The Sons Of Cleito (The Abductions of Langley Garret Book 1) (2 page)

'Sit,' the man in the ill-fitting black suit said, as the woman made a very quick call on her mobile. All she said was, 'All ok,' before ending the call.

I sat down on what I recognised, as all Swiss would do, a cheap yet practical IKEA sofa and shook my head trying to clear it a little and make some sense of what had happened. It didn't work. It simply made the feeling in my guts worse. I looked up at the man standing above me, who somehow now appeared taller, wider and nastier, but as I did, he turned away as if he wasn't in the slightest bit interested in me. That helped a little because the situation I was in was starting to remind me of some Bruce Willis movies I had seen and his disinterest was a whole lot more comforting than the thought of being kicked in the genitals.

'Just stay calm Mr Garret and your head will clear very soon. We'll be moving you a little later, so please relax as best you can while we make the arrangements for you. Would you like a drink of water?' she asked.

'Yes please,' I said rather timidly, and immediately wished I had sounded more assertive.

She looked at the man and he walked off to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water for me. At least I now knew who the boss was. He returned and handed me the glass and I drank it down in one thirsty gulp. I held the empty glass in my hand not knowing what to do with it, as there was no table. The woman took it from me and handed it to the man, who silently and obediently went back to the kitchen, then returned quite quickly and handed me the refilled glass.

'Thank you,' I managed, with a touch more manhood in my voice. He nodded. As he turned away, I noticed an orange plastic crate not far from me on my left, just under the window. My laptop, mobile phone, iPad and external hard drives were stacked inside it along with my file of backup CDs and DVDs. Alongside the crate was a suitcase that I immediately recognised as mine, and it told me why the man had spent so long in my bedroom, and that the delivery man did actually work on Sundays. I looked up at the woman. 'I can't believe all this.'

She didn't answer.

'Can I send a message to my wife telling her I've been arrested, or whatever the hell this is?'

She simply shook her head.

'You can't rip me out from my home and not let me contact anyone,' I said, almost pleading.

'I'm sorry. Not at this time,' she said calmly.

'Who the hell are you? Police, CIA, MI5 or what?' I asked, but she turned away from me. I went to stand up.

'Mr Garret, please sit down or I will have you restrained,' she said without turning to look at me. The man, standing at the kitchen door had a look that told me I should probably comply.

'Thank you,' she said when I sat down – still with her back to me. I took another gulp of my glass of water.

Nowhere

A different type of grogginess came over me quite slowly, and when the man took the glass from my hand, I looked up at him and I realised then that it was the water. The only comparison I had to the feeling that was enveloping me was when I'd had my appendix removed. The pre-med injection they gave me before my operation induced the same,
'I really couldn't give a fuck about anything'
type of feeling. Visions of a dark, heavy set male nurse dry shaving my nether regions popped into my head, then out again, as I saw three men appear from nowhere on my right. As had happened before my appendix were chopped out, my brain lost its capacity to function logically and my ears and eyes were merging, mixing and confusing everything that was happening around me.

'Get him ready,' someone said.

'Are you sure it's him?' another voice asked.

'It's been a long day here too,' I heard and thought it was the woman speaking but as I looked around, I couldn't see her. Something green flashed on my left and as I turned my head, I suddenly couldn't decide if I was sitting or standing.

'The car's here.'

'What time?'

'Altenrhein, three-twenty.'

'Have we got clearance yet?'

'Approved.'

'Destination.'

'Classified.'

Pieces of the conversation around me echoed in my head but made no sense. I looked down at my knees and decided that I was sitting, but my internal organs weren't, as they were extremely busy rearranging themselves once again.

'Ok, up you get,' I heard as my shoulders levitated. Two blurred faces, too close for my eyes to focus on, breathing on me as my legs turned to jelly and I felt my feet dragging. The green flash appeared again; then enveloped me and my arms felt like they had suddenly disappeared. The floor below my feet disappeared next as the breathing near my face intensified. I saw a door with darkness on the other side and some movement in front of me. My feet started bouncing on something over and over again until finally my dulled brain concluded they were hitting steps on my way down a staircase. All I knew was that it was black as I was bundled into a car and seat belted, and then the heavy breathing on either side of me returning after the loud clunk of closing doors. I tried to think about Helen and how worried she might be when she got back, but my brain wouldn't function properly, as the heavy set male nurse returned to my mind and continued dry shaving my pubic hair.

I could only hear silence above the hum of the car engine and tyre noise on the road, yet had a sensation of speed as I willed my eyes to work, which they still refused to do. I tried to say something but my mouth was on strike along with my eyes, so I gave up and just let the nurse continue shaving me. It could've been a few minutes or a few days I was so confused, but I did realise the car had stopped and that the breathing on either side of me had moved, shortly after I heard the click of the release of my seat belt. My body moved somewhere; then along and upwards before I heard another click of a seat belt. In front of me was a white blur with specks of brown splashed here and there.

'Everything's cleared. Have a good flight and see you again,' I heard a voice say.

'Yeah. Thanks for all your cooperation on this one.'

'He should be ok for another couple of hours.'

'We'll look after him once he comes around.'

I saw bodies moving in front of me and then they all suddenly disappeared, bar one blurred face that appeared directly in front of me.

'Take it easy Mr Garret. It won't be such a long flight,' I heard, before I heard nothing again.

The rocking of turbulence woke me and a man in front of me slowly came into focus. In his fifties perhaps, with short grey hair and a very square jaw. Military was the first word that came to my muddled mind.

'You're probably thirsty,' he said, as he put an open bottle of mineral water to my mouth. It was then that I felt my arms were tied and I looked down to see the green straight jacket that was enveloping me. My ankles were shackled. I drank because my mouth was so dry, but wondered if I was being drugged yet again. 'We'll be landing shortly,' he said while I drank, spilling some water as I quenched my thirst. I wanted to ask where I was but my senses were still trying to find their feet. When I'd finished the whole bottle of water, he stood up and walked away. As the minutes passed, my head cleared and I realised I was sitting in a small jet. I turned my head as far as I could and looked around the cabin but couldn't see anyone, although I could hear dulled voices over the engine noise, coming from the rear of the cabin behind two pulled curtains.

I wriggled a little trying to make myself more comfortable, which was a complete waste of energy as I learnt quickly that there was no comfortable position to be in when you're wearing a straightjacket. However I did manage to rub my itchy nose up against the side of my seat's headrest and from it, gained some mild relief just before the man with the square jaw returned and sat opposite me. He even half smiled, and although it wasn't really a warm one, I satisfied myself in believing it wasn't a threatening one.

'I'm sorry about the necessity for the restraint Mr Garret, but we didn't want you to come to any harm. I'll have it removed shortly.'

'Should I ask my questions now?' I asked.

'Probably best not to right now, so relax as best you can and you'll find out all you need to know after we land.'

I nodded, and then looked out my window for a moment into the dark night sky. A much younger man appeared in the aisle alongside us, and the man across from me nodded towards him.

'If you could sit forward a little Mr Garret, I'll have your jacket removed,' he said, and then the younger man leant towards me and started unbuckling the straightjacket. Within a few minutes my chest and arms were extremely relieved to have their freedom of movement back. I stretched my arms to relieve the stiffness, and was even more pleased when the young man bent down to remove my ankle cuffs. As he did though, I noticed he slipped something else around my right ankle and I looked up at the squared jawed man.

'A little something to make sure you're safe Mr Garret.'

'A tracking device?'

'A little smarter, but yes, something like that.'

'Smarter?' I asked him as the young man finished his task of freeing me and fixing this smarter
thing around my ankle.

'I'm sure you'll come to understand.'

'Another question for after we land?' I asked, and he nodded, accompanied by a smile that seemed pleased with my comprehension of the situation. The young man disappeared without a word and I sat opposite the square jawed man, whose smile had now vanished, but at least I could happily scratch my itchy nose with ease. Above the noise of the engines, the silence between us was punctuated with my arm stretching and
ahhing
at my newfound freedom, and his military like sniffing. It reminded me of my father, who sniffed in exactly the same fashion when he was bored, annoyed, or ready to give me a thoroughly good talking to. It was an,
'I'm really fed up with all this,'
kind of sniff. I sniffed back at him, as if to say I was fed up as well and I felt we had reached a form of mutual agreement.

Helen crossed my mind and I think I wished she hadn't really bothered crossing. The last few years hadn't been our best years, and with her working a lot more, and being away an awful lot more, combined with my doing a lot less and not really giving a fuck about it, we had drifted from each other a little. I'm not sure how it happened because it was by way of such small increments it was difficult to comprehend that each half-inch was adding up to the mile that now came between us. It was probably at about the half-mile stage that I started drinking a little more to fill the space she used to occupy. There were occasional discussions of course, but at about the two thirds of a mile stage they started focussing on my uselessness and laziness and her paying to feed and house me.

When I did try to make the point that I had done that for a very long time as well, it was normally classified as ancient history, past the statutes of limitations, and therefore inadmissible as evidence. When we reached this stage in our occasional discussions, we then both resorted to saying fuck a lot and not speaking to each other at all for a week or two. At about the three quarters of a mile stage we both gave up on having occasional or even rare discussions, which was good in some respects as it stopped us swearing at each other, and from that point we seemed to have mutually accepted and agreed that ignoring each other was the most prudent solution.

The sun was threatening to rise, and the darkness through the window at my shoulder was just beginning to be tinged with red. I watched as the deep red glow on the horizon changed slowly to a very dark orange, and then a few moments later I heard a change in the sound of the jet's engines and then the feeling of falling. For some reason my mouth couldn't help stating the bleeding obvious.

'We're landing,' I said, and was not surprised to be answered with a simple nod. As the man opposite me didn't seem at all bothered with fastening his seatbelt, I didn't either. 'And where we're landing will be a question for after we land I suppose.' Another nod – and a sniff.

There were no cabin crew to announce well-rehearsed safety messages before landing or to collect headphones, and there hadn't even been a hint of breakfast. I saved myself another knowing nod by concentrating on my view from the window and as the sun eked its way closer to the horizon, its rays slowly lit my view. Sea or ocean became clear below, and as the plane banked, I could see a few white peaks of waves. It meant I was very definitely a long way from Switzerland. Helen flashed into my mind again as I gazed at the endless water below me and I wondered what she would do when she arrived back home, or if she had arrived home already, what she had done. My sense of time was completely confused, and although my watch said twenty-five to six, I had no idea what day it was, or how long it had been since I was taken from my apartment. The only calculation I could make was that as it was early morning below me, and my watch agreed, that I hadn't travelled too far from Switzerland. Or if we had, we had headed roughly north or south and not east or west. Adding one more factor to my calculations, I reasoned that as there were no seas or oceans remotely near Switzerland to the north, we must have travelled south.

I caught my reflection in the window and noticed I needed a shave, and as I ran my hand across the whiskers on my chin, I calculated that I hadn't shaved for about two days, so perhaps Helen was due home today. Once she discovered my suitcase and some of my clothes were missing, along with my laptop and phone, what would she think? My brain was using some logic for the first time since I was taken from my apartment, and although quite pleased with myself for my time and day calculations, I wasn't nearly as pleased with my calculations as to what Helen would think and do. We'd had our ups and downs, which were almost uniquely downs in recent years, so I doubted that she would call the police and report me missing. Maybe she would try calling me, but she would have noticed that the apartment door was locked when she returned, and that nothing had been stolen. She would simply discover that I was missing, along with my suitcase, some clothes, laptop and phone, and probably presume I'd left her. More than likely she would hope like hell that I had, and happily celebrate the prospect with a bottle of champagne.