I Am Pilgrim (88 page)

A terrible thought struck her – what if the American hadn’t made a mistake by driving across the

border? Say the deputy director of MIT was in their employ, or somebody had re-routed her call and

she hadn’t been speaking to him at all? What if all the clues she had followed had been planted?

Imagine if it was a sting. It would mean that she had been supposed to show the information to her brother and get him to emerge from the shadows.

‘In the name of God—’ she said, and started to run.

She passed the vaults where the gladiators’ weapons and armour had once been stored and raced up

a long ramp towards the Porta Libitinensis – the Gate of Death – through which the bodies of the dead entertainers were removed.

She had almost reached its ruined arch, the whole arena spread out in front of her, when her cellphone – no longer in the dead-spot – started to ring. She pulled it out and saw that she had at least a dozen missed calls. All, like the current one, were from her nanny.

She answered, desperately frightened, speaking in Turkish. ‘What is it?’

But it wasn’t her nanny’s voice that replied. It was an American man speaking English.

‘Leyla Cumali?’ he said.

Terrified, she yelled, ‘Who are you?’

But he didn’t answer, using instead the exact words the two of us had planned in my hotel room: ‘I

have sent you a video file. Look at it.’

In her confusion and fear, she didn’t seem to hear, demanding again to know who he was.

‘If you want to save your nephew, look at the video,’ Ben demanded. ‘It is shot in real time, it’s happening now.’

Her nephew? Cumali thought. They know everything.

Hand shaking, almost in tears, she found the video file and opened it. She watched it and almost collapsed, screaming into the phone, ‘No … please … oh, no.’

Chapter Thirty-eight

I WAS DROWNING again – this time in pain as well as in water. I was fighting for my life, fluid cascading over my face and my shattered foot, generating surge after surge of agony. It was fast becoming the

only consciousness I knew.

My head was tilted back, my throat open, water flowing down and triggering endless spasms of gagging. My chest was heaving, my lungs screaming and my body collapsing. Terror had chased out

every rational thought and had me cornered. I had tried counting again, but had lost it at fifty-seven seconds. That seemed like a lifetime ago.

Behind the blindfold, I had travelled beyond the last star. I had seen the void at the end of the universe, a darkness without form or shape or end. I knew that they had damaged me in a place far

beyond pain, scarred me in my soul.

A wisp of memory found me in my corner. Whisperer had said something. He had said, if it ever

got too much for me, I should finish it. Roll to my rifle and go to my God like a soldier. But that was the final cruelty of it – because the torturers controlled the amount of water, I couldn’t even open my throat, flood my lungs and drown myself quickly. Even the last dignity, the one of taking my own life, was unattainable. I was forced to go on, to suffer, to stand at the Door to Nowhere but never be able to step through it.

The Saracen checked his watch – the American had already endured for one hundred and twenty-

five seconds – longer than any man he had known, far longer than he had expected, approaching the

mark set by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a great warrior, a follower of the One True God and a courageous student of the Holy Qur ’an. Surely he must be ready to talk now? He motioned to the two

Albanians.

I felt water stream from my hair and the filthy towel rip free of my face as they pulled me out. I was shaking, my body completely out of control and my mind not far behind. The terror was physical, every fear in my life made manifest. I couldn’t speak but as I returned from the abyss the pain in my foot came back with a wild ferocity and I felt myself plunging into a welcome unconsciousness. The

Saracen hit me hard on my broken cheek and the surge of adrenaline stopped me.

He forced open my eyelids and looked into my pupils, seeing how much life was present, while his

other hand probed my neck until he found an artery, checking to see if my heartbeat was irregular and threatening to fail. He stepped back and looked at me – gasping for air, trying to control my tremors, forcing aside the pain in my foot.

‘Who are you?’ he said so softly I was probably the only one who could hear it.

I saw the concern and confusion on his face, and it gave me strength. In our epic battle of wills, I was dying but I was winning.

‘The name?’ he said.

I shook my head weakly.

‘Give him to me,’ Nikolaides said, exploding with impatience.

‘No,’ responded the Saracen, ‘you’ll end up killing him and we’ll know nothing. We’ve got hours

if we need them.’

‘Until somebody sails past to look at the ruins and gets curious,’ Nikolaides said.

‘Go and move the boat then,’ the Saracen replied. ‘Put it behind the rocks so nobody can see.’

Nikolaides hesitated, not accustomed to being ordered around.

‘Go,’ the Saracen said. ‘We’re just wasting more time.’

The bull glared and gave in, turning to the two Albanians, ordering them to help him. The men vanished down the main passageway, and the Saracen looked down at me slumped against the trough,

still bound to the board, my wrists swollen and twisted out of shape, the steel cuffs cutting into the flesh and my fingers as white as the marble from the lack of blood. He poked my shattered foot with

the toe of his shoe and watched me wince. He did it again – harder – and, despite myself, I cried out.

‘It’s only going to get worse,’ he promised quietly.

He lifted back his shoe to kick the raw flesh, but he never got the chance. From out of the darkness of the side passage, we heard a voice.

She was yelling in Arabic, frantically.

Chapter Thirty-nine

FROM WHERE I was lying, I had an unobstructed view as Cumali ran into the light, fear written all over her face, the cellphone clutched tight, her brother racing to meet her.

For a moment I wondered what had happened: in my mind, the plan was shattered and I was finding

it difficult to process even the most rudimentary information. I couldn’t conceive that Bradley was alive; I didn’t remember that one phone call could still save both myself and the mission.

I watched in confusion, trying not to surrender to the pain in my foot and wrists, as Cumali reached her brother and thrust the phone at him. He spoke in Arabic, but it was clear that he was demanding to know what was wrong. Gasping for breath, Cumali just pointed at the phone. The Saracen looked at

the screen …

His beloved son stared back, innocent and uncomprehending. Tears streaked the little guy’s face but, because he was being filmed, he was trying his best to smile. He had a hangman’s noose around

his neck.

The Saracen stared at the still frame, his entire universe trembling, everything he thought he knew

and understood shaken to its foundations. He looked at me, murderous and volatile. Somebody was

threatening his child! He would—

He flew towards me, his eyes incandescent with anger, and in my wounded mind a gear finally meshed. It was the phone call I had tried so hard to count down to, the one which I had desperately wanted to hear. It was the only explanation for the woman’s distress and the Saracen’s anger …

Bradley had come through!

I tried to sit a little straighter, but I was still strapped to the board. Despite a wave of pain, I managed to remember what I had rehearsed in my hotel room when my mind and body were whole

and terror was something which only other men knew. I had guessed that the moment of greatest danger would be when the Saracen realized it was a sting and that his child’s life was in the balance: he might lash out in fury and kill whoever was close at hand. I dug down and recalled what I had to

say.

‘Be sensible and you can save your son,’ I said, half faltering.

‘How do you know it’s my son?!’ he yelled.

‘You can save him if you want,’ I repeated, not bothering to explain.

His sister had recovered enough to start screaming at her brother – half in Arabic, half in English, all in anguish – telling him not to waste time, to ask me what he had to do to save the child. The Saracen kept staring at me, unsure whether to surrender to logic or anger.

‘Look at the picture!’ Cumali yelled. ‘Look at your son!’

She pushed the phone closer to his face and he looked again at the child’s image. He turned to me

…

‘What is happening? Tell me!’ he demanded.

‘Speak to the man on the phone,’ I replied.

The Saracen put the phone to his mouth and spoke in English, venomous. ‘Who are you?!’ he said,

trying to assert control.

I knew Bradley would ignore it – just as we had planned, he would tell the Saracen to watch a video

clip he was about to send. The first shot would be of a clock or watch to prove that it wasn’t faked, that we hadn’t staged it, that it was happening as we spoke.

The Saracen played the clip. He saw the clock and then he seemed to stagger. His sister, watching too, clung to him, crying out in a mix of Arabic and Turkish. The clip showed one end of the rope

attached to the brass bolt that had once supported the kitchen light. The other end was the noose around the little guy’s neck. He was standing on the shoulders of the obese and sweat-drenched nanny.

When her weak knees gave out, she would fall and the boy would hang.

It was a horrific scene, and it was no wonder that Bradley had objected so vehemently to it, but I

needed something so shocking that the Saracen would have no time to act or plan. In truth, I couldn’t take all the credit – if that was the word – for devising it. I had read about it years ago – during the Second World War, Japanese troops had made captured European fathers support their kids in exactly

the same fashion. They had then forced the children’s mothers to watch until their husbands stumbled and fell. Of course, to the Japanese, it was sport.

The Saracen lowered the phone and looked at me in hatred. While he stood rooted to the ground,

Cumali flew at me, about to rip and tear at my injured face.

Her brother hauled her back – he was trying to think, his eyes darting around the walls of the ruins.

It was a better indication of the prison in which he found himself than the bars of any cage. My mind was starting to function and I knew I had to keep the pressure on, to deny him any chance of disrupting the script I had written.

‘I and my people won’t tolerate any delay,’ I said. ‘Listen to the phone again.’

Robotic, in shock, the Saracen lifted the phone and heard a woman at the other end sobbing, hysterical, speaking to him in Turkish. It disoriented him – it was a language he didn’t understand –

and he handed it to his sister.

She started to translate into Arabic, but I stopped her. ‘In English,’ I demanded.

She told her brother it was the nanny. ‘She’s pleading,’ she said. ‘She can barely stand! She says, if we can’t save her, at least save the child.’

She grabbed the Saracen’s shirt, losing control. ‘What in God’s name have you done? What have

you led us into?!’

He threw her hand off and she stumbled backwards, breathing hard, staring at him in fury.

‘We estimated that the nanny would probably be able to stand for another six minutes,’ I said. ‘Of

course, we could be wrong. It might be less.’

I was making it up but, in the desperate circumstances, nobody challenged it. The Saracen looked at

the image on the phone and then at me. I knew that he was reeling, uncertain what to do.

‘You’re his father,’ I said quietly. ‘Your son is your responsibility – save him.’

I had learned long ago in Geneva that love wasn’t weak, love was strong. Now I had gambled everything on the power of it. The Saracen said nothing, immobilized – unable to think or decide –

caught between his grand plan for the future and his son’s life.

I had to force him, and I reached down into my fragmented mind and remembered what I had to say. ‘What value is a promise,’ I said, ‘especially one to a dying wife? But go ahead if you want to –

break a promise made before Allah.’

He stared at me, breathing in shallow gulps, scared. ‘How do you know that? Who told you about

Gaza?!’

I made no reply, and he turned away from the two of us. He was lost in darkness, trying to find a

way out of the prison, thinking – I was certain – about holding his dying wife, how his son was his

last tangible link to her and the sacred promise he had made to her and to God to protect him.

I saw his shoulders slump, and then his voice broke with sudden anguish. ‘What do you want?’ he

said, turning towards me. ‘Tell me what to do.’

Cumali, sobbing in relief, threw her arms around him.

‘I have to let the man on the phone know that I’m alive and safe,’ I said. ‘Untie me.’

The Saracen hesitated – once he released me he knew that there was no going back – but he didn’t

get any more time to think about it. Cumali stepped forward, released the leather straps that bound me to the board, took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the cuffs.

They fell to the ground and I almost passed out from the flood of pain as the circulation started to return to my swollen hands. I managed to grab the side of the trough and haul myself upright. As soon as I touched my battered foot to the ground, the explosion of crushed nerves almost sent me back into the mud, but somehow I stayed on my feet and put my hand out for the phone.