Strike Back (22 page)

So much for the legendary Arab hospitality, thought Porter bitterly.

He leant back against the wall. He felt exhausted. As he looked into the darkness, he tried to take stock of what had just happened. He had thought for the last couple of days about what he would do when he got here, about how he would handle the kidnappers, and how he would handle Hassad. But he’d hadn’t expected to be thrown straight into a prison.

Whatever was about to happen next, it wasn’t going to be good. There was no point in kidding himself about that.

Maybe I’ve miscalculated, he thought. Who knows who we killed on that mission all those years ago? A dozen or more Hezbollah guys had been taken out on that job. We weren’t even counting. It could have been somebody’s father or brother. They might well have been looking for revenge all this time. After all, nobody clings on to a grudge
like an Arab. And nobody is ever more determined to take their vengeance in blood.

Maybe Hassad just said I could come out here so that he could kill me.

And who could blame him?

There’s unfinished business between us and he probably knows it.

Perhaps this is how it ends. A short, brutal fight in a dark cell. And then a knife to the throat.

Porter sat down on the straw, resting his back against the wall. The clouds had obscured the moon, and the cell was plunged into near total darkness. Up above, Porter could hear a couple of vehicles move around, and then he heard a couple of shouts. One of the commands appeared to be in English, but Porter reckoned he must have misheard. Soon, it fell completely silent. He had no idea what time it was – the Firm hadn’t supplied him with a watch and it was years since he’d owned one himself – but he guessed it must be at least midnight. Friday morning already, he told himself. Tomorrow night Katie Dartmouth will have been executed. And they can toss her into whatever grave they have already dug for me.

Peering into the darkness, Porter decided that he didn’t mind dying that much, just so long as it was quick and painless. If he was being honest with himself, he’d died a long time ago. The moment that Hassad had come back from unconsciousness and shot my mates, my life was over. There was nothing worth living for after that. I was just punching out the hours at the factory, until the foreman called the whistle on my time.

But now at least I’ve done something for Sandy, he thought.

And regrets? Christ, where would you even start? But right at the top of the list would be not killing the Hassad bastard.

He could hear the turning of the key in the lock. Porter’s muscles tensed as soon as he heard the mechanism start to move. He could hear the rusty, scratchy bolt being thrown back. And then the door started to open.

Porter stood up.

A man was walking into the room. He must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, but like a sumo wrestler, it was strong, meaty flesh, as much muscle as flab. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. His face was pudgy and mean, dark-coloured, and with tiny eyes and a small nose like a pig’s.

And in his hand, he was carrying a strip of thick, black hosepipe.

Porter instinctively stepped backwards.

‘Where the hell is Hassad?’ he snapped.

The man said nothing.

‘We had a deal,’ said Porter, the anger evident in every syllable.

The man was cradling the hosepipe in the palm of his fist.

‘I spoke to Hassad, and he told me to meet him here,’ Porter shouted. ‘He gave me his word, soldier to soldier. I saved the bastard’s life once. Doesn’t that mean a sodding thing to you people?’

The man took another step forward. His eyes were staring straight into Porter, and there was something about his expression that made Porter nervous. He’d seen it dozens of times before on drunks tooled up and high on the prospect of violence.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Porter.

‘Your worst nightmare,’ replied the man. He spoke in cold, slow English, with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

He cracked the hosepipe. It lashed through the air, smashing into the side of Porter’s chest. The plastic snapped into his shirt and then into his skin with the force of a
hailstorm of bullets. Porter screamed out in pain: a howl of agony that started somewhere deep inside his lungs, and erupted through his mouth with the force of a volcano. As he did so, he was staggering backwards, but his head was cracking against the narrow, sloping ceiling. ‘Get the fuck away from me,’ Porter shouted.

The hosepipe cracked through the air once again. Instinctively, Porter raised his hands to protect himself but it was no good. It smashed past his hands, and laced itself around his chest, neck and throat. The force of the impact rocked him back, crashing his head once more against the low ceiling. He could feel his eyes dancing and his brain spinning. The blows were emptying all the air out of his lungs, and sending a bolt of pain stabbing through him.

Underneath him, Porter could feel his knees buckling. He was reaching out for something to hold on to but there was nothing there.

The whip crashed down once more.

‘Who the fuck …’ mumbled Porter, hardly even able to breathe.

But the words died on his lips.

He had already lost consciousness.

Porter opened first one eye, then the other.

He was half awake, half asleep, and in that dreamlike state he could barely remember what had happened to him. His throat was parched dry, and his stomach felt as if it was only slowly recovering from a violent sickness. He could recall the outlines of his mission, arriving in Beirut, travelling halfway across the Lebanon, and then being met by the men who were supposed to take him to meet Hassad.

And then he remembered where it had all gone wrong, and suddenly he woke up completely.

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

He could hear the fear and dread in his own voice.

Porter was strapped to a chair, and the chair itself appeared to be nailed into the floor. There were ropes around his chest, his arms and his legs, making it impossible for him to do more than twitch a few muscles. They must have come in during the night to strap me up, he told himself grimly. To make sure that I couldn’t cause any trouble when I came round from the beating.

But why?

A few pale glimmers of light were sneaking through the tiny window of the cell. It must be morning, Porter told himself, although he had no way of knowing for sure what time it was or even which day.

The door started to creak open. Porter followed it with his eyes, and found it impossible to suppress a glimmer of
hope that it might be Hassad. Disappointment, he knew, was inevitable. As the door swung completely open, the same fat bastard who had whipped him into unconsciousness last night stepped slowly into the room. Same black clothes. Same pudgy face. And the same streak of pure violence running through his eyes.

Porter looked straight at him, and he could feel every muscle in his body tensing in anger, but he resolved to remain silent.

The man took two paces forward, so that his imposing bulk was just five feet away from the chair to which Porter was strapped.

‘I haven’t killed any Zionist, imperialist scum for more than a week,’ he said. The words were pronounced in whiny, heavily accented English. ‘So I think I’m going to enjoy this.’

It takes character to listen to your own death sentence in silence, thought Porter. But maybe when you don’t care any more it doesn’t feel so bad.

‘It is ten o’clock now,’ the man continued. ‘The beheading –
your
beheading – is scheduled for one hour.’

Porter flinched. It was an involuntary instinctive twitching of the muscles, one that he couldn’t control, and he felt instantly ashamed of himself. Take this like a soldier, he told himself. It is the last shred of dignity left to you.

‘Before then, we offer you the chance to make your peace with Allah.’

‘I’ll make peace with my own God, thank you,’ Porter spat contemptuously.

The man smiled. ‘You will die in accordance with the teaching of the Koran,’ he said. ‘That is our way, and if you attempt to resist us, you will only make things worse for yourself. You will be led from here, and taken to a courtyard, where you will be allowed to face Mecca. You will be allowed to kneel, and whether you wear a blindfold or not
is up to you.’ The man’s face creased up in another pudgy smile. ‘The blade will be sharp, but of course you are a strong man, with a thick neck, and as I am sure you can imagine, it is hard for even the most skilful swordsman to sever a neck in one blow. I have watched several beheadings and the head nearly always comes away from the neck on the third or fourth strike of the sword.’

Porter could feel the muscles on his arms straining against the ropes that bound him to the chair: if there was even the remotest possibility of release, he would flatten the bastard in a hailstorm of punches. But there was not so much as a millimetre of leeway in his bindings.

The man started to unroll some sheets of paper he was holding in his hand.

‘The holy book says, “When a man dies they who survive him ask what property he has left behind. The angel who bends over the dying man asks what good deed he has sent before him.”’ He paused. ‘You should take heed of those words.’

Porter caught his breath inwardly, and remained silent.

The man folded his arms and began to pray, and as he did so, his voice turned from a whine into a slow, respectful chant.

‘In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe,
The Compassionate, the Merciful,
Sovereign of the Day of Judgement!
You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.
Guide us to the straight path,
The path of those whom You have favoured,
Not of those who have incurred Your wrath,
Nor of those who have gone astray.’

Porter could feel a bead of cold sweat running down the
back of his spine. I don’t mind dying, he thought bitterly.
But I could do without the bloody RE lesson.

The man had briefly closed his eyes at the end of the prayer, in a moment of religious contemplation, but now he opened them again. ‘I will leave these with you,’ he said, holding out the few sheets of paper in his hand. ‘You are an infidel, and maybe you wish to die an infidel. That is your choice. But we are holy men, and we wish you to have the opportunity to come to know the one and true God before you pass from this world to the next.’

‘Maybe I’d rather not die at all,’ growled Porter.

‘A soldier always wants to die,’ said the man.

He placed the sheets of paper down on Porter’s lap. It took all the self-control Porter could muster to stop himself from spitting on them. Instead, he merely looked up impassively into the man’s eyes. Don’t give him the satisfaction of even the smallest victory over you, he told himself. It will just be one more regret to take with you to your grave.

Porter watched as the door clunked shut, and listened as the bolt was slotted into place. Even though he was securely bound to the chair, with no possibility of freeing himself, they weren’t taking any chances on his escape. Porter could feel his heart pounding against his ribcage. His blood was beating furiously, and even though the cell was dark and damp it was impossible to stop the sweat dripping down his back.

Now there can be no doubt, he told himself morosely. Within the hour, I shall be dead.

He was afraid, he didn’t mind admitting that. When he was a soldier he knew he might die, but that was in a firefight, with a weapon in his hand, when he would at least have had a chance to defend himself. This was different: a cold and premeditated death at the hands of a bunch of religious psychopaths and gangsters. Of all the ways to go, Porter
reckoned, being murdered was the worst, for the simple reason that some bastard was getting the better of you.

And it made it worse to die without knowing who was killing you or why they wanted you dead so badly?

He peered into the darkness. His arms were still straining against the ropes binding him to the chair, but he knew it was useless: the wrestling with the bindings was just the instinctive desperate reaction of a condemned man, like a person who has been accidentally buried alive clawing hopelessly at the lid of their own coffin.

Hassad wasn’t here, he told himself. Or at least, if he was, he had no intention of showing himself. If it had been a trick all along, just to lure me out here to my death, then I don’t suppose he is about to change his mind now. But maybe it isn’t a trick? Perhaps someone back at the Firm betrayed me. Maybe someone who wants Katie Dartmouth to die, perhaps so the government will fall? After all, someone already tried to kill me back in London. Who’s to say they aren’t trying again out here? And this time, they look like making a better job of it.

I can wrestle with the riddle. But unless the bastard chooses to tell me in the last seconds before the sword cuts into the back of my neck, I will never know the answer.

Porter tried to calm himself. He knew he had to keep himself together if he was to walk out of here and face his execution. Avoiding humiliation was the only shred of control he had left over what remained of his life, and he was determined not to squander that now: for all he knew, the beheading might be broadcast on television or the Internet. The minutes were ticking by, although without a watch he had no sure way of knowing how much time was left to him. Half an hour maybe? It could even be less.