Masters of War (41 page)

She heard Basheba give a low hiss, and shot her hand out and grabbed her wrist. ‘Stay where you are, Basheba. They’re armed. And anyway, the younger man, the one you said did it – he isn’t there.’

‘These others are just as bad. They watched it happen. They defended him.’

‘They’re
armed
, Basheba, and there are four of them. They’re going to watch out for each other.
Look!
’

Sure enough, two of them – the squat guy with shorter hair and the taller man with a shaved head and tattoos on his neck – had taken up position by the entrance to the tent while their companions entered. The guy with the shaved head looked over in their direction. A nasty leer crossed his face, so menacing that the two women almost involuntarily stepped inside the tent. Clara realised her pulse was raising, and a little voice in her head told her that their safety – hers and Basheba’s – depended on what was going on in the main tent. She had to find out, she decided. She had to eavesdrop.

Clearly, walking closer to the big tent to listen in was impossible, not with those brutal-looking men standing watch. But the medical tent was, after all, just a tent. Clara looked towards the back wall. There was nothing stopping her from clambering under the canvas and approaching the other tent from behind. Basheba saw what she was looking at. ‘What if they come?’ she said. Clara gave her hands a reassuring squeeze and made for the rear of the tent.

It had been erected with care. The lower edge of the canvas was pegged tightly to a groundsheet. It took a minute or so for Clara to loosen it sufficiently to wriggle out, but, with a final look back at a clearly anxious Basheba, that’s what she did.

The tent had been pitched close to the sandstone cliff. There was a gap of less than half a metre for Clara to squeeze along. It was dark, but the gentle glow of the main tent, fifteen metres away, gave her enough light to see her way. A minute later she was crouching by the back of the tent, straining hard to hear the conversation that was going on inside.

‘Nothing happens,’ said a voice – not Sorgen or any of his men, so Clara could only assume it was one of the newcomers – ‘until we see the money.’

‘Hugo Buckingham is dead?’ asked Sorgen quietly.

‘As a dodo. No bullets. If anyone finds his body, they’ll just put it down to an explosion. One of the many.’

‘Ah,’ Sorgen replied sadly. ‘He was once a good friend.’

‘I’d hate to see how you treat your enemies, pal.’

Sorgen ignored the comment, asking, ‘His bodyguard – the other young man?’

‘It’s dealt with, Sorgen. Where’s the money?’

‘Ah, the money,’ Sorgen said quietly. ‘I take it you have already levied a handsome charge on the British government for eliminating myself and my generals.’

‘Upfront, Sorgen, luckily for you. If it had been cash on delivery, we wouldn’t be having this little chat.’

‘And now we pay another fee for you to double-cross them.’

‘Why get paid once when you can get paid twice?’

‘You would make an excellent politician,’ said Sorgen with a rueful laugh. ‘Still, 750,000 dollars. It is quite a price, for such a small thing.’

‘It’s loose change for your French paymasters, boyo.’

‘They are
your
paymasters now.’

‘Today maybe. Tomorrow, who knows? Anyway, if it’s such a small thing, you should do it yourself.’

‘Delegation is the first rule of leadership, Mr Taff. A strange name, “Taff”. Where did you come by it?’

‘The money. Unless you want us to carry out the British government’s instructions and not the French.’

There was a significant pause. ‘Not yet,’ Sorgen said, and his bantering tone had changed to something more serious.

‘Don’t start messing me around, Sorgen,’ Taff replied, his voice low and menacing. ‘You’ll find that’s bad for your health.’

‘If I was quite so badly outnumbered as you, Mr Taff, I would be worried. But if your intention is to wipe out me and my men, I think you’ve rather – what is that delightful phrase? – missed the boat. However, I can assure you that I have every intention of letting you walk away with your suitcase of cash. But you must concede that, by your own admission, you are not entirely to be trusted. We are paying you a great deal of money to wipe that animal Asu and his commanders from the face of the earth. I’d be foolish to let you leave here without some kind of guarantee that you’re not simply going to disappear.’

Another pause.

‘What kind of guarantee,’ Taff said, ‘did you have in mind?’

‘Do you believe in fate?’ Sorgen asked. There was no reply from Taff. ‘Well, if she exists, she has smiled upon us. Two days ago Asu’s daughter-in-law Basheba appeared at our humble camp.’

‘I know her,’ Taff said.

‘Then you know what a tiresome woman she is, and will have no problem helping her on her way to Paradise. You look shocked, Mr Taff. Don’t be. If Basheba had stayed with Asu, you would be eliminating her along with the others. I’m sure you understand, though, that if I have footage of you, or one of your men – I’m not an unreasonable man, you may delegate this convenient execution if you want – I have at least some small assurance that your loyalties do not really lie with my brother.’

Clara felt all the strength drain from her body. Her brain shrieked at her to run back to the other tent, to grab Basheba and help her escape. But her limbs wouldn’t obey those instructions.

‘Fine,’ Taff said. ‘Bring her here.’

‘Just one minute,’ Sorgen said. ‘We have another issue. Our French backers require some sort of evidence that your loyalty to them is not limited to taking their money and then carrying out the wishes of the British government regardless.’

Clara felt dizzy with nausea.

‘As luck would have it, fate has deposited a young British doctor on our doorstep. Perhaps you noticed her this morning. A pretty little thing. If we had more time, I’d be happy to allow you to have your way with her. As it is, I must insist that you also kill her for the camera.’

Clara pressed her hands to her lips, then turned and started stumbling back to the medical tent. She knew she had only seconds to get herself and the Syrian woman out of there, but it seemed to take an age to scramble back under the canvas wall, like she was stuck in a nightmare where she couldn’t escape some faceless pursuer.

‘
Basheba!
’ she hissed once she was inside. One of the wounded male patients had woken up, and Basheba was kneeling down beside him, one hand on his forehead. Clara ran towards her and pulled the surprised woman to her feet. She limped as Clara tugged her back towards the rear of the tent.

‘What are you doing?’ Basheba asked, clearly startled by Clara’s urgent behaviour.

‘They’re coming for us. We have to get out of here
now?
. . .’

Clara glanced towards the flap at the front of the tent. She thought she saw the canvas ripple as somebody touched it. She pushed Basheba down to the gap at the bottom of the tent, looking anxiously over her shoulder as the Syrian woman wriggled awkwardly beneath the canvas wall. She was startled as she saw a hand begin to draw the flap to one side, and she hurled herself through her emergency exit, into the tiny space between the tent and the cliff face.

And then she screamed.

Basheba was on her feet. Behind her, a foot taller, was the man with the shaved head and tattoos on his upper chest and throat. In one hand he held a clump of Basheba’s hair. In the other was a knife, with cruel-looking hooks pointing back towards the handle. The wickedly sharp point was pressed to the soft flesh of Basheba’s neck, and a thin bead of blood dribbled down her dark skin.

The man sneered. ‘Sorgen said you were worth having,’ he said. ‘Suppose a raghead like that would give his left nut for a taste of a white girl. Maybe I’d do you too, if there was nothing else on the menu.’ Clara took a terrified step backwards, but stopped and screamed again as the man yanked Basheba’s head back and made as if to slice through her throat. ‘Get to the front of the tents, bitch,’ he said. ‘If I get the feeling you’re about to run, I’ll start doing some halal butchery right now. Got it?’

Clara stared at him.

‘
Got it?
’

She nodded frantically and started retracing her steps towards the main tent. She turned left to follow the narrow passage between the two tents, Basheba and the man with the knife following her. Twenty seconds later they emerged in front of the main tent. The short, blond-haired man was there. He appraised himself of the situation at a glance. ‘Nice one, Skinner,’ he said, before pointing to the entrance to the tent. ‘In you go, ladies,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for you.’

‘
Please
,’ Clara begged. ‘Let us go. I’ll do anything.’

The man called Skinner barked a short, ugly laugh. ‘Hear that, Hector? What’s it worth? A desert freebie?’

‘Only if you take the raghead,’ Hector said. And then, as if he’d been asked to explain himself, ‘Don’t wipe their fucking arses properly, do they?’

‘Looks like you’re out of luck, ladies,’ said Skinner. He nodded at Hector, who grabbed Clara by the hair and pushed her towards the tent.

‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Now.’

There was silence inside the tent. A sense of expectation. The light was dim, coming from a couple of red spotlights trained on to the centre of the tent. Sorgen stood in the middle, his robes and moustache bathed in the red light. A couple of metres behind him, lying on the ground, was a leather suitcase. His commanders, who still wore their scarves around their heads, were dotted about the tent’s perimeter – fifteen or so of them – an audience watching the show unfold. Skinner and Hector nodded at a third Western man standing guard by the entrance as they forced the women into the tent. Standing next to Sorgen was the man Clara assumed must be Taff. He was older than the others, somewhere in his late fifties, with straggly grey stubble. He watched the women approach with a curious lack of expression.

Sorgen shouted something in Arabic. One of his commanders stepped forwards. He was clutching a small, hand-held camcorder. The viewfinder was flipped open.

Basheba spoke angrily in Arabic. A sharp word from Sorgen did nothing to silence her, so Skinner, whose knife was still pressed against her neck, kneed her brutally in the small of the back. Her body went momentarily limp from the pain, and she appeared to be hanging by the fistful of hair Skinner was still clutching. Then he threw her to the ground.

Too terrified to scream again, and restrained by the strong arms of the man called Hector, Clara could only watch the horror that unfolded.

It was an order from Taff that started it all. He nodded at Skinner and said, ‘Do it.’

‘Basheba first,’ Sorgen said. Still bathed in red light, his eyes were filled with a kind of greed, as though he was about to feast on the sight of this poor woman’s execution.

Skinner nodded. He was still holding the vicious knife. With the red light glinting off it, it looked as if it was already covered in blood. The guy with the camcorder held it at arm’s length. Clara saw a light on the side switch from red to green.

Skinner walked up to the terrified woman, whose head was in her hands as she wept uncontrollably. Grabbing her hair again, he hauled her to her feet.

‘What’s your name, bitch?’ he said.

Basheba couldn’t answer. She just stared at him with undisguised horror.

Skinner raised the knife to her face. In full view of the camera, he sliced each cheek vertically. The blade was sharp, cutting through Basheba’s flesh as though it was barely there. She screamed as blood leaked from each incision, smearing her cheeks and lips.

‘What’s your name?’ Skinner repeated.

‘B . . . Basheba,’ she managed to say.

‘To the camera.’

‘
Basheba.
’

Skinner smiled then. It was an expression of such cold violence that Clara could barely look at him. Something, though, some kind of horrible magnetic force, kept her eyes glued to Skinner as he raised the knife again. He was standing behind Basheba now, his knife arm around her neck, the blade pointing at her throat.

He pressed it against the skin.

Clara closed her eyes as Basheba screamed.

But that scream was not the only sound that suddenly filled the tent.

There was a gunshot. It came from the front flap of the tent. The shock of the ear-splitting noise was enough to make Clara wonder, for just a fraction of a second, if she herself had been the target. Her eyes jerked open again, just in time to see Skinner go down. The bullet had hit him in the head, ripping a chunk from the skull and causing a gruesome shower of blood, bone and brain matter to rain down. The impact of the shot threw his body back a couple of metres. He hit the ground with a solid, terminal thump. His knife fell a metre from where he dropped.

Basheba screamed again. Her hands were covering her face, but blood was still seeping between her fingers. For some reason she ran towards Clara, as if Clara was in any position to protect her as Taff, Hector and the rest of Sorgen’s commanders turned towards the front of the tent, their weapons ready.