by Hugh Laurie
'They know you're an American,' he said.
I shrugged a so what.
'Talk to them, Ricky,' said Francisco. 'Why not?'
So I shrugged again, sulkily, Jesus, what a waste of time, and ambled up to the desk. Beamon glared up at me as I took the phone.
'A goddamn American,' he whispered.
'Kiss my ass,' I said, and put the receiver to my ear. 'Yeah?'
There was a click, and a buzz, and another click.
'Lang,' said a voice.
Here we go, I thought.
'Yeah,' said Ricky.
'How you doing?'
It was the voice of Russell P. Barnes, arsehole of this parish, and even through the fizzing interference, his voice was back-slappingly confident.
'The fuck do you want?' said Ricky.
'Wave, Thomas,' said Barnes.
I signalled to Francisco for the binoculars, and he handed them across the desk to me. I moved to the window.
'You want to look to your left,' said Barnes.
I didn't, actually.
On the corner of the block, in a corral of jeeps and army trucks, stood a clutch of men. Some in uniform, some not.
I lifted the binoculars, and saw trees and houses leaping about in the magnified scale, and then Barnes shot across the lens. I went back, and steadied, and there he was, a phone at his ear, and binoculars at his eyes. He did actually wave.
I checked the rest of the group, but couldn't see any striped grey trousers.
'Just sayin' hello, Tom,' said Barnes.
'Sure,' said Ricky.
The line crackled away as we waited for each other. I knew I could wait longer than him.
'So, Tom,' said Barnes, eventually, 'when can we expect you out of there?'
I looked away from the binoculars, and glanced at Francisco, and at Beamon, and at the hostages. I looked at them, and thought of the others.
'We ain't comin' out,' said Ricky, and Francisco nodded slowly.
I looked through the binoculars and saw Barnes laugh. I didn't hear it, because he held the receiver away from his face, but I saw him throw back his head and bare his teeth. Then he turned to the group of men round him and said something, and some of them laughed too.
'Sure, Tom. When you ...'
'I mean it,' said Ricky, and Barnes kept on smiling.'Whoever you are, nothing you try is going to work.'
Barnes shook his head, enjoying my performance.
'You may be a clever guy,' I said, and saw him nod. 'You may be an educated man. Maybe you're even a college graduate.'
The laugh faded a little from Barnes' face. That was nice.
'But nothing you try is going to work.' He dropped the binoculars and stared. Not because he wanted to see me, but because he wanted me to see him. His face was like stone. 'Believe me, Mr Graduate,' I said.
He stayed stock-still, his eyes lasering across the two hundred yards between us. And then I saw him shout something, and he put the receiver back to his ear.
'Listen, you piece of shit, I don't care whether you come out of there or not. And if you do come out, I don't care whether it's walking, or in a big rubber bag, or in a lot of little rubber bags. But I got to warn you Lang ...' He pressed the phone tighter to his mouth, and I could hear spittle in his voice. 'You better not mess with progress. Do you understand me? Progress is something you've just got to let happen.'
'Sure,' said Ricky.
'Sure,' said Barnes.
I saw him look off to the side and nod.
'Take a look to the right, Lang. Blue Toyota.'
I did as I was told, and a windscreen skidded through the image in the binoculars. I steadied on it.
Naimh Murdah and Sarah Woolf, side-by-side in the front of the Toyota, drinking something hot from plastic beakers. Waiting for the Cup Final kick-off. Sarah was looking down at something, or at nothing, and Murdah was examining himself in the rear-view mirror. He didn't seem to mind what he saw.
'Progress, Lang,' said the voice of Barnes. 'Progress is good for everybody.'
He paused and I slid the binoculars left again, just in time to see him smile.
'Look,' I said, putting some worry into my voice, 'just let me talk to her, will you?'
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Francisco straighten in his chair. I had to deal with him, keep him straight, so I held the phone away from my face and threw an embarrassed grin over my shoulder.
'It's my mom,' I said. 'Worried about me.'
We both laughed a little at that.
I squinted through the binoculars again, and saw that Barnes was now standing by the Toyota. Inside the car, Sarah had the phone to her mouth, and Murdah had turned sideways in his seat to watch her.
'Thomas?' she said. Her voice sounded low and raw.
'Hi,' I said.
There was a pause, while we exchanged one or two interesting thoughts across the fizzing line, and then she said, 'I'm waiting for you.'
That's what I wanted to hear.
Murdah said something I didn't catch, and then Barnes reached in through the window and took the phone from Sarah.
'No time for all this, Tom. You can talk all you want, once you're out of there.' He smiled. 'So, any thoughts you'd like to share at this time, Thomas? A word, maybe? Little word, like yes or no?'
I stood there, watching Barnes watching me, and I waited as long as I dared. I wanted him to feel the size of my decision.
Sarah was waiting for me.
Please, God, this had better work.
'Yes,' I said.
Twenty-five
Do be careful with this stuff,
because it's extremely sticky.
VALERIE SINGLETON
I persuaded Francisco to hold off with the statement for a while.
He wanted to get it out straight away, but I said a few more hours of uncertainty wouldn't do us any harm. Once they knew who we were, and could put a name to us, the story would cool a little. Even if there were fireworks afterwards, the mystery would have gone.
Just a few more hours, I said.
And so we waited through the night, taking our turns in the different positions.
The roof was the least popular, because it was cold and lonely, and nobody took that for more than an hour. Otherwise, we ate, and chatted, and didn't chat, and thought about our lives and how they'd brought us to this. Whether we were captors or captives.
They didn't send us any more food that night, but Hugo found some frozen hamburger buns in the canteen, and we laid them out on Beamon's desk to thaw and prodded them whenever we couldn't think of anything else to do.
The hostages dozed and held hands most of the time. Francisco had thought about splitting them up and scattering them over the building, but in the end he'd decided that they'd just take more guarding that way, and he was probably right. Francisco was being right about quite a lot of things. Taking advice, too, which made a nice change. I suppose there aren't many terrorists in the world who are so familiar with hostage situations that they can afford to be dogmatic, and say nah, the way you do it is this. Francisco was in uncharted waters just as much as the rest of us, and it made him nicer somehow.
It was just after four, and I had fixed it so that I was down in the lobby with Latifa when Francisco hobbled down the stairs with the statement for the press.
'Lat,' he said, with a charming smile, 'go tell the world for us.'
Latifa smiled back at him, thrilled that the wise elder brother had conferred this honour upon her, but not wanting to show it too much. She took the envelope from him and watched, lovingly, as he limped back to the staircase.
'They're waiting for you now,' he said, without turning round. 'Give it to them, tell them it goes straight to CNN, nobody else, and if they don't read it, word for word, they got dead Americans in here.' He stopped as he reached the half-landing, and turned to us. 'You cover her good, Ricky.'
I nodded and we watched him go, and then Latifa sighed. What a guy, she was thinking. My he
ro, and he chose me.
The real reason Francisco had chosen Latifa, of course, was that he reckoned it might make an armed assault by the gallant Moroccans fractionally less likely if they knew we had women in the team. But I didn't want to spoil her moment by saying that.
Latifa turned and looked out through the main doors, clutching the envelope and squinting into the bright lights of the television crews. She put a hand up to her hair.
'Fame at last,' I said, and she made a face at me.
She moved across to the reception desk and started to fiddle with her shirt in the reflection of the glass. I followed.
'Here,' I said, and I took the envelope from her and helped arrange the collar of the shirt in a cool way. I fluffed her hair out from behind her ears, and wiped a smudge of something off her cheek. She stood there and let me do it. Not as an intimacy. More like a boxer in his corner, getting set for the next round while the seconds squirt and rub and rinse and primp.
I reached into my pocket, took out the envelope, and handed it to her, while she took some deep breaths.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze.
'You'll be okay,' I said.
'Never been on TV before,' she said.
Dawn. Sunrise. Daybreak. Whatever.
There is still a gloom over the horizon, but it has an orange smear to it. The night is shrinking back into the ground, as the sun scrabbles for a finger-hold on the edge of the skyline.
The hostages are mostly asleep. They have drawn closer together in the night, because it has been colder than anyone thought it would be, and legs are no longer lolling over the edge of the rug.
Francisco looks tired as he holds out the phone for me. He has his feet propped up on the side of Beamon's desk, and he is watching CNN with the sound turned down, as a kindness to the sleeping Beamon.
I'm tired too, of course, but maybe I've got a little more adrenalin in my blood at this moment. I take the phone from Francisco.
'Yeah.'
Some popping, electronic noises. Then Barnes.
'Your five-thirty alarm call,' he says, with a smile in his voice.
'What do you want?' And I realise immediately that I have said this with an English accent. I look across at Francisco, but he doesn't seem to have noticed. So I turn back to the window and listen to Barnes for a while, and when he's finished I take a deep breath, hoping desperately and not caring at all, both at the same time.
'When?' I say.
Barnes chuckles. I laugh too, in no particular accent.
'Fifty minutes,' he says, and hangs up.
When I turn back from the window, Francisco is watching me. His eyelashes seem longer than ever.
Sarah is waiting for me.
'They're bringing us breakfast,' I say, bending my Minnesotan vowels this time.
Francisco nods.
The sun is going to be clambering up soon, gradually heaving itself over the window sill. I leave the hostages, and Beamon, and Francisco, dozing in front of CNN. I walk out of the office and take the lift to the roof.
Three minutes later, forty-seven to go, and things are about as ready as they're going to be. I take the stairs down to the lobby.
Empty corridor, empty stairwell, empty stomach. The blood in my ears is loud, much louder than the sound of my feet on the carpet. I stop at the second floor landing, and look out into the street.
Decent crowd, for this time of the morning.
I was thinking ahead, that's why I forgot the present. The present hasn't happened, isn't happening, there is only the future. Life and death. Life or death. These, you see, are big things. Much bigger than footsteps. Footsteps are tiny things, compared to oblivion.
I had dropped down half a flight, just turned the corner on to the mezzanine, before I heard them and realised how wrong they were - wrong because they were running footsteps, and nobody should have been running in this building. Not now. Not with forty-six minutes to go.
Benjamin rounded the corner and stopped.
'What's up, Benj?' I said, as coolly as I could.
He stared at me for a moment. Breathing hard.
'The fuck have you been?' he said.
I frowned.
'On the roof,' I said. 'I was ...'
'Latifa's on the roof,' he snapped.
We stared at each other. He was blowing through his mouth, partly from exertion, partly from anger.
'Well, Benj, I told her to go down to the lobby. There's going to be breakfast...'
And then, in a rush of angry movement, Benjamin lifted the Steyr to his shoulder and jammed his cheek against the stock, his fists clenching and unclenching around the grips.
And the barrel of the weapon had disappeared.
Now, how could that be? I thought to myself. How could the barrel of a Steyr, four hundred and twenty millimetres long, six grooves, right hand twist - how could that just disappear?
Well of course it couldn't, and it hadn't.
It was just my point of view.
'You fucking shit bastard,' says Benjamin.
I stand there, staring into a black hole.
Forty-five minutes to go, and this, let's face it, is about the worst possible time for Benjamin to bring up a subject as big, as broad, as many-headed as Betrayal. I suggest to him, politely I hope, that we might deal with it later; but Benjamin thinks now would be better.
'You fucking shit bastard,' is the way he puts it.
Part of the problem is that Benjamin has never trusted me. That's really the gist of it. Benjamin has had his suspicions right from the start, and he wants me to know about them now, in case I feel like trying to argue with him.
It all began, he tells me, with my military training.
Oh really, Benj?
Yes really.
Benjamin had lain awake at night, staring at the roof of his tent, wondering where and how a retarded Minnesotan had learnt to strip an M16, blindfold, in half the time it took everyone else. From there, apparently, he'd gone on to wonder about my accent, and my taste in clothes and music. And how come I put so many miles on the Land Rover when I was only going out for some beer?
This is all trifling stuff, of course, and, until now, Ricky could have batted it back without any trouble.
But the other part of the problem - the bigger part, frankly, right at this moment - is that Benjamin was fooling around with the telephone exchange during my conversation with Barnes.
Forty-one minutes.
'So what's it to be, Benj?' I say.
He presses his cheek harder against the stock, and I think I can see his finger turning white on the trigger.
'You going to shoot me?' I say. 'Now? Going to pull that trigger?'
He licks his lips. He knows what I'm thinking.
He twitches slightly, then pulls his face away from the Steyr, keeping his huge eyes on me.
'Latifa,' he calls over his shoulder. Loud. But not loud enough. He seems to be having trouble with his voice.
'They hear gunshots, Benj,' I say, 'they're going to think you've killed a hostage. They're going to storm the building. Kill us all'
The word 'kill' hits him, and for an instant I think he might fire.
'Latifa,' he says again. Louder this time, and that has to be it. I can't let him shout a third time. I start to move, very slowly, towards him. My left hand is as loose as a hand can be.
'For a lot of guys out there, Benj,' I say, moving, 'a gunshot is just what they want to hear right now. You going to give them that?'
He licks his lips again. Once. Twice. Turns his head towards the stairs.
I grab the barrel with my left hand, and push it back into his shoulder. No choice. If I pull the weapon away from him, the trigger's depressed, and so am I. So I push it back and to the side, and as his face comes further away from the stock I drive the heel of my right hand up under Benjamin's nose.
He drops like a stone - faster than a stone, as if some massive force is pushing him down to the floor - and for a moment I think I may
have killed him. But then his head starts to move from side to side, and I can see the blood bubbling away from his lips.
I ease the Steyr out of his hands and flick down the safety catch, just as Latifa shouts up from the stairwell.
'Yeah?'
I can hear her feet on the stairs now. Not fast, but not slow.
I look down at Benjamin.
That's democracy, Benj. One man against many.
Latifa rounds the corner of the lower flight, the Uzi still slung at her shoulder.
'Jesus,' she says, when she sees the blood. 'What happened?'
'I don't know,' I say. I'm not looking at her. I'm bending over Benjamin, peering anxiously into his face. 'Guess he fell.'
Latifa brushes past me and squats at Benjamin's side, and as she does so, I glance at my watch.
Thirty-nine minutes.
Latifa turns and looks up at me.
'I'll do this,' she says. 'Take the lobby, Rick.'
So I do.
I take the lobby, and the front entrance, and the steps, and the hundred and sixty-seven yards from the steps to the police cordon.
My head feels hot by the time I get there, because I have my hands clasped on top of it.
Not surprisingly, they frisked me like they were taking a frisking exam. To get into the Royal College of Frisking. Five times, head to toe, mouth, ears, crotch, soles of shoes. They tore most of my clothes from my body, and left me looking like an opened Christmas present.
It took them sixteen minutes.
They left me for another five, leaning against the side of a police van, arms and legs spread, while they shouted and pushed past each other. I stared at the ground. Sarah is waiting for me.
Christ, she'd better be.
Another minute went by, more shouting, more pushing, and I started to look around, thinking that if something didn't happen soon, I'd have to make it happen. Bloody Benjamin. My shoulders started to ache from the weight of my leaning.
'Good job, Thomas,' said a voice.
I looked to my left, under my arm, and saw a pair of scuffed Red Wing boots. One flat on the ground, the other cocked at a right angle, with the toe buried in the dust. I slowly tilted up to find the rest of Russell Barnes.