Brotherhood of the Tomb (8 page)

Food was left for him in bowls while he slept. It came regularly enough to stave off real hunger pangs, but not often enough or in sufficient quantities to satisfy. It never varied: white rice, a few beans, cold black coffee. The empty bowls were removed while he slept again, which was seldom. The coffee kept him high and awake for long periods. When he did sleep, he was restless and easily wakened. He quickly became disorientated. He suffered from constipation, then bouts of severe diarrhoea that kept him huddled for hours over the toilet. He would wake from disturbed dreams, shaking and nauseous.

Sometimes they would let him sleep ten or fifteen minutes, then waken him by banging loudly on the door. That would continue for hours: each time he began to nod off, the banging would start, until he grew agitated and angry. By the tenth or eleventh time, he would be so tired and confused that he started weeping from sheer frustration. Afterwards, he would feel ashamed of his tears: he was determined to show his gaolers no signs of weakness. But the tears came, whether he wished them or not.

He dreamed of De Faoite incessantly, of the wounded and bleeding altar on which he lay, inarticulate, like a tortured animal. The priest would rise and open cracked lips and whisper a single word over and over: Passover, Passover. And in the dream flakes of plaster would crumble and fall from the high vaulted ceiling, white and sharp as snow, drifting across the bloody church, blanching its floor and walls, bleaching it of all corruption.

‘Talk to me, Patrick,’ Natalya Pavlovna would say

in a hushed voice, like one of the nuns he had known as a child, praying, alone with God. ‘Tell me about yourself. Tell me about your past. We have plenty of time, all the time in the world.’

But he sensed an urgency in her voice, a frisson of alarm that belied the patience with which she approached her task. She never spoke of things directly, never asked leading questions. Her inquisition was roundabout, yet Patrick knew it hungered for a certain and sudden quarry.

At first, Patrick would not respond to these overtures. He kept a determined silence, as though vowed to it. That was his novitiate. But as time passed and he lost track of night and day, present and past, dream and reality, he came to crave Natalya Pavlovna’s visits more and more. In the end, he felt only gratitude for her presence and an overwhelming desire to please her.

At times he would wake out of some twisted dream or nightmare to find his mind preternaturally sharp, and in such moments he knew his gratitude to be no more than Natalya Pavlovna had contrived. But he could not wholly throw it aside. Lack of sleep and repeated caffeine buzzes kept him off balance. His resources were diminished, his resistance increasingly difficult to summon. There were moments when he felt he loved her, her soft, reassuring voice, her dark, questioning eyes.

It was not love, of course, but fear mixed with gratitude. And yet at times he could feel a shiver of sexuality pass between them. Even nuns on their hard beds wake with a shudder of desire. Often when she visited, he had the beginnings of an erection. Her subtlety was like a finger drawn along his flesh. They experienced a growing intimacy. Her questions were a lover’s hands, stripping him bare. He would wake

up sweating, dreaming of betrayal. But who was left for him to betray?

On several occasions, she asked him about his sins, major and minor, old and new. It was a way into his soul, and from his soul to his heart, and thence to his mind, where he kept all his recollections of names and dates and places. Natalya Pavlovna cared nothing for theology. Sins were nothing to her, or at best keys with which to unlock the doors of Patrick’s mind.

‘Think of me as a priest,’ she would murmur, ‘as a father confessor. How long is it since your last confession?’

And Patrick - who had indeed been many years absent from the confessional, and who did indeed suffer from a guilty conscience and the creeping footsteps of unquiet ghosts - unburdened his spirit gladly and without remorse.

Natalya Pavlovna never rushed, never applied overt pressure, though it was becoming increasingly clear that she was working against time. From sins religious they passed to sins secular, from morals they ascended to pragmatism and the absolutism of the state.

The sessions with Chekulayev were more down to earth. Unlike the woman, he was not interested in the state of Patrick’s soul. After a session with Natalya, Patrick found it almost a relief to be faced with Chekulayev’s directness.

He knew the names of Patrick’s principal agents in Egypt and Lebanon, most of his contacts in the PLO and Hezbollah, and several of his agents of influence in Syria. He had details of CIA houses in Cairo and Port Said. He could recite details of several important cases in which Patrick had been involved, including some that had gone wrong, wrong enough to lead to

unnecessary loss of life. He knew about Hasan Abi Shaqra.

What he sought, of course, were the gaps. The things he knew were nothing to those of which he was ignorant. But Patrick knew when to talk and when to keep silent.

‘Tell me about Shifrin.’ Chekulayev returned time and time again to Patrick’s old mentor, his station chief in Cairo. When did he tell you about Passover? What does he know about the Brotherhood?’ Patrick did not answer, for the simple reason that he had nothing to offer.

Natalya Pavlovna, however, possessed the skill to blur the difference between what she knew and what she did not. Each time they spoke, Patrick sensed his resistance weakening. He had talked and he wanted to talk more. He longed to confide in her. The white walls pressed in on him like the blocks of a hydraulic press. He thought they were growing closer. But he could not bring himself to measure them.

‘Tell me about Passover.’ Natalya Pavlovna returned to the subject with increasing frequency. She seemed almost nervous. Her thin hands lay on her lap like pale, crustless crabs, naked and exposed. ‘What do you know of Migliau? Is he here? In Ireland? What have you heard? Have they set a date?’

To all of these questions Patrick could only plead complete ignorance. His head ached and he longed for darkness. Even with his eyes closed, the bright light lanced his brain like a thin blade.

‘I’ve told you. All I know of “Passover” is that De Faoite mentioned it before he died.’

‘You mutter it in your sleep. I’ve heard you many times.’ This admission that she eavesdropped on Patrick’s moments of slumber did not seem to cause Natalya Pavlovna any awkwardness. She

knew Patrick assumed it, expected it. Sleep was not sacrosanct. In the religion they shared, nothing was sacrosanct. They were like husband and wife now. Surely there could be no more secrets between them.

He woke three or four times to find himself alone. By the fifth he was sure something was wrong. He was starving: why did no one come? He shouted and banged the walls, but there was no response. Exhausted, he fell asleep again. When he awoke, nothing had changed.

He called out again. You can hear me, you bastards, you can hear me!

‘Where are you, Chekulayev? Where are you, Natalya? Why don’t you answer?’

But no one responded to his entreaties. A ball of fear settled in his stomach.

He crouched down by the wall, disorientated. So, they had changed tactics. Isolate him, deprive him of all human contact, starve him. He felt helpless and afraid. How long could he go on? His cupboard was bare, at least of those things Natalya Pavlovna really wanted to hear. Would lies suffice?

He thought of ways to pass the time, mind games to blot out his growing distress. First, he taught himself to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards, first in English, then in Latin, as he had learnt it as a child. After that he composed elaborate, meaningless poems in Arabic, in which each word began with the same letter and each line ended with the same rhyme. And he wrote letters in his head to everyone he had ever known. Still no one came.

For a long time he stood defenceless at the mirror. He watched himself curiously, as he might have watched a monkey in a cage: his unshaven face, his red-rimmed eyes. Perhaps this was all there was

left: himself and his reflection. If he vanished, he wondered, would the reflection remain there, like a wound after the knife has gone? He banged hard on the glass, bruising his knuckles.

‘Chekulayev, you fucker! Stop playing games! Get your ass in here, I want to speak to you!’ His voice sounded cracked and hollow, crashing against the tight walls and falling to the floor. For the first time, he was gripped by a fearful claustrophobia. It took him by the throat, forcing him painfully onto his knees, pressing him in onto himself. He began to sob. Tears coursed down grimy cheeks into his beard.

Time passed. He grew calm and called again. Still no one came. There were no sounds. It was as if he had been buried alive. He pushed the thought out of his head. You’re still in the interrogation room. They’re out there, watching you. Hold on.

He used the toilet and cleaned himself with a strip torn from his thin garment. There was no more paper.

The fear grew more intense. More than ever, he had lost track of time and place. If he did not leave soon, this tiny chamber would become his tomb. He sank back on the floor, shaking. Surely now Chekulayev would decide that he had had enough. There was no need to continue the farce. He was broken. He would confess. Natalya Pavlovna would understand. There would be no gloating, no rebukes. Just relief that their ordeal was over. But no one came.

He was not sure when the thought first came to him that something was very wrong indeed. He had conducted interrogations himself, he knew the score. Isolation was a valuable tool: it could break a stubborn spirit. But there were limits to its usefulness. It could drive someone over the edge for days

or even weeks. His captors did not have that sort of time: he was certain of it. They wanted answers now. Something was amiss.

He took a chair and stood with it for a long time in front of the mirror. His intention was clear. Still nobody came. Turning his head away, he lifted the chair by its back and swung it in a long arc. It crashed against the mirror with a roar of fragmenting glass. Something sharp flew against his cheek. He let the chair fall. The room beyond was empty.

TEN

Careful as glass, he stepped into the tiny room. There was an audio console on his right, fitted with two rows of tapes: one group to record, the other to play back. The console was illuminated as though someone had been there and gone a moment ago. A pad lay in front of the console, covered in Cyrillic longhand. On top of it someone had left a pen with the top unscrewed. A bank of green and red digital counters glowed like fairy lights against burnished metal. A single tape was spinning like a circus wheel, its free end flapping against the controls. On top of the console someone had left a half-finished cup of coffee. Patrick lifted it up. It was stone cold, days old.

As he set the cup down, his hand brushed the console. He heard the sound of breathing, then a voice, whispering, close by.

‘When will you understand? When will you believe me? I don’t know anything. I can’t help you. I can only tell you what I know.’

His own voice. He shuddered and switched off the toggle he had accidentally touched. Silence regained control.

He waited, tense, behind the door, expecting someone to come, holding the cup in his hand, the nearest thing he could find to a weapon. Cold coffee lay spilled on the floor, a dull, khaki pool soaking into the carpet. There was an electric clock above the console. It said twenty to ten: night or morning, he had no way of knowing. He let five minutes pass. No one came.

The door opened into the little anteroom through which he had passed on his arrival. Like the interrogation room, the monitoring cubicle was disguised

behind the brown papered wall. The door closed behind him, and it was as though neither his cell nor the cubicle beside it had ever existed. He stood in an ordinary room, breathing ordinary air. He had only the white cotton shift to remind him of his ordeal.

He paused on the landing, uncertain what to do. Sense told him to go directly down the stairs: with luck he could make it to the front door and be on the street before anyone came. But a more deep-seated instinct told him that no one was going to come. To leave without knowing why could only be dangerous. If his instinct was wrong, at least he had the element of surprise.

In a junk-room on the third floor he found a long-handled hammer. It felt lethal in his hand and gave him renewed confidence. The other rooms - all bedrooms - were empty. A glance through one curtained window told him it was ten o’clock at night. Outside, the streets were endless, mocking, scarred with rain. There was no way down.

He descended the stairs to the second floor, willing himself to move slowly, fighting back an urge to run until he reached the street. He heard a sound like music, a muffled, almost ethereal sound. It was music, and yet not quite music.

On the landing, he hesitated, listening. Now he realized what the sound was: a gramophone needle stuck in a record groove was playing the same snatch of music over and over again.

The sound came from a room on his left. He opened the door. Here, as elsewhere, the light had been left on. A coffee table with English-language magazines, two easy chairs, an empty glass that had been knocked to the floor. In one corner, a cheap gramophone ground out its single phrase. He stepped across and lifted the needle. The sleeve stood

on a shelf nearby: the Elmer Bernstein recording of Sean O’Riada’s Mise Eire, played by the RTE Concert Orchestra. Someone had been getting into the spirit of things.

Next door was a bathroom. Stainless steel and dingy porcelain, a toilet like the one upstairs, a razor on a shelf. He closed the door.

There were six people in the next room, five men and one woman, Natalya Pavlovna. They sat facing him in a row, their eyes fixed on the door. No one spoke. No one asked him to come in. He stood in the doorway for a long time, returning their stare. Such strange postures, such tortured expressions. No one moved a muscle. Patrick closed the door behind him.