The Reluctant Hero (27 page)

‘I see we’ve both managed to change out of our old shirts,’ Harry said.

Beg didn’t react, knew Harry’s game. ‘Please, Mr Jones, let us not quarrel about the past.’

‘Agreed. Come on, let’s go down the pub and have a beer.’

And the scene was set. They both knew what they
were about. Amir Beg was going to inflict his will upon Harry, in such a manner that what had gone before would be of no consequence. Put the past to rest, and along with it, Harry’s future.

For Harry, this was no longer a game of survival. He was going to die in this chair. His only choice, if it could be thought of as a choice, was to see whether he could die on his terms, terms that weren’t entirely Amir Beg’s. It would be a victory, of sorts. Beg would win the physical contest, of that there was no shred of doubt, but there was another battle, that of the mind, and of the soul, that Harry was still determined to fight, as long as he could.

‘I hope you will understand,’ Beg said, ‘that I admire you, Mr Jones. We have a lot in common.’

‘You learn something new all the time.’

‘You are a most extraordinary man – no, really. Those scars on your body, they are proof of that. And your willingness to give up your life for a friend.’ As he sipped his tea once more, his spectacles began to steam. He polished them with another of his spotless white handkerchiefs. ‘A noble gesture. I congratulate you. I assume you succeeded and Mr Kravitz is now out of the country.’

It was a question, not a statement, and Harry knew he was fishing.

‘Harry Jones. Member of Parliament. London SW1A 0AA. Sorry, I don’t have a serial number any more, so I’ve given you the post code.’

‘Don’t underestimate me, Mr Jones. We are both experienced at what we do. You know I will get what I want eventually. And the sooner you cooperate, the sooner it will be over.’

‘My life, you mean.’

‘Your suffering.’ Beg rose from his perch and moved across to the cupboard. Taking a small key from his pocket, he inserted it into the primitive lock, and the doors swung open. As he saw what was inside, Harry felt his stomach trying to escape through the back of his throat. Every shelf was packed with items that had been gathered for one purpose, to inflict so much horror upon whoever sat in this chair that they would do whatever Amir Beg asked.

The Ta’argi picked up a hammer, the sort with a heavy head that was used to crush rocks or bricks. ‘I know what’s going through your mind, Mr Jones. I’ve been in your position, remember. Waiting. For whatever happens next.’ He cradled the hammer in his hands, like a father inspecting his newborn child. ‘They broke my hands, you see, the Soviets. Knuckle by knuckle. And when they had healed, they broke them all over again. I’m reminded of that every day of my life. So much pain. But what you remember most, even more than the pain of the flesh, is the pain of waiting. The fear of the unknown. Simply not knowing what’s going to happen to you. You understand that, don’t you? Your imagination fills with all sorts of horror.’ He looked at Harry, could smell his fear. ‘You see, I meant what I said. We have a lot in common.’

‘You cracked. You gave the Soviets what they wanted.’

‘But of course. Everyone does. In time.’

‘I guess Mr Karabayev must have cracked a whole lot sooner, then. Clever man. He seems to have got out with much less trouble.’

Harry could see he had hit a target. Beg’s face darkened, almost flinched, the anger bubbling through like a mountain spring. ‘Our President is a parasite,’ he whispered.

‘Yet you do his dirty work.’

‘I do
my
work!’ Beg snapped. ‘And one day I shall dance and sing on his grave.’

‘You sound as if you might volunteer to dig it, too.’ Beg’s body stiffened in passion. ‘You know, we have a law, passed after the Soviet time, that any man seeking to be President must show he can speak a little Ta’argi. A marker, a sign that we have grown up. That we are free in our own land.’ He ran his tongue along lips that were thin, dry. ‘Can you imagine what he did?’

‘My imagination’s pretty stimulated right now.’

‘One thirty-second television broadcast. That
I
wrote for him. For which
I
rehearsed him.’ He pounded his chest with a crooked hand, claiming his credit. ‘It took more than three weeks before he even came close to getting it right!’

‘And now you’re going to kill me for no better reason than that my friend fucked his wife. Let me go, Beg. I could help you do much more damage to him alive.’

‘I need no foreigner’s help to get rid of him!’

‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend.’

‘You Westerners have no friends in this part of the world, have you not yet learned that lesson?’

‘Nevertheless, we still have our uses.’

‘And you have uses for me, Mr Jones. Dead. As a message to all other foreigners who intend to come here and rape Ta’argistan.’

There was an edge of madness in Beg’s eye, so Harry thought, and a little trickle of spittle falling from the corner of his mouth. Harry knew he was never going to argue his way out of this corner.

‘So that’s what you intend to do. After you have broken my hands. For fun. Just like the Soviets did to you. You know, you’re still their puppet.’

Beg wrinkled his nose in puzzlement. ‘Oh, no, Mr Jones,’ he said, putting the hammer aside on the desk. ‘I have entirely other plans for you.’

Martha didn’t intend to wander far. She had no wish to find herself lost in a strange city, let alone have any difficulty in getting back to the Fat Chance, just in case. Yet she knew she had to spend a little time away from the cellar. It had become like a crypt.

She wandered distractedly along unkempt, snowcrowded streets, catching glimpses of a strange woman staring back at her from the reflections in shop fronts and restaurant windows. The new Martha Reilly. A puzzling woman. Was she in love with Harry? If that
was so, it was proving a pitifully tangled experience, yet love had always been that way for her. She’d not even liked Harry, at first, thought him too rich, one of those privileged Englishmen who’d had it all too easy, for too long. Just the sort of man who prevented her from getting where she thought she wanted to be. But that had been a superficial judgement, she knew that now, she’d seen the scars on his body that told her his hadn’t been a life spent between satin sheets, even if he could afford them. He was a restless soul, discontented with his life, looking for something more. They were a lot like each other, and perhaps that was why they fought. Her feelings about all men were twisted, filled with searing memories that had all been glued together, and she’d never succeeded in prising them apart and dealing with them, hadn’t even wanted to, until now. Harry could help, and she wanted his help. Perhaps that was what love was about.

Yet what a terrible place to find love. She gazed around her, searching above the skyline of Ashkek, beyond the belching chimneys of the power station, to the jagged line of mountains in the distance. They seemed cold and unforgiving; give her the surf of Cape Cod any day. She shivered, despite her new jacket, which was proving less adequate than it looked. Yet those old women squatting on the pavement wore considerably less, their bare arms reaching out from beneath shawls to plead with her to buy their wares, or simply to beg. ‘
Ya vas umolyau
,’ they whispered,
Please,
please
, their lips cracked, their round eyes filled with tearful memories of better times. Martha hurried on.

She was lost in her own world of troubles, thinking of Harry, when she looked up to discover that two policemen were standing on the street corner not twenty yards ahead. She grew nervous, sure they would spot the guilty blush on her cheeks. She wanted to take no chances, so cast around for shelter. A few steps away were steps that led beneath an arch to a set of polished wooden doors – a church, Russian Orthodox, its onion dome towering above her head. She recalled her briefing – so many religious remnants had been left scattered along the Silk Road; it might just as easily have been a Buddhist or Hindu or Shamanist temple, even more likely a mosque. The new System, unlike its ardently atheistic Soviet predecessors, didn’t mind very much to whom you prayed, so long as above all else you remembered to worship It. She lowered her head and ducked inside.

She hadn’t been in a church since her marriage, except for Remembrance Sunday, which was inescapable duty. And they hadn’t been churches like this, so overpoweringly ornate, filled with mysteries and flickering candles and polished woods, and relics waiting for the lips of the devout, and the overpowering waft of incense. An old
babushka
in dark widow’s weeds was bent over the steps before the altar, worn polishing cloth in her hand, while close by another woman trimmed candles in their glittering brass holders. Martha slipped into a pew at the
back of the church, trying to make herself invisible amongst the congregation of gilded saints that stood on all sides. From the mosaic of the vast domed ceiling, the robed figures of Christ and the apostles stared down on her.

She hadn’t tried prayer, not since she was eleven and wanted a pony, but as she sat on the hard wooden seat she envied the simple faith of the elderly women who toiled in front of her. Yet strange things had been happening to her, deep inside, and she had never wanted anything more in her adult life than what she sought now – Harry, and his safety. She slipped to her knees. It couldn’t hurt.

She bent her head, closed her eyes, focused her mind, summoned all her energies and willed him to be free. ‘Please, God,’ she whispered.

When she raised her eyes and sat up once again, she felt a surge of comfort. She still had no idea about God, but she knew for certain that something special had happened in her life through meeting Harry and coming to this place with him. In finding Harry, she had found part of herself that had been missing.

She remembered Zac, what had happened to him, and her imagination began to prey upon her. What would they do – no,
what were they doing
– to Harry? Half-formed fears began to crowd into her mind, chasing away the comfort she’d found. Then her attention was caught by a painting in a huge gilded frame that hung on a wall near at hand. It was of a
young man, St Sebastian the Martyr. It made her think of Harry. His hair was the same colour, the eyes had a similar cast, and his lips were parted, calling out in despair, his body tied to a tree and pierced through with many arrows. The blood from his wounds trickled down below his knees. With a cry of torment that echoed throughout the church and startled the
babushkas
, Martha jumped to her feet and ran from the church.

‘There are only two things I require from you, Mr Jones, and then we can get this entire unpleasant business over with.’ Beg made it sound as if he was about to do Harry a favour.

‘You mean you can kill me.’

‘I think life is so often overrated, don’t you? Particularly when it involves so much suffering. In any event, I have very little time. The President is, after all, the President, and he is an impatient man. He requires that his instructions are carried out promptly. So although your suffering will not be prolonged unnecessarily, it will, I’m afraid, be intense. Until you tell me what it is I need to know. But that shouldn’t be so difficult. Only two things.’ He counted on his crooked fingers. ‘First, of course, I must know who helped you. You understand that, don’t you?’

‘And second?’

‘I would like to know why, Mr Jones. Why you have done this. Given your life up for a friend.’

‘The first I will never tell you,’ Harry whispered. ‘And the second, you will never understand.’

‘A pity. A very great pity. I would have enjoyed the privilege of talking with you some more, but . . . to business.’ He crossed to the cupboard, his storehouse of terrors. When he turned back once more, he was holding a tray of surgical instruments that he laid on the desk directly in front of Harry. Pliers, clamps, needles, scalpels, even a saw. As battered as his eyes were, Harry couldn’t drag them away. Beg knew it. It was always the same. His fingers hovered over the tray in a grotesque pantomime, as though it was a box of chocolates and he was having difficulty in making up his mind which treat to select.

‘Please, Mr Jones, try to understand. There is nothing personal in this. Truly.’

‘You’ll be suggesting we hold hands next.’

‘I will gain no pleasure in watching you suffer.’

‘Screw you, Beg. This isn’t a spectator sport for you, you get your rocks off on making people suffer. Is it instead of sex? What is it with you, is there no woman in your life? Or is it something else that does it for you – young boys, perhaps? Dead sheep? A pound of raw liver?’ He was lashing out, trying to hit a target, struggling to hide his fear. ‘Or is it that you’re not only inadequate but undersized, too? The shortest dick in the boys’ showers, was that it?’ Harry was sweating now, the tension cascading down his face.

Beg turned, and something sparkled in his hand. ‘I
think, on that front, you have no cause to be making any claims,’ he snorted as his eyes dropped to Harry’s groin.

‘I’m freezing.’ ‘And afraid.’

Of course he was. Beg was holding a scalpel.

For the first time Harry tried to test his bonds, but the leather straps were thick and securely fastened. He could do no more than wriggle, or was it that he was shivering?

‘Who helped you? Give me their names. Otherwise . . .’ Beg took a step forward. The state of his hands meant that he was forced to hold the scalpel crudely, in the palm of his hand rather than with his fingers, but whichever way he held it, it was moving straight for Harry’s uninjured eye. Harry closed it, not in any hope of protection but in order to try to compose himself for what was to come. Should he laugh, sneer, scream, suffer in silence? This might be the last decision he ever made. He wanted desperately to get it right.

‘The names, Mr Jones. You don’t need to go through this. Just give me their names.’

Yet when Harry opened his eye once again, Beg realized he wasn’t going to cooperate. There was a strength, a resilience, a glimmer of hatred in this man that Beg knew he would have to overcome before he got anything from him. He lunged forward.