by Robin Duval
Twenty minutes later, as he meandered through the sleepiest part of Ealing, where the houses were double-fronted and the cars all German, he arrived at Longfield Walk. He’d often used it as a – notional – short cut. He liked its name, its echo of the countryside as it used to be. He liked the way it slipped between high garden walls, a slim half-secret avenue for pedestrians and the occasional cyclist. It was delightfully unnecessary – the main road ran parallel to it a hundred feet to the east. Two fingers in the air to modern planning.
Usually when he passed down it in the morning, there was someone in a downstairs room at the northern end practising her vocal scales: too good for a student – a professional opera singer maybe. Today she was tacet. The solitary being within sight or earshot was a drunk slumped against a wall with a suitcase beside him, fast asleep in the sunshine.
Bryn was about halfway down when a man stepped in from the street below and stood across his path with arms akimbo.
He stopped instinctively. Immediately a door opened in the right hand wall and a second man emerged. Something about his face was familiar and in a moment of puzzled incomprehension Bryn delayed for a fatal second or two. Then just as he turned to flee, a canvas bag swept down from nowhere over his head and shoulders, straps were snapped tight round his body, and he was helpless.
He tried to shout but a hand clamped the foamy inner lining of the bag across his face so that he could scarcely breathe. He was aware of being whisked back through the wall into the garden beyond, down what must have been a service alleyway and into the boot of a waiting car. A needle came through the canvas and into his arm and after that he remembered nothing.
He awoke to complete confusion. For a while he barely had a sense of memory, let alone an inkling as to where he might be. He was like a frightened child waking in the night except there were no clues at all: no moonlight edging round the curtains, no sounds of distant traffic, footsteps on the landing. It was so pitch dark he could not at first tell if he was indoors or out.
The first thing he identified was a smell of urine; and he discovered that his jeans were wet with it. His shoulder ached – bruised, he supposed – and when he tried to stand up both knees crumpled beneath him. The floor was unlike any he had ever walked on before. As he sprawled across it, he could feel with his fingers a soft, undulating, pitted surface like a beach after the tide had withdrawn. He crawled along until he bumped into a wall; and followed it round in an attempt to establish the shape and size of the place he was in. A room perhaps twelve feet by twelve. Everything in it was padded.
A door slammed open. A silhouetted figure in boots, tuckedin trousers and loose shirt stood in the space; then he was gone, the door slammed shut again behind him. Followed by a terrible blaring cacophony – music louder than he had ever heard and, of all things, Wagner.
A bank of ceiling arc lights crashed on. He could feel their heat; and the brightness was so intense that even when he squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with his hands he could still see the pink outline of his fingers. The noise, meantime, was equally intolerable. He had to settle in the end for a crouched position with his head against the floor and his thumbs deep in his ears.
The door burst open again and two men rushed in and whipped his hands from his head, cuffed them behind his back and rammed a heavy baton between his elbows. And began to shake him and shake him and shake him. One on either side each holding an end of the baton with gloved hands. Wrenching him rapidly back and forth until he had no idea which was the most unbearable: the excruciating pains rushing up his spine, the surging headache and gagging dry vomit, or the certainty that if this continued much longer he would surely die. He caught a brief glimpse of their faces – or that part of their faces visible between their heavy ear-defenders and black-lensed industrial goggles – but he could not this time mistake the dark and aquiline features of the Mediterranean.
He passed out.
When he came to he was alone again, lying in a doll-like heap. He made a vague effort to raise his head and one of the tormentors instantly returned with a hessian sack and threw it over him. The pain of the past half hour had begun to abate but also sufficiently to make him more acutely aware of the new ordeal. He tried to shut out any sense of what the sack must contain: horse manure, dog crap, human faeces – but shit by any other name. He choked and gagged and vomited. The more he tried to shake the monstrous object off his head, the more it clung to him. He could not breathe. He could only, and almost with relief, weep.
Someone eventually came into the room and pulled the sack off. A hand – almost tenderly – wiped the mess from his face and dropped it in a bucket, and passed it to someone else for removal. His wrists were unshackled and the baton put aside. He was now wholly unrestrained but, when he tried to stand or move, his limbs folded up as if they were jelly. His hands and fingers had become a twitching collection of pins and needles. He fell sprawling to the padded floor; and lay there.
‘So you’ll tell us everything now, will you?’ said the man and Bryn nodded.
He realised that he recognised the voice.
‘I know you,’ he said fatuously.
‘Of course you do,’ said the man, amiably. ‘We shared a table in the Volcanic Park last month, did we not?’
The hikers. Walking the Pacific Crest Trail; flirting with the ladies from Sacramento; quizzing him about his intentions.
‘You can still call me Eyal. Though that’s not my name. Any more than yours is Hathrill. You don’t make a very good spy, whoever you are. You didn’t even recognise me this morning, did you?’
Bryn nodded again. Even a tiny movement was painful.
‘But there are many things about your involvement in this affair which puzzle us. You will be helping us, won’t you?’
Another nod.
The other man returned. Again Bryn realised, with a sigh of despair, that it was a familiar face. The little photographer in the restaurant in Bayreuth. The cameraman in Pitshanger Park. And Eyal, or whoever the first one was, was probably the student he’d seen sitting on the fallen log, setting this whole thing up on the phone.
‘Let’s get down to business,’ said Eyal, and gave a hand signal to his companion. The other grabbed one of Bryn’s wrists and pressed it inwards in an agonising lock. Bryn gasped.
‘It’s not necessary,’ he whispered.
‘Well, we shall see,’ said Eyal.
‘All we need,’ he continued, ‘is for you to tell us everything you know about the isotope. Who your contacts are, where it is now, what plans have been made, where you meet. You understand that?’
Bryn nodded again.
‘Let’s start with who you’re working with.’
Out of the fear and pain some small clarity was emerging. It must have been Eyal he had passed climbing the cliff path out of Yosemite, and whom he’d seen later under the Douglas firs at the summit. And it followed that if Eyal’s group had been onto him from such an early stage, it could only have been because of his Bayreuth dinner with Strange.
In which case, he guessed he was one on a whole list of Strange contacts, all under surveillance. Networks of agents searching for the isotope. What a chilling affirmation of the monster’s power.
And they might have lost interest in him if he’d not stumbled upon Sidney Stratton’s body. And run into Strange outside the Opera House. By the same token, they might know nothing at all about Marcus – always absent from these conjunctions – and almost nothing about Agnete. Nor should they. Ever.
He considered trying to bluff it out. Explain his association with Strange on the entirely truthful basis that no business was ever involved. Purely social acquaintance and a mutual interest in opera. He was an innocent member of the general public. Then he remembered Eyal’s earlier comment about his identity. Eyal knew about the false passport. How could he explain that?
The cameraman tightened his wrist lock and Bryn gasped.
‘I think the man you want is called Udell Stra
nge,’ he whispered.
‘You’re working with him?’
The pain again seemed to clarify Bryn’s mind.
‘I have done.’
‘In what kind of way?’
‘I… I… shift currency around for him. And drugs. I’m a bagman.’
‘A bagman, are you? What was the last job you did for him?’
‘Cocaine. I took some cocaine through to London.’
‘Through Heathrow?’
‘Carry-on baggage. No problem with Customs.’
‘You paid them off?’
‘That’s right.’
Eyal nodded to the other man and he released Bryn’s wrist and left the room.
‘You’re not taking us seriously, are you?’ said Eyal quietly.
‘Of course I am.’
‘Because you’ve never worked for Udell Strange in your life. You’ve met him twice and we have a full record of both those meetings. You have been working for someone else. And we need to know who it is.’
The cameraman returned, this time carrying what appeared to be a stretcher, which he placed full length on the floor of the room. No one spoke. Bryn was hauled to his feet and slung face upwards on top of the device, and bound at the shoulders, hips and ankles with heavy straps. One end of the stretcher was raised so that his head was a foot or so below his heels. The whole assembly – wood struts, canvas, straps – had been soaked with water and was ice-cold.
Eyal looked down on him.
‘If we cannot trust you to tell the truth,’ he said, ‘maybe we should give you a cleansing bath.’
‘Wash his mouth out with soap and water,’ said the other, in a thick Germanic accent.
‘I’m sure you know what awaits you,’ said Eyal. ‘Something we learned from the American Department of Homeland Security. Just to remind you… we apply water to a cloth which is lowered over your nose and mouth. If that is insufficient incentive, we pour more water from this large watering can, from a distance of twelve or twenty-four inches above your face. This we will do for about half a minute. At that point we may allow you to catch your breath – two or three full draughts should be enough – before we start the whole cycle again. The back of your throat will seize up. You will believe you are drowning. Oh yes. Your chest will heave – people are even known to break their ribs against the canvas straps. Your lungs and your sinuses will be on fire. Do you want me to continue?’
‘No,’ said Bryn.
‘Then tell me who you are working for.’
‘MI6.’
‘Oh really. Give him a drink, Feivel.’
The cloth was lowered over his face and, after an interval, he heard the water begin to trickle onto it from the watering can. He had sufficient time to take a massive breath, reckoning he could last forty-five seconds, perhaps a minute. But a minute and more passed and still the water flowed, and continued to flow, till his head and lungs were on the point of explosion. But when he could hang on no longer and tried to gasp for air, the cloth had become as impermeable as cellophane. He could feel his lungs collapsing. He struggled to cough and retch and every muscle of his body screamed in spasm – until a great dark cloud began to gather around him and the agony receded and faded away and he knew that he was dying.
The cloth had fallen from his face. He was conscious for a long time before he felt able to open his eyes. On the periphery of his vision a couple of figures were standing in the opened door of the chamber. One, probably Eyal, was talking to someone very quietly. He looked as though he was holding a small mobile to his ear.
Both men went away and the door was closed. Bryn attempted to lift an arm but the slightest movement shot him back into his valley of pain. If anything, his hips were the most aflame – all that convulsive twisting against the straps. As for the straps themselves, they now lay on the floor around him, each in its own little pool of water.
The ceiling lights were on, but dimmer now. Wagner still played – quietly – through the loudspeakers in the walls. He could even recognise the work. The composer’s last opera, Parsifal, slow and relentless – a five hour fable about an innocent fool out of his depth in the real world. He would not care if he never heard Wagner again as long as he lived.
Eyal came back into the room. He was carrying a long hypodermic syringe filled with some yellow liquid. This was it. He had no strength, and scarcely any will, to oppose him.
The Israeli rolled up Bryn’s left sleeve and – very professionally – rubbed up a vein with his thumb. Bryn could barely feel the tip of the needle as it sank in.
‘Is it all over now?’ he asked. ‘Is this what you guys call a termination?’
Eyal glanced up at him and smiled.
‘No,’ he murmured. ‘Kill a friend of Marcus’s? Never.’
Chapter 18
The first thing he saw was the fox. Probably a teenager: slender and delicate, with a tail hardly bushier than a cat’s. It stood a couple of feet away, staring at him with unblinking amber eyes. A black streak swept back along each side of its slim snout, luring Bryn’s gaze towards two bat-like ears, forward-swivelled as if to focus all of the creature’s hypnotic force upon him.
He gazed at the fox. The fox gazed at him.
Eventually he must have moved slightly, because the creature skipped back, like a fallen leaf caught in a gust of wind, and drew its head back towards its shoulders in darkest suspicion.
‘Hi,’ he said.
The young animal turned away and trotted off down an avenue of oak and horse chestnut trees; and Bryn turned reluctantly to the business of exploring his body and his environment.
He was out in the open air and soaking wet. The ground beneath was greasy but hard and flat. He had been dumped within the curve of a decaying log screened off on three sides by a tangle of brambles and ivy. The moon and the stars were so clear and bright, and the night so silent, that he thought at first he was somewhere in the English countryside. But a few yards away he could make out some low railings and a municipal children’s playground. He was back where the horror show had started. In Pitshanger Park. In Ealing.
He could not get up. Even dragging an arm around for support required an effort of will. The sudden shift of balance rolled him onto his face and he lay helplessly with his mouth full of dirt and grass. His head ached; the pressure of ribs and hips against the hard clay made him gasp with pain. But a little strength was beginning to seep back. Sufficient to lever his body onto the ivy-smothered log and settle for a few moments into a pain-free sitting position. In the light of a full moon as bright as a winter day, he craned his head left and right until he was certain that he was quite alone. Even the fox had disappeared.
His brain began to spin with a wild relief. Dying and returning to life! He could hardly breathe for the elation. And yet, after all he’d been through, how bizarre to rejoice. Had he really died, he’d have been no less content. It seemed as rational as a man acclaiming his good fortune for escaping from bad; or praising the Almighty for delivering him from an Act of God. He must pull himself together.
The first priority was to make an itemisation of what he’d been left with. He forced his trembling fingers into the pockets of his jacket. He could feel a wallet still, stuffed and bulky: money, credit cards and driving licence for Hathrill, even the fake passport. A pair of spectacles in the top pocket. Handkerchief and change. Notebook. Keys. They’d not even taken the keys. Did they have time to copy them; or had they no longer any use for them?
He tried to stand up. His limbs were still shaky, but already becoming stronger. A more commonsense mood was beginning to replace the early adrenalin. Whatever he might fear, what he needed was a bed. Change out of his cold and soaking clothes. Sleep.
Covering the quarter of a mile home through the empty streets turned out a labour of Hercules. It was slightly uphill from the river, but as tiring as the Yosemite cliff climb. Every few minutes he found himself obliged to sit on a dustbin or a garden wall, and wait for energy to return to his flat-l
ining batteries. The last block was the hardest and it was the fear of discovery and recapture that chiefly drove him on. On the inside of Dieter’s front door were two chains, plus a bolt and a night-latch; and he slapped on every one.
He slept through till next evening. Even when he awoke he had no desire to leave his bed. Every muscle, from his neck to his ankles, ached. He could move around alright, take himself to the toilet for a trickling pee, eat some fruit or cheese from the fridge; but the effort soon exhausted him and he shuffled back again to bed. His second sleep lasted into the following morning.
He had been out of touch with the news for two full days. Long enough for another major development in world events. All the news channels were buzzing with speculation following the shockingly unexpected death of the American Vice President. A widower, he had recently remarried a much younger woman whose glamour and vitality had – by all accounts – reinvigorated him politically and physically. The circumstances of his death were still obscure. The strongest rumour was that Vice President Flaxman had expired while engaged in some unusually energetic marital activity – the details of which of course could not be shared with the daybreak audience.
The wider implications were serious. With the rising threat of war in the Middle East, the President had become very dependent upon her VP for his reassuringly macho presence in the White House. Without him she was exposed. A one-time pacifist, she had never been persuasive in the role of commander-in-chief, as national opinion polls persistently reflected.
Some of the media speculation concerned Flaxman’s successor. One candidate, a retiring four-star general fresh from a successful conclusion to yet another campaign in Afghanistan, was the subject of a blog and twitter campaign to draft him into the post. In the view of a breakfast pundit, commenting live by satellite from Washington, public opinion might make it impossible for the President to resist his appointment. In the meantime, her – apparently – grief-stricken withdrawal from public view and refusal to address either the VP issue or the Middle East crisis had created a political vacuum, which was being vigorously occupied by her opponents.