The Girl in Green (31 page)

‘Right, then. On with it,' Benton says.

Benton sits back against the wall and rests his muscles. He watches Arwood contort himself, trying to weaken and snap the restraints.

‘Were you listening to me?' Arwood asks.

‘Were you saying something?'

‘I was pouring my heart out.'

‘Can you break it loose?'

‘I'm trying,' Arwood says as he twists his wrists. ‘It doesn't feel looser.'

‘I don't think it will. I think it'll snap or not snap. It isn't a knot.'

‘So anyway, I drank and drank and drank, and I found a calling.'

‘Good for you.'

‘You asked what I was doing. I'm trying to tell you. So listen. After my parents kicked me out of the house for not killing Arabs, I started working at flea markets and gun shows—'

Arwood's twisting around isn't breaking the restraint. But maybe twisting or cutting isn't the answer. Maybe the plastic is loose enough already, and all it needs is enough force to pull the ends apart. But the two of them pulling against one another won't do it. Their wrists are too pliant. The plastic fibreglass will cut into the flesh, and the pain is too great.

What would Leonardo da Vinci do?
‘He wouldn't be in this bloody mess, that's for sure,' Benton mutters to himself.

‘What?' asks Arwood.

‘Nothing. Go on. Gun shows.'

‘I started brokering weapons. I'm an arms broker. I got around. That's why I was able to get your ticket using frequent-flier points.'

‘I think we might be able to loop your cuffs around the handle of the door, then I can stand to the other side and pull you. If it's weak enough now, it might give.'

‘That's not a bad idea. But you were so interested in what I did for a living, and now I've told you, and … nothing.'

‘I've been chewing fibreglass for an hour after the possible murder of our colleagues. I don't have what it takes to negotiate your stories now, Arwood. In some deep sense, and for some reason, I still trust you. But I also don't believe a word you say. So that's all going to have to wait. Let's try to break these,' Benton says, stepping toward the inner door where the Stooges took Adar and Jamal.

Arwood follows Benton to the door and finds the handle. Turning around, he wedges the metal cylinder in the space by his wrist near the watch.

It is a tight fit.

‘No way you can get your fingers in there, too. You'll never reach, anyway. Your shoulders are too wide. I'm going to lean forward as hard as I can, and I want you to grab my belt and pull me even harder. That's both of our bodies and our strength versus the spot you've been chewing on.'

‘OK. Try rocking a bit, too. Put as many kinds of stresses on that weak point as possible.'

Together, Arwood and Benton lean forward, putting all their weight against Arwood's wrists, the cuffs, and the door handle. Benton knows he is facing the outside door and, in pulling, tries to will himself through it.

And, without a sound, Arwood's cuffs snap.

Together still, they fall to the floor. Benton lands on his face, breaking his nose. Arwood can feel blood around his wrists, where the plastic has dug into the flesh.

‘I think … I think I've really hurt myself,' Benton says, but Arwood isn't listening. He's off to the mattress and recovering the iPhone. He turns it on, and muffles the sound by placing it beneath his armpit. The room glows a pale blue, and Benton whispers ‘The light.' Arwood covers the screen until he can hide it beneath a mattress and adjust the brightness. Opening ‘Messages', he types one with the coordinates and a brief note.

‘We don't have a signal,' Benton says.

‘No,' Arwood whispers. ‘But we're not going to miraculously get one, either. It's like this, Thomas: either there's a signal a few metres outside that window, or there isn't. You know what a Hail Mary pass is?'

Spitting blood from his lips, Benton mutters, ‘I can guess.'

‘Football. American football. You can either get tackled and lose the game, or hurl the ball into the unknown and hope for the best. You might still lose the game, but the thing about a Hail Mary is that you also just might win.'

‘I see where this is going.'

‘After you hit “send” on an SMS, it usually says “sending” for a second or two as it looks for a signal and catches the wave. My hunch is that if I hit the button and I hurl it out the slit in the roof, maybe it can catch a signal and send the message before it smashes to bits and it's game over.'

‘It's not much of a plan, is it?'

‘Not really, but my thinking is that the odds are better than zero, which is what they absolutely are right now if we don't do it. And, like you said, my restraints are off. This is the window of opportunity, no pun intended. So, what do you say?'

‘Who are you writing to?'

‘Märta. And a local friend.'

‘Can you do that?'

‘Yeah. You click the little plus thing, and you can add recipients. See?'

‘You really think Märta would move the world to come and get us? It wouldn't be a rational choice. That would be a lot of chips to cash in for two people who did this to themselves.'

‘Yes, I do. And I'll tell you why. Because people aren't rational actors, Benton. People are
themselves
. If you want to know what's going to happen next, you don't look at the choice, you look at who's making it. That's what I learned as an arms broker. In this case, it's Märta. I think Märta wants to see you rescued, because she either loves you or close enough to it. And I think she wants to help the underdog, and that means Adar. And I think she wants to protect her own staff, and that means Jamal. And I think she doesn't ask for a lot of favours from other people, so whoever she is going to ask for help is going to say yes. She doesn't care about me, but there should be enough seats on the bus if it comes along.'

‘That's quite an analysis.'

‘I'd bet your life on it.'

‘All right. Get on with it,' Benton says.

‘You need to kneel by the window so I can stand on you. I can't reach otherwise.'

‘Of course you do.'

Benton moves on his hands and knees toward the wall across from the mattresses and between the two doors. There are three slits near the ceiling, each a metre long, separated by small supporting columns. They are too small for a man or a child to slip through, but wide enough for binoculars, a rifle, or an arm to hurl an object the size of a grenade or a mobile telephone.

The room has all the qualities of a crypt. It smells like a construction site mixed with cooking spices and bare feet. In the dirt and the dust that coats everything, as Arwood places his right foot in the small of Benton's back, an unexpected thought comes to him, and not one he's entertained before.

‘I want to die outside,' Benton says.

‘Me, too,' says Arwood, and he now shifts all his weight onto Benton's back. The skin over his old bones slips around like a plucked chicken's. ‘I want to get out of here and have a nice long life selling weapons to oppressed people with cash.'

‘I don't mean outside this room. I mean outside all rooms. I want my last breath of life to be taken outdoors. A clear shot, so to speak.'

‘This window opens to the outside,' Arwood says. ‘We seem to be in a small valley, or a canyon, or something. I can't fit my head through. I can see stars above us, but there are rocks or — well, something that blocks out the stars — maybe ten or fifteen metres away. There's no artificial light anywhere. I can't see any buildings. Wherever we are is blacked out.'

There is blood dripping from Benton's nose, and he cannot move his hand to wipe it away. All he can do is stare into the floor and listen as Arwood narrates his own movements: ‘I'm reaching my hand out to see what's there. The outside wall is smooth, more or less. I can't reach the ground. I can't tell how high up we are. The light is too strange. A metre or two? It doesn't feel like the ground in our room is the same level as the ground outside. I think we're dug in. That's why the slats on the wall are so high.'

‘If you have a clear throw, then get on with it. My back—'

Arwood falls silent above him. His feet become still. There is a moment when their absurd pose becomes statuesque — a new member in the Garden of the Fugitives, those human statues at Pompeii. Then, without a sound, Arwood's weight shifts to Benton's lower back, rests there a moment, and then shifts forward to his upper back as he hurls the phone with all his might.

A silence follows — as complete and warm as a ceasefire — to be replaced by the sound of plastic and metal crashing into an ancient crevasse, echoing outward from the Sinjar Mountains to al-Anbar in the south and Ninawa province to the north, with a message for anyone with the ability to hear it.

28

Märta Ström wakes to the sound of her phone. She checks her watch to confirm the time. She can barely make out the faintly luminous green glow of the watch hands. It doesn't appear to be 5.00 a.m. yet. Which is nice. There is more time for sleep.

Her grandmother used to call sleep ‘delicious', as though it had a flavour. Her grandmother died almost twenty years ago. Märta would lie in bed with her as a child, after her grandfather had gone off to wherever men went at six in the morning. The bed was still warm. The blanket smelled of wool. The wooden walls of their home, two hours from Stockholm, never entirely lost their smell. Everything in their home was simple. What they needed they had, and what they had they needed. Life was about the relationships between people, and the love that peace allows. She can still feel the knuckles of her grandmother's hand and the way her index finger would curl across all four of her own fingers while they lay in bed, toasty from the neck down, a thin layer of cold over her cheeks from the windows that were not thick enough — not really — to keep out the early-morning chill of a Swedish winter. She can taste it, just like her grandmother said. But it isn't the sleep she can taste. It is the memory.

More time to sleep. More time to hold her grandmother's hand and wonder what might be for breakfast. To enjoy this time alone with her. Her parents aren't here now. Or her older brother. They'll be able to talk this morning, just the two of them.

There would be nothing preventing them from sharing a stolen moment together this morning, were it not for a question forming off the bow like a storm front. She knows, instinctively, that if she allows the question to take a proper shape, it will disrupt her planned course. She needs to ignore it. Maybe it will go away. She wants to have breakfast with her grandmother, because they love each other and this time is set aside for the two of them.

But it nags her. It irks her. It knows her too well. She is not one to avoid a good question. And so it comes:
If the sound on her phone wasn
'
t the alarm, what was it?

Märta unclenches her hand from her grandmother's, and the bond is broken. Her grandmother's spirit leaves her, and she is alone again. She is older.

She looks at her phone.

It is an SMS message:

N36° 23' 15.88”, E41°47'32.87”. Held hostage. Need help. In some kind of old building. Probably ISIL. Come get us now.

She's up. Phone in hand, she skips the formality of slippers and bathrobe, and pads down the tiled staircase with the agility of an eleven-year-old girl. In the living room, she flips on the light. Herb is lying on his side, fast asleep in his blue boxers, as peaceful as a baby giant. She says, ‘Herb,' only once in a quiet tone, and his eyes pop open.

‘We got a note. They're alive. Ten minutes. Make coffee. Where's Tigger?'

‘In the guest room. He won the coin toss.'

Märta is up the stairs quicker than a sound. She opens the guest bedroom door and flicks on the light from the wall switch. Tigger is sleeping face down and naked, his feet toward the head of the bed.

‘Tigger?'

No reply.

‘
François
Armand?
'

‘
Je ne veux pas aller à l'école. C'est ennuyeux
,' he says.

‘
Réveille-toi. Ils sont vivants.
'

Tigger raises his head. ‘
D'accord
.'

‘Time to go to work.'

Märta showers quickly, dresses, and then goes downstairs to meet the two men, who are already dressed in field gear — no more than ten minutes after she woke them.

‘What do we have?' Tigger asks her.

Märta reads off the coordinates from her cell phone. Herb writes them down, then copies them a second time and hands the second copy to Tigger, who puts them into his pocket without looking up.