by Andy Maslen
He nodded again. Makhmad let the man go. Clutching his throat and coughing, he retreated behind the bar to the door to the office. Half a minute later, he reappeared clutching a bundle of multi-coloured notes. Shaking, he counted them out in front of Kasym.
“Look, Kasym, I’m sorry. I was out of line. We’ll do some advertising, bring in the punters again. Here’s your money.”
Kasym swept up the notes and stuffed them into his jacket pocket without taking his eyes from Pete’s.
“Good. Very good. You know, this is a nice place, Pete. You do good business here. I know that young Lithuanian chick you have holed up in your flat is expensive to keep. Maybe you felt you needed to skim something off the top to buy her nice things.”
Pete shook his head vigorously.
“No, Kasym, it’s nothing like that, really. I . . .”
Kasym touched his index finger to Pete’s lips.
“Shh, my friend. You buy her perfume, maybe? A nice designer dress or two? I understand. A man’s got to protect his investment, hasn’t he? But that goes for both of us. So here’s how we’re going to leave things between us. Next month, I’m going to swing by the Casino and you’re going to have my money all ready to go. The usual ten thousand plus a little extra, say two thousand, as a fine for fucking with me today. That will settle things between us, and we can go on together as business partners. Or, maybe you feel these terms are unfair. In which case, I will send Dukka round and let the two of you . . . renegotiate . . . the terms of our agreement.”
“No!” Pete said, whitening, pulling on his ponytail like it was a bell rope. “No need for that. It’s all fine. Come whenever you like next month. I’ll have your money.”
“Good boy. Now, how about a little drink on the house, hmm? Makhmad and I have had a long and demanding day.”
*
Back at the house, Kasym set up the sitting room for filming. He placed the copy of Eesti Päevaleht on the seat of one of the two hard chairs facing the window. The script he’d laboured over, printed in block capitals on a sheet of ruled paper ripped from his A4 notepad, lay on top of the newspaper. The camcorder, a high-end model with an extendible mic covered with a fluffy grey shield, stood ready on its tripod.
“Go and fetch them, Dukka,” he said.
“Sure, Boss.”
He reappeared with the two hostages a few minutes later, pushing and prodding Sarah Bryant in the small of the back to ensure she was tightly grouped with her daughter. Easier to kill the enemy when they were close together.
Kasym looked them up and down. Taut muscles around the eyes betrayed their fear but these women had themselves under control. No screaming, or beseeching to be let go. No shaking or weeping. Strong. He admired that in a woman.
“Sit, please,” he said, pointing at the chairs. Sarah Bryant took the chair nearest the door, Chloe, the one with the newspaper and script. She picked up the slim bundle before she sat, turned the paper over in her hands, glanced at the script, then back at Kasym.
“You want to film us. Is that it? Making an appeal to Dad? The paper’s to show we’re alive?”
“As of now, yes. It will reassure your father that we are treating you well. Now, shall we begin? I’m afraid we cannot offer lighting or make-up, but you both look fine as you are.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“First you both say hello. Then Chloe, you will read the words I have written for you. Please do not mention our location. We will simply do another take. Just like in Hollywood.”
Behind him, Makhmad snickered. Elsbeta and Dukka looked on impassively. Elsbeta, because she had seen it all before. Dukka, because he looked at everything with great interest but without a great deal of excitement.
It was a hot day, and a light breeze inflated the dingy grey net curtain from time to time, bringing with it the scent of lime blossom from the trees outside in the street.
Kasym clapped his hands loudly, making the two women start.
“Let’s begin.” He stood behind the camcorder, thumbed the power button and waited a few seconds while the electronics inside the silver case woke up. Then he pressed the record button and spoke. “Mrs Bryant, you first.”
Through the viewfinder, Kasym watched as the Englishwoman prepared herself to speak. She straightened in her chair and pulled her shoulders back. She brushed her tawny hair behind her ears with both hands and began to speak in a calm, clear voice.
“Darling. Please don’t worry. These people have kidnapped me and Chloe, but they are treating us well. Just be strong. I love you.”
She looked sideways at her daughter.
“Hi Dad. We were in Stockholm and now—” She stopped as Kasym waved an admonitory finger at her beneath the lens of the camcorder. “OK, so these people have kidnapped us. Mum and I are fine. Just do what they say. I love you Dad.”
Then she looked down at the newspaper in her lap. Held it up under her chin. Kasym zoomed in on the masthead. Panned a little to the left of the black and red type blaring the newspaper’s name to focus on the date. Then zoomed out again. Beneath the lens he pointed down, signalling for Chloe to drop the newspaper. She placed it on her lap and picked up the script.
“So, I guess you know from the paper that we’re alive today. Now I’m going to read out a speech they’ve written.”
She cleared her throat and shook her head a couple of times.
“Every nation should be free to govern itself. Its people should have the same basic human rights as all other peoples. This is true for Chechnya. This is true for the Chechen people. Think back, Mr Bryant, to the days of the British Empire. How many millions did you squash down, beat, torture or kill to preserve your own dominion over half the planet? Britain saw the error of its ways and freed its former colonies, but today, right now, there are other empires who do not see why they should follow Britain’s example. For us, for the Chechen people, that oppressor is Russia.”
Chloe paused and looked up from the script into the camera. The breeze caught a wisp of her hair and blew it across her mouth where it stuck to her lip. She picked it off and resumed reading.
“We intend to free our country from Russia’s stranglehold. But to do that, we need funds. We do not ask you for money directly, but you are a powerful man. You can help us. We understand that there is to be an official investigation into Project Gulliver. Make sure it finds nothing wrong. That is all you need do to secure the continuing wellbeing and eventual safe return of your wife and daughter. Needless to say, any involvement of the police or security services will result in an adverse outcome for your family. Perhaps you doubt our sincerity, Mr Bryant. I will send you a token of our commitment to a free Chechnya.”
Kasym leaned away from the camcorder and turned to Elsbeta. He nodded, then returned to the viewfinder.
Casually, as if she were stretching her legs, she walked in front of the camera, pausing to retrieve a balaclava from a pocket and pull it down over her head. She squatted down beside Chloe Bryant on her left side. She reached up and brushed back the young woman’s hair, revealing a thin, silver wire earring with a small diamond dangling from it on a second loop. She fingered it gently, flicking it with the tip of her forefinger.
Chloe whipped her head round and glared at Elsbeta.
“Don’t touch it! Dad gave them to me for my twenty-first.”
Elsbeta said nothing. Instead she gripped Chloe’s jaw with her left hand and pushed her head around so that her left ear was facing the lens. Then, using her right hand, she squeezed the loop of wire between her thumb and the knuckle of her index finger until her thumbnail whitened, and tensed her right arm. She looked at the lens. From behind it, Kasym nodded again.
Chloe’s shriek of pain was loud but quick. Her hand flew to her ear, then, reflexively, she pulled it away to stare at her reddened palm.
“You bitch!” she shouted. “Fuck you!”
Sarah Bryant took charge, surprising Kasym.
“Get me some ice and a clea
n towel. Do you have a first aid kit? Well, do you?”
Nobody moved. They were waiting for him. He reflected that the English lived up to their reputation for being calm in a crisis. They’d faced down their own would-be oppressors nearly eighty years ago; now it was the turn of the Chechens.
He turned off the camcorder then nodded to Elsbeta, who was watching him closely. She fetched ice from the freezer and clean towels from a drawer in the kitchen. Makhmad disappeared and came back a few minutes later bearing a small red plastic box with a white cross on the lid. The girl was in pain, but she wasn’t crying. He admired that. The mother was pinching the torn earlobe between thumb and forefinger and murmuring reassurance to her daughter.
“It’ll be all right, darling. Do you remember Rachel Jackson? She caught her earring in the strap of her riding helmet last year. Did exactly the same thing. It healed up perfectly. Hardly even a scar.”
“She didn’t have some fucking terrorist pull it out though, did she, Mum?”
The mother looked over at Kasym. She knew he’d heard and the worry showed in the tight crinkles fanning out from the corners of her eyes.
“Don’t worry, Mrs Bryant,” Kasym said. “Your daughter is brave, a fighter. In Chechen, we have a word for women like her: nanaċöķalom. It translates loosely as ‘she-tiger’. Teeth, claws, plenty of strength, plenty of courage. We admire them. Now, take care of her. We have some work to do. Dukka. You stay here. Guard them. Same rules as before.”
“Sure, boss. Only, can’t I come with you this time? I’m not just a babysitter, you know. I got these.”
He adopted a caricatured bodybuilder pose, standing straight and jacking his arms up so that his biceps threatened to burst the sleeves of his cheap white shirt.
“I know, Dukka. And next time someone needs a little lesson, I’ll bring you along as the teacher. But for now, you’re the prison guard, OK?”
Dukka dropped his arms and the corners of his mouth simultaneously.
“OK, Boss. I’m the prison guard.” He turned to the two women. “And nobody gets past Dukka.”
“Good boy. Now, you two, come with me.”
Leaving the kitchen, which had temporarily become a dressing station, Kasym, Elsbeta and Makhmad walked outside to the car.
They got in, Kasym in the front with Makhmad, Elsbeta in the back.
“Right, we’ve got what we need to really put pressure on Bryant.”
*
Having left Elsbeta and Makhmad in the Old Town, Kasym arrived back at the house carrying two bulging Maxima supermarket carrier bags. He dumped them on the pine table in the kitchen. Chloe and Sarah were in the sitting room, playing cards under the watchful eye of Dukka.
“I am sorry to interrupt your card game, ladies” he said. “But I need your help in the kitchen. If you don’t mind.”
He gestured wide-armed towards the door and waited for the two women to put their cards down and precede him into the kitchen.
“Tonight, I will cook for you. Elsbeta and Makhmad are attending to some business for me so it will just be the four of us. We will have a Chechen speciality. You like lamb?”
They nodded. He’d noticed they preferred to keep silent around him. Well, perhaps some good home cooking and wine would make them more talkative. He emptied the bags. White onions tumbled across the tabletop, followed by long, red Romano peppers, a couple of heads of garlic, and a crinkled deep-green sheaf of what he called black cabbage. He lined up three bottles of Estonian wine, two red, one white, and a dozen lamb chops, still smelling of the butcher’s shop and bearing inch-thick rinds of creamy fat.
“Mrs Bryant, perhaps you would trim the fat from the chops. Save it though. It’s good for frying. Chloe, please would you chop the onions? Not too fine, leave something for us to taste.”
He unlocked the drawer containing the kitchen knives and handed them out. He caught the look that flashed between mother and daughter.
“May I ask you both a question?” he asked. He decided to wait for a spoken answer this time. He counted and looked the women in the eye in turn. He reached six before Sarah Bryant spoke.
“Of course you can ask us a question. You are in charge, after all.”
“Have you ever used a knife on anything with a pulse?” Kasym asked.
Chapter 8
As Gabriel began to unload the story of his parents, he wondered whether he would cry. He hadn’t when the two police officers had turned up at his door, sombre-faced and overly respectful. Perching on the edge of a leather sofa in his white-painted living room, the older of the two cops, a woman detective inspector, had informed him that there had been an accident. He could feel a lump in the back of his throat, but he decided it didn’t matter. Here, surrounded by so many people who’d lost friends, comrades or parts of their minds and bodies, his own loss felt like an admission ticket.
“Dad was really fit. He played tennis every day, nearly. Walked the dogs. And he sailed. He had a stroke and died when they were out on the boat. He always said to me he wanted to go doing something he loved, so I try to believe he wouldn’t have minded. But he was young. Too young, really. Not even seventy.”
“I’m really sorry,’ Tom said. “Strokes are bad. Like a sniper bullet.”
“Yes, they can be. But this wasn’t such a bad one. He could have recovered if they’d got to him in time.”
“What happened?”
“My Mum was on the boat with him. But . . .” Gabriel sighed deeply. “Something happened after I joined the Army, back in Hong Kong where they were living. It undid her and she started drinking. When Dad had his stroke, she was passed out downstairs. He died with his wife just five feet away from him. She must have come upstairs when she sobered up, and found him. She left a note. The Coastguard found her body in the water. Another boat reported her.”
“So you lost them both in one day.” Then Tom smacked himself hard on the forehead. “Sorry, statement of the bleeding obvious.”
“It’s OK. Thanks for even asking. It wasn’t Mum’s fault, not really. This spoilt rich kid in HK she was tutoring didn’t get into university. Knew his parents would blow their stacks so he made up this accusation about Mum. That she’d behaved . . .”
He stopped. Felt the heat of his tears on his cheeks. He sat there, in the wheelchair and sobbed. Tom did very little. Just waited. Put a hand out and patted Gabriel’s shoulder, left it there until the heaving subsided into stillness.
“Oh, God, sorry. Didn’t know that was going to happen,” Gabriel said.
“Stay here a little longer and you’ll hear a lot of guys crying louder and longer. Nobody minds. The shrinks say it’s cathartic.”
Gabriel cleared his throat and swiped the soft cotton of his sleeve across his eyes.
“You were asking me about cars?”
“Yes. So imagine driving your Maserati flat out, but you’re sitting on the front lip of the bonnet. Now imagine those Italian engineers had reworked the aerodynamics so it got skittish at anything faster than fifty. And taken the self-centring out of the steering. And put you on a test track covered in water and diesel.”
“OK. Doing that. Not enjoying it.”
“Good. That’s what flying a Typhoon’s like.”
“But that sounds like a nightmare.”
“It is. Until you master it. Then it’s just a sublime moment. Those crates will do whatever you want. It’s like telepathy. Flip, roll, climb, dive: you think it, and it happens. But they knew – we knew – there was more we could do if we could somehow speed up our thought processes.”
“And that’s where Dreyer Pharma came in?”
“With their ‘Viagra for the brain’ as the R&D woman put it, yes.”
“What was it like? Did it work?”
“Yes. It worked. I told you. We were already the sharpest pencils in the box. Then we got sharper. They ran so many tests on us, I swear there are astronauts who had less done to them than us. So, the time comes for the first flight test. Nothing
complicated. Just take a Hawk jet trainer up to 3,000 feet, couple of laps of the base, then back home for tea and a biscuit.
“We all did it, nothing to report, Sir. It was amazing, you could see for miles, sense tiny shifts in air currents. Then, they wanted to prove the drug. Eddie won the lottery to go first. Climbed into a Typhoon with instructions to take it up to 30,000 feet, play around, have some fun, come back down, and get plugged into the science-woman’s laptop and have his brain downloaded for analysis.”
As Tom recounted his story, Gabriel looked out of the window again. A wind had sprung up, and the trees at the edge of the gardens were swaying at their tips. A bird of prey of some kind, a kestrel maybe, was beating its way against the air currents, being pursued by five crows.
“He went up fine,” Tom said. “We watched from the airfield with binoculars. He was showing off, basically, doing stuff that shouldn’t have even been possible. Then something went wrong. He didn’t pull out of a stall turn. The damn thing just fell out of the sky. We were screaming for him to eject but he didn’t. Eddie hit the ground at probably two hundred miles an hour. Nothing left but a crater and some pieces of tin.
“Here’s the thing. They wouldn’t play us the recording from his mic. He was wired for sound and was supposed to talk the whole time. Let them know what was going on in his head, his muscles. How he felt. So Shiona and I, we broke into the control room in the middle of the night. Had to dodge the Rock Apes too.”
“Rock Apes?”
“RAF Regiment. You know, the Military Police. MPs.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“We played the recording. It wasn’t hard to find on the computer. Stupid civilians think everything is safe because it’s on base. Eddie was fine, initially. Reporting on the controls, the plane’s responses, his reactions, saying how smooth everything felt. How he was plugged in to the avionics. Then the weirdness started. He began singing. Old Beatles numbers. Then he started screaming about snakes. He was shouting ‘Get away from me!’ over and over again. Then the static when he hit the ground.”