The Mephisto Threat

by E. V. Seymour

  Not much of a techno-person, Tallis clicked through each application, methodically opening and checking folders, the most startling revelation the virtual absence of business data, legitimate or otherwise. Instead, the computer told its own grim story. File after file revealed downloaded reports and articles on pioneering treatment for brain-damaged victims. He felt like he was reading an obituary for someone who had not yet died. Billy’s accident had nearly killed him, but it had killed a chunk of his father, too. Tallis sat back, felt sudden tension in his neck. He understood only too well Kennedy’s despair. When Belle had died, something inside him had also expired.

  Tallis closed down the machine, left the office, thinking he’d make the next stop the Walsall site, when, suddenly, the alarm went off. He raced downstairs. Quickly taking in the scene, he could see no signs of forced entry. The deadlock was in place, exactly as he’d left it. Through the windows everything was as before, except the old man had gone. Alarm must be on the blink, he thought, or perhaps there’d been a power surge. Not so unusual in wet and windy weather. Walking through to the tiny kitchen, he checked the box to the alarm. The time—18.34—was flashing. Tallis punched in the code to disable it and pushed it to reset. Satisfied, he made a quick tour of the offices, double-checking everything was as it should be then opened the door, locked it behind him and walked out into the rain. He was on the point of getting into the TT when he experienced a sudden rush of fear.

  Next was pain. Then darkness.

  He came round care of a bucket of cold water thrown into his face. The back of his skull hurt badly. He was stripped down to his boxers, his wrists and ankles roped tightly together. His feet inches from the floor, his arms were above his head and he was suspended from a large metal hook that jutted out of the ceiling. A chain ran in a Heath Robinson kind of affair from the hook to a winder and lever attached to the wall—except there was nothing eccentric or quaint about the effect on his body. The cramp in his shoulders was agonising. He felt entombed in pain.

  There was no window. Four walls, brick and sweating with condensation, enclosed him in a cell measuring no more than nine by nine. A smell of mould and rot hung in the dead air.

  Gasping, blinking under the brutal glare of a strip light, he thought for a terrifying moment that someone had kidnapped him and flown him back to the detention centre in Turkey, his fears unassuaged by the sight of his captors.

  Ergul, the head of the Turkish Mafia and a member of the Commission, spoke first. ‘You will tell us the truth,’ he said darkly. ‘First, we want to know how long your boss has been passing information.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘Don’t play games.’

  ‘Johnny knows a lot of things.’

  ‘So you don’t deny it?’

  ‘I do. He’s no grass.’

  Ergul looked at Alpi, his second-in-command, by far the more benign-looking of the two men. Alpi turned to Tallis, smiled and then from nowhere produced a length of electric cable. One sharp lash across Tallis’s bare shoulders convinced him he was wrong. Six more followed.

  ‘Guys,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. Johnny’s suffered too, you know, losing one of his best men.’

  Alpi exchanged dead-eyed looks with Ergul. Oh, God, Tallis thought, were they responsible for Gabriel’s terrible suffering? A vision of the man’s mutilated body flashed through his mind. Had Gabriel told them that Kennedy was an informer? Another vicious crack across his already bruised skin brought him rushing back to the present.

  ‘We know,’ Ergul said, putting his face close to Tallis’s. Already, Tallis could feel sweat pouring from his brow, underneath his arms, in his groin. All he could do was keep talking, playing the innocent. Whatever he did, he mustn’t break.

  ‘All you know,’ he said, alarmed by the pain rushing through the upper half of his body, ‘is that someone’s striped up your mates.’

  ‘Johnny Kennedy,’ Ergul spat.

  ‘No.’

  Alpi’s fist shot out, connecting perfectly with Tallis’s left eye. ‘It’s not true,’ Tallis moaned. Another blow hit Tallis across the mouth, splitting his lip. ‘You keep doing that and I won’t be able to talk,’ he muttered.

  All at once, his world turned sideways. Alpi had worked a lever dashing him down, the side of Tallis’s head taking the full force as it connected to the roughened floor, wrists and ankles burning as they strained against the rope. Roughly righting him, cranking him back up, Ergul started in again.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘If Kennedy grassed you up,’ Tallis said, trying to get his breath, ‘why didn’t he name you? Why didn’t you get a knock at the door?’

  Another flash of pain, this time the blow aimed at his kidneys. Christ, Tallis thought, his mouth filling with bile, they weren’t interested in answers. They simply wanted to use him as a punchbag for their aggression. Apart from the agonising pain, he felt his face grey and ooze with sweat.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Alpi said, his voice soft and beguiling.

  ‘Milton,’ Tallis said, adopting the pseudonym he and Kennedy had devised for the meeting with the Commission.

  ‘Your real name.’

  ‘Milton.’

  ‘You lie.’ Alpi looked at Ergul and nodded. Fear, bright and glistening, broke out over Tallis’s body. He could smell it. This time the whiplash broke his skin, the pain searing. Blood, warm and viscous, trickled down his back.

  ‘Your name is David Miller.’

  Fuck, Tallis thought. They knew about his Turkish adventure. He could just about believe word had leaked out, but how in hell’s name did these two-bit psychos have that much detail about his identity? Did they have mates in the Turkish police? Then he remembered the American connection. He’d said himself that the CIA had a long history of using organised crime to further their ends. Hell, he’d even pointed out to Asim that the CIA had recruited Mafiosi to kill Castro.

  ‘You were working for Mr Kennedy, yes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He sent you.’

  ‘No.’

  This time Tallis was dropped onto his knees. Without a word Alpi placed his bony hands either side of Tallis’s shoulders and dug his fingers in deep, hitting the pressure points. Tallis twisted and gritted his teeth, almost blacking out with pain.

  ‘He wanted you to do business with the Moroccan, Tardarti.’

  ‘No, you have it all wrong.’

  ‘What was it, a drug deal?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tallis moaned.

  Ergul signalled to Alpi. Tallis was roughly hoisted back up. He thought his shoulders might dislocate.

  ‘No,’ Ergul spat, ‘you wanted to talk about bombs.’

  ‘Not true.’

  ‘But something went wrong. Perhaps you were not offering enough money.’

  ‘You’re talking crap.’

  ‘Tardarti did not trust you.’

  ‘I never talked to Tardarti.’

  ‘You feared he would expose your plans to fund terrorism so you killed him.’ Where the fuck did they get their information—educated guess, or wild supposition? Without warning, Tallis flashed back to the detention centre and Koroglu. Tell him that we know he intended to meet the Moroccan. Tell him that he had already contacted him in Britain. Even then, the Americans had already had a line going on Kennedy, but Kennedy, under his new status as an informer, was untouchable so they were using the Turkish Mafia to root out his associates. These guys weren’t pissed off about a cut in their takings, he thought, looking blindly at his interrogators, because the CIA was paying them handsomely for extra-curricular services. It wasn’t that outlandish. He bet a lot of shady stuff went on without the knowledge of international governments so that, in the final outcome, they could be protected from grave political consequences.

  Alpi suddenly dropped the lever. This time Tallis was ready, feet hitting the floor first. Next, he was seized by both men and manhandled onto a chair. To his surprise, Alpi undid the rop
e binding his arms then, taking his left wrist and with one deft perfectly choreographed movement, broke the bone. So unexpected, so coldly premeditated and carried out, this time Tallis let out a scream of agony.

  ‘If it wasn’t bombs, what was it?’ Alpi’s words were wheedling.

  ‘Nothing.’ He felt sick. Dots were dancing before his eyes. The floor was moving, so were the walls.

  ‘When did you plan to plant these bombs?’ Ergul said, drawing up another chair, planting himself inches away from Tallis.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ he groaned. Jesus, change the fucking record.

  ‘London, Frankfurt, New York?’

  ‘No…’

  When Ergul gripped his injured wrist, Tallis fainted.

  Tallis came to with the smell of Ergul’s breath on his face, the sting of Ergul’s hand across his cheek. The pain from the injuries to his body and shattered wrist was something he’d never experienced before. Had someone handed him a knife he would have cheerfully cut his own throat to escape it.

  ‘I know nothing,’ Tallis groaned, trying to set his stall out again, anything to delay the next round of torture.

  ‘But that’s not true,’ Alpi said with a glittering smile. ‘Johnny sent you to talk to Tardarti about bombs, yes?’

  ‘How many more times? No.’

  Ergul shook his head, pulled up a chair, his flat features level with Tallis’s chin. Worryingly, he rested a podgy hand on Tallis’s knee. The line of the cartilage bore a four-inch scar, the remnants of an old injury picked up during training in the army. It never gave him any trouble. Until now, he thought, bracing himself. These guys seemed to know every weakness, not just of the human body but his body.

  ‘In our meeting with the Commission,’ Ergul said, ‘your boss was extremely eloquent.’

  ‘He’s an eloquent man,’ Tallis said, sweating with the dread of random violence, the consequent suffering.

  Ergul smiled and nodded, glad, it seemed, he’d reached consensus with his victim. ‘He talked much about the threat of terrorism, the way the British government is finding more and more ways to meet the challenge…’

  ‘More legislation, more surveillance, more sharing of data, more crime-fighting organisations,’ Tallis slipped in helpfully. He knew, at least, how Kennedy thought.

  ‘Exactly, my friend,’ Ergul said. ‘More and more devious methods to restrict the powers of the ordinary citizen and damage good businessmen like ourselves,’ he said, glancing up at the ever-grinning Alpi. Tallis followed his gaze and saw, with horror, that Alpi had pulled out a flick-knife. ‘Which is why he asked all of us to join together, to fight fire with fire,’ Ergul continued. ‘I believe it is based on the old judo adage of drawing your enemy close enough so that you can throw them.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Tallis said, hating the tremor in his voice.

  Ergul grinned. ‘So that he can actively aid and abet terrorism…’

  ‘No. That’s not true. You can’t infer he supports terrorism simply because he wants you to unite against the law.’

  ‘We have intelligence,’ Ergul hissed.

  From your paymasters, the Yanks, Tallis bet. ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Do not pretend,’ Alpi said, pointing the knife at Tallis. ’We need solid information. We need dates, times. If you continue to lie, we will cut you slowly bit by bit and mail the body parts back to your family. We could start with your cock.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Tallis burst out.

  Slap. Tallis resisted the temptation to spit in his tormentor’s eye.

  ‘It is clever, no?’ Ergul said slowly. ‘To cause confusion, to distract attention, we crime lords are encouraged to take ever more risks. Your boss even suggested we get involved in terrorism.’

  What? ‘Crap. I don’t believe you.’ They were just shooting a line to get him to talk.

  ‘So that while the police are hunting down terrorists,’ Alpi said in a wheedling voice, ‘we can continue to do business as usual.’

  Tallis let out a bitter laugh. Christ, he’d said the same, almost word for bloody word, to Lavender. He thought of her lovely smile, her laughter, and the unlikelihood of ever hearing it again. ‘Business as usual?’ Tallis spat. ‘You won’t be able to shit without a licence. Those freedoms you say are being restricted will simply disappear for good. You’d be handing the government a gift, and Kennedy’s much smarter than that. He’d never encourage it. He loves his family too much, his city, this country.’

  Ergul grabbed Tallis’s knee, dug his fingers deep into the line of the scar, twisting. In spite of the shooting fire in his joint, he slammed his head forward, smashing into Ergul’s face. While Ergul shot backwards, overturning his chair, Alpi grabbed Tallis round the throat in a claw hold. Tallis tried to struggle but the more he did, the stronger Alpi’s grip on his larynx. Christ, Tallis thought, with every second that passed not only was he nearer to unconsciousness but death. One extra squeeze and his larynx would break. Too long, and his brain would start to starve of oxygen. At best, he’d end up like Billy.

  A terrible rattling noise issued from his throat. He made every attempt to struggle, arm flapping, bulging eyes searching frantically for the knife. One last effort, he thought, one last attempt to nail this bastard and escape the bloody jaws of death. Then he saw it: bright, glittering and seductive. One-handed, Alpi had flicked open the blade. He was swinging his knife-hand back and Tallis realised with terrible clarity that he was about to die. And what a way to go, he thought crazily, picturing the thrust and plunge and twist of the blade into the side of his neck, the rush of his blood cascading onto a floor covered with filth.

  Then the door burst open.

  Alpi’s head exploded in a blast of bone and blood and tissue. A deathly scream ricocheted round the cell as Ergul’s body received a burst of machine-gun fire. Slipping in and out of consciousness, Tallis was aware of shouted orders, of being untied, of someone taking off their shirt and covering him. Next, he was lifted carefully, gently, and taken to where the air smelt fresher. Before darkness consumed him, he imagined he was in the loving arms of a father, that he was his son.

  29

  * * *

  ‘YOU’RE making good progress.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Tallis stared at the man.

  ‘Your doctor.’

  Tallis was in bed. His left hand and arm were partially encased in plaster. There was a large dressing on his back, a light bandage on one knee. He felt muzzy.

  ‘Mr Kennedy asked me to look after you,’ the doctor explained with a smile that denoted he felt honoured by the request.

  Tallis glanced around at the pale green walls, the French windows, orange autumn light sifting through the glass. From his bed he had a fine view of the gardens. Two wagtails shot along the lawn at speed. The clinic, Tallis thought. How useful to have a friendly quack on site who didn’t ask questions. He wondered whether the man was a specialist in the treatment of bullet wounds as well as torture.

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘Two days. We had to sedate you. Fortunately, the wrist was a clean break.’

  Tallis threw back the covers, awkwardly swung his legs round, attempting to plant both feet on the floor. He felt hollow-eyed, swathed in exhaustion. ‘Where are my things?’

  The doctor’s expression shot through with alarm. ‘Mr Tallis, I really don’t think—’

  ‘And my phone. I need my phone.’

  ‘You really are in no state to—’

  ‘Keys to my car.’

  ‘I strongly advise—’

  ‘Hell, man, at least find me a pair of shorts.’

  The door swung open. ‘What’s all this?’ Kennedy said, advancing on Tallis.

  The doctor instantly paled. ‘I did warn him in the strongest of terms, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘It’s all right, James,’ Kennedy said. ‘Leave this to me.’

  The sight of Kennedy alone triggered a host o
f thoughts Tallis hadn’t begun to elucidate. Ergul and Alpi were stooges for the CIA, but was there truth in their assertion?

  Kennedy broke into a wide smile.

  ‘What?’ Tallis said. He felt extraordinarily agitated. Maybe they’d pumped him full of amphetamines or something. After all, Kennedy was in the right business.

  ‘You’re standing stark bollock naked looking as if you want to take the whole world on.’

  ‘I’d like some clothes.’ Tallis knew he sounded pissy.

  ‘I’ll arrange it, but first you eat and then we talk.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Tallis, everyone who matters is being kept in the loop.’

  ‘There’ve been no terrorist attacks?’ Please, God, Tallis thought.

  ‘We’re safe for the time being.’

  And you would know, Tallis thought, immediately quashing the thought. ‘I still need to get up,’ he insisted, feeling very unwell indeed.

  ‘Another twenty-four hours of bed rest isn’t going to make any difference to anyone other than you.’

  Tallis looked into Kennedy’s eyes, eyes that in some lights appeared to be without guile. He didn’t know what he believed any more. Perhaps that was good. In the great scheme of things, opinions counted for little. ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘My patch. My job to know.’

  Wasn’t a very plausible argument, Tallis thought, feeling far too muddled to debate the whys and wherefores. ‘Why did you save me?’

  ‘Because I could. Is that good enough?’ Kennedy twitched a smile.

  ‘Yeah.’ Tallis smiled uncertainly. ‘Thank you.’

  He must have fallen asleep. When he awoke it was pitchblack. He switched on the overhead light, eyes blinking and adjusting to the shifting shadows. A set of clean clothes had been placed on the only chair in the room. Both his watch and phone had thoughtfully been left on the side-table next to the glass and jug of water. He picked up the watch: 03.43. Wincing with pain from the lacerations on his back, wrist throbbing, he gingerly slid out of bed and took the phone to the window, switching it on, wondering if he had enough battery. Sure enough, the phone bleeped into action, notifying him that he had two missed calls, one from Lavender, one from Asim. He played both. Lavender’s was along the lines of Has something happened and get in touch. Asim’s was more coded: Trouble on the horizon from our friends in America. Damn right, Tallis thought.