There were two of them gripping me, one either side. They were in civilian clothes; my left foot pressed against a metal buckle on a pair of muddy loafers, and I was treated to a c.o.c.ktail of stale nicotine and leather on my right as I got hauled off the lino.
I was prepared to bet all of Charlie"s three quid that the jacket was black.
Then all I could smell was turnips as a scratchy nylon sack was pulled over my head. It came down to my elbows.
My two new best mates exchanged a word or two in Paperclip; I was starting to get the hang of it now. Then they dragged me out into the corridor. Pinp.r.i.c.ks of fluorescent light glinted through the weave, and I could see more grey lino through the gap at my waist.
We turned left, through a set of swing doors, then on again, through another.
A gust of cold air played across my bare skin, shrinking everything except the goose b.u.mps. I started to shiver as we moved out onto a short flight of wooden steps.
Chips of gravel punctured the soles of my feet as I was bundled through the open tailgate of a waiting estate car. The back seats were down and I landed on a haphazard combination of scratchy woollen and furry nylon blankets.
I wriggled as far forward as I could, hoping to b.u.mp up against Charlie, but my only reward was banging my head against a spare car battery and having my nose attacked by the overpowering stench of urine and damp dog. Another blanket was thrown over me and the tailgate slammed shut.
This wasn"t good.
I had a feeling I knew what kind of policemen these guys were, and you wouldn"t want to stop and ask them the way.
The front doors opened and closed and I felt myself bounce around a bit as the two of them sorted themselves out. The engine fired up and we crunched our way past the Portakabins. I closed my eyes, to try and maintain some sense of direction.
I heard some chat, then the strike of a match, and nicotine-laden smoke began to do battle with the smell of dog.
I wasn"t scared about what might lie ahead. I just felt depressed.
And hungry.
And, much to my surprise, pretty f.u.c.king lonely.
5
We came to a halt and the driver wound down his window. He rattled off a series of short, sharp instructions to someone in Paperclip, then I heard the creak of a barrier being raised and the car rolled forward once more.
We rumbled over the kilometre or so of hardcore towards the main and took the left. No surprises there. The Georgians weren"t any fonder of their old mates from the Russian Federation than the Americans were.
We moved smoothly along the metalled road, with only the occasional shake and rattle as we encountered a good old-fashioned pothole.
I tried to time this stretch by counting off the seconds, and got to twenty minutes without a pause.
The two in the front were still enjoying themselves. They switched the radio on and listened to some Georgian songs that seemed to involve a lot of wailing. Maybe it was the same station that played in emba.s.sy security huts?
At no stage did they acknowledge I was there. Maybe they"d forgotten me. That would have been nice.
There"d been no steep climbs up or down, so we were still following the valley. Why weren"t we going over the high ground, stopping at the VCP then heading back to the city? And if we weren"t, was that a good or a bad thing? I had a nasty feeling I knew the answer.
Ten minutes more and this definitely wasn"t normal police stuff. We still hadn"t got anywhere near the high ground; if we"d been going back to the city we would have done so by now.
I shuffled around, trying to get more blanket over me. My gooseb.u.mps were on the retreat and I wanted to make the most of it while I could.
Something about being warm and coc.o.o.ned set me thinking about Silky again. I was confused. I knew I"d done the right thing coming here with Charlie, but at the same time, all I wanted now was to be back with her in Australia. Not just as an alternative to lying in the back of a car on my way to what was probably going to be the beasting of a lifetime, but simply because I wanted to be with her. She smelled a whole lot better than these blankets, for starters.
I thought about her lying next to me on the beach, and sitting beside me in the pa.s.senger seat of the VW. My mind rambled. I couldn"t think of a single moment with her that hadn"t been good. I thought about the time she said, "We"re a good fit, no?" She was right, we were. I missed her.
So what were we going to do when I got back? There was still the trip to the red centre; to what I called Ayers Rock and Silky and everybody else seemed to think was now Uluru.
Before meeting Silky, I"d have cut away from any fearful thoughts in a situation like this even cut away from good stuff at the same time. I probably would just have lain here. But f.u.c.k it, I liked it this way. There was still sailing in the Whitsundays, and Kakadu National Park, and New Zealand. All the places we"d spoken about when we were travelling together. I wanted to go to them all, and I wanted to go to them with her.
The gearbox made a m.u.f.fled complaint and the car slowed. We turned onto much rougher ground. I curled up tight.
The engine cut out.
Both front doors opened and there was the crunch of shoes on stones.
The tailgate was lifted and the blanket pulled away. The cold air hit me like a slap in the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks.
6
I was dragged past another vehicle, across a stretch of wet gra.s.s strewn with rocks and scree.
The night wind chilled me to the bone; my skin was like a freshly plucked chicken"s.
We stopped and I heard the sound of a heavy kick on wood. A door swung open and I was pulled through it into what felt like a sauna. The air was heavy with the odour of damp and bottled gas.
I stumbled forward a few paces then felt pressure on my shoulders. My a.r.s.e connected with a plastic chair. Above me, I could hear the gentle hiss of burning gas. I leaned forward, clenching my teeth, waiting for them to give me the good news. I expected to get yanked upright any second, but they let me stay as I was.
Then, even more surprisingly, they pulled off the sack.
I kept my head down but my eyes went into overdrive. I was in a small room with rough stone walls and a compacted earth floor. In front of me was a blue plastic collapsible picnic table with metal legs, which looked as though it had come straight out of an Argos catalogue. Two hurricane lamps sat at either end of it, their shadows dancing across the walls. My pa.s.sport and Charlie"s lay in between them.
The driver and his mate were behind me, breathing heavily after the exertion of frog-marching me from the car.
A pair of US desert boots appeared on the other side of the table. The chinos above them looked as though they"d been inflated by a high-pressure hose. A thin-barrelled .22 semi-automatic was pointing straight at my forehead, held rock-steady in a latex-gloved hand.
When I saw who it belonged to, the Georgian secret police suddenly seemed like the soft option.
My luck had finally run out.
Towering over me was at least 250 pounds of fat, topped off by an all-too-familiar whitewall haircut.
I didn"t like the way he was holding the weapon, but it didn"t look nearly as scary as he did.
Jim D. "Call Me Buster" Bastendorf, the man we"d rechristened b.a.s.t.a.r.d at Waco, had hardly changed a bit in the twelve years since I"d last seen him.
7
I looked down again, but kept my eyes on the weapon.
All of a sudden, my hands felt strangely comfortable round my head. All the same, I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. I had f.u.c.ked up and had to accept whatever followed.
If he wanted me to beg, though, he had another thought coming. f.u.c.k him. He was going to do what he was going to do, whatever I did, so what was the point?
I heard him move around the table. His nostrils whistled as he bent closer. Then I felt him jam the muzzle hard into my right hand.
I flinched as the working parts clicked. I couldn"t help it.
I opened my eyes. b.a.s.t.a.r.d was still above me. He liked how I"d reacted; it made him smile.
"Now, son, who the f.u.c.k are you?"
"You"ve got my pa.s.sport. Give it a read."
He looked down at me. I knew from his expression that he still hadn"t made the connection between me, Anthony the Brit f.a.g scientist, and a compound full of dead Davidians, and I wasn"t going to help him out. I was in enough trouble already.
"You"re no American. Where you from?" His brow furrowed as he studied my face and let his brain flick back a few pages. "I know you from somewhere, don"t I?"
"Listen, we have you on film, handing over equipment at the Marriott in Istanbul and-"
The first punch was to my right temple and caught me square on. I managed to stay on the chair, but it was a while before my head stopped ringing and splinters of light stopped dancing in front of my eyes.
"Shut the f.u.c.k up! You"re in deep s.h.i.t, boy! The police want your a.s.s, big-time. You"re responsible for the murder of their answer to that Bob f.u.c.king Geldof guy, and they don"t see the funny side of that. And you know what? I"ll give those f.u.c.ks just exactly what they want if you don"t offer me a little co-operation."
He hit me twice more. My hands took some of the pain but the second blow took me down onto the hard earth floor and came f.u.c.king close to dislocating my shoulder.
"That"s what I want, co-operation!"
I tensed, eyes closed, knees up to my chest, ready for more.
I didn"t look up.
b.a.s.t.a.r.d was a difficult man to ignore, but in my opinion it was well worth the effort. The heat on my back was good and I made the most of it while I waited for the starbursts in my head to burn out.
The two boys leaned down either side of me and heaved me back up onto the chair. I felt the cold steel of a blade against the right side of my chin. I flinched again, but was patted gently on top of my head.
"Relax, Nick. The guys are just having a little fun." He"d put his Mr Nice Guy hat on, and although it was never going to fit, at least it made a change. "They"re just gonna cut the tape off you. Relax, son. We don"t wanna risk slicing out those baby blues now, do we?"
They dug a pair of scissors into the gaffer tape and started to cut and pull. As the tape was yanked away, it took clumps of my hair and eyebrows with it. There was a positive side to it, though; I felt the blood rushing back into my arms.
"Sit up, Nick. Enjoy the party."
I tipped my head a little and looked behind me. A patio heater fuelled by a king-size propane gas bottle was doing its bit for global warming, and the two boys were the shiny-headed bouncers I"d seen in the Pajero outside the Marriott. Both were still in black, and the one on the right was giving his gigs a polish.
"How you doing, Nick, you OK?" b.a.s.t.a.r.d drew up another plastic chair on his side of the table, all sweetness and light. The weapon had gone but the gloves remained.
An aluminium thermos now sat between the lamps. The pa.s.sports had gone.
"Go on, son. Smell the coffee. It"s good and strong."
I flexed my fingers, leaned forward, took the flask, and started to unscrew the lid. At times like this you"ve got to take whatever"s on offer. You"ve no idea when it"s going to come your way again. Besides, I"d been gagging for a brew for hours.
The two boys behind me shuffled from one foot to the other. I couldn"t decide whether they were just enjoying the heat, or readying themselves for the next bout in the programme. Whatever, it was clear they were still in the red corner, and I was still in the blue.
The venue for tonight"s entertainment was, as far as I could tell, an old farmhouse with exposed roof beams and tiles. The holes in the wall, where I guessed there had once been windows, were blocked with grey nylon turnip sacks like the one I"d been wearing.
I poured hot black coffee into two plastic cups and pushed one across the table with a smile. It smelled really good. "Where"s Charlie?"
He took a sip. He knew what I was doing. If I got drugged, he did too.
The coffee stung the cuts on my tongue, but so what? It tasted as good as it smelled, and warmed me all the way down to my stomach.
"Any chance of my clothes?"
He shrugged. "Sure." He leaned back in his chair, lifted another grey sack from the floor and tipped my kit out in front of me.
I dressed quickly, checking my pockets as I went. No cash; definitely no pa.s.sport. Nothing, apart from Baby-G. But then what was I expecting?
"Has Charlie got his?" Part of your job under interrogation is to look after your mates. Charlie was in bad enough shape already, without going hypothermic.
b.a.s.t.a.r.d gave me a nod, and sampled a little more of his coffee. "You guys look out for each other, don"t you? I like that." He put his cup back down on the table. "Hey, I"m sorry about what happened just now. But you know" he made a pistol with his fingers and pulled the trigger at me "finding out that Chuck had brought someone on the job with him, well, it made me a little crazy."
He still had a supersize smile glued to his face, but I wasn"t too happy about that. He"d been a little crazy the last time we"d met, and that hadn"t taken us anywhere good.
8
His smile broadened. "I like to know what"s going on; I like to get things done my way. I just needed to let off some steam. Guys like us, we need to do that from time to time, don"t we, Nick? You understand."