by Chris Ryan
After about five minutes he turned round and asked in English, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yep,’ I nodded
‘Won’t be long now.’
Then he picked up all the things they’d taken off me – watch, ID discs, boot laces and so on – and handed them back. ‘These are yours,’ he said.
I was so confused. What was the point of taking it all off me in the first place? There’d been so many changes of mood.
First the farm boy, definitely friendly.
The driver of the truck had turned hostile, telling me I had no business to be in Syria.
Then the policeman on duty had saved me from the mob.
Next the guys inside the station had tried to steal all my kit.
Then the guy who made me write down my details seemed to be back on my side.
A few minutes later my escorts were giving me apples to eat.
Then it was into the mock-execution, and more sick jokes about going to Baghdad.
No wonder my head was swimming.
I started getting my kit back in place. I put away the maps and knife, and got the ID discs back round my neck. By then my feet had swollen up so much that I couldn’t get my boots on, so I didn’t bother threading the laces.
At last we came to a big modern building, probably ten storeys high. There were guards in green uniforms and armed with AK-47s on the gates, on the walls, everywhere. It wasn’t the sort of place you could break into, or out of, in a hurry. Before I had time to wonder where we were, the gates swung open in front of us, and we drove into a courtyard.
All my escorts got out. When I tried to move, I found that my knees and ankles had locked solid. The older guy saw me struggling and clicked his fingers. The other two lifted me out of the car and practically carried me up a long flight of steps to the glass doors. They can’t have enjoyed it much, because I absolutely stank.
After a few steps my legs began to function again, more or less. We shuffled into a big reception area, where everything looked efficient and well-guarded. We got into a lift and went up a few floors. As the doors opened, we were met by a smartly dressed, clean-shaven man in a dark blue blazer, stripey tie and blue shirt. Beside him, hovering respectfully, stood another man, about the same age, but chubbier and less smart.
The boss-figure in the stripey tie was an impressive character: in his mid-forties, he had a good haircut and possessed obvious authority. I hadn’t a clue who he was and he didn’t tell me. Only later did I discover that he was head of the Mukhabarat, the Syrian Secret Police.
The boss smiled, reached out, took my hand, and said in English, ‘Welcome to Damascus. Welcome to Syria.’
The chubby man, who was an interpreter, said, ‘Come in, please.’ He ushered me in.
Where was the catch? What were they up to? I was desperately trying to think through all my options – and think fast – so that I didn’t get caught out.
I followed them through into some kind of office and sat down on a sofa. I could see the boss sniff, not liking the smell of me. Now that I was somewhere clean, I could see what a terrible state I was in: my hair was matted, my hands and face were filthy. There was brown, dried blood on my DPMs. The boss himself took off the shamag, which was still wrapped round my head. He spoke sharply to the interpreter, clearly saying, ‘Get this stuff off.’ Someone else helped me out of the dishdash. Another guy brought in my bag and put it under a table.
‘Would you like to get cleaned up?’ the boss asked through the interpreter.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Good idea.’
‘Come with me.’
The interpreter’s English was first class, and he seemed very friendly. I tried to appear grateful; but I still had no idea what was going on, and I expect I looked shell-shocked. I had time to glance round the walls and noticed a gold-plated AK-47, as well as pictures of Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian President. A large, leather-topped desk stood in one corner, covered in ornaments and paperweights. Two or three settees were set out around a coffee table. The whole room spoke of money and good organization.
We walked out of the office, through a living room and into a bedroom, where some exercise machines were set out. Then we went into the bathroom, which had a big corner bath, a shower, a toilet, a pedestal basin with a mirror on the wall above it, and shelves full of toiletries. Everything was clean and glitzy, with gold-plated taps.
The boss walked around, fitting a new blade into a safety razor and getting some shampoo ready. Someone turned on the bath, and through the interpreter he said, ‘This is all my stuff. Just use it, please.’
He went out and left me alone. It was only then that I looked in a mirror and saw my face. What a sight! I was gaunt as a skeleton; under ten days’ growth of beard my cheeks were hollow, and my eyes seemed to have sunk into their sockets. My hair was matted with every kind of filth.
I felt stunned, unable to make out what was happening. One minute I’d been gearing myself up for prison; now I was being taken care of in a high-class apartment. But whatever else lay ahead, there was no reason not to have a bath. I started slowly undressing, and took off my shirt.
Looking in two mirrors at once (one in front, one behind), I caught sight of my back, and I could hardly believe it. My ribs, spine and hipbones were all sticking out, as though I’d been starved for weeks. I could see every rib going round and joining my backbone. It was a shock to realize that I’d been living off my own body. In walking nearly 300 kilometres, and shuddering with cold for countless hours, I’d burned away all the muscle which I’d built up during my time on the SP team.
In the mirror I saw a young boy coming in holding a tape measure, and the interpreter behind him.
‘What’s going on now?’ I demanded.
‘We’ll just take your sizes,’ said the interpreter, and the boy started measuring me.
What’s this for? I was thinking. A coffin? But I didn’t ask – partly out of fear that I would learn something bad.
The boy soon legged it, and as I was getting my trousers off, in came another guy with a cup of Turkish coffee. I drank a mouthful of it, but it tasted like cough medicine and made me gag. ‘Water!’ I croaked, and made drinking motions.
I edged myself over the bath and lowered myself in carefully, backside first, keeping my feet out of the water. Then I gradually submerged them. As the heat hit the cuts, the pain was horrendous. After a few seconds I lifted them out again, then tried to lower them back into the water. I lay there with my legs up as I washed myself and shampooed my hair. Soon the water was absolutely black, so I got out, pulled out the plug, and started to fill the bath again.
I got back into clean water, and again the pain in my feet was terrific, as if needles were being driven into them. Apart from the cuts along the sides, they were discoloured, with red and blue patches. All I could do was lie there and bite my tongue. After a while the burning ache subsided, and I started to enjoy the hot water.
The interpreter came in and sat down by the bath with his notepad. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
Play it like you’re frightened, I thought. ‘I’m a medic,’ I told him. ‘I was brought in from the TA, and I was on board a helicopter going in to retrieve—’
‘The TA?’
‘The Territorial Army. The reserves. As I said, I was going in to retrieve a downed pilot, and something happened. There was a big bang, the helicopter crashed, and I just ran for it. We came down, and I was really scared. I didn’t wait for anybody else . . .’ Keep it light, I was thinking. Pretend to be nervous.
‘How long ago?’
‘Three days, I think.’
‘Whereabouts was the crash?’
‘I don’t know. I just ran. I had no idea where we were.’
‘What sort of helicopter was it?’
‘A Sea King.’
‘What did it look like?’
‘Just a helicopter . . . Single engine.’
The interpreter had been watching me closely
. ‘OK,’ he said, and left the room. I didn’t think he’d believed a word I’d said. Too bad. I climbed out of the bath and got my beard off with a couple of shaves. Without the stubble, I looked very thin and tired. My lips were cracked and broken, but no more than if I’d been in the sun too long.
As I was drying myself, the boy who’d measured me brought in a set of clean white underpants and vest and laid them on the toilet seat. Also, he picked up my own stinking kit, and took it out.
Spotting a pair of scales, I stood on them. At first I thought the needle had jammed, so I shook the platform about but it stayed steady on 63.5 kg, or 140 lb. Ten days earlier I’d been 80 kg, or 176 lb. I’d lost 36 lb – over l6 kg.
I pulled on the clean underwear and walked out into the bedroom. Waiting for me was a brand-new blue corduroy suit, together with a white shirt and a tie. By then it was eleven o’clock at night. The secret police must have told a tailor to put the suit together in half an hour. They clearly had influence. There was also a pair of black slip-on shoes.
As I started to get dressed, the boss noticed the state of my feet. He telephoned for a medical orderly, while I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. Soon a medic appeared. He cleaned out the cuts with a lotion that stung, and put plasters on, but he made such a mess of the job that I reckoned I could have done better on my own. If they’d had any zinc oxide tape, I’d have taped my feet right up. Also, I knew I needed some antibiotics. By then my ankles as well as my feet were swollen, and the new pair of shoes wouldn’t go on. I stayed in my socks.
Suddenly a horrible thought hit me. It’s a press conference. They’re dressing me up for a staged press do. I’m going to walk into a room full of lights and reporters and cameramen. They’ll all be asking questions. What am I going to tell them?
I hadn’t a clue what was happening in Iraq. I presumed that the air war was still going on – but I didn’t know if the ground war had started. I didn’t even know what had become of the rest of my patrol.
If I said the wrong thing now, I could blow the whole SAS operation in the Gulf.
I could blow the fact that the Regiment was in Saudi.
Did the Syrians realize I was in the SAS?
Maybe I should tell them the truth, in the hope that they’d keep it quiet. One way or another, I could be in big trouble.
Before I had time to worry too much, they moved me back into the sitting room and the boss told the interpreter to switch on the TV. He tuned to CNN, and I soon saw that the air war was still on – Allied aircraft were bombing Baghdad – but there appeared to have been no major action on the ground.
‘Are you hungry?’ the interpreter asked me.
Hungry? In the past eight days I’d eaten two packets of biscuits and two apples. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am.’
‘Just a minute, then.’
He let me watch CNN for a while, then led me through to the other lounge. My feet felt quite easy on the carpet, but I was sore and stiff all over. In my brief absence someone had set out a feast on a table. There were kebabs, steaks, rice, salads, bread and fruit.
‘You must be starving,’ the interpreter said. He heaped a pile of food onto my plate. The smell was fantastic, but when I cut into a steak and took one bite of it, it seemed to stick in my throat and I couldn’t eat any more.
I just sat there drinking pints of water. ‘Is the food bad?’ asked the boss.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I’m not as hungry as I thought. More thirsty. I’m sorry.’
The other two had been eating, but I got the impression they were only doing it to be polite. As soon as I gave up, they did too. Back in the other room, the interpreter asked, ‘Well, what would you like to do now? How about seeing some Syrian nightlife?’
What? I was astounded. Didn’t these guys realize what a state I was in?
‘No thanks,’ I muttered. ‘I can’t walk.’
‘Well, do you need anything?’
‘Can you take me to the British Embassy?’
‘Oh? You want to go there?’ He seemed rather surprised.
‘Yes, if it’s possible.’
‘OK.’ He began making phone calls. While he was doing that, I was led across to a table – and there was all my kit which had been taken away in the police station, and which I thought had been stolen.
‘Well,’ said the interpreter, coming over, ‘is everything there?’
I made a check, and found everything present – weapon, ammunition, night-sight, even the white phos grenades.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s all there.’
‘This is interesting.’ He picked up the night-sight. ‘What’s this?’
‘Oh, just a thing they gave us so that we could see in the dark.’ I felt sure he knew what it was, so I showed him how to turn it on, and he stood there looking out of the window with it, down into the courtyard.
‘Brilliant!’ he said. ‘I’ll have everything packed away for you.’
I think they knew exactly who I was, but they were playing along with my story.
‘You know,’ said the interpreter keenly, ‘I’ve always wanted to come to England for a holiday. Where do you live?’
‘In Newcastle,’ I said. ‘With my parents.’
‘Oh, I’d love to come there. Can you give me your telephone number and address? Maybe you could show us the sights and return our hospitality some time? Could I give you a ring?’
I made up a number, giving the Rowlands Gill code with changed digits, and a phoney address.
‘By the way,’ the interpreter added as we were waiting. ‘Did you see anyone as you crossed the border? Did anyone meet you?’
That made me think they must have had people out on their own side of the frontier, watching, and waiting to receive escapees. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t see anybody.’
‘So you found the police station yourself?’
‘That’s right.’ I told them more or less what had happened at the farmhouse.
‘And this young boy who took you in – where was his house?’
I tried to describe the location, and the boss promised to send someone to thank the people there. ‘How was your journey after that?’ he asked.
I thought, If I tell him about the fake execution and everything else that happened in the desert, he may keep me here for days, until he’s had the guys dragged in.
‘Oh, it was fine, thanks,’ I said. ‘No problem.’
There was a knock at the door, and in came the driver of the car. He was actually cowering, dry-washing his hands in front of him, with his head hanging down. Who is this boss guy? I wondered. What does he do to people to make them behave like that?
The interpreter gave me a piece of paper with a telephone number on it, and said, ‘If you have any problems in Damascus, ring this number and ask to speak to me.’ I put the note in my pocket and tucked my new shoes under one arm. Then I shook hands with the boss, who patted me on the back. ‘The car will take you to the British Embassy,’ he said, ‘and staff of the embassy will meet you there.’
I limped downstairs and found a Mercedes waiting. In we climbed, and the driver set off.
The embassy was a disappointment. It turned out to be a boring office building, although there were a lot of guards dotted all over the place in ones and twos with weapons. As we pulled up, I grabbed my bag, thanked the driver and got out. It was a little before 1 a.m.
A young man was standing on the steps, waiting to meet me. He introduced himself as the second secretary, and I soon saw that he was a switched-on lad – tall, dark-haired, wearing glasses, in his early thirties, and quite smart looking. With him was the defence attaché – older, clearly an officer of sorts, fortyish, short, dark-haired as well.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Sergeant Ryan from 22 SAS.’
‘OK. Upstairs.’
I dragged myself up one flight and sat down in a room. What with the state of my hands, and blood oozing out of my stockinged feet, you might have th
ought the DA would give me an easy time. Not at all.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’m just going to ask you a few questions, to verify who you are – make sure you’re not a plant. What’s your parent unit? Who’s the commanding officer?’
I stared at the guy. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Don’t start. I’m from 22 SAS, and I’ve been on the run for eight days. Just get a message back to High Wycombe.’
That woke him up. He gave a kind of choke. ‘Look, cool it,’ the second secretary told him. The DA seemed to have no inkling of what had been going on behind the scenes in Iraq, but I got the impression that the second secretary had a pretty good idea.
‘There’s nobody else come out, then?’ I asked.
The DA stared at me. ‘No, you’re the first we’ve seen.’
‘Can you tell us what happened?’ the second secretary asked.
So I gave them a broad outline of the story: how the patrol had been deployed and had a contact, how we’d legged it through the desert, split up, lost Vince, moved on, had another contact, and so on.
The DA seemed amazed that anyone should have walked out into Syria. ‘Nobody told us you were anywhere near the border,’ he said. But then he let on that, a few days before, he’d had a visit from two British guys doing some sort of a recce. When I heard their names, I realized they were from the Regiment, and that they’d been making a security assessment. After I said I knew both of them, things began to make more sense to him. He warned me that the building was probably bugged, which meant the Syrians could be listening to every word we said. I just hoped they’d packed up for the night. Otherwise they’d immediately know that I’d been lying an hour or two earlier.
The DA wrote down some details of what I’d told him and brought in one of the communications clerks, a girl, who encoded a message and sent it off to the UK command centre at High Wycombe.
Once the message was sent, I reassembled my weapon and secured it, together with my ammunition, grenades, TACBE and night-sight, in the strong room. Then they told me that I could spend the rest of the night in the Meridien Hotel, just down the road. They felt that the hotel would be secure enough, but they told me to stay in my room and to order meals through room service. They said they’d put me on the British Airways flight to London the next day.