Samarkand Hijack

by David Monnery

  The duty officer ambled back. ‘These do?’ he asked.

  Marat took one look, grabbed the small box of listening devices, and stuffed them roughly into his jacket pocket as he headed back down the corridor. On his way through the front doors he slowed sufficiently to examine his watch again. He had between ten and fifteen minutes, depending on how fast they were flying the damned machine.

  The Gur Emir was three minutes away by car, but even at this early hour the traffic was already building and his car was a block away in the wrong direction. He decided he could get there on foot in under ten.

  Marat started running, cutting across the wide boulevard and down the first side-street which ran in the general direction of the distant blue dome. It had to be less than two kilometres away, he thought, and tried to remember how long it had been since he had run anything like that distance.

  The first few hundred metres seemed surprisingly easy, and Marat was congratulating himself on being in such good shape when his breath began to grow laboured and his calf and thigh muscles started showing signs of seizing up. He pushed himself across another street, dimly aware that a passing motorist was throwing abuse in his direction, and promised himself a second visit to the NSS gym. He thanked his lucky stars he had stopped smoking.

  The dome grew slowly nearer, disappeared from view, and then, just as his legs were telling him that they could go no further, suddenly appeared only a hundred metres or so away, at the end of a cul-de-sac. He jogged towards it, clambered over the ornate stone wall which surrounded the complex, and almost stumbled through a side gate into the courtyard.

  His watch told him he had run out of time. His mind tried to work out where to place the devices. Put yourself in Nasruddin Salih’s place, Marat told himself. Where would you put the hostages? Where would you make your HQ? There were only two obvious sites for the latter. Marat started striding towards the administrative office and felt his left thigh seize up with cramp. He rubbed it a couple of times and hobbled on, trying to ignore the pain.

  The door was locked but one of the small windows had been left on a latch, slightly ajar. He reached his hand through with the self-adhesive bug and managed to clamp it above the internal window frame. There was no way of knowing how visible it was from inside the room.

  The main chamber of the mausoleum was next, and here he fixed a bug beneath the rim of Tamerlane’s cenotaph. The old man would have approved, Marat thought, and limped back outside.

  In the eastern sky a large dot was growing even larger. Marat scurried as best he could down the courtyard and across the stretch of grass in front of the mausoleum. With the drone of the helicopter now loud in his ears, he expended what felt like his final reserves of energy in almost falling over the wall, and managed to drag himself upright behind a convenient tree.

  The helicopter came down out of the still-lightening sky, and settled on the barely adequate expanse of grass in front of the Gur Emir. Chunar, who had been selected to bear word of the operation to their supporters in the city, hurried towards the rear of the complex and disappeared into the adjoining maze of streets, several days’ worth of communiqués stuffed inside his jacket pocket.

  Talib, meanwhile, had left two men guarding the hostages, ordered another to carry their supplies into the building, and gone off himself in search of the site’s caretaker. While the latter was nervously explaining which key was which on the jangling chain at his belt, Nasruddin and Akbar walked through into the courtyard. Above them the ribbed cantaloup dome seemed to almost float above the octagonal mausoleum. Nasruddin felt a sudden pang of unfocused regret.

  ‘Come, we must hurry,’ Talib said, arriving at his shoulder.

  The three men walked swiftly across to the door of the administrative office, which Talib opened with the appropriate key. Nasruddin went straight for the telephone, taking the list of news-agency numbers from his pocket as he did so.

  Meanwhile the hostages had been ordered out of the helicopter at gunpoint, and ushered in through the towering gateway. Several of them recognized where they were, having walked down to view the outside of the building on the evening of their arrival four days earlier. This time they had their guide with them, Docherty thought wryly.

  Across the courtyard they filed, and into the octagonal chamber where the world’s largest slab of jade served as Tamerlane’s cenotaph. The actual graves were in the crypt below, where tourists were not allowed to go.

  Hostages were. The ten men and women were ordered down a stone stairway into the company of Tamerlane’s bones, with only each other and a single electric light-bulb to keep them company.

  President Bakalev was woken by the bedside phone, and instantly knew something had gone wrong. He grabbed for the receiver, scattering pills and almost knocking over the glass of water. His wife groaned and turned over.

  Muratov’s report exceeded the President’s most pessimistic expectations. The zealots had taken over Tamerlane’s mausoleum! In the middle of Samarkand! How the hell could they keep a siege in the centre of the country’s second city quiet?

  They couldn’t, as Muratov soon made clear. The first couple of foreign journalists had already been on the phone to the local government press office.

  ‘Don’t give them anything,’ was Bakalev’s instinctual response.

  ‘We’ll have to give them something,’ Muratov said.

  ‘Just the basics then – a bunch of armed madmen have taken some hostages and occupied the Gur Emir. Stress what an insult this is – profaning the tomb of the Father of Uzbekistan.’

  ‘Understood,’ Muratov said drily.

  Another question occurred to Bakalev. ‘How the hell did foreign journalists get wind of this?’ he asked belligerently.

  Muratov had hoped to avoid that one. ‘The terrorists had about half an hour’s use of the phone in the Gur Emir’s administrative office before anyone thought to cut it off,’ he said.

  Bakalev looked at his bedroom ceiling and then closed his eyes. ‘They no longer have access to the outside world?’

  ‘No. Only a direct line to us.’

  ‘Well, that’s something.’ Maybe the situation could still be contained, at least for a while.

  ‘And we have listening devices in the Gur Emir,’ Muratov added. He had been saving this good news until last.

  ‘Have you heard anything?’ Bakalev asked sharply.

  ‘Not yet – we’ve only just set up the reception equipment.’

  ‘Anything else I should know?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We should be hearing their new demands soon.’

  ‘I can hardly wait.’

  In London it was almost two in the morning, but Sir Christopher Hanson had only been sleeping a short while when the call from Pearson-Jones in Samarkand was patched through to him. He listened, with a sinking sensation in his stomach, to the same news with which Muratov had woken President Bakalev.

  After replacing the receiver he lay back for a moment, before abruptly swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up. This was going to be one of those nights, he thought. When the demands were released he would have to wake up the Prime Minister. And probably Alan Holcroft, though he didn’t suppose the Foreign Minister was finding it easy to sleep these days.

  He put on his dressing-gown, walked across to the window, and looked out through the gap between the curtains. A light rain was falling on the Kensington street and a couple were walking, almost dancing, arm in arm along the opposite pavement. They stopped to look in a skip and then walked happily on, oblivious to the rain, to ageing men watching them from windows, to terrorists in fabled Samarkand.

  Lucky buggers, Hanson thought.

  ‘I think it’s time to tell them we mean business,’ Talib said, letting himself into the Gur Emir’s office. ‘There’s about two hundred soldiers out there, and one of them may take it into his head to be a hero.’

  Nasruddin nodded, and read one last time through the list of demands they had decided on the
previous evening. Then he picked up the phone and waited for the enemy to answer.

  ‘Yes?’ Muratov said, almost immediately.

  ‘Assalamu alaikam, Colonel,’ Nasruddin said cheerfully. He had come to enjoy these conversations, he thought. He didn’t think he wanted to know why.

  ‘Is the British Ambassador there with you?’

  ‘I am,’ Pearson-Jones said tightly.

  ‘The first thing I must tell you both,’ Nasruddin began, ‘is that the hostages are being held in the crypt below the mausoleum chamber, and that if any attempt is made to rescue them – or if any action whatsoever is taken against us – then one of our men is stationed by the doorway, ready to throw a grenade down the stairs.’ He allowed a slight pause before asking: ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Very,’ Muratov said quietly.

  ‘We shall consider the stone wall that surrounds the site the border between our respective territories,’ Nasruddin said. ‘Any attempt on your part to cross that line will be considered the opening move of a rescue attempt, and we shall take the appropriate action. Understood?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is written that “Whoever fights for the cause of God, whether he dies or triumphs, We shall richly reward him”.’ Nasruddin allowed himself a theatrical pause before adding: ‘So you see, we have nothing to lose here on earth.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do. I shall now read the list of our demands.’

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘One, we demand the immediate release of all political prisoners in Uzbekistan. I have a list here of two hundred and seven men and women, which can be handed to one of your men at the gate.

  ‘Two, we demand an extension of the current British blasphemy laws to cover Islam and other major religions.

  ‘Three, we demand the cancellation of the trade deal about to be signed between the governments of Uzbekistan and Britain. The people of Uzbekistan will not be sold into a world of empty pleasures and materialism.

  ‘Four, we demand payment by the British government of 500 million dollars to the Islamic Green Cross as reparation for its part in the massacre of half a million Iraqi citizens during the Gulf War.

  ‘Those are the demands. In addition, we are prepared to exchange the hostage Sarah Holcroft for the British author Salman Rushdie.

  ‘Copies of this communiqué will be circulated throughout this city and Tashkent during the rest of the day.’

  Oh shit, Muratov thought.

  ‘We expect a clear response by this time tomorrow,’ Nasruddin concluded. ‘Do you have any questions?’

  Not really, Muratov thought. These were not demands that anyone with a shred of intelligence would expect to be conceded. The bastard hadn’t even give them a real deadline – he just wanted a ‘clear response’. No, this was a media circus in the making, a week or more of publicity for the fucking Trumpet of God.

  ‘Mr Salih,’ Pearson-Jones was saying, ‘I will convey your demands in good faith to my government in London. I can even sympathize with some of them, though not of course with your methods. I am assuming you intend to release all the hostages if and when your demands are met. Might I suggest that you show good faith by releasing the two oldest hostages, both of whom must be in some danger from such a stressful situation.’

  ‘You can suggest it,’ Nasruddin said, ‘but there will be no release of any hostages until all our demands are met in full. I assure you Mr and Mrs Jennings are in good health.’

  There was silence at both ends of the line.

  Nasruddin put down the phone and looked at Talib and Akbar. ‘So far so good,’ he said.

  ‘Did they sound surprised?’ Akbar asked.

  ‘Not really. Neither of them said anything until the British Ambassador tried to start bargaining. They are already playing for time.’

  Talib grunted. ‘Of course. We know our demands are not going to be met. But time is not on their side. The question is: do they believe we will kill the hostages if they try anything?’

  ‘And what if they don’t?’ Nasruddin said. ‘They cannot take the chance that we are bluffing.’

  ‘They will try to find out whether we are or not. Probably not today, but tomorrow, or the day after. One of their soldiers might stray accidentally across the wall, or they’ll cut the phone line again, or the electricity. They’ll keep pushing. They won’t break our rules too blatantly but they’ll try to bend them.’

  ‘We have already decided what to do in that situation,’ Akbar said. ‘We must make it hard for them to find an excuse.’

  ‘And we can always choose to ignore any minor transgressions,’ Nasruddin interjected. He sat back in the chair, hands behind his head. ‘And in any case,’ he said with a smile, ‘they’ll be too busy dealing with the public outcry at their own actions. Tomorrow our second communiqué will be released, and everyone will find out how the Uzbek government was promised English gold in exchange for the Imam, and how the British government was willing to abandon all its principles just because the daughter of a minister was involved.’

  ‘That is all very well,’ Talib said, ‘but there still may come a moment when we are forced to choose between killing a hostage or surrendering the initiative. If they are not going to meet our demands, they will probably have to try something else.’

  ‘We shall just have to be vigilant,’ Akbar said. ‘What else can we do?’

  After listening in with the others to the terrorists’ conversation, Muratov left the operations van and walked the kilometre or so back to his temporary office in the NSS building. They had been given a day to formulate a ‘clear response’ to the demands, and Muratov was in no great hurry to hear Bakalev’s appreciation of the situation. Or lack of it.

  What he wasn’t ready for was the violence of the President’s temper. ‘If this is allowed to go on for days,’ Bakalev half shouted, ‘there’s no way we can keep it quiet. We shall end up looking indecisive, stupid, opportunistic, inept…you name it. Even if we manage to kill all the bastards the damage will have been done.’

  ‘So what do you want us to do?’ Muratov asked, finding a gap in the tirade.

  ‘God knows. What I’d like is for you to find a way of ending this before tomorrow morning. If the whole business lasts less than twenty-four hours then it’ll be forgotten just as quickly. The world press won’t have time to descend on us. CNN won’t have time to get their cameras here.’

  Muratov examined the back of his own hand. ‘And the hostages?’ he asked.

  ‘It’ll look better if they’re rescued,’ Bakalev said. ‘Or at least some of them. But first we need a good reason for going in, even if we have to invent one.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Muratov said.

  ‘Good,’ Bakalev said, and hung up.

  Muratov sat at the desk for several minutes, leaning back in the chair, hands behind his head, eyes shut. Then suddenly they opened, and his lips twisted into a cynical smile. He picked up the phone again, and asked the operations room to put him through to the mobile incident room. ‘I want copies of all the listening tapes sent over here,’ he told Nurhan.

  ‘So we start from scratch,’ Stoneham had said, once the van doors had closed behind Muratov and Pearson-Jones. ‘Tell us what’s over there. What’s the place called for a start?’

  ‘The Gur Emir,’ Nurhan said. ‘It means Grave of the King. Tamerlane is buried in the crypt with his son Ulug Bek and about six others.’ She passed across the floor plan which the Ancient Monuments department had sent over. ‘The crypt is under the octagonal chamber, and there’s only one entrance.’

  ‘Great,’ Brierley said sarcastically.

  As the two Englishmen examined the diagram Nurhan went through a mental checklist. Two battalions of regular troops were holding the perimeter, and it had been made clear to their commanders that no one was to even lean on the stone wall, much less cross it. Men from her own unit were currently seeking out the best available vantage-points in the area
surrounding the mausoleum complex. These would be used for general observation, but also be available for the half-dozen snipers who had been placed on standby. Two more members of her unit were sitting at the other end of the van with headphones on, listening to and recording the terrorists’ conversation.

  That had been a brilliant idea of Marat’s, she thought, and wondered where he had got to. He had been in the van five minutes earlier.

  She stretched her arms in the air. There was no more she could do, other than make contingency plans for a last-resort assault. And that, she guessed, would be days away – now that the terrorists were contained the bargaining would start in earnest. There would be no point in putting the hostages’ lives at risk through action, unless it became apparent that they were more at risk through inaction.

  There was even the building to consider. The ministries of both tourism and ancient monuments had already expressed their concern at what gunfire might do to the green alabaster tiling and blue-gold geometric panels. Blowing in the latticed windows was out of the question.

  And who knew what Tamerlane would think of it all? The words ‘If I am roused from my grave the earth will tremble’ were allegedly written on the underside of his tombstone, and the last time anyone had tried to take a peek had been 21 June 1941. The Germans had invaded the Soviet Union the following day. A grenade exploding in his crypt might cause an earthquake. Or a nuclear war somewhere.

  Her brain was addled, Nurhan thought, and for good reason – the past seventy-two hours had been decidedly light on sleep. She yawned, just as Marat reappeared with four steaming glasses of tea balanced in a cardboard box.

  ‘And he remembered the sugar,’ Stoneham said happily.

  Brierley took his glass and placed it on the floor beside the floor plan. ‘I think it’s time we got to work,’ he said.

  16

  Morning turned to afternoon, and the temperature kept rising as the sun started on its downward track. In the NSS building a retired sixty-eight-year-old Russian by the name of Alexander Kustamov was working on the tapes Muratov had given him, a nostalgic smile fixed almost permanently on his face. Two storeys above, Muratov was finishing a liquid lunch, and feeling a little sorry for himself. This was not why he had joined the Communist Party all those years ago.