Samarkand Hijack

by David Monnery

  Marat had noticed too. ‘I could tell them I’ve arrested you for prostitution,’ he said, and wished he hadn’t. The look she flashed him was mostly of rage, but if he was any judge of women there was also an element of hurt.

  Of course, his ex-wife had always told him he wasn’t. ‘Sorry,’ he said instinctively.

  She gave him another look, more pitying this time, which he didn’t find much of an improvement. ‘But I shouldn’t stray off on your own,’ he added, looking round.

  ‘I won’t.’

  He drained the last of his coffee. ‘Let’s start asking questions then.’

  They began with the staff, moved on to the clientele, and then went through the same process at the establishment across the street. Half an hour and many sullen silences later they had found four witnesses to the passage of the bus the previous evening. All of them had seen it go straight across the crossroads, on to the road which led back to Samarkand.

  They went back to the Volga, and Nurhan steered the car slowly out of town, past the bus station and a mosque under construction. She kept an eye on the alleys to the left as Marat scoured those to the right. There was no sign of a bus.

  They emerged from the town alongside the river which had created it, now no more than a trickle of water between sun-baked stones.

  ‘How many turn-offs do you reckon there are between here and home?’ Marat asked.

  ‘I don’t remember any proper roads,’ she replied. ‘But it’s a long time since I did this journey in daylight.’

  The fields soon petered out, as the road climbed steadily into the dry hills. After two or three kilometres it was joined by a dusty track from the east. One or more vehicles turning right had left tyre tracks on the bend.

  ‘Let’s try it,’ Marat suggested.

  She gave him a withering look. ‘There’s thousands of square kilometres of wilderness out there, and I’d rather explore it with a map and some proper supplies. We could drive around all day without seeing anyone. Or of course, if we were really lucky, we could meet up with half a dozen heavily armed terrorists.’

  He smiled. ‘Point taken. But let’s drive up it for a mile or so – just to get a sense of the lay of the land.’

  Looking at him, she realized he was serious. ‘All right,’ she agreed reluctantly, and started the car up the surprisingly smooth track.

  Half a mile later they came to an unmarked forking of the ways. Ahead of them the yellow hills rose into grey mountains, and the mountains into distant snow-covered peaks beneath a deep-blue sky. It was as beautiful as it was daunting.

  ‘This is a job for a helicopter,’ she said.

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ he conceded.

  Docherty’s first thought on waking was to wonder why he was sleeping alone. Then realization dawned. He lay motionless for a moment, grateful that he had at least managed to get some sleep. Light was filtering in through the cracks in the boarded-up window. He looked at his watch and found that it was twenty past six.

  Someone was in the bathroom, and since everyone else was visible from where he lay, it could only be Ogley. Docherty poked his head over the edge of the top bunk and confirmed as much.

  He wondered if the children knew what had happened. He couldn’t imagine his sister would tell them, but kids had a way of knowing something was wrong without being told. Docherty rubbed his eyes and decided he’d rather be doing something than lying there thinking.

  He went to take a daylight look at the room’s only window. Somewhat to his surprise, it slid open. Beyond the glass there was a mosquito screen, and beyond that planks had been nailed across the aperture. It wouldn’t take much effort to break out, but it would be hard to do it quietly. The real problems would begin once they were outside. Even without any idea of where they were, one or two of them might be able to escape across the mountain wilderness, but not fourteen.

  Still, he thought, it would serve as an escape hatch in an emergency. He turned away from the window and almost walked into the elder of the two Zahid brothers.

  ‘Can you see the sun?’ the man asked. ‘Or any shadows?’

  ‘I don’t think…’ Docherty began, and then noticed the rolled-up prayer mat Ali Zahid was holding in his hand. ‘But the window faces east,’ he said. ‘I noticed the North Star when we got off the bus last night,’ he added in explanation, just as the sound of cursing came from the bathroom. Ogley’s voice sounded almost hysterical.

  Docherty and Ali Zahid exchanged glances, and the Scot strode across to the door. He tried to open it, but Ogley had wedged his sweater between door and floor, and he had to push hard to open up a six-inch gap. Through it, he saw Ogley scrambling on a flooded floor without his trousers on, apparently trying to wipe himself with what remained of the fast-disappearing water. The bucket lay on its side. ‘Get out!’ Ogley shouted at him. It was almost a sob.

  Docherty closed the door. Behind him Ali Zahid had laid out his mat, and was now prostrating himself in the general direction of Mecca. It had to be ironic for a Muslim priest like Zahid, the Scot thought, being hijacked by people of his own faith who claimed to be holier than he was. In his own case it would be akin to being held hostage by a bunch of Celtic’s skinhead supporters.

  ‘What have you got to smile about?’ Copley asked him. ‘There’s no breakfast, no newspaper, and there probably won’t even be a morning post.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the worst of it – the professor’s just spilt our entire water supply.’

  ‘Shit, he hasn’t.’

  ‘But I think we’re going to have to be kind to him. This room isn’t big enough to accommodate someone having a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose he can help it. And I guess we’re all going to be prone to the odd fart of alarm. I was just lying there thinking about Sharon and the kids. I think she only comes on these jaunts to keep me company. Maybe next year we’ll go to Majorca.’

  ‘And you’ll probably get mugged by a gang of Spanish teenagers.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He looked at Docherty almost as if he was seeking reassurance. ‘You’ve never been in a spot like this before, have you?’

  ‘Nope. But I suppose I’ve been in physical danger enough times to know that getting excited only gets in the way. And I guess it becomes second nature after a while.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re here even if you’re not.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Docherty said wryly, just as Ogley reappeared.

  The lecturer walked between them without saying anything, and threw himself on to his bunk.

  ‘Is all the water gone?’ Docherty asked, trying to keep any note of accusation out of his voice.

  ‘You shouldn’t have walked in like that,’ Ogley said in a shaky voice. ‘If we don’t respect each other’s privacy then we become animals like them.’

  ‘Sorry. I thought you needed help. Now, is the water all gone?’

  ‘Yes. It was an accident. I couldn’t…’

  ‘OK. We’ll get some more.’ Docherty went through to the bathroom, where Ogley’s incontinence was much in evidence, both in the air and on the ground. He collected the bucket and took it back through to the door which led to the corridor. He rapped once, and was about to do so again when the wooden hatch was pulled back to reveal two eyes.

  Docherty held up the water bucket.

  The hatch slammed shut, and the seconds turned into a minute. Docherty was just coming to the conclusion that they had had their answer when the hatch opened again. ‘Leave bucket by door and stand back,’ a voice said in English. Docherty did as he was told, and the door slowly opened inwards to reveal a man holding an AK47 aimed straight into the room. The man’s eyes darted from right to left and back again, and then he nodded, whereupon a second man appeared with a new bucket of water, and exchanged it for the empty one. He pulled the door shut behind him, and the familiar clang of bolts followed.

  Docherty took the bucket to the bathroom door and then turned round. ‘I think you’ve got
some cleaning up to do,’ he told Ogley.

  The lecturer opened his mouth to reply, but the look on Docherty’s face obviously made him think better of whatever it was he intended to say. Yet he made no move to do as he was asked.

  ‘Like you said, we have to have respect for each other,’ Docherty pointed out, as gently as he could. Ogley was going to clean up his own shit if the Scot had to force him, but it would be a hundred times better if the man realized that here and now – maybe for the first time in his life – he had the responsibilities which went with membership of a group of equals.

  For several seconds the two men looked at each other, and then it was Ogley who looked away, climbed out of his bunk, and carried the water through into the bathroom.

  Thirty metres away, at the northern end of the lodge, the women’s day began with a crisis. Sharon Copley had woken sometime before dawn, and rather than wake anyone else, had allowed her anxiety to build, right up to the point where an asthma attack seemed imminent. She told Isabel and Alice Jennings as much between wheezing breaths. Her inhaler was in the bag which she had left on the bus.

  Alice went immediately to the door and started beating out a tattoo on it. When no one appeared she simply upped the violence of her assault, her face a study in wrathful indignation. Isabel was torn between admiration and a fear that the old woman would pay for such temerity.

  Eventually one of the hijackers’ faces appeared at the hatch. It took several minutes of mime to explain the situation, whereupon the face disappeared. Another minute later, with Sharon’s inability to suck in breath worsening by the second, the man called Talib appeared, and raised one finger to indicate that one of the women should accompany him.

  Isabel looked round, saw no one else was keen to volunteer, and put herself forward.

  ‘Go to bus?’ she asked.

  The man nodded, and gestured her to walk in front of him. She retraced their steps of the night before, down the corridor which ran the length of the building from north to south. On the right were guest rooms and the large lounge with the bearskin rug; on the left what seemed to be store rooms. One wall was lined with skis.

  The sun had not yet risen above the mountain behind the lodge, and the valley stretching out in front of her was still cast in shadow. It was a beautiful morning, and she felt buoyed up by it in spite of everything.

  On the bus she quickly found Sharon’s bag, and checked that the inhaler was inside it. Through the window she could see Talib waiting for her, his eyes seemingly fixed on the valley below. He had a sad face, she thought. And an intelligent one. These were not a bunch of mindless maniacs. But was that good or bad?

  She stepped back down to the ground, and he stepped politely aside to let her pass. A minute later she was back in their room, handing over the inhaler to Sharon. For the next few minutes it was all smiles, as Sharon recovered her breath and they all shared in their small victory over adversity. But soon the basic truth of their situation reasserted itself, and Isabel found herself wondering what she could do to counter the creeping fear that seemed to be infecting them all, herself included.

  They all expressed it in different ways, of course. Elizabeth Ogley talked too much and too bitterly, and often only to herself. Alice Jennings was finding it easier to be angry than admit to herself how worried she was about her husband. Sarah Holcroft seemed to be slowly sinking into a sea of self-pity, and Brenda Walker had lost all her brisk certainty of the evening before.

  As for herself, Isabel seemed unable to counter the feeling – the ridiculous feeling – that she was paying for the transgressions in her past. Maybe her unconscious was still mired in the Catholicism of her childhood; maybe it even remembered every word of the homilies she had sat through in the small wooden church which overlooked the Beagle Channel.

  She lay on her bunk drifting through the conscious memories – the joy of leaving the heavy air of the church and emerging into a landscape of sea and sky which seemed to go on for ever.

  It felt wonderful and wrong at the same time. She levered herself up into a sitting position and started applying her mind to the problem of how to lift the collective spirits of six terrified women.

  Simon Kennedy had arrived in Samarkand at half-past two in the morning. He had not seen a single soul on the streets as he drove across town towards the missing tourists’ hotel – even the drunks had bedded down for the night. The hotel was no livelier. After parking his car, rather against his better judgement, on the street outside, Kennedy had almost needed to knock the doors down in order to raise the night receptionist. Once a room had been grudgingly found for him, the MI6 man set about determining the whereabouts of the Central Asian Tours party.

  The receptionist’s token resistance had collapsed at the sight of a ten-dollar bill. The tour party, he said, had not yet returned from Shakhrisabz. A vehicle breakdown was doubtless the cause, and there was no need for concern – his brother worked at the tourist hotel in Shakhrisabz, and it was excellent. When asked by Kennedy about the involvement of the police, the man had denied all knowledge of any such thing.

  Kennedy had phoned the lack of news to Tashkent and gone to bed, wondering if he had just driven four hundred kilometres for nothing.

  He was woken four hours later by the clamour of a pneumatic drill, and almost fell out of bed in his haste to reach the window. His car was still in one piece, but major roadworks seemed to have started all around it. Kennedy dressed hurriedly, waited three minutes for a lift that never came, and ran down the six flights of stairs to the ground floor. Ignoring the ironic jeers of the Uzbek workmen, he extricated his car from under the shadow of a bulldozer, and drove it through into the hotel’s now-open car park. In the lobby he checked that the keys to the Central Asian Tours party’s rooms were still hanging on their nails behind the reception desk. They were. And according to the sign on the dining-room door breakfast was about to be served.

  Twenty minutes later it arrived in all its neo-Soviet glory. Various cold meats with bread, jam from distant Russia, ersatz coffee courtesy of Nescafé. The only genuine Central Asian touch was a delicious glass of lassi, which almost made up for the rest. Kennedy was sitting with his second cup of appalling coffee, daydreaming about fresh Danish pastries and cappuccino, when a blonde woman walked past and took a seat at the table furthest away from him. He smiled hopefully in her direction, and she smiled back, but neither of them said anything.

  He had the vague feeling he had seen her before, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember where, and he found it hard to admit he would have forgotten anyone quite so striking. Her hair was cut fairly short – it was called an urchin cut, he thought – and she had a pixie-ish face, with a perfect small nose and mouth beneath blue eyes. There was nothing pixie-ish about her body though: she was at least five foot nine, with long legs and pronounced hips and breasts. Classic English upper class, Kennedy thought. She’d probably played hockey at Roedean.

  For all he knew she was a German or a Swede. Probably waiting for her husband to finish his morning crap and join her. Slow crappers, the Germans, but thorough.

  He had things to do, like find out if a busload of Brits had really been hijacked. He got up, gave her one last glance and found she was smiling across at him.

  Maybe she didn’t have a husband, he thought. If she was still here that evening he would have to find out.

  Annabel Silcott had a better memory for faces than Simon Kennedy. She had seen him the previous week at a party in Tashkent, and though they had not been introduced, their semi-drunken Russian host had included Kennedy in the witty thumbnail sketches of other guests which he had treated her to. ‘He’s a paradox,’ the host had said. ‘Intelligence without it.’

  So what, she idly wondered, was an Intelligence man doing in Samarkand? Probably nothing, but if by any chance he was gainfully employed, then the nature of that employment was bound to be more interesting than her current project, which was writing an article on ‘Women under Islam arou
nd the World’ for one of the Sunday tabloid colour supplements back home.

  It was not an assignment she was enjoying. All her editor really wanted were horror stories of women oppressed by the dreadful Muslims, preferably with elements of romance and bondage thrown in. A sort of modern-day sheikhs-and-harems piece, but written in a balanced, multicultural style. She had to be careful to point out how fulfilling some of these women found sexual slavery.

  Annabel didn’t much like the way Muslim men, by and large, treated their women, but then she didn’t much like the way tabloid editors treated them either. The main problem, though, was that there was nothing new to say. She could find some juicy stories – or make them up if all else failed – but no one was going to take any notice, or at least not for any more time than it took this week’s paper to become next week’s cat litter. This was not the way for her to become the next Kate Adie.

  Something to do with Intelligence work might be. Serious news, not news as soap opera. She remembered that the British and Americans were signing some sort of trade deal in Tashkent over the coming weekend. Maybe there had been an assassination threat, or something like that.

  In which case, why would Kennedy be here in Samarkand? It couldn’t be that. In fact, he was probably on holiday, and she was just indulging in wishful thinking.

  But she would make a few enquiries, just the same.

  Nurhan and Marat arrived back in Samarkand around eight-thirty. They had counted thirty-seven turn-offs between Kitab and the intersection with the Pendzhikent road just outside the city. Twenty had led east, seventeen west. None had been metalled. They had encountered only four people on the trip across the mountains, and though two of them had seen the bus heading south the previous afternoon none had seen it return.