Fuelling the Fire

by Roland Ladley

  “What can I do for you?” Jane looked directly at Sam as she hung her scarf over the back of her chair. Progress.

  “I need some time off, please.”

  “No, sorry.” Jane didn’t even think about her reply. It was instantaneous.

  Jane was back doing stuff on her desk now. Not making eye contact with Sam.

  Then she stopped and looked up. She seemed to have gathered herself.

  “Without David, we’re stretched. I’m stretched. Your new intelligence is crucial, and we will need all of our resources to try to understand why Daesh are keeping James alive. And, just as importantly, to establish where he is being held.”

  “I understand that. And I will continue to work remotely to the same capacity as I am now . . .”

  Jane interrupted her. Her steel was back.

  “You know that’s not the case! The tablet and the phone only give you so much granularity. I would argue that you wouldn’t have made this find on a Nexus? True?”

  Sam closed her eyes. Jane was right. As much as it hurt, she couldn’t take time off now. She couldn’t.

  But she could work to rule, maybe? Wolfgang could come over—where will he stay? My place?—and she could help him in the evenings. What day is it? Wednesday. Unless Jane called a lockdown, she could travel after work Friday night and be back in on Monday. She had plenty of money saved, so catching a plane wouldn’t be a problem. Yes, that would work.

  Sam had obviously taken too long to reply, so Jane carried on.

  “Look, Sam, I’m sorry. I have to get this news to the chief and then put a briefing note to the JIC. I do need to move along. But, why do you want time now? Is it still your Uncle Peter?”

  Sam was alert now, her focus back. Jane was right. It was a selfish request.

  She softened her approach. “Sort of. Look, it’s all fine. I’ll do what I need to do in the evenings and this weekend. I’ll assume you won’t call a lockdown, and I can travel then if I need to. Don’t worry about it.”

  Jane was about to let Sam go, but then she added, “Is it to do with the person you met while you were in the Alps?” Jane smiled, a touch cheekily.

  Sam, who was about to turn and walk out, stopped herself. She smiled at Jane. It was good to have her back.

  “It might be. I’d better get back to the office so I can forward that presentation. By the way, can I call him Clive?”

  “What?”

  “The chief—you know, ‘Call me Clive.’”

  Jane laughed out loud.

  “Call him what you want, but if you value your job, I’d stick with ‘Sir.’”

  “OK then.”

  No. 17a Roundgreen Lane, Colliers Green, London

  Sam was thankful that she had managed to get home from work without having to break someone else’s nose. She half expected the spotty youth to be waiting for her with a couple of friends, but thankfully he was nowhere to be seen. She only had one forehead and didn’t like to use it that often.

  The day had ended in a rush, with a sharp call to brief “Clive.” Jane had let her lead on the briefing. He’d seen it straight away, even before Sam got to the end of the presentation. He swore—quietly—at the outcome.

  “Bugger.”

  The chief stood up, walked to the window of his office, and looked down the Thames. She was familiar with the move. She’d only been in David’s office twice before and, both times, he’d gone through the same routine when he needed to think. Look out of the window, gather one’s thoughts. Sam’s mind drifted to how she imagined him in his hospital bed, and a lump grew in her throat. Tears were never far away at the moment.

  “Well done, Sam. Excellent work. The big questions are, why have they kept James alive, why fake his execution, and where are they keeping him? Jane?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Could be all manner of things. Future bargaining counter. Doing a Damian Lewis on him and trying to convert him to Islam—although I think that is very farfetched. If they’ve broken him, and we have evidence of waterboarding, then maybe he’d be a source of useful advice on our MOs and lower-level tactics.”

  “Sam?”

  What, me?

  “Jane’s third point, plus the first, in that order. He’s broken—I think there’s no doubt about that. As a result, they can ask him anything they want, and he will give them a sensible answer. And, sometime in the future, he might just be a useful trade.”

  “I think that’s a fair assessment from both of you. Have you briefed the JIC yet, Jane?”

  “I was writing the note when we got a slot to see you, sir.”

  “OK. All good. We now need to find this soldier. Please let me know if you need any more resources. And, both of you”—the chief waited for an answer, but clearly wasn’t expecting one—“call me Clive. Please.”

  Sam had almost wet herself at that point. But she managed to get out of his office without sniggering. And then it felt great to walk down the corridor with Jane, laughing out loud at the chief’s last comment like two naughty schoolgirls. When things were tough, you needed to pull together. Humour was an effective glue.

  It had, without doubt, been a good day.

  Now, what she needed to do—other than eat and possibly have another half glass of that very slurpable Malbec—was to e-mail Wolfgang.

  She had sent him a holding reply late last night and was delighted that, within a few minutes, he had come back with: OK. Let me know what your boss says. I can be at Heathrow within eight hours.

  With the pasta boiling away—how long does it take? Eight or twelve minutes?—she opened her Gmail account and typed away:

  Hi Wolfgang,

  Can’t get time off just yet, although the weekend is free at the moment—work may come crashing in. Happy that you come here when you want, or I could catch a flight on Friday after work? Would need to be back here late Sunday night.

  I have a couch. Or I understand they’ve got room at the Dorchester.

  Where do you live? And, as it feels such a long time ago and such a fleeting meeting, are you for real?

  Looking forward to it. Anything to break the mundanity of life here.

  Sam

  Should she put some kisses at the end, like everyone does nowadays—but not really mean it? No, sod it. It’s too early for anything like that. I’d probably frighten him off.

  Sam pressed “Send.”

  She ate, washed up, and was about to watch something banal on TV when she remembered that she had started looking through Interpol mug shots for the man who had ransacked Wolfgang’s apartment.

  She opened up the Nexus and logged in. What she had managed to do last night—with some limited manipulation afforded by her access to SIS securenet—was to play with the video and get a reasonably good mug shot of the man. She now had a photo that looked like something taken in a police cell.

  The Interpol database had thousands and thousands of photos. And, whilst she was never short of patience, what she didn’t have was the time or the energy to search through all of them. She reduced the number of images by narrowing the fields for her search. After some trial and error—she was still learning the intricacies of the application—she managed to restrict the search to males, thirty to fifty years old, German. Search results: six hundred and fifty.

  What time is it? It’s ten fifteen—must go to bed soon.

  Ping.

  An e-mail to her Gmail account.

  It was from Wolfgang.

  Dear Sam,

  I am alive and as you remember me. “Nice chinos,” I think you said. I have booked a flight out of Munich—where we have a house—for 3 p.m. tomorrow. I can be in central London at six thirty, all being well. Or we can meet at Heathrow. Your choice.

  I’m not keen on the Dorchester; the rooms are slightly on the small side. Happy to use your couch, although—seriously—I can book into a hotel if you wish.

  Let me know your address.

  Looking forward to it.

  Wolfgang xxx


  That was such a good feeling. She had no idea what the man was really like, or whether or not she could trust him. But it felt great to be doing something other than work.

  So, “Clive” had gone well. Now Wolfgang—I wonder if he likes to be called Wolfie?—was going to make a guest appearance. And, as we know, good things come in threes—come on Interpol, don’t let me down.

  Inevitably, it wasn’t as simple as that.

  Sam painstakingly looked over page after page of mug shots and, at one point, fell asleep with the Nexus almost slipping off her lap.

  She woke suddenly. She looked across at the plastic clock sitting on the plain-wood mantelshelf above the electric fire. She’d lost fifteen minutes.

  Onward!

  And then, there he was. Three-quarters of the way down page ninety-seven. Was it him? She sat up, adjusting the pillow behind her back. She reached for, and finished, the half glass of wine she had poured a couple of hours previously. Then, she tapped on the image—it enlarged before her eyes.

  It was him. OK, so he had more hair in the Interpol shot and a weaselly moustache. But she was confident. It was him. Herr Heinrich Bischoff. Forty-nine years old. Domicile: Leipzig, Germany.

  Leipzig wasn’t far from Dresden. That made sense.

  She was onto something. But, she also knew she was dog-tired. And her place needed a tiny bit of sprucing up before Wolfgang’s arrival tomorrow. She screen-captured the image and then closed her machine.

  This would all have to wait.

  Chapter 12

  Somewhere on the Saudi Peninsula

  The guard came into his cell with a plateful of meat, some bread, and a very green orange. He placed it carefully on the floor and nodded. He then went over to an old Philips cassette player, opened it, turned the tape around, and pressed “Play.”

  He gestured with his AK-47, and, in thickly disguised English, admonished Tony.

  “No touch!”

  Tony nodded. It was all he had the energy for.

  The guard left the cell and locked the thick wooden door behind him. Clunk, clunk.

  The subtle whirr of the spooling cassette was quickly hidden by the fairly melodic voice of someone who sounded like David Niven—a proper English accent. It had taken Tony half an hour to establish that he was listening to the Koran. Next to the cassette player were twelve tapes—about fourteen hours of religious words. All of which were in a language he understood. He thought he was already listening to it for a second time, maybe even a third. It was hard to tell; his mind hadn’t been his own for a while. He heard some of the words and even managed to assimilate a phrase or two. But much of it he tuned out. No, that assumed that he had control over what his brain currently registered. He didn’t. Some of it got through—whatever his brain wanted him to hear.

  What he heard made perfect sense to him. As had his Bible classes when he was at school. All of it seemed well meaning and something that any rational person might subscribe to. There was nothing wrong with religion. It was the people who preached it who were the problem.

  Tony shuffled across to the plate, his legs shackled in medieval irons, fixed to the wall by a long chain. His hands were free.

  Leaving aside what was going on in his head, his body seemed to have settled down, if you consider “racked with surges of pain” as settling down. He had been visited by a doctor yesterday. At least, he assumed he was a doctor. He was an Arab, carrying one of those black bulbous briefcases that held all manner of medical implements and pills. It was interesting that he wasn’t wearing a thawb, but loose-fitting trousers and an open-necked shirt. He sweated a lot and looked a little uncomfortable with what he was being asked to do. He was probably there under sufferance, which made Tony feel that at least the guy might be trying to fix him, rather than hurt him. That was a novelty.

  The leg stung like hell, but the swelling that had been there since the beginning had started to go down. In a more lucid moment, and there hadn’t been many, he had checked the wound and thought that he had a hole on both sides of his leg: a small entry wound on one side and a massive gash of an exit wound on the other. The doctor had made him scream by daubing the wound with what was probably alcohol. The pain had calmed down once he had bandaged it. He still couldn’t stand up easily. Not without being helped.

  His ribs were sore, as was the whole of his head. He remembered spitting out a bit of a tooth at one point and chewing was akin to sticking a Stanley knife in his cheeks—but he managed. His nose throbbed, but that was just cartilage. It would be fine.

  But it was his stomach that hurt the most. He knew he’d taken a good number of kicks to his middle, but he didn’t think that was the problem. He couldn’t keep anything down—or more accurately, inside. He reckoned he probably had dysentery, or something similar. His stomach contracted with extraordinary cramps that made him curl up in a ball and weep. Recently, crying had come easily.

  At least now he had a bucket where he could relieve himself, and they had provided a couple of cloths to wipe himself. There was a second bucket with clean water in it, and next to it some soap. Earlier on, his guard, again gesticulating with his rifle, had said, “Clean! Clean!” Nothing was done around here without an exclamation mark.

  But it wasn’t the injuries or the disease that hurt him most—although both made him cry out, at times uncontrollably. Since Ted and Sandy, something else hurt more. He hadn’t been able to stop weeping since Ted and Sandy. He was surprised he had any fluid left, what with it coming out of both ends and then seeping from his eyes.

  Before Ted and Sandy, he had got through the beatings and the torture. They were transient events, spikes of horrendousness on a plateau of pain. He had screamed, cursed, and cried as they kicked him; he had begged and blubbered when they had waterboarded him. He had told them everything. He’d even told them things he didn’t know, but thought might please them. He actually made things up. It was unimaginable what your brain would do to stop the pain. He couldn’t run away, so his mind did what it could do to try to end the cycle of violence. He hated himself for it. But he couldn’t stop, even though he tried.

  But that, somehow, was all manageable. There were gaps in the horror where all he had to deal with was the throbbing pain and the deep self-loathing.

  Now, having seen them execute Ted and Sandy, sever their heads with a blunt sword, he was faced with a new enemy. Something stronger and more debilitating than beatings, more devastating than the torture.

  He’d assumed that Sandy was dead. He’d seen him go down, but not made it to him during the attack before he took a bullet to his leg. And, as Sandy was not on the video he and Ted shot days ago, he thought that he was gone. Dumped somewhere—surely they wouldn’t have bothered to bury him?

  But they hadn’t dumped him. They had saved him to be ceremoniously executed alongside Ted. And Tony had been made to watch the proceedings from one side.

  Guest of honour.

  He had been continuously hooded up until that point. He had been dragged along and sat on a chair in the midday sun. He still had no idea where he was, or where he’d come from.

  How did he get here from the first place he’d been kept? Where they had waterboarded him? He thought he’d been thrown in the back of a pickup in the middle of the night. Flesh; a filthy, thin thawb that you might call clothes; a corrugated metal floor—all squashed together. As they drove along, the bouncing was as painful as anything he had endured so far. He banged and lurched against other things in the truck that he couldn’t fathom. On reflection, the things might have been Ted and Sandy.

  When they got to where they were now, for him, his disposition had got better. They’d stuck him in a room with a single door and a barred but opened window. An Arab, whom he now thought of as his guard, brought him food, water, a toilet bucket, and something to wash himself with. And the Koran recited by David Niven. He had managed to stand once to look out of the window, but only stole a fleeting glance of rock and sand before his legs had given way
.

  And then he was guest of honour at the execution of Ted and Sandy.

  Sitting on a chair and still hooded, he heard a commotion. Once that had died down, and after what he now thought was a rehearsal of the words to accompany the execution, his hood had been removed.

  Bright, penetrating sunlight.

  He couldn’t stop blinking. For about a minute. But it took less than that for the horror of what was in front of him to come into focus.

  He couldn’t recall the next five minutes, not in a coherent way. Not now. The video camera on the tripod. The small cheering audience. The Arabian tea on a table in front of him. His hands had been freed and an Arab to one side had said to him, “Tea. Drink!”

  He had.

  The interminable words prior to the double flash of the sword. Two bodies; two heads. No longer joined together.

  To him, then, there followed a noisy silence. Words became a sea of background hum that didn’t register. And his mouth wouldn’t utter a thing. He tried to shout “Stop!” as the blade was held aloft for the first time. But nothing came out. It was as if his tongue had been replaced with a piece of leather that he could no longer control. As the blade came down for a second time he couldn’t hear anything either, just a dreadful, unrelenting background hum.

  He was mute. Deaf and dumb.

  That was then. It was nearly two days later. At least he could count. He could sense time, and his hearing was back. The Koran was coming over loud and clear. But he still couldn’t speak.

  The doctor had talked to him in poor English, asking for his symptoms. He hadn’t been able to respond. He’d tried to tell him about his stomach, but could only mouth what he was feeling. Down there. He had pointed. Maybe words would come back, but then he’d have to describe out loud the horror of Ted and Sandy. The worst thing. Worse than the pain and the torture. Worse than the beatings.