Fire Hawk (3 page)

Suddenly the Labrador eyes had turned angry, the man's chisel chin jerking forward involuntarily. He'd shouted at his subordinates. He'd been seen by the prisoner and didn't want to be. The hood had been jammed back on.

Then, two days ago, Packer had had the feeling they were giving up, that he'd defeated them. Yesterday there'd been no interrogation session at all and they'd let him sleep out his exhaustion. At the end of the day they'd disconnected his arm from the heating pipe to which he'd been shackled, moved him from the stinking toilet of a cell whose vile, shit-caked confines he'd defined through touch on day one of his incarceration, then never again, and hosed him down with icy water. After that they'd let him eat something that tasted like food instead of sewage, and given him a room with a bed instead of a stone floor. He'd felt absurdly relieved. Almost euphoric.

This morning, however, when his guard told him he was being moved, his fear had returned. Something new was in store and they wouldn't say what. A show trial perhaps? Some travesty of a court process? A spy hearing for which there was only ever one sentence in Iraq?

It was hot in the back of the truck now. The tyres had hummed for what seemed like hours. If it was Abu Ghraib they were heading for, they should surely have arrived already. But if not Abu Ghraib, where else? The road they were on sounded smooth and felt straight. The only route from the capital that he knew personally was the motorway to Jordan. With no flights, all commercial visitors to Iraq had to take the ten-hour drive from Amman. But there were other main roads from Baghdad
– north, south and east. They could be taking him anywhere.

If you lucky this finish quick for you.
At that moment the guard's words had only one meaning for him. Death. The noose over the head, the tightening at the throat, the floor dropping away. He ordered himself not to think about it.

From time to time during the past days he'd felt intense, bitter anger at his masters at SIS for failing to get him out of there. What were they doing in London? There'd been nothing from the world he knew. Not a word. And Chrissie – surely to God she would have moved heaven and earth for him.

From time to time, too, he'd ruminated on what madness it was that had made him want to be a spy in the first place. A thirst for excitement had been one motive, and as he lay there in his own filth in the bare cell it had seemed a damned stupid one. But there'd been more to it than that – a fundamental belief that the dissemblers of this world needed sorting out and that he should be one of those to do it. For now, however, the dissemblers had won. He was their prisoner.

Suddenly the truck slowed down, bumping onto the rough verge and coming to a juddering halt. The sun had turned the rear of the vehicle into an oven. Sam's throat felt parched. He heard the flap being unlaced and someone climbing into the back.

‘What's going on?' He felt panicky again. ‘What's happening?'

He imagined a pistol being put to his head. His arms were untied and he was jerked up into a sitting position.

‘We have stopped to urinate, Packer. That is all.' Sandhurst's mellow tones. It surprised him the interrogator was still with him. ‘We don't want you making a mess of our vehicle.'

Why was Sandhurst here? Interrogators weren't normally involved in transporting prisoners around the country.

‘Then take this damn hood off so I can see what I'm doing.'

‘You're not allowed to see. You're a
spy
, Packer.'

Gingerly, Sam felt for the edge of the platform and swung his legs over. When his feet hit the ground he yelped with pain. Hands gripped him and he was marched a few paces.

‘This will do.' Sandhurst's voice again. ‘You can do it here. What is it you call it in the Navy? Pumping ship?'

‘Something like that.'

The Navy . . .
How
did this man know so much about him?

Packer fumbled with the unfamiliar buttons of the trousers given to him to wear that morning. Unable to see what he was doing, the flow didn't come easily. Behind him on the road he heard the swish of heavy vehicles passing, confirming they were on a main highway. And from the strength of the sun above he guessed it was midday or later. Must have dozed a little in the truck.

After he had buttoned up, the hands were back on his elbows, spinning him round and steering him to the truck.

‘Look,' he protested gently, ‘for the love of God, can't you tell me where we're going?'

‘You'll find out soon enough,' Sandhurst snapped, shoving him against the tailboard so he could feel the ledge. ‘Get in. There's some water in a bottle if you want it.'

‘What about food? I've had nothing.'

‘Oh, really? Haven't you heard?' Sandhurst mocked. ‘There's a food shortage in Iraq. UN sanctions, you know.'

Sam eased his backside onto the tailboard and swung
his legs up. His shins burned horribly. He edged backwards until he found the stretcher again. A plastic water bottle was pressed into his hands. He unscrewed the top and raised the rim to his lips. The water was warm and unpleasant, but he drank gratefully. He heard breathing. His hearing, made more sensitive by his inability to see, told him it was the guard beside him rather than Sandhurst.

‘What's going to happen to me?' he whispered. ‘You can tell me.' Between the beatings this man had shown a degree of kindness to him in the past few days.

‘Tch!'

Sam held out the bottle.

‘No. You must drink more. You get dehydrate.'

He felt he'd had enough, but took several more swigs.

‘Where are we going, friend? Tell me.'

‘Tch, tch,' the Iraqi repeated, taking the bottle and pushing Sam down onto the stretcher. He retied his arms. ‘You are spy. Soon finish for you.'

God! That word ‘finish' was like a bell tolling.

‘What d'you mean?'

‘This night. All finish for you,' the guard whispered, then scurried away.

Tonight. Within hours. The ambiguity of the words tortured him. He tensed his arms, testing the strength of the ties. No chance of escape. He heard the canvas flaps being fastened, then the cab doors banging shut. The engine coughed back into life and they began to move again.

As the tyres picked up speed on the highway, his mind filled with the image of a face. The face of the woman whom he'd entrusted with his life. A face framed by silky chestnut hair and dominated by cool grey eyes.

Chrissie.

It had been a whim to put her phone number in the German's newspaper. An instinctive act, stemming from
a belief that she still cared for him. She'd been Christine White when they first met, although she'd used a different surname as her cover. Christine Kessler now, the wife of a department head at MI6. Ironically it had been here in Iraq their affair had begun, six years ago. With Iraq's army massing on the border with Kuwait, Western intelligence had been short of agents in place. Newly transferred to the Intelligence Service from the Royal Navy, he'd been despatched to Baghdad as an extra on a trade mission. A few days later the Iraqi army had invaded Kuwait, and when the West threatened retaliation most foreigners in Iraq, including himself, had been rounded up as hostages.

He'd been told before his mission that there was another MI6 agent in Baghdad, but not her name. A woman whose cover job was with a British company running a construction contract. He knew that she'd been told about him too. At the hotel where most of the Britons were being held by the Iraqi security services, they'd identified one another through a process of elimination.

She'd attracted him instantly. Physically at least. From the crown of her red-brown hair to the immaculately pedicured toes peeping from a pair of slingback sandals, she'd oozed style and sensuality. Her character had grated at first – she'd tried to pull rank because she'd worked for the Intelligence Service longer than him. But the antipathy hadn't lasted. Thrown together by confinement to the hotel, their relationship had become close and equal.

But not intimate at first, not until the Iraqi announcement that the foreigners were to be used as human shields against American bombers. Then a change had come about in her. The fear spreading through the hostages that they would all be killed had gripped her with an irrational intensity. She'd kept her cool in public, but
alone with him in the privacy of his room she'd gone to pieces. She'd shared his bed that night and he'd done what he'd wanted to do since first clapping eyes on her. The next day, when the hostages had been shipped off to be held at strategic targets, Sam had been separated from her. Only at Christmas when they were repatriated to Britain had they met again. Only then had she told him that she was engaged to be married. To Martin Kessler, a senior official at SIS.

He'd expected that to be the end of the matter – a sexual interlude in a moment of crisis – but the bond forged in Baghdad was not to be broken so easily. A few months after her wedding she'd contacted him again, inviting herself to his apartment one Sunday afternoon. Within minutes of walking through the door she'd told him her marriage had been a terrible mistake. That her husband lacked bedroom skills and seemed disinclined to acquire any.

She'd made no secret of the purpose of her visit. Her directness had disarmed him. He wasn't used to women declaring so openly that they wanted sex, particularly women who attracted him as much as Chrissie. Despite qualms about what he was getting into, he'd obliged her, because when she'd unbuttoned her shirt in his living room that Sunday afternoon, the reasons for doing so had seemed infinitely more appealing than those against. Their affair had lasted for over five years on and off, until three months ago, when she'd announced her ‘final and irreversible' decision to commit herself to her husband. No good reason given. At least, none that had made sense to him.

The truck hit a pothole suddenly, shooting pain through his bruised back.

How stupid. How incredibly ill-judged, he realised now, to have sent his message to a woman who'd rejected him. Phoned through to the home she shared with the
man he'd cuckolded, a man who could by definition be no friend of his, a man high up in MI6 who had the power to decide that a spy whose cover was blown in Iraq should be left to rot there.

‘Stupid,' he mouthed to himself. ‘Fucking stupid.'

Despair engulfed him. He was utterly alone – and he felt it.

It was hot in the back of the truck and getting hotter. He would have given anything for some more of that water, despite its unpleasant taste, but if the bottle was there, his pinioned arms were preventing him getting to it. An irresistible drowsiness began to creep over him.

When he came to, his head throbbed and he had no idea how much more time had passed. The truck had stopped. A cool draught of air blowing over him told him that the canvas flap had been lifted and it was night. How could he have slept so long? He tried to snap awake, but his mind was a fog. Suddenly it occurred to him that the water he'd drunk could have been drugged.

Minutes passed. He listened but heard nothing that would tell him where he was. Then through the rough fabric of the hood he saw a light being shone on him. Thick rubber soles thumped up onto the truck's steel floor. He had company. Someone who reeked of sweat. The sleeve of his shirt was pulled up, fingers tapping on his veins.

‘What the fuck . . .?'

Terror hit him. Sheer, blind terror.

‘What're you doing?'

He strained at the ties binding him to the stretcher. A needle jabbed in and a flush of coolness spread up his arm.

‘Oh no.
No!
'

Not like that. Not so soon. Not when he wasn't ready.

THE AIRBUS TURBOFANS
whimpered into silence and the dozen business-class passengers began to unclip their belts. Cabin staff delved into hanging spaces for jackets, their eyes betraying an eagerness to be rid of their passengers. It had been a long flight.

Towards the back of the cabin an English woman in her mid-thirties, whose red-brown hair fell in wisps across her forehead, had given the appearance of being asleep through most of the flight. Now she sat up straight and made a bleary-eyed check that nothing had fallen from her handbag. Then she stood up to extricate her small suitcase from the overhead locker.

‘Let me.'

A steward reached up for her and lowered the bag to the floor.

‘Thanks.'

She flashed him her warmest of looks and noted the interest in his eyes. At least one of them wasn't gay.

‘Hope we'll see you again soon, Mrs Taylor.'

‘Thank you. I hope so too.'

A stewardess held out a cream linen jacket for her.

‘Thanks. I'm glad half of me won't look creased,' she said, brushing her lap in an attempt to smooth the
wrinkles of the matching skirt. ‘I'd have done better wearing jeans.' She slipped the jacket on. ‘What did they say the temperature was outside?'

‘Not sure, madam. Twenty-four Celsius, I think. But it'll drop at this time of year. Nights in Amman should be pleasantly cool at the end of September.'

The woman made liberal use of a perfume spray while the dark-suited, dapper little Arab, who'd been seated three rows in front of her smoking like a chimney during the flight, brushed past, heading for the exit. His face, she noticed, was still puckered with anger and disappointment at being expelled from Britain. She stepped quickly into the aisle to be right behind him, flinching at the acid whiff of his perspiration. The aircraft's main door was open but the stairs had yet to be wheeled into place. Beyond the galley in the crowded tourist section of the plane she saw passengers queuing impatiently to get off.

When the steps finally arrived, she stuck right behind the man she'd been shadowing as he descended to the tarmac. There was a fifty-metre walk to the terminal. She glanced up at its roof. Half-lit faces watching for relatives. She knew that among them would be professionals, Iraqis checking that the man whose return they'd demanded – the man in front of her – had truly arrived. But it was dark on the tarmac. Passengers hurrying from both ends of the plane were all around them now. Would the watchers spot him in the gloom? It was vital they did. Timing was critical.