by Tig Hague
PENGUIN BOOKS
The English Prisoner
Tig Hague works in the City of London. He lives with his partner Lucy and their young daughter in London.
The English Prisoner
TIG HAGUE
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published as Zone 22 by Michael Joseph 2008
Published in Penguin Books 2009
1
Copyright © Tig Hague, 2008
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-195902-3
In memory of Sandra
Moscow
Thursday 17 July 2003
The bump and skid of the wheels woke me up with a jolt as we touched down at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo 2 airport. I squinted through the window at the watery grey clouds enveloping the skies over the Russian capital. It was just after six Moscow time, three hours ahead of the UK, and my aching body was telling me it was actually three in the morning and this was no time to be starting a day. My bum was numb and my head thick with sleep, or the lack of it, after a fitful night squirming in my uncomfortable Aeroflot seat. My mouth was dry and sticky but my water bottle was empty and I was just going to have to wait until we passed through Customs. I was still paying for the stag party and wedding at the weekend, and this was one business trip to Moscow I could’ve really done without. Garban Icap, though, didn’t become ‘the world’s largest derivatives broker’ by letting one of its junior brokers cancel three days of meetings with leading clients just because he had a dog of a hangover.
Half asleep I tidied up my notes, snapped my briefcase shut and sank into my seat as the plane began to taxi slowly back towards its docking bay. I stared out of the window, thinking of Lucy yesterday morning back in bed at Mum’s house when I nuzzled into her warm neck as she dozed under her mop of wavy brown hair.
‘Sweetheart, how am I going to spend four days without you?’ That was the last thing she’d said and I smiled as I recalled it.
It usually takes about an hour, or sometimes two, to reach the front of the passport and visa queue at Sheremetyevo 2, and there’s always pushing and shoving as people start to lose their patience. I was one of the first into the Arrivals building and I reached the man in the booth in a personal best time of 30 minutes – only to be told I hadn’t filled in my form properly. I was dispatched with a grunt and a wave of the hand to join the back of the queue and I was annoyed that I couldn’t quickly scribble out a new form there and then, which would have taken under a minute. I rolled my eyes, sighed loudly and sloped off like a naughty schoolboy.
I glanced anxiously at the clock on my mobile. Time was getting a little tight. I needed to get through the terrible Moscow traffic to my hotel for a shower, a shave and a change of clothes before I headed off to the first meeting of the day. I hadn’t touched my razor for three days, and what with my puffy, black-ringed eyes I didn’t want to be shaking hands with some of our most important clients looking like a Chechen separatist on the run, albeit one dressed in a smart light-blue shirt and a pair of tailor-made dark trousers.
The queue I rejoined after filling in a new form had become something of a scrum and I elbowed and shoved as politely as the next man to reach the booths, but by the time I finally made it into the baggage reclaim area I was one of the last passengers left in the cavernous grey hall. There were just a few bags left on the carousel, but my large black suitcase wasn’t among them. It was sitting on the floor with two or three other cases. Weird. What was all that about? Running late, I walked quickly towards the screened-off Customs area with my two Duty Free bags, dragging the case behind me.
A dozen or so officials wandered around in a variety of uniforms, while roughly the same number of passengers shuffled towards the exit. No one was smiling. Just beyond the screens, a set of electronic glass doors opened into the Arrivals area and I headed straight for them, craning my neck to see if I could spot my driver for the trip. It always gave me a small thrill to come through into the concourse and see a man holding a board with my name emblazoned across it: TIG HAGUE!
I was dimly aware that there was a group of other passengers over to my left, but I just kept walking, thinking nothing of it. I was about five yards from the door when a man started shouting in Russian. I turned around. He was shouting at me. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he was waving his hands around and pointing to the back of the queue. ‘Am I ever going to get out of this shithole?’ I muttered to myself. Everyone was being asked to put their bags through an X-ray machine. I had never seen luggage being scanned on the way out of an airport. Then I remembered the previous week’s news story about the twenty people who’d been killed by two female Chechen suicide bombers at an open-air rock concert in the city. Fair enough. Besides, the queue was moving fairly fast and I’d be away in a couple of minutes.
The middle-aged official who took my bag was the same one who pulled me up just as I was about to head through the automatic doors. He looked like he’d been there all night. He was very small, no more than about five foot two, and he had dark greasy hair, big bloodshot eyes, skinny arms and the expression of a man who just wanted to get home and put his feet up.
As my suitcase emerged on to the rollers from the other end of the scanner, he pointed to my two Duty Free bags, one containing a box of Marlboro Lights and another of Marlboro Reds, a pen and some perfume, and the other, two bottles of whisky; presents for my clients. I handed them over to him, knowing that that was the last bureaucratic obstacle I had to hurdle. Within seconds, I’d be through those doors. He peered inside the bags and said something in Russian. I shook my head and looked quizzical. ‘I’m sorry, pal, but I don’t understand Russian,’ I said in English, smiling.
He replied sternly: ‘Two whisky, two cigarettes, NO!’
That amount had never been a problem on previous trips and I told him that, even though I knew he wouldn’t understand. He looked around the room and over his shoulder, leant towards me and rubbed his fingers and thumb together. I didn’t twig that he was inviting me to bribe him. I thought he was asking whether I was carrying large sums of cash in my luggage. The Russians are very strict about how much money you can take in and out of the country; when you fill in the visa form
on arrival you have to declare how much cash you have and what credit cards you are carrying. I had about 500 US dollars – two months’ wages for this guy but hardly enough to put me in smuggler class.
I was too tired, too rushed for protracted negotiations, and I said in a ‘fuck-you-just-get-on-with-it’ kind of way: ‘No!… I… no… have… money. Me-No-Money!’
He didn’t like that. He stabbed a finger at my suitcase and then at the metal inspection table at the end of the scanning machine. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I mumbled and lifted the large black case on to the table. He spun the case around and snapped it open while fixing me with an icy stare. Half a dozen officials stood nearby chatting among themselves. Dozens of people milled around beyond the glass doors and I hoped one of them was my driver.
He started taking out my clothes, piece by piece, hanging them up on the screen behind him. He was in no hurry now, and showing me that. I was the last passenger left in the hall. All my clothes were on hangers so I could put them straight into the wardrobe at the hotel. He hung up a couple of shirts and T-shirts. Then he picked up my jeans.
I froze.
1
Images tumbled through my mind like a video on fast-forward: stag party… pub garden… scrap of hash in Rizla paper… light blue jeans… change pocket… SHIT!!!… Adrenaline burst into my body: my heart raced, my head swam, I tried to suck air into my lungs as the blood in my head dropped into my feet… The world went into slow motion, like I had just plunged into deep, icy water from a great height. I watched spellbound as he lifted out the jeans and began to run his hands through the pockets. I felt the acid building up in my stomach and spreading out through my chest like fire.
He put his index and middle finger into the change pocket. He turned his head halfway round in the vague direction of his colleagues nearer the exit. He let out a low groan and then barked something in Russian in a raised voice. I had no idea what, but I took it to mean: ‘We’ve got one here, guys!’
I was muttering to myself: ‘Shut Up! Just shut the hell up! Shut your face, you greasy little jerk!’
Uniforms were walking towards me. Two huge men in army fatigues with sub-machine guns were on either side of me. They had berets, twelve-holed combat boots and Para belts. It was just a blur of images, like an old-fashioned cine-film. Another guy strode towards me: Mr Meathead, a great bear of a man in a dark blue jacket emblazoned with important-looking badges. With his military cap on, he was touching six foot eight, about three feet wide at the shoulders and he had a head the size of a medicine ball. I suddenly felt very small.
I was terrified for the first time in my life: it wasn’t just fear or panic, it was sheer terror. I tried to think clearly but my mind was awash. So much was crowding in and jockeying for attention in my head that I couldn’t separate one thought from another. Thoughts rattled and collided in my head like an asteroid storm. What’s Lucy going to think? What are Mum and Dad going to say? How am I going to tell my boss at work? What am I going to tell my clients? They’re going to send me home in disgrace… I’m going to be deported and never allowed back into Russia… My boss is going to go mental… I’m going to get sacked here… We won’t get the mortgage… We’re going to lose the house we have set our hearts on… We’ve exchanged but not completed… Lucy’s going to go mad… I’m in serious trouble here… If I lose my job in the City, I’m as good as unemployable… I’ll have to get a job as a brickie working for Dad… Hang on. Cool it. Calm down, Tig. Deep breaths. I know what I’ll do, I’ll just tell them I fell ill on the plane and they had to send me home, I’ll take a couple of days off sick at work, I’ll make up some illness and say that they wouldn’t let me into the country in case I sneezed and infected someone else.
The commotion was getting louder. Everyone was talking at once. They were asking me questions in Russian. ‘I don’t speak Russian,’ I kept saying. Meathead took the hash and pushed it towards my face. It was so small in his giant fat fingers it looked like a brown pinhead. ‘What this?’ he asked in English. ‘WHAT THIS?’
‘It’s hashish,’ I said. What else could I say? He asked me if it was mine and I replied: ‘Yes, it is. I didn’t mean to bring it to Moscow. It was a mistake. I was at a stag party and…’ At which point, the conversation erupted round me again. They sounded jubilant, like a bunch of fisherman on a riverbank who’d finally reeled one in. I was the one that didn’t get away.
Flanked by the two camo guys with the sub-machine guns, and with Meathead pushing me in the back, I was frogmarched round the corner into a small area that had been screened off on all sides. There were sofas along two of the walls, a desk littered with papers, and an office chair behind it. Some strip lights were stacked in one corner and some old filing cabinets lined one wall. As a one-man office it would feel cramped, but with all four of us squeezed in, it felt claustrophobic. My heart was trying to burst, it was pounding so hard.
I was told to sit on a sofa. I turned to Meathead, who was now sitting behind the desk, and said: ‘I need to speak to the British Embassy or a lawyer.’ He laughed and said something in Russian to the guards, who joined in the laughter. Another man arrived, clearly the most senior of them all, with his olive-coloured officer’s uniform and a big heavily peaked army cap. You look absurd in that massive hat, I thought. I looked up at him as he stood right over me, hoping I might find a more sympathetic response, but I could only hold eye contact with him for a second or two. His face told me it was not, as a rule, one to which desperate people were inclined to look for sympathy or clemency. He motioned for me to stand up and take my clothes off.
I felt a bit unsteady as I got to my feet and slowly removed my clothes, starting with my loafers. Embarrassment and fear spread over me like a chill. The floor beneath my bare feet was cold. When I got down to my boxer shorts, he signalled that I had gone far enough, and I felt a mild sensation of relief that no one was going to give me a ‘digital rectum’ exam right then. I covered my genitals like a footballer in a defensive wall waiting for a free kick to be taken.
Without looking up from the papers on the desk before him, Meathead said: ‘Tell me why you are hashish.’ He began writing as I leant forward and tried my best to explain about the stag party. I wanted him to look at me, but his head stayed down. He didn’t understand, or want to understand, anything I said. ‘Well, I was at a stag party for a very old friend from university, we’d just finished clay-pigeon shooting and we’re sitting in a pub garden in Hertfordshire which is a county near London…’ And so I went on. Meathead was barely paying attention and only glanced in my direction from time to time in between adding the odd scribble in his file. I was speaking quickly and nervously, in step with my racing heartbeat, blurting out my explanation in staccato bursts of semi-Cockney, dropping my T’s and my H’s because I was talking so fast. I realized I was just talking to the air as Meathead glazed over and drifted off to Narnia behind his desk. He asked me a few questions about the purpose of my trip to Russia, and then made it perfectly clear he wasn’t listening to a single fucking thing I was saying by looking around the room and yawning. Then he sat back in his chair to signal he had heard quite enough, thank you, and dismissed me back to the sofa with a backhand wave. I slumped into the sofa and felt the cold of the plastic on my naked back.
No one uttered a word for several minutes. Another man appeared holding a small glass test tube. Meathead pointed to my suitcase, which had been brought in earlier, and showed him the small scrap of hashish that they’d placed on top of my jeans. The man took out a knife and, placing the hash on the desk, sliced off a thin sliver, which he found quite difficult because the hash was so small he couldn’t get a decent grip on it. He placed the sliver, the size of a baby’s fingernail, into the test tube, then poured in a small amount of liquid from a bottle, shook it up and placed it on the desk. For several minutes everyone in the room stared at the little glass vial in complete silence, waiting for something to happen: Meathead, Twat-in-the-Hat, the two guards, the
laboratory geezer and me, all transfixed by this tiny little glass tube. I’m not a religious man, but I found myself in prayer. ‘Please God, Please God, you’ve got to help me out here…’ repeating it over and over again as the minutes ticked away and no one said a word. Then the liquid began to change colour, and the Russians all started nodding at each other. Meathead smiled in satisfaction and motioned to me to put my clothes back on.
The two guards led me from the room and walked me round the corner into what looked like some kind of medical room. Like everything else in the airport, all the furnishings, decor and paraphernalia were distinctly 1950s: drab, functional, tired. The only connection with the modern world was a large set of electronic scales and an unsophisticated computer. There were two plump, oldish women in there, one sitting at the desk tapping away at the computer keyboard, and the other making some kind of hot beverage. I needed a drink myself. My mouth and throat were like sandpaper, and my stomach was starting to ache with hunger.
They were the first women I’d seen since I’d been stopped in the Customs hall two hours earlier – or was it three? Or one? I was overwhelmed with shame at the sight of them for some reason. They both looked at me with disgust, like I was the lowest of the low, a horrible little scumbag. Meathead came in and handed one of the women the piece of hashish. She went to a cupboard and took out a thick black bag made of heavy polythene. Into the bottom of the bag she dropped the tiny blim of hash – enough for one joint, maybe two if you’re a student – wrapped it into a ball, took out a roll of tape, and proceeded to bind it around the bag until there was almost more tape visible than bag. When she’d finally finished she picked up a seal with a tag on it and attached it to the top of the bag, carried the package over to the electronic scales and dropped it on to the weighing platform. I couldn’t see the numbers it was registering, but after a few seconds she let out a little wolf whistle, as if to say: ‘Wow, this lad’s carrying a serious load of drugs.’ Everything went into slow motion again as the realization hit me: I was being fitted up.