He tried to convince them to send it to Kathryn Adams in Washington (he had no qualms about using her name. They knew about his US sponsor. They knew everything). They wouldn’t. They weren’t taking that kind of risk. Eventually the bag vanished. He supposed they’d sent it somewhere, but they wouldn’t tell him anything. He sat in the corner of his bed, cuffed to the wall again except for the toilet trips, trying to calculate the time that had passed while he was incapable. Three months? At least three months since he had been kidnapped… He must get to England at once. Fiorinda was in trouble. The terrible urgency coursed through him, scouring his blood: there was nothing he could do.
He thought of how his lovers had pleaded with him to be more careful. Sage saying, Some nutter’s going to walk up to you and shoot you in the head, Ax. Have mercy on me, take some precautions. But Ax wouldn’t listen, because Ax Preston mustn’t go that way. No bodyguards, no armoured limousines, no razor-wired VIP lounge, fuck that. So he had carried on impressing the punters with his attitude, and his darlings had let him behave like an idiot, because they’d known he could hardly stand the life his choices had forced him into. They’d let him try to stay human. They didn’t know about the petty kick he’d got out of walking modestly among the common people, with his secret all-areas pass. Knowing that at any moment (even in Washington DC), he could get treated completely differently. Such balm for all the years of being not-famous. He thought of that sneaking thrill now, with cruel shame.
So this is where I end up, this is how I pay.
I knew I would have to pay.
The dirty room was in a ghost town. When he’d woken up cuffed but not drugged he had held off from screaming for help, because he was Ax Preston and he wanted to rescue himself. He’d been angry with himself about that, later, but maybe it’d been for the best. If he hadn’t been killed straight away by trigger-happy Martín, it would have done no good. No one lived around here. When his hearing recovered he sat and listened to the silence for hours on end (a branch falls, a bird cries, something four-legged trots along the ghost town street). He knew that the emptiness went on for miles and miles. He would hear the cartel’s battered RV drive up; or the rust-bucket Ford that belonged to Martín, jolting over potholes. He would hear them coming from a long way off, and he would hear them leave, the noise slowly dying away.
Martín and João were Brazilian. The others were US, except for Orfeo, the black man, who was a Cuban. But Ax didn’t think this could be Brazil, he couldn’t see how they could have transported him so far. I travelled by road for a long time, I think… I think I’m in Mexico, or, what comes next? He could not remember the names of any Central American countries. His thoughts crawled around the gaping hole where the chip had been, like lost souls. It’s more than three months. But now I’m stronger. Now I can get started. Escape. Befriend them, romance them, get the cuffs off.
There’s a road, I can follow the road.
His arm and leg weren’t good. Getting better, but not very fucking good.
He was rarely alone. Most often at least two of them sat in the dirty room with him, night and day, and the others would be in the RV. They swopped around. Someone (João?), was wise enough not to allow anyone to have a special relationship with the prisoner. It was no burden to them, apparently, to spend their whole time hanging out in this dump. They had nothing better to do. He kept a count of days on the wall. When they spotted it (the marks were fingernail-faint) there was a long discussion, and they decided to let him continue. But all the days were the same. He improved his Spanish, and learned to speak some Portuguese.
From an early stage he had tried to reach his lovers by telepathy. Not as crazy as it sounded…he knew the Zen Selfers took telepathy for granted. They routinely came across what they called ‘telepathy artefacts’, different people’s thoughts bleeding into each other, in the course of their experiments. Ax had been amazed by this, but they weren’t impressed. It’s a bust, Sage had told him. The signal-to-noise problem’s ludicrous, and what’s wrong with a phone implant? In this endless silence, and since thoughts of them filled his heart, he hoped the signal-to-noise problem should be less.
Nothing clearer than a feeling ever came back to him, except once.
One day, one hot, damp silent afternoon, maybe around the seven months mark, he was alone. He was sitting with his eyes closed, enjoying the rare pleasure, when he heard Sage’s voice saying softly and distinctly, like the start of the first track of Unmasked,
‘Hi, Ax.’
He opened his eyes and there was Sage, crosslegged at the other end of the bed. He was unmasked, tanned, wearing white drawstring trousers and a teeshirt. Bare feet. His hair had grown out and was combed into cornrows. He was very thin. He smiled without speaking: and suddenly Ax was at Yap Moss, absolutely there, on the winter moorland, Sage with him; wearing the living skull mask. They were about to say goodbye, it might be forever, and plunge into the battle: and even now, knowing all that would come after, it was a good way to part. No hugs, no tears, no last minute avowals: just I say, ‘Transmission Mast—’ which is where we’ll regroup if we survive. He says ‘See you there,’—and we swing away from each other, into the mêlée. The moorland faded. Ax was back in the dirty room. Sage was still there, like a b-loc living ghost, his blue eyes and his beautiful mouth between solemn and smiling. But his face began to break up, pixel by pixel: a trick he used to do with the mask, that Ax had never liked because it had always seemed as if the process wouldn’t stop, it would go on until not only the mask had vanished, but the face under it. Which was exactly what happened now, until Sage wasn’t there anymore.
For a long time Ax gazed, feeling the white light of absence.
He didn’t know what he had seen, a ghost or a vision; or a figment of his imagination. But he knew certainly that Sage was gone, and he must mourn his friend and lover as dead.
Fiorinda was still alive, in her desperate trouble. He knew that, equally surely, though he never saw her, not a glimpse. He thought they often passed each other, in the hot nights when he couldn’t sleep, like prisoners treading opposite circles in an exercise yard.
Fiorinda in her dark world, and I in mine.
There were no seasons. Sometimes rain fell in pounding silver rods for days, but there was no pattern to it. Rain or no rain, the dull heat continued unbroken. The cartel had more discipline than Ax had given them credit for, and they kept it up for an incredible length of time. They didn’t know how to get hold of a ransom, but they knew how to handle a hostage. No one was ever alone with Ax; Ax was rarely alone. Ax had no idea where he was, and was never given access to any clues. Sometimes the guards brought music or videos to the room, but never a radio. He gathered from their squabbles that João allowed no careless talk: no one outside the group knew about the prisoner.
The routine of keeping Ax cuffed to the wall, except when he was taken to the toilet, was never relaxed. But discipline finally broke down over the guitar—which had been lying in a corner, forgotten, since they realised their brain-damaged hostage couldn’t begin play it. João became convinced that Ax had recovered. He’d be able to play, if he wasn’t handcuffed to the wall. There was a huge discussion, which ended with an agreement that Ax’s conditions should be changed a little.
Ax kept out of it, and didn’t mention that his right hand motor control was still shit.
The RV turned up with a stranger on board. Ax was very scared when he saw this, immediately associating a stranger with the freelance brain surgeon. It didn’t help that the guy was dressed in grubby white overalls. But no, all this one did was tear up some grimy vinyl, pound out a hole in the concrete floor with a chisel and mallet and set a thick metal hasp in there, in cement.
Ax was left alone with the handyman for a good ten minutes. He knew it couldn’t be an accident. He could see exactly where this was going, but if there’s no chance, you take anything, so he talked to the guy anyway. The stranger—thickset, coffee-skinned, wedge-shaped Indio feature
s—kept his eyes, behind plastic goggles, on his job. You are not like them, said Ax. You are normal, you come from the normal world, from sane people. Help me. Tell someone.
No response. Maybe one shifty glance, quickly quenched—
The cartel came in and sat there watching the cement dry. Baz, the younger white bloke, combed his stringy blond hair with his fingers and complained the whole thing had been unnecessary. Ax could have played with one hand chained to the wall. João made smalltalk with the handyman and tried to engage Ax in a staring match; which Ax declined. Then João and the stranger went out. Felipe and Simon, the stocky brothers, unlocked Ax from the wall and took him to the window, a gun in his back. The Indio, with his toolbox and half a bag of cement in one hand, was taking a wad of notes from João. It looked like a lot of money, but Ax didn’t even know the currency so he couldn’t tell. The man turned to get into the RV. João took out his gun, shot the handyman in the back of the head and stood there, while the shot echoed, looking up at Ax.
See what you made me do.
João came back indoors and offered Ax, still loose from the wall, a cigarette.
‘Just so you could play guitar, Ax. Just so you could play again.’
‘You were going to do it anyway,’ Ax shrugged indifference.
One of the more unpleasant things was that he knew he had been raped, more than once, back at the beginning, in the time he didn’t remember clearly. He had a strong feeling it had been João, the major Ax Preston fan, and only João. He couldn’t be sure. He could never be sure it wouldn’t happen again. In a situation like this things could get much worse, at any moment. Live with it.
João laughed, sat down and started a fake conversation with his pals.
If you think that’s the first death on my conscience, thought Ax, you haven’t been paying much attention to your favourite sensational soap-opera, bastard.
Now Ax could be shackled at the ankles with his hands free, and play that guitar. He said he was tired, he would try it out tomorrow. João accepted the little show of resistance. He was clearly feeling pleased with himself.
Night fell. Ax listened to the cartel arguing about how to get rid of the corpse, his eyes fixed on the darkness, his shoulder against the wall: a useless soldier, guarding a door he could not guard, that was thousands of miles away.
He dreamed he was with his friends. They were in the blasted ruin of a stone-walled cottage, in the Yorkshire village where Sage had been captured once in the Islamic Campaign. There was a war going on again, they were at the front line. It was good. He’d forgotten about his friends. He’d forgotten that he loved them, and how much they’d been through together: but here they all were, dirty, cheerful, very much themselves. Rob and the Babes, Allie and Dilip, Chip and Ver and Rox; and the Heads. Allie and Rox were loading antique rifles, like something from the Wild West. Sage was jiving around, cheerful and serene, distributing the guns, making sure everyone was in cover, singing a rude ska song, Push wood on the fire, Jackie, Good wood on the fire Jackie, a tune the lads used to like. But Jackie Dando wasn’t here, only the Few. When Sage reached Felice he kissed her deep and long (Ah, we all knew about that piece of chemistry, and we knew they’d never do anything about it: Rob would have gone beserk). Rob smiled benignly. Nothing could break this mood, this lightness. It came to Ax that the reason they were so happy was that they knew they were going to die, probably within the hour. Die together, die trying.
But oh God, where’s Fiorinda?
He woke soaked in sweat, full of dread, his heart pounding.
I have to get back to England, right now…
The dirty room came back; the terrible urgency seeped away. It was afternoon. Martín and Orfeo were playing a game of cards, a coolbox of beers at hand. Martín saw that he was awake and came over with a bowl and a spoon.
‘You must eat something, Ax. You’ll get sick, you’ll die.’
He had stopped eating, a sudden and involuntary failure. He’d been trying to play the guitar, and it had opened old wounds. Orfeo the Cuban folded his lean height down beside the bed (shadow of my Sage rises in memory) and took Ax’s hand. Ouch. The sores on his wrists were worse again now the cuffs only went on at night. His ankles were giving him hell, also. ‘We’re your friends, Ax. We don’t want you to get sick and we don’t want João to hurt you. Come on, you know we don’t want to hurt you.’
He couldn’t stop the tears.
‘If you’re my friends then for God’s sake, let me go—’
The black man and the white look shook their heads sadly. The cartel would never let him go. They’d given up hope of the ransom. They were keeping Ax out of inertia, like a troublesome pet; but in the end they would kill him, and it would be better so. What else could happen? He imagined himself returning to England after endless years. Sage dead, Fiorinda’s agony over, everything that we meant forgotten, what would I do, how would that be life?
Martín’s cellphone chimed. He listened, looked significantly at Orfeo, and the two men left the room. Ax heard the Ford start up and rumble away.
He reached over and picked up the guitar.
He couldn’t play very well. But he could play. For in my day, I have had many bitter and shattering experiences in war and on the stormy seas… Where’s that from? It’s from the Odyssey. What if my library comes back? What if I have copied stuff, back-up in the grey cells, that I put there without knowing I was doing it? He leaned his head against the wall, his fingers falling into stillness. Ah, there’s no pain like hope.
What’s that? What’s that sound?
He could hear someone playing a guitar. Someone else out there in the ghost town or the jungle was playing an electric guitar—
Martín and Orfeo fooled him by coming back on foot from wherever they’d gone. They came into the room and looked at him; and the guitar he’d hurriedly set aside.
‘What was that you were playing?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Play it again. I liked that.’
So he played again, casually picking out the tune he had heard.
I’m lonesome since I crossed the hill, and over plain and valley—
‘A strange rhythm,’ said Orfeo, who liked to think he was informed about music. ‘Where is that from, Ax? West Africa? Mali?’
‘Nah,’ said Ax. ‘Somewhere much weirder than that.’
Felipe and Simon arrived in the RV, bringing cooked rice with tuna flakes. Ax ate, willingly and with appetite, which pleased everyone. Orfeo tested Ax’s teeth (a little obsession of his) and insisted Ax eat the lime that had been squeezed over his rice, chewing the skin and pulp. You will thank me, he said, genuinely kind. Martín wanted them to hear that curious tune. So Ax played ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’ for them, but differently this time. Returning power coursed through him, he felt utterly unafraid. The certainty of destiny.
The four kidnappers were transfixed. ‘My God,’ said Orfeo, when Ax stopped to rest his hand. ‘My God, this is really Ax Preston.’
A day passed, two days. Ax didn’t do anything, he didn’t say anything. He felt as if he was holding his breath. Very early in the tropical morning, on the third day from the afternoon when he had heard that other guitar, Felipe and Simon were sitting with him, and Baz, the younger white guy. They all heard the sound of a helicopter, circling overhead.
The cartel representatives hurried down to the street. Ax was left alone, shackled to the wall, listening to the sound effects. A strange vehicle. Voices, talking in Spanish. Suddenly, gunfire…and then all hell broke loose. Helicopters. Something heavy (it sounded like an APC) roaring up the washed-out road. Felipe and Simon screaming at each other, having fled back inside the block. More firing, thunder of booted feet, shouting in New World Spanish and American English. Men and women in uniform filled the doorway of the dirty room. ‘My God,’ said the man first through the door. ‘My God, this incredible. You were given up for dead, Mr Preston, months ago. This is unbelievable!’
‘I
’m glad somebody believed,’ said Ax.
They freed him from the cuffs. They helped him upright and wrapped him in a blanket (Ax thought of Massacre Night; of the clearing at Spitall’s Farm), and took him outside. There were an amazing number of soldiers milling around, American and Mexican. The officer in charge said they’d found the ghost town house a week ago, and come up with the guitar ploy to signal that help was near. They’d been monitoring the warm body count in the house, so they’d known it was safe to open fire as soon as those three men came running out… Their information had been that Ax was in imminent danger of execution. The doctor who dressed his sores (and ripped-up fingertips), a black bloke with humorous eyes, appraised Ax’s bearded face and said, ‘You don’t look much like him.’
‘Who?’
‘Axl Rose. I’m into classic hard rock.’
‘Sorry. Not a single tattoo. How many of them did you get?’
‘We killed three here. We’ll get the others, don’t worry.’
He was in the back of the APC, dressed in camouflage fatigues, sipping a cup of US armed services bouillion, when the girl who had believed in him arrived, She’d been kept back, out of the firing line. He’d known it couldn’t be Fiorinda, unless she’d forgotten everything she ever knew about playing guitar. But he’d hoped.
One look at Lurch’s face, and he knew the news was not good.
‘Hi.’ She was holding the Les Paul, in its case. ‘I’ve, um, been carrying this around since you’ve been gone.’ She gave it to him, took out a pack of cigarettes and gave him those too. ‘I’m so glad.’
‘So am I,’ said Ax. ‘Thank you, Kathryn. I owe you, mightily. Tell me about Fiorinda. What’s been happening in England? I’ll need to talk to David Sale—’
‘No…’ The Ugly American wet her lips. ‘David Sale’s dead.’
‘David is dead? David Sale is dead?’ he repeated, stunned.
‘Ax, there’s no easy way to tell you… It’s a different world. Things have changed so much. I don’t know where to start.’
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