INCARNATION (51 page)

‘What’s “radge”?’ she asked.

‘Crazy, likes. Now, where’s yir mother’s number?’

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of paper with a scribbled telephone number on it. He switched the phone on and punched in the number. There was a single ring at the other end, then a woman’s voice answered, harsh and fragile.

‘Hello? Who’s this?’

‘Hello, Lizzie. Remember me? Ah’d say it wasnae a matter of “Who?” so much as “How much?” wouldn’t you?’

‘How is Maddie? I want to speak to her. I don’t think you realize what you’ve got yourself into. There’ll be hell to pay if you’ve harmed her in any way.’

‘Ah think we’ll take things in the right order. What aboot the polis? Has either o’ you told the blueberry muffins anything aboot this? Are they listenin’ in tae this conversation?’

‘Oh, don’t be such a pillock. Who do you think I’ve got here, Inspector fucking Morse? I’ve as little wish to see the police here as you do. All I want is to get my daughter back. Put her on the line.’

Calum pressed the ‘Mute’ button and turned to Maddie.

‘Yir mother wants tae have a word. Tell her ye’re all right, but say nae more than ye have tae.’

She looked at him coldly. Thoughts of gallant knights had entirely left her.

‘Would you like to tell me what the fuck is going on here? “How much?” “What about the police?” Have I just been kidnapped? Is that what this is all about?’

‘No, but Ah’d like yir mother tae think so. Ah’d appreciate it if ye’d just play along wi’ the charade. You’ll come tae nae harm fae me, Ah promise.’

She glared at him for several moments, then snatched the phone.

‘Mother? Are you all right?’

‘I think it’s I who should be asking that question, dear. Just what the hell do you think you’re up to?’

‘I’m not up to anything, Mother. Jesus, does somebody have to be up to something just because they’ve run out on you?’

‘Of course not, dear. It’s just that ...'

‘Let’s get this straight, Mother. You pulled me out of a clinic where I was being given essential treatment, and you refused to get me the drugs I needed. So I decided to get as far away from you and that two-faced bastard Farrar as I could. Once Dad gets back, I’m moving in with him. End of story.’

‘Darling, has he hurt you?’

‘Hurt me? Quite the opposite. I’m feeling better than I have in years.’

‘Well ...Has he laid hands on you?’

‘Laid hands ...?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean.’

‘He’s been a perfect gentleman.’

She felt the handset lifted from her. Calum sat down and crossed his legs.

‘Hear that, Lizzie? Yir daughter is unharmed an’ unfucked. If ye’d prefer tae keep her in that condition, a wee donation tae ma trust fund would be appreciated. Ah’m no’ greedy, but Ah dinnae intend tae haggle over this. You’ll pay the price Ah ask - nae discounts, nae reductions, nae bargain offers.’

Elizabeth sighed.

‘How much?’

He hesitated at the last moment, wondering if he shouldn’t raise his demand after all. What if she had more money than he thought? He almost doubled his original price, then reasoned that there were ways of raising it further down the line. A package with a finger in it would go down a treat. Or a nose.

‘One million,’ he said.

‘Pounds?’

‘What the fuck else?’

'I’m sorry, I’ll have to talk about this with ...'

‘Ah wouldnae waste much time, hen. Ah’m no’ runnin’ a Billy Butlins here. You an’ Spiderman have two days. One tae get the money, one tae get it tae me. Otherwise ...’ His voice fell away. He looked at Maddie, raising his eyebrows as if to say it was all a joke. But that wasn’t what he was thinking. Inside he was contemplating his options.

‘Otherwise what?’ Anthony Farrar’s voice hurtled down the line like an angry rocket.

For a moment, Calum was knocked off course, but it took only seconds for him to regain his equilibrium.

‘Ah leave all that tae yir imagination. The chief thing is that ye’ve only got two days.’

‘Fine. Two days. Now, listen carefully to me, you numskull. I take it you’ve never dealt in amounts like a million before, so you will hardly be aware that we will need a good deal more than twenty-four hours to put a sum like that together. People like Elizabeth don’t just leave their money in a Post Office savings account or the Co-op Bank. Money gets tied up in shares, trust funds, bonds - and a lot of it lives abroad. For her to realize one million will take at least three days. Do you understand that?’

‘If Ah said you’d get Maddie’s head in a Damien Hirst box if Ah didnae see ma money, what would ye do?’

‘Do? Frankly, I’d think you were the greatest buffoon who ever lived. If you kill her, you get nothing. If you wait a day or two longer, you get all you want. We haven’t even disputed your price, so we can expect a bit of co-operation from you. Now, when the money’s ready, where do you want it left?’

‘Dinnae push me. Ah’ll leave you know nearer the time. An’ Ah want you tae swear there’ll be not a word said aboot this tae the polis.’

‘Very well, you have my word on that if I have your agreement on the question of time.’

‘Good. Three days. Ah’ll keep in touch.’

He pressed the ‘End’ button and switched off the phone. As he put it down, he looked at Maddie and winked.

‘Are you serious?’ she asked. ‘I mean … you could go to jail for a scam like this.’

‘Only if they get me. It’s worth a go. Half a million each - that isnae bad.’

‘They’ll never cough up. They know I ran off with you.’

He shook his head.

‘No’ the way Ah sees it. For all they know, Ah could have hit you over the head and dragged ye ootay the hoose. For all they know, Ah could be a fuckin’ psychopath, Ah could be oota ma head.’

‘Are you?’ Maddie didn’t know if she asked the question seriously or in jest.

‘Ah do a good imitation. Now …’ He looked at her empty plate. ‘D’ye feel like dessert?’

She shook her head.

‘No, thanks. That was lovely. But… I’m feeling a bit sicky. If I could have …’ The craving was eating her from somewhere deep inside.

‘Ay, Ah ken what ye want. Wait here, Ah’ll see what Ah can rustle up.’

He came back smiling, in his hand a shiny hypodermic filled with glistening liquid. She sat down on the bed and rolled her sleeve up meekly while he injected straight into her blue and waiting vein.

She talked animatedly for a while, then fell like a snowdrop down through gulfs of darkness to her own resting place, in her own silence.

He straightened her on the bed, with her head on the pillow and her hair arrayed behind it, copper hair necked with sunlight. She seemed at rest, but he could not pull himself away. He moved a long lock of hair from her forehead to the side, and gently traced the line of her eyebrows. Her eyelids fluttered softly as he did so. His hand moved to her cheek, and on to her lips.

He wanted to leave before something awkward happened, but she seemed to exercise a hold over him. His right hand moved quietly down to her breasts, and for several moments he held her left breast in his palm. The fabric of her T-shirt shifted, and he let his hand move with it, round and round, against the softness of her body.

Something stopped him from going further. He cupped her breast with both hands, then kissed it.

He stood and went to the door, making sure to lock it behind him. Inside the room, Maddie opened her eyes with a nicker, and brought her hand to her breast, where the sense of another hand could still be felt. She smiled softly to herself, and fell asleep again.

Judaidat al-Hamir, 20 miles north of the Saudi/Iraqi border

L
ooking about him, Captain Peter Terry had a distinct sense of deja vu. He’d been cut off about two hundred miles north of here during the Gulf War, and bloody lucky to sneak back to his own side of the border again. Back at Bradbury Lines barracks, he’d been decorated and slapped on the back; but he’d never forgiven his political masters for their failure to topple Saddam Hussein. His sense of deja vu was intimately tied up with some very strong feelings of betrayal.

He wasn’t alone. His three companions had spent time in an Iraqi jail and had only come out again as a result of concessions made by the UK to Baghdad. They’d been over the moon to get out of their hell-hole alive, but they couldn’t help feeling that an unacceptably high price had been paid for their freedom. They’d volunteered to help bring a tyrant to his knees, only to see him, years later, still cocking a snook at anybody and everybody who got in his way.

Peter looked his men over. They were a dusty-looking bunch already: the Syrian Desert did not waste time in putting its mark on intruders. He’d chosen them very carefully, regardless of the SAS and its internal politics, under conditions of absolute secrecy. He himself had been picked as team leader by someone very high up the military hierarchy. And details of the mission had been handed to him on the plane only minutes before he and his team had set off to cross the Saudi/Iraqi border.

A special flight had taken them from England to Saudi Arabia the night before. Neither the plane’s departure nor its arrival had been recorded. They’d landed at a desert airfield that had been constructed during the Gulf War, abandoned, and now brought back to covert life for a single operation.

The flight had been tense, tinged with irony. The drone of the heavy engines had intertwined with the steady hum of worries and fears that vibrated through each man’s head.

Bill Burroughs, the youngest of the team at thirty-six, hated flying. He’d sat hunched up at the back of the cabin, counting off the minutes to touchdown. Barry Dobson, a Geordie from Whitley Bay who was reckoned the hardest, fastest, and most dangerous of them, showed round photographs of his youngest child, Mary, aged two weeks and three days. Dai Matthias, currently the only Taffie serving under the SAS cap-badge, had grumbled about the horrors of canteen food, and played chess with Peter.

They’d landed in darkness, without lights, while Burroughs muttered fervent prayers in the rear. The Hercules - a C.Mk 1 - had been night-camouflaged and equipped with an automatic landing device called Charles (the airfield had been designated Camilla). The second they hit the ground, he changed completely. In a matter of moments, the flying phobic surrendered place to someone who could keep a cool head even under the heaviest fire. No one who knew him would have thought to sneer at his fear of flying. He’d made over three thousand parachute jumps, seventeen of them at the North Pole, and his leave weekends were spent hang-gliding in Scotland.

They’d unloaded the plane by themselves, and unpacked their equipment by the light of heavy-duty torches: two Landrover 110s, a short-range Longline Light Strike Vehicle that was to be used for the last stage of the mission, four M72 antitank weapons, two Stinger surface-to-air missile systems, a Milan antitank weapon, two Minimi light machine-guns, two Browning 0.5-in machine-guns, Ml 6 assault rifles with attached M203 grenade-launchers, and any number of bits and pieces deemed to enhance the joy of combat.

The moment the last bullet had been de-planed, the impatient aircraft turned and scrambled back up the little runway, taking off as effortlessly as if it had been broad daylight, en route for King Khalid Military City, sleep, and fresh fuel. Its low hum came back to them for half a minute, then disappeared in the night.

They’d paused for a moment then, savouring this familiar, unfamiliar night world in which every sense was heightened. Nobody much liked being out here again. It was too quiet, too cold at night, too hot by day, too open, too closed. There were no landscapes here, no peaks or rivers or lakes or forests to rest the eye or the mind on.

Then their training had taken over, and Peter Terry called them over to one side.

‘I’ve just been handed our mission orders,’ he said. He took a map from his pocket and unfolded it on the ground while Burroughs trained a light on it.

‘Our target is here,’ he said, stabbing his forefinger at a spot about forty miles west of Baghdad. Someone behind him groaned.

‘Al-Falluja. Jesus Christ, they’re sending four poor bastards in to smash up al-Falluja. I’ve got a better suggestion - why don’t we just top ourselves here? It’ll save fuel and we’ll be repatriated in a better class of box.’

The speaker was Dai Matthias - the Dai Lama. His precise Neath vowels hung on the desert air like invisible moths. Peter did not bother to look at him or the others. Dai’s reaction was reasonable. Al-Falluja was one of Saddam Hussein’s largest weapons complexes, which included plants for the manufacture of nerve gas and Scud missiles, all constructed by German and Austrian firms in the eighties. It was among the most tightly guarded sites in the Middle East, way out of the league of a troop of soldiers, however tough, however Welsh.

‘Give me a chance, Dai. If you aren’t interested in this job, there’s a chip shop down the road.’

‘I’m off chips, me. Bad for the heart, see.’

‘Let’s get on with this briefing, then. We’re not heading for al-Falluja proper. Intelligence have got wind of something a few miles further south. Another weapons centre. A holding base for weapons being shipped in.’

‘Shipped in? Where the hell from?’ Barry sounded indignant, as though the thought of imported weaponry threatened to taint the purity of the operation.

‘That’s classified. If I knew I’d tell you, but I don’t. I don’t even know what sort of weapons they are.’

‘Nukes?’ Bill leaned forward and scrutinized the map as if it held the answer.

'I honestly don’t know, but at a guess I’d say you’re spot on. Somebody back in London is willing to go to war just for the chance to take these buggers out.’

‘Which is where we come in.’

‘Broadly speaking. We’ve got mugshots of the suspect area. You’ll get to see them in a minute. But all you’ll see is industrial clutter, camouflage, and desert. The real thing’s underground, in a series of bunkers going very deep. It’s impossible to pin it down to within less than a mile or two. London wants it within yards. The plan is for us to go in, locate it, and call in an air strike.’