(2013) Collateral Damage (19 page)
They passed through a checkpoint manned by Saudi soldiers of
the Arab peace-keeping force. A pistol in his belly, Dove watched helplessly while
they waved the traffic through with graceful Bedouin gestures as if their real task
was merely to slow the foolish urban pace. Shortly after that the Chevrolet turned
into an underground car park where they gagged him and handcuffed his hands behind
his back, the way the New York cops do to prevent prisoners grabbing their escort's
weapon. He did the rest of the trip in the boot, and he guessed correctly that this
was because the Syrian road-blocks they had to pass through heading south were a
tougher proposition than the Saudis.
He had bounced about in the cramped, petrol-reeking blackness,
trying not to vomit because he knew if he did he would choke on it and die. There
was also a tearing pain across his chest which he put down to indigestion brought
on by the cheap champagne. His nerve was still quite good then. He was able to fight
off fear with the notion that he might soon be meeting Koller, and all he wanted
was just one chance to get his hands around the German's neck. He didn't really
mind what happened after that.
He was almost unconscious when the car stopped and they dragged
him out, banging his ankles on some projection before he was allowed to fall in
a heap on to the hard dirt. They pulled him up, one under each arm, and he found
himself next to a wire mesh fence with three strands of barbed wire running around
the top. The gag was removed and wrapped around his eyes - he could feel the dampness
of his spittle as a blindfold. He inhaled great lungfuls of the scented Mediterranean
air. They walked him up steps, through doors, down steps. When they took the blindfold
and the handcuffs off he was in the cellar.
There was evidence that it was sometimes used as a storeroom.
Half a dozen empty sacks of the type that might have once contained rice or lentils
were piled in one corner; there was also an old ammunition box with Russian markings
on it that he sometimes sat on.
During his first night he had been obliged to urinate on the
floor, groping around the walls until he reached a corner as far as possible from
the place where he intended to try and sleep. Next morning they had given him a
galvanized bucket, which was removed every evening after his last meal. So far he
had managed to induce constipation and the cellar did not smell as foul as it might
have done. It was a cold place and the urine spent when the handcuffs were removed
still stained the floor.
Dove despised himself for his fear. There was enough of the puritan
in him to regard his capture as just punishment for his carousing with the whore
and not as the ineluctable event it was. He found himself making an agnostic's secret
deals with an authority that, even in his innermost thoughts, he feared to name
in case a turncoat obeisance only brought down divine contempt. Instead, he bargained
as he did as a schoolboy - no place in the first fifteen for passing this exam.
Now, remembering the missing condom, he examined himself hopefully for venereal
disease, offering shameful discomfort, even syphilitic insanity, for his life.
He supposed that in the back of his mind he had considered that
his odyssey might lead to his death, even welcomed the idea, but somehow it had
never occurred to him that this might happen before he got to Koller. Apart from
the meals, delivered by an old man in a grubby shirt while an unsmiling youth covered
him with a Kalashnikov from the top of the stairs, nobody asked questions or told
him why they were holding him. He became convinced the Front were awaiting Koller's
arrival; that the German had discovered that he was responsible for what had happened
to the cabinet minister's daughter; had expressed a desire to deal with him personally.
When he had read about her injuries in a two-day-old British newspaper he had not
felt the slightest remorse. It had been necessary to question her, he reasoned,
and as it was she had given him a phoney address for the terrorist. The rest had
been an accident and, in any case, she was far less innocent than Emma. He had been
amused to read in the newspaper that the police were working on the theory that
some member of a rival faction was responsible for her injuries. More disturbing
was the description she had given of her attacker once she had recovered consciousness:
big build, fairish hair, Midlands or North Country accent, blond hairs on the back
of his hand. He found the last part puzzling. Why had she retained that particular
detail? He had visions of the guards dragging him to Koller, twisting his fingers
until the backs of his hands were clearly displayed.
Dove was lost in this reverie when the sound of bolts being drawn
heralded breakfast. The heavy wooden door swung open and the stubble-chinned old
man appeared, carrying a tray on which there was a steaming glass of tea and more
hommos. Behind him came the hostile youth with the automatic rifle and, through
the door, he glimpsed the beginning of a whitewashed corridor.
The old man came carefully down the steps, the laden tray he
was carrying held slightly to one side so that he could see where to put his feet.
As he came closer Dove saw that next to the tea were the cigarettes he had asked
for the previous evening. In the present circumstances it seemed a good idea to
start smoking again. Dove took the tray and put it on the ammunition box, picked
up the cigarettes and began peeling the cellophane from the packet. As he did so
he realised that there were no matches with them. 'Light?' he said. The old man
looked puzzled.
'Matches.
Les allumettes,' said the schoolteacher
desperately. The idea of cigarettes and no matches was quite unbearable. He mimed
lighting a cigarette, holding the packet as if it were a box of matches. The youth
began sullenly searching his pockets with his left hand, holding the Kalashnikov
loosely by its pistol grip on his right side so that its muzzle pointed to the floor.
At length he found a box and made to pass them to his companion at the foot of the
stairs. On impulse Dove, a cigarette in his mouth, strode up three flights to take
them directly from the guard. The boy was no more than sixteen years old and had
thin, almost feminine, wrists. Dove became filled with a terrible elation, like
that wild moment in the loose when a ball tumbles free and a clever forward seizes
his chance to score. His big left hand closed around the youth's wrist and jerked,
while at the same time he got his right hand to his shirt to complete the throw
which landed him heavily on his back, his head against the urine bucket. The Kalashnikov
clattered onto the steps; as he picked it up Dove caught a glimpse of the old man
taking off down the corridor like a schoolboy, yelling as he went.
Dove ran on after him, fumbling with the rifle, head down, shoulders
hunched, vague memories of jolly mock bayonet charges practised at school cadet-force
camps returning. The corridor was not very long, twenty metres perhaps. At the end
of it was a portiere of some heavy grey material, now half-drawn and flapping on
its curtain-rings in the wake of the terrified servant. The schoolteacher followed
him through and found himself in a large, quite modern kitchen where a woman, in
the short skirt with trousers beneath favoured by Palestinian peasants, stood staring
at him open-mouthful, an enamel dish of chopped meat in her hands. Next to her was
the old man-he had seized a kitchen knife, still bloody from the chopped meat. Behind
them was an open door, through which could be seen the wire mesh fence with the
barbed wire on top he remembered from the time they pulled him out of the car. Dove
let out a ferocious yell and charged. It was too much for the old man, who jumped
back and took an ineffective swipe at the rugby forward, scratching his face and
upper arm, as he went careering through the door.
At the fence Dove turned right and began to follow it around
the villa, passing over the grille above his cell as he did so. He rounded two corners
until he came to the front, where a big black American car was parked next to a
pick-up truck with a belt-fed heavy machine-gun mounted on the back. He sprinted
between the vehicles, making for the open tubular steel gates he could see beyond
them. There was wetness on his face, but he wasn't certain whether it was blood
or sweat.
As he left the cover of the car for his dash to the gate he became
aware of movement on the front porch of the villa to his right. Somebody shouted,
'Dove', but he was going for the touchdown now, right between the posts, the Kalashnikov
the ball. Then he was falling, skidding along on his elbows, hanging on to the rifle.
He knew right away what had happened. He had tripped over the rooted metal flange
the gate was bolted into when closed. He went to get up and there was a short burst
of fire. Three little fountains of dust kicked up from the ground about a metre
from his head. 'Christ,' he thought, 'so that's what it's like.' Dove pulled himself
round,
working on his elbows, keeping his belly as close
to the friendly earth as possible, then brought the rifle to his shoulder, aimed
in the general direction of the porch and pulled the trigger. It refused to budge.
He pulled again; still nothing happened. 'Safety catch,' he thought. His fingers
searched the mechanism around the breach, found a knob which moved downwards when
pressure was applied. Again he heaved at the trigger, but it might have been set
in concrete.
'My dear Dove,' said a familiar voice. 'To fire that weapon I
believe you are first required to pull back the cocking handle. But if you try to
do that the gentlemen behind you will be obliged to shoot. Please put the bloody
thing down and come and have a drink.'
Dove looked behind him. Less than two metres away stood two solemn
young Palestinians in chequered keffiyehs, pointing their weapons downwards from
the hip. He tossed the Kalashnikov aside and looked up at the smiling figure walking
towards him from the porch. It was the Palestinian publisher, still dressed as if
he was planning to lunch at his London club.
Dove was sitting at a table trying hard not to catch the grimy
cuffs of his Airey and Wheeler lightweight on the starched white cloth. It had become
important not to soil the cloth. The cloth stood for cleanliness, and civilized
behaviour. Suddenly he felt very tired. Somebody had given him a handkerchief to
dab the knife-cut on his face and he was clutching a large glass of whisky.
'Well, well, Habibi,' the publisher was saying, 'we didn't
realise we had the makings of such a fine fighting man with us.
Truly a
fedayeen. You had us worried there for a moment. We thought
you were going to hurt yourself - or one of us.'
'I don't understand,' said Dove. The fight had gone out of him.
He had almost scored, but now the ball was back up field. He was numb. Was any of
this real?
This Arab sitting opposite in a pin-stripe suit, the
drink, the sympathetic voice.
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and for a
moment made himself believe that when he opened them Emma's head would be beside
his on the pillow, hair
disarrayed,
the petulant, childlike
lips.
'They had to do it,' said the publisher, trying to sound apologetic.
'They had to check you out, make certain you were genuine.
The
bona fide article and all that.
That's why they asked me to come here. I
just hope they'll let me back in at Heathrow without the virginity test.'
'You don't look much like a Punjabi bride to me,' said Dove,
beginning to recover a little.
'No, slightly soiled I'll admit, but then you don't look so fresh
yourself at the moment. Look, let me show you to your room. You can clean up, and
we'd better have a look at that cut too. When you're ready I'll explain what we
propose to do.' The publisher rose.
'There's
some clean
clothes there as well - I think you'll find they fit.'
Dove's room was clean and simply furnished with a bed, a curtained-off
wardrobe, and a small Kurdish rug decorating the bare boards. There was a card table
in one corner on which stood an earthenware jug and bowl and clean towels. The publisher
was right about the clothes. They were his own and lay in his suitcase on the bed.
So did the Webley - unloaded. He wondered how they had managed to get his case out
of the Admiral, where security was known to be good. He was shown where to shower
and shave, and afterwards one of the serious young guards from the main gate dressed
the scratches on his cheek and shoulder with iodine and sticking plaster. Then he
went downstairs to where the publisher was waiting. 'Coffee, tea or shall we continue
with the whisky?' he asked.
The schoolteacher thought it better to keep his head clear and
allowed the publisher to pour him coffee from a pot with a beaklike spout. The
Palestinian talked for half an hour or more. When he had finished Dove leaned back,
lit a cigarette and wondered whether he could believe his ears.
'Let's get this straight,' he said. 'You're proposing to train
me at one of your camps, teach me all your tricks, and then turn me loose on Koller?'
'If you want to,' said the publisher.
'You mean I have a choice?'
'Certainly.
We can find Koller, but
we can't make you kill him.
To do that you've got to want to do
it very badly.
We were rather thinking you did.'
'I do,' said Dove.
'In that case,' said the publisher, 'I think we have a contract.'
The lawyer came in. 'He's agreed,' said the publisher.
'Good.'
Dove turned on the lawyer, whom he had last seen at the university.
'Why didn't you help me when I came to you, instead of having me thrown into your
bloody dungeon?'
'It wasn't my idea,' he said, 'but it was necessary to make sure.
I'm sure you'll understand Mr Dove that, in our position, we have to be very certain
about who we are dealing with. We admired your courage.'
