The Hostage s-1

by Duncan Falconer

  The hood filtered the light from a dim bulb that shone constantly in the centre of the ceiling. If there was a porthole in the room it was covered, but it seemed likely, considering the high temperature and close proximity of the engines, that the room was at or below the waterline.

  Hank had explored with his legs in all directions and found what felt like a piece of heavy rope, a plastic bucket, a chunk of wood and a solid metal support welded to the floor, which was probably holding up a shelf somewhere above. He estimated he had been on board a day or so but it was hard to tell without a change in light. He had dozed off several times but for how long he wasn’t sure. He had kept an accurate count of the number of days for the first seven, until his only source of timing, daylight, was taken from him. The old garage filled with junk they had first kept him in had a hole in the roof. ‘They’ being the French people: Henri and the two apes who kidnapped him. Then after a drive inside a box for an hour or so he found himself in a dank room, which he presumed was a basement without any light other than the one that was switched on whenever someone came into the room. He estimated he had been in that place for three days but if he had been told six he would not have been surprised. A few years back he had taken part in an interrogation exercise in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was kept in a dark cell for two days with just food and water. Light and darkness were alternated, anything from minutes to hours between them, and when the exercise was over he thought he had spent three days more in the cell than he actually had.

  Figuring out his surroundings was his only pastime. The thought of escape was always on his mind of course, but the opportunity had not yet presented itself. Not that he had a life-threatening, burning desire to escape. He would if he could, if it didn’t endanger him. His captors were very thorough and attentive though. The bonds they tied his hands and feet with were strong and whenever he was visited they were checked and if loose, retied. They had not removed his hood since he regained consciousness on day one, even when feeding him, which was a handful of bread, cheese or meat shoved under it and into his mouth, followed by a squirt of water from a plastic bottle. No one had spoken to him. Not a word. He’d heard voices on occasion but they were in another part of the building and muffled. When he was in the basement there were Irish and French voices. There was a woman’s voice once. English she sounded, but she could’ve been Irish. He thought she had fed him a couple of times. She wasn’t as rough as the others and her hands were soft. If he guessed correctly she was the one who had given him a piece of chocolate.

  After the basement came the long drive in the back of a grimy van to his present location. They had carried him in a box from the van and rolled him out into the metal room and secured him to the pole.Those were all Irishmen, or at least the only ones who said anything were.

  Hank felt low in energy, kept deliberately so by his captors no doubt. He was constantly hungry but his stomach had shrunk enough so that just a small amount of food would satisfy him for a while. The only plus side to not eating was that he didn’t need to take a shit, which he hadn’t done the last three days.

  Oddly enough, being held captive had been one of Hank’s daydreams; however, he always saw himself in a cell and able to exercise every day and maintain his fitness. But being constantly tied up and hooded was not as bad as he would have imagined. There was something about Hank’s generally easy-going temperament and his ability to live within himself that helped him through the endless hours sitting in silence with only his thoughts for company. He had covered just about every aspect of his situation and the endless combination of outcomes. Kathryn had figured greatly in his thoughts, of course. He expected Helen and Janet had been told he was away on a long exercise. It was Kathryn he was most worried about.

  A door opened and what sounded like several people stepped into the room. Hank wondered if it was feeding time, or better still, a trip to the toilet perhaps. The only positive thing about the shit in his pants was that it offered some insulation against the cold floor, once it had dried out a bit, even though most of it had worked its way up his back and over his thighs. A shower would have been unbelievable. He might have forgiven them for everything had they let him clean up and put on fresh clothes. It sounded like they were carrying something heavy as they shuffled across the floor.They dumped it unceremoniously a few feet from Hank. He could not make out the rest of the sounds accurately, but someone was doing something energetically enough to make them a little out of breath. Then the group made its way back through the door and it was closed.

  No food, Hank decided. No toilet. And definitely no bath. He became annoyed. Fear had initially dominated all of his emotions, but as the days went by it melted into the background, for the most part, and he began to feel anger and impatience. It was not so much at being captured but the way he was being kept. In a strange way he had accepted being a prisoner almost immediately. He was a soldier and incarceration by the enemy was always a potential hazard of that occupation. He was annoyed at the way they treated him like an animal and decided the next time they came in he was going to voice his complaints. If the IRA considered itself to be a contemporary army, and indeed if it expected its enemies to think of it as such, it should act in as many ways as it could like one. That included the proper treatment of prisoners. What they were doing to him was torturous and uncivilised. Hank would try and make them see things that way the next chance he got. Then he heard something, close by, across the room. He wondered if it was a rat. Then he heard a sigh. It was a person.

  Hank’s senses stretched to maximum sensitivity as he scanned for the slightest sound or movement. He moved his head, trying to get a glimpse of any change in the light. Another sigh, or was it a moan? Something scraped across the floor, like the heel of a foot, a leg straightening out, as if the person were sitting on the floor like Hank. It then went silent.

  Hank waited an age for whomever it was to make another move. It seemed as if the person was asleep. The breathing had become rhythmic, quite loud, but it also sounded congested.

  Some time later, as Hank was beginning to doze off, he heard the person start to cough and hack, trying to clear their throat.

  ‘Ah, Jesus,’ a voice moaned. It was a man.

  Hank listened quietly, wondering when the man would acknowledge him.

  ‘Ah, God,’ the man said again. ‘Bejesus . . . Focken bastards,’ he cried out weakly.

  It was obvious that the man was in pain. Hank wondered if he was a prisoner like himself. The man would surely be able to see Hank, unless he also had a hood over his head.

  Hank deliberately scraped his foot across the floor. The man went silent. He’d heard him. Hank did it again. When the man spoke it was with a croaking sound, as if he had painful chest problems. ‘Why don’t you get the focken thing over with, yer bastards.’

  He was Irish, Hank could tell that much, and he obviously thought Hank was one of them. That confirmed the man could not see him. Hank was about to say something but was suddenly suspicious. What if it was one of them? What if they were trying to trick him into talking? The first rule of imprisonment for a soldier is to say nothing other than name, rank and serial number.

  ‘Say something, you bastard,’ the man said. ‘Focken beat me up again if it makes yer feel any better.’

  It seemed an extreme length to go to just to interrogate him. There was nothing he could think of that would be of any use to the IRA anyhow. Hank decided talking would be okay as long as he asked the questions.

  ‘Who are you?’ Hank said.

  ‘What do mean, who am I, you eedjit? You know who I am or I wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘I’m sitting on the floor with my hands tied to a pole and a hood over my head,’ Hank said.

  The man was silent for a moment. When he spoke again the aggression had gone from his voice, although suspicion remained.

  ‘You a prisoner?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is that an American accent?’

  ‘Yeah.
’

  ‘And you’re toid op with a hood over your head?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m tied up.’

  There was a long silence again, both men trying to figure out the other.

  ‘What’s an American doing a prisoner with these people?’ he asked.

  ‘Case of mistaken identity,’ Hank said.

  ‘That right?’ the Irishman said sardonically.‘Let me guess,’ he said. ‘You must be FBI or DEA. You were doin’ one of yer arms deal stings and the boyos caught yer.’

  ‘Nope,’ Hank said.

  ‘Then it’s CIA, or maybe you’re INS?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Ah, it don’t make a dick of a focken difference what you tell me, fellah. I’m for the focken tip anyway.’

  ‘Tip?’

  ‘You’re talkin’ to a focken dead man,’ he said. ‘They’re gonna focken clip me, so they are.’

  The comment filled the small space and the air took a while to clear.

  ‘What are they gonna do with you?’ the man asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think it would be the smartest thing in the world for the IRA to clip a Yanky fed. Last thing they’ll want to do is make it personal with your people.’

  ‘I’m not a fed.’

  ‘Oi give op then. What are yer?’

  ‘I’m not law enforcement,’ Hank said tiredly.

  ‘Then what the fuck are yer doin’ here?’

  ‘I told you. Case of mistaken identity.’

  ‘Bollocks . . . Look, if you don’t want to tell me that’s fine. Like oi give a focken shite. Got me own focken problems anyhow. Just makin’ conversation . . . You’re probably the last focker I’ll talk to, that’s all.’

  Hank wanted to talk to the man, find out about him, but a lifetime in Special Forces was urging him to be cautious.

  ‘Why’re you here?’ Hank asked eventually.

  The Irishman didn’t answer.

  ‘Hey, you were the one who said it didn’t matter and wanted to talk,’ Hank said.

  ‘I’m a tout,’ he said.

  Hank knew the term. ‘You IRA?’

  ‘Well, now that’s an interesting question . . . Since I’m a tout I s’pose I’m focken technically not IRA.’

  ‘You work for the British?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Brits? Fock off. I work for meself.’ He cleared his throat and nose, hacking loudly, then groaning with pain immediately after. He took a moment to recover, undoubtedly in a bad way.

  ‘Focken bastards gave me a good pasting last night. I thought that was it. Kicked me focken stupid they did.What I’d give for a focken aspirin. Me head is focken splittin’.’ He cleared blood and mucus from his nose and throat again and held his breath to ease the stab of pain the effort caused him. ‘Focken bastards,’ he said softly as he exhaled. ‘So what the fock you doin’ here then if you ain’t nothin’ to do with law enforcement?’

  Hank kept silent.

  ‘Oh, roight. I forgot. Mistaken identity. Excuse me focken brain but it’s a bit loike mashed potato at the moment . . . So who is it they mistook you for then? Prince focken Charles, was it?’

  Hank expected his captors knew who he was. In two weeks or whatever, no one had asked him. If they weren’t curious that suggested they knew. If they never gave a damn, why were they keeping him? They would’ve searched him when he was unconscious and found his US Navy ID card. That would’ve surprised them, especially if they thought they had a Brit spy in the bag. In two weeks he would’ve expected the IRA to be able to find out who he was. Perhaps he was already in the newspapers as a missing American serviceman.

  His thoughts went to Kathryn again and how she no doubt went ballistic when she found out. He wondered if they had told her it was the IRA holding him. That would confuse her already confused politics. He was going to get an earful when he got home no matter what. Hank fully expected to be repatriated once the Brits and Americans had sorted the mess out between them. It would be an embarrassment for all concerned, and the IRA had no use for him surely. What the hell, he decided. He wasn’t giving anything away they didn’t already know.‘I’m US Navy,’ Hank said.

  ‘US Navy? Navy intelligence?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, for fock sake. You’re doin’ my head in, man. What the fock would the IRA want with an American focken sailor?’

  ‘I was working with the Brit military . . . observing. Something went wrong and I got snatched by these guys who thought I was a Brit.’

  ‘Is that right? What were you observing?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  The Irishman started laughing gently and then winced with the pain it caused him for his troubles. ‘The American sailor got picked up watching the Brits watching the IRA. That’s focken sweet, that is.You tell a grand tale, so you do, Yank.’

  ‘How’d you end up here?’ Hank asked.

  ‘I got shopped . . . The snitch got snitched on. It was the Brits, I know that much. Focken IRA didn’t have a clue about me. They’re nothin’ but a buncha focken eedjits. It had t’av been the Brits. I was too bloody careful.’The man took a moment to get through a stitch of pain. ‘I know why they did it though,’ he continued after a moment. ‘It was me own fault.You went a wee bit too far this time, Seamus, so you did,’ he said. ‘Too bloody tempting though it was.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘I shoulda got out a year ago,’ he said, ignoring Hank’s question. ‘Got a wife and a kid, yer see.That makes yer push it, you know. When yer single you push it for the crack. When yev a family you push it for the money . . . I sold guns to the IRA and I sometimes sold the people I sold them to to the Brits, when I knew I could get away with it. And a good living, so it was.’

  The Irishman went silent, then there was a sniffling sound, softly with each intake of breath. He was crying.

  Hank let him to himself and they sat in silence for a long time.The man seemed genuine enough and he wasn’t unusually interested in Hank.

  ‘Where do you think we are?’ Hank asked, breaking the long silence.

  The Irishman cleared his throat, bringing something up, blood or mucus, and spitting it into his hood. ‘Fock. I can’t cough any more. The pain is murderous. I must have at least half-a-dozen broken focken ribs,’ he said, adjusting his position carefully. ‘Either the Med or the Atlantic. If we’re on a river we’re not far inland. I heard seagulls as they brought me aboard. They picked me up in Munich and we must’ve drove ten hours at least but not much more. It was loit when they picked me op and loit when I got here and I didn’t sleep on the journey. That’s the best I can make of it for yer. Not that it makes a flying fock of a difference.’

  ‘What were you doing in Munich?’

  ‘About to get focken paid,’ he said.

  ‘Paid for passing information?’

  ‘No. Running weapons. At first I thought the fockers were stitching me op, trying to take me goods without paying.When they started beating on me they explained the real reason and that me time was op . . . Bastards.’

  ‘You really think they’ll kill you?’

  ‘Oi’ll be the first focken tout in four hundred years to walk free if they don’t. Oi’ve a sneakin’ feelin’ oi’m not going to be that locky,’ he said. ‘Anyhow, I recognized one of the voices when I came on board. A murdering bastard called Brennan. The Executioner is one of his nicknames. Bastard gets a kick out of it. Likes to take his time too. Taunting bastard, so he is. Brennan’ll have some fun with me before he does the business.’

  Hank believed him. The man certainly sounded like it was going to happen. It suddenly felt strange, being in a room with a man about to die.

  ‘What did you mean earlier, when you said you went too far?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you went too far.You think that’s why the Brits shopped you. You were greedy.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the man said, then took a while to answer again, and this time not just because of his discomfort. Ha
nk could almost hear him thinking. ‘Do the Aral Sea labs mean anything to you?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It should. The Aral Sea is in Kazakhstan. It’s a big lake really, mostly dried op. The other soide of it is Uzbekistan. In the middle of it is an island, and on that island are the labs that used to churn out some of the deadliest biological weapons the world has ever heard of. That was back in the Cold War days . . . If yer know the right people, for the right price yer can buy a pint a pure death . . . Did yer know eight kilos of a chemical that oi don’t even know the name of could kill two and a half million people in a city as big as London?’

  ‘You saying you tried to buy some of that stuff?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Not troid. Oi’m sayin’ oi bought some . . . “Virus U” they call it. About two cupfuls for a hundred grand. The so-called experts talk about how much damage some a these biological weapons can do, but for the most part they don’t have a focken clue. A Pepsi can full could wipe out a small town and then spread and wipe out several cities. Oi don’t know what two cupfuls of Virus U’ll do, but oi wouldn’t want to be within a thousand miles of it when it’s released.’

  ‘Who did you buy this stuff for?’

  ‘Who do yer bloody think?’

  ‘The IRA?’

  ‘They’re me only client.’

  ‘And they have it?’

  ‘A course they have it.’

  ‘Would that be the IRA or the Real IRA?’

  ‘What’s in a bloody name?’

  Hank was suddenly stunned as the implications of what he had just heard sunk in. ‘Are you out of your friggin’ mind?’

  The Irishman didn’t answer. Hank wondered how out of touch he was with the IRA situation. He never would have believed they would be into biological terrorism.

  ‘Have the IRA ever bought anything like this before?’ Hank asked.

  ‘Not as far as oi know. This was a special request. It took me a year to set it op.’

  ‘What do they want it for?’

  ‘They don’t exactly include me in their top-level mission briefings.Tell you the truth, oi wasn’t going to let it happen. Oi’m tellin’ the truth. Dead men don’t tell lies . . . I was going to shop them to the Brits soon as oi got paid the money. It would’ve been me last job sure enough. Oi’d’ve got a few sheckles for that kinda information. The joke is the Brits’ve shot themselves in the foot by shopping me. You can’t expect me to feel sorry for ’em. They’ve focken killed me and that’s that.’