reaching down, he took her by the upper arm and helped her to her feet.

  ‘We’ve still got a long way to go,’ he told her. ‘Let’s move. Just shout if you want another snifter.’

  Meanwhile, the others, having abandoned the Panda in a side-street in Feces de Abajo, had made it to the border post on foot, and crossed one by one with their false identities without incident. They had caught the only car-hire business still open as it was about to close, and Hantash was at that moment driving them on Portuguese highway 1035, in a southerly direction by the side of the River Támega. There was a mountainous, roundabout route ahead of them to get them to the town of São Miguel, where Arsenio was headed with Carolyn – one hundred and sixty kilometres of it, when in fact São Miguel was just twenty kilometres from where they had parted company outside Bousés.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, Arsenio and Carolyn arrived at the Río Assureira. It was wider at that point than he had imagined – and deeper, considering it was July. But then this was mountain country where it rained a lot during the spring, and the streams were still running, feeding the river. He had hoped that they would be able to wade across. He saw that they would, but only some of the way; in the middle they would probably be obliged to swim. He put his bag down on the dried mud bank.

  ‘Strip off,’ he told Carolyn, as he began to unbutton his shirt.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going to have to swim. We wouldn’t want to be walking into town with soaking-wet clothes, now would we?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ she stared at him. His shirt was off and he was carefully folding it. He had a superbly muscular torso, she could not help noticing.

  ‘No buts, Carolyn. Get your gear off.’

  He took off his shoes and socks and stowed them in the bag with his shirt, then unzipped his trousers while she stood, chewing her bottom lip, silently watching him.

  ‘Come on.’ He finished undressing. ‘We haven’t got all night, darling. You wouldn’t want me to have to help you now, would you?’

  Deeply reluctant, but realizing she had no option, she took off her sweater, then the trainers and socks, then the jeans. She did not look at him again until she handed him her clothes. He was naked, making no effort to hide himself from her. She tried to keep her eyes away from his genitals, but they flickered over them twice, seemingly with a will of their own.

  He rolled the sweater and trainers and socks in the jeans and tucked the bundle in the side of the bag with his own, carefully folded clothes. Then he held out his hand, looking her in the eye and not at her bare breasts as most men would have done. ‘The bikini bottom,’ he said.

  She flinched. ‘That’s hardly necessary.’

  ‘Why do you think I’ve taken my pants off? I don’t happen to be an exhibitionist. I don’t want wet pants showing through my trousers in the village. I don’t want to feel wet. I don’t want you with wet pants, either, even supposing nobody in the place is awake when we get there.’

  ‘I’ll put them in the bag when we get to the other side,’ she said. ‘I won’t wear them any more.’

  He sighed, then produced that infectious grin again. ‘Have it your own way,’ he told her. ‘But you’re still going to have to take them off in front of me, aren’t you? Tell you what, take them off now, I promise not to look at you, or when you put them back on. Take them off on the other side of the river, then I’m going to ogle your every move, my lovely. Your choice.’

  ‘Shit,’ she said. She was beaten. ‘All right – turn your head away.’ She hooked her thumbs in the sides of the bikini bottom.

  ‘Just hold it a moment.’

  Producing a length of string from the bag, he looped it around her neck.

  ‘What the . . .?’ she said, a touch of fear creeping back.

  ‘Hate to do this, but I wouldn’t want you getting any funny ideas and trying to swim off. Behave yourself, stick by my side, and you won’t even know you’ve got it on.’ He tied a slip-knot in the string, so that she had a noose hanging loosely around her neck, a couple of metres of string between it and the end of the string in his hand. ‘Now you can take your knickers off,’ he said, glancing up at the moon.

  It was beginning to feel like some kinky sex scene – except that he kept his word and did not look at her. But somehow, as they stepped side by side into the cool, steady tug of the river, she could not avoid sneaking a peep at him, before hurriedly looking away, her mind a confused jumble.

  Underfoot were rocks, large pebbles and small stones. All were worn smooth by the water, but picking their way across and through them was tricky because they were slippery and quite invisible; the only view afforded them by looking at the surface of the river was a fractured reflection of moon and stars. The water plucking at their lower legs was cool, just short of cold; in contrast to the sticky warmth of the night, it felt wonderfully refreshing.

  For Carolyn, everything was fast becoming unreal again. Nude, stepping out into a dark river dividing Spain and Portugal, hand in hand with a naked killer who had kidnapped her under the sea, a noose around her neck, its end in his hand. Despite it all, her eyes slid sideways and she cast another furtive glance at him. He really did have a very fine body. As for his co . . . Christ – what the bloody hell was going on in that crazy brain of hers? She tore her gaze away from him, determined to look at nothing more than the water from then on.

  Arsenio was acutely aware of her too. It was hard not to look at her, as the stones and rocks gave way to fine grains, then a level bed of silt, and the water rose above their knees and stead
ily up their thighs. But he managed the feat. It occurred to him that when they reached the other bank he could take her if he was so inclined – and she may even go along with it without putting up too much of a struggle. He put the thought firmly from his mind. He wasn’t in the rape business, and only yesterday he had rescued her from just such a fate. And if there was one crime he would detest seeing on his wanted-for list it was that base act.

  Then the water was surging coldly above their waists, the current pulling at them, and they were swimming, Arsenio’s flight bag held above his head in the hand with the end of the piece of string. By the time they were almost across and they put their feet down again on silt, the current had taken them quite a way downstream. They could just make out in the dark and deeply shadowed landscape that they were opposite an olive grove.

  There were fewer stones on the river bed than the other side. But the bank was steeper and they had a struggle to haul themselves up. They were in Portugal. The lights of São Miguel, much closer now but still some way away, were tucked into the lower slopes of a mountain, visible above the olive trees.

  ‘You can take the noose off,’ said Arsenio, as he dug into the bag and brought out a clean, white T-shirt. He handed it to her. ‘Here, dry yourself.’ He found a sweater in among the hardware and used it to towel himself down, then he handed her her bundle of clothes and her bikini bottom and started to dress. She actually felt good after the swim. It had cleansed the fishy smell from her body, though the aroma still clung vaguely to the sweater and jeans.

  ‘You like olives?’ were his next words as they stepped in among the tightly planted, small, twisted trees. He stopped to pick one.

  ‘I detest them,’ she told him.

  ‘It’s an acquired taste. Well worth persevering for.’ He bit into the olive. ‘You should try one.’

  ‘You didn’t look at me. Not even once did you look at me.’ She sounded surprised, even perhaps the slightest bit regretful.

  He grinned flatly at her. ‘I never break a promise to a pretty girl.’ He paused. ‘But you looked at me.’

  She felt herself colouring. She hastily changed the subject. ‘If you never break a promise, will you promise me you won’t hurt me? That I’ll get out of this alive?’

  He spat out the olive pip and stopped to pick another. ‘You’ll get out alive. That I promise you,’ he told her, popping the olive into his mouth.

  ‘What about not hurting me?’

  ‘Only if you continue to behave yourself. Daddy’s going to pay up, I’m sure of that – so there won’t be any need for further persuasion in that direction.’

  A chill ran through her. ‘You would have . . . you would have cut my finger off, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t, not personally.’

  ‘But that awful, German-sounding thug, he would have done?’

  He stared at her regretfully, without expression. ‘Yes, he would.’

  They walked on in silence until they were almost out of the grove. Through the trees, up ahead, they could make out an upward-sloping field of long grass. Carolyn had more or less lost her personal fear of Arsenio; swimming naked with him, he not looking at her nude body, the sight of his nakedness, his calm and measured way of speaking, all had contrived to make her feel almost comfortable with him. She was his prisoner, yet the fear had almost melted away. Analysing her feelings, she found that she could not even bring herself to hate him. Was this, then, the famous Stockholm syndrome? Surely not – didn’t that have to do with a hostage coming round to a terrorist’s way of thinking, even beginning to love him, not with a kidnap victim finding things she rather liked about her abductor? She was feeling most odd.

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ she told him, as they walked from the olive grove to find themselves thigh-high in pale-yellow grass with tiny snails clinging to it. ‘A man like you, involved in something like this. I mean, you’re hardly an oaf.’

  He raised a mild eyebrow. ‘An oaf? I hope not.’

  ‘But you’ve been behaving like one,’ she said. Then she added hastily, ‘Until we were alone, that is.’

  ‘Carolyn, I’m in charge of a multi-million-pound kidnap operation. I’ve had the SBS and half the police in Spain after me. Do you expect me to behave like the perfect gentleman?’ He realized that he was surprised at himself for opening up to her. He was beginning to like her – and that was not exactly a great idea. She was a spunky young lady – she had been terrified half to death and now she was chatting away with him as if they were old friends.

  She gaped at him. ‘Multi-million-pound?’ she repeated. She knew it had to be a lot of money, but not so much. ‘How many millions?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘God, you’re going to absolutely skint my poor father.’

  ‘I doubt that. He’s a very rich man.’

  ‘And what gives you the right to try and relieve him of his money? He works terribly hard to keep hold of it. Hanging on to your fortune isn’t easy these days.’

  He frowned at her. ‘Look, why don’t you just shut it?’ he told her, trying to sound menacing, but falling short of it.

  Shut it she did, that was until they were through the field. ‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said. ‘I don’t recall anybody ever calling you anything.’

  ‘It’s Arsenio,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of a name is that?’ She seemed to have heard it somewhere before.

  ‘A Spanish name. I’m Venezuelan by birth.’ They were on a stony track, leading upwards, the village now not far away. Gorse and shrubs were closing in on them.

  She searched her memory. Venezuelan? Arsenio? Christ! She stopped dead, mouth dropping open. ‘You’re not the Arsenio?’ she asked him, knowing at that moment that, of course, he had to be.

  ‘El Asesino,’ he said bluntly, not looking at her. ‘The one, yes. The Assassin.’

  ‘God!’

  ‘Perhaps now you’ll stop being so fucking friendly and quit asking stupid questions?’ He was irritated with himself; he did not care for his nickname, neither did he feel like scaring Carolyn again; but he needed to, otherwise he would shortly be softening up – and then slipping up.

  She tried to digest the information, but it was not sinking in properly. The world’s most wanted terrorist – as Carlos the Jackal had been until he was caught? The man who had blown up the peers’ guest room in the House of Lords and two cleaning women along with it? The man who had broken out of Parkhurst and caused the death of the governor in so doing? This man – who had been concerned about her feet, and her dignity, and who had saved her from rape?

  He seemed to have read her mind, for he said, a minute or so later, ‘An enigma, that’s me.’

  ‘And how,’ retorted Carolyn.

  They spoke no more until the track began to widen as they got nearer the village. Suddenly, up ahead, the beams of a car were swinging from side to side, cutting swathes in the blackness, the car itself out of sight but approaching. Taking hold of Carolyn by the elbow, Arsenio hurried her off the track and behind the shelter of some thick gorse, pulling her down so that they were crouching side by side. He unzipped his bag to pull out a Smith & Wesson 459 and a silencer, which he screwed on adroitly.

  ‘Very, very still, and very, very quiet,’ he told her. She had no intention of being anything else. The fear was seeping back.

  The car, bumping around on its springs, soon came into sight. An oldish Renault 5 with police markings on its side and an unlit blue lamp on its roof, it stopped twenty metres before reaching them. The driver’s door opened.

  Arsenio was pointing the gun in the policeman’s direction. ‘Try anything at all to attract his attention, and I shall kill him,’ he whispered.

  The seeping fear became a flood. Carolyn was as still and as quiet as a sleeping mouse as the policeman had a pee, lit a cigarette and leant back on his car to gaze up at the stars. He smoked some of the cigarette, got back in the car, backed off the track, turned around and headed towards the vil
lage.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Arsenio, standing and putting the gun away.

  She was too scared to say anything. The terrifying fact that she was in the hands of the dangerous killer El Asesino had at last sunk in.

  They encountered no one else out in that lonely Portuguese outpost. Apart from occasional flurries of breeze, and the infrequent rustle of night creatures in the scrubby undergrowth that closed in on the track, it was still and quiet. Then, as they neared São Miguel, familiar music, very faint at first, reached their ears. Totally unexpected in so remote a part of Europe, it was the Beatles singing Penny Lane.

  As the music got louder and they rounded a bend to see, quite close, a cluster of lights, Arsenio again took out his silenced Smith & Wesson and shoved it into his trousers, under his shirt. Then he slipped the handles of the flight bag over his shoulder, took out his flick-knife and opened it. Putting his arm around Carolyn’s waist, he slid the knife up under the front of her sweater; her skin crept at the cold touch of wicked steel on her bare belly.

  ‘We’re lovers, understand?’ he told her. ‘A pair of strolling lovers.’ He looked at his watch – ten minutes to midnight. There would still be some people around, for sure. Villages this far south tended not to go to sleep early.

  The track became a cracked and potholed road. Suddenly they were in a narrow village street, dark-windowed, unattractive little houses on either side of them, here and there a slither of light peeping from behind closed curtains.

  It was a tiny, dispirited, one-horse, one-policeman sort of a place – much what Arsenio had expected and hoped for. Within a couple of minutes the road had widened fractionally and they were walking past some tiny shops into the village centre. Ahead of them were the lights of a bar, outside it the car belonging to the one policeman was host to a couple of scruffy-looking, dark-faced men who were sitting on its bonnet, talking and drinking. The music was coming from the bar, the Beatles sounding ludicrously incongruous in this land of the mournful fado. There was also, approaching them as Penny Lane gave way to Don’t Let Me Down, walking in an odd, knock-kneed sort of way and with one hand held up and flopping loosely in front of his thin, gaunt face, a boy in his late teens. He came directly up to them. They could see in the light from one of the few street lamps that saliva was dribbling from a corner of his down-turned mouth. Carolyn gasped as he flapped his dangling hand to within inches of her face, staring at her with vacant, yet piercing eyes, and then wandered on by.