to the guns I knew. I found the safety and switched it off.
The problem with these huge bloody doors was that you couldn't hear a thing through them. Probably useful if you wanted to stage a little private torturing, or a discreet orgy, but fuck all use if you wanted to sneak around the place undetected. I pressed my ear to one of the doors but there was no way of knowing what was happening on the other side. I was about to climb out the balcony when I noticed something slightly askew in one of the wall patterns in the far corner; a tiny line that didn't quite fit the design. I ran across to it and found a concealed door with a metal ring flush to the wall. I popped it out and pulled, revealing a narrow, gloomy back staircase, presumably installed for the servants.
I stepped inside, pulled the door closed behind me and made my way downstairs, gun at the ready.
I passed one exit, which I gently cracked open. It led into a large kitchen on the ground floor. There was no- one inside, so I took the opportunity to slip out and find a couple of good knives which I slipped into my waistband. I then returned to the staircase and continued my descent. Eventually the stairs ended at another door, beyond which lay the damp concrete corridor and the cells. I crept along the corridor to the point where it met the cell block at a kind of T-junction. Back to the wall, I risked a quick glimpse into the prison run and saw only one guard, sitting reading near the main entrance. He was facing me, about fifty metres away. No way to take him out silently. I was just going to have to hope for the best.
I shouldered the M16, took a deep breath, and steeped into his line of sight. He didn't look up; too engrossed in Tom Clancy. I walked towards him, gun sighted square on his chest as I did so. I was half way to him when he turned the page, and in that instant he registered my presence. He looked up at me in surprise and opened his mouth to challenge me. I squeezed the trigger softly and sent a round spinning straight at his chest.
And missed.
I'm not accustomed to missing, but I'd never fired an M16 before so I was unfamiliar with its quirks. The gun pulled upwards much more than I'd expected. The bullet hit the wall beside his shoulder, sending out a puff of white plaster. My surprise at missing caused me to hesitate, and in the instant before I could resight and fire again my target said: 'Jesus, Lee, what the hell are you doing?'
Which was unexpected.
Ten minutes later, with a knife at my throat and my right arm pinioned behind my back, I was led out of the palace into the dark orange of sunset. The palace looked oddly unimpressive from outside. Partly this was because it had been shot to shit more than once, partly it was that all the opulence inside wasn't reflected in the blocky, uninspired exterior. The effect was that of walking out of a cinema into the street; glamour and colour replaced by dullness and dust.
The man with the knife – the man who I'd failed to shoot – marched me straight ahead, past the wonderful gardens and on to a paved path that led from the main palace building to a smaller, but still very large outbuilding (a palacette, perhaps, or a palacini?) There were a few of them dotted around inside the thick stone walls that ringed the enormous compound. There were fields too, scrubby and untended with a few lonely trees, probably once intended as orchards but never irrigated properly and now ignored.
It was a grim place. Badly planned, hardly finished, abandoned, fought over and now occupied, baking in the relentless heat. But that garden somehow seemed to have survived. Perhaps it was because I was so nervous, but I fixated on the garden as I walked away from it, daydreaming about its pools and arches. But I wasn't going to somewhere calm and cool and green. I was going to be executed.
There were two other soldiers escorting me, and two more at the open doors of the building ahead. We entered a large reception hall, lit by the amber light that flooded through an enormous lattice window. Blythe was there, seated on a seventies style sofa; polyester covered foam squares on a basic metal frame, all in a garish swirling pattern of green and brown. My father sat beside him, hands cuffed to the frame. In front of them stood something that came up to my shoulders, covered in a white sheet out of which snaked thick cables that coiled across the mosaic floor and out of the door we had just entered by.
'Thank you, Major,' said Blythe. 'You can release the prisoner.'
The knife was removed and my arm freed. The man who'd been steering me stepped back into the lengthening shadows.
'You all right, Lee?'
'Yeah Dad, I'm fine.'
'You are anything but fine, son,' said Blythe.
'He's not your son,' spat my father.
'I told him that, Dad, but he wouldn't listen. Maybe he wants to adopt me.'
'I already have a son, Sergeant Keegan,' replied Blythe. 'One more than you, in a few minutes.'
'If you touch one hair…'
'Soldier,' barked Blythe.
The nearest of his troops yelled 'Sir!' in reponse.
'If Sergeant Keegan utters another threat you will shoot him dead.'
'Sir, yes, Sir!' The soldier raised his rifle and stepped forward, keeping the muzzle a few inches from my dad's head. Blythe glanced at the soldier and said witheringly: 'Not there, you'll cover me in brains. Stand behind him.'
'Sir, yes, Sir!'
I looked into Dad's eyes and I could see him willing me to be strong and calm. I could also see his panic. I smiled at him.
'Lee, you surprise me, you really do,' said the general, turning his attention back to me. 'I thought you were going to be the answer to my prayers. Instead you kill two of my men in what I can only call very creative ways, and you almost manage to make it three. I'm impressed.'
The look on Dad's face was a picture; a mixture of horror, disbelief and pride. He mouthed 'really?' and I nodded, matter of fact.
'I don't like being bullied, General,' I said.
'I can tell. Anyway, here's what we're going to do. You're going to tell me where your father's band of merry men is hiding or I am going to kill you.'
'You're going to kill me anyway.'
He laughed at that, a rich, warm laugh that contained no humour whatsoever.
'I surely am,' he said. 'But I can make it quick or slow, and given how long you lasted on the waterboard I'm thinking you don't have the stomach for slow.'
He wasn't wrong.
I considered my options and the general waited for my response, studying my face closely as I did so.
'What constitutes quick?' I asked.
'I like to give people a choice.'
'A choice?'
'Yes. You can be shot, hanged, electrocuted or given a lethal injection. Your call.'
Again I considered. Again he watched me do so.
'Well, I've been shot, and I've been hanged, and I really don't like needles, so I reckon I'll go for the electric chair please.'
As soon as I said it I realised I'd made a mistake – he hadn't mentioned a chair. Dad noticed too, and his eyes narrowed as he cocked his head at me curiously, trying to work out what was going on.
Blythe, however, missed it.
'All right, the chair it is. It is a classic, after all. But first…'
'They're in the souk. It's a courtyard behind a carpet shop with a green sign with red letters on it. I know they're planning to stay there until tomorrow night. That's the best I can tell you.'
Blythe nodded, satisfied.
'And why did you give yourself up?' he asked. 'They must have told you about me, you must have known what would happen. Did you really think you could rescue your dad single handed? Can you possibly be that naive?'
I shrugged. 'What can I say? I have this thing about walking into the compounds of my enemies and baiting them. It worked once before, I figured why not try it again.'
Blythe stood up and walked over to me, leaning close into my face and studying me.
'I know you're lying,' he said softly. 'You're not that stupid. And I'm curious, but not that curious. You are a
