by Tony Park
‘Yes, maybe that would be a good idea.’
‘We can take the plane, perhaps fly to Mozambique or even Zanzibar for a few days. I’d love to show you the beach, the place where I grew up. I’ll sort some things out here later today. You go get squared away on your side of the river and I’ll call you with the details tomorrow.’
Miranda did not call or email Chris Wallis and tell her Hassan was taking her to Mozambique. Her decision to keep the journey a secret flouted everything Chris had told her about the need to keep her informed of her movements, and of Hassan’s.
They took off for Mozambique in Hassan’s Cessna the following day. Miranda was concerned that they had not filled out any customs or immigration clearances in either Zimbabwe, for her, or Zambia, for him. Also, when they landed at the coastal town of Inhambane in Mozambique there was no sign of border officials and Hassan made no attempt to find them. He seemed to treat Africa as his personal playground.
‘We’re doing nothing illegal, Miranda, not running guns or drugs! Who cares if we fly over a couple of border posts?’
Miranda’s worries about Hassan’s disregard for international law melted away over a holiday cocktail of cold beers, grilled lobsters and the warm azure waters of the Indian Ocean. Hassan had booked two rooms at the four-star coastal resort, but after dinner and dancing Miranda lingered outside his door.
The kiss was meant to be goodnight, but it was the first time their lips had met and neither of them wanted the moment to end. Miranda found herself hungry for Hassan and opened her mouth to him.
She let him lead her into his room, raised her arms as he lifted her top over her head, ran her fingers through his dark hair as he freed her breasts from her bra, and tumbled backwards onto his bed as he moved between her legs.
Afterwards, when she returned to Zimbabwe, she was too racked with guilt over her secret love and the pleasure he had given her to tell her CIA controller about the affair. When she met with Chris in person she let on nothing about her blossoming relationship with the man who was her target, or her illegal trip into a neighbouring country. Miranda became very good at concealing the truth.
After Miranda returned to Zimbabwe, she and Hassan made love every time she crossed the river to visit him. She had given up trying to find information to incriminate him and she was satisfied there was nothing more she could discover about Iqbal. Chris had seemed impressed and pleased with her discovery of the telephone number, however, which turned out to have the international dialling prefix for Pakistan.
‘We’ll track this number down. I’m betting that it’s brother Iqbal on the end of that line and, if it is, there will be a lot of people interested in following this up. You’ve done a good job, Miranda,’ Chris said.
Two weeks after her visit to South Africa Miranda was in Hassan’s lodge when he surprised her with an invitation to fly to Zanzibar, to see the island where he had grown up. They would leave the next morning. They crossed the river in a rush, gathered some travel clothes and left everything else locked. There was no time to email or call Chris – not that Miranda would have anyway. She felt guilty, but she also realised her double, double life excited her, maybe even aroused her.
On the boat, off the coast of Zanzibar, Hassan told her of the death of his brother in combat in Afghanistan.
‘It’s amazing what you can find on the net,’ he said to her. ‘A friend called me in Zambia and alerted me to a feature article in a magazine about the death of a wanted terrorist. The action happened on the day my brother was killed. The American Special Forces team that killed him took along a wire service reporter with them. The man who killed my brother, who saved the reporter, is identified only by his Christian name, Jed. That’s your father’s name, isn’t it, Miranda?’
She swallowed hard and felt the instant perspiration on her hands, the pounding of a vein in her neck. ‘It could have been anyone, Hassan.’ She realised now the stupidity of opening up to him as they shared their life stories in the way that new lovers do.
‘It said in the article that this brave American soldier was more scared for the safety of his daughter, who was researching lions in Africa, than he was for his own wellbeing.’
‘No!’
‘The story speculates that the terrorist targeted in this raid was located by scanners that tracked his satellite phone signal. You liked my satellite phone so much, didn’t you, Miranda? The day I caught you looking at it you said you wanted to upgrade. But when I checked your tent – yes, I crossed the river while you were playing with my cheetahs – I found that you had an American military tactical satellite system in your tent, along with various other sophisticated surveillance toys. I don’t know any wildlife researchers in the world who would use their funding to buy a communications system that is designed for soldiers and spies to send encrypted messages.’
‘Hassan, it’s not what you think. I can explain everything.’
‘You don’t need to explain, Miranda. It’s very simple. You hurt me, and now I want to hurt you. I tried the other day, when I fucked you like a whore.’
‘Hassan, please, don’t do this,’ she begged.
‘But you enjoyed it, didn’t you? Moaned like a bitch in heat when I used you. It must have been as easy for you to play the virtuous little academic as it was the slut. Did the CIA teach you how to fuck as well as how to spy, Miranda?’
She backed away from him, tried not to think about her shame and to come up with a way to escape.
‘Forget it, Miranda. There’s nowhere to go on this boat. No one knows you’re here. You and your father were doing your duty. Now, at long last, I must do my duty, to my brother. I would say that your father has every reason to be more concerned for your safety than his.’ Hassan drew the dart gun, pointed it at her and pulled the trigger.
In the all-consuming darkness of the coffin, Miranda started to cry.
Chapter 25
The adrenaline surged through Hassan bin Zayid’s veins as he piloted the open-top Land Rover at high speed over a bump that caused all four wheels to leave the ground.
Iqbal would have been so proud of his work, he thought. ‘You will be avenged,’ he said aloud to himself. The rear of the vehicle skidded and Hassan wrestled with the steering to keep the four-byfour on the corrugated track. He ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch, taking heart from the fact that the bough indicated he was once more close to the bush camp. He turned off the engine as he crested a low rise and coasted down the opposite slope towards the Zambezi. He stopped the vehicle a hundred metres from the camp.
There was a light breeze from the river and he smelled the lingering remains of acrid smoke. He had heard the low crump of the exploding grenade as he waited with the surface-to-air missile for the rescue helicopter he knew would come. He smiled at his own cleverness. Nonetheless, he moved slowly and cautiously as he approached the camp. The American would probably come back here looking for him but, while Hassan had taken the longer route back to the camp by land, he doubted his enemies would have organised themselves in time to return just yet. Hassan heard a softly whistled bird call and froze in his tracks. Juma dropped from the branch of the tree above him, landing with the grace and surefootedness of a leopard.
‘Two of them came, boss. One black, one white. The African opened the door of the hut and the grenade caught him.’ Juma smiled as he relayed the story.
‘Killed?’
‘Wounded, but bad I think. Either way, he is one less to worry about.’
‘But they came quickly. That means they are onto us. I see they haven’t disturbed the coffins.’
When Juma had collected Hassan from the airstrip they had driven to the bush camp, with Miranda sealed in her coffin, alive but still drugged and on oxygen. They had buried her in the pit prepared by the African. It was a time-consuming but necessary part of Hassan’s plot. He realised that with only him and Juma to execute the mission on the ground they would need a totally secure area in which to hold their captives during
the operation. The coffins had seemed appropriate, not only for transporting Miranda and the surface-to-air missiles into mainland Tanzania, but also for hiding the hostages. If he and Juma had been killed during the inevitable rescue mission, which had arrived on cue after the general’s plane was shot down, Calvert and Miranda would have slowly died in their wooden cells as their oxygen ran out. Whatever happened, the world would be rid of a military enemy of Islam and the bitch who had betrayed Hassan.
After capturing Calvert they had returned to the camp by boat and buried the general in the other box on top of Miranda’s coffin and then covered him up before heading back down the river, by vehicle, to ambush the helicopter. Hassan’s head told him that the reason for keeping Miranda alive, and not killing her outright, was so the organisation could use her as a second bargaining chip, in addition to Calvert. But in his heart, he knew he wanted to prolong her suffering, and exact his revenge on her, mentally and physically, over time.
‘No, boss, they didn’t find where the hostages were buried. But they found the shovel. I should not have left it out.’
Hassan nodded in agreement, noticing the spade against the wall of the hut. ‘It doesn’t matter. Soon we’ll be gone. Dig them up.’
‘One more thing, boss.’
‘What is it, Juma? We can’t waste time.’
‘The white man, boss …’
‘Yes?’
‘It was the father of Miss Miranda. The man who came to the lodge.’
Hassan smiled. ‘Don’t look so worried, Juma. I’m pleased you didn’t kill him before. I want him to live with the pain of his daughter’s death. We will send her back to her father a piece at a time.
Now, to work!’
Bin Zayid lit a cigarette while Juma dug. He was elated Jed Banks was in the game. In his wildest, sweetest fantasy of how this adventure would unfold he saw his brother’s killer in tears as he realised that his actions in Afghanistan had been directly responsible for the death of his only child. Miranda deserved to die. It had been her information, he was sure, that had led the Americans to his brother.
There was only one shovel, but the coffins were not buried deep and Juma worked furiously.
Hassan checked his watch. Both of them should still be unconscious, although if his calculations were correct Miranda would be coming to within the hour. That was fine by him. He wanted her awake when they arrived in Mozambique so he could use her. He was on the edge now, a freelance soldier in a war without boundaries. He would probably never return to his life of spoiled leisure, but he was free to indulge new passions, new vices above and beyond the laws of men. He had allowed himself to experience real intimacy with Miranda and then found out she had been spying on him, using him.
His weakness had cost his brother his life. Hassan would seek retribution in the same way that Iqbal would have. He remembered his brother’s stories about how he had tortured Russian prisoners for information during the fighting in Chechnya. Hassan had been shocked, but also surprised to find himself fascinated and excited. Iqbal had spoken of the experience in the same way that a boastful man recounts his sexual conquests.
As he imagined the degradations he would submit Miranda to he found himself becoming physically aroused. In his mind’s eye he saw the final flash of the knife and felt her body spasm one last time.
‘Faster, Juma,’ he said, checking his watch again.
The plan, at least his part in it, was going more or less according to schedule. He was annoyed that Banks had made the connection between him and the attack on Calvert’s aircraft so quickly, but he had left the booby-trapped grenade in the hut in case of just such an eventuality. As far as he knew, the man still believed his daughter had been killed by a lion. Hassan smiled to himself. The father’s pain would be even greater when he learned that she had been alive and within his reach, possibly even under his very feet, and he had failed to save her.
Once Juma had finished they would load the coffins into the Land Rover and then drive to the airstrip. With Miranda and the general on board they would take off for a remote airfield in Mozambique, on the edge of Lake Cahora Bassa, where they would be met by two locally born members of the organisation to which Hassan now belonged. They would video General Calvert and Miranda, proving they were alive, and send the tape to an Arab-language satellite television station, along with a demand for the American Government to release all the remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba. Hassan realised that the parading of Calvert, as a well-known public figure, would generate media coverage for the cause, but that the Americans would not free anyone in order to save him. He was an ex-soldier, and the Americans would probably accept his death and try to glorify him as a martyr to their cause. Miranda, however, was a pretty young woman. After they had beheaded Calvert and released the tape of his execution, they would release a video of Miranda, alive and crying. Public opinion in America and elsewhere in the world might just turn at the prospect of a young woman being dismembered on television or the internet. But, even if the Americans did release some or all of the prisoners, Hassan had no intention of letting Miranda live.
Hassan had originally planned to weather the storm and continue to hide behind the fiction that he was still in Zanzibar. However, he realised that somehow the Americans, including Miranda’s father, had linked him to the attack much sooner than he expected. So what? he mused. He was committed to the fight now and he would continue his jihad until he died. Africa was a big continent and he had cash enough in his pack to last a couple of years at least. He had withdrawn a hundred thousand US dollars from one of the family accounts before leaving Stone Town.
‘Finished, boss,’ Juma said. The back of his fatigue shirt was black with sweat and his face was streaked with dirt.
When she heard the digging start, Miranda scratched harder, ignoring the pain and the blood on her fingertips.
After her tears had subsided she had resumed her blind search of the interior of the coffin. Inside the casket, about halfway along on the right-hand side, was a metal orb around the size of a tennis ball. On top was a smaller metal cylinder. It was fastened to the wall of the box with a band of thin, flexible metal, which felt as though it had been nailed to the wood. Her first thought was that the nails would make a weapon of some sort if she could remove them. As her fingers moved higher, to the top of the ball, she felt a metal handle, a small device of some kind on top and a ring that jangled when her fingers brushed it. She gasped. Forget the nails, she had seen enough action movies to realise she was sharing the box with a hand grenade.
Miranda snatched her hands away in panic. She took a breath and forced herself to think calmly.
She touched it again, gently, in case her actions somehow set it off. Attached to the pin was a length of cord, which she carefully followed. At the end of the string was a loop attached to a hook that had been screwed into the lid of the coffin.
A booby trap. She knew enough about grenades to know that when you pulled the pin a lever flew off and the thing detonated a few seconds later. Exactly how long it would take, though, she had no idea. She supposed the fuse could be altered, so that the grenade exploded sooner. Miranda guessed that Hassan had rigged the simple activation device of string and hook so that in the event that she was rescued, whoever opened the coffin first would accidentally pull the pin from the grenade and kill both her and her rescuer. She shook her head in disgust at his deviousness. If, however, Hassan got to her first – and she assumed he wanted her alive for a little while longer for some purpose – he could easily disarm the trap by lifting the lid a few centimetres and unhooking the string before it became taut.
Miranda unhooked the cord herself and set to work trying to loosen the grenade from the band holding it to the coffin wall. Screw him. One way or another he was going to be on the receiving end of his own cleverness. The risk was that if she pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it at him then she, too, would be blown up instantly. However, she
realised that if Hassan got to her before anyone else it would only be a matter of time before he killed her anyway. Better to die on her own terms than allow him to torture or abuse her. Her calmness surprised her.
She lay still for a second then realised that she could not waste any more time. She wobbled the grenade backwards and forwards, using its bulk and weight to loosen the nails that held it secure. She hooked her fingers into the edges of the banding, wincing as the jagged-edged sheet metal sliced the skin underneath her fingernails. The digging noises were getting louder now and her whole body shuddered in fright when the blade of the shovel clanged on the lid above her.
Gambling that the noise of the digging would muffle her work, she pulled again on the grenade, as hard as she could, and felt one, then the other nail on one side of the band pop loose. She bent back the metal strip and the grenade dropped with a thud on the floor of the coffin beside her. Miranda screwed her eyes shut, fearing the thing would go off. It just lay there, though, cold and hard beside her forearm. She reached across her torso, awkwardly because of her bound hands, grabbed it and deposited it between her legs. The shovel grated back and forth across the lid now and she heard muffled voices.
Miranda realised that if it was Hassan, the first thing he would do after opening the lid would be to unhook the booby trap. She fumbled with the grenade and, after several attempts, managed to untie the string from the pin.
Suddenly she was jolted. As the coffin was lifted her head flicked forwards and banged painfully on the lid. The grenade rolled along the floor between her legs, but she trapped it under her calves before it reached the other end of the box. Carefully, so as not to make a sound, she tied the free end of the string to the metal band, which was still fixed to the wall of the casket. She slipped the loop of the cord back onto the hook in the lid.
Hassan moved to the edge of the shallow grave and grabbed the carry handles at the head of the coffin. ‘One, two, three! She’s a heavy bitch.’