I heard a noise at the door and didn't bother moving from my bed, as it was only ever a meal tray. I blinked when I saw him standing over me.
'You're being moved,' his Oxford accent told me, and then he turned immediately and left, slamming my cell door behind himself.
Tents
Helicopters weren't a novelty at all for me anymore and after I was loaded aboard, I somehow knew it would be to an airfield and then on to wherever and whatever. Another prison I decided. As I'd predicted, the helicopter landed at the airfield where I had arrived and I was loaded aboard the same type of military cargo plane. The only difference being that the flight seemed a little shorter and when I was led from the plane after it landed, I was ushered into a waiting green military ambulance. Two men in military fatigues were waiting inside, and one indicated for me to sit between them. Neither one spoke to me but when the ambulance pulled to a stop about twenty minutes later, the back doors flew open and they helped me out and walked me to a row of four brown and cream camouflaged tents covered in dark green netting. By the red crosses on them, partially obscured by the green netting, I assumed it was a field hospital but I was much more reassured by the lower temperature and the passing sight of a few trees I caught as I was whisked from the ambulance. The two men with me sat me down inside one of the tents, and then they sat silently either side of me.
Quite a while passed until a man in his early forties and greying approached. Dressed in military greens but with the addition of a stethoscope around his neck.
'This way Mr Garret,' he said and waited for me to stand. The two men sitting beside me didn't move to get up as I walked away with the man I presumed was a doctor. He led me into an area that was busy with a few people filling in forms, and then into an excuse for a consultation room, only a flap of canvas for a door and fold up chairs and something similar to a card table. He indicated for me to sit while he studied a file. He looked up once or twice and then made a few notes before he finally spoke.
'We'll give you a check-up and do some x-rays on that hand and your nose. Could you get on the scales for me?' he asked, and pointed to them in the corner of the room.
After he'd checked my weight, blood pressure and had me up on a table to check what parts of my body interested him, he called for someone from the canvas flap and a man who had all the expressionless hallmarks of an orderly arrived. The doctor told him to take me off for x-rays and to collect a urine sample and arrange a blood test. We both waited while the doctor filled out a form and then handed it to my new attendant. After my tests and some waiting around in between and after, the doctor came to get me around early evening and took me back to his makeshift consultation room, where he informed me that I would undergo surgery on my hand and nose and be kept under observation for about a week. When he'd finished his short explanation he called the orderly again and I was led through to another tent where I was washed and changed. Once I was in my hospital bunk, my ankles were shackled. But at least I could move freely and sit up. The orderly told me I would be under guard, but to take it easy and rest. Given my situation and the way I felt, I agreed without hesitation. I slept fitfully that night, thinking about Helen, and Chara.
After a light breakfast, which was the best meal I had eaten in a very long time, I was prepared for my two bouts of surgery. As they were both performed under local anaesthetic, I was back in my bed for lunch with a cast on my left hand and heavy bandages around my head that I thought were holding my nose onto my head until it bonded back on to my face. With a cast, bandages and ankle cuffs, I wasn't going anywhere and it even felt like everyone else thought so to, as I wasn't bothered apart from my meals arriving and a chaplain coming to see me the next morning with an assortment of magazines for me to choose from. I selected a few news magazines, passing on the motoring ones but probably made a bad decision. So many pages had been removed, and the ones that hadn't, had black felt marker lines obscuring large portions of text. Obviously it was wise not to know anything here – wherever here was. I had asked the orderly the day before, but he told me he wasn't allowed to discuss anything other my medical condition.
The doctor checked on me twice a day, and with real food, a course of antibiotics and rest, I felt a little stronger each day. After five days, the dressing on my nose was reduced to one large plaster holding a piece of plastic in place over my nose. The doctor told me I would be fit enough to travel in a day or two. I wasn't surprised that he didn't know, or wouldn't say where I would be travelling to, but I was pinning my hopes on the fact that after going to the trouble of repairing my broken hand and nose that my destination wouldn't involve having them broken again.
The next morning, shortly after I'd finished my breakfast, the orderly arrived and told me he needed to get me ready to be transferred. After a wash and a change from my blue and white wraparound bed apron into a pair of light blue overalls, complete with the luxury of a pair of olive green undershorts, socks and a pair of green plastic slippers, he walked me to the area where I had entered nearly a week before. Two new men in black suits were waiting and before I knew it, one had handcuffed my right wrist and then clipped the other end to his own left wrist. They quickly escorted me to a waiting black van, with them sitting either side of me on the rear seat. I heard the whine of jet engines as the van pulled to a halt about twenty minutes later. One man leant down and removed my ankle chains, and then when the car door opened, I saw the steps leading up to an unmarked, plain white jet, and I was quickly taken up the steps by the man who was manacled to my wrist. There were only about fifteen or sixteen seats inside the small cabin. He unlocked the handcuff from his wrist and told me to sit. When I did, he clipped his end of my handcuffs around the armrest alongside me.
Without a word exchanged between us he looked down at me, and I looked up at him, before he turned and headed to the door then disappeared from view. The jet's engines started to increase in pitch a little as a man in a pilot's uniform appeared at the front of the cabin. I assumed he'd come from the cockpit. He didn't look at me as he fiddled with something and the door of the cabin started to close. He disappeared, and a few minutes later I felt the plane beginning to taxi forward. I looked out my window, but apart from scattered trees and sand, I couldn't make out anything that gave me a clue as to where I was. When I returned my view to inside the cabin, I was startled by a man, who had silently arrived while I was busy looking at trees and was now sitting opposite me. Another suit, but this time containing a man in his forties with sharp piercing blue eyes, a grey crew cut and a totally expressionless face. A short white-coiled cord extended from inside his collar to an earpiece in his left ear. I looked at him, and he returned my stare, until I felt the thrust of take off and returned my view to the window and the trees speeding by. As the plane climbed I looked out hoping to see a coastline or mountains in the feint hope of seeing something familiar, but clouds began blocking my view within a few short minutes.
I looked back at the man. He was typing something into his phone.
'Can I ask where I'm going?'
He looked up slowly from his phone. 'Just relax Mr Garret.'
'So that was a no then?'
'Yes,' he replied, and went back to concentrating on what he was doing with his phone.
After a silent flight, except for my phone addicted fellow passenger grunting from time to time, which I think was due to his occasional frustration with the game he was playing on his phone, I heard the plane's engines lower in pitch and felt the slow loss of altitude and waited to discover where we were landing. Or more precisely, what awaited for me after that. As the plane lost altitude, clouds that became heavier and darker blanketed out my view from my window. I heard the noise of the under carriage descending, and still couldn't see anything, until finally the plane came out from below the clouds and then into driving rain moments before it landed. Looking out as the plane taxied, all I could see was rain and fog.
I didn't find it unusual to be handcuffed to my silent co-pas
senger and then whisked off the plane into a waiting black SUV. Although there were no windows in the van, after a while I could feel the motion and hear the sounds of a city. Sirens, slowing down as if in heavy traffic, stopping regularly, perhaps for traffic lights, and the constant hum that a city makes. When it finally pulled to a halt, I was bundled from the car, which was parked in a loading area inside a building, and quickly escorted through a set of heavy plastic flapping doors and then up two flights of stairs. My minder, still handcuffed to me, opened a fire exit door and we entered a stark white corridor. It was only a short distance before he opened a door on our left, and I didn't need any explanation. It was my new cell. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked our handcuffs.
'Make yourself comfortable,' he said. I nodded and resisted saying that I'd heard that before.
City
There was a basic but clean bathroom, with a real ceramic flushing toilet. The bed wasn't large but it had a decent mattress, and the small desk alongside had pencils and two notepads plus a bible in its top drawer. There was a window, which was barred of course, but it was quite large. The only problem was that the view from it of a brick wall wasn't all that inspiring. But all things considered, I classed everything as a vast improvement and gave me the reassuring sense that it was unlikely that I would die here. My spleen and pancreas agreed, but my stomach was its usual suspicious self.
The food was better and I satisfied myself during the days that passed with the feeling of relative safety and of a smiling young man who delivered my meals, and who also kindly brought me a copy of Noble House to read. I had two visits from a doctor. On his second visit he removed my plastic nose splint. After he'd left, I looked at my nose in the bathroom mirror and while it wasn't pretty at all, it was a nose. He told me it would take some time to heal properly, but that I'd have to expect it to be a little less than perfect even after that. The cast on my hand had to remain for a while longer though.
I was deep into reading Clavell's Noble House when I heard my door. Thinking it was my smiling meal man I didn't get up, but reacted when I hear a polite cough.
'Hello.'
'Hello Mr Garret, I'm Urs Villiger.
'You're Swiss?' I said as I stood up.
'Yes,' he said as he offered his hand to shake. I took it hesitantly, still in shock at him being from Switzerland. 'I'm handling your dossier.'
'Um, right,' I said, still dumbfounded.
'I only wanted to introduce myself before we start work on your situation. So if you wouldn't mind being patient for a little longer, I'll arrange for us to meet soon and then assess what can be done.'
'Yes, of course.'
'All right then, I'll see you again as soon as possible.'
'Thank you. Um, can I ask you something?'
'Yes.'
'Where am I?'
'Ankara. You're in protective custody.'
'Thank you. Thank you very much for telling me. And, eh, protected by who, and from who or what?'
'We'll discuss that when I meet with you again Mr Garret.'
'I understand,' I said, just happy to feel that I was safe. Well, safe being rather relative in my situation, but my stomach and liver seemed to be satisfied with its relativity.
'Good then. Well, I'll be in touch,' he said as he left.
I laid back down on my bed content with a relieved feeling of at last knowing where I was and it helped to confirm my assumptions about where I had been taken over however long it had been – weeks or months, I didn't know, but I hadn't been taken very far. As I was in Ankara, it was logical to assume that I had been held within the region surrounding Greece. If I'd had a map I could have guessed from the approximate time of each flight, but satisfied myself with my guesses of Greece, The Balkans, Turkey and of course a small remote island, perhaps in the Aegean or Ionian Seas. From there it was back to Noble House and Ian Dunross' discovery of secret documents that the KGB and MI6 would love to get their hands on. Given my situation I really wondered if I shouldn't be reading something a little less close to home. Perhaps 1984 or A Brave New World.
My days passed quietly, reading mostly, as the smiling young man who delivered my meals was kind enough to bring me a few more books. We'd managed to get onto a first name basis as well, which made Paul's visits more pleasant. As did his delivering of some clothes for me. Not high fashion, but casual and comfortable jeans, t-shirts, sweaters and sneakers as well as new underwear, still in shop-bought plastic wrap. The doctor came once more and checked on my nose, and gave me a pleasant surprise by removing the plaster cast from my left hand and replacing it with a hard plastic brace that I could remove when I had a shower. The only thing I really wanted was to be able to go for a walk, perhaps in a park or by a lake, but that was wishful thinking for the time being. I satisfied myself with the absence of black balaclavas – and women.
Close to a week went by before Urs Villiger called in to see me again but this time he invited me to come with him. It wasn't far to the interview room, which was basic, with a small round table and two plastic chairs, just a few metres down the corridor from my cell. But there were no guards accompanying us, or handcuffs for me. He asked me to sit down as he dropped a thick red dossier on the table.
'I'd like to start by getting all of your details first,' he said, as he opened the dossier and took out a blank yellow form that I could see had a lot of boxes for him to fill in.
'Yes, sure.'
'So your full name and date and place of birth.'
'Langley Benjamin Garret. Fifth of February, nineteen sixty-five. Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England,' I stated, and he began completing his long yellow form. For an hour at least he asked for almost every detail of my life, from schools and universities I had attended, previous addresses, past employers, passports, residency permits and driver's licence to my marriage date, Helen's date of birth and the names of her close relatives, plus the names of doctors, lawyers and accountants I had used. I thought we were close to finished as he reached the bottom boxes of his form, but he turned it over and there were yet more boxes to complete. He asked me for the names of relatives or friends who could vouch for me and give a reference of my good standing, as well as the names of acquaintances and neighbours that I knew in and around Neuchâtel. When he reached the end of side two, he handed me the form and asked me to read it through thoroughly and then sign and date it if I agreed that the information was accurate and factual. I signed it.
'Thank you Mr Garret. I'll need to have this information checked and verified, and after that we can move on to the steps we can take to resolve your case file.'
'So it will take a while?'
'I shouldn't think so. I know you must be quite concerned, so we'll do our best to find a speedy and sensible solution.'
'Can I ask some questions?'
'Yes of course, but I only have a limited knowledge of your file.'
'That's fine, I understand. I'd just like to know if I'm being held here by you? By you I mean the Swiss government.'
'No. You are currently being held in the Russian Embassy in Ankara. I have been given access to meet with you by the Russian ambassador.'
'How…? …the Russians…,' I said, shaking my head in disbelief.
'I don't know the precise details, but I understand that it was arranged between parties that came to believe that it was in their interest to have you delivered to a neutral authority.'
'I'd never thought of Russia as neutral.'
'All countries have different objectives in certain given situations,' he replied, but I was struggling to understand, so I tried a different question.
'Well, can I ask if you know who, and maybe why they took me in the first place?'
'No, we don't have any information regarding that, but we are investigating.'
'And the other ones who held me after that on the submarine?'
'No, we don't know. Sorry I can't be more helpful.'
'That's ok, but one more question if I may. Are you
from the Swiss Government?'
'No, not the Confederation, but I'm with a Swiss agency.'
'Secret police?' I asked with a smile.
'An agency Mr Garret,' he replied, but with a hint of a returned smile that made me feel somewhat reassured.
'Look, there is one question you may be able to help me with.'
'Yes?'
'My wife Helen. Do you have any information about her?'
'We are not sure of her whereabouts, I'm afraid.'
'So she's not at home in Neuchâtel?'
'No.'
'And no idea at all where she could be?'
'I'm sorry. We don't have any more information than that.'
'Well, thanks at least for telling me what you know.'
'The least I could do. So if there's nothing else, I'll return you to your quarters.'
'Ok,' I said as I stood, and picked up on his politeness in referring to my cell.
'I'll be in touch as soon as I have any further information regarding your case file.'
After he'd accompanied me back to my cell, I sat on my bed, totally confused about why I was being held by the Russians, and even more by the fact that my cell door wasn't fully closed and locked. After what I'd been through, and with the comfort of fresh clean underwear, I didn't bother going to investigate. Waiting patiently in my cell, doing as I was told or asked and reading my days away was by far the best course of action I could take right now. Then hope that Urs Villiger returned with some news.
Go
My stomach and small intestine reacted with more than mild suspicion, even though almost every other part of my body was very pleased. It's strange how when what you've been waiting for, for a very long time finally arrives, it can all feel a bit ordinary. Rather like tearing the shiny colourful Christmas wrapping paper from a gift that has been sitting under the tree for a week, and discovering that it was only camouflage for a pair of socks. That is how I felt when I landed at Zurich airport aboard a commercial flight from Amman.
The Sons Of Cleito (The Abductions of Langley Garret Book 1) Page 9