by Jack Hayes
“Legal?”
“Eventually, possibly,” Blake replied. “More importantly, though, I need to reach out to people high up in the British establishment – way outside my league and normal chain of contacts. People he would more probably have links to.”
“Well, if it were legal advice, I’d have to suffice this evening. Mac’s working late,” she said, before poking Blake with a finger. “And don’t call him His Excellency: you know it makes him huffy.”
“Really?” Blake feigned innocence. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“A likely story.”
“What time’s he home? I may need to call him.”
Eleanor looked up at the sky and thought about the conversations she’d had with her husband earlier in the evening.
“It’s probably an all-nighter,” she said. “Apparently big dos over this India-EU trade deal. I’m not allowed to say much but it’s regarded as huge potatoes for the UK. The British government is really hammering it through.”
There were only two rules laid down when Blake was first invited to the home of the Right Honourable Lord Justice MacHaranger and Lady Eleanor. The first was simple: he was to be called Mac and she was Ellie while being talked to in and around the extensive house. The second was that everything said by anyone at any time was totally off the record and under no circumstances was it to be used in any way for the furtherance of a story.
Blake routinely broke the first by calling Mac every chivalric title he could think of, except the correct one. It wouldn’t even have entered his head to violate the second. He had given his word, and that was sacrosanct.
“Crap,” Blake said.
“I can have him call you as soon as he gets home?” Eleanor offered.
Blake took a small, cheap phone he’d picked up en route at a petrol station out of his pocket. He took her mobile and punched the number in.
“What happened to your usual one?” she asked.
“This is a burner.”
“I can see that – did you become a drug lord overnight? Just how much trouble are you in?”
“The worst possible amount,” Blake said. “You’re going to read about it all tomorrow, I’m sure, unless they clamp down on the press.”
Eleanor took a step backwards. Blake watched her as she noticed the full change in his demeanour. Her stare flowed from the bruises on his face, down the all black clothing covered in dust and encrusted blood, to the burnt holes in his jeans.
“Okay,” she said, the truth dawning on her face. “I take it I’m to say to no-one that you’ve been here?”
“You’d be putting yourself in mortal danger if you did. That’s why I’m entrusting you with just the cat. I’ve been careful to make sure there’s no-one who’s followed me.”
She nodded her head.
“I’ll have Mac call you as soon as he’s done.”
“Excellent. I’ll be back for Boxcat tomorrow.”
“Where next for you, now?” she asked.
“Now?” Blake pulled his car keys from his pocket. “Now, I have to complete a bargain I started earlier this evening”.
A quizzical expression crossed Eleanor’s face.
“I have to sell my soul for a second time,” Blake spat through gritted teeth.
39
Mehr Zain awoke groggily.
He was stripped to his underwear, his arms and legs tightly roped to several heavy duty metal pegs that were staked deep into the earth. He tried to lift his head. There was a sharp pain in his neck. A thin wire garrotte was stretched across it, attached to two further pegs.
He rested his head back on the hard soil.
Unusual.
There weren’t many places in the Emirates that weren’t either raw rock or desert sand. He wondered where he was and how long he’d been unconscious.
Hours?
A day?
Above him, bright halogen lights were caustically bright, almost burning his retinas. He sniffed. There was a musty smell. Urine soaked sawdust. He tried to swivel his neck without cutting himself.
Wire mesh fronted cages.
Becoming more alert, he began to hear the sounds of birds. Falcons. So popular in the Middle East, anyone who’d lived there long enough could recognise the sound of their distinctive calls.
“You’re awake,” Aarez said from somewhere outside of Zain’s vision. “Good, I had one of my men inject you with a stimulant a few minutes ago but I was worried it wasn’t working.”
Zain said nothing. He tugged gently on his restraints to see if he could free his hands or feet.
He was held fast.
“You’re welcome to test your bindings – but careful with the piano wire around your neck. You’ll want that unsullied for later,” Aarez said.
He stepped into Zain’s view. Aarez had changed into a fresh dishdasha and leered forward malevolently.
“You and your friends have caused me a great deal of trouble,” he said. “I have lost contact with my lieutenant, Oassan. I can only assume the worst since I sent him to retrieve something of great importance to my current goals.”
A small feather drifted from one of the falcon pens. It floated on the air, a soft, downy beauty, a cherub hovering above Zain’s body.
“What I need from you is information,” Aarez continued. “I need to know how much you and the others chasing me have deduced.”
Mehr shifted his gaze to Aarez. The Arab moved to a small table placed closer to the bird cages and began fiddling with some tools.
“I’ll tell you nothing,” Zain replied.
“You can talk, or not,” Aarez replied. “Personally, I think you will. But first, you should learn the rules of this game and then make your decision.”
He pulled a small iron sickle from the table and began to walk back towards Zain.
“Stick and carrot,” Aarez continued, “I’m a great believer. First: the carrot. If you talk to me, then I shan’t have to try and extract the information from someone else – perhaps one of those lovely young girls you were guarding.”
Zain chewed at his tongue. He felt a pang of shame. He felt as though he’d been tasked with protecting Asp’s wife and children. If they were here, he had failed.
“Next: the stick,” Aarez said. “The stick should always be bigger than the carrot, in my opinion. Anything less is a great error. Human beings respond so much more viscerally to anguish than pleasure.”
He reached forward with the sickle and swung it into Mehr’s exposed belly.
A dull splat.
Zain clenched with pain, the ropes biting into his ankles and wrists. The wire tightened across his neck as he pulled against it. His trachea, constricted, strangled his exasperated scream.
The sickle cut jaggedly through his stomach, gouging a rough, hatcheted gash from one side to the other. Aarez drew the red tinted blade from Mehr’s skin. He plunged his hands into the wound with relish.
Agony emanated through Mehr’s entire being.
He felt simultaneously intense burning as his intestines were wrenched onto the ground and the depths of cold they were exposed naked to the air.
“The stick is quite simple,” Aarez called out, stepping away towards the bird cages.
He clicked at catches and allowed three birds to spring forward and perch on the wooden bar that ran along the front of their pens as a perch. He whistled and trilled as they hopped out.
The birds chirped in reply.
“We’ll start with these four falcons,” Aarez said slowly, “but I have many, many birds here – kestrels, Harris hawks, kites – and it will take them hours to fully gorge themselves on your body. The stimulant you’ve been injected with will prevent the regrettable occurrence of you passing out from pain.”
Mehr tried furiously once more to yank at the restraints. He’d heard stories as a child of humans finding miraculous strength in times of peril – grandparents lifting cars clear of fallen children following a crash. The body was a phenomenal thing.
; He muttered a prayer calling for strength from God.
With all his might he heaved until he collapsed, exhausted and panting.
The pegs did not budge.
“You are left with three choices,” Aarez said calmly. “First, you can tell me all I wish to know and the pain will end as I give you a quick death. Second, you can allow yourself to be eaten alive by my feathered pets, knowing that if you don’t talk, once you are dead I’ll simply hook the girls in next to your morbid corpse.”
Mehr found it difficult to focus on the soothing tones of Aarez’s voice through the pain. He felt as though his blood was bubbling out of his belly like a fountain and trickling away in a bright crimson stream to the dirt.
“There is, of course a third option,” Aarez continued, “and this one is particularly delicious. You can use what little strength is in your body to slit your own throat against the piano wire.”
Cold sweat dotted Mehr’s forehead.
Despair.
He knew he wasn’t the most religiously attentive man – he smoked and he enjoyed the occasional drink – but he still regarded himself as Muslim in his heart. He avoided pork at all times. He prayed. He had been raised well and any lapses he had were the result of a hard life escaping the dirty streets of Cairo and the corrupting influences of modern society.
“But suicide?” he thought. “There has to be another way.”
It was one of the greatest sins imaginable – totally destructive to a hallowed path to the afterlife.
He closed his eyes.
With an almighty burst he tried once more to break free, pulling hard against the pegs. The ropes dug and sliced into his wrists and ankles.
His energy spent, Mehr slumped against the pottery coloured soil.
“Very well, then,” Aarez said. “Let us begin. We’ll start with my first question once the birds have begun eating.”
The flutter of feathers in flight.
Tears formed in Mehr’s eyes as a Saker falcon, wings outstretched, circled over his body.
“Oh God,” he thought. “How I love birds. They always remind me of mala’kah.”
Looking down on him, the falcon swooped low and began its feast.
40
Blake pushed the door of Dubrovnik’s wide as he entered.
Blue neon lights from behind the bar flickered, illuminating the bottles and making the smoke shimmer, giving the place the down-at-heel air of a backstreet dive from an earlier age.
On his usual barstool, Blake saw Ron Casabian leaning against the counter with a double whiskey talking to another man, whose face was obscured by the bar’s thick atmosphere.
This was not unusual.
Ron usually held court at Dubrovnik’s, surrounded by a gaggle of friends and reporters, listening to his stories of intrigue and conspiratorially connecting fragments from various regional sources.
Ron called his regular drinking partners his “accomplices”.
They certainly boozed. They clearly indulged in both the legally sanctioned end of the drugs market (‘local herbal tobacco’ was the traditional euphemism – or ‘special blend’). And on weekends, they visited the whoremongers.
Blake pushed through the crowd of suits and rounded the bar.
“And here he is – the boy with a broken halo,” Ron said with great enthusiasm, his arms held wide. “Come here, my boy – you must sample this new cocktail I’ve invented. I call it ‘Grounds for Divorce’.”
“You want to talk any louder?” Blake smiled. “Maybe there’s a Ceebie in the corner who didn’t realise I’d entered.”
“Gah!” Ron threw his hands up theatrically, “I have a professional understanding with them that this bar is off limits. What happens here stays here. At the end of the week I agree with their ears exactly what they have heard and can report to their superiors. It’s all very civilized.”
Blake leaned in close.
“And how do you know they stick to your agreement?” he whispered.
“Two reasons,” Ron spoke softly into Blake’s ear. “First, the local spook is the bartender and I have photos of him committing illegal acts with two Lebanese transvestites.”
Ron grinned profusely to show how much he’d enjoyed that particular evening’s work.
“And second,” he continued, “he knows I have another contact in his office deliver me every report he submits to his bosses. I get them at my desk on Monday morning at 11 am.”
Ron then leaned back and burst into raucous laughter.
Blake always enjoyed Ron’s company.
Ron was short, had the frame of a powerful wrestler gone to seed, and at fifty still had sable black hair with a full beard. There was not a single grey in sight.
How Blake envied him that.
Around Ron, there was always boisterous merriment. In Blake’s mind, Ron was Santa Claus’s younger, more libidinous brother.
And Alice’s face always flickered with disgust when his name was mentioned. At times in the last eighteen months, all those things had been huge pluses.
“John,” Ron called to the bartender. “Get my friend here a beer – he’s looking thirsty. And stick it on Asp’s tab. For him it’s a business expense.”
Blake saw Ron’s drinking partner for the first time.
Nate Aspinal.
“The two of you have met before, I’m guessing,” Ron said.
“Once,” Asp replied, shaking Blake’s hand. “A year ago at a mutual acquaintance’s Dubai leaving drinks.”
“It was the dullest dinner party ever,” Blake added. “Thirty-two guests, almost all of them British embassy consular staff. Career civil servants.”
“The two of us ended up sneaking out and hiding in the pool house with a bottle of tequila until sunrise,” Asp laughed. “I meant to get in touch…”
“But in your line of work, hanging out with a journalist probably isn’t the smartest move in the world,” Blake replied. “I understand.”
“Well,” Asp said, “I hear reporter isn’t your only line of work.”
Blake shot Ron a look that could kill.
“Relax, relax,” Ron said, patting a hand on Blake’s back. “I get the impression you two have been working on the same story from opposite ends and a little clarity will help smooth this bargain.”
Blake took a step back. Legs and hands instinctively ready to fight.
“Blake, relax!” Ron said. “Seriously. I’ve known this man ten years. I vouch for him.”
“With the greatest of respect, Ron…”
“Listen,” Ron said. “You’re already being taken care of. I’ve sent a clean-up crew to your home address to sort out the borscht you left spattered all over the walls. There’s a second on its way to interfere with that mess you left in the marina. And finally, since you’ve been a busy boy: I’ve had to stretch myself to the limit to get a third to distract the police who are crawling all over the back nine of a golf course in the Springs district.”
Blake was astounded by the speed of Ron’s knowledge.
“How do you know about all that already?” Blake asked.
“That’s my job, Blake,” Ron said. “It’s what I do. And right now, I’m telling you that all three of us need to put all cards – all cards, mind – on the table otherwise this muddle we’re embroiled in is going to turn very quickly on us.”
Blake considered his options. Ron talked loosely, he knew that. Yet he couldn’t believe how candidly the American was bandying about such dangerous information.
“You think I was thrilled about this?” Asp hissed. “I’ve had two dead colleagues in a week. Tonight, I probably lost a third. He was protecting my wife and kids so now I have to presume these bastards have them too.”
“And what do you plan to do to these people when you catch up with them?” Blake asked.
“To quote Ron: ‘make more borscht’,” Asp replied coldly.
Blake dropped his eyes.
“Well, my friend: decision time,” Ron said. “It�
��s either come with us to a corner booth I’ve marked out so that we can hash this through… or you walk out and you’re on your own. I call off the clean-up and interference teams – I tell them to stop what they’re doing and tell them to return any bodies they’ve secured to their original locations. What do you say?”
Blake scanned the bar once more to check the faces of those around them. Middle aged suits dancing and drinking and smoking, not a care in the world.
“Let’s do this,” Blake said.
Ron let out a triumphant laugh and whacked his hands on the bar top.
“Excellent news!” he yelled. “Borscht for everyone.”
41
“Let me get this straight – you have the box, you’ve opened it and it contains three cigarette butts that belonged to Prince Harry?” Ron asked.
He face was furrowed with incredulity.
“That’s all she wrote,” Blake replied.
“But it makes no sense,” Ron said. “The only possibility is that you’d want them for the purposes of extortion. We all know the conspiracy theory that’s been doing the rounds for years – so you’d take your cigarette butts and you’d get them to a DNA lab in the hope that they reveal Harry is the son of someone other than Prince Charles.”
“There’s just one flaw in the plan,” Blake said.
“It’s absolutely nuts,” he and Ron said in unison.
Asp scratched at his beard, irritated.
“You yourself, Ron, said stories have consequences, even if they’re untrue,” Asp asserted.
“True, true,” Ron replied. “But the kid is so obviously Charles’s son that it’s just ridiculous. The idea is absolute nonsense!”
“None of this gets my wife and children back,” Asp said. “What do we do about that?”
“In order to help get them back safely,” Ron replied gently, “given the proven proclivities of these people towards torture and random killing, we need to understand what’s at stake. Otherwise, if you play this flat – simply hand over the goods and trust they’ll do the right thing – we may end up being double crossed. Understanding them allows us to plan. Right now we don’t even know exactly who or where these people are. Have you received a ransom?”