The Reluctant Hero (18 page)

The bars were of steel, and ran from top to bottom of the tunnel. They were designed to be wide enough for sewage, but not a man. The intention was clear; there was to be no repeat of the previous escape. And that is why Mourat had brought a hydraulic spreader with them, nearly forty pounds of it, slung across his broad shoulders, the type of equipment used to bend broken car frames back into shape and repair accident damage. Useful kit on the roads of Ta’argistan, and which, with Mourat’s muscle behind it, was capable of concentrating four tons of pressure through its jaws. Yet it was hard work in the stench and darkness, with everything covered in slime. For a moment, as the jaws slipped on the bars for the third time, Harry thought they might not make it, but Mourat was not only strong but also persevering. The steel was poor quality, and once he found a grip on the two longest bars, they bent, then
burst from their mountings, showering ancient brick dust in every direction.

When the dust settled, they could see. They were through.

It had taken some time for Sydykov to get hold of Amir Beg on the telephone. He had to go through the security services’ control room, and late at night there were always delays and incompetence – and outright obstruction, of course. No one wanted to bear the responsibility for disturbing him; men had been known to disappear for less.

‘Sir, I apologize for troubling you.’

‘What is it?’ Beg muttered, shaking the sleep from his voice, not yet annoyed. Sydykov was a sound man, not prone to panic or excessive enthusiasm. There would be a reason.

‘I have learned something I thought I should report. The British SAS. That’s—’

‘Yes, yes, get on with it.’

‘Sir, Mr Jones was once a senior member. An officer. I thought you ought to know.’

‘We should have known sooner.’

For a moment Sydykov thought his boss might be accepting some of the responsibility for this lapse, but quickly put such thoughts aside. Sydykov would have to accept the blame himself, or shove it further down the line. ‘It seems Jones has a reputation for trouble. I don’t think we can afford to trust him.’

‘Trust him? I’d sooner trust a Turkish whore.’

‘He’s sick, I know, but even so. I thought . . .’

‘You thought right, Major. We should take nothing for granted, not even his indisposition. I think we’ll check on Mr Jones, make sure he’s tucked up safely in his bed, right where he’s supposed to be. Nailed to it, if necessary.’

‘Should I—’

‘No. Leave him to me.’ He jabbed a carefully manicured finger at the phone, closing the connection, and immediately started redialling.

They came up through a manhole in the floor of the kitchens, pushing aside the thick wooden lid, scrambling out of the sewer, on the point of retching. All three lay on the cold, uneven flagstones, gasping as they filled their lungs with fresh air. Only slowly did Harry appreciate how disgusting his condition had become, covered in sewage that clung stubbornly to him and soaked through his clothes, and beneath them. He had to fight the temptation to vomit as he scraped himself down as best he could with a wooden spatula he found on a counter.

It was close to midnight. In some distant part of the building a door slammed, but other sounds were hidden by the thick walls of the fortress. All seemed quiet, except for the rasp of their own breathing and the ancient refrigerator that kicked into life in a corner.

‘So far, so very unpleasant,’ Bektour muttered as he inspected Harry’s condition and pulled a face. ‘Perhaps you should wait for it to harden, then peel it off like an eggshell.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ Harry replied, not meaning it.

But Bektour had been of enormous help. He was a young man of quiet yet irrepressible enthusiasm that managed to fill the holes left by Harry’s own misgivings. From a pocket that was now damp with soil, Harry brought out the map they had prepared the night before and spread it on the stones of the kitchen floor, tracing their path with a filthcovered finger. Bektour knelt beside him, studying it in the pool of light thrown by his lamp.

‘If I’d known this way was going to smell so bloody awful, I’d have knocked on the door,’ Harry said.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Jones,’ Bektour encouraged, ‘I think there’s enough shit waiting ahead of us that you’ll soon feel right at home.’

The party in the hotel corridor was proceeding under the indulgent and increasingly watery eye of Lord Proffit when the guards’ radio spluttered into life. It was as though a live grenade had been rolled into their midst. One moment the guards were in a state of inebriation, the next they were transported to a condition of intense if ill-focused alert. Proffit had enough Russian to follow what was going on. They were being instructed to check that Harry was in his room. Dear
God, something was up, someone was growing suspicious. It was only the soporific effect of his own intake of alcohol that prevented the peer from falling into a panic.

The guards began to stir, levering themselves to their feet, stretching their arms, swimming through their sea of confusion, but Proffit, even with his old bones, was ahead of them.

‘You can’t go in there!’ he cried in a profound bass voice that stretched not only as far as Harry’s door but, he fervently hoped, also beyond it. ‘
Eadi otsuda! Not go
in!
Not while those two are – do I have to spell it out for you blithering heathens? – engaged in a little horizontal electioneering? A bit of Boris and Brenda?’ He didn’t attempt the translation, which in any event would have been beyond him. Instead, he burst into merriment as he grabbed his crotch and began gesticulating towards the door.

The guards stepped forward, yet their expressions were awash with uncertainty. What
precisely
was it they were supposed to do? Break down the door? Burst in on two British politicians? Cause a diplomatic incident? Kick the Cold War back to life? The order, when it was given, had sounded simple enough, but with every shake of their heads the matter seemed to be growing increasingly complicated. The only thing they could see for certain was that if it all went pig-shaped, it would be their balls on the block.

The elderly peer made sure he got to the door first,
pressing his ear to the panel, a frown of concentration imprinted on his face. Then, slowly, his expression began to transform to one of wonder, which was followed by lewd gloating. He motioned for the guards to listen; they did so, at first cautious, then increasingly boldly. They began to nod to each other. It seemed the patient was recovering fast. Perhaps it was the vodka – or maybe a little mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? They sniggered, and began to relax. Whatever the cause of the enquiry, they were now in a position to confirm that the foreign visitors were both cosy and accounted for – enjoying themselves, even, loading up on a few precious last-minute memories of their stay in Ta’argistan. Because, from inside the room, the guards could hear the strains of a creaking bed and the unambiguous sound of Martha slowly working her way up to an elemental, earth-moving orgasm.

With the help of their sources on the inside of the Castle, they knew where Zac was being held. They also had a pretty good understanding of the security system, which was elementary and based mostly around men and metal. Harry had a lifetime of experience with security systems. They had a chronic susceptibility for looking in entirely the wrong direction, a bit like the Maginot Line. Almost every military strategy Harry had ever encountered had focused on winning the last war rather than the next, just as security inside the prison was designed to deal with the last
escape rather than what Harry and the others had in mind. That’s why the sewers had been blocked, to stop those trying to get out. No one had paused to consider that someone might try to get in. After all, who’d be insane enough to do that, break into a place like this? As Harry tried to wash the shit from his hands and face, it seemed a perfectly reasonable question.

The prison kitchen required regular deliveries of supplies, and so it had ready access to the courtyard and the gate through which Harry had first entered. The same went for the governor’s office and other sections of the administration block. There wasn’t much call for tight security there; the system had been concentrated on the prisoners’ quarters. From the kitchen, therefore, there was easy entry not only to the courtyard but also to everything that ran off it.

That’s what had caught Harry’s attention. There was something else he had seen on the plans, a door from the courtyard that opened into a long basement corridor. ‘What’s that?’ he had enquired as they had made their plans, jabbing his finger at the point where the corridor came to an end.

There had been a moment of unease between the prison officers, who looked at Bektour.

‘Go on, tell him,’ Bektour had whispered.

‘It’s the Hanging Room,’ they had told Harry. ‘Where they . . .’ The sentence had been left unfinished. There was no need.

There had been progress in Ta’argistan, of sorts. Gone
were the days when victims were dragged behind horses across the steppes for the passing amusement of ruling lords and the further instruction of the masses. Nowadays the bodies of the executed were taken out quietly, along this corridor, through the door and into the courtyard, to be disposed of along with the rest of the prison’s rubbish. And at its other end, beyond the Hanging Room, lay the Extreme Punishment Wing. That was where they would find Zac.

There was no formidable security on the route that led from the execution chamber, they had been told. Only corpses came this way. The difficulty, of course, was the courtyard, which was lit, albeit like the rest of Ashkek in a desultory fashion, but well enough for interlopers to be seen. Harry would need to cross the courtyard and a hundred feet away, in full view, were the armed guards at the gate.

He tapped his watch. ‘The bloody sewer took longer than we bargained for. We haven’t got much time. Come on.’ He moved to the kitchen door that would spill them out onto the courtyard. It wasn’t locked, merely closed, and here they stood, Harry tapping his toe, marking the seconds as he stared intently at the face of his watch. It was no ordinary timepiece but a Rolex Yacht-Master, made from yellow gold, one of two identical watches that Julia had bought and engraved on the back with a simple message. ‘Thank You. J.’ The first she had presented to Zac, the other to Harry. He had worn it ever since, for luck. And, as he had repeatedly told everyone
to the point of their witlessness, on this job, timing was everything. So they waited.

And waited.

Eventually, Harry clenched his hand until it made a fist. ‘Bollocks. Something’s wrong.’

The plan had called for a power cut at 12.20 a.m. that would knock out the lights and drown the courtyard in darkness, courtesy of another friend of Bektour’s group who worked at the local power station. Easiest thing in the world, to trip the supply, happened all the time, most evenings, in fact, even with teams of engineers toiling to stop it happening. But not, it seemed, tonight.

Three minutes passed, five, then eight.

Nothing.

Most of Ashkek slept.

In the hotel, Sid Proffit was pouring the last of the vodka into the glasses of the guards, who were in the state of relaxation that comes only when a man knows his duty is done and there is free booze for the asking. They sat in the corridor with their backs propped up against the wall. One was almost asleep, his eyes glazed, his chin drooping towards the plastic flower that still protruded from his breast pocket.

Yet as one cog in the system ground to a halt, another was stirred into action. In the square outside the prison, a guard, considerably more alert than Sid Proffit’s companions, at last emerged from the gatehouse to inspect the problem with Aibeck’s truck.

‘What’s up?’

‘How the fuck do I know?’ Aibeck replied. ‘My boss pays me to drive, not piece back together this load of Japanese junk.’ He spat in the snow, professing anger, trying to stop his fingers from shaking with fear as he scraped at a spark plug with a strip of emery paper.

‘Bosses? Tell me about them,’ the guard muttered goodnaturedly. ‘You want to try working in this shit hole.’

‘No thanks. Too reliable. It means I’d have to go home every night to the wife. I’d rather stand here and freeze.’

The guard laughed, while Aibeck’s trembling hands dropped the spark plug in the snow. ‘So bloody cold I can’t feel my fingers any more.’

‘You want tea?’

Aibeck glanced at his watch. 12.32 a.m. The others were due out at 1.20. He had to keep this going, and tea would give him cover, fill the time. And he was fucking freezing, ice collecting on his moustache. ‘Thanks. Can I have it here, though? Need to get this bathtub back on the road.’

‘What, you think I’d let you into the prison? I’d have to shoot you first! No, you wait here,’ the guard instructed over his shoulder as he walked back to the guardhouse.

Aibeck thrust his hands deep into his pockets to stop them shaking. It was several minutes before he dared even try to pick up the spark plug from the snow.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the prison walls, Harry had come to a decision. ‘We’ll have to risk it.’

‘What, beneath the lights?’ Bektour protested. ‘They’ll see us for sure.’

‘I don’t think so. I’ve been watching. None of them have looked this way in five minutes. If they’re not scratching their balls or making tea they’re looking at what Aibeck’s up to in the square.’

‘I guess we’re going to have to take this game up a level,’ Mourat muttered, flexing his shoulders, trying to spit, pretend indifference, but nothing came, his mouth was dry.

Suddenly Harry knew he was taking advantage of these young men. Perhaps he’d known it from the start and simply hadn’t bothered about it. He was leading them on, allowing their inexperience and youthful enthusiasm to take them further, step after step, disguising the danger behind a web of adventure. But it was the same with all military service, wasn’t it? It was a young man’s game, had to be, not simply because of factors like speed, and strength, and resilience, but because old men didn’t appreciate the joke, knew when to duck and run. Harry was old enough to know better than to wade through a tunnel of shit in order to break into a prison, but he knew he’d come too far to turn back. What had Martha said – a shark that had to swim? That hurt, too close for comfort, but he’d worry about that later. For now, he had a job to do. He picked up a broom and
thrust it at Mourat, then grabbed a bucket and mop for himself.