by Bear Grylls
Jaeger said nothing. No way would he answer. But he could sense the anger and aggression rising again.
‘One more time: what are the names of the rest of your crew?’
From somewhere Jaeger found his voice. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
He felt his head being wrenched backwards, then his face was rammed into the forest dirt, deeper than it had been before. He tried to hold his breath as the insults and curses began again, punctuated by expertly aimed kicks and blows. Whoever his captors were, they sure knew how to hurt someone.
Finally he was pulled upright and the bag was yanked over his head once more.
The voice spat out a command. ‘Lose him. He’s no use if he won’t talk. You know what to do.’
Jaeger was dragged around to what had to be the rear of the vehicle. He was lifted up and hurled aboard. Hands forced him into a sitting position – legs out straight, arms linked behind his back.
Then silence. Just the rasp of his own laboured breathing.
The minutes dragged on. Jaeger could sense – taste – the metallic tang of his own fear. Eventually he had to try to shift position, in an effort to ease his aching limbs.
Slam! Someone booted him in the stomach. Not a word had been spoken. He was forced back into the same seated pose. He knew now that in spite of the spikes of pain, he was not permitted to move. He’d been put into a stress position, one designed to deliver a relentless and unendurable torture.
Without warning, the vehicle gave a sudden lurch and began to move. The unexpected motion threw Jaeger on to his front. Instantly he was booted around the head. He dragged himself into position again, but moments later the truck hit a ditch and he was catapulted on to his back. Again, elbows and fists rained down, driving his head into the cold metal skin of the vehicle.
Finally one of his tormentors dragged him back into the same stress position as before. The pain was intense. His head throbbed, his lungs were bursting and he was still winded from the beating. He felt as if his heart was about to explode out of his chest. Fear and panic gripped him.
Jaeger knew he’d been captured by utter professionals. The question was, who were they exactly?
And where in God’s name were they taking him?
17
The truck ride seemed to take forever, jolting along rutted tracks and rattling over rough ground. In spite of the pain he was in, at least it gave Jaeger time to think. Someone must have betrayed them. No one could have found them in the Falkenhagen Bunker otherwise, that was for certain.
Was it Narov? If not, who else had known where they were meeting? None of the team had been informed of their end destination. All they’d been told was that they would be collected from the airport.
But why? After all they’d been through, why would Narov have sold him out? And to whom?
All of a sudden the truck slowed to a stop. Jaeger heard the rear door being hinged open. He tensed. Hands grabbed him by the legs and hauled him out, letting him drop. He tried to use his arms to break the fall, but still his head cannoned into the ground.
Jesus, that hurt.
He was dragged away, pulled along by his feet like an animal carcass, his head and torso ploughing through the dirt. From the brightness filtering in through the bag, he could tell that it was daylight. Otherwise, he had lost all sense of time.
He heard a door being wrenched open and he was booted inside some kind of building. It went suddenly dark again. A terrifying sense of total blackness. Then he heard the familiar whir of a lift motor and felt the floor beneath him drop away. He was in an elevator, going deep.
Finally, the movement stopped. Jaeger was dragged out and propelled through a series of sharp right-angled turns – some kind of twisting corridor, he figured. Then a door opened, unleashing a tsunami of deafening sound. It was as if a TV had been left on tuned to nothing, blasting out electronic interference – so-called white noise – at top volume.
He was gripped beneath the armpits and dragged backwards into the white-noise room. His hands were cut free and his clothes were torn away from him with such force that the buttons flew off. He was left in nothing but his boxers; even his shoes were gone.
He was manoeuvred into a position facing the wall, his hands against the cold brickwork but balanced only on the tips of his fingers. His captors kicked his legs further and further backwards until he was suspended at what felt like a sixty-degree angle on fingertips and toes.
Footsteps stomped away. Utter silence, apart from his own pained and laboured breathing.
Was there anyone but him here any more?
Did he have company?
There was no way of telling.
Years back, Jaeger had been put through simulated resistance-to-interrogation training, as part of the selection process when joining the SAS. It was designed to test your resolve under pressure, and to train you how to cope with captivity. It had been thirty-six hours of hell, but he’d always known it was only an exercise.
This, by contrast, was very real and terrifying.
His shoulder muscles started to burn, his fingers cramping, as all the while the deafening white noise pounded into his skull. He wanted to cry out with the pain, but his mouth was still taped shut. All he could do was scream and yell inside his own head.
Eventually it was the finger cramps that got too much for him. The pain seared through his hands, the muscles tensing so hard it felt as if his fingers would be ripped from their very sockets. For an instant he relaxed, pressing his palms against the wall. It was blissful relief to allow them to take his full weight. But the next moment he doubled over as a jabbing bolt of pain shot up his spine.
Jaeger screamed, but it came out as a muffled yelp. He was far from alone in here, and someone had just applied an electrode – a cattle prod? – to the small of his back.
With brute savagery he was kicked back into his former position. Not a word had been said, but there was no misunderstanding the situation: if he tried to move or relax, they’d jab him with the electrode.
It wasn’t long before his arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably. At the very moment when he felt he couldn’t go on, his feet were booted out from under him, and he collapsed to the floor like a dead man. There was absolutely no let-up. Hands grabbed him like a lump of meat, forcing him into the sitting position he’d adopted in the truck, but this time with his arms folded in front of him.
His captors were faceless, voiceless tormentors. But their message was crystal clear: movement equals pain.
All that assailed Jaeger now was the screaming blast of white noise. Time became meaningless. When he lost consciousness and keeled over, they wrestled him into a new stress position, and on and on and on.
Eventually something seemed to change.
Without a hint of warning, Jaeger felt himself dragged to his feet. His hands were whipped behind his back, wrists taped together, and he was propelled towards the door. He was dragged along the corridors again, swinging left-right-left-right around the sharp series of turns.
He heard another door open and he was thrust into a room. A sharp edge was rammed into the back of his knees. It was a bare wooden chair, and it forced him to sit. He hunched there in silence.
Wherever he was now, there was an extra chill to the atmosphere, plus a faint smell of airlessness and damp. In one way this was the most terrifying moment yet. Jaeger had understood the white-noise room; its purpose and its rules. His captors had been trying to exhaust him, to break him down and force him to crack.
But this? This unknown. This total lack of noise or any sense of a human presence other than his own – it was utterly chilling.
Jaeger felt a spike of fear. Real, visceral fear. He had no idea where he had been brought to, but he sensed there was nothing good about this place. Plus he had little sense who might have captured him, or what they intended to do with him now.
All of a sudden, light flooded in, blinding him. The bag had been ripped off, and at the
same instant a powerful beam switched on. It seemed to be shining directly into his face.
Gradually his eyes started to adjust and he began to figure out detail.
There was a stark metal desk before him, with a glass surface. Sitting on the desk was a bland-looking white china mug.
Nothing else: just a mug of steaming liquid.
Behind the desk was seated a portly, bearded, balding man. He looked to be in his mid-sixties. He was dressed in a threadbare tweed jacket and fraying shirt. With his dated dress and spectacles, he had the demeanour of a jaded university lecturer or an underpaid museum curator. A bachelor who did his own cleaning, overcooked his vegetables and was fond of collecting butterflies.
He looked utterly unremarkable: he’d be forgotten in an instant and would never turn heads in a crowd. The archetypal grey man. And the very last thing that Jaeger had been expecting to encounter right now.
He’d expected a gang of shaven-headed Eastern European thugs, each wielding a pickaxe handle or baseball bat. This was just so weird. It was way out left field, and it was messing with his head.
The grey man stared at Jaeger without saying a word. His expression almost gave the impression that he was . . . uninterested; bored; studying some unedifying museum specimen.
He nodded at the mug. ‘Tea, white, one sugar. A cuppa. Isn’t that what you say in England?’
He spoke quietly, with just a hint of a foreign accent, but to Jaeger it was untraceable. He didn’t sound particularly aggressive or unfriendly. In fact he gave the impression of being slightly weary – as if he had done this a thousand times before.
‘A nice cuppa. You must be thirsty. Have some tea.’
In the military, Jaeger had been taught to always take a drink or food if ever he were offered. Yes, it could be poisoned, but why would anyone bother? It was much easier to beat a captive to a pulp, or shoot him dead.
He stared at the white china mug. Faint wisps of steam curled into the chill air.
‘A cup of tea,’ the man repeated quietly. ‘White with one. Have a drink.’
Jaeger flicked his eyes up to the grey man’s face and back to the mug again. Then he reached out and grabbed it. From the smell, it just seemed to be hot, sweet, milky tea. He raised it to his lips and gulped it down.
There was no adverse reaction. He didn’t collapse or puke or go into convulsions.
He placed the mug back down.
Silence descended once more.
Jaeger took a momentary glance at his surroundings. The room was a stark, utterly featureless cube devoid of any windows. He felt the grey man’s eyes upon him, staring intently. He returned his own gaze to the floor.
‘You are cold, I think? You must be. Cold. Would you like to be warm?’
Jaeger’s mind raced. What was this – a trick question? Maybe. But Jaeger needed to buy himself some time. And in truth he was sitting there in his boxers freezing his nuts off. ‘I’ve been warmer, sir. Sir, yes – I’m cold.’
The ‘sir’ bit was another lesson ingrained during Jaeger’s military training: treat your captors as if they warranted some respect. There was just a chance that it might be repaid; it might persuade them to view you as a fellow human.
Yet right now Jaeger held out little hope. All that he had experienced here was designed to reduce him to the level of a defenceless animal.
‘I think you would like to be warm,’ the grey man continued. ‘Look beside you. Open the bag. Inside, you will find dry clothes.’
Jaeger glanced down. A cheap-looking sports bag had appeared beside his chair. He reached for it and did as instructed, unzipping it. He half feared he would find the severed, bloodied head of one of his Amazon team lying inside. Instead, he discovered a set of faded orange work overalls and a pair of threadbare socks, plus some battered plimsolls.
‘But what were you expecting?’ the grey man asked, a faint smile playing across his features. ‘First, a nice cup of tea. Now, clothes. Clothes to make you warm. Get dressed. Put them on.’
Jaeger slid into the overalls and buttoned up the front, then slipped on the shoes and sat back down again.
‘Warmer? Does that feel better?’
Jaeger nodded.
‘So now I think you understand. I have the power to help you. I can truly help. But I need something in return: I need you to help me.’ The grey man left a weighty pause. ‘I just need to know when your friends will be arriving, who we are to expect, and how we are to recognise them.’
‘I cannot answer that question, sir.’ It was the standard response that Jaeger had been trained to give: a negative, but as polite and respectful as he could make it in the circumstances. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about either,’ he added. He knew he had to stall.
The interrogator sighed, as if he had been expecting that response. ‘It does not matter. We have found your . . . equipment. Your laptop. Your cell phone. We will crack your security codes and passwords and soon these things will reveal to us your secrets.’
Jaeger’s mind was whirling. He was certain he’d not brought a laptop with him. And as for his cheap pay-as-you-go mobile, that would reveal nothing of any great import.
‘If you cannot answer my question, at least tell me this: what are you doing here? Why are you in my country?’
Jaeger’s mind reeled. His country. But this was Germany. Surely he hadn’t been in the truck long enough for them to have crossed into some eastern European state? Who in God’s name had he been taken by? Was it some rogue arm of the German intelligence services?
‘I don’t know what you’re talking—’ he began, but the grey man cut him off.
‘This is very sad. I helped you, Mr Will Jaeger, but you are not trying to help me. And if you cannot help, then you will be returned to the room with the noise and the pain.’
The grey man had barely finished speaking when unseen hands whipped the bag over Jaeger’s head again. The shock of it made his heart skip a beat.
Then he was hauled to his feet, spun around, and without another word he was marched away.
18
Jaeger found himself back in the white-noise room, leaning at a crazy angle against the brick wall. During SAS selection, they’d referred to such a place as ‘the softener’ – the room where grown men became weak. All he could hear was the empty, meaningless howl tearing through the darkness. All he could smell was his own sweat, cold and clammy against his skin. And in his throat he could taste the acid tang of bile.
He felt battered and exhausted and utterly alone, and his body was hurting like it had rarely hurt before. His head was throbbing; his mind screaming.
He started to murmur songs in his head. Snatches of favoured tunes remembered from his youth. If he could sing those songs, maybe he could block out the white noise, the agony and the fear.
Waves of fatigue washed over him. He was close to his limit and he knew it.
When the songs faded, he told himself stories of his childhood. Tales of his heroes that his father used to read to him. The feats of those who had inspired him and driven him on when he had faced his hardest tests; both as a kid, and later during his worst trials in the military.
He relived the story of Douglas Mawson, an Australian explorer who went through hell and back, starved and alone in Antarctica, yet somehow managed to haul himself to safety. Of George Mallory, very possibly the first person ever to climb Mount Everest, a man who knew for certain that he was sacrificing his life to conquer the world’s highest peak. Mallory never made it down alive, perishing on those ice-bound slopes. But that was the sacrifice of his choosing.
Jaeger knew that humankind was capable of achieving the seemingly impossible. When the body was screaming that it could take no more, the mind could force it to go on. An individual could go way beyond the possible.
Likewise, if Jaeger believed strongly enough, he could beat the odds. He could get through this.
The power of the will.
He began to repeat the same mantra ove
r and over: Stay alert to the chance to escape. Stay alert . . .
He lost all track of time; all sense of day and night. At one moment the bag was lifted to free his mouth, and a cup was thrust to his lips. He felt his head being forced backwards as they poured its contents down his throat.
Tea. Just like before.
It was followed by a stale biscuit. Then another and another. They rammed them in, pulled down the bag, and shoved him back into position.
Like an animal.
But at least for now they seemed to want to keep him alive.
Sometime later his head must have dropped, jerking downwards into sleep and slumping on to his chest. He felt himself torn into savage wakefulness as he was forced into a new stress position.
This time he was made to kneel on a patch of gravel. As the minutes passed, the sharp, jagged stones dug deeper into his flesh, cutting off the circulation, causing bolts of pain to shoot up into his brain. He was in agony, but he told himself he could get through this.
The power of the will.
How long had it been? he wondered. Days? Two or three, or more? It felt like an eternity.
At some point the white noise died abruptly, and the insanely inappropriate tones of the Barney the Dinosaur theme tune began to blast out at full volume. Jaeger had heard about such techniques: playing kids’ cartoon tunes over and over to break a man’s sanity and his will. It was known as ‘psyops’ – psychological operations. But for Jaeger, it had something of the opposite effect.
Barney had been one of Luke’s favourite TV characters when he was an infant. The song served to bring the memories flooding back. Happy moments. Ones to grasp hold of; a rock upon which to tether his storm-lashed soul.
He reminded himself that this was what had brought him here. Chief amongst his motives, he was here on the trail of his missing wife and child. If he let his captors break him, he was abandoning that mission and giving up on those he loved.
He would not betray Ruth and Luke.
He had to hold on and hold firm.