by James Wolff
“Calvary’s arrived!” said one of the soldiers in a voice Jonas had last heard in the video footage of his father. “It’s a bit crowded in the back but we’ll find a place for you.”
He sat next to his father and across from Tobias and Maryam. The two kidnappers he didn’t recognize sat in the back by the tailgate, scanning the landscape behind them for other vehicles. Jonas’s father was either sleeping or unconscious. He didn’t want to disturb him if it was sleep, and if it was worse than that he didn’t know what he could do to help. He took off his jacket, rolled it into a pillow and placed it behind his father’s head. They picked up speed. It would be seven or eight miles to the border. Perhaps an hour’s drive, given the hilly terrain ahead of them. They would have a vehicle hidden somewhere, a change of clothes, probably another truck filled with armed men to accompany them on the journey into Syria. Jonas could see the dog in the distance, limping after them.
Maryam had been beaten up. There were red marks on her face and some of her hair had been ripped out. Tobias tried to wipe away the blood coming from her nose but she caught his hand and touched the dirty bandages that covered the stumps where two of his fingers had been.
“Don’t worry, everything will be all right,” he whispered to her. He looked around the jeep, cleared his throat and blinked repeatedly, unsure without his glasses where precisely to address his comments. “Is there any way you can let her go?” he asked in a loud voice, anxious to be heard above the noise of the engine. His grey shirt was soaked with sweat. “You began with one foreign hostage and now you have three – three will be more than sufficient, three is a big success. You have won.” His watery eyes settled briefly on Jonas. “She is just another Syrian refugee. You can’t make any videos with her. Nobody cares about her enough to pay a ransom. I would appreciate it if you will let her go.”
One of the guards had turned around to listen. His black hair was freshly cut and there were tiny shaving nicks along his jaw. “I’ve worked out who you remind me of,” he said. “Remember those Robin Hood things on TV, Ahmed?” He nudged the guard opposite him. They might have been brothers, they looked so alike. “You know what I mean? Smelling of booze, cuddling up to the ladies? Not quite as fat as Friar Tuck, but we’ve had you on a diet, haven’t we?” They laughed.
“Please,” said Tobias. “She will just take up space in the truck. She is unimportant, she is not your enemy, she is just another victim in —”
“A wictim? She’s a wictim? Are you joking me? She almost took Ahmed’s nuts off back there.” They laughed again. “She’s not going anywhere. Truth is there’ll be a long line of brothers wanting to marry her. Once those bruises go and she learns how to behave. And they’ll all get a chance.” He spat on to the desert floor. “Besides, she knows about the jeep and the uniforms.”
They climbed a dirt track that twisted indecisively between fallen boulders, ravines and low, jagged cliff faces, the wheels slipping on the loose earth as the driver fought to maintain speed. There was no life to be seen anywhere, no plants or trees or birds, and no colour beyond the endless tones of brown and red like exposed muscle rippling beneath the pale blues of an empty sky. Jonas thought about what it would mean to cross a border in a place like this. The moment itself would pass unnoticed. He might have followed a trail laid down by others, but this time there would be no searchlights, no sirens, no soldiers in greatcoats. Philby had been disappointed by Moscow. Jonas suspected he would feel the same about Raqqa.
After a while Maryam fell asleep with her head against Tobias’s shoulder. The tiny gold stars on her coat glittered weakly. Jonas held his father’s hand.
“We talked about so many things,” Tobias said, watching them, as though continuing a conversation that had begun in his head. “What it was like on the first day he met your mother, how nervous he was the first time he preached. Our best sermons, our worst sermons. What it is like being a father. He told me how proud he was of you so many times that I had to tell him some of the bad things you did, just to stop him talking. It didn’t work. I told him what it was like to discover a daughter when she is already grown up, the heartbreak and the joy all at the same time. We found that we had a lot to be grateful for. On the days we believed were Sundays we would have a little service. Secretly, you understand. A hymn or two, as quietly as possible, and then prayers, and we would take it in turns to perform for each other the sacrament of communion with some water and a piece of bread we had hidden away. Yes, on Sundays we put our differences to one side. The rest of the week? You would not believe the arguments. Two old priests like us. One day the Pope, the next day the saints. One time the guards came running. Can you imagine explaining transubstantiation to those two? They didn’t think it was funny.”
Maryam stirred briefly. Blood from her nose had stained the front of her shirt. Tobias stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry,” Jonas said.
“For what? For loving your father?”
“Shut up, you two,” said one of the guards.
Tobias nodded at Jonas and smiled.
The guards grabbed each other and shook their weapons in the air as though in celebration. A pickup truck came into view thirty metres behind them, its cargo of fighters waving and cheering and shouting something Jonas couldn’t hear. It must have happened, he thought. We must have crossed the border.
Suddenly there was colour everywhere. The ground was on fire around them and their jeep was on its side and everything was muffled, as though extremely loud noises were coming from a soundproofed room nearby. He tasted blood. Smoke was thick in the air and someone was coughing. One of the guards crawled on his hands and knees out on to the desert floor, blood trickling from his ears; he cocked his head to listen to the distant crackle of gunfire, twitched and lay down. They were all piled on top of each other as though trying to crowd through a small doorway at the same time. Maryam rolled to the side and pulled at Tobias’s arm. She began to mouth words at him and slap him across his face. Through the smoke Jonas could see Hisham running in circles with his mouth open, the beach on his T-shirt speckled with blood, a gun in one hand and a book in the other. The truck behind them had driven into a gully and spilled five men on to the ground; three of them lay motionless while little explosions of red dust puffed at the air around them. Another two crouched behind the truck, pointing their guns into the sky and shaking them. Jonas couldn’t hear anything; it was as though they were playing a game, as though they were playing at cowboys and Indians. One of them broke loose and came running towards the jeep and threw something that bounced twice on the ground, like he was skimming a stone on water, but he was never going to get more than two bounces with something as round and heavy as that. It came to a stop a few feet from the tailgate. As Jonas reached for it and drew back his arm he saw the pond and felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, and he remembered a time when happiness was something that existed in the world regardless of him and would always be there, like God, or one of those balloons that could be twisted into different shapes but would never burst.
The grenade exploded before it hit the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When he woke up, men were running everywhere. Someone was leaning over him. He recognized the man who had knocked him down in the restaurant.
“Can you hear me?” he was saying. He had an English accent. “Can you hear me? Jonas? Jonas? We’re going to get you out of here. Mate, pass me that tourniquet. Can you hear me? Jonas?”
So many questions. He was tired of questions, even though the answer was a simple one. In any case, he seemed to have forgotten how to speak. There would be time enough for that later. He could see well enough, though. He could see Tobias lying on the ground about a dozen feet away. He could see Maryam talking to him and stroking his hair while a medic bandaged his arm. He could see a helicopter. He could even see as high as the birds up in the sky, spinning in slow perfect circles like a mobile above a child’s cot. He wanted to reach up to make them spin fas
ter, but his arms felt so heavy.
“Is my father all right?”
“Did he say something?” the soldier asked. “Jonas, Jonas, can you hear me? Jonas?”
All right, too ambitious. It was like learning to speak again.
“My father?”
“Did you get any of that? We can’t hear what you’re saying, Jonas. Probably best take it easy, yeah?”
One last go. Can’t get simpler than this.
“Dad?”
“What’s that? Your dad? Your dad’s all right. Don’t you worry about your dad. We’ll bring him over in a second, just get you patched up first. We need a lot more blood, get on the radio. Do you remember where the documents are, Jonas? Who did you give the documents to?”
How was he supposed to explain that? He tried to pick out Hisham’s body with his eyes. Three of the soldiers were stripping the dead of their clothes and going through the pockets, running their hands along the seams and throwing them into a pile. He could make out the word Hawaii in pink lettering on a discarded T-shirt.
One of the soldiers came over with the USB stick.
“Jonas, is this it?”
He nodded.
“Are there any other copies?”
He tried to shake his head.
“Finish checking the bodies and search the vehicles. Get the lads to prep the explosives. We’ll need the password, Jonas. Can you remember what it is? Jonas? What’s the password?”
“Dad,” he said.
“Your dad? What, his name? His date of birth? What is it, Jonas?”
“I want to see my dad,” he said.
“I can’t make any sense of this. Bring his father over here, maybe he’ll be able to understand what he’s saying.”
With a soldier on either side his father was able to walk. They lowered him to the ground next to Jonas. He was thin and trembling and pale, as though milk was running through his veins, but he was alive; blood spotted the bandage wrapped around his head. He took hold of Jonas’s hand and held it to his lips.
“Jonas, can you tell us the password?” the soldier asked.
The pile of clothing burst into flames. He glimpsed the wild dog watching him from the top of a nearby hilltop, clutching its mangled leg like a sceptre.
“The password, Jonas. What’s the password?”
He tried to get the words out.
“What’s that?” asked the soldier. “The law something he loves as a father. What does that mean?”
“The Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in,” said his father.
“How can that be the password?”
“Try Proverbs 3:12. Please, can you stop asking him questions?”
Jonas could hear the tapping of a keyboard. Encouraged by his success, he tried to say something else. The helicopter came close and drowned him out but still his father smiled through his tears and nodded, as though what was important was that they were speaking to each other, as though the words themselves were a gift and what they contained didn’t matter one little bit.
“There’s nothing on here,” one of the soldiers said.
“What do you mean? Maybe there’s a second password.”
“No, I mean there’s nothing on here. I’ve got into it all right but it’s empty. I don’t understand. There are no documents.”
It had taken seconds to delete the entire cache from its encrypted vault. Hisham would have understood, thought Jonas. He had promised something it turned out he was unable to deliver. Like Hisham with those students. Like Sykes and Picot, if you wanted to put it in those terms.
Looking up into the sky, he thought: helicopters make more sense than aeroplanes. There’s a logic to a helicopter that even a child can understand. Its blades whirred above him like the spokes of a bicycle racing downhill. Why are there no wheels in nature? he wanted to ask his father. The robin redbreast on the edge of the birdbath, the woodpecker who lives at the bottom of the garden. Why didn’t God give them wheels instead of wings? Jonas needed answers more than ever. He was glad he had his father with him. He wasn’t brave enough for this.
“Daddy,” he said. His mouth filled with blood. “Daddy.”