The Reluctant Hero (25 page)

His mind wandered back to Dmitri Panov. Who was he? Had he a family? What was his crime? And what
had driven him to kill himself? What horrors had he known? It was thinking about Dmitri that made Harry realize he’d made a most terrible mistake. Whatever the poor bastard had hanged himself with, it wasn’t a belt or his bloody shoelaces. No, they would never have made it that easy for him, Dmitri wouldn’t have been allowed to keep such things. And, as Harry looked down at his trainers and Bond Street belt, he knew he must have given his own game away.

He cursed himself violently. He was undone.

He heard them coming for him, down the passageway, their feet pounding out their purpose. Four of them. Very official. In step. Like a beating drum. And suddenly his wish was granted, the cell door was thrown open, but it did him no good. They hauled him to his feet, and almost before he knew it they had manacled his hands behind his back and secured a leather strap around his chest, so tight it made breathing difficult, then used it to drag him into the passageway.

His mind was racing as he tried to keep up with the guards, but his feet were suddenly treacherous, stumbling. The guards took his weight and dragged him on. Everything was a blur, the pale corridor lights flashing past him, and he tried to scream in protest but he couldn’t get his breath. He desperately needed to tell them. They were going the wrong way! Turned left out of the cell, not to the right, and he knew that way led only to one place.

The Hanging Room.

*

The aircraft was less than an hour from Heathrow when Sid Proffit waved for one of the cabin crew. The flight path had taken them over Russia so he’d left matters late, wanting to make sure they were over familiar territory. The young attendant tried to ignore the summons; she was busy with the pre-landing checks, and he’d had more than his share of the wine, drinking not excessively but mechanically, methodically, not for pleasure but, it seemed, from need, ever since they’d started serving breakfast, as though he needed to deaden some deep seated pain. But he was insistent. He even took the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and flapped it in the air. She bent warily over his seat.

‘We have a little problem,’ he announced.

She said nothing, her eyes defensive, hard, but they began to melt in disbelief as he talked. The passenger flying under the name of Harry Jones wasn’t him at all. He wasn’t a criminal, but it was a delicate diplomatic situation. All a bit of a tangle, really . . . Not until Proffit had produced his parliamentary pass did she even begin to take him seriously, and still she suspected the old goat was trying to proposition her, but a lord was a lord, no matter how much he’d had to drink. She knew she needed to talk to the captain.

The captain left his flight deck and came back into the cabin with considerable reluctance, but the cabin attendant’s story and his own earlier encounter with Martha were enough to ring alarm bells. He listened as the peer recounted his tale, which by the time he’d finished
seemed to involve a head-on collision with almost everything that was solid and immovable: the criminal law, human rights, airline protocols, passport controls, parliamentary privilege, diplomatic relations, not to mention his own company’s rulebook.

Yet whatever doubts the captain harboured were pushed aside by the sight of the man sitting next to Proffit. Whoever he was, he needed help. The strain of his imprisonment and escape had caught up with Zac, the shot he’d been given had long since faded, leaving him scarcely conscious and barely coherent, drifting in and out of sleep even as the captain tried to talk to him. Truth was, he was probably unfit to travel and should-n’t have been allowed on the aircraft in the first place. Neither did he look much like the photo in his passport. Something else they’d probably throw at the captain. He was regretting getting up that morning.

‘He needs medical help,’ the peer said.

‘I’ll see to it. Have it waiting when we land.’

‘And the police.’

‘By the sounds of things, you’ll be needing the entire British army.’

‘I fear it’s too late for that,’ Proffit said, his voice cracking with concern.

He was being dragged along the passageway, head down, the sweat running into his eyes. He couldn’t see much, only shapes. Suddenly Harry was blinded by a shaft of brilliance spread from a door that was opening
up ahead of him, and he was being kicked and manhandled up the short steps leading to it. He blinked, tried to clear his vision. Through the blur and haze a face came into view, standing in the light, blocking the way. It was Amir Beg.

There was no mistaking the disbelief that stretched across the Ta’argi’s normally impassive features. Whatever, or whomever, he had been expecting, it wasn’t this. And Harry’s heart leapt.

‘You’ve got the wrong man! You know me. I’m Harry Jones!’

Beg stared at him, a long while, his face slowly reforming itself before he replied. ‘In this place,’ he said quietly, ‘there are no names. Only numbers.’ And he stepped aside.

Harry stumbled. When he raised his head from the floor, he saw the unblinking eye of the noose, staring down at him. It must be a joke, they couldn’t be serious, but he wasn’t appreciating the humour. ‘This is a mistake!’ he cried out. But they were bundling him towards the steps of the scaffold.

Harry tried to resist, was desperate to struggle his way free, but they bound his legs, too, guards pressing down with their knees upon his back as he lay spreadeagled on the rough wooden treads. His resistance faded into nothing more than a pathetic wriggle. They dragged him forward, his face scratching raw across the final steps, then they hauled him to his feet, trussed like a chicken.

He was standing at the centre of a crude trapdoor, his feet on a roughly painted white cross. Three men beside him. They jerked his chin up. He felt the noose being lowered around his neck.

It was coarse, scratched him, he could feel stray fibres of hemp sticking into his neck.

Come on, guys, this is a joke. Gone far enough
. . .

Beneath him, he saw a guard with a camera, pointed at him, already taking photographs. Harry remembered the display spread across the wall.

‘You’re making a mistake!’ Harry shouted, but the words caught in his throat. ‘I haven’t even had a trial.’

One of the guards, who understood a little English, burst into mocking laughter. Then he pulled at the rope, tightening the noose. Harry could feel the heavy knot nestling behind his left ear, smell the guard’s sour breath.

God, forgive me, for whatever I have done
. . .

The seconds that had dashed past at the gallop now seemed to stand still. All became quiet. The guards stepped away from him. In the middle of the floor, staring up at him, stood Amir Beg. Harry could hear the camera shutter clicking. And his heart pounding.

He had been close to death many times before, but never like this. In an abattoir.

Death is a soldier’s profession, and Harry had never complained. He’d always hoped he would die like a man, even though he had no idea what that meant. Except this wasn’t it. Look Death in the eye, spit in his
face, but all Harry could see was Amir Beg, a tight, thin smile marked on his face, like a scar.

He seemed to have been standing there for half of eternity. Harry wondered if that was it, if he had already died and Death was simply the last image of life captured and preserved forever, so that he would be left staring into Amir Beg’s eyes for the rest of time. Yet when he shook his head, he felt the noose scratching, and knew what was still to come.

They were about to kill him. Part of him wanted to scream, to offer them anything they asked, if only they would let him live, but they wanted nothing, except to see him hang, even better if he broke to pieces.

Yet who gives a fuck about them? Do it your way, Harry. For you!

He stood, as tall as he could, struggling to keep his balance despite his bonds, his mind now uncluttered, his thrashing heart suddenly slowing.

Do it your way, Harry
. . .
!

Life’s most closely held secret was what followed, when living was done, and he was about to discover the truth.

Amir Beg had lifted his right hand, raised his crown of crippled knuckles. It was the sign.

Beg stopped the execution. Harry had braced himself, trying to pretend he didn’t care, when Beg’s voice rang out. One word.

Stop.

Harry was only half aware as the guards dragged him back to his cell, undid his bonds, took his belt and trainers, and threw him into a corner. Then they gave him a bloody good kicking. That woke him up. When they had done he lay there shivering, and not just from the damp and cold. It was some time before Amir Beg appeared.

Harry hadn’t noticed before but the other man was dressed as though for a wedding, in a neat suit, white collar and colourful tie. He stepped into the cell with a cautious foot, anxious not to get his polished shoes caught in anything too unpleasant. He held a white handkerchief to his nose to stifle the stench – a stench Harry had long since ceased to notice or care about.

‘Mr Jones,’ Beg said, from the far side of the cell, ‘this is not what I expected. Not what I expected at all.’

Harry propped himself up against the stone wall.
‘I’m delighted to have brought a little interest to your dull day. You must get bored with nothing better to do than hanging innocent men.’

‘It should have been your friend, Mr Kravitz, and he can scarcely be accused of innocence. Not when he was discovered in bed with the President’s wife.’

Harry moaned and banged the back of his head against the wall in despair. So that was it. A woman. The man hadn’t changed. Fuck you, Zac.

‘So he was in the wrong bed. And you’re in the wrong cell, Mr Jones. Most unfortunate.’

‘We all have our weaknesses,’ Harry muttered through clenched teeth as his hand inspected his battered ribs; he thought he’d probably cracked a couple.

‘You are right. I myself have a weakness, a great one. A need to understand. I suspect you share that weakness. We both have enquiring minds and an inability to pass a problem by. That cost me dear in the Soviet time, just as it has now cost you.’ He coughed, cleared his throat. He needed both hands to wipe the handkerchief across his lips. ‘Even today I have not learned my lesson,’ he continued. ‘You see, I could simply have let you hang and the world – my world – would be content. Everything would add up. One crime committed, one prisoner suitably punished. But that wasn’t enough for me, you see. I realized that you would have taken with you too many secrets, left behind too many mysteries. How you ended up here.
Why
you ended up here – I am most curious about that, Mr Jones. And, of
course, who helped you in all this. I am intrigued. I would like to know. So I have spared you.’

‘Sorry to give you sleepless nights.’

‘Men with minds like ours often have difficulty sleeping.’

‘I suppose it’s easier if you’ve just done a heavy day’s work with a noose.’

‘We live in an uncertain world. And it is with clearing up a few of those uncertainties that I would like your help.’

Harry stared at Beg, into the dark, pitiless eyes, at the weak, rounded shoulders and the crippled hands. He had to make a judgement, to take the measure of this man and his intentions, and every instinct told him it was pointless. Harry knew he wasn’t being spared, he was merely being used. To resolve Beg’s uncertainties.

‘You’re not going to let me walk out of here, are you?’

Beg inclined his head. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.You see, my President . . . like us, he has a weakness, too. An inability to let bygones be bygones. He is a simple, unsophisticated man. He prefers revenge.’

‘But you are offering me a deal?’

‘In a way.’

‘I’m fascinated,’ Harry replied drily.

For the first time, Beg took his eyes off Harry in order to compose his words. ‘We will all die, Mr Jones, and few of us are allowed to know the moment of our death. But some of us, at least, can determine the manner of our death.’

Harry knew where the other man was headed.

‘It’s a privilege which not everyone enjoys, to die without pain. A man can suffer so much.’

So that was the deal. Tell Beg everything, so that death would come quickly. Or stretch the process further than his neck and suffer horribly, a process which, in Beg’s experienced if mutilated hands, would almost certainly result in Harry telling him what he wanted to know anyway. Harry’s eyes wandered up to the bars across the ventilation flue, and the marks on the wall. What had that man been through, before he decided he would end his own life?

‘You are a man of considerable experience, Mr Jones. You understand what I mean, I think. A man might die a thousand miserable deaths in a room like this. I offer you the chance to die only once.’

Harry looked around him. He couldn’t think of any where worse, dying here, like a rat.

‘You won’t get anything out of me.’

‘Oh, I think I will.’

Harry knew he was right. Everyone broke, eventually. At first you gave them only your name, rank and number, but then a little more – controlled release, the NCOs at Hereford called it, but men like Beg were never satisfied, would persist, find the sort of pain that was unendurable, and so you would end up giving them your guts, every yard of them. Anyway, Harry suspected that Beg was the sort of man who would want to make him suffer, for the pleasure he gained of
watching a better man cringe and fall apart. His way of showing off his superiority, to himself.

Harry would die. He might not be able to decide when or how he died, but perhaps he might yet be able to decide where he died. It might be the last thing he ever achieved. And he didn’t want it to be here, not in this stinking pit, the most wretched place on earth. So, slowly, hurting from his beating, he crawled his way up the wall until he was standing several feet from Beg. His tormentor still had his handkerchief clasped to his face, and was showing a substantial stretch of stiff white shirt cuff.

‘I won’t die here, not in this room,’ Harry said defiantly.