A week after his disappearance, the ransom appeared. It was childish, vague, an open invitation to seal his fate.
To secure the release of Police Commissioner El Sayed, the main market street must be closed, without the help of state authorities, for an under-16s football match. Kick off 5pm, tomorrow.
The neighbourhood was incredulous. It seemed insulting that while their sons lay in jail, El Sayed could be freed so flippantly. Why didn’t the kidnappers ask for their loved ones’ release instead? Something tangible. Something just.
The following morning, the teahouses were ripe with arguments about the rights and wrongs of inaction. Street-side vendors gossiped about how various factions would force the street to stay open. Why should they save a man who had caused such pain?
Some spoke of how the ransom was a challenge to the community to show they were better than those who ruled. But were these people not aware of the realities around them? The brutality, the corruption – the idea of uniting to save a hated man struck many as offensively romantic.
In the early afternoon plain-clothed policemen mingled among the crowds, whispering veiled threats: promises of future crackdowns if the neighbourhood left their boss and protector to his fate. Warnings were made about the safety of wives and sons. But this only strengthened the resolve of those who finally felt armed with the advantage.
At 4pm traffic gridlocked the main street: taxis and bikes fought for every inch in between street vendors and those unloading goods. Elderly men stared from cafés. Traders collected on pavements. They talked excitedly about the inevitable conclusion, ignoring the seed of guilt growing in their hearts. Policemen loitered by the junction, weighing the repercussions of closing down the street against the ransom’s instructions.
At 4.30 a woman and boy held hands as they walked along the pavement. The boy wore an oversized replica of the national team kit and carried a football under his free arm. Pedestrians stepped back and fell silent as they passed. The two stopped halfway down, the eyes of the street upon them. The woman kissed the boy lightly on the head before entering a teashop, leaving him alone. His shining eyes nervously skirted those in the shop before he looked down and stared at his trainers.
The twelve-year-old son of El Sayed stood vulnerable and alone before them.
They tried loading the wrongs of his father on to him. They tried placing his imminent loss into the perspective of the many who had lost their fathers before him. They tried looking away, their silent collusion justifying that this was the way things must be.
And yet El Sayed’s son remained, name on the back of his shirt, football in hand, ready to save his father. His presence reflected and amplified their lingering guilt. In his innocence he seemed unaware of why the crowd was behaving this way.
An elderly man stood up from his seat. ‘It should not be like this.’ He stepped out on to the street and placed his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Others stood and followed.
Wishing for a bad ending was different to taking part in it.
Scuffles and threats met the swelling numbers who directed traffic away from the street. For years the neighbourhood had been intimidated; but in the minutes that followed, people ignored their fear and found themselves blocking taxis and helping to unload trucks parked on the street.
Makeshift goalposts were erected. Teenage boys appeared, swarming around El Sayed’s son, arguing only about the picking of teams. An irresistible momentum now took over. Cars that had been purposefully abandoned were pushed clear. Immovable trucks were integrated into the pitch.
Confused by the ridiculousness of the situation, the oppon-ents of saving El Sayed were reduced to petulant remarks; stopping proceedings would have meant violently dispersing a group of young footballers who were an assortment of cousins, brothers and nephews.
The crowd retreated to the pavements. A man appointed himself as referee and selected two captains to shake hands. The whistle blew.
PART ONE
The Hostages
Liam
Thursday, April 9th
London School of Economics lecture theatre
‘So, what’s your favourite kidnap?’
‘My favourite?’ Liam emphasised the second word disdainfully. ‘Kidnaps aren’t the type of thing you’re supposed to have favourites of.’
‘Come on,’ said the male journalist on the second row. ‘You’ve spent eighteen months writing a book on them. There must be one that does it for you.’
Liam looked across at Dr Mosley, the professor chairing the event, attempting to convey that this was not the sort of question he thought appropriate at his book launch. Dr Mosley seemed eager to hear Liam’s response.
‘Why? What’s yours?’ Liam asked the young journalist. He folded his arms, and let his face rest in his trademark dissatisfied expression.
Book launches for other authors consisted of fans and well-wishers; his were opportunities for his detractors to socialise together, where journalists goaded him into controversial soundbites. It was an unspoken agreement: they gave Liam publicity in return for painting him as the pantomime villain.
‘That’s easy,’ said the journalist. ‘John Paul Getty. Classic kidnapping mistake: take a hostage the family don’t want back. His billionaire grandfather only agreed to pay the ransom if it was tax deductible.’ Cautious laughter filled the half-full LSE lecture theatre.
‘I’m surprised your favourite part wasn’t when the kidnappers cut off his ear and mailed it to the police during a postal strike.’ Liam’s thin smile failed to turn the jibe into banter.
The journalist shrugged with a grin. ‘Just thought it’d be nice to balance the serious tone with something a little more accessible.’
Liam’s smile now flirted with a grimace; he had built the book’s premise around a list of failed abductions, before intellectualising it with the history of kidnappings: warring tribes, empire building, the slave trade, bride stealing, fundamentalism and rendition. Its title, which lay projected on to the back of the stage, reflected its contrived basis: Kidnap: A Tale of Alternative Taxation in a World of Inequality.
‘I’ll take your invaluable suggestion on board,’ Liam said as he took a sip of water, and placed the glass back on the table that lay between his and Dr Mosley’s seats.
‘Yes . . . well . . .’ Dr Mosley flustered over her notes. ‘One thing I found particularly interesting in the book was the divide between purely money-driven kidnappings, and political kidnappings: selfish greed versus a strategy to force a better world. You seemed to have a pretty damning opinion of the latter.’
‘That’s because none of them has ever been successful.’
Dr Mosley smiled politely and fiddled with the cord of her glasses behind her ear. ‘Success is relative, though. Maybe some you deem fruitless, others view as having achieved some of their aims.’
‘Can you name me one?’ He instantly regretted continuing with the dismissive tone he had adopted with the journalist.
Dr Mosley puffed out her cheeks to the audience, raising a few charitable smiles. ‘What about the Iranian hostage crisis? It worked for Khomeini in rallying personal support and propa-ganda against the west.’
Liam purposefully nodded encouragement, as an apology. ‘Maybe. But the crisis led to Iran becoming a pariah in the international community, so that when Iraq attacked, it received no support. A million Iranians died in the following war. For me, that isn’t success.’
Dr Mosley nodded, deep in thought.
‘Any other ideas of a successful political kidnap?’ said Dr Mosley, scanning the audience below. There were maybe 150 people scattered around the ground-floor seating; the upper tiers remained empty. Journalists and academics monopolised the front row, with the public and students at the back. Dr Mosley pointed to a woman in her forties, halfway down.
‘What about the Crest Voyager crisis? I know they asked for the oil company to leave Nigeria altogether, but I think part of their motive was to show the world how hear
tless capitalism is. And on that point, many people think they were successful.’
‘I’m sorry – you think that by murdering five innocent people, the kidnappers showed that other people were heartless?’ Liam shook his head.
‘I’m . . . I’m not saying that they looked any better,’ said the woman. ‘But desperate people don’t have the luxury of an alternative.’
‘You’re saying the needless killing of five people was their only alternative? How about not killing five people? Given the choice, would you kill five innocent people, or would you choose not to?’
‘I’m not sure that’s exactly what she was trying to say,’ Dr Mosley tried to interject.
‘No it wasn’t, but it’s where her logic ends up.’ Liam had worked himself up into the intellectual self-righteousness the press had come for. ‘Liberal opinion is filled with people making excuses for evil done by the poor. There are plenty of people in similar situations who choose not to take five hostages and kill them in cold blood. Maybe you should focus on those trying to improve their lives ethically rather than become an apologist for an act of terrorism.’
The theatre went quiet, except for the eager tapping of laptop keys as journalists recorded their lead quote. Dr Mosley shuffled some papers and made notes to try to look preoccupied as she thought of a way to change the subject.
‘So . . . I was wondering, considering what you just said, do you think there’s any cause, or situation, that could ever justify a kidnapping?’
Liam sat back in his seat and gave himself a few seconds to calm down. ‘No. A worthy cause will always do itself more harm.’
‘So there’s no point in trying? The desperate should give up as history’s not on their side?’
‘Look, don’t get me wrong, there’re a lot of evil people in the world, and the least they deserve is to be abducted and locked in a room for what they’ve done. I’m not being squeam-ish. I’m being practical. You kill an oilrig worker, the oil company puts more guns and security on their rigs. You successfully trade prisoners – don’t be surprised if your enemy kills those they capture next time instead of jailing them. You take a rich man’s money – don’t be surprised if he pays for someone to hunt you down. Kidnaps put the have-nots against the haves. The haves like revenge and control the resources to realise it.’
‘So there’s absolutely no circumstance where you think it could work?’ probed Dr Mosley.
Liam was tempted to reply immediately in the negative, before catching himself on the intake of breath, and elabor-ating on the thought that had just entered his mind.
‘A successful kidnap, I suppose, has the same quality as a successful con. A great con leaves both the con artist and the victim feeling like they’ve had a good deal. In the same way, a successful kidnap would require the ransom to ask for something those being ransomed would want to give . . . a demand they would demand from themselves—’
Liam broke off, staring at the back of the lecture theatre. ‘But I am yet to come across a case of this happening.’
Michael Reyburn
Friday, April 10th
10 Downing Street, London
Demands. Ultimatums. You have to do this or we’ll have to do that. Have to.
Michael could tell a situation was grave when groups talked of being forced to do something they didn’t want to. Bankers, religious extremists, union leaders: self-selected mediums for the coercive powers of money, God and the zeitgeist. Who the hell did they think they were? They were left with no choice but to do this, even though the demands they forced on Michael had only been decided upon after hours of procrastination.
Then there were the arbitrary timeframes. You have two weeks to change this; your army has one month to leave; or the one that haunted him the most: you have one minute to admit responsibility for. He respected the power of a deadline, but the lack of realism tended to create a sense of inertia rather than urgency.
Most of all he disliked the confrontation. Not because he was the type of man who reacted better to a request when it ended in please (although he was), but because it made him feel like the enemy. He would happily champion many of the ultimatums (with a few tweaks in vocabulary): raising wages, ending military occupations, redressing the injustices of global capitalism. They were in his manifesto.
He just wished they could do things together in partnership, rather than at metaphorical and, occasionally, literal gunpoint. Demands created conflict, opposition where none existed before. He accepted that not having done them yet implied he might need a gentle push, but government proved to be a blunter instrument than he had dared imagine. He, too, was frustrated. But he was an ally, not an adversary.
But ransoms transformed issues into principles. They gave those in power an out: never mind the murder of innocents, because we do not negotiate with terrorists. Forget helping the needy, because you can’t afford the precedent. Forget right and wrong, empathy, humanity. The principle of non-negotiation trumped all else.
Michael had made a list of all the demands he had faced while in government, and the majority read like a utopian manifesto. Maybe extreme measures were all that were left to people when faced with a system that lacked any empathy. He didn’t know any more.
‘Yes, Prime Minister, that’s correct. You have to push through this banking legislation in one month, or my union will be forced to strike.’
He had grown to despise them all.
Michael stared out the window towards the hum of tourists gathered by the security gate.
‘Prime Minister.’
Michael turned around, slightly dazed, and struggled a smile at his press officer Charlie, who was eating breakfast out of a bag saturated with grease.
‘Everything all right?’
Michael shrugged. ‘Nothing I can’t handle as indecisively as always.’
‘Heard the bankers are making threats over your reform suggestions.’
‘I’ll force their talent elsewhere apparently, and we can’t have them destroying someone else’s economy when they could be destroying ours. I’m betraying my lack of business acumen.’ Michael took a seat opposite Charlie.
Charlie smiled as he wiped some rogue puff pastry from his two-day stubble. ‘And the unions are serious? They’ll strike unless you submit the reforms to parliament?’
Michael pursed his lips, flicking a pen around his thumb using index and middle fingers.
‘The unions know you can’t agree, right? You’ll look like you’re being held to ransom.’ Four years on from Crest Voyager, Charlie still felt bad for using the word around Michael, like using the word dead around the bereaved.
Michael forced a smile.
‘Look . . .’ Charlie said warmly, ‘unless we become a little more proactive, the press will deal with it for you.’
Michael nodded absently and turned back towards the window. ‘Good luck to them.’
Liam
Friday, April 10th
Newsdesk of the Daily Voice, London
‘Enjoyed the book. Many editors would be a little pissed if they didn’t get a preview of a book one of their staff wrote.’
‘Pleased you enjoyed it,’ Liam said without pleasure, taking a seat next to his press editor Jane Barrett, who remained staring at her computer screen as she spoke.
‘Wilcox across the road called. Requested I ask you if you think he’s a terrorist sympathiser.’
‘Probably.’
‘My hunch too. But apparently he wasn’t just making small talk.’ Liam stared back, motionless. Barrett pulled her eyes away from the screen for the first time and towards the jumble of papers on her desk. ‘That became apparent when one of my interns brought me a copy of, well, any of today’s news-papers.’ Barrett placed a couple of them close to Liam. ‘you’re a terrorist sympathiser,’ powell tells single mother, read a headline.
‘It’s strange. Whenever Crest Voyager is bought up, you transform yourself from a man people dislike but respect, to a man people simply dislike
.’
Liam lost himself for a moment as he read the various accounts of him accusing a woman – who turned out to be a forty-two-year-old nurse and mother – of sympathising with evil. ‘And what would you recommend?’
‘For starters, I’d urge you never to write a book about it; but if you did I’d ban you from holding a book launch, giving interviews, or opening your mouth generally in any direction.’
Liam sat back in his seat.
‘Liam,’ Barrett said, taking off her glasses and pushing her hair behind her ears. ‘You’ve been here a long time at the Daily Voice, and as our readership has become more liberal, you’ve taken it upon yourself to even things out. You’re our token hawk. But you’ve got to avoid labelling single-mother nurses who volunteer their weekends to help the disabled as terrorist sympathisers; especially when their views match those of your editor.’ Barrett raised her eyebrows. ‘It might work for your book sales, but it doesn’t work here.’
When he’d started at the paper, nearly two decades earlier, he’d been conspicuous for being more liberal than the paper’s editorial – breaking stories highlighting the destructive nature of multinationals on their environments, the collusion be-tween energy companies and states, and human rights abuses committed in the name of democracy. His style built a reputation, but few friendships along the way. Barrett, then a fellow journalist, made a deliberate effort to be a friendly face. From then on, everyone saw them bound to each other: maybe not as friends, but perhaps as mentor and protégée. As the next decade passed, and he embarked on his journey from activist to right-wing commentator, Barrett became his editor; it drove a confused loyalty.
‘So what? You want me to apologise to this woman for disagreeing with her?’
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