“Steve. Steve Jones. He is an Australian citizen. Is he here?”
“What is the name of the... niece?”
“Can I have some water, please?”
“Answer the question.”
“Mia. She has a daughter, Malak.”
“Malak?”
“Yes.”
The man turned and knocked on the door. The door opened, and he said something, and the door closed again. The man stood watching silently until the door opened again, and another man entered. He walked toward John, and as he passed the light, John could see he was in uniform. His hair was cropped short, and he held a plastic bottle of water in his hand. He stood in front of John, unscrewed the cap, and held the bottle to John’s mouth. John gulped the water down until the bottle was empty. The man turned, and as he did, John glimpsed a flag on the man’s shoulder.
“You are Turkish?”
His interrogator said nothing as the soldier with the bottle left the room, and the door clicked shut behind him.
“Are you Turkish?”
“I ask the questions.”
John began to feel a little hope. He would rather deal with an official force who, hopefully, would be bound by some rules rather than a rag-tag bunch of fundamentalists.
“I think you are the Turkish Army.”
Again, the man didn’t answer, so John continued.
“I am a British citizen. My friend is an Australian citizen. Another friend is with us. He is from Oman. Our governments won’t be happy if you mistreat us.”
John saw the man change position. He moved slightly, a little away from the light but not enough to make out any detail.
“John Hayes, Englishman. No-one knows you are here.”
“Yes, they do. Our wives know. They will inform our governments.”
“Ah, so your governments don’t know you are here.” John could hear the amusement in the man’s voice, and he cursed himself for his slip-up.
“What is the name of your friend from Oman?”
“Mansur Wahibi.”
“How did you come here?”
“Look, you have to let us go. We only came to save Mia and her daughter.”
“How did you come here?” The man’s tone was firmer.
“We came by taxi from Zuhajrijja.”
“And how did you get to Zuhajrijja?”
John sighed. “We crossed the border near Cizre. At night. We caught a taxi from there to Arima.”
“And this niece, what was her name?”
“Mia.”
“Mia, Mia. That’s right, and her daughter?”
“Malak.”
“Malak. Where did you find them?”
“In Idlib.”
“Idlib? Hmmm.”
John saw the man take two paces to his right, turn and pace back as if he was thinking.
“I don’t believe you.”
John shook his head. “It’s the truth.”
“You are lying.”
“No.”
“I think, John Hayes, Englishman,” he said Englishman slowly, almost as if it was distasteful, “that you are a spy.”
John shook his head.
“You have come to spy on us. I think you are... what do they call you? MI6. Yes, that’s what you are.”
John shook his head. “Do I really look like a spy to you?”
But the man had walked out of the room.
92
It was a long time before anyone returned.
John’s arms were cramping. He tried to change position a few times, but nothing helped, the sides of the chair digging into his arms, and eventually, they went numb, anyway. The light stayed on. He closed his eyes but could still feel it on his face, burning into his eyelids.
He thought of Adriana, how worried she must be. He should never have agreed to come. He had been selfish, partly agreeing to help Steve because he craved adventure, but it wasn’t worth it. He should never have put Adriana through this. He should have stayed in Lisbon. He knew deep down, though, he could never have done that to his friend. Steve had saved his life, and he owed him. He could never have spent the rest of his life, knowing he had chosen comfort over his debt to his friend. Where were Steve and Mansur now? Where were Mia and Malak? Had they got away?
His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening and a man stepping inside. He still couldn’t see who it was, but when he spoke, he recognized his voice.
“Why was Mia here in Syria?”
John frowned. Did that mean they had also captured her? “She... came with her... boyfriend.”
“Why did he come here?”
“He...” John sighed, no point in hiding it now. John didn’t really care if Naeem got into trouble. He was the reason they were all there. “He joined the jihad.”
“He joined the jihad.” The man repeated slowly. “What is his name?”
“Naeem. I don’t know his full name.”
“Describe him to me.”
The question confused John. If they had captured him, they would know who he was unless he was refusing to answer questions. Anyway, it wasn’t John’s problem.
“He’s about five-eleven, thin, brown hair, beard. He has a wound in his left thigh.”
The man turned and left the room.
“Turn the fucking light off!” John shouted after him.
93
John jerked awake. Despite his discomfort and the light burning a hole in his face, he had somehow drifted off. The sound of the door opening had woken him, and again, the man stood in the shadows.
“You are lying, John Hayes, Englishman.”
John closed his eyes and counted to ten. He was struggling to remain calm.
“You have no proof, John Hayes, if that’s what your name is. You have no identification, no passport, no papers. You expect me to believe you traveled across Syria like that?”
John shook his head, his eyes still closed.
“Well.”
“Oh, fuck off.” John gave up. The stress and strain of the last few days got the better of him. He would either end up dead or in a prison camp. What was the penalty for spying? Death? Fuck him. “It’s all fucking true. Do you think I’d want to come to this fucking shithole if I didn’t have a good reason? For fuck’s sake! Go ahead, fucking kill each other in the name of God. The joke’s on you. There is no fucking God. It’s all in your imagination. Allah? Bullshit! There’s nothing out there. No Allah, no God, no Jesus, no Buddha. Fuck it, there’s no fucking Jedi! It’s all a load of bullshit. We get born, we all fucking hate each other, then we die and rot in the ground. If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem. Just fuck off and leave me alone!”
John took a deep breath and exhaled. He felt better. A smile grew on his face. “Fuck you all.” The smile grew wider, and he began to laugh. He laughed louder and louder, his body shaking. He threw his head back and laughed to the ceiling. He laughed and laughed, feeling the release of tension, a heaviness leaving this body until finally, the laughter stopped. He lowered his head, catching his breath, and looked toward the shadowy figure standing near the door. He hadn’t moved.
John closed his eyes, and his chin dropped to his chest. He was exhausted. All he wanted to do was sleep. A noise caught his attention, and he lifted his head and opened his eyes to see the man walking out the door. John watched the door close behind him and closed his eyes again. A moment later, John heard the door open, someone walked in and turned off the light before walking out.
94
Hours passed, John didn’t know how long. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his fitful sleep plagued with the faces of Abu Mujahid and the young boy, Karam.
He had lost all feeling in his arms and his buttocks. His mouth was dry, and he had long ago given up trying to control his bladder, feeling great relief as he urinated where he sat.
In one dream, he saw the face of Charlotte smiling at him and woke up weeping, tears running down his face. Why had his life been like this? When he was young,
he had so many dreams for the future, so much hope, yet nothing had turned out the way he had imagined. There had been moments of happiness, of love, but they had been canceled out by great sorrow, loss, and hatred. What was the point? How did people like Mansur seem so calm and content? Why did he have to suffer so much?
John drifted back into sleep and was woken sometime later by someone walking into the room. By the time he remembered where he was, the person had already moved behind him, pulled a hood over his head, and exited the room.
Fuck. Finally? An execution in some godforsaken hellhole that no-one in the rest of the world really cared about? An image of Karam flashed before his eyes—the young boy standing in the field, firing his AK47, his mouth open in a defiant yell, while John cowered behind the pickup. John lifted his chin. If he was going to die, he would die like the young boy—brave and defiant to the end.
He heard the door open and footsteps approaching. Arms grabbed him from both sides and lifted him to his feet. He gasped as the blood rushed back to his arms and legs, his limbs tingling and spasming. He forced himself to stand straight and held his head high. Pushed forward, he stumbled, the hands catching him and guiding him out the door. He was marched along, half-carried down some steps, then lifted into a vehicle and dumped on his side onto a hard-ridged metal floor. Doors were closed, then he heard the rumble of an engine, and the vehicle moved off.
John tried to focus on the sensations, the direction of travel, how many turns, and in what direction, but the journey went on too long, and he gave up. Again, he drifted in and out of consciousness, waking now and then as the vehicle jolted and bumped over rough surfaces. Sometime later, he sensed the vehicle slowing, then stop. He heard shouting outside, then the vehicle moved off again. Eventually, John had no idea when, the hood and sleep deprivation robbing him of all sense of space and time, the vehicle stopped. He heard doors slam, then there was silence. He drifted off again.
After a while, he heard the doors opening, and someone grabbed his feet and pulled him backward. He felt them hang out into space, then someone grabbed him by the arms and eased him out, his feet touching the ground. He struggled to stand upright, again the blood rushing to his legs, his limbs tingling with pins and needles. He remembered Karam and straightened, pushed his shoulders back, and held his head up high.
The hands under each arm turned him around and marched him for what felt like a couple hundred meters, up some steps, and into a building. Then the hands pushed him to a kneeling position on the ground. This was it… the end. Despite the hood, John closed his eyes, the act giving him some peace, and took a deep breath. His heart was racing, and he fought to bring it under control—deep breath in, deep breath out, five seconds in, five seconds out.
He thought back over his life. Would he have done anything differently? No, he had no regrets. He had done what he had done, and he still felt it was right. He had loved and lost but had lived a full life. Everyone he had killed had deserved it. There was nothing gratuitous. He had done what had needed to be done.
He heard footsteps, then from behind, he felt fingers tugging at his hood. It was removed from his head, and once more, he blinked rapidly, his eyes trying to adjust to the increase in light. Before he could see, he heard a voice he had heard somewhere before.
“Welcome to Turkey.”
95
John struggled to focus. Where had he heard that voice before?
Mehmet.
The smuggler was standing in front of him, a smile spread across his corpulent face. John struggled to process.
“What? How?”
“It’s okay, you are safe now.” He nodded to someone behind John, and John felt fingers on his wrist and something cutting away at his flexicuffs. He shook his hands out and glanced over his shoulder. A Turkish soldier stood behind him. He nodded and slipped a hand under John’s arm, helping him to his feet and guiding him to a chair.
“You are safe now, John,” Mehmet repeated.
“Where are the others?”
As if on cue, the door opened, and two hooded figures were escorted in. Mehmet nodded at their escorts, and they removed the hoods and cut the flexicuffs from the prisoners’ wrists. John jumped to his feet and strode across the room, grabbing both Steve and Mansur in a hug as the two blinked against the light.
“I thought I wasn’t going to see you guys again.”
“Where are we?” Steve asked, looking over John’s shoulder and recognizing Mehmet for the first time.
“Turkey. We are safe,” John reassured him.
“Where’s Mia, Malak?” he asked frantically.
“They are okay.” Mehmet smiled and raised his hands. “The doctor is seeing to the child.”
“I want to see them.”
Mehmet nodded to the soldiers, and one of them stepped back and opened the door.
“He will take you.”
Steve nodded and followed him out.
John held Mansur at arm’s length.
“Are you okay, my friend?”
Mansur smiled. “I am now.”
“Good.” John let go and turned to face Mehmet. “How the hell did you get us out of there? And where are we now?”
“You are on a Turkish military base, just across the border in Hatay province. Your friend Craig called me. I called in a few favors.”
“Thank you, Mehmet.” John exhaled loudly, feeling the constant tension of the last few days leaving his body. “There were others. Are they here, too?”
“No. I’m sorry.” Mehmet shook his head. “But they are safe. They have been sent to a camp near Manbij. They will be looked after, food, medicine, shelter.”
“The women?”
“Yes.”
John glanced at Mansur and frowned. Turning back to Mehmet, he asked, “And Naeem?”
“Who?”
“Naeem. Mia’s husband. Australian. He was wounded in the leg.”
Mehmet shook his head. “There was no-one else.”
“There was. He was with us when we were caught.”
Mehmet shook his head again. He looked at Mansur, and back at John, clearly puzzled.
“There was no-one else. I asked them to release everyone. They did. The only reason the Yazidi women aren’t here is it’s too political, but...” He shrugged. “There was no Naeem.”
John studied his face. He didn’t seem to be lying, and why would he? What would he stand to gain? John turned to look at Mansur, and Mansur shrugged.
“We are safe, that’s what’s important.”
John nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“Come, you must be hungry. The Turkish Army is providing food for you. I hear their Mess is quite good.”
John’s stomach growled as if it had heard Mehmet, but John had something more important to do.
“Mehmet, first, I need a phone. I have to make a call.”
“Adriana?” Mehmet smiled. “She knows.” He removed a phone from his pocket and passed it over. “Craig has kept her informed. She and... Maadhavi? They are on their way here.”
John breathed a huge sigh of relief and took the phone from Mehmet’s hand. He dialed from memory and held the phone to his ear. He waited impatiently as the phone connected, then rang. A moment later, he heard the most beautiful sound in the world.
“Hello, John?”
96
John stood by the window, looking out over the classical gardens of the villa. Below on a patch of lawn, between a row of immaculately manicured hedgerows, Adriana, Maadhavi, and Mia sat, Malak running around them.
In the two weeks since they had been rescued from Syria, the young child had blossomed. The army doctor had given her a dose of antibiotics and deworming medicine, then gave her the all-clear, saying all she needed was regular food and a healthy environment. She had filled out, had color in her cheeks, and instead of sleeping all day, it was hard to get her to sit down.
Mia looked much healthier, too, and the bruising on her face had all but disappeared. She had abandoned
the black abaya and was now dressed in western clothing, although she still covered her hair with a hijab. John had even seen her smile, an expression that transformed her face, the years dropping away, becoming a young lady again. But now and then, when she thought she was unobserved, a deep sorrow crossed her face, and John knew from experience, she would be troubled by her past for a long time to come.
The disappearance of Naeem remained a mystery, but Mia said she no longer cared. Puzzled, yes, but she had closed her heart to him a long time ago.
Mehmet had graciously given them the use of a villa he owned in Istanbul’s Bebek district for as long as they needed while they waited for their replacement documentation to come through. John’s, Steve’s, and Mansur’s passports were replaced quickly, and Mansur had already departed for Oman, eager to be back with Warda and his daughters. The departure had been a sad one, but they made promises to meet again, the bonds formed in the shared stress of Syria would not be severed easily.
John and Adriana agreed to stay on with Steve and Maadhavi while they waited for Mia and Malak to get a passport, Mia’s having been lost in Syria a long time ago. At first, the Australian government had refused, claiming she was a foreign combatant and would be refused entry back into the country. But after a series of articles written jointly by Craig and Adriana about how Mia and her uncle had rescued a group of Yazidi women from slavery, the government reluctantly bowed to public pressure and instructed the Australian Ambassador to Turkey to issue them with the documentation they needed.
Adriana followed up her reports with interviews conducted over video link with the women in Jadidet al-Hamar IDP camp, southwest of Manbij, the heartbreaking stories garnering worldwide attention. The last she had heard was a deal was being brokered to return the women to their homes in Eastern Syria and Iraq.
John watched her now as she tossed her head back in laughter, her thick mane of hair catching the light as it flicked back over her shoulders. He could hear the joy in her voice as she played with Malak.
Payback - John Hayes Series 06 (2020) Page 23