by Ed Grace
No, he could not break their bones or force them to beg for mercy.
He could do nothing but take the beating.
He took in a deep breath, held it, then let it out.
He relaxed his body.
Closed his eyes.
“Come on then, boys,” he said. “Do your worst.”
The first fist that landed was in his stomach. The second was on the back of his head. The next was a kick that took his ankles out.
He lay on the floor, covered his head, and took the beating.
The pain he could take — that was nothing.
The real torture was the humiliation of being beaten by a cretin such as Azeer Nadeem.
He promised himself he’d get him.
Once this was over, he’d get him.
And Sullivan would give a far better beating than this group of thugs could ever manage.
Chapter Twenty-Five
An hour or so later, one of the older, female screws unlocked his cell door and barked, “You have a visitor.”
Sullivan left his cell and wondered if she was the one who had unlocked the door so he could take his beating. He followed her off E Wing, through a corridor, and into a visitor room, where he found Kelly waiting.
“You have half an hour,” the screw said, and shut the door, with no idea she was talking to a member of MI5.
Kelly stood, as if she was about to run up to Sullivan but paused, her hands covering her mouth as she gasped.
From the look of horror on her face, Sullivan imagined the wounds left by Azeer’s gang were pretty bad.
“You should see the other guy,” he said, limping in and sitting beside Kelly, who remained standing and staring, as if the shock was such that she did not know what to do.
He rubbed his ribs. He was sure they must be bruised. That, and the feeling that his nose was clogged up with dried blood, that his cheekbones were still throbbing, and that he couldn’t move his leg without his thigh being in agony, meant that he couldn’t get comfortable — which was probably the most frustrating part of it all.
Kelly finally sat and put her hand on his knee. The gesture was not reciprocated.
Still, she left the hand there.
“You didn’t bring me any water or anything?”
She snapped herself out of her shock and said, “Oh yeah,” then passed a bottle of water to Sullivan.
“I’ve been fucking killing for a clean bottle of water,” he said as he screwed off the top, then downed half of it. “Almost as much as I’ve been killing for a whiskey.”
“How did this happen, Jay?”
“What, me being thirsty?”
“You know damn well what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do.”
He took another swig.
“Well?” she prompted.
“Azeer Nadeem and his boys jumped me.”
“What?”
“Couldn’t hardly fight back, could I? Didn’t want to be known as the difficult guy who can’t take a beating.”
“Well do they know what you’re doing?”
“No.”
“Then why on earth would they give you such a beating?”
Sullivan shrugged.
“If they have any suspicions, any at all, then we need to—”
“Relax, relax. They don’t know shit. I provoked them, that is all.”
“You provoked them?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I thought you were meant to be keeping your head down! You were meant to be unnoticed.”
“What, are you my mum now?”
“Stop it, Jay. I’m being serious. If you can’t handle this—”
“You have no fucking idea what I can handle.”
He finished the bottle then crushed it in his hand.
“This is what you came here for?” he said. “To chastise me?”
He dabbed a cut on his forehead. It left blood on his fingers.
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“Then what did you come for?”
She hesitated.
“Because I missed you,” she said.
“You missed me?”
“Yes. And I also wanted you to know we’ve translated what you’ve recorded. We have the date and time of the next attack.”
Sullivan’s eyes widened. “Where? When?”
Kelly lowered her voice.
“Brighton Pier. They said it would be on the day of the night the clocks go forward. The clocks go forward on Sunday morning, so we have two days.”
“Two days?”
“After I’ve finished here, I’m going to join a team in Brighton. We’re going to be staking out the pier over the next two days. We have a list of people who we think—”
“I don’t need to know what your strategy is.”
Just as Alexander had taught him. He was a soldier — he pulled the trigger, and left the strategies to the people who give the orders. As far as he was concerned, he could do nothing to help in Brighton, so understanding their strategy wouldn’t help him.
Still, he was slightly worried, however much he didn’t want to admit it. Kelly was going to be at the location of the attack. What if the intel was wrong? What if she had mis-translated? What if she got hurt?
No. She could take care of herself. She didn’t need his concern.
He decided, nevertheless, to just say, “Be careful,” before standing up and getting ready to return to his cell.
“Is that it?” Kelly objected, standing up also.
“What?”
“You’re just going?”
“You need to get to Brighton. I don’t want to hold you up.”
“Jay, why are you like this? You don’t need to be so stand-offish. You don’t—”
She stopped talking. Stepped forward. Placed a delicate hand on his bruised cheek, and placed a light kiss on his lips, then a more passionate one.
They heard a tap on the window. Sullivan looked over his shoulder to see the screw telling them to knock it off.
He took a step away from Kelly.
“I will call you on Sunday evening at 9:00 p.m. to update you,” she told him.
“Okay,” he said. “Good luck.”
“Is that it?”
“They said there will also be a third attack. I still need to—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He looked at her.
She was a fierce woman. She was everything a weak man would fear and a strong man would want.
He had no idea which category he fell into.
“I love you, Jay,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said. “Please, just… don’t.”
He turned. Walked away. Re-entered the prison corridor that led back to his cell, and did not look back.
Kelly needed to love someone who was good enough for her, and that would never be him.
Stoke-On-Trent, United Kingdom
FIVE YEARS AGO
Chapter Twenty-Six
Zain had never felt secure — not in his body, his mind, nor in the world. He had always kept himself to himself at school, and he rarely interacted with anyone at the mosque. Yet, the more time he spent with Azeer, the more confident he felt. Zain could just listen to his friend for hours and never notice a minute passing by.
As his eighteenth birthday approached, Azeer could see Zain was feeling a little down. He’d spoken to his parents on the phone — they’d had little to say to each other, and he’d ended the conversation quickly. Therefore, Azeer insisted that they would go out that evening and take his mind off it.
And so they spent another evening talking about all the things Azeer believed in.
“See, the West wrote their history books, didn’t they?” Azeer said as he eyeballed some guy who was staring at him across the restaurant. “So whatever you read is written from the way they look at it.”
Zain decided this was the best opportunity to ask a question he’d been wondering for a while.
“But some thing
s are difficult for them to skew.”
“Like what? You tell me one thing that you have been taught and I will tell you why it’s wrong.”
“Okay, how about the Gulf War?”
“What about it?”
“I mean, Saddam Hussain invaded another country. He killed people.”
“And you think that’s why America and the UK intervened?”
“Yes.”
“No, Zain. You’re getting their side, and their side only, aren’t you? Yes, Saddam invaded Kuwait, but countries invade other countries all the time, why were the United Nations so bothered this time?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you why. Because it was Islam they were fighting against, not Saddam.”
“What do you mean?”
“The West wants to stop the spread of Islam. They do not want the number of Islamic countries to grow, do you understand? They went to war because they figured one less Muslim country is one less problem.” In almost the same breath, Azeer looked at the guy who was still staring at him. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
The guy looked around.
“Yes, I’m talking to you. You keep staring at me. What do you want?”
“I wasn’t—”
“There must be a reason. What is it?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Stop staring.”
The man stood up, shifting nervously, and left.
Zain marvelled at Azeer, caught between disbelief and admiration. The way he handled people like that…
Zain spent most of his time walking from one place to the next with his head down and avoiding eye contact. The kind of people who once stabbed Fahad still existed. They still followed him, taunted him, and threatened him, and he was often scared to walk from one side of the town to the other.
“How are you so confident?” Zain asked. “People stare at me like that all the time and I don’t do shit.”
Azeer grinned. “They are scared of us. They think we are all terrorists.”
“What?”
“After 9/11, they look at us and assume that we all have bombs strapped to our chest. If we tell them to back off, they get scared about what we might do.”
Zain mulled this over. Did they really think that? Did they look at him and assume he was a terrorist?
“I’ll tell you what you should do,” Azeer continued, “next time they stare at you or cause trouble — you tell them you are a suicide bomber and you have explosives strapped to your chest.”
“And they will believe me?”
“Trust me. That’s how convinced they are that we’re all part of Al Qaeda.”
The next day, with Azeer’s assertions ringing around his mind, he walked through town with a newfound sense of confidence. When those looks were aimed at him, instead of avoiding them, this time he looked back. He let them think he was the murderer they thought he was. He let their racist inclinations create their own fear.
“Yo, paki boy,” he heard one person say. “Get out of our country.”
Normally, Zain would speed up his walking and get out of there quickly.
On this particular day, he stopped. Turned toward the man standing outside some cheap clothes store, his group of mates stood around him.
“What did you just say?” Zain asked.
“You heard me.”
The man stepped closer.
Zain did not move.
“You want some, do you?” the man said. “You want us to get you out of our country?”
Zain studied this man. His cockiness, the way he strutted, the way his friends encouraged him — in a way, Zain wished he did actually have a bomb on him. He wished he could blow this guy up.
“I got a bomb on me,” he said.
“What?” The man laughed with his mates.
Zain looked beneath his jacket and pretended to move something; pretended to readjust his bomb vest.
“I am a suicide bomber and I have a bomb on me.” He stepped toward the man, who stepped back. “You want me to burn you up?”
The man looked to his mates. His face changed. He was actually believing this.
How was he so stupid to actually believe that Zain was just casually walking around town with a bomb strapped to him? Did this man actually believe that anyone who was part of Islam just got up in the morning, put on their vest of explosives, and went about their day?
“Yeah, we’re sorry,” the man said. “We’re cool. We’re fine. We didn’t mean it, yeah?”
The fear in the man’s eyes was real.
It was the fear Zain had seen in his own reflection so many times.
He couldn’t quite believe it was that easy. That they believed in their paranoia so deeply, and that they were either that thick, or that racist.
Azeer was right.
These people did deserve to die.
HMP Brenthall. United Kingdom
NOW
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was Saturday afternoon, and Sullivan felt a little nervous. He had no idea how well Kelly and Jameson were doing, whether their team had made any arrests, or even made progress in monitoring the situation.
They had until tomorrow to catch the attackers. Then what? What if they didn’t?
It was a no-win situation. If they evacuate the pier, they won’t catch the terrorist, and Alhami will just attack somewhere else. But if they don’t evacuate the pier, and they don’t manage to catch the terrorist — people die and they could have prevented it.
He walked through the courtyard with a small limp, and bruises and scabs on his face. Azeer and his group looked over and allowed themselves a little chuckle. They thought they’d broken his spirit.
Little did they know, his spirit had already been broken a long time ago.
He sat on a bench. Looked around. He had nothing to do, and he was bored.
That’s when he noticed Al approaching, using his walking stick to help him over. He stopped beside Sullivan and held his hand out.
“My name is Alan,” he said. “You can call me Al.”
Sullivan shook his hand. He was so used to not telling anyone his name that he almost forgot it had already been broadcast all over the news almost two weeks ago.
“Jay,” he said.
“Mind if I sit?”
“Depends. You got those cards with you?”
“I have.”
“Know how to play Rummy?”
“Sure do.”
“Then take a seat.”
Al sat down, leant his walking stick against the bench, and took out his pack of cards. He dealt, and they engaged in a game of Rummy.
After a few rounds, Al spoke.
“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “What you did was foolish and unnecessary, but it took guts to do it. And, by the look of it, you’ve paid the price.”
“I’ve taken a beating before.”
“I’m sure you have.” Al paused. “I saw you on the news. You’re that assassin, aren’t you?”
“Ex-assassin.”
“Used to work for the government?”
“That’s how it started.”
“So why did you let them beat you?”
“What?”
This stumped Sullivan. He wasn’t expecting this question.
“Why did you let Azeer and his gang of idiots beat you? Surely you’d have been taught how to take on a bunch of guys like that.”
Sullivan shrugged. He wasn’t sure what to say and wanted to change the conversation quickly, so he said the first thing that came to mind.
“Hey, the clocks are changing — is this the one where we gain an hour, or lose an hour?”
“We lose it.”
“And it’s tomorrow, yeah? The day of the night the clocks go forward?”
“Well, if you want to get technical, that’s tonight.”
Sullivan froze.
“What?” he said.
“Well, the clocks change at 1:00 a.m. — which is tomorrow morni
ng, or today’s tonight. So, technically, tomorrow is the day of the morning the night goes back, and today is the day of the night the clock goes back.”
Sullivan took a moment for that to sink in.
Al was right.
Tomorrow was not the night of the clocks going back.
That was today.
How had they been so stupid?
No, they couldn’t be wrong. Kelly and Jameson were smart. It was a technicality. It was just the way it was phrased, that was all. The attack had to be tomorrow, not today.
Yet, as much as he told himself this, he didn’t believe it.
He suddenly realised how things could be about to go so very wrong.
“Shit,” he said and, without any explanation to Al, he leapt from his seat, sprinting through the courtyard and back into the cells.
He already knew he would be too late.
He was trapped in prison, and there was little he could do.
Brighton Pier, United Kingdom
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Abdul drove his car along Marine Parade, pulled into a street called New Steine, and parked his car.
The car parking charge was extortionate but, just as he went to pay it, he remembered — he didn’t need to.
He was not going to be around to pay any parking tickets he might acquire.
He killed the engine. Put his hands on his knees. Breathed.
Just as Azeer had told him on the phone, he needed to breathe. He needed to take a moment. Ground himself. Think through it. Calm his nerves.
Although he wasn’t entirely certain whether it was nerves, or whether it was excitement.
This was the moment he’d waited for his whole life. His parents were proud. His comrades were proud.
Azeer was proud.
This was the greatest honour that could be bestowed upon anyone, and soon he would be with Allah.
He took off his t-shirt.
Pulled the box out from beneath the passenger seat.
Opened it.
There it was. The vest. Detonator attached. Enough explosives to send a clear message to all of those who wish to stop the spread of Islam.
