Samarkand Hijack

by David Monnery

  ‘How about a bath before we report in?’ Marat suggested.

  ‘Why not?’ she agreed. The chance to change into something more suitable would be worth any slight delay in re-establishing their claim to lead this investigation.

  She dropped him outside his apartment building – a grey Russian block on what used to be Engels Street – and drove back across to her flat in the Old Town. The water supply was acting up again, but she managed to bathe herself in two inches’ worth, and then selected a pair of loose-fitting black trousers and a kaftan-style blouse to wear. The latter was loose enough for her to carry the SIG-Sauer P226 automatic concealed in the small of her back.

  Marat was waiting by the kerb when she returned to pick him up, wearing what she hoped was another white shirt – it looked crumpled enough to be the old one – and dark-blue trousers.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’ she asked.

  ‘About two years. Since I separated from my wife,’ he added, as if that provided a more accurate dating.

  ‘Where’s she?’

  He looked at her with a wry smile. ‘You do enjoy asking questions, don’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’m just curious. You don’t have to answer.’

  ‘She and the children are in an apartment on Mirshazapova. An expensive apartment.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had children.’ They were approaching the NSS building.

  ‘I’m not sure I do any more,’ he said, reaching for the door handle.

  They found Hamza Zhakidov in the position they had left him, sitting behind his desk. The tiredness in his face and the still made-up camp-bed against one wall suggested he had spent all night at the office. Or maybe he had been home to the delectable Susha, Marat thought cynically.

  They told him what they had discovered – or rather not discovered – since calling in from Shakhrisabz.

  ‘So what’s your guess?’ Zhakidov asked them.

  ‘The mountains,’ they said almost as one voice.

  ‘We need to take a helicopter up there and have a look,’ Nurhan argued.

  Zhakidov looked at her doubtfully. ‘Have you any idea where to start looking?’

  ‘We’ll do some research first,’ Marat said. ‘Have a look at the map and see what the possibilities are. Then work out a search plan to cover the most likely places.’

  Zhakidov nodded. ‘OK, do it. But make sure you keep in contact.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In about seventy-five minutes we should be hearing from the terrorists.’

  6

  According to Docherty’s watch it was almost nine o’clock. The atmosphere in the men’s room was better than it had been two hours earlier, largely, he suspected, for the simple reason that they had been fed. It had not exactly been a feast, but it was better than Docherty had expected – the bread was only slightly stale, the tea highly refreshing, and he had always liked his yoghurt on the sour side anyway. Whoever the terrorists were, there was nothing sadistic in the way they were treating their hostages.

  And everyone had managed to use the bathroom, showing exemplary restraint in the amount of water they used.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that Sam Jennings seemed to be having trouble with his heart. Docherty knew that the sheer stress of such situations tended to create particular medical problems, and that the cardiovascular system was one of the main areas at risk. The respiratory system, as he unwisely told Mike Copley, was another. Sharon was apparently prone to asthma attacks.

  Sam Jennings himself said there was nothing to worry about. ‘Who’s the doctor here?’ he asked indignantly. ‘I’m going to outlive these bastards if it’s the last thing I do.’

  Docherty hoped it wouldn’t be, and not just for Sam Jennings’s sake. For one thing, a doctor was always useful to have around. For another, there was no telling how the hijackers would react to the death of one of their hostages. They would, after all, be blamed for it.

  In the meantime, Copley had been pacing up and down the room for several minutes. He had started off making jokes about Colditz and Porridge, and was always ready with a grin, but left to its own devices his face settled into the grim mask it was wearing now. Some people used humour to keep them going, Docherty thought, while others used emotionalism. He preferred the former – it was kinder on the others involved.

  The initial shock was wearing off, he realized. Now everyone was getting a bit restless. Maybe this was the time for him to give his version of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing lecture on hostage situations and how to survive them. Always assuming he could remember any of it.

  Flexibility, adaptability…

  At that moment the sliding panel on the door jerked back. ‘Stand back,’ the familiar voice said, and almost immediately the door opened inwards. ‘Exercise time,’ the man with the AK47 said, gesturing with the gun for them to leave the room.

  Everyone looked at Docherty, who said: ‘Let’s go.’ If the hijackers wanted to shoot them, they could do so a lot more easily where they were.

  The man with the gun pointed him back down the corridor they had used the previous evening, and the eight males walked in single file towards the centre of the lodge, where they took the right turn, which led to the front entrance. Docherty tried repressing his hope that the women might already be outside, but the sense of disappointment could hardly have been more acute when he discovered they were not.

  Instead there was only the natural beauty of the mountains that rose up behind the lodge and reached out on either side to enclose it. By daylight it was clear that the lodge stood at the head of a west-facing valley, almost a bay, that was gouged from the side of the range. Ahead of him wooded mountainsides sloped away into brown foothills, which in turn tumbled down to a distant yellow-brown plain.

  It was a beautiful place for a prison, he thought.

  No one had told them where they could walk, but the four armed men positioned on the corners of the rectangular space in front of the lodge seemed to offer a pretty good clue. Docherty recognized the man who had answered to the name Talib on the bus, and walked slowly towards him, making sure that both his hands were visible to the hijacker. He stopped when still five metres away.

  ‘Can I ask a question?’ he said.

  The man looked at him impatiently. ‘No speak English,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Do any of the others speak English?’ Docherty asked, pointing at each of the other three men in turn.

  ‘No speak English,’ Talib said again. He seemed almost amused, Docherty thought. Maybe he did speak English.

  It was more than frustrating, almost like a slap in the face. It made him feel impotent, and reminded him of the way he had always felt as a young man, when girlfriends retreated into silence in the middle of a fight.

  He turned away from Talib, so as not to show the angry frustration he was feeling. The man who had let them out of the room, and who at least knew the words ‘stand back’ and ‘exercise’, was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Nasruddin, whose English was as good as his own. Probably better, if you liked the BBC version.

  This was policy, Docherty realized. Someone had done their homework on hostage situations, and decided on a policy of minimal communication between hostage-takers and hostages. That was depressing enough in itself, since often the communication between the two was instrumental in saving the latter’s lives. But it was also depressing in what it said about the prospects for a successful negotiation to end this business. These men did not seem likely to fold, and presumably the Uzbek government would have little more reason to make concessions. Not unless the British government was putting pressure on them, and everyone knew their policy on giving in to terrorism.

  Except, he suddenly realized, that this time one of their own was caught up in the net. A cynic would expect that to make a difference. He supposed he should hope it wouldn’t, but to hell with that – they needed all the help they could get.

  A cynic might also think that the Zahids were prostrating themselve
s on the ground as a way of demonstrating their Islamic credentials. Or maybe they were praying for a rescue mission.

  It suddenly occurred to Docherty that with Sarah Holcroft among the hostages his old regiment might be brought into this. Now there was a thought…He started scouring the horizon for suitable places to put an observation point. The SAS could hardly be here yet, but by this time tomorrow…

  He noticed for the first time that the others were just standing idly around, and walked across to join them. ‘We should be keeping moving,’ he urged them. ‘There’s no way of knowing how long it’ll be before they let us out again.’

  ‘You should write a book,’ Ogley said sarcastically, but he accompanied the other three as they began circumnavigating the available space.

  Docherty asked the American how he was.

  ‘I’ve been better,’ Sam said, ‘but I’ll be OK.’

  ‘What did you ask the guard?’ Copley asked.

  ‘I asked if I could ask a question. The answer was no. He said he didn’t speak English, but I think they’ve decided to keep contact to a minimum.’

  ‘Why?’ Copley wanted to know.

  ‘Ever heard of the Stockholm Syndrome?’ Docherty asked. ‘Well, it was named after something that happened in Sweden, oh, about twenty years ago now. A man tried to hold up a bank, but the police arrived too quickly for him to get away, so he gathered together about half a dozen hostages and holed up in the bank’s vault. They were there for six days. And during that time a bond developed between the man and his hostages. A practical bond which seemed completely crazy to those who weren’t directly involved. They stood guard for him when he slept, and protected him with their bodies when he surrendered, just in case the police were feeling trigger-happy. One of the women hostages fell in love with him, and married him later in prison.

  ‘I guess it’s easier to see why he co-operated with them than the other way round. In some ways they were in the same sort of situation as a pet would be towards its owner – utterly dependent – and some psychologists reckon people do regress when they feel that powerless…’

  ‘Jesus, are we going to start getting up on our hind legs and begging for dog biscuits?’

  ‘Probably. I guess the other side of the equation is the important one for us to worry about. The hostage-taker in Stockholm ended up being unable to harm his hostages for the simple reason that they had become real human beings to him.’

  ‘And you think that’s what these people are trying to avoid?’

  Docherty shrugged. ‘Maybe. On the other hand they could just be rotten linguists. But any chance we get to talk, we should. Even the odd smile will help.’

  Nurhan and Marat stood shoulder to shoulder over the 1:250,000 scale map of Kashkadar’inskaya Oblast, studying the mosaic of unmade tracks in the areas to either side of the Samarkand – Shakhrisabz road.

  ‘There’s nothing up there,’ Marat muttered.

  ‘What did you expect – a new housing estate? There’s a hell of a lot of caves.’

  ‘OK, so where do we start? This map doesn’t seem to have a symbol for caves large enough to hide a bus in.’

  She sighed. ‘Christ knows.’

  ‘Well, I vote for following that first track outside Kitab. It was the only one on that side of the mountain with definite tyre marks.’

  ‘The other tracks weren’t so dusty. But OK, it’s as good a place as any.’

  Marat looked for it on the map. ‘It’s not marked,’ he decided. ‘Unless this is it,’ he added, pointing out a track which wound its way up a steep valley and abruptly ended. ‘But there’s no sign of the fork we came to.’

  ‘These maps are hopeless,’ she said. ‘In the old days all they cared about were the border areas. They got them right.’

  ‘It’s all we’ve got,’ he said, rolling it up. ‘Let’s go.’

  It took them fifteen minutes to reach the airport, where the Ka-26 helicopter was waiting for them, the contra-rotating rotors hanging limp above the squat fuselage. Its blond Russian pilot was morosely smoking a cigarette on the cab running board of a fuel tanker nearby. Marat showed him their destination.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘A bus,’ Nurhan said shortly.

  ‘There are plenty of those in the city.’

  ‘Ha ha. Let’s get moving.’

  The pilot grinned and ushered them aboard. Almost instantly, it seemed, they were rising swiftly into the sky, Samarkand laid out in its bowl beneath them, the blue domes sparsely scattered across the brown city, like cornflowers in a desert.

  After their walk in the mountain air the room seemed almost unbearably stuffy. ‘I’m sticking to my shirt already,’ Copley complained, ‘and it’s not even ten o’clock. I think hijackers should be obliged to provide fresh underwear on a daily basis.’

  ‘They could put it in the Geneva Convention,’ Sam Jennings agreed. The American seemed better, Docherty thought. The colour in his cheeks was back to normal.

  ‘It’s a serious point though,’ the Scot said. ‘In these conditions we’re not going to be able to stay as clean as we’d like, but it is important we keep ourselves as clean as we can.’ He stopped, thinking that he sounded like a preacher. Everyone was looking at him, including the Zahids. Docherty found them harder to read than the others, particularly the two older men. The young men seemed to have bounced back from the initial shock with typical adolescent bravado.

  ‘I’ve done courses in how to deal with situations like this,’ Docherty went on, ‘though mostly from the point of view of those outside the situation. Still, I picked up a few tips on the way which might come in useful. So…’

  ‘Enlighten us, Doc,’ Copley said with a grin.

  Docherty grinned back. ‘Most of it’s common sense. The basic thing is to keep active and keep flexible, both mentally and physically. We have to keep ourselves as together as we can. That means eating whatever food they give us, whether it tastes like what we’re used to or not. It means wiping our arses whichever way we can, and not freaking out at the absence of toilet paper. It means accepting that we’re not going to get a nice hot bath each day, and not using that fact as an excuse to get slovenly. We’re in a situation where we’re denied all respect from the rest of the world, so we have to get it from ourselves and each other.

  ‘The same thing goes for our minds. We have to keep them active, one way or another. For a start, how many books do we have?’

  ‘One guide book,’ Copley said.

  ‘A biography of Tamerlane,’ Sam Jennings volunteered.

  ‘Nothing,’ Ogley admitted.

  ‘A Koran,’ Ali Zahid said with a smile. ‘But in Urdu, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Last year’s Wisden,’ Javid said.

  ‘OK. So by the end of this we should all be experts in something. How about paper and pens? I have one ballpoint.’

  There were three others, one of which had already succumbed to the heat.

  ‘We can play word games,’ Docherty said. ‘We can make a draught-board and pieces. We can argue about which footballers or cricketers are the best who ever played. We can write tortured poetry. Anything is better than sitting around wondering what’s happening in the world outside. Our chances of influencing the authorities are non-existent, and our chances of influencing this lot outside are not much better. But even given that, like I said before, we shouldn’t miss any chance we get of making human contact with these men. Though it’s wise to keep in mind the old saw about not discussing religion or politics.’

  He paused for a moment. ‘I don’t want to scare anyone, but just remember that even a split second’s hesitation – that split second most people seem to need before they can open fire on someone they know – might save your life in the event of a rescue attempt…’

  ‘What are the chances of one?’ Sam Jennings asked.

  Docherty shrugged. ‘Most situations like this end in either the terrorists’ surrender or an attack by the authorities.
If it comes to the second, then remember, get down on the floor and stay there. In these situations more hostages have been killed by the authorities than by their captors, and nearly always because they’ve stood up when they shouldn’t.’

  ‘We should try and tell the women,’ Copley said.

  ‘They should already know,’ Docherty said. ‘I think Brenda Walker works for Intelligence, so…’

  ‘Looking after Sarah Holcroft,’ Ogley said. ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘Well, it never occurred to me,’ Copley admitted. ‘She seemed kind of nice.’

  In the women’s room things had slowly improved over the last few hours. Isabel, with help from Brenda Walker, had bullied the others into talking with each other. They were not the most homogeneous of groups, in age, class or interests, but once started, the conversation, like a ball on a downhill slope, had just kept rolling.

  Sarah Holcroft, rather nervously for someone with her tabloid reputation, had suggested that the four married women tell the story of how they met their husbands, and before anyone could object Alice Jennings had launched into the tale of how she had met Sam nearly sixty years earlier, in New York’s Central Park. She had slipped when getting off her horse on the famous old carousel, and he had grandly come forward, parting the crowd with the words ‘Make way – I’m a doctor.’ In matter of fact he had only just entered medical school, but her ankle had only been slightly sprained, and they had even managed to go out dancing the same night.

  Sharon’s account of meeting Mike was not quite so romantic. They had met when Sharon was asked to sing with a Coventry-based punk band called The Hump. Mike was the drummer. ‘He had a Mohican then,’ Sharon said, ‘and I thought what a dipstick! I still do sometimes. Anyway, we sort of started talking to each other a lot about my boyfriends and his girlfriends, and then one day we just started kissing each other. Just like that. It was weird. But nice.’

  Isabel had half expected Elizabeth Ogley to decline to take part in this sharing of personal histories, but the lecturer seemed more than willing. ‘It was a very sixties meeting,’ she said drily. ‘A party in Ladbroke Grove in the summer of ’68. I was lying stoned out of my mind on one of the beds upstairs listening to a Cream record coming through the floor. This guy was sitting on the floor with his back to the bed telling me about the demonstration he had been on that day, and how “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” was a modern mantra. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew he was on the bed beside me with his hand inside my bra. And the next thing after that he was pulling himself out, apologizing for coming too soon, and promising that he would do better next time.’ Elizabeth grimaced. ‘So it started with a lie,’ she said matter-of-factly. Then her face softened momentarily. ‘But it hasn’t been all bad,’ she said.