The Fish Kisser
Page 31
“Now you’re talking …” he started, but was cut short by the sudden blinding lights of an oncoming vehicle, the first for many miles, and the Mercedes’ tires dug into the dusty desert as he swerved. In a flash the car was past and the lights went out.
“He’s driving without lights,” he complained bitterly, the policeman in him wanting to tear after the offender with a ticket.
Another unlit car flew out of the darkness and briefly flashed its lights, catching Bliss unawares again, although he managed to stick to the road this time.
“What the …” he started, then checked in his rear view mirror and spotted the shadow of a dark car.
“Yolanda, we’ve got company.”
“Police?” she said hopefully, swivelling to look.
“I don’t think so,” he replied nervously.
“Bandits?” she enquired, with an excellent Southern drawl.
Bliss checked the mirror again. “Possibly. Let’s see what happens if we slow down.” They slowed and the following car matched their speed, making no attempt to pass. He sped up again and two miles later the sinister car was still there. At every turn his heart began to jump; expecting to find a roadblock just around the corner, expecting the occupants of the following car to leap out wearing bandannas and carrying machine guns.
“Hold tight,” he said, ramming his foot to the floor. The Mercedes nearly took off. “Keep looking,” he shouted and she spun round in her seat.
“We’re losing him,” she said after a few moments.
“As soon as we’ve rounded the next bend,” he warned, “I’m going to turn off my lights and do a one-eighty.”
They shot round the corner at nearly a hundred miles-an-hour and Bliss jumped on the brakes, then pirouetted the car around. Without stopping he drove straight at the following vehicle and stabbed on his high beams. Blinded, the driver lost control and careened off the road, bouncing out of their view into the desert and crunching into a rock.
Bliss spun the car back around, gripping the wheel hard to stop his hands shaking, and his lights picked up the occupants clambering out.
“I wonder who they are?” Yolanda breathed rhetorically.
“Do they look like bandits?” he asked as he stood on the accelerator.
“It’s difficult to tell,” she replied, still straining her neck.
Bliss agreed with a nod. With their swarthy skin, deep-set dark eyes, black greasy hair, and villainous smiles, all the locals looked candidates for the “most wanted” page of the Police Gazette.
Three more cars passed without lights, the drivers relying on the moonlight and Allah. After the third, Bliss turned off his lights and drove without difficulty. “If you can’t beat them, join them,” he said to Yolanda who translated the saying into Dutch for his amusement.
Five hours, three towns, and a hundred unlit cars later the red warning light came on again.
“Low on gas,” said Yolanda who had taken over the driving.
“Town up ahead,” he said lazily, as he noticed a radiant glow on the horizon.
“Which town?”
His eyes searched in the dim light. “It must be off the map,” he concluded. “Syria maybe,” he added, sitting up attentively. “We’ll get help from the border police wherever it is.”
She consulted the dashboard clock. “It’s three o’clock Sunday morning. We’ll be lucky if anyone’s awake.”
“Fingers crossed,” he replied, as they rounded the next bend, and were suddenly confronted by the “town”: nothing more than a border crossing besieged by a bunch of squatter’s huts. A half dozen trucks were pulled off to the side and the drivers stood around, enthusiastically shaking hands, jabbering excitedly, and gesticulating wildly as if they had just conquered Antarctica or climbed Everest.
Yolanda eased the unlit car onto the desert and killed the engine. “I’ll take a look,” she said, throwing the shawl over her head and slipping out of the car as he tried to protest.
“Damn woman,”
Ten minutes later she slunk back. “Dave it’s not Syria. It’s Kurdistan,” she said, forlornly slumping in the seat.
“Kurdistan,” he repeated,” Isn’t that part of Iraq?”
“Uh, uh.”
They sat in silent deliberation for several minutes; thoughts of home and family interwoven with frightening images of the Gulf war: bloated bodies of gassed Kurds, and fanatical Iraqis chanting, “Death to westerners,” tortured hostages, and terribly mutilated prisoners of war.
“Dave,” she enquired slowly, “Do you think we should carry on?”
“Yolanda!” he scowled.
For once she agreed. “Okey dokey, Dave. Well that’s it then.”
chapter sixteen
“Well … Where the bloody hell is Bliss?” shouted Superintendent Edwards, forcing his staff sergeant to clamp his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
“They don’t know Sir.”
Edwards, adopting a silly, child-like voice threw the sergeant’s words back at him, “They don’t know, Sir.” Then he spat, “Well bloody well find him. He was supposed be on that ship Friday. He should have been back here yesterday.”
The sergeant, hand over the mouthpiece, kept his voice down. “According to the Dutch he was in Turkey yesterday, with one of their detectives, chasing a truck.”
“What?”
“Sir …?” There was more.
Edwards rose in unison with his tone. “What?”
“Perhaps you should speak to Captain Jahnssen, Sir.”
“Why?”
“Well, apparently they’ve stolen a car and the Turkish police are chasing them.”
“Serves ’em bloody right,” said Edwards, snatching the phone. “Jost. What’s all this crap about Bliss and one of your men in Turkey?”
The sergeant watched, fascinated, as Edwards’ face reddened to a boil. Then he exploded, “A woman. I bloody well knew it.” Clapping his hand over the phone he snorted loudly into the air, “Umph! The randy bastard. Chasing a truck my ass! He’s chasing a fanny.”
Taking his hand off the mouthpiece he started on the captain again. “Well where the bloody hell are they?”
He listened intently for half a minute, sticking an occasional “When?” “How?” and, “Why?” into the conversation, before adding, “I’ll call you back in ten minutes.” Then he slowly lowered the phone as he sat, the colour draining from his cheeks.
“Something wrong, Sir?” enquired the sergeant.
Edwards’ face clouded. “The Dutch are pretty worried. Apparently Bliss and his bit of skirt were headed into a hostile area—fundamentalist rebels—even the Turkish cops won’t go there. Jost has been trying Interpol and the Turks all day but nobody knows what to do.”
“Anything we can do?”
“I suppose we’d better inform the duty officer at the Foreign Office. According to Jost all western governments have been warning people not to go to that part of Turkey since the Gulf war.”
“The F.O. will be ticked off to hear we’ve got a man there then,” replied the sergeant, reaching for the phone.
“Wait,” snapped Edwards, slapping it back to the cradle. “Let’s think about this.” Pausing, he doodled a skull and crossbones on a scratch pad as he ran through various scenarios in his mind, then shook his head seriously. “We haven’t got a man there—officially I mean.” He let the words sink in for a few seconds, then, satisfied by the expression on his junior’s face, continued, “If some off-duty bobby takes his bird somewhere against Foreign Office advice that’s not our problem.”
“I agree, Sir?”
“In fact,” Edwards continued, ducking under a canopy of authority, “I specifically ordered Bliss back to England on that ship on Friday, didn’t I?”
“That’s correct, Sir, you did.”
Edwards reached into a drawer. “Well, Sergeant, I think it’s time I wrote out some discipline charges for our Mr. Bliss. Starting with disobeying an order … Chasing a fucking t
ruck, eh!”
Edwards was wrong. Bliss and Yolanda were no longer chasing the truck. Neither were they in Turkey. They were in Iraq, hiding inside the container amidst the pallets.
“This is stupid, Yolanda,” whispered Bliss, his voice echoing out of the darkness as the driver waited for the Iraqi border guards to wave him through. “They’ll kill us if they find us, and Edwards will kill me if they don’t.”
“I think you are right, Dave. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”
It was her fault. They’d sat in the Mercedes at the border watching the truck with resigned detachment as the border guards checked the contents.
“At least we can tell them we followed it this far,” said Bliss with some satisfaction.
Yolanda stared at the truck in thought, then asked softly. “Are you married, Dave?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“I don’t really. But I was thinking about the man they’ve got in there: wondering if he has a wife and children.”
“Divorced,” he admitted, his neutral tone giving nothing away—no bitterness, no regret; Gone, but not forgotten.
There was some relief in her sigh. “Any children?”
“One—Samantha; I told you, she’s a lawyer.” A dozen memories of his daughter immediately flooded his mind as he realized he still hadn’t called her, then he shook it off, thinking: there’s little point; what could she do? Anyway, she’s too wrapped up in her job and London’s gritty nightlife to worry about me. “Alright,” he said, getting the message and caving in, “You’re right. If I was in that truck would I want someone to risk their life to save me?”
“Well?”
“Let’s do it for his kids then,” he said, as they abandoned the car and made off toward the truck, then he pulled her up. “What about you? Why would you do it?”
“I have a child as well,” she said, hiding behind the softness of the words and the darkness of the desert.
“I expect many of those kidnapped people have children,” he continued, skirting an obviously tender spot while adding further justification.
The guards had moved onto another rig by the time they arrived at the red and white eighteen-wheeler. They clambered into the container without difficulty, hid among the pallets, and, as they waited for the doors to slam, Bliss had second thoughts and started backing out. “This is crazy … even if we find out where they’re taking him, there’s no guarantee the others will be there. And how the hell are we going to get out?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, holding his hand, “but we have to try.”
He relented; life had become so surreal nothing mattered anymore. “As soon as we get there we’ll raise the alarm and get out.”
“And straight back to Istanbul for that holiday I promised.”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course.”
He smiled in the blackness, and they leaned on each other, huddling warmly in the numbing cold of the desert night.
For the first twenty minutes the road was straight and flat, then the paved surface gave way to rock strewn mountain passes. They cuddled, spoon-like, and snoozed as the truck bumped and jolted its way along the rugged roads; struggling sluggishly uphill, or straining against the squealing brakes downhill. They tried sleeping in turns but the constant shaking and jarring instantly awoke them whenever they dropped off even for a minute.
“Sun’s up,” said Bliss several hours later.
“How do you know?
Finding her hand in the darkness he pressed it against the container’s warm skin. Then the smell of hot metal gradually enveloped them as the pleasant warmth of the morning simmered into the searing heat of mid-day. Their thoughts dragged with the hours, and Yolanda’s pensive silence concerned him. It wasn’t like her—a few hours earlier she’d been flying through life with panache—had she crash landed? It couldn’t be their predicament; she’d led the flight all the way from Holland and could have bailed at any time, if she’d wanted. Sifting through his memory banks Bliss found a red flag. “It must be her child,” he said to himself. “She kept that quiet,” and realized he knew nothing of her offspring despite the three—or was it four?—days they’d shared everything—absolutely everything, toothbrush included. What should he have asked? Age, sex, colour—there’s a thought! Blonde with blue eyes he might have guessed but knowing Yolanda’s reckless disregard for convention, anything was possible. Was it too late to ask?
At every stop during the day they begged the doors to open and let in a cool mountain breeze but were dispirited time and time again.
“There’s no more water,” Bliss said by late afternoon. Then coolness returned and they swayed and jolted from evening into the numbing cold of the desert night, shivering uncontrollably in their sweat soaked clothes.
The final stop was different, around midnight they guessed. The truck lurched to a standstill on a smooth section of flat road when a shouted command was followed by the whine of a gate. Then they were through, and a minute later the engine’s drone turned into a hollow rumble as they drove inside a building. An electric door buzzed to a close behind them.
“We’ve arrived,” he said, his chattering teeth having difficulty with the words and a clamour of activity followed as the cab was detached from the truck.
“I think they’re taking him out,” Bliss whispered a few seconds later as he heard voices behind the false wall.
Yolanda was gripped by a sudden panic. “What if they don’t open the back doors? Maybe these boxes are only for show.”
The thought had occurred to him. “Let’s wait,” he replied, thinking fate had brought them this far—surely not for nought.
Slowly the voices moved away, absolute stillness tensed the air and they clung to each other like guinea pigs in a sensory deprivation experiment.
“We can’t get out,” she whispered worriedly after awhile, her muted voice sounding like a shout in the black metal tunnel.
“Shhhh.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have drunk all that water,” she moaned as she squirmed to a corner. Then the back doors flew open. “Get down,” he hissed and she flattened herself behind one of the stacks. The brilliant flood of fluorescent light stung after twenty hours of blackout, and they squinted madly, trying to see what was happening.
Two burly men with baseball caps and jeans—truck drivers anywhere—clambered into the truck, and were heaving the heavy pallets around as if they were Styrofoam. Yolanda sidled back to Bliss and made him jump as she stuck her mouth to his ear. “Any ideas?”
He shook his head as another pallet was disappearing, and found himself fighting the almost overwhelming temptation to walk smartly to the back of the container, warrant card in hand, announcing, “Metropolitan Police—you’re all under arrest.”
“What if we creep off behind one …” he began
She stopped him with a shake of her head and whispered, “They’ll see us.”
“There’s plenty of time,” he said quietly, the sound of his voice masked by the men rumbling the pallet along the steel floor.
Six pallets later, they still had no plan.
“We could do a runner,” he breathed, as another pallet was pushed off the back onto the tines of a fork-lift. She didn’t bother to reply.
Only four pallets remained, the men chose the one straight in front of them.
Yolanda found Bliss’ ear, “Could we push one of these on top of them?”
Bliss considered for a second, then found her ear again, “I don’t think so.”
Another stack was being grabbed by the men, and manhandled toward the back of the truck. Just two left.
“I know,” whispered Yolanda, digging into her purse for her gun. “You divert them and I’ll shoot.”
“You’re armed?” he mouthed, and could have kissed her.
“Where’s yours?”
“The sergeant’s got it.”
Giving him a funny look, she mouthed, “Ready?”
“They’ve gone,” said Yolanda a few seconds later as she heard a door close. “Quick.”
Jumping off the back of the trailer, their eyes searched the warehouse for a hiding place or a way out. Bliss saw the giant door through which they had come. “We could just drive it out,” he suggested.
“Then what?”
“Go to the local police and tell them what we know,” he tried lamely.
“Dave this is Iraq. This place is probably run by the police. Anyway we’ve been through this before.”
Without warning he grabbed her and pulled her under the truck. “Camera,” he explained, pointing at the high ceiling. She saw it and ducked. “We’ve got to get out before they come back to finish unloading. It must be their meal break.”
Then Bliss’ eyes picked out an ordinary looking door at the back of the warehouse. “I wonder what’s in there?”
“We can’t stay here,” said Yolanda, “so we’ll have to find out.”
They slithered together across the floor, praying the camera watcher was asleep.
The sleeping guard hadn’t stood a chance. Stripped, bound and gagged in under a minute, they took a risk with the security camera and bundled him into the back of the trailer. The scrawny man was little more than an undernourished teenager, and his uniform was such a tight fit on Bliss that Yolanda gave him a screwy smile. Poking out his tongue in retaliation, he pointed the way with the guard’s gun and they headed for the elevator.
They pressed themselves into the corner as the enamelled elevator rattled downwards and hissed to a halt. The doors opened with a tired sigh and the silent emptiness laughed at them.
It was two hours before they breathed freely again. Two hours of mind sharpening anxiety as they eased open door after door, expecting every time to hear sirens or feel the sting of a bullet. Two hours of constant apprehension; two hours of concentrated tension; two hours of sweat-soaking, nerve racking, mouth-drying, diarrhoeainducing fear. Fear that every camera was eyeing them; every step might break an invisible beam; every door would be alarmed; every movement picked up by a sensor; and every sound heard by a hidden microphone. Room after room had shown them it’s empty face. Desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and all the detritus of a modern office complex filled each room. And at least a hundred computers idled in neutral, their engines ticking over with a constant buzz—all that was missing were the drivers.