The Reluctant Hero

  Through the window, Beg could see the light slowly building up behind the mountains. That was another of his concerns. Something was going on up there, in the shadows of the peaks. In the last few months there had been a noticeable rise in the number of foreigners visiting Ta’argistan – it was officially encouraged, since visitors brought with them vital foreign currency, but too many had been making the trip to the mountains for Beg’s taste. They weren’t tour operators with an eye to a new market or backpackers chasing spiritual salvation and cheap drugs, these were businessmen with mining connections. The excuse was the old mines down which the Soviets had tipped all their radioactive garbage, and which in the minds of some nervous observers now threatened to turn into some sort of ecological doomsday whose every rad and roentgen would be the match of Chernobyl. So an international consortium had been created to tackle the situation, paid for by international busybodies like the UN and European Union, and administered by foreign companies. That was the obscenity of such projects; fabulous sums of aid were promised by the West, but all of it seemed to end up in the pockets of companies back home. And what in the name of God did thick-necked thugs like Kravitz know about nuclear waste? No, there was something else going on, Beg could feel it in his aching bones. Foreigners had never brought Ta’argistan anything other than death and despair, and those huge dumps of irradiated trash. They came and helped themselves to everything, including the President’s wife, then left. Well, not this one. That bastard was going nowhere. Ever.

  God help him, but his hands hurt! It was as much as he could do to hold the cigarette that, to his surprise, he was smoking. Here in the bathroom. He shook his head in self-mockery. There was too much going on. Time to sort it. Starting with the foreigners. Well, one, at least.

  Martha had to force herself not to run. She paced herself as she walked from the plane back to the VIP lounge. No one was there to stop her, no security to shout foul, no men in well-pressed suits demanding to see her passport. They had all gone to other duties. On the other side of a glass wall the airport was beginning to grow busier, with people milling around waiting for a flight to Istanbul. She could see passengers lining up to have their hand luggage checked; one elderly woman in an embroidered native headdress was quarrelling furiously with an official about her oversized bag that seemed to be stuffed to bursting point with thick nan flat breads. Didn’t they bake bread in Istanbul, for pity’s sake? The cautious customs man was beginning to tear one apart, anxious about what might be inside. The woman screamed in objection, almost in tears. No one looked in Martha’s direction.

  The door to the VIP room was as she had left it, locked open, when their host had left them alone. She drew it back, very slowly, expecting to be accosted by accusing eyes, but the room was empty and she scurried across to the door on the far side. Then she was through, into the main concourse. No one challenged her. Those in the growing crowd had their own distractions with their unruly children and aged parents, tickets, Tannoy messages, luggage, or had their attention fixed on the TV monitors in the waiting area that were showing an ice-hockey match. A Russian league match. It seemed the empire wasn’t yet dead.

  Suddenly she stopped, flooding with alarm. Barely a few yards away, talking to a security guard with a dinner-plate hat and a Kalashnikov hooked over his arm, was the official who had said farewell to her only minutes earlier in the VIP lounge. It would take only a turn of his head and she was undone. But he didn’t. She hurried on, through the swing doors and back into the freezing dawn of Ta’argistan.

  The power came back on and the single bulb in the cell snapped back into life. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Harry looked around him. He was in a space no more than ten feet square, with walls and floor constructed from rough-hewn stone and substantially older than the Soviet-era prison built above it. There were no windows, only a small funnel that led upwards from the ceiling and was connected, he presumed, to a primitive and spectacularly inadequate ventilation system. There were bars across the funnel, which in any event was too small for a man to slip through.

  This had once been a storage cellar, Harry guessed, and he was surprised how damp it seemed and how much moss and slime grew on its walls, until he realized that the damp was condensation created by the prisoners, whose bodies provided the only source of heat. The cell was entirely devoid of furniture except for a rough wooden pallet six inches off the floor, on top of which lay a thin straw palliasse stained so deeply that it was impossible to tell anything about the colour of the original covering. It was riddled with holes where the rats had gnawed. A slop bucket glowered from the far corner. Apart from that, and the solitary bulb, there was nothing else, except for the pervading stench of things rotten from which he couldn’t escape, even when he closed his eyes. It was like being buried at the bottom of a medieval garbage pit. Harry had been in worse places – always when he found himself in difficulties, he reassured himself that he’d seen worse and survived. Only problem was, right now, that he couldn’t remember when. Now he realized why Zac had been so determined to press on him the chess piece; it was a connection with the world outside, fuel for the imagination, something that might sustain hope. A few hours in this place and that tiny horse would grow to almost mythical dimensions.

  But Harry wouldn’t be here long. Already he was forming a plan. The prison’s security had been tried and found wanting, the bolts on the door were disgracefully illfitting and the battered lock was loose. What more did he need, apart from a little luck? He had a way out, by the same route he’d broken in, and although the lighting and CCTV had been restored, they would only prove a problem if the guards lifted their heads from their trough. Yet they were bound to be dozy, and he would be quick, like a rat in the shadows. He would be out tonight, once it was fully dark, so long as no one looked too closely in the meantime and they left him alone. Why, he reassured himself, once he was on the other side of this door he was already halfway there!

  The sound of approaching activity echoed along the passageway, interrupting his thoughts. The morning breakfast inspection was underway, but not yet close at hand. Harry hated simply sitting still, waiting, while his mind was agitated and his imagination on fire. He had a little time before the inspection arrived with its inquisitive eyes, so he crossed to the door, the barrier between him and his escape route, the door that had swung open so easily during the night. Too easily, perhaps? He couldn’t afford for a loose lock to arouse suspicion. On the other hand, he needed to be able to break it once more.

  He nudged the door. It was satisfactorily tight. He put a shoulder to it, with the same result. A flood of uncertainty began to leap around him. He squeezed his body between the doorjambs, placing his back against one and his foot against the other, and heaved with all his strength, then heaved again, and again, until his heart began pounding in his ears.

  Nothing.

  Without Mourat’s persuasive talents and four tons of pressure from the hydraulic spreader, the lock was going nowhere.

  And neither was Harry.

  Martha stood in the shadows of the airport car park beneath the branches of a leafless tree, struggling to come to terms with the enormity of what she had done. God in Heaven, it was cold. She wasn’t prepared for this, had rushed, been impulsive, was wearing clothing that was entirely inadequate for standing in a car park, let alone anything else. She had brought nothing with her, apart from the contents of her handbag.

  As she cowered beneath the tree, shivering, trying to struggle through the thick mud of uncertainty oozing into every corner of her mind, she heard the whine of aircraft engines. Two Pratt & Whitney turbofans were roaring, rising in pitch until the air around her started to shake. As she watched, the flight to London rose into the early morning sky. Within twenty minutes it would be out of Ta’argi airspace. Zac Kravitz was on his way home.

  She found no sense of exhilaration. An icy wind bit at her ankles and carried away with it the courage that had bubbled through her only a short wh
ile before. She was standing in the corner of some foreign plot, freezing, and suddenly frightened of her own stupidity. It was all very well being carried off in the heat of the moment, but there was work to be done. Harry’s life might depend upon her. She realized that she hadn’t the slightest idea what she should do.

  He sat on the filthy straw, his mind brimming with despair. If he couldn’t get out of this putrid cell, Harry knew he was lost, totally and most comprehensively screwed. On this side of the door, there was nothing for him but disaster.

  He scanned the cell once more, desperate for something he might have overlooked, but he found only scratchings on the wall. A date, from seven years ago. A phrase in Russian he couldn’t translate but which looked like a prayer. And a name. Polina. With a single word beside it. Proshaite. Farewell.

  He dragged his thoughts away from what these marks implied; he had other priorities. He could hear the morning inspection drawing closer, and he began to reassess his own situation, realizing how vulnerable he was, particularly with the light back on. He cursed his idiocy – he still had Julia’s watch on his wrist. His lucky charm. Yet it seemed to have lost its magical powers, had even become dangerous, was something that could betray him. It had to be hidden, the head torch, too, which had been tossed into a corner during the chaos of Zac’s departure. The only hiding place was in the straw palliasse, and he quickly stuffed them into one of the rat holes, just in time. There was a clatter outside the door; he curled himself into a ball, like a hedgehog, back to the door, and stirred only enough to show that he was still alive.

  There was a crash as a hatch at the bottom of the door was swung open and a metal bowl pushed through, scraping along the floor. Suddenly, Harry tasted fear, a cold, metallic sensation in the back of his throat that persisted, no matter how hard he tried to swallow. He became aware that the guard hadn’t gone, and was watching him through the grille.

  ‘Food, you bastard. Move!’ the guard growled, kicking the door.

  Harry had to obey. He rolled over, very slowly, tried not to catch the guard’s eye, hung his head, collected the bowl, crawled back. The bowl contained a foul mess of porridge with some form of animal fat mixed in, coagulated, cold, made from oats milled so roughly that the husks came along too. No spoon. He tipped the bowl, took a mouthful, had to struggle to force it down; it tasted of soap. The guard was still watching. Harry took another small mouthful. Only then did the guard disappear.

  Dejectedly, Harry climbed from his mattress, moved across to the slop bin, and poured the rest of the mess away.

  Martha wasn’t the sort to dwell on her misery. Dealing with her father had taught her that. She sat in a taxi making the trip back into town, past the power station, its chimneys belching new smoke into the skies. Around her the people of Ashkek were stepping out to their daily grind, wrapped in caps or headscarves against the cold, waiting for clapped-out buses with grimy windows and dirt splashed up their sides. At an intersection the taxi drew up alongside a police car, an aged Lada, and she had to struggle against the temptation to give herself away by sinking down into her seat and revealing her guilt. Already the driver was studying her in the mirror, a frown scratched across his face; did he suspect?

  ‘Where?’ the driver asked as the taxi drew away, its exhausted suspension giving a heave as it found yet another pothole. Martha merely waved down the road towards the city centre. She didn’t know where to go.

  She desperately needed help. Yet Britain had no embassy in Ta’argistan. There was an honorary consul, should she contact him? Or the US Embassy? But they would be able to do nothing except ask questions – questions that Harry could ill afford to have answered. She thought about trying to phone the Foreign Office in London, but back there it was barely past midnight and by that time of night the princes had turned back into frogs. For now she was stranded in a strange place with no man to shout at, other than a taxi driver who understood scarcely a word of English. She was helpless. She felt fear closing around her like a fist, just as though she were still waiting for the creak of her father’s footstep on the stairs. Somehow now, as then, it felt as though it were all her fault.

  ‘Where? Where?’ the driver demanded yet again as they started hitting the suburbs.

  Suddenly she realized there was only one place she could go.

  ‘The Fat Chance Saloon!’ she shouted in the driver’s ear, as though sheer volume would force its way past any lack of comprehension.

  He scowled, waggled a finger in his abused ear, and put his foot down.

  Amir Beg was also being driven through the capital. He no longer saw the huddled masses and the decaying streets that in his youth had fuelled his passions and screamed to him of injustice; nowadays his cares were more directly personal. He knew he was obsessive, couldn’t let things go, wouldn’t delegate or trust others. It was a fault, but it was his nature. That’s why he’d been alarmed by Harry Jones. Beg had recognized in him another remorseless soul who wouldn’t pass things by. But now he was gone, and Beg was relieved. Time for unfinished business. The American, Kravitz.

  He wouldn’t be the first to die at Karabayev’s insistence. Wasn’t it an indisputable fact that the entire wretched country was dying? The President was a dangerous and vindictive man, and Beg was in no doubt that if he put a foot wrong, it would be his turn, too. The dreams he and Karabayev had once shared together had long since burned in the fires of the other man’s ambitions.

  Beg had new dreams. In them, the President was strung up beside the foreign prisoner, his neck bent, his body swinging lifeless. In one snap of the trapdoor Ta’argistan would have been cleansed of two sources of infection, the years of growing humiliation that Beg had suffered at the other man’s hands set aside. Yet, for the moment, at least, it was nothing more than a dream. Today, only one would die.

  The sun was rising above the streets, the day moving forward. It was time.

  ‘The Castle,’ he snapped at his driver.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The guard, whose name was Bolot, turned from Harry’s door and began retracing his footsteps, his mind whirling as he tried to decode the meaning of what he’d just seen. It made no sense. He was barely nineteen, had only been in the job a few months, yet he wasn’t an idiot and knew that surprises weren’t welcome, least of all down here in the Punishment Wing. His anxiety quickened his pace, and soon he was running, his footsteps echoing back from the stones until he had reached the security gate. He began rattling the bars, demanding he be let through.

  ‘Who put the bee up your bum?’ his colleague on the other side muttered, dragged from his magazine and reaching lazily for the keys.

  ‘Come on, camel breath!’ Bolot spat in impatience.

  ‘What’s the matter, your sister caught crabs or something?’ the other man replied, making a point of fiddling with the keys, very slowly, taunting. When at last he unlocked the gate, he was almost bowled over as Bolot rushed through and past him.

  ‘She didn’t have crabs the last time I fucked her!’ the other guard called after him, but in vain. Bolot didn’t stop, vaulting up the steps to the main level two at a time.

  Bolot was a straightforward, unimaginative soul, a minor link in the chain of command. It was his intention to report to the duty captain. The captain was a sanctimonious prick, to be sure, married to Bolot’s cousin, on whom he cheated regularly, but he was the one who had provided Bolot with the job in the prison in the first place, and he was the one in charge of the duty roster. With luck, after what he was about to report, Bolot reckoned he might get a promotion away from the breakfast slop duty, and maybe even extra leave. The thought drove him on, too impetuously, for as he flung himself into the officer’s room he found not the captain but no less than the deputy governor, his balding head bending over his breakfast.

  The deputy governor looked up, a face ready to spit bullets. ‘This had better be good,’ he growled in warning, his lips dribbling crumbs of bread.

  Bolot hesitated, panting from h
is exertions and the excitement. ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’

  ‘Get on with it!’

  ‘The American, sir.’

  The deputy governor’s eyebrow rose, suddenly cautious. ‘What about the American?’

  ‘I think he’s wearing sports shoes . . .’

  Martha had always been impetuous, ever since . . . well, ever since she’d left home. One of her first lessons in life, get your retaliation in first, girl, while their minds are off duty, halfway up your thighs. Never stand still long enough to encourage them, always move on, and that’s what she’d done, from every relationship she’d ever formed, even from her marriage. No sticking place. That’s why men, even her political masters, had so much difficulty dealing with her, and why she’d never made it to the ministerial corridor; she pretended it was prejudice, glass ceilings and all that misogyny crap, but it was also partly down to her. She growled at them like a Rottweiler even while she was running, kept ducking responsibility, never allowing anyone to know how scared she was.

  So why was she still here? She could simply have kept running, stayed on the aircraft, as they’d agreed, but something had got to her.

  Harry. Bloody Harry, that’s what. Turning her world on its head.

  Yes, she’d like to be back on his bed, making a mess of his sheets, no denying it. She might distrust a man’s intentions but she still had her needs. Yet it was more than that. She’d found herself being drawn not just to the muscle but also to the man inside. She recognized a fellow sufferer, another wanderer in the desert, someone who would understand. Why else had she blurted out all that stuff about her father?