Strike Back (21 page)

He glanced at the clock. Six twenty. Hassad hadn’t given the Firm any precise time for the pickup. But they expected him to be getting to the bar around five thirty, so they should have scheduled the collection for shortly after that. Maybe it’s a set-up, thought Porter. Maybe they are just going to leave me, and then let that bloke with the scar cut my throat open as soon as it gets dark.

A man walked up to the bar. Late forties, Porter noted, with a linen jacket, a bald head and one of those Saddam Hussein moustaches that men wore throughout the Middle East. Is that my contact? wondered Porter. For a moment, he could feel his muscles tensing with anticipation. But the guy just ordered some chilled water and tea, and went to sit outside by himself. Porter emptied the rest of the Johnnie Walker bottle into his coffee cup, and knocked it back in one gulp. Much more of this and I’ll be looking for somewhere to spend the night.

Six forty. Porter took out the book the Firm had packed into his bag. Pretty good, he decided, after a few pages, but it was difficult to concentrate on reading anything. One of
scarface’s friends had left the bar, but the rest of them were still arguing over the contents of that day’s paper. The barman had switched on the radio, and as the news came through Porter caught the name of Katie Dartmouth, but the presenter was talking so fast in Arabic he couldn’t begin to translate what he was saying. Who knows, thought Porter, maybe the bastards have already killed her.

‘Mahmudiyya,’ said a voice behind him.

The instant he heard the word, Porter could feel his heart thump against the walls of his chest. This is where it all kicks off, he realised grimly.

Porter looked up. There were two men standing right next to him. The taller of the two was almost six foot, slim with slicked-back hair, around thirty, with the hardened face and the muscles of a man who’d been in plenty of fights. The shorter man was about five eight, with thin dark hair, a face that was running to fat even though he couldn’t even have reached his mid-twenties yet. A pair of sunglasses were wrapped around his eyes, and there was a gold chain glinting through the black hairs on his chest that were visible through his open-necked shirt.

This is it, thought Porter. He drained the last few dregs of his whisky-soaked coffee and stood up. Time for the kickoff.

‘Let’s go,’ he said quietly.

The two men remained silent. They turned on their heels, heading towards the door. Scarface and the barman were watching as he left, their jaws dropping slightly, but neither of them moved from their spot. Do they know these goons? wondered Porter. Do I …?

A black Toyota 4x4 was parked outside on the tarmac. It looked new to Porter. The smaller man opened the back door, revealing the dark leather seats and blackened-out windows inside. Porter was about to climb in when the taller man touched his arm. ‘Wait,’ he said.

His tone was low and controlled, with a slight accent, but Porter could tell his English was good. ‘Here,’ he added.

There was a strip of black cloth in his hand. Porter knew instantly what it was.

A blindfold.

‘OK,’ he said.

He turned to face the car. The taller man stood behind him, and his height gave him at least three inches over Porter. He was stretching the cloth in his hand, then laid the strip across Porter’s face. The skin on his fingers was rough, like a builder’s, but his touch was as soft as a little girl’s, and Porter could feel himself growing nauseated by the sense of the man’s flesh touching his. He wrapped the blindfold around, once, twice, three times, so that the top half of Porter’s face was completely covered. The light totally vanished, and Porter could see nothing. A hand pushed him down into the back seat of the Toyota, and as he sunk back into the leather, he could hear the ignition turn, and feel the surge of power as the car started to move out into the street.

The blackness was total. Porter knew this was inevitable. If they were going to the place they had hidden Katie Dartmouth, then they had to be certain he had no idea where they had taken him. If he knew where she was, they would have to kill him, of that there could be no doubt. Even if they were planning to kill him – and he suspected they were – they would still go through the blindfold routine. If they didn’t, he’d know he was a dead man, and they’d surely save up that piece of information for later. A condemned man is always a nuisance: he knows he has nothing to lose, and that makes him dangerous. So, whatever the plan, the blindfold was unavoidable.

‘Where are we going?’ he said.

Silence.

He could hear only the hum of the engine, and the rumble of the tyres against the rough tarmac.

‘How long will it take?’ said Porter.

Again, silence. He could feel the Toyota turning first left, then right. Whether they were travelling north, south, east or west, he no longer had any idea. No doubt that was the intention.

‘I said, how long will it take?’

Silence.

OK, thought Porter. Don’t talk if you don’t want to. Just take me to Hassad.

The Toyota kept ploughing on over harder and harder terrain. Porter had long since lost track of what time it was. Two, maybe three hours they had been driving. It was hard to keep up, as it was to keep tabs on your direction when a blindfold was strapped over your eyes: lose that most basic of the senses, and the others seem to go as well.

How far have we gone? Porter tried to calculate. Sixty, perhaps seventy miles. But in which direction it was impossible to tell.

The roads had been getting rougher as time moved on. He wasn’t even sure they were still on a road at all. At a guess, Porter reckoned they had been driving north, but he couldn’t be certain. They might well have crossed into Syria by now. Neither of the men up front had uttered a single word the whole time, and Porter had long since given up trying to talk to them. They didn’t even talk to each other.

Suddenly, he felt the Toyota judder to a halt. Porter didn’t react. It had stopped several times in the past couple of hours as it encountered some obstacle on the road, but each time it quickly restarted. This was different. The engine had been turned off. He could hear doors opening. Somewhere in the distance – outside the car – he could hear voices.

‘Get out.’

From the tone of the voice, Porter could tell it was the taller man speaking.

He levered himself out of the back seat, and swung his legs
down onto the ground. Still unable to see anything, he knocked his head against the roof of the car, and he could feel a dull ache where a bruise might be starting to form. He kept on moving, until he was standing, he guessed, just next to the car.

‘Where are we?’ said Porter.

‘Stay quiet,’ barked the man.

His tone was harsh and cruel, but there was a hint of amusement in it as well.

Then, a silence.

Porter could sense there were people around him. He couldn’t see anyone because of the blindfold. He couldn’t hear anyone any more either: if they were there, they were keeping quiet. But he could sense them all the same. There was a body heat in the air all around him. There was a charged, tense atmosphere that you could smell in the air. There are plenty of guys here, he told himself. And probably all of them want to kill me.

‘Why won’t you answer me?’ he said.

‘Just move,’ hissed the taller man.

‘I can’t bloody see anything.’

Suddenly a hand was gripping his shoulder. It squeezed tight, and he could feel the muscled fingers digging hard into his flesh. ‘Just move.’

‘Not until you take my blindfold off.’

Porter dug his heels into the ground. The man was still holding on to his shoulder. Stand my ground, Porter thought. We have to start this right. Once they start treating me like a prisoner rather than a negotiator, then I’m done for.

The grip on his shoulder started to relax.

‘You’re not allowed to see the outside of the building,’ said the taller man. ‘It is too dangerous for us. You must understand this. Now, allow me to take you inside. Then we can remove the blindfold.’

‘And bring Hassad to see me?’

‘You will meet the man you have come to see, yes.’

Porter started walking. The taller man was guiding him. Underneath, he could tell the ground was soft and sandy. Maybe they were out in the Syrian Desert somewhere. He could sense men all around him, and caught a couple of whispers, but no one was talking out loud. Within a few seconds, they had gone inside some kind of doorway. It was warm – he could sense the temperature change instantly – and he was being led along a corridor. He tried counting the paces: without being able to see anything, it was the only way of getting a sense of the size of the place. Thirty, he reckoned, which made the corridor only about twenty metres long. He started to be steered down a staircase. Ten, fifteen, twenty steps, he counted. That meant they were only one floor down, probably in a basement. Another corridor. This time they walked only about five metres. Then they stopped, and the man let go of his shoulder.

‘Can we lose the bloody blindfold now?’ snapped Porter.

He could hear his voice echoing around the cramped corridor: from the time it took his voice to bounce back from the walls, he reckoned it was just a short corridor, and at most a couple of rooms.

There was no reply.

Porter could hear the sound of a key being turned in a lock. Then a bolt being shifted back. Next, there was a sudden shove against him, and he was bundled into the room.

‘Getting your fucking hands off me,’ he snarled.

Another shove. This time Porter could feel four pairs of hands pushing him forwards. They were strong: the skin on the hands was gnarled and tough, like the sole of an old boot, and the muscles behind them were toned and fit. The force of the blow took Porter by surprise and he stumbled. His hands were flailing out desperately – the blindfold meant
he still couldn’t see anything – and that made it even harder for him to regain his balance. His feet were already wobbling beneath him as the next thump hit him in the middle of the spine. A ripple of pain tore through him. A boot was crashing into his ankles. He could feel himself starting to fall. His arms reached out to grab hold of something, but there was nothing there apart from thin air. He was hurtling towards the ground. There was a moment of sheer terror as he realised he had no idea what he was falling towards: it could be hard stone, it might be shards of glass, they could have tossed him into a well to drown him. In a brief instant, he could remember his instructors in the Regiment telling him that one of the ways the Iraqis tortured their prisoners was to blindfold them, then push them downstairs, because the terror of falling without knowing where you were going was more than most men could bear. I can see their point, he thought grimly. He had thrown his arms around his face to protect it. In the next instant, his body was crashing into the ground. There was something soft and damp on the surface of the floor. Straw, maybe. And beneath that stone. He could feel some bruising on his knees and around his ribs where he had taken the worst impact of the fall, but apart from that he was intact. Nothing broken: he’d have felt the pain by now if a bone had snapped. He felt around. Whether the two men were still standing in the doorway, he had no idea.

‘Where the fuck is Hassad?’ he growled.

Silence.

He could hear one of the men breathing. And he could hear his own voice echoing around the tiny room.

‘I’m supposed to be his bloody guest,’ shouted Porter. ‘Why the fuck are you treating me like this?’

Porter started to lift himself up from the floor. His hands were reaching up to the back of his head to untie the blindfold. But the knots were strong, and it was taking a moment
to unpick them. He started to stand up – and as he did so, the door slammed shut. He could hear the turning of the key in the lock. And then he could hear the sound of metal scratching against metal as the bolt was pushed into place.

He pushed himself up against the door, slamming his fists against it. ‘Take me to see Hassad,’ he shouted.

The words echoed around the room, taunting him like a hundred different mocking voices.

But the only response was the tread of four sets of boots walking away along the corridor. And then a laugh.

‘Fuck it,’ he muttered.

For a moment, Porter just rested against the side of the door. He was catching his breath. And, more importantly, trying to catch his thoughts as well.

What the hell have they done to me?

Why have they brought me here?

He started to unpick the knots on the blindfold. It was slow and frustrating, but at least it gave him something to do. It stopped the questions raging through his head: Where have they brought me? Why are they treating me like this? Has it all gone wrong already? Slowly the blindfold came free. He unwrapped the black cloth from his face, and threw it to the floor.

‘Shit,’ he said.
Maybe I was better off not being able to see anything.

The cell measured ten feet by fifteen. Up by the doorway, there was enough room for Porter to stand up, but the ceiling sloped away fast, so that by the other end it was no more than four feet high. There was a slit window at the far end of the room, measuring no more than a foot across, to a depth of six inches. It looked out onto a wall, and had bars across it. Outside, it was dark already, but the moon was shining, and a few weak glimmers of light were managing to trickle through the tiny window. It took Porter a few
seconds to adjust his eyes. For what? he wondered. There was some straw tossed across the rough stone floor, but it must have been here for at least a year, Porter reckoned, because it was damp and sodden with dirt. He knelt down to where he had fallen from the doorway. There was some smeared blood on the floor, but he could tell it wasn’t his: it was caked crimson and dry, so it must have been at least a day or two old. Next to it there was a human tooth, with some dried blood caked around its torn root, which looked if it had fallen from a man’s mouth during a beating. Porter kicked it away with the toe of his boot, then explored the rest of the cell. There was some writing on the wall but all of it was in Arabic: some of the letters looked like they had been scratched into the walls with a man’s fingernails. In one corner was the only object of any sort in the room, a metal bucket with a vile, putrid smell rising out of it. The bucket was half filled with water, and there was a human turd floating on its scummy surface.