Those in Peril (Unlocked) (17 page)

After the musty cell of her confinement the desert air was clean and warm. She breathed it with relief. She had long ago lost any interest in what would happen to her next. She had retreated into a state of dull resignation. Halfway down the mountain track she became aware of the crowd that was gathered beside one of the pools in the lush green gardens below her. They appeared to be drawn up in some sort of order, a half-circle. All of them were men. As she came closer she saw that in the open centre of the circle a man sat cross-legged on a spread of woollen rugs. He wore traditional white baggy trousers, black waistcoat and turban, but even though a keffiyeh covered his face she recognized Adam. She felt a lift of her spirits. She had not seen him since the day almost a month ago when she had been photographed while she held up a copy of the
International Herald Tribune
. She wanted to run to him. In all this cruel and savage mob he was the only one she could trust. She knew he was her protector. He was the light in the darkness of her despair. She began to press forward eagerly but the men on each side restrained her, and they went on down the hill at the same easy pace. Suddenly another man appeared in front of her. He walked backwards with a large black professional video camera focused on her face.

‘Smile please, Missy,’ he entreated her. ‘Watch the birdie please, Missy.’ His English was almost unintelligible.

‘Go away!’ she shouted at him with the last flicker of her once fiery spirit. ‘Leave me alone.’ She made a lunge at him, but he skipped away, keeping just out of her reach. The guards seized her arms and jerked her back. The cameraman kept on filming. They entered the semi-circle of armed and masked men, and Cayla called pathetically to Adam, ‘Please! Oh, please, Adam! Stop them tormenting me.’

Adam gave an order. Her guards hustled her forward and forced her to sit beside him on the brightly coloured and patterned carpet. Now the cameraman came and knelt in front of them. He had screwed his camera onto a tripod. He bent over it to focus on Adam’s face and the camera purred softly. Adam removed the keffiyeh that covered his face and looked directly into the camera lens.

‘Cayla,’ Adam said in his almost perfect English, only lightly tinged by his French accent, ‘they are taking this footage to send to your mother, to show her that you are being well cared for. You can send her any message you like. Speak into the camera. Tell her that they will soon send her a ransom demand. You must ask her to pay it at once. Once they receive the money all this unpleasantness will be over. You will be released and sent back home to your mother again. Do you understand?’ She nodded dumbly.

‘Remove the veil,’ Adam ordered her gently. ‘Let your mother see your face.’ Slowly, as if in a trance, Cayla lifted the headscarf and let it drop over her shoulders. ‘Now, look into the camera. Good, that’s it. Now, speak to your mother. Tell her what is in your heart.’

Cayla drew a long shaky breath and said, ‘Hello, Mummy. It’s me, Cayla.’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I am sorry. That’s a stupid thing to say. Of course you know who I am.’ She gathered her wits again. ‘These people are holding me in this horrible place. I am so afraid. I know that something terrible is going to happen to me. They want you to send them some money. They promise they will let me go when you do. Oh, Mummy, please help me. Don’t let them do this to me.’ She began to sob and lowered her face into her cupped hands, her voice muffled by her fingers and the force of her terror and grief. ‘Please, my darling mother. You are the only one in the world who can save me.’ Her sobbing became wilder, and her words lost any form or sense. Adam reached across and stroked her hair tenderly. Then he looked directly into the camera.

‘Mrs Bannock, I want to tell you how sorry I am that this is happening to your daughter. Cayla is a lovely young girl. It is a tragedy that she has been caught up in this. I am truly sorry. I wish there was something I could do. However, I am not responsible for the actions of these men. They are a law unto themselves. You are the only one who can put an end to this horror. Do as Cayla has requested you. Pay the ransom money and your beautiful daughter will immediately be returned to you.’

He stood up and moved out of camera shot. His place was taken by four of the masked men. They had laid aside their firearms. They lifted Cayla to her feet and turned her to face the camera. One of them took a handful of her blonde hair from behind and hauled her head back. Another masked man entered the shot from the right, and he drew a dagger with a rhino-horn handle and a curved ten-inch blade from his belt. The blade was inlaid with gold Arabic script. He held the point of the blade under Cayla’s chin, almost touching the velvety skin of her throat.

‘No! Please!’ she gabbled. The group stood for a full minute without moving. Then he lowered the blade slowly until it pointed at her left breast, the outline of it showing through the black cotton of her abaya. Then the man moved his free hand up over her right breast. He cupped it in his hand and joggled it almost playfully. Cayla redoubled her struggles, and the men holding her laughed under their masks. The sound was like the cackling of hyenas that had picked up the scent of blood on the wind.

The dagger man hooked his finger into the collar of the abaya and held it open. Then he ran the blade into the space between the black cloth and Cayla’s skin. She felt the cold metal and she froze and looked down as he moved the knife blade down between her breasts. The cloth split open and one of her breasts bulged out. The skin was pale as cream but the nipple was red as a ruby. The man sheathed the dagger and then reached into the open gown. He brought out both her breasts, one in each hand, and squeezed them so brutally that their delicate nipples stood out and Cayla screamed with pain. He released her breasts and hooked his forefinger into the slit in the thin cloth and ripped it down to her ankles. Under the abaya she was naked. The photographer panned the camera in and lingeringly recorded every detail of her body, dwelling on her bosom and then moving down to the soft golden fur of her pubes.

Cayla stood docilely. She offered no further resistance when the four men holding her lowered her onto her back and held her spreadeagled on the carpet. There was one of them on each of her arms, holding her by the wrists. The other two grasped her ankles. They pulled her legs wide apart. The photographer altered the focus of his lens, moving into a close-up and high-definition shot of the pink lips of her genitalia. Cayla rolled her head from side to side.

‘Please don’t do this!’ she whimpered. ‘Please . . .’

The man who stood over her undid his belt and let his baggy white trousers drop around his ankles. He stared down at Cayla’s sex and spat on the palm of his right hand. He spread the spittle over the head of his penis to lubricate it. The camera followed each of his movements. His penis stiffened and extended out of the mass of jet-black pubic hair. It was enormous. Thick blue veins twisted around the shaft like some loathsome climbing vine. Cayla stared up at it, wide-eyed and speechless with fright. He knelt between her knees, and lowered himself onto her. She tried to kick him off, but the men held her legs apart. The buttocks of the man on top of her were muscular and covered with dense black hair like those of an animal. They clenched and drove downwards. Cayla screamed shrilly and her whole body convulsed. While he pounded down on her, the other men from the watching circle laid aside their weapons and came forward to form a line, lowering their trousers and with their hands working themselves up into a state of readiness for their turn.

As one finished and stood up, another took his place immediately. After the fourth rape Cayla lay quiescent, no longer screaming or struggling. After the sixth there was blood, much blood, bright against her pale thighs. When the tenth man stood up grinning and hoisting his breeches, the camera pulled away to focus on the face of Adam, as he watched emotionlessly. He turned to look into the lens.

‘I am very sorry you had to witness this, Mrs Bannock,’ he said softly. ‘I do not think that your daughter can stand much more of it. You and I can put a stop to it at once. All you have to do is to order a wire transfer to a bank in Hong Kong for the amount of ten billion United States dollars. You know how to contact the people who are doing this to Cayla. You will be given the bank details when you let them know that you are ready to send the money.’

D
uring the day Hazel carried the BlackBerry under her blouse, suspended on a cord around her neck. She had strapped it to the skin between her breasts with a strip of adhesive tape so that, even when she was running, parachuting and training with the men she could reach it before it rang twice. At night she kept it under her pillow and often woke to find she was holding it in her hand. It was as close as she could get to Cayla.

When at last it did ring she was sitting at the situation room table with Hector Cross while he gave his senior operatives their daily briefing. The security duties of Cross Bow had to continue with their full efficiency. Hector was very much aware that the enemy might take advantage of the disarray caused by Cayla’s abduction and that they could spring another surprise attack at any time. The meeting ended and Hector looked around the table.

‘Any questions? Good! I will detain you no longer . . .’ He broke off as the BlackBerry under Hazel’s khaki safari shirt rang.

‘Oh, God!’ she whispered and ripping open the buttons, she reached under her shirt and brought out the device.

‘Leave us!’ Hector snapped at his men. ‘Get out! Now!’ They obeyed instantly, and Paddy O’Quinn led them out and closed the door behind them. Hazel already had the phone to her ear and was shouting into the mouthpiece,

‘Hello! Who is this? Speak to me. Please, speak to me!’ Hector reached out and took her shoulder. He shook it gently.

‘Hazel, it’s not a voice call. It’s a text message or an attachment.’ In her agitation she had not recognized the difference in the ringtones. Working in desperate haste, she located the body of the message.

‘You’re right,’ she blurted. ‘It’s an attachment. It seems to be a photograph or a video. Yes, it’s a video! A long one . . . twelve megabytes.’

‘Wait! Don’t open it yet!’ Hector tried to stop her. He had a presentiment of the evil to come. He wanted to prepare her for it. But she seemed not even to hear him. She was already running the video directly onto the small screen of the device.

‘It’s Cayla!’ she exclaimed joyfully. ‘She’s still alive. Oh, thank God! Come and watch her, Cross!’ He came around to her side of the desk.

‘My poor baby, she looks so beautiful but so tragic.’ On the screen Cayla was walking towards the man seated on the carpet in the circle of masked and armed Arabs. The man’s face was also masked with a head shawl. But the camera closed in on him until only his head and shoulders were framed in the shot. The man removed the shawl that concealed his features.

‘Who is that man, Cross? Do you know him?’ Hazel asked with agitation.

‘No, I have never seen him before. But now I shall never forget him,’ Hector said quietly. Adam made his short speech and they both listened in silence staring at the screen as though it were a venomous reptile.

‘. . . Pay the ransom money and your beautiful daughter will immediately be returned to you,’ Adam ended quietly.

‘I’ll pay it,’ Hazel whispered, ‘I’ll pay anything to have her back.’

‘I am sorry, Mrs Bannock,’ Hector said gently, ‘but he’s lying to you. Everything he says is a lie. This is the Beast and he is the master of the lie.’ The image on the screen changed, the Arab with the knife advanced on Cayla.

‘He isn’t going to hurt her. No, he mustn’t hurt her. I will pay anything. Anything to stop them hurting my baby!’ Her voice was rising hysterically.

‘Be brave! For Cayla’s sake, be brave.’

‘Surely these people are human beings, not animals,’ she said. ‘They won’t hurt an innocent young girl who has done them no harm.’

‘No, they are not animals. The most savage animals are good and noble compared to these creatures.’ The Arab on the screen stood over Cayla and exposed his grotesque sex. Hazel sobbed and reached for Hector’s hand. Then she was silent as the full horror began to unfold. But she was shaking as though in high fever.

‘Turn it off!’ Hector ordered her, but she shook her head and her grip on Hector’s hand was like a steel vice. He could hardly believe the power of it. He made no effort to remove her hand; although the pain made his eyes water he could not deny her any comfort he was capable of giving to her. It seemed to both of them that the multiple rapes of her daughter went on endlessly. Hector felt a rage rising in him such as he had never experienced before. When the image of Adam appeared again on the screen, Hector had a focus for his hatred. He stared at the face as though trying to engrave the features indelibly on his mind. At last the video had run its dreadful course and the screen went blank. Neither of them moved or spoke for a long time. They went on staring at the empty screen.