The Reluctant Hero

by Michael Dobbs

  When she was offered a third cup of tea, Martha held up her hand. ‘Thank you, Governor, very helpful, I’m sure, but we haven’t come here for tea. We came to see the prison. Can I suggest, Mr Sickof, that we get on with it?’

  Sydykov’s lips tightened into the thinnest of smiles as he turned to the governor and began a rapid exchange. The governor picked up the telephone and soon two new officials joined them, who began describing everything from budget allocations to food allowances. After another five minutes, Martha stood up.

  ‘The prison,’ she demanded.

  ‘But of course,’ Sydykov countered. ‘We are ready for you. It is simply that we wanted you to understand what you are about to see.’

  ‘Mr Sickof, I understand all too well what I am seeing. In New England, where I was born, we call it a snow job.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t . . .’

  ‘When the snow comes down on you so hard you can’t see a damned thing.’

  He nodded, as though accepting the insult, and rose from his chair. ‘But you will understand, I hope, Mrs Riley, that we are a poor country, and this is not a hotel. We have few resources. Those we have we prefer to direct towards more deserving causes – our schools, hospitals. I know of your interest in human rights, but pregnant women and children have their human rights, too. Please remember that as you find your way through the snow.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she replied, heading determinedly for the door.

  Soon they were being led on a tour of administrative offices, laundry, the exercise yard and the kitchens, which seemed rudimentary beyond belief. And just before Martha’s exasperation was about to burst forth once more, they found themselves sitting in a cell, small and spartan, considerably colder than the governor’s office but no worse than would have been found in many prisons around the world, talking to two shaven-scalped prisoners – although it soon became clear that the conversation was to be as much with Sydykov as with the men. The prisoners could have been saying anything, but all Harry and Martha heard was what Sydykov told them. Of adequate food, of fair treatment, of generous exercise – although Harry had noted that the kitchen fires were cold and the exercise yard covered in unbroken snow. As they spoke, the prisoners’ eyes kept darting in agitation towards the door, where the governor stood, monitoring their every word.

  Sydykov was extolling the benefits of the parole system when Martha got to her feet once more. ‘I would like to see other prisoners. And more of the prison.’ She was like a mongoose at a snake. Gave no quarter.

  ‘Anything you wish,’ he said slowly, his tone calm, almost mechanical; neither of them was any longer bothering to hide their mutual animosity.

  Harry turned to the governor and made his voice heard, almost for the first time. ‘Do you have different classes of prisoners?’

  ‘No,’ Sydykov replied without bothering to translate the question.

  ‘And you treat foreign prisoners in the same way as the locals?’

  Sydykov shrugged. ‘There are so few foreigners here. Uzbek smugglers, the occasional Kazakh car thief – all Kazakhs are a little crazy, they inevitably end up getting caught. That sort of thing. They receive the same treatment.’

  ‘I was thinking more of Western prisoners.’

  Sydykov stared at Harry, long enough to let him know he understood where this was headed. He spoke briefly to the governor before turning once more to Harry. ‘As you know, tourism is not yet well developed in our country. We hope to expand all such links – with your government’s help. We need a better airport, new roads, investment in improved hotels, and much more. These are our plans, the things we want you to take back to your government. Tourism could be a key growth area for us – we Ta’argis are renowned for our hospitality. It is a tradition from our nomadic past.’ He was delivering a lecture in response to what had been a simple question, wanting to establish with Harry who was in charge of this exercise. But the point had been made. ‘For the moment, Mr Jones, we get no more than a couple of thousand Western tourists, mostly trekkers who head for the mountains. They cause very little trouble. We did have two German guests who had accepted too much of our hospitality and were discovered drunk in Victory Park. We gave them a small fine and put them on a plane back home. Two years ago.’

  ‘No Western prisoners right now?’

  ‘No Western prisoners right now,’ Sydykov repeated softly.

  They held each other’s eye, testing their resolve, before Martha spoke up again. ‘Right. The rest of the prison?’

  Sydykov tore his eyes away from Harry and glanced at his watch. ‘There is little time, I’m afraid. You are due to have lunch with the Prime Minister and we cannot be late. But,’ he added quickly, forestalling her imminent outburst, ‘we will do our best. Please – come.’

  And for twenty minutes they were hauled around facilities at an almost reckless pace. Everywhere they found conditions were simple, primitive by some standards, squalid in parts, but no one made complaints. Whenever they paused to interrogate inmates, Sydykov declared that they were entirely content. The way he talked, they might have been there at their own request.

  All too soon their headlong charge had led them back to the courtyard and their car. The driver was already holding the door open.

  ‘I must apologize for the rush,’ Sydykov said, ‘but such visits are difficult to arrange at short notice. I hope you will accept that we have done our best.’

  And that’s what the record would show. They’d met the governor and senior officials, been shown any number of facilities, talked with several prisoners, and even if those discussions hadn’t been at length or in private, what could a reasonable man or woman expect squeezed between dinner with the President and lunch with the Prime Minister? Sydykov would make his report back to Beg; it was a game, and the morning had been a victory for the home side.

  It was only when he stepped into the fresh air once more that Harry became fully aware of the reek of decay that had clung to them throughout their visit, the sort of stench that couldn’t be scrubbed from the air, no matter how hard the prisoners toiled. That’s when Harry knew Zac was in there, somewhere, at the heart of it, in a place they hadn’t been shown. Rotting. His nose told him what he hadn’t seen.

  In every corner of the Castle they had found armed guards and closed doors, and ancient, stout locks whose keys dangled from the gaolers’ belts. CCTV, too. As they passed out through the gates once more, with Martha squirming in frustration beside him, Harry took a fresh look at the walls. Damn, but they were thick. Take an entire squadron of Dambusters to blast a way through that lot. He couldn’t take this place by storm, and there was nothing he could do on his own. He found himself catching his breath, his heart racing in anxiety. Yet as they turned into the main avenue, he was reminded he wasn’t entirely on his own.

  ‘That,’ Martha spat, ‘was a complete waste of time!’ She didn’t care that Sydykov heard her – indeed, she insisted on it. From his seat in the front, the Ta’argi official allowed himself a faint smile of satisfaction and stared straight ahead. What he didn’t see was that Harry had caught Martha’s eye, and squeezed her hand. They had at least one advantage. They now knew more about the enemy, about his strengths, but also his arrogance, and arrogance was a weakness.

  There was also the not inconsiderable matter of the photographs that Harry had taken of the governor’s office on his mobile phone. It hadn’t been a waste of time, after all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The afternoon was taken up with a sumptuous but swiftly taken lunch in the Prime Minister’s residence and a couple of desiccated briefings from ministers and officials about the country’s economic needs. Bobby Malik had tried to play his part, reeling off figures he had found in the briefing papers he had brought with him about the amount of British aid that had been provided to the country.

  ‘Yes,’ the Prime Minister responded through a mouthful of sausage stuffed with meat and preserved mutton fat, ‘your aid programme. You h
ave sent many consultants and advisers who have visited, told us of our shortcomings, then returned home. We would have preferred a power station.’

  After that, Malik retreated and kept his counsel, and neither did Harry take much of an active part, sipping distractedly at the watery beer. His mind was elsewhere, wondering about those he had met the night before. By this evening, they had said, or not at all. As the pale light outside the window began to fade, Harry found it increasingly difficult to maintain his spirits.

  Were they serious? Would they come? It would soon be dark, how long could the definition of an evening be stretched? Or were they already raising their glasses and drinking to yet another foreign fool?

  By half-past six it had been dark for more than an hour, and Harry knew it was over. The evening was well upon them and they had been transported to an ice-hockey game – their ‘culture time’, as Bowles had referred to it. They wouldn’t get to watch the whole thing, because they were expected to attend yet another official dinner at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. They would be transported directly there from the game. No downtime, no opportunity for anyone to make contact. Somewhere deep inside, his heart raced even faster and Harry felt sick.

  The ice hockey was taking place inside a ramshackle indoor arena that Harry suspected might once have been an aircraft hangar. It was noisy, cold, barely above freezing, even in the stands, with row upon row of seats around the rink supported on scaffolding. The conditions were primitive, yet the game was pursued with an intensity that was infectious. The players were young men who, when the summer came and the sun had chased the snows from the steppes, would swap their ice skates for short, shaggy-maned horses and do battle in a fierce sport that required them to fight for the carcass of a headless, black-fleeced goat, just like their forefathers had done, except in the old times the victims had been human. It wasn’t that the ancient Ta’argis had been heartless, simply practical; goats had often been more valuable. The equation was simple. Survival had required victory – over the elements, of course, and the enemy, but also sometimes over each other. Now clouds of condensation were beginning to form up amongst the metal rafters as the sons of the survivors fought, while on all sides spectators bellowed their encouragement. Even Sydykov, that most emotionally constipated of men, was performing little jumps of excitement in his seat and waving his glove in enthusiasm. Beside him Martha, unimpressed, shivered.

  They were offered mugs of thin soup to keep them warm, far too salty for Harry’s taste, but piping hot. Martha wouldn’t drink but clung to it as a hand warmer. Vendors roamed between the seats, selling paper twists filled with candy and nuts, doing their business in those moments when the crowd wasn’t on its feet and screaming. One of the vendors, an old, wizened man, offered Harry a bag, but his fingers were frozen and he fumbled, dropping it to the floor. As they bent to retrieve the bag, their heads came close together. The old man whispered something in Harry’s ear, so quietly that no one else could possibly have heard, and Harry himself had difficulty.

  ‘Take a piss,’ the old man said. ‘Five minutes.’

  When Harry looked up to catch his eye, the man had already gone.

  Five minutes later, Harry made his excuses. He walked the twenty yards to a miserable wood and brick shack with no door and ‘M’ painted hurriedly on the wall. Muzhskoi – Male. The paint had dribbled and long since faded. It was as primitive as could be, nothing but a bare enclosure with cracked tiles underfoot and a sheet of corrugated iron covering one long wall, beneath which ran an open gutter. The place reeked of ammonia, so sharp it made Harry flinch. A solitary man in a long serge overcoat stood facing the primitive urinal; Harry crossed to join him, standing so close that the other man splashed Harry’s shoes as well as his own. When he was finished, the man bent to fumble with his flies, and spoke softly.

  ‘Same taxi. Eleven tonight. Do not be late.’

  The man buttoned his coat carefully, then left. From outside came another eruption of excitement, so loud that it made the air shake. As he started to fasten his flies, Harry couldn’t resist offering a silent cry of satisfaction. The game, after all, was still in play. Yet when he drew breath, he choked, the fetid air sticking in his craw. Nothing was simple in this country, not even taking a piss.

  They were shuttled from the hockey match to their dinner at the ministry in a fleet of cars. To Harry’s surprise, he found himself alone in the back of one of them as they drove in procession through the dimly lit streets. To his still greater surprise, he discovered that the man in the front passenger seat was Amir Beg.

  ‘I hope you found your visit to the Castle this morning useful, Mr Jones,’ Beg said over his shoulder.

  ‘It was helpful. Thank you.’

  ‘I sense your caution. It is understandable.’ He turned to face Harry, his face all but obscured in the darkness, apart from his almond eyes staring from behind the spectacles. ‘Mr Jones, I hope you will allow me to speak freely. It is very easy for small countries like mine to be misunderstood. We have no great wealth, but that does not make us savages. Some like to pretend we are still in the Dark Ages, but we try our best and look forward. We want to improve. That’s why I was glad to arrange your visit this morning. I want your help in dispelling these wild rumours that we abuse human rights. I would like to think I can rely on you in that, after your visit. And if there is anything else you would like to see . . .’

  Harry was taken aback by this approach, not certain where it was headed. He didn’t want to commit himself. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said.

  Beg twisted his body still further and hooked his arm over the back of the seat to enable him to look at Harry full in the face. ‘You also raised the issue of your friend. You thought he might be here.’

  ‘Not my friend. A former colleague, from many years ago,’ Harry replied cautiously.

  ‘Whoever he is, or might be, whatever you’ve heard, I’d like to help. Put any misunderstandings to rest. Perhaps you can give me a little more information.’

  Harry examined the eyes, touched the inner soul, and knew this was not a man to trust. He shook his head. ‘It was nothing, apparently. A wild tale somebody had picked up. They obviously panicked and asked me to look into it while I was here. You yourself said last night you don’t have any American prisoners.’

  ‘That’s correct, but . . .’

  There was a moment’s silence between them as the car bumped along a rough stretch of road.

  ‘May I be frank with you, Mr Jones?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘I am not always told the truth. Not the whole truth, at least. Those like Sydykov and his kind, they love their little secrets, cling to them as if they were their mother’s breast. I suspect you find much the same in your own country.’

  Harry nodded; he had a point.

  ‘It’s possible at some point your American might have passed through the hands of the security forces,’ the Ta’argi said. ‘Much the same once happened to me. I know the pain.’

  In the light of the passing street lamps, Harry saw Beg’s broken knuckles glow deathly pale, and some instinct inside made him shiver. This man had been attentive, solicitous, had said all the right things, a perfect host. But nobody came out of the Soviet camps perfect. Harry knew this was nothing but an act.

  ‘If you could tell me any more about your colleague, I’d be happy to use my powers to investigate a little further,’ Beg continued. ‘With your help, of course.’

  Play the dumb fool, Harry told himself, tell him no more than he must already know. ‘His name is Zac Kravitz. From Michigan, I think. I last saw him more than ten years ago, so there’s not a whole lot more I can tell you, apart from the fact that he’s gone missing. And that he has friends who are very concerned for him.’

  ‘And why would he have been here in Ta’argistan?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I know he’s well travelled. A tourism consultant, perhaps?’

  They were pulling up in front of the steps of t
he Transport Ministry, their time drawing to an end. Harry and Beg were staring at each other, not in hostility but rather to size each other up. They both seemed to understand that the hostility would come. No need to rush it.

  The driver was at the passenger door, holding it open. Beg wrinkled a brow, like a chess player calculating his next move, and the one after that. His eyes suggested he knew he would win.

  ‘Well, if there’s anything else that comes to mind, please let me know. Enjoy your evening, Mr Jones.’

  Enjoy his evening? In three hours’ time he’d be standing on a freezing taxi rank in shoes that were still damp from the previous night’s outing. He was exhilarated by the prospect of what he might be about to discover, yet it was already overshadowed by an instinct that was screaming of danger. Does Beg know? Harry wondered. Could he have found out already? This was undoubtedly a desperately serious man. Harry climbed the steps, wondering what he was walking into.

  ‘Having second thoughts?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Plenty,’ Martha replied.

  The day’s formalities done, she was lying next to him on his bed, wrapped once more in the thin, tight dressing gown for the benefit of the old woman in the corridor. Harry, whispering into her ear to the accompaniment of the BBC, had been bringing her up to date on his encounter with the man with the paper twist of nuts, and with Amir Beg.

  ‘Somehow I’d always suspected,’ she said, continuing, ‘that sharing a bed with you would have its ridiculous complications.’

  ‘Thought a lot about that, then, have we?’

  She dug an elbow into his ribs and called him a sorry bastard, but there was no malice in it.

  ‘Harry, you’ve got to take care,’ she said, her tone suddenly more serious.

  ‘About sharing a bed with you? I promise eternal vigilance.’

  She rolled over to face him. ‘But you don’t even know if your friend is here.’

  ‘He’s here all right.’ ‘How do you know?’