The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs
‘Instinct. Experience. And Amir Beg. The bastard’s lying.’
‘You can’t be certain of that.’
‘I am. The man was smiling.’
‘Yeah. I know the type.’
As they continued talking, suddenly the radio crackled and the BBC faded into silence. The lights flickered, fought back, then succumbed completely. A power cut. It was several seconds before it came back on.
‘My alarm call. Time to go,’ Harry whispered. He stood up and squeezed his feet once more into his damp, protesting shoes. ‘How do I look?’
‘Like you need a serious session with a colour consultant. I’m just not sure – a scarf, maybe? Save you getting yourself arrested by the fashion police.’
In retaliation, his eye ran teasingly up her body, but by the time he had reached her face, he found it stiff with concern.
‘This isn’t just a playground, is it?’ she said. ‘Your friend, he must be in very serious trouble. Which means we could be.’
‘That’s possible,’ he said slowly. ‘Roddy Bowles finds you in my bed, he’s going to be furious.’
But she wouldn’t be distracted. ‘What’s your plan, Harry?’
He looked away, buttoned up his coat, anxious she might find something disagreeable hidden in his expression. ‘A plan?’ he said. ‘Bugger it, I knew there was something missing.’
No snow tonight, just intense, penetrating cold. He felt conspicuous on the street, doing his best to hurry along on the slippery ground. Once or twice he stopped, bent to fix a shoelace, glancing behind him, trying to see if anyone was following. When he turned a corner he hid in the doorway of a baker’s shop behind a pile of empty plastic boxes, and waited for several minutes, but no one passed. He pulled up his collar against the freezing air and carried on.
The taxi was there, parked a little further away from the entrance of the Marriott than the previous night. He climbed in the back. The driver set off, saying nothing. He, too, seemed anxious about being followed. He drove slowly at first, excessively so, glancing in his mirror, tugging nervously at a cigarette, then he put his foot down and doubled back on himself, turning several corners. He parked in the shadows, waited several minutes, then repeated the entire exercise. Only when they had passed the angular outline of the Monument to National Independence for the third time did the driver seem to relax.
They didn’t head to the railway station, but drew up outside a dimly lit doorway in a side street that ran off Victory Square. A sign declared this to be the entrance to the Fat Chance Saloon. It seemed closed. The driver nodded, and Harry tried the handle. The door opened onto a short flight of narrow wooden steps, badly worn, that led down to the basement. Harry descended cautiously; it was a great place for an ambush. As he reached the last step and opened another door, a fug of tobacco smoke hit him and began to attack his eyes. The Fat Chance had been created inside an old cellar with a low barrel ceiling, inadequate ventilation and several side alcoves, where young people sat crowded around computer terminals. A piano was tucked away in a corner; the pianist was taking a cigarette break. The Fat Chance appeared to be some combination of Internet and jazz club, the sound of an old Blood, Sweat and Tears track trickling out from the speakers, to the accompaniment of clicking keyboards from the alcoves. The jazz enthusiasts seemed to be taking a holiday, only two tables in the main section were occupied, but it seemed to Harry to be the type of establishment that might never be busy, a place that had the atmosphere of merely going through the motions. The atmosphere was close, claustrophobic, only kids could survive here and Harry knew it would give him a thumping headache if he stayed too long. A waitress appeared at his elbow; she was middle-aged with tired, deep-set eyes that didn’t offer even a flicker of welcome. She nodded that he should follow her. They threaded their way between the tables to the far end of the cellar where she drew back a rough patterned curtain that screeched on its metal rings to reveal a larger alcove that had once probably been an old store room, the brick walls and ceiling freshly painted to cover the damp that was already beginning to find its way back through. At the table sat four men. One of them was the man with the nicotine moustache from the previous night, the second a young man, late twenties, with a chest like a gorilla and massive shoulders in the shape of a horseshoe, whom Harry assumed was some sort of minder. The third was young, barely in his twenties with straight dark hair down below his shoulders and who stared enquiringly at Harry through heavily tinted glasses. A little like John Lennon, Harry thought. The last of the men was older, rheumy eyes, prolific eyebrows. It was he who appeared to be in charge and instructed Harry to sit down. As Harry did so, the waitress placed a glass of beer on the red-and-white checked table cloth in front of him. It was frothy and looked desperately thin; he didn’t touch it.
‘So,’ the older man said, ‘you have been asking to meet some people, or something, called the Horsemen.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Tell me, Mr Jones, who or what do you think these Horsemen are?’ He wasn’t looking at Harry, as if he wasn’t worth the trouble, but instead inspected the end of his mean, self-rolled cigarette, the sort that required almost constant relighting.
‘Someone who doesn’t care for your President or his friends. Someone I hope might be willing to help me, and in return receive my help.’
‘For what purpose?’
‘I believe a friend of mine is in the prison here, in the Castle. I want to get him out.’
What happened next went so quickly that Harry was only vaguely aware of all the pieces. The gorilla got up – to get another beer, Harry assumed – but no sooner had he passed by than Harry’s arms were snatched and pinned behind the chair, which was tipped, then dragged back from the table. Any noise was drowned out by the piano player, who chose that moment, presumably under instruction, to pick up his playing – a Beatles melody, the acid years, Harry later recalled, without being able to be more specific. His memories of the moment were fragmented because, while he was tilted back and with his arms still pinned, he was hit, very hard, just below the ribcage in the solar plexus, with a blow that seemed to go straight to his backbone. The pain screamed through his body and for a moment he was paralysed. His diaphragm went into spasm, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t protest, couldn’t even be sick. The gorilla let him fall forward, his face striking the table, where it lay in the spillage of the beer while he gasped for breath.
‘You ask too much, Mr Jones,’ the third man sighed. ‘You say you want help, but I think you already have too many friends. Like Major Sydykov. And you already know about our prison, you were there this morning. I think you are a friend of the President, too, not the sort to be a friend of ours. So what are you really doing here?’ His tone was dry, unemotional, not soaked in accusation, yet there was no doubting the menace in his words.
Harry forced his face up from the table, his eyes bleary. ‘I’m looking for someone,’ he gasped.
‘Yes, yes, these Horsemen. So you have said.’
Harry shook his head, the spilled beer dribbling down his forehead. ‘No. An American. His name is Zac Kravitz.’
As his stomach muscles went into spasm once more, in the background the pianist changed the tune, beginning to thump out his version of ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Up to that point it had been a particular favourite of Harry’s.
‘I think Zac’s in there somewhere, in the Castle,’ Harry continued, still choking. ‘He’s the only thing I’m interested in.’
The man examined the end of his cigarette once more, frowning as he discovered it had died. He relit it, sucking in a slow lungful of nicotine. ‘So, you are a friend of the unfortunate American?’
The words revived Harry like a shower of ice water. He pushed himself back in his chair, disregarding the threat of further violence, his voice urgent. ‘You know him? He’s there?’
‘Oh, yes. He’s there. And in very deep trouble.’ The man stared through the purple tobacco smoke, suddenly perplexed. ‘Yet you are
‘This is the first time I’ve known – for sure, you see. That helps.’
‘How can that be?’ the man asked, picking a fleck of tobacco from his tongue.
‘No bloody point in trying to break a man out of prison if he’s not there.’
The other man began to laugh, drily. ‘You want to break into the Castle?’ He wrinkled his brow in curiosity. ‘Then your defence is complete. You are clearly mad.’
‘It’s why I wanted to find you,’ Harry gasped, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. He began spluttering again; too much smoke. God, it hurt, his stomach muscles weren’t what they once had been. But the pain had been worthwhile. As he stared across the table, through bleary eyes, Harry felt sure he had found the leader of the Horsemen. ‘I want your help to get him out.’
The humour died on the other man’s face. ‘What foolishness is this?’ The tone was harsh, his lip curled. He suspected a trap.
‘My friend’s in trouble. I want him out. And I’m willing to pay, a very large amount of money. It’s the same deal I offered Amir Beg last night, except you will have the added reward of causing huge embarrassment to the government.’
‘You expect us to do your dirty work for you?’ the man spat.
‘No, not at all. I want you to help me. Whatever happens, whatever we do, I’m part of it.’
‘But you are a politician,’ the man sneered.
‘I’ve had my moments.’ Harry picked up a paper napkin and wiped the beer and sweat from his face. He was feeling better. They were talking rather than breaking his neck.
‘You would risk your life for him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And why would you do that, Mr Jones?’ It was a fresh voice, that of the waitress. For the first time Harry realized that she hadn’t left, had witnessed everything from the background. Now the men were looking towards her, waiting for her lead. It left Harry confused.
Why would he risk his life? It was an excellent question, one all soldiers are asked, but normally respond to with little more than a quiet smile. ‘I owe him. He saved the life of my wife many years ago. But it’s even more than that. Difficult to explain.’ Not the thing most soldiers talked about. Unless you’d been there, been part of it, how could you understand?
‘I’m a patient woman. No need to rush.’ She took a seat in the middle of the table, like a judge. Her dark eyes had an air of authority, of experience. It wasn’t just the grey at her temples but a sense that she knew about life and was accustomed to its many lies. An air of profound sadness clung to her.
‘Zac and I, we fought together. Put our lives on the line for each other.’
‘Friends.’
‘More than that, much more. A soldier’s code.’
‘Tell me about it – please.’
Her voice was soft, but insistent. The rest were silent, waiting on him, and on her. Even the cigarette had been allowed to die. They were putting Harry to the test.
‘OK,’ he began, struggling to ignore the pain that was still burning through his gut, ‘it’s like this. In my country you join up, become a soldier, for many reasons – the excitement, the challenge, those strange things men call their ideals, or maybe it’s because you’re just trying to escape from what or where you are.’
‘You have a choice? Interesting.’
‘Then, one day, you find yourself out there facing the enemy. And they’re trying to kill you. Rip the life from your body. You’re never the same after that. How do you put it into words? The bullets are tearing at the air around your head, your heart is flooding with fear, every instinct screams at you to run, to get out of there, to save yourself, but . . . you stay. Why? Sure, for Queen and country, and for the people back home, all those things you’ve sworn to protect, but it’s difficult to find much of a focus when you watch men torn to pieces and know you’re supposed to be next on the list. You stay put, not for your ideals, or because anyone orders you to, and no way for the money you’re being paid. You stay for the other guys.
‘You’re in it together, you see. This is what you’ve chosen, and there’s an instinct even more powerful than self-preservation, a fear even greater than that of your own death. A soldier would rather face a firing squad a thousand times over than just once have to look his own colleagues in the eye knowing he had failed them. You share the risk with them because they share it with you, and together you’re part of something that is so much more powerful and important than a collection of individuals.’
‘I think all of us here share that, Mr Jones,’ she said gently.
‘It’s how you measure yourself, as a man. The loneliest place on earth is looking in a mirror and being ashamed of who you see.’
‘Some people never bother to look in that mirror.’
‘I guess I must be the vain type.’
She steepled her fingers in front of her mouth, preparing a verdict. ‘Mr Jones, you must know that they intend to execute your friend. He has only a short time to live.’
It jolted him, more pain, yet somehow it was no surprise. ‘Why? What has he done?’
‘This is Ta’argistan. Reason is not required.’
Harry turned, confronted them all, eye to eye, before coming back at the woman. ‘Then you must help me! You are the last chance I have of getting him out alive.’
‘I think you are right,’ she said. ‘But we cannot.’
‘I was told you were the opposition.’
‘Yes, an opposition, of sorts, but not a resistance movement. We have no army. We are teachers, lawyers, bakers, postmen, engineers, taxi drivers. Even bar owners. Simple people, not soldiers. We try to fight with ideas, not AK-47s.’
‘You must help!’
‘He may be your friend, Mr Jones, and I pity him, but he is your friend, not ours.’ Her voice grew firmer as he pressed, while desperation began creeping into his.
‘I’ll pay you. Richly.’
‘We are not gangsters, either! We cannot help you.’ And the gorilla’s hand was on Harry’s shoulder.
‘I won’t accept this,’ he said, clenching his fists in frustration. ‘I want to talk to the leader of your Horsemen.’
Her hooded eyes flinched. ‘But you cannot. He is dead.’
He stared at her in bewilderment.
‘My husband . . .’ The words and their memories were clearly a struggle. ‘They took him. Last spring, when the snows began to melt.’
‘And since then?’ But he could see the answer in her face. Despair. Confusion. And defeat. The widow sat in his chair, but she would not take his place.
‘I am so sorry,’ he whispered.
Cold, dead eyes stared back at him.
‘But that is why you must understand,’ he pressed. ‘Zac, he saved my wife’s life.’ He thought he saw a flicker of some emotion in her features, but whether it was of sympathy or resentment, he could not tell. ‘What price would you pay, to get your husband back?’
‘Goodnight, Mr Jones.’
Harry was hauled to his feet. He tried to fight back, but it was pointless. The curtain was drawn back once more, its metal rings clattering along the rail like the bolts of the rifles in a firing squad. Only at the last moment did he turn upon her, with violence in his tone.
‘You say you fight with ideas. You want ideas?’ he spat. ‘I’ll give you one. From a man named Edmund Burke.’
‘An Englishman?’
‘A stubborn bloody Irishman, as it happens, and all the better for it. Nearly three hundred years ago. “The only thing that’s necessary for evil to triumph,” he said, “is for good men to do nothing”.’ Harry didn’t even try to hide his contempt. ‘I think he meant women, too,’ he shouted as he was bustled out.
A chair went flying, Russian curses were tossed about. Then a new voice joined in.
‘Mr Jones.’
Harry was almost out of earshot when he heard his name being called. It was the young man with the shoulder-length hair. Everyone stopped. H
‘How would you have done it? The escape?’
‘No, Bektour!’ the woman said sharply. ‘Such knowledge is dangerous. We don’t want to know.’
‘It’s not the information that’s dangerous, Mother.’ ‘Even so.’
He shook his head, his neatly brushed hair rustling around his shoulders. ‘Information is power, Mother,’ he said softly. ‘You know we cannot leave it to them. Father would have understood.’
Harry remembered the kids huddled together in the other alcoves around computers, sharing monitors, often squeezed together two on a chair. ‘So that’s what you’re doing here,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’re running an Internet group.’
‘We are what the comics call cyber-activists, Mr Jones,’ the young man said. His English was excellent, with a slight American tinge. ‘We set up websites, form chat groups, offer news, all the sort of stuff the authorities try to cover up.’
His mother snorted in exasperation.
‘Yes, it’s not like the old ways, and it has its risks,’ he continued. ‘They keep trying to close us down, but they have difficulty in finding us in cyberspace, and when they get close, we move on. We use foreign servers, keep changing our encryption programs, we constantly do battle with their blocking software. It’s like a game of tennis, first they serve, then we return. They try hard but they’re not very good at it. We are better, even though we only wear T-shirts and jeans.’
‘They won’t bury you in cyberspace if they catch you, Bektour. They’ll bury you right here, alongside your father,’ his mother snapped.
‘In which case there’s nothing much more to lose by listening to what Mr Jones has to say,’ Bektour replied, with all the politeness of a loving son but with a sense of weariness that implied this was another round in a very old argument. ‘Please, Mr Jones,’ he said, indicating he should take his seat once more. ‘Humour me, and forgive my mother.’
Harry was angry, hurting, in two minds. Why indulge these people with their family squabbles? Yet it meant, for the moment, at least, he wouldn’t be thrown out into the snow and left entirely on his own.