Line of Succession

by Brian Garfield

  5:10 P.M. Continental European Time Fairlie was in some sort of vehicle. He could feel the crunch and jounce of its movement; there was the slight stench of gasoline exhaust.

  He had come awake once before. Inside a room, the light very dim; someone had put a needle in his arm and he had gone out again.

  He remembered it now: the helicopter, the shootings, the glimpse of the gas pistol.

  His head was sluggish with drug. He blinked; there was no constriction on his eyelids but he could see nothing. A sense of blindness, and panic; he tried to move his hands but they were manacled or tied; tried to sit up and banged his forehead into something sickeningly soft. The world lurched crazily and tipped him half up on one shoulder but his head struck something soft again, and he was rolled onto his back again by a shift in the vehicle’s attitude.

  He tried to cry out but it was only a hoarse grunt against the wadding taped into his mouth.

  Rising panic: he began to thrash in the darkness but all his limbs were tied and he began to drown, choking on the gag. When he understood that, he stopped straining: he made his muscles limp and focused on getting his breath. The wads in his mouth kept tickling the back of his tongue: he felt nauseous and wanted to cough but it was impossible to draw deep breath for a cough, the wadding strangled him; he had to force himself to breathe with shallow regularity, it was the only way to get air. In the blackness his eyes were wide and round.

  The vehicle’s gears gnashed. It lurched forward; he had a feeling it was going up a hill, rounding a sharp curve. Perhaps he was in the trunk of a car—but no; he was stretched out full length on his back and he knew of no car with a trunk that large. The floor of a station wagon perhaps? A truck?

  He was contained within a very constricted space: something the size and proportion of his own body. He could define its limits with his elbows, his forehead, his toes. All of it was heavily padded with a soft cloth-covered substance. A padded cell, he thought, I always knew it would come to this. He was not ready to laugh but the thought eased his panic.

  They had padded the enclosure to keep him from banging on it with his elbows and feet. They had removed every possibility of his making his presence known to anyone. Professionally done, he thought.

  Now he asked a silent question and realized it was the question people were supposed to ask when they regained consciousness:

  Where am I?

  And what time was it? What day?

  Questions to which there were no answers.

  It was a land vehicle. Not a plane, not a boat; the motion was that of something on wheels, moving on bad roads, not at a very great rate of speed.

  How long had he been moving? There was no way to know what country he was in—what continent.

  The thought of time—the indefinite bubble of time in which he lay—made him sharply aware of hunger and thirst.

  They would be looking for him. The whole world would be looking. He approached the thought with a certain detachment.

  The blackness was absolute. He was totally enclosed. It made him acutely afraid: the lack of light suggested lack of air; the size of the enclosure was claustrophobic; how soon would he exhaust the oxygen? He breathed cautiously but the air did not seem preternatu-rally stale; there was only the faint stink of exhaust fumes.

  Gently. Exhaust fumes: they weren’t being generated inside his padded enclosure. They came in the air, from outside. There was an air vent somewhere.

  The floor lurched over a bad bump, a chuckhole. Then there was the sensation of rumbling unevenness: a flat tire? But it kept moving, it didn’t slow down. He was puzzled until the answer struck him: cobblestones.

  He lay motionless, feeling cramped, his muscles knotting painfully even though he was stretched out full length. It was a physical manifestation of fear and he fought it by relaxing himself a muscle at a time.

  The motion stopped.

  His body tensed again, panic renewed: the vehicle had stopped, it was a new terror to reckon with.

  His prison swayed under him and he thought it must be the weight of someone climbing into the vehicle. Then he felt himself in motion. Scraping, banging; he was rolled from side to side, there was one particularly sharp blow, and he felt the case around him sway unevenly.

  They were carrying him somewhere. Clumsily, banging into things. He felt it when they set him down.

  A squeak, and a quiet rhythmic scraping. For a moment he had a horrid gothic illusion of rats gnawing at his enclosure. Incredible what the mind could conjure in total darkness.

  There was light. A thin ribbon at first, a crack that opened under the edge of the top of his enclosure. It was very faint but it made him blink. By its shadows he could see that the enclosure around him was lined with something glossy and quilted.

  A coffin. They had him in a coffin.

  The squeaking and scraping: they were unscrewing the lid.

  Something out of a bad horror movie, he thought; it was unthinkable and it was silly. Laughter and fright chased each other through his veins. He felt the rapid heavy thudding of his pulsebeat.

  Three of them lifted the lid away. He could make out their silhouettes, that was all; the light blinded him. He tried to sit up. A voice, curiously strained and muffled, spoke calmly: “Take it easy Fairlie.”

  Two of them lifted him to a sitting position. He went dizzy, felt his eyes roll up; he had to knot his stomach muscles and fight for consciousness. The same voice spoke again, but not to him: “Take the gag out, give him something to drink.” Then it came closer: “Fairlie can you hear me? Nod your head.”

  He lifted his head and let it drop. The effort seemed to cost too much.

  “All right, listen to me now. Where we are you could yell your head off and nobody but us would hear you. But I don’t want any yelling. Understand? You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Otherwise we have to hurt you.”

  He squinted, trying to see. Shapes swam in the light, slowly becoming distinct, taking on form and color. A garage, he saw it was. Big enough for three or four cars. There were two: a small European coupe and a black hearse.

  A hearse.

  It was an old hearse, perhaps a Citroen; the tires looked bad. That was what they had transported him in. Steam rose from the hoods of both cars.

  He saw the black lieutenant, in chauffeur’s uniform now. Still chewing gum.

  There were four others, he saw. All of them in Arab robes, their faces hidden behind Bedouin headgear, the wraparounds up to their noses. One of them came forward and began to peel the surgical tape from Fairlie’s face. It stung like razor cuts as it ripped away.

  The hands were small and deft: a woman, he saw, and it surprised him.

  She did not speak. The black lieutenant brought a tin cup of water. “Small sips, man. Swallow easy.” And tipped the cup to Fairlie’s lips.

  He sucked greedily. The water had a brassy taste, or perhaps that was only the fear on his tongue.

  The other spoke, the one who had spoken the first time. A disguised voice, he could hear that immediately, but something Slavic about it. “Free his feet and sit him over here.” He was beyond the light and Fairlie couldn’t see him clearly.

  The woman undid the wire around his ankles. “His hands too?”

  “Not for the moment.”

  The woman and the black lieutenant lifted him to his feet. He was standing in the open coffin on the floor of the garage. They held him, each by one elbow. The blood rushed from his head and he almost passed out again; he fought it because it seemed essential to fight something.

  It was as if his feet had gone to sleep. He had no muscular control of his ankles. The woman said, “Step over. Careful.” She affected a Germanic sort of accent but it didn’t sound real. Nonetheless, he thought, it served to disguise her real voice well enough. He could see nothing of her but her hands and eyes and cheekbones. She was perhaps eight inches shorter than Fairlie.

  They walked him across the room slowly. He felt like a loosely strung pupp
et. His feet flapped uncontrollably at every step.

  There was a workbench against the rear wall. Tools and scrap had been swept to the side. Packing crates were drawn up in the guise of chairs and the Slavic one said, “Sit.”

  His elbows were free but his hands were wired together; he sat forward with his elbows on the bench and his hands in front of his face, peering past his knuckles. It was very important to know where he was—vitally important, though he didn’t think why. He tried to make out the license plates of the two cars but they had been smeared deliberately with mud.

  The Slav said, “You can speak, can’t you?”

  He didn’t know; he hadn’t tried. He opened his mouth and uttered an unrecognizable croak.

  “Come on now, you haven’t been gagged that long.”

  “How long?” It came out better but it was still as if his tongue were shot full of novocaine.

  “A few hours, that’s all. It’s only about sunset.”

  The same day, then. Monday, January the tenth.

  A rusty work lamp on the workbench, the kind with a hook, and a cage over the bulb. The Slav picked it up, switched it on. “Abdul.”

  The black lieutenant: “Yeah?”

  “Lights out.”

  Abdul, which clearly was not his name, went to a wall switch. The ceiling lights went out; only the work lamp in the Slav’s fist burned. The Slav trained it on Fairlie.

  “Do you know your name?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “What is this?”

  “What is your name please.”

  The light blinded him to the rest of the room. He closed his eyes, twisted his head, squinted into the dark corners.

  “Name.”

  “Clifford Fairlie.”

  “Very good. You may call me Sélim.”

  Sélim and Abdul, then. It was very unconvincing; perhaps it was intended to be.

  “Abdul. The recorder.”

  Footsteps on concrete. After a moment Sélim the Slav spoke at him again from the darkness. “Fairlie talk to me.”

  “What about?”

  “You must have questions.”

  Names, Fairlie thought. Sélim and Abdul. They withheld their real names, they disguised their voices, they hid their faces from him. Conclusion: it was important he not discover who they were. Suddenly he felt a clawing surge of hope. They would not have gone to these lengths if they meant to kill him.

  But he knew Abdul’s black face.

  But half a dozen people back at Perdido knew it too. They wouldn’t kill Fairlie for that.

  Uncertain all the same, he felt very cold.

  Sélim said, “Perhaps you’d like to know what this is all about.”

  “I assume I’ve been kidnapped.”

  “Very good.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “What purpose would you think?”

  “I suppose I’m being held for ransom, is that it?”

  “In a way.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m sure you recognize the facts of life, Fairlie. Political kidnapping is a highly effective weapon in the wars of liberation that are being waged against the forces of the imperialist regimes.”

  “I doubt it. This won’t win your cause many friends.” Fairlie rubbed his mouth against the back of his hand. “May I have something to eat?”

  “Certainly. Lady.”

  Fairlie heard the girl moving around in the dimness.

  “Are we still in Spain?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose it doesn’t.”

  Abdul the black lieutenant inserted himself briefly between Fairlie and the light. He placed an object on the workbench at Sélim’s hand. It was a small tape recorder.

  Sélim did not touch it. Fairlie looked at the tape spools. They were not turning; the machine was not switched on.

  Sélim said, “You were saying.”

  “What is it you want of me?”

  “Only a little painless cooperation. It won’t cost you anything.”

  “Speaking in whose terms?”

  “Don’t be alarmed. What do you think we want of you?”

  The girl—she was a girl or a young woman by her hands and eyes—brought him food on a scrap of cloth. A small crusty loaf split into a sandwich, chunks of cold boiled ham.

  Sélim reached for Fairlie’s hands. Fairlie drew back sharply; the Slav only clucked in his throat, reached out again and began to untwist the wires around Fairlie’s wrists.

  When his hands were free Fairlie rubbed his welted wrists vigorously. “Is this all of you? This little band?”

  “We’re everywhere, Fairlie. The united peoples of the world.”

  “I suppose to you self-styled revolutionaries your cause makes good sense. To me it’s gibberish. But I’m sure you didn’t drag me here just to engage in silly dialectics.”

  “Perhaps that’s exactly what we have done.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You refuse to listen to us unless we force you to.”

  “I listen to everyone. It doesn’t oblige me to agree with everything I hear.”

  The bread and ham had no flavor; he ate mechanically.

  Sélim said, “How long do you suppose we’ve been sitting here talking?”

  “Why?”

  “Humor me. Answer the question.”

  “Five minutes I suppose. Ten minutes. I don’t know.”

  “I imagine it’s long enough for you to have cleared your voice. It sounds natural enough to me.” Sélim reached for the tape recorder, pushed it forward into the light. He did not switch it on yet. “Now we have a simple request. I have a short speech written out. You ought to find that familiar—you people always read speeches written for you by someone else, don’t you.”

  Fairlie refused to be drawn; fear chugged in his stomach and he was not prepared to debate questions of that nature.

  “We’d like you to deliver this little speech for us in your own voice. Into the tape recorder.”

  Fairlie only continued to eat.

  Sélim was very patient, very mild. “You see we believe the greatest difficulty faced by the peoples of the world is that those in power simply do not listen—or at best, listen only to what they want to hear.”

  “You’ve got a captive audience,” Fairlie said. “If it pleases you to bombard me with mindless invective I can’t stop you. But I can’t see how you expect it to do you any good.”

  “On the contrary. We expect you to help us re-educate the world.”

  “Thank you but I rarely send my brain out to be laundered.”

  “An admirable sense of humor. You’re a brave man.”

  Sélim reached inside his robes, drew out a folded paper, pushed it into the light. Fairlie picked it up. It had been typewritten, single spaced.

  “You’ll read it exactly as written, with no editorial revisions and no imaginative asides.”

  Fairlie read it. His mouth pinched into tight compression; he breathed deep through his nose. “I see.”

  “Yes, quite.”

  “And after I’ve obeyed your instructions?”

  “We don’t intend to kill you.”

  “Is that a fact.”

  “Fairlie you’re no use to us dead. I realize I can’t prove this to you. It’s true, however.”

  “You don’t honestly think Washington will agree to these demands?”

  “Why not? It’s a very cheap price to pay for your safe return.” Sélim leaned forward. “Put yourself in Brewster’s position. You’d do it. So will he. Come now, Fairlie, you’re wasting our time. You can readily understand that right now for us time is blood.”

  Fairlie glanced at the last line of the typewritten speech. “‘Instructions will follow.’ What instructions? You can’t bring this off, you know that.”

  “We’ve brought it off up to now, haven’t we Fairlie.” The voice was filled with quiet arrogance.

 
Fairlie tried to see him past the upheld hand lamp. Sélim’s head, wrapped in linen, was only a vague suggestion. Fairlie’s hand reached the table, gripped its edge; he put his fingertips on the document and pushed it away.

  “You’re refusing.”

  “Suppose I do?”

  “Then we’ll break one of your fingers and ask you again.”

  “I can’t be brainwashed.”

  “Can’t you? Suppose I leave it to your imagination. You have to decide what your own life is worth to you—I can’t tell you that. How much pain can you bear?”

  Fairlie lowered his face into his hands to shut out the blinding hard light.

  He heard Sélim’s quiet talk. “We’re individually important to no one, not even ourselves. You on the other hand are important to a great many people. You have obligations to them as well as to yourself.” Sélim’s voice had dropped almost out of hearing.

  Fairlie sat cramped and motionless facing the decision that would have to last his lifetime. Sophomoric questions of physical courage were beside the point; what mattered was position. If you stood for anything at all you must be seen to stand for it. You could not allow yourself to mouth words that mocked your beliefs. Not even when no one who heard you would believe for a moment that you had made the statement of your own free will.

  He pulled the typewritten statement into the light and squinted against the glare. “‘They are to be released and given safe asylum.’ Asylum where? No country in the world will touch them.”

  “Let that be our problem. Haven’t you enough of your own?”

  Sélim dipped the light a little, out of his eyes. Fairlie shook his head. “‘Fascist pigs,’ ‘white liberal swine,’ ‘racist imperialists.’ Cheap propaganda slogans that don’t mean a thing. This document would have to be deciphered like a broadside from Peking.”

  “I haven’t asked you to interpret for us. Just read it.”

  Fairlie looked into the shadows beside the light. “The point is I have a position in the world, you see—alive or dead I still represent that position. The man in that position can’t put his voice to words like these.”

  “Even if they’re true?”

  “They aren’t true.”

  “Then you refuse.”

  He would have preferred to be able to meet Sélim’s eyes but the light made it impossible.