The Reluctant Hero (17 page)

‘Maybe we could spend a little time together?’

She snorted in mockery. ‘You think I’m a charity job?’

‘Get to know each other better,’ he said, softly, doggedly, like rain falling on a fire. He saw her dig her nails deep into her palms, trying to regain control. God, she was a fighter, with one whole half of humanity, of course, but most of all with herself. He watched while the battle within slowly subsided.

‘That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ she said eventually. ‘Getting to know ourselves better. Testing ourselves. Finding out who we really are.’

‘I don’t understand . . .’

‘Don’t try to kid me that you’re doing this for friendship, or from a sense of duty, Harry. At the end of the day, this is really just about you. It’s who you are, something in you that never looks for the easy route, always takes that extra step no matter what the consequences for others. Because if you stop, you think you’ll die, something inside you will suffocate, like a shark that can’t swim. This isn’t about Zac, for God’s sake. It’s about you.’

Her words hurt. They should have been easier to deflect, to ignore, but he hadn’t looked at things like that before. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Maybe you understand me better than I do myself,’ he said sadly.

‘How the hell can I understand you when I’m so Godawful at understanding even me?’ she cried out, determined to contradict him at every turn. Yet now her anger with him was washing away in tears of selfrecrimination. No matter how she might try, there were some things she had never been able to deny. Her life was her own fault. As much as she frequently blamed others, she always blamed herself. Her head sank down to his shoulder.

‘That’s why I wondered,’ he said gently, ‘when we’re back home . . .’

She wiped her tears on his shirt, looked up into his
eyes, very close. ‘I’d like to, Harry, more than you can imagine. But I don’t think it would work, you and me.’

‘You said we were alike.’

‘Too much so. Doing things our own way.’

‘Too selfish, you mean? In too much of a hurry? We could maybe learn to slow down a bit.’

‘Slow down? I can’t, Harry.’

‘Why the hell not?’

‘I’m thirty-eight. Divorced. No kids. You work it out.’

‘Well, hare and tortoise time, then. You know, need to take it easy in order to get to the finishing line first.’

She nestled back into her pillows, her eyes focused on something a million miles away. ‘I don’t think I can do that, Harry. I can’t forgive, you see. I’m just too bloody angry all the time.’

‘We could talk about it, maybe? Later?’

She sucked in a deep breath. ‘We need to think about now,’ she said, glancing at the bedside clock, moving from one reality to another and slamming the door behind her. The moment was over.

He took her hand, knotting his fingers through hers and massaging them tenderly. ‘OK, Martha Riley, one step at a time. But there’s one thing you must promise me.’

‘Which is?’

‘Thanks to you I don’t know any more whether I’m trying to save Zac or simply save myself. But whatever happens to Zac and me –
what ever happens
’ – he picked
out the words with great care – ‘you’ll be on that plane tomorrow morning. No excuses.’

Her fingers tightened around his. The blue neon figures on the clock insisted that the night was moving towards ten. They had barely eight hours.

Martha stepped back out into the corridor again. She had recovered her composure – a necessary tool for a woman in politics – and she smiled in conspiratorial fashion at the young guards, who were now relaxed, a gentle flush covering their cheeks. One was leaning idly against the wall, the other sitting on the floor, smoking. The glasses were near at hand, the bottle almost done.

She passed them by, disappearing into her own room. Five minutes later she reappeared, changed into her dressing gown. It had been tied clumsily, too loosely for decency. She beckoned towards the guards. ‘Come here, you two total losers, and see what Mama’s got for you.’

They shook their heads dumbly, not a snatch of English between them. She waved her hand again, more urgently; they looked at each other in uncertainty. They might not understand her words but they read much in her gesture, and imagined more. The guard who was propping up the wall sauntered over. She beckoned him to her bathroom. He took a tentative step forward, then another. She was leaning over the basin, her gown cascading down, revealing much and suggesting still more,
while she struggled with her tap. It responded with a reluctant dribble. It had been like that ever since she’d arrived, the management had offered their sincere regrets but absolutely no form of practical assistance. She twisted it one way, then the other, before turning to the guard. ‘Hello, there, are you from Jerksville, like the rest of them?’

He nodded enthusiastically.

‘So can you help me, you useless, bad-ass bogeyman?’

The other guard had now joined them, his caution overwhelmed by curiosity as he peered over his colleague’s shoulder, and the pantomime began. She leaned over the basin, they stared; she turned the tap, they muttered to each other in appreciation; she turned it off and pointed helplessly. Then the performance was repeated. One of the guards started fiddling with the tap himself while the other made a suggestion in Russian that Martha sensed was profoundly vulgar. The guard laughed. So did she. They inched closer. She began to fear she’d overdone the exposed flesh.

‘Alcohol and sex, you primitive bastards,’ she said with bravado, trying to appear amused. ‘What the hell, you really are all the fucking same.’

They roared.

Then, on cue and much to her relief, the solid figure of Sid Proffit appeared in the doorway. ‘Hullo there, Martha. You finished packing?’

The guards jumped back in alarm.

‘These bellboys of yours, are they ready to take the cases down?’ Proffit bawled.

The pantomime in the bathroom broke up in confusion.

By which time, behind their backs, Harry had slipped out of the hotel and was on his way.

The temperature had dropped several degrees since Harry had last been outside. He would have preferred snow, large, overblown flakes that would have given him cover, but instead the night was clear. The world had become a monochrome print, like an engraving from Oliver Twist, a place of black and grey, and shadows, and fears. He passed the monument to Lenin with its rotting plinth; moonlight bounced off the monster’s skeletal head while his outstretched arm pointed towards the stars, yet the eyes seemed to follow Harry’s every step. He hurried on.

He met his team at the rough shelter beside the railway station. Just three of them. The man with the moustache, who turned out to be called Aibeck, the young gorilla who had thumped him, named Mourat, and Bektour. None of them appeared as confident as the night before. They looked at him nervously, in silence. No greeting. Harry went round them all and took their hands, one by one, reassuring them, and their faces slowly relaxed.

‘Is everything ready?’ Harry asked.

Bektour nodded, but Harry insisted on inspecting
each item. The equipment had been gathered from sheds and car-body shops, the clothing from wherever they’d been able to scrounge it. None of it as new, some of it was ancient, but it would have to do. There wasn’t time to change it.

‘And no weapons,’ Harry demanded. ‘Remember, this is silent-in, silent-out. Otherwise we’re dog meat.’

‘Mourat and I aren’t gangsters, Mr Jones, we’re geeks,’ Bektour replied in soft reprimand. ‘We hate any noise that hasn’t come through an amplifier. And Aibeck here drives a taxi, not a tank. He’s not even very good at that. Weapons? I doubt he could operate the cigarette lighter.’

Harry couldn’t resist a smile; he liked this kid. Bektour had his spectacles taped to his head and his long hair tied back in a knot, just as Harry had told him to. Ninja geek.

‘You all up for this?’

‘I think we should get on with this before my glasses start misting up and Mourat’s manhood freezes,’ Bektour replied.

‘I don’t suppose you’d win prizes as the prettiest regiment in the world,’ Harry said, his words leaving clouds of vapour condensing in the stiff night air, ‘but you’ll do. So let’s start the party.’

They clapped their hands, to summon up the blood, to keep warm. Aibeck led the way to a dilapidated Datsun truck with canvas sides, the type of vehicle that could be found anywhere in Central Asia, the
threadbare camels of the new Silk Road. While he climbed up to the driver’s cab, Harry, Bektour and Mourat hauled themselves into the back. As they settled down on the bare boards the engine spluttered into reluctant life, drenching them in a cloud of oily smoke, and Harry began changing his clothes, swapping his overcoat for a dark sweater, throwing aside his unrealistic hand-stitched leather shoes and squeezing into a pair of old trainers. The trainers were too tight, pinched his toes, which would soon blister. He used to tramp all over Wales with much worse, although that had been twenty years earlier . . .

The truck jolted forward, its gearbox groaning wearily, slowly leaving the stench of overcooked engine oil behind as it made its way through the city, keeping to the lesser streets, as they headed towards the Castle.

Sidney Proffit was a man not only of legendary whiskers but also of long experience, which had left him with a variety of talents. He knew how to drink, was a master of the art of bullshit, and even understood a smattering of Russian from his university days, which had been spent soaking up all sorts of radical passions at the start of the Cold War. These talents were proving useful as, with the assistance of the second bottle of vodka, he engaged the attentions of the two guards. Theirs wasn’t much of a conversation, Sid’s Russian creaked more than his joints and the guards
themselves weren’t accomplished raconteurs, but the 80-proof spirit filled the gaps. The three of them squatted on the thin carpet of the hotel corridor, their faces flushed, their tongues thick. They had toasted many things: first, the revolution, then their mothers, each one by name, and after that international solidarity, the manufacturers of Ferrari racing cars and almost the entire first-team squad of Manchester United – they had even raised their glasses to Britney Spears, which had caused one of the guards to chuckle until he choked. The Englishman knew he was winning when he was able to push plastic flowers from the hallway vase into the breast pockets of their uniforms, where they protruded and drooped like an ageing vicar’s lust.

Martha had long since retreated to Harry’s room, now far more modest, hugging her gown around her. Sid waved vaguely in the direction of the door. ‘Stick it up the enemy!’ he cried in schoolboy Russian, and made a crude copulative gesture. The guards roared in approval, and levered themselves onto elbows while holding out their glasses for refills. They didn’t notice that Sid had stopped drinking some while ago.

The moonlight had become more intense. It didn’t help. To get inside the prison, Harry and the others planned to steal their way into the sewers, and the only practical access point was in a modest square tucked up beneath the Castle walls. Miserably for the fulfilment of their plans, it was overlooked by the
guardhouse at the side gate. They desperately needed distraction, yet Martha was otherwise engaged, so as the truck crept into the square, crashing through its gearbox, it gave a chassis-rattling shudder and came coasting to a halt as the engine died. No amount of abuse poured on the starter motor would persuade it to cough back into life. Wearily Aibeck climbed from his cab, slamming the door shut in irritation, and unhooked the engine cowling. Its worn hinges groaned in despair. He gazed mournfully at the engine, then began testing components with his fingers, twiddling here, tugging there, before wiping his hands on an old rag and kicking the tyre to vent his frustration. He returned to his cab and retrieved his tool box. Soon he could be seen, and heard, leaning over the engine compartment, cursing.

The game went on for several minutes. No one came to investigate. A truck had broken down – so what? Big deal. The situation was a good fifty metres from the Castle walls, and the weather was cold enough to freeze camel spit. It was no one’s problem but the poor bastard who had his butt poking out at the moon. So the guards in their warm guardhouse failed to spot Harry and the others dropping from beneath the canvas on the far side of the truck and levering open the manhole cover that lay directly beneath their feet. As they struggled with cold fingers, it slipped, fell with a clatter; Aibeck began hammering heartily on the engine. It was Harry who went down first, followed by
Bektour. Mourat took the rear, dragging the heavy metal plate back into place above them. Not until they heard the clunk of the cover locking into position did they switch on the LED camping lights that were strapped around their heads.

The stench was gut-wrenching, left them reeling. While the Castle was built on the highest point of Ashkek and gravity dealt with the contents of the sewer, the prison facility didn’t use much water, there wasn’t much washing, and the passage of the shit through the sewer was slow. Human and other waste was left to fester, and the resulting process of decomposition released gases that attacked Harry and the others with the ferocity of an artillery barrage. They had brought scarves with them and they tied these across their mouths and nostrils; it didn’t make much difference. Even the rats knew better, fleeing in search of safer ground as the three men approached, the light from their lamps glancing off all manner of dark vileness. Crystals were growing down the walls, stalactites dangled from the roof like witches’ fingers. The effluent formed a foul, sluggish stream about two feet across and half as deep at the lowest point, and they tried to find footholds on the slippery walls either side of it all. The sewer had been built with bricks, now well past their prime and crumbling in many places, and the height was about five feet, which forced them to stoop. They made their way cautiously along the tunnel, feeling uncertainly for every step, their hands and elbows
knocking lumps of dark, sweating slime from the walls. Then Harry stumbled. He lost his footing on a section of broken brick and went tumbling, head first. He managed to keep his face out of it, but as he spun like a cat to protect himself he was covered from shoulder to shin in the stuff. He couldn’t even curse, not daring to risk any unnecessary mouthful, but inside he exploded with disgust, and he spat, trying to rid himself of the awful bitter-sweet taste in his mouth. As quickly as he could, he hauled himself to his feet. That was when the narrow beam of his torch picked out the glistening bars that were blocking their way.