The Reluctant Hero Read online

  ‘It’s that work which brought you here?’ Beg pressed.

  ‘Let me say that my work has given me a wide range of interests,’ Harry responded.

  ‘Indeed?’ Beg raised his glass to his lips and sipped; he had to use both hands, gripping the glass with difficulty, he couldn’t fully unbend his fingers. ‘And may I ask what your interests are in Ta’argistan?’

  Harry admired the way in which Beg seemed to pick up on every nuance. He wasn’t a man to be underrated, and that made him entirely the right man for Harry’s purpose.

  ‘I have heard a story that an old acquaintance of mine is here. You know how stories fly around.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘An American. By the name of Zac Kravitz. The suggestion is that he’s found himself in difficulty and is having trouble getting home. That causes great pain to his many friends and family.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Beg said for the third time, in the manner of a professor listening to a student’s dissertation and unwilling to commit himself.

  ‘May I be blunt?’

  ‘It seems you already are, Mr Jones.’

  ‘I don’t want to follow the path Mrs Riley seems intent on treading, making wild public protests about injustices. In truth, Mr Beg, I don’t know whether any injustice has been done. I neither know the facts nor care much about them. But I and his friends would be exceedingly grateful to get him home. Exceedingly grateful.’ The words were repeated slowly, as though dragging a great weight.

  Beg’s eyes bored into Harry from above his spectacles, unblinking, assessing, until finally he used his knuckle to move his glasses back up his nose. ‘Then I think what you are suggesting mirrors Mrs Riley’s path precisely. Financial aid in return for – certain considerations.’

  ‘But entirely privately.’

  One of the servants came to replenish Beg’s glass but he waved her away impatiently. She scuttled to a safe distance.

  ‘I would ensure that a substantial sum of aid was made available without strings,’ Harry continued, ‘and directed through whatever channels were deemed appropriate to prevent it becoming a matter of public controversy.’

  He was offering a bribe. Beg took no offence. Such things were accepted practice along most stretches of the Silk Road. Harry knew what the next question would be. He would be asked to state how much, then they would haggle – which raised the question, how much was Zac worth to him? How do you place a value on a friend’ consider-able means, his father had been a swashbuckling pirate and had died in the arms of a disgracefully young mistress, leaving behind a fair fortune, and even though the stock-market chaos and Harry’s short-lived marriage to his predatory second wife had kicked painful chunks out of it, still there was enough. Life in this part of the world was valued pretty cheaply, although Harry suspected Beg’s appetites might be larger than most. Somewhere in the middle there would be a compromise, a figure that would satisfy them both. Yet what Beg said next took Harry by surprise.

  ‘It is a very interesting proposition you make, Mr Jones. But it suffers from one small flaw.’

  They were like two men facing each other on a tightrope, each waiting for the other to make his move.

  ‘We have no American prisoners,’ Beg said quietly. ‘Goodnight, Mr Jones. Take great care.’ He moved away and the evening was at its end.

  Harry had gambled. He had failed. He had no fall-back plan. And in the process, he had made himself a marked man.

  Tiny spaceships of snow hovered inquisitively around them as they climbed back into their minibus for the journey back to the hotel. The roads were still crowded with night traffic – a surprisingly large number of German and Japanese cars, Harry noticed, all old, mostly imported second-hand from Western Europe, and some almost certainly stolen. For a while they followed a Mercedes van that still bore the fading logo of a German haulage company. Nothing here was quite what it seemed. Through the darkness and the snow, the people of Ashkek scurried about their business.

  The bus swayed and bounced along the darkened road and over substantial ruts, although whether these were caused by poor maintenance or uncleared ice it was difficult to tell. As they had seated themselves, Roddy Bowles and Martha had what in diplomatic circles would have been termed a frank exchange. He had challenged what he called her unpardonable rudeness to the President. She had countered that it would have been difficult for him to hear let alone understand what was being said with his head stuck halfway up the President’s arse. He had accused her of flagrant discourtesy. She had replied, in earshot of all, that she would have taken his advice about manners more seriously if he hadn’t spent so much of the dinner with his hand creeping up her thigh. After that they decided to suspend hostilities until another day, and found seats at opposite ends of the bus.

  Sydykov, who was still in harness, had spent much of the journey back to their hotel on his mobile phone. Eventually he stood up and faced the guests, clinging on with both hands as the bus swayed and bucked.

  ‘I have to offer you all an apology,’ he said. ‘But the weather has got worse. A lot of snow is coming. As you know, we had intended to take you into the Celestial Mountains tomorrow morning to visit our latest hydroelectric project, but the roads will be unreliable. So I’m afraid we shall be forced to change the schedule. I’m sorry to have to ask, but is there anything you would care to do tomorrow morning instead?’

  In the half-light of the poorly illuminated bus, a discussion began that teetered between accepting an invitation to morning coffee with the Deputy Prime Minister and a discussion about tourism and transport, when Martha’s voice cut through the babble.

  ‘I’d like to visit the central prison.’

  ‘The prison? But – why?’ Sydykov replied uneasily.

  ‘Human rights. The President said we shouldn’t be worried about it, and a visit to the prison would help convince us.’

  From the rear of the bus Bowles could be heard muttering about their trip being turned into some sort of publicity stunt. Sydykov, too, had his objections. ‘But we have had no notice.’

  ‘That’s the point,’ Martha replied. ‘An unannounced visit. Couldn’t be better.’

  ‘I am really not sure it will be possible without preparation—’

  ‘No, no, Mr Sickof, that won’t do at all. President Karabayev assured us you have nothing to hide – his words, not mine – and I respect him as a man of his word. Do I need to take the matter up with him?’

  It was a threat that left Sydykov swaying with uncertainty. He wasn’t one to second-guess the presidential whim. Then Bowles joined in.

  ‘This is ridiculous. We can’t let you hijack the whole proceedings,’ he protested from the back of the bus. ‘You can’t demand that our hosts make special arrangements just for one.’

  Sydykov shrugged his shoulders, as if to indicate reluctant agreement, until another voice interrupted them.

  ‘That’s not a problem. I’d like to go, too.’

  It was Harry.

  ‘Excellent! We have a quorum,’ Martha exclaimed.

  At that moment, with the hotel in sight, the bus hit another pothole and Sydykov was thrown back into his seat. He didn’t get up again, but instead began agitatedly banging the buttons on his mobile phone.

  The guard had been reluctant to leave the other man alone with the prisoner.

  ‘Why should you worry? Look at that,’ the visitor had said, nodding towards Zac’s pathetic form, huddled in the shadows of the corner. ‘A butterfly with broken wings. I need no protection from that.’

  The guard knew better than to contradict him. He saluted, and left them alone.

  For a while, after the door had been slammed shut, the visitor said nothing, standing quietly, thoughtful, his hand against his nose to fight the stench until eventually Zac stirred and looked up.

  ‘You are an interesting man, Mr Kravitz,’ the visitor said quietly. ‘You come to my country to cause trouble and deep offence, so we lock you up and throw away the key. Yet st
ill you seem bent on causing trouble – you, and your friend, Harry Jones.’

  Zac shook his head in confusion, aroused by some distant memory.

  ‘Oh, did you not know? Mr Jones is here, in Ashkek. He is asking about you.’

  Slowly, heavily, with a body that refused to cooperate, Zac levered himself up into a sitting position, his back propped against the wall. ‘Harry?’ he mumbled through cracked lips.

  ‘Yes. He wants to buy you back. A most interesting man, your Mr Jones.’

  Zac stretched his legs, clumsily, and began to wriggle, like a fish on a line, as he tried to rub the pain from his shoulder.

  ‘In fact, I think he may have saved your life,’ the visitor continued. ‘You were due to die tomorrow.’

  Zac raised his head, perplexed. His lips moved, but no words came out.

  ‘Did they not tell you? The President in his wisdom had decreed it. But now . . .’

  Life, hope, began to stir once more in Zac. He leaned forward, expectant.

  ‘We shall keep you alive,’ the visitor continued, ‘and play the game. We can’t let you go, you understand that, don’t you? Not at any price. You really shouldn’t have been caught fucking the President’s wife. Not that you were the first, of course, and I think our beloved President suspects that. But you were the first to get caught, and that makes a difference. Now he demands retribution, and even though he is only half a man, he is still the President.’

  The visitor began to laugh, but gagged on the first mouthful of fetid air. He spat on the floor in disgust.

  ‘So we will wait for your friend Mr Jones to leave us.’ He paused. ‘And then, I’m afraid, you will die.’

  His smile was thin, surgical, like a wound. He was done here, for the moment. Amir Beg kicked the door to attract the guard.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The hotel room was what passed for five-star in Ashkek – clean, comfortable, and fiercely overheated. Whether the tropical temperatures were a constant condition, Harry doubted; he’d already seen enough hesitation of the lights to suggest that the power supply couldn’t be taken for granted. The hotel was topping up while it could.

  He’d been in bed half an hour but couldn’t sleep, his mind tumbling through what he had seen and heard. Could it be that, after all, Zac wasn’t here, as Beg had claimed? But Beg’s denials carried no weight. Harry had offered him a bribe; a corrupt man would have reacted to the temptation, and an honest one to the insult. Yet Beg had offered nothing but professed indifference. That couldn’t be the end of the story.

  As Harry lay on his bed, staring up at the whorls of plaster that decorated the ceiling, he heard a knocking at the door. A tentative sound. Not the secret police, then. When he opened it, he was astonished to discover Martha, wrapped in one of the hotel’s meagre dressing gowns and, from what he could see, little else. From her perch at the end of the corridor, the old hag watched everything.

  He couldn’t resist staring at Martha in surprise and more than passing approval before engaging once more with her eyes. ‘Am I supposed to invite you in?’

  ‘You’d better. Unless you want to disappoint Stalin’s Granny over there,’ she replied, nodding in the direction of the crone.

  ‘This isn’t what I expected,’ he said, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Don’t expect anything at all. You’re not my type.’

  He was mildly surprised to feel a flicker of disappointment pass over him.

  She stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded defensively across her chest. ‘I want to know what you’re up to,’ she demanded primly.

  ‘What I’m up to?’

  ‘There’s something odd going on – and you’re in the middle of it. Don’t pretend you’ve come here just to take a look at a few factories and—’

  Suddenly he held up a finger to his lips to demand her silence. He hadn’t made a close inspection of his room but he assumed it was bugged – nothing too sophisticated, not in a city that couldn’t even afford enough coins for the electricity meter, but there were basic precautions that needed attending to. He went over to the bedside radio and switched on the BBC World Service, then he sat on the bed and patted the place beside him. She gave him a sharp look, then setsuddenly volunteertled down suspiciously on the duvet.

  ‘Look, I’m not an idiot,’ she began in a low voice, leaning closer to him, ‘the whole thing stinks. Sydykov’s suits are far too well cut for him to masquerade as a tour guide. This place is crawling with security. I hadn’t exactly expected Ashkek to be a holiday camp but this is like something out of the old Soviet Union. If this is an aspiring democracy, as the Foreign Office would have us believe, then I’m Mother Teresa.’

  Humility had never been her strong point. In Westminster, many people simply referred to her as the Power and the Gloria, but not within her hearing.

  ‘I agree,’ he said.

  ‘So what the hell were you doing sucking up to Amir Beg? Can’t you tell what he is, for God’s sake? I just don’t understand what you’re up to – appearing out of the blue, with no notice, no previous interest in the place. All evening you say nothing, even more odd you drink nothing—’

  He winced, she’d hit too close for comfort. He’d only wanted to keep a clear head. ‘Since when has what I drink been any concern of yours?’

  ‘I don’t know what causes more trouble – when you’re drinking or when you’re not.’

  He was growing angry with her. Ridiculous woman. ‘Do you always burst into men’s bedrooms just to insult them?’

  ‘It’s not my habits that are the issue here. Anyway, I assure you, I’m not your type. But Amir Beg seems to be. That cosy chat of yours – you’ve got something going with him, haven’t you? You’re like Roddy Bowles, I’m sure he’s up to something, too – except you don’t have his line in bullshit.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, never like Roddy Bowles.’

  ‘Then what’s going on, Harry? Why did you suddenly volunteer to come with me to the prison? I don’t need you holding my bloody hand, or contradicting everything I say and denying what I see.’

  Ah, so that was it. She thought he was a stooge, intent on keeping her in her place.

  ‘I won’t have it,’ she spat, even as she whispered.

  Somewhere in the background the BBC was offering a weather forecast. Bleak, and getting worse. Harry stared at Martha from close at hand. Her hazel eyes were indisputably animated and, it seemed, observant. Perhaps he had underestimated her.

  ‘Don’t take me for a fool, Harry.’

  ‘I don’t. Many things, perhaps. But not a fool.’

  That was the moment he decided he would trust her. He wasn’t sure why – perhaps it was simply that aching feeling of being on his own for far too long. Anyway, it was only sense to let someone know what he was up to, in case the whole thing went disastrously wrong and he got his balls caught in a wringer. So he turned the radio up and told her: about Zac, about Julia, about loyalty and ties and his attempt to bribe Beg. As he talked, she sat and listened quietly.

  ‘I’d hoped they might simply be persuaded to let him go,’ he concluded. ‘That’s why I came here, to ask them, quietly. But . . . well, you got there and sank your teeth in first.’ He couldn’t resist a wisp of criticism.

  ‘Ridiculous. If Beg won’t release your friend for a substantial bribe, he was never likely to let him go for nothing.’

  ‘Fair point.’

  ‘You’re risking your whole career, you know that. If you get caught offering a bribe . . .’

  He didn’t bother to reply.

  ‘You haven’t seen this Zac for years. And it doesn’t even sound as if you like him too much.’

  ‘Not the point.’

  ‘Julia meant that much to you?’ Suddenly, her stridency had softened. It was a stupid question, and she knew it as soon as it was asked. ‘Harry, I’d like to help.’

  ‘You can’t,’ he replied, brushing her aside.

  ‘Why not?’

 
; ‘Because.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Harry sighed. ‘Because it seems I can’t get him released using the usual flattery or even excessive bribery. So the only option I think I’ve got left is to break the bastard out.’

  Neither of them spoke for several minutes as they considered what he had said. Then some thought seem to strike her and she stiffened. ‘You’re a total dickhead. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re not the first to reach that conclusion.’ Harry shifted his position on the bed to find himself a better defensive position.

  ‘So you’re just going to – break him out on your own. Single-handed. Is that it?’

  He shook his head, not bothering to reply. How could he? He hadn’t any firm idea of what he was going to do.

  ‘You don’t even know for sure Zac is here,’ she persisted.

  ‘That’s right. But this is just the sort of hole at the end of the earth he’d end up in.’ He knew it sounded pathetic.

  She studied him intently, gauging the next thrust. ‘You know, Harry, you’re not at all like your reputation.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Turning down a woman’s offer. Although I guess I’m a little older than your regular diet.’

  He shook his head once again, as though trying to ward off troublesome flies. First drink, now women. God, she wasn’t doing much for his self-esteem this evening.

  ‘Must be your time of life, I suppose. Roddy’s such a clear case, but you . . . I’ve seen it so often. Men reach a certain age, start getting terrified that they’re losing their masculinity and might be shown up by some woman.’

  ‘Martha, what’s bitten you? I can do without the feminist outrage right now. It’s simply . . . Look, it could turn nasty.’ He scowled, but she wasn’t to be so easily denied.

  ‘What? Not nice work for a woman?’ She laughed, but the eyes were hard, there was no humour in her face.

  ‘For anyone.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. You sound just like an echo of my wretched father. He tried to stop me going to college, you know, even though I was a straight-A student.’