The Reluctant Hero (29 page)

‘And still I wouldn’t escape.’

‘Precisely. We both know that. And I don’t think I’m in much of a position to lie.’

Harry had hoped that now the tables had been turned Beg would shrivel, fall to pieces, start to cringe and mewl, but now the pain in his hands had subsided, he was showing considerable mettle.

‘This isn’t your day, is it, Mr Jones?’

Harry was desperately assessing his situation. He needed clothes, and an escape route. He examined Beg, but the Ta’argi was a good eight inches shorter than him; his shirt and trousers would be useless. He considered taking Beg hostage but that would only serve to slow him down, and in any standoff there could be only one conclusion. They would both end up on the business end of a bullet; Karabayev would insist on it. Harry began rifling the drawers in the desk, searching for something, he didn’t know what.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in suggesting we come to an arrangement which would ensure both of us were still alive by this time tomorrow?’ Beg asked tentatively.

Harry didn’t bother replying.

‘No, I thought not. But to show my good faith,’ Beg said, as Harry continued to ransack the desk drawers, ‘I have to tell you that a guard will be bringing me some fresh tea. Right about now.’

He wasn’t showing good faith, of course, merely playing the game, trying to keep Harry unbalanced and indecisive. Harry threw the final, useless drawer aside and grabbed a handful of medical gauze, dabbing at his ear, cleaning up the mess as he struggled to figure out a plan of action. That was when, as Beg had promised, there was a sharp knock on the door. Harry jumped. He picked up the scalpel once more, and held it in front of Beg’s nose.

‘Get him in here. Any nonsense and I will slit his throat.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

‘Yours will be next.’

Harry scurried across the room to hide behind the door. There was another knock. Beg cried out, ‘
Vkhodite!
’ Come!

The door opened slowly and into the room, head down, all his concentration focused on the tray of tea and scones, came a young guard. In one movement Harry had kicked the door shut, placed one arm around the guard’s neck and pressed the scalpel against his cheek. The tray fell to the floor with the sound of a car crash.

Harry should have killed him, straight away. It was the only safe thing to do, particularly with his cracked ribs. It would take no more than an elbow from the guard and Harry would be down. Yet death had followed him all his adult life and Harry wanted to end it, shake it off. He wanted this boy to live. He’d once – only once – asked himself how many people he had killed, in the war in Iraq, the glorious wilderness of Afghanistan, in the jungles of Colombia and West Africa, in the cold mud of Armagh and all the other places he had fought besides, but he had stopped counting when he’d remembered Julia. He’d killed her, too, as good as. His list was already too long and he had no desire to add to it. This boy looked as though he’d left his mother’s side only a few hours before and
he was doing nothing more than his duty by delivering a tray of tea. Only an Englishman would die for a tray of tea. Anyway, the young Ta’argi was tall, his uniform might just fit Harry, so it wouldn’t do to get blood over it. The guard’s neck was in the crook of Harry’s arm; he kept up the pressure, cutting off the supply of oxygen to the brain. It took only a few seconds for the young man’s body to go limp. Collapsed.

Harry gasped as his ribs exploded in agony once more. He doubled up, choking, every breath as hard to take as if he had swallowed a mouthful of petrol. When, at last, he recovered, he stripped the guard of his tunic top and trousers, his belt and his boots. As he struggled into them, he vowed once again to lose a few pounds. He couldn’t use the socks because the boots were at least a size too tight and pinched horribly. They would have to do.

All this time, Beg had been listening to what was going on behind his back, straining to interpret every rustle and gasp. He knew his moment would come next, when he would be brought back into the play, a game that would decide whether he would die or somehow escape with his life. ‘You’re very resourceful, Mr Jones. Truly, I admire you.’

‘It’s not mutual,’ Harry snapped, banging his foot into the final boot.

Beg began talking once more, trying to fill the silence with words, to calm his own fears, to distract Harry from whatever he intended, but as he did so he picked up the chilling sound of the guard’s gun being checked.

His flow of words stalled as he heard the cold, metallic clicks of the magazine being ejected, inspected, rammed back home, a round being forced into the chamber. Then came the softer sound of the gun being slipped back into its holster. Beg thought he might die with relief. For the first time, he thought he might live a little longer.

It was a surprising weakness in Harry Jones, to let Beg live, an act of folly, yet the world overflowed with surprises. It was what had always given Beg his advantage, spotting weakness in others, exploiting it, and them. Now he sat, his breathing growing more regular, waiting. At last, from the corner of his eye, he saw Harry. He was dressed in the guard’s ill-fitting uniform, inspecting himself, making one final check. No socks, Beg noted, and trousers that were too short. Details that were certain to betray him.

Then he heard Harry’s footsteps retreating, crossing to the door – he was almost gone! – but as Beg strained to catch every movement, the door didn’t open. The other man seemed to have forgotten something, for the footsteps came back, the heavy boots scraping the floor. Beg could sense Harry standing behind him, could hear his breathing, as though he had just run a race, and he felt the prickle of fear rising on his neck.

He saw Harry move round the chair until the two were facing each other. Their eyes locked. Drained of emotion. Businesslike, somehow. As Beg watched, Harry bent down, drew closer. Whispered in Beg’s ear.

‘Nothing personal,’ Beg heard him say.

Beg sensed the rush of horror through his bowels. He knew the other man was lying. Then he felt the pressure of the blade, sawing, slicing, as his ear was cut off. That’s when he began screaming again.

Harry had no idea where he was, but as he crept into the corridor he saw the soft glow of daylight at its far end. He hurried towards it, only to find the window solidly barred, but through it he could see he was on the ground floor, with a view across the exercise yard. It left him struggling to work out his location from what he remembered of his previous visit. He knew that all the exits were guarded and there would be no chance of simply walking out unobserved, not with only one ear. It had stopped erupting blood but was still grotesque. Neither was the sewer an option, not in daylight, and he couldn’t climb out of any barred window. That meant the third floor, right at the top, or trying to hang on until darkness, but this last option presented too much of a risk. Once they found Beg, Harry knew he would insist on starting the mother of all manhunts. He should have killed the bastard after all.

Harry was juggling with the idea of returning to the room and finishing the job when he was dragged back to the moment by the sounds of guards approaching. His first instinct was to run, but that would only give the game away, and he had the disguise of his uniform. It would do, at a distance. As the guards approached, he began to walk in the opposite direction.

He knew he had to stay out of close contact, but this was a prison crawling with guards, and he ran into another as soon as he had turned the corner. Incredulity spread across the guard’s face as he caught sight of Harry’s bruised and bloodied features. He muttered something, a question, in Russian, but Harry didn’t understand a word, so he hit him. The guard cried out, fell to the floor, the files he had been carrying clattering around him. The commotion, in turn, aroused the curiosity of the other guards, who began calling. That’s when Harry started running.

There was no plan to Harry’s flight. He simply needed to gain some distance on the sounds of pursuit that were growing stronger behind him. An alarm bell began jangling. Within a few minutes every exit from the prison would be locked down, the guard doubled. For one dark moment he thought he might have to try to shoot his way out . . . No, better the third floor.

One of the abiding images of Harry’s childhood – he’d been about ten – was one of the episodes that marked the end of the Vietnam War, the scenes on television of Americans scrambling onto the rooftop of their embassy in Saigon, waiting for evacuation helicopters, as hordes of Vietnamese swarmed over the walls and into the embassy compound. It had been extraordinary how many had made it out, despite the impossible circumstances. Not as impossible as his, of course. He needed a miracle, but first he needed a staircase.

He found it by accident, blundering through a door and finding himself on the stone steps that led from the courtyard to the governor’s office. For a moment he contemplated changing course and crashing the courtyard, perhaps trying to steal one of the cars, battering his way through the gates, but he knew it was already too late. He had lost that vital, life-extending element of surprise. So he ran up the stairs, two at a time, using the banister to haul himself up still faster. Below him, he could hear his pursuers doing the same.

Then a shot rang out. It didn’t miss by much. As he reached the second floor landing, a door opened; a guard appeared and shouted in alarm. Harry kicked him, watched him topple, sprang up the next flight. They were only feet behind him now.

The door to the governor’s office was locked. He put his shoulder to it and it gave way immediately. When he burst through, for a moment it seemed as though he had jumped into a different world, one of almost comical calm. The empire around him might be in uproar, but Governor Akmatov had other things on his mind. He was standing by the double windows, a glass of vodka in his hand, naked from the waist down, except for his socks, staring triumphantly at the world outside. Bent over by the corner of his desk was his secretary. As Harry burst in, Akmatov turned and stared in disbelief, while she screamed and clutched at her loose blouse. Little wonder they’d turned the key.

Harry couldn’t stop. In another couple of steps there would be guns trained on his back. To stand still would be to die, so he kept running, grabbed a letter opener from the desk, thrust it at the eye of the still-startled governor just as the guards arrived. The governor’s grotesquely exposed body was now between Harry and his pursuers, and Harry was careful to keep it that way. The guards were sizing up the situation, waving their weapons, bristling with intent. He cast around for a means of escape, but there was none, nothing but the windows.

Akmatov’s office windows were in the outside wall of the Castle. The previous day, when he’d been sitting and drinking the governor’s tea, Harry had noticed a gang of workmen clearing the street below, with shovels, even planks of wood. The snowfall had been heavy, the drifts thick, and the heap of snow was deep. It gave him an idea, a lousy idea, he would be the first to admit, but better than the one being offered by the collection of muzzles pointing at him.

‘Open the windows,’ he instructed Akmatov. The governor, still in shock, was incapable of obeying, his hands desperately scrabbling to cover his dignity. Harry forced the point of the letter opener into the skin just below the eyeball; Akmatov screamed, the guards shook their weapons, but could not fire.

Clumsily, the governor reached behind him and loosened the catch. The windows swung open on a blast of chill air.

It was a ludicrous gamble for Harry, of course, but
the alternative was to be shot, or even worse, returned to the care of Amir Beg. And he still had one very substantial card to play. The governor. Harry’s arm stretched around Akmatov’s chest, and heaved with all the strength he could summon. Suddenly they were falling backwards, tumbling, twisting, three floors.

It wasn’t, perhaps, total madness. Akmatov was beneath him as they fell. He was fat, and the snow might still be soft.

They hit with a crack. Harry’s mind went blank from the renewed pain in his ribs. When once more he regained his focus, he saw the crack had been Akmatov’s neck. The governor’s eyes stared emptily, his mouth wide open, smelling of borscht. There was blood on the snow; Harry’s ear again. And there were shouts from above, but no shots, for his pursuers wouldn’t take the risk of hitting the governor; they didn’t yet know that he was dead. Another body on Harry’s list.

He grabbed a handful of snow and packed it to his ear, then picked himself up and began to stumble away. That’s when the shooting started again, bullets spraying in the snow around him. He had to scrabble for every foothold; it was like trying to race through water. He pushed himself on, not daring to stop. As he tumbled into the road and began to run, he told himself he needed to find another pair of boots. This pair was killing him.

After Martha had fled from the church she had scurried back to the Fat Chance, but her nightmares had pursued her and now they seemed to have her surrounded. She was feeling wiped out. She’d had no proper sleep since she’d arrived in the country, and none at all the previous night. She wasn’t well equipped for this job, waiting, staring at an empty coffee cup. The wooden chair on which she sat was unforgiving, but still her head dropped, the resistance slowly draining from her body.

It was Bektour, ever the young shepherd, who noticed. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, shaking her shoulder. He showed her to another of the alcoves, hidden behind a curtain. It was almost entirely filled by two well-worn, cushion-strewn sofas that faced each other a couple of feet apart. ‘Rest here,’ he said, ‘it will be more comfortable.’ And, usefully, out of his mother’s way, although he didn’t say so.

Martha sank into the cushions, which closed around her like protective arms, and she sighed in gratitude.

‘This is where we take turns to sleep, when we’re working at the screens.’

‘You kids,’ she muttered, yawning. ‘All the same. Romantic night owls.’

‘No, I’m afraid that’s not it. It’s simply that the rate we get charged for our Internet connection drops by two-thirds after midnight.’