by Serena James
“There is something else you should know. There are some Embassy officials out there hounding Rebecca for information about her interview with Somwan. I am pretty sure they are MI5 trying to keep their involvement under wraps. They have managed to get the doctors to stop her medication to keep her lucid so they can pump her for information. She can’t remember and she is in agony without pain relief.”
There was a fierce anger boiling through Harker’s speech, displaying a hardness in her eyes. “They are putting her at more risk of developing pneumonia. She could die, Mr. Kane. It’s nothing short of torture.”
He told Harker quietly, firmly, “If I know Rebecca, she will be giving them a hard time back. She is a fighter, she will hold up until I get there. They won’t be allowed near her after that. I will personally make sure of it.”
A brightness slowly returned to Harker’s eyes. “I don’t doubt it.”
The door opened making them both look up and turn towards it. A young man of Indian English descent came into the room. The man smiled at them both.
“Charles, come in. This is Charles Beaumont, my personal assistant. One more thing before you both go. Michael Eaton, Rebecca’s brother is already out there. He left the moment she was reported missing. You never met him, I know... he may get in your way.” She raised her eyebrows and smiled with sarcasm as she spoke about Michael.
Kane got the impression that Michael Eaton was not one of her favourite people. “He’s the tall dark and handsome type, an internationally renowned cardio thoracic surgeon, who really believes he is something. Just like most surgeons in my experience. But he is a notorious womaniser and a gambler. He’s arrogant and believes he always knows what is best for everyone, especially his sister when she is in trouble. He thinks he can look after her and get her home on his own. He won’t trust her safety with anyone. Rebecca and he are very close, very protective of each other. I suppose you can’t blame them. They are all they have, there is no other family. Did she ever tell you about her parents and what happened to them?”
“No. I knew that she had a brother she doted on but she always clammed up when I mentioned her parents.” Kane watched Harker with interest, always eager to learn something new about Rebecca. She had never given much away.
“Their parents were murdered in front of them when she and Michael were children.”
Kane stared hard at her.
“They were journalists, well the wife, Janice. She was an award-winning photographic journalist. They did a piece together on a Mafia sex-slave ring in 1981 and made some dangerous enemies. When the gunmen finished with their parents they went looking for Michael and Rebecca. She was only eleven, Michael was eight. She hid Michael and faced them alone. Michael told me – she would never tell me anything. They hit her several times but she wouldn’t give up Michael’s whereabouts... they tore the place up looking for him. But the Eatons lived in a large old cottage and there was many a nook and cranny. He could have been anywhere. Turns out he was right under their noses and could see everything that went on. They put a gun to her forehead...”
Harker recounted the tale with disgust now but her hard tone was punctuated with bitter emotion. Kane just felt numb as he listened in horror.
“Michael, he wanted to go to her aid but she had locked him in this vent or whatever it was... I don’t remember... not that he would have been able to do anything. He watched the man holding the gun to her head pull back the trigger. He really thought she was going to die. He told me that he would never forget how courageous she was, how she faced her fate with dignity. Tears were rolling down her face but she didn’t flinch with fear. To him, she was regal, serene, braver than he could ever be – he will never forget the way she protected him with her own life. I think he is in awe of her: It’s the way he talks about her with such pride. If the police had been a second later in barging through the door she would have been dead. They shot the gunman dead and he fell on top of her. Michael said he remembers screaming with her and he is sure a part of him still is.” She paused for a moment before continuing, “Michael will get in your way and try to control the situation. He won’t trust anyone with her protection. He believes he owes her that much.”
Kane suddenly realised he was still staring at Harker. But he was looking through her. He was stuck in the scene she had described, watching Rebecca as a child facing death in the eye. He felt pain, loss, anxiety beginning to gain a strangle hold on him. It was the culmination of the fear he had experienced wondering if she was dead or alive. A reminder of how close she had come to death before he could make it right between them. He’d been wasting time. No more.
He was going to make her see that they belonged together before her job got her killed. He always said she had a death wish. Now he knew why. She had been repeating the same scenario over and over in her mind. She must have thought she should have died along with her parents. She’d been trying to get herself killed. She must have felt guilty about surviving. It explained so much about her. It was almost a textbook manoeuvre.
She was starting to make sense to him now. You are more messed up than I thought Rebecca. Trouble is, you never counted on the part of yourself you showed me, the part that is damned if it is going to let you kill yourself to prove a point. No more games. This is going to end. I am going to make you see sense whether you like it or not.
“Mr. Kane, are you all right?” He raised his head quickly, jumping to Harker’s attention. She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I am sorry, Mr. Kane. I should have been more careful how I told you. I can see how much you still care for Rebecca. Now I am even more convinced that I have chosen the right man for the job. She doesn’t need some faceless security expert who will boss her around. She needs emotional support.”
Kane felt uneasy again. He shouldn’t really go. He was too involved with Rebecca, albeit their relationship was in the past. It was unethical. He shouldn’t be involved with the client, it stopped you doing an effective job. It made you careless. But then this wasn’t any ordinary assignment and he was too stubborn and, dare he say it, arrogant to let anyone else provide her security. He was the only one he trusted with her life. He stood up fastening his suit jacket and moved to shake Harker’s hand.
“I will call you when I have seen her.”
“Mr. Kane, if Rebecca does not co-operate with you and fails to follow your instructions just tell her she is fired. When she gets her memory back that will help you to keep her under control and stop her from trying to sort this mess out on her own. We both know that is what she will try and do. It’s too dangerous. Tell her I want her safe or she is out of a job and I mean it.”
He grinned and followed Charles. She’ll love that!
Chapter Two
Charles gave him the lowdown on the plane, filling in the blanks left out by Harker and a copy of the medical report on Rebecca’s injuries. It made tough reading. Kane had meant to read it objectively, keep his distance from the anger. He wanted to pretend that he didn’t know the woman it talked about. But his attempt at professional indifference failed. A number of things hit him. First, she had clearly been interrogated, and not by terrorists. There was too much evidence of systematic torture, techniques for getting information used by the Southern Bundenese Army: he’d done his homework.
The Bundenese Liberation Army, or BLA, were out and out terrorists who took their hostage’s heads or limbs depending on the warning they wished to send out to the world. The punishment always fit the crime. The torture detailed in the report represented the government’s army. It was methodical, clinical – they had even used condoms when they had raped her. Rape was a standard interrogation practice used on both women and men by the Southern Bundenese army and others around the world. The terrorists would have simply taken her head.
Rebecca had been beaten, and cut with a knife on her chest area and arms. It looked like the torture had lasted several hours. But it appeared she had held up well. I don’t expect anything else from you, Becca bu
t I wish for your sake you had given it up, whatever it was you were hiding. What the hell was it that made you risk your life? Get beaten and raped for? Who the hell were you protecting? Can’t be Somwan. Something that she told you that affects others? Has to be! You are always championing somebody’s cause but your own. For once I wish you would think of yourself.
He looked at the photograph of her face taken whilst she slept. He touched the image gently with his fingers feeling anger knot inside him, tightening his whole frame rigid. There was bruising to her face, forehead and jaw and she sported one black eye. The only anomaly in the report was that her stomach and back area had been untouched. In fact all areas near her surgical wound were clear of injury.
The report surmised that the beating had taken place before the surgery. That would mean that she had been considered as being a kidney donor before the interrogation. He’d heard the tales of kidney stealing and organ selling scare stories from around the world. Don’t they have to run tests to make sure it is worth taking the organ? Compatibility tests? Would they really just take it? Not likely. She’s been ear marked as a donor. Maybe before she left the UK? Doesn’t make any sense. Too many bloody questions to answer. I hope you get your memory back Becca.
He loosened his tie and glanced once more at the report he held in his hand with distaste. He put it down on the table in front of him and found himself staring at it. The anger he had been trying to control and swat down for days was getting harder to control. He wasn’t just angry at the bastards who had done this to her, but also at Rebecca for putting herself in that position in the first place.
If he had been anywhere else but on an aeroplane he would have punched the wall and let some of the frustration loose. He’d never felt like this before, not even when his ex-wife walked out of the door after only six months of marriage. He had just felt relieved. I hate fucking flying. Aren’t we there yet?
He made a concerted effort to look around, not at the report. But it kept drawing his obsessive attention back. He kept focusing on key words on the front cover. They disturbed the order of his thoughts, triggering off his imagination – laceration, rape, violation. He ran his hand over his face in frustration and decided to order a drink from the co-pilot who attended them. He hadn’t allowed any unnecessary crew on the flight. He wanted to down the brandy in one go and order another one but he forced himself to be patient. Besides he needed to be alert the moment he stepped off the plane.
He looked out of the window wishing it was land he saw and not fluffy white clouds or the sun glinting off the wings blinding him. 36,000 feet. Jeez I am stuck in this tin can at 36,000 feet feeling like I am going to blow my top any moment. I need another drink. No. Hell Rebecca, I know more than anyone just how tough you are, but how are you going to pull through this one on your own?
He took another gulp of his brandy, starting to worry about what mental state he would find her in when he got to Kamol, the closest city to the border with South Bundhara. The Rebecca Eaton who stole his heart almost two years ago when she came to Afghanistan to do a special programme on the Royal Marines fighting the Taliban was a tough class act. She had even left his men in awe. She risked her life to get to the truth and make damn sure the whole world knew about it. The programme won her a BAFTA. Some of the men in the tank corps even named a tank after her, said it would bring them luck and, funny enough, so far it had done.
He put his glass down on the table only to see it jump in the air as the plane shuddered and dipped with unexpected turbulence. I so wish I could get pissed. Get a grip. You are a decorated officer, an ex Royal Marine who has faced death countless bloody times and you are afraid of a stupid plane ride? Give me the enemy to fight any day. I don’t want to die a pointless death in this metal coffin where I can’t do anything to save my life. Relax, remember when you first met her.
He discreetly checked his seatbelt and pulled it a little tighter. He sat back in his chair and stretched out his long legs in front of him and closed his eyes, trying to ignore his obsessive need to be alert to every damn different noise the plane made. He sank back into the past. It was cliché but he remembered the day she walked into his life just like yesterday.
He was never any good at loving people. He always got it wrong. Someone always got hurt and in this case it was Rebecca. He had been moaning to his fellow officers in the tent that passed for a mess hall about being assigned to supervise a visiting journalist in Helmand Province, Camp Bastion. Yet everyone he’d moaned to was envious when they found out who the journalist was – Rebecca Eaton.
He’d heard of her, seen her on TV a few times. Yeah she was pretty, but reckless, dangerous. Every time he saw one of her reports she always seemed to be in the thick of it, bombs going off all around her. Everyone was starry eyed but he didn’t trust journalists and it was dangerous having them on the front line. She might have proven too much of a distraction for his men. Still his CO overruled him.
“We need all the good press we can get, Kane. She is an army favourite. She was instrumental in getting the government to pay attention to the lack of kit the men had out in Iraq that was costing lives. She shouts loud and gets results. We need her to show the good old folks back home what a bloody good job we are doing out here on their behalf, show them their tax money is being well spent. Get used to it Kane.”
Kane would never forget the way the men around him reacted when she came to introduce herself. But it wasn’t on the same scale as his own reaction. Thank God he was more practised at hiding his feelings than the rest of them. A destructive failed marriage tended to make it a far easier task. He wasn’t going to let any woman get the better of him again. Still, he was pleasant, although non-committal and slightly aloof. As far as he was concerned she would consider him a closed book. He made sure of that. But just like the rest of them he was hypnotised by those sparkling emerald eyes that shone mischievously at him. Those eyes that told him he was trapped, that she knew his game despite his rather cool subdued reception of her. He knew that was one of the things that gave his attraction to her away. She always liked a challenge she’d told him later. His eyes always communicated his feelings whether he liked it or not, she’d also said. They betrayed him every time.
She was quite small, 5”3 or 5”4? Funny, she’d looked taller on the screen. She was clearly trying to meld in, be one of the boys with her outfit in a large desert-coloured shirt and trousers. But there was no way she could hide those tantalising sumptuous curves. No, she had him hooked and she knew it. All of his attempts to avoid her net and keep her distant only seemed to make her more determined to reel him in. The more she tried, the more he wanted her and the more he slipped up. It was all leading to an inevitable conclusion. He hadn’t expected it to kick off on the front line. Not on the day she was shot.
They were out on an operation to move the Taliban out of one of their strongholds. She was talking to the camera, crouched low behind a wall with him as they began shelling the enemy. He wondered how she could concentrate with all the noise going off all around her. It had to be distracting and frightening, even for her. But she remained coolly professional. She never failed to impress him. She was doing a damn good job of telling the public just what he and his men had to face every day on the front line. She’d done her research, knew their situation and the political situation inside out. She had got to know his men, capturing their thoughts and feelings on the war. He admired her for having the guts to come out there and put her life at risk.
The enemy was firing on both sides. She was down, squashed against the wall telling Jed and her director to do the same. Kane told her to follow him and crawl with the rest of his men along the ditch between the wall and a field full of maize that was providing them with flimsy cover on the other side. She’d kept up with him, only pausing to relate what was happening to the camera or to tell Jed to get down. The man was often a damn nuisance trying to catch every angle of the fighting.
She kept asking him questions about
what was going on around them and his next intentions. She really was the original grace under pressure. The only indication he got of any fear was a slight tremor in her voice.
They headed towards a small shell of a building he knew wasn’t far off. It should have been safe enough for them to take shelter there. They finally made it after being face down in the dirty, watery ditch, being under almost constant fire from the enemy. Miraculously, no one had been hurt, maimed or killed for a change.
The small building wasn’t much of a comfort. Four walls and a partial roof afforded little cover, but it would have to do until air support could arrive. He had instructed Sgt Major Slater to radio for it when there was a sudden lull in the gunfire. He remembered feeling suspicious. He looked all around. He’d known something was coming that day. He’d felt it all morning. Then it came, a shot, straight in Slater’s arm, then another in his stomach, a third in his chest as he radioed for the air support. Shit. Snipers.
One of his men shouted, “Incoming.” An explosion shook the ground nearby. Thankfully, it had missed It’s intended target, them. He turned quickly to find one of the enemy on top of what was left of the roof. One of his officers was leading Rebecca and the others under cover when he was shot and killed. They were surrounded. Kane killed the man on the roof before he could take anyone else out and ordered Rebecca and her crew to stay behind two of his own men firing over one of the walls. He and Lance Corporal Adler cleared the covered part of the building killing two of the enemy.
He ordered Rebecca and co to the shelter of the wall. He remembered hearing the Taliban rustling through the maize towards them, ready to storm the building. His heart was pounding so hard that day. He had an extra responsibility: three civilians who were relying on him for protection, which he took very seriously. Slater was still alive – barely – groaning in pain. Two of his men moved to bring him under cover helped by Rebecca who was doing her best to be of assistance, even though he knew it was futile. He’d gotten good at predicting death by this point.