‘I must go now, my friend,’ said Vojnomirovic.
‘No, help me, please,’ said Kadar.
This was the bit Vojnomirovic didn’t like. Thankfully the subject was strapped into the chair, otherwise his arms would have been locked around his captor’s knees, begging.
Vojnomirovic slipped out the door and breathed the cool antiseptic air in the corridor that was free of the smell of human waste. The dosage was about right, he concluded, but maybe they should up it just a fraction, say by another twenty-five micrograms. The CIA was impatient, breathing down their necks. Some bitch from the Canberra bureau – wherever that was – was on the phone every other hour demanding an update. He smiled. He’d sure like to get her ass in the chair. He stepped back into the control room and eased the door shut. ‘Well,’ he said to Curtis. ‘As Shakespeare said, “No more Mr Nice Guy”.’
Manila, Philippines
Jeff Kalas sat in the Restaurant Le Bellevue and watched the lights dance like electric ballerinas across the black waters of Manila Bay. He’d suggested the venue for dinner, the Diamond Hotel’s finest restaurant, because he wanted the event to be an occasion. He’d decided to leave his wife and children. The kids were one or two years away from moving out, and then he’d be stuck living with a stranger, his wife. He realised, since meeting Skye, that he even hated the sound of his wife’s breathing beside him, especially in bed. He had to leave her before he was driven to do something he might regret. And what better time to do the deed than when he was, quite frankly, smitten with another woman. He wondered what Skye would be wearing this night. He hoped it would be the sheer white dress that showed the perfection of her figure and set off the healthy tan of her skin. She’s a beautiful creature, and she’s mine, he said to himself, resisting the temptation to say it aloud. There were a few confessions to make, however. He didn’t think they would get in the way, but this time, he wanted the relationship to be honest and open. Skye deserved that. And more. And when it came to the ‘and more’, she would have that too. He tapped the small box in his coat pocket.
Kalas sensed that the dynamic in the room had changed slightly. The man sitting at the table opposite was looking over the shoulder of the woman he was having dinner with, oblivious both to her conversation and the view. That, Jeff knew, could only mean one thing. Several other men, and a couple of women too, were watching someone who’d entered the room. He resisted the temptation to look around.
Hands closed over his eyes from behind. ‘Guess…’ said the woman’s voice.
‘Umm…Penélope Cruz?’
‘Oh, do you like her?’ said Skye. She let her hands fall away and took the seat beside him. ‘You know, she’s very short.’
‘Yeah, but feisty,’ said Jeff as the waiter brought the bottle of vintage Veuve to the table and presented it to him for approval. Jeff nodded. Yes, she was wearing the white dress and her thick caramel hair was free of any clips or bands. It fell around her shoulders and down her back and stopped where her nipples were thinly disguised behind the stretch fabric. It was a hot night and she had chosen not to wear a bra. Even now, after several months, Jeff found it hard not to stare at her, as did every other man in the restaurant.
‘Do you know, I love this hotel but I’ve never eaten here,’ she said, smiling at Jeff as the waiter poured her a flute of champagne.
‘Well, actually, no; I didn’t know that. Good, it’ll be our restaurant, then.’
‘Like it’s our pool,’ she said.
‘Exactly.’ Jeff looked at Skye, her brown eyes sparkling like the lights on the water outside, and he thought his heart would burst. Was being so captivated by a woman such a bad thing? He wondered whether, somehow, what he was about to do and say was lacking reason. He knew he was taking a big chance, but this girl was worth it. ‘Skye, do you love me?’
Skye looked around, a little embarrassed, her smile just a touch wary and different to the carefree one she wore when she first sat down. ‘Jeff, you know how I feel about you.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Jeff…’
‘Well?’
‘Okay, I love you.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘And now you may have your reward.’ He removed his hand from his pocket, placed it on the white damask tablecloth and then took it away, leaving behind a purple velvet box.
‘What’s that?’ Skye asked, intrigued, expectant, frightened and inquisitive all at the same time. Jeff was married, wasn’t he? This couldn’t be what she thought it might be, could it?
‘Well, go on, my little chicken basket…open it?’ he said playfully, sitting back in his chair, sipping at the flute.
Skye reached forward. She took the box and held it in the palm of her hand, weighing it. She was scared to open it.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, woman. Open it!’ he said, rolling his eyes.
Skye flashed him a smile and opened the box. Inside was not what she expected. She removed the stone and held it between her thumb and forefinger, more intrigued than anything else. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a diamond. An Argyle diamond from Western Australia,’ he said with a broad grin. ‘Uncut, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’ She turned it over in the light. It looked like a little chunk of dirty, vaguely pink glass. ‘Jeff, I…I don’t know what to say. It’s beautiful. Why –’
‘I’ve left Doreen,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘I want to be with you.’
Skye found it hard to keep the mixed emotions that swept over her from showing on her face. She was frightened by Jeff’s proclamation, but at the same time excited by it. ‘Why –’
‘Why? For me, for you – us,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘Skye, I want things to be open between us. You’ve asked me a few times what I do for a living, where the money comes from. I want to tell you. Now. There are a few things I want you to know.’
Seven hours later, at four in the morning, Skye sat naked on her bed, knees drawn up to her chin with her arms wrapped around her legs, rocking slightly. They’d had sex, but Skye had only been physically present. Jeff had asked whether something was wrong and Skye had taken the opportunity to tell him that the migraine threatening her all day had finally arrived, as indeed it had, her vision fractured by what appeared to be slivers of brightly coloured glass. Soon the headache would begin, pounding at the back of her brain like a heavy brass knocker rapping impatiently.
At the restaurant, Jeff had eventually gotten around to telling her where his money came from, about the two men at the pool – everything. Everything he knew, at any rate. Skye had listened attentively while inside, in her mind and belly, separate tornadoes whirled and she felt as if she were sitting on the deck of a ship being tossed in a storm rather than on a chair in a four-star restaurant. Jeff laundered money or, more accurately, exported money for people he believed were selling massive amounts of marijuana and heroin in Australia, exchanging millions of dollars for Argyle diamonds, which were easy to slip out of the country. He didn’t appear to realise that he was dealing with terrorists rather than drug barons, and that the money he was siphoning out of Australia was being used to cause violent death and destruction, most likely throughout South East Asia. God, our embassy in Jakarta! And then there were the hundreds or possibly thousands of addicts he was helping to supply with heroin, a drug that would surely kill them. Wasn’t that just as bad? Skye knew that she had important information, a link to their most wanted terrorists, that her employer would have far more than a passing interest in obtaining. If she gave it up, she would be giving Jeff up. He would share the same fate as that of the terrorists. ‘Oh, Jeff, you are a foolish man,’ she said aloud to the raindrops that spattered her window.
Skye slipped off the bed and found her rucksack. The phone number she’d written down was there. She dug around until she found the card. She dropped the bag, and then went back to the bed and resumed the knees-up position with the card beside her. If she called it and spoke to the task force in Sydn
ey, Jeff would not be the only one in a shit storm of trouble. But did she have a choice?
Camp Echo, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
She had tried to get to hospital, but there was a war on and priority for beds was given to wounded Israeli soldiers, not to migrant Saudi labourers who could well be spies. And so Kadar Al-Jahani had watched his mother die a ghastly death, the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck by the baby she had just given birth to. The infant had somehow come to life and wound it around her throat like a tourniquet and pulled it tight. The sight of this was enough to make Kadar, the little boy watching on, tear the very skin from his face with horror. And so his mother had given birth in the street to the unholy creature. The baby, stillborn, had killed her, and then the rats had come to finish the job. He watched them rip and gnaw at his mother and then feast on the baby’s corpse. The maggots came next, wriggling through their nostrils and eye sockets, singing joyfully as they burrowed through the flesh between skin and bone.
The rats were carrying him now, bearing him along the street, back to his bed. The anguish he felt at seeing the death of his mother took on the colour green. It became a liquid that filled his head and leaked from his nostrils and he began to gag. He couldn’t breathe. Harder and harder he struggled to drag in the oxygen. He was drowning in nothingness. And then it took on the familiar taste of sand, hot and dry and unforgiving. The taste of it filled his mouth, the ever-present grit of the Holy Land.
Curtis and Vojnomirovic watched the subject writhing in the chair. He’d again started babbling a set of numbers and letters. Curtis checked the pad on his desk: ‘1511472723’. Yep, no change. What did they mean? Voj had no idea either. Were they code for something? Lat and long coords? Maybe it was his AMEX account number and the sucker was feeling guilty about not having paid his account? Of course, the sequence could also be utterly meaningless. He talked plenty about some historical rag head, Khalid bin Wallflower or something. The drugs got inside the mind and, over time, completely cleaned it out. Perhaps this stuff – the numbers and the Khalid bin dude – was just the mind’s equivalent of a dust ball behind the refrigerator. Whatever, extracting information was their job, not making sense of it.
Kadar Al-Jahani’s brainwave patterns shifted and the needle’s frantic activity on the printout told them that he was in the depths of some unspeakable nightmare, and that it was time once more to give him relief. With it came the opportunity for the subject to divest himself of the final secrets eating away at his brain. This subject had been tough but he had cracked, as everyone eventually did. The information he’d given up like rotten pearls, Curtis and Vojnomirovic knew, was exciting their superiors to the point where they actually paid them the occasional visit. Torture, for that’s what they were doing, was never a pleasant thing to witness. One needed a certain amount of callus built up, and Vojnomirovic and Curtis had built up plenty.
‘In you go, Voj. This is it, partner. We need the key, the final questions answered.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Vojnomirovic, somewhat annoyed. He knew exactly what had to be done and didn’t need the apprentice to remind him.
Curtis commanded the release of the pentothal with a tap on his keyboard, as Vojnomirovic squeaked off down the linoleum.
Kadar Al-Jahani’s skin crawled as he watched the boy lying on his bed, the rats tunnelling back and forth under the sheets. He felt himself floating higher above the scene and, as he did so, the anguish and pain seemed to drain away. Several men floated from the walls, C-4 and detonators strapped around their stomachs. Kadar was frightened but pleased. The explosive booster materials would atomise the hell playing out below him and he would finally be released to death and a place for all eternity beside Allah in the garden of paradise. Suddenly, the men exploded with nothing more than loud popping sounds and became round balls of tightly compressed flowers, like dandelions, their heads poking stupidly out the top from collars of petals. Kadar Al-Jahani was overcome with frustration. And then he was back in the chair in the white cell. The walls moved in and out as they breathed slowly, peacefully, yet the tears welled in Kadar’s eyes and began to flow freely down his cheeks. He roared with the pain of the memories, distorted and angry, carried on the backs of insects and rodents. And then he saw the man in the white coat and he knew love the way an acolyte might love God. This man was his saviour, his protector. It was he who kept the dreams at bay, and now Kadar Al-Jahani would do and say anything to please him.
‘Kill me,’ he begged. ‘Please kill me. I can’t bear this. Please pity me. I give you my life.’ He howled and his chest heaved with the sobs.
‘It’s okay. It’s okay,’ said Vojnomirovic. ‘I can make the evil stop, but you must help me.’
‘Anything,’ said Kadar. ‘Anything…please.’
‘Tell me where Duat is. Where is your comrade? Where is your base? What is the target?’ That was it, thought Vojnomirovic, the remaining tantalising details the subject held on to locked deep within. And they desperately needed that information.
The lieutenant colonel looked down at the man and noticed that something was wrong. He was sucking in oxygen, but he seemed in some distress.
‘Voj, get back in here quick,’ said Curtis through the small white speakers embedded in the corners of the ceiling.
‘Take a look at the man’s vitals,’ said Curtis when Vojnomirovic came running through the door, his own heart rate shooting way up when he saw the subject’s BP.
‘Jesus,’ said Vojnomirovic. The man’s systolic and diastolic readings were almost identical. One seventy over one sixty. ‘He’s about to crash, for Christ’s sake.’
An alarm bell sounded. ‘Christ,’ said Curtis, ‘there he goes.’
The stress on Kadar’s heart blasted him into a flashback. Suddenly, sand filled his nose and mouth and flooded into his lungs. He could feel his chest moving in and out, heaving, but the sand blocked his airways. He watched himself as a spectator and noted a small explosion in his chest that blew a red hole in his skin, where his heart would be. As his vision started to fade, white worms eating the colour from the picture, a rat poked his snout from the hole in his chest and tested the air, wriggling its long whiskers.
Curtis hit the external alarm and then he and Vojnomirovic left the control room and raced into Kadar Al-Jahani’s cell. Three male army nurses joined them with a crash cart. Vojnomirovic thrust a large pre-prepared hypodermic down, punching the needle through the subject’s rib cage and into his heart. He pressed down on the plunger, releasing the adrenalin. Nothing. Curtis applied the paddles and the subject jerked with the electric charge that hammered into his system. Nothing. Progressively higher shocks were fed to the heart in an attempt to kickstart it again, but it was useless.
‘Shit,’ said Curtis when he finally stood back and looked at the naked man strapped to the chair, slimy with blood and mucus. ‘What the fuck went wrong here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Vojnomirovic, already feeling the heat that would descend on them, ‘but we’d better fucking well find out.’
Port Botany, Sydney, Australia
The two Australian Customs officers walked slowly through the corridors between containers stacked as high as five-storey buildings. Daisy went ahead, the slack on her leash played out. The cool breeze quickened as it funnelled down these aisles and, despite the fact that it was late summer, both of the customs investigators were pleased to be wearing caps and windcheaters over their dark blue overalls. Daisy, a labrador–kelpie crossbreed, snuffled from side to side, shoving her snout into various cracks, hunting for the stray molecules of an array of different substances.
There were over a hundred containers on the wharf. On this day, they would try to inspect three, but probably only get through two. One of the agents carried the manifest for the first container to be inspected: 2209LK. The officers were going to make it hard for the wharfies today because this one was buried right in the middle of a stack. That meant getting to it would require other containers to
be shifted and restacked. The labourers weren’t keen to cooperate because of the extra work involved. But the customs officers couldn’t care less. ‘The buggers get paid to move the things around, so what’s the fucking problem?’ said Craig in an aside to his older partner when the shift foreman bitched and moaned as he walked off.
The officers and their dog reached the end of the aisle and walked into bright sunshine, a cool breeze blowing the scent of salt and diesel fuel off the waters of the bay. The wharfies were shifting the containers one at a time with an enormous crane that hoisted the steel boxes up under its belly like a giant four-legged squid. It would take another half an hour at least, the agents realised, for the particular container they wanted to inspect to be freed from the stack.
The customs men sat down in the sun, out of the breeze, and soaked up the warmth. Daisy, too, took the opportunity to rest, half lying, half sitting up, her long red tongue waggling as she panted. ‘What are we looking at again?’ asked Robert, older by ten years and a considerable number of beers, all of which seemed to hang precariously over his belt.
Craig handed him the manifest. ‘Here, check it out.’
Robert pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. ‘Okay, we got a whole bunch of pots and furniture. Indoor and outdoor stuff, plus half a dozen snooker tables. Out of Denpasar. Should be pretty straightforward.’
‘Sweet,’ said Craig.
Robert’s mobile struck up a jaunty rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’.
‘When are you going to change the ring on that phone, man?’ Craig shook his head. His partner was a bit of a dag.
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