wood and kicks – he could absorb it. Bloody pain was manageable. It wouldn’t last long. The defiance was melded with sheer obstinacy. He was of the age when kids had gone to see black-and-white films, had read close-print books and knew of Odette Hallowes, and Yeo-Thomas, who was the White Rabbit, and of Violette Szabo. He was of the age when he had passed judgement on naval personnel captured in the Shatt al-Arab waterway who had seemed to thank the bastards of the Revolutionary Guard Corps for the humiliations and mock-executions and had almost apologised for navigation cock-ups. The stories of childhood had stayed with him. The memory of news bulletins, and older men’s disgust, was sharp. He told the goon nothing.
There was a table in the room. There had been a moment when the blindfold had been stripped off and he had seen a clean notepad on the table, with two pencils. The top page was blank. The bastard expected to fill it when he, Foxy, did the canary bit. The page stayed blank. It was his target to keep it so.
The goon did not know who he was. The goon moved on. What was his mission? He was asked in Farsi, Arabic and English, then again in Farsi and finally in Pashto. The wood was raised as he was given a second to show willingness to answer. He could see the wood but his eyes were misted and narrowed from the blows. He could have said: A colleague and I are on a deniable mission to observe the home of Rashid Armajan, bomb-maker, and using techniques of surveillance as practised in covert rural observation post procedures, with a shotgun mike. We learned that Armajan and his wife were headed for Lubeck where she has a medical consultation and he has an appointment with. ..
It was about time drifting, and he didn’t know how much was needed. What was his mission? Maybe, already, the Engineer had reached Germany. Maybe, the following morning, afternoon or evening he would be targeted – if Foxy answered the question What is your mission?. Telephone or radio calls, text messages or emails would fly, and a shield would be placed in front of the man. He would be inside a security bubble and the chance would be gone. A shite-face would say that Foxy Foulkes had not delivered and there’d be a cock-sucker on hand to agree. Pig obstinate, and knew it because Liz – first wife – had told him so.
The wood came down. The goon bastard swung it with full force. Foxy’s problem – there were many but the one topping the list: he didn’t know where the blow would land and couldn’t wriggle to avoid its impact. It was on the shins. No flesh there, just skin on bone. Done with the flat of the wood to inflict pain, not the edge, which might have broken the tibia. He might not say anything but he was near to screaming.
The wood was lifted again. Foxy looked up at the face. He didn’t see hate, only frustration, and the wood came down. He jack-knifed because it was in the groin, on the shrivelled little thing that Ellie – two months back – had laughed at when he’d walked naked into the bedroom from the bathroom. She’d turned her back on him and gone back to her book. Great waves of heaving, wanting to vomit, convulsed Foxy. The wood went up again and he couldn’t help himself. He no longer had the strength to cross his legs. He was humiliated, helpless and the pain sources competed, from his feet to the crown of his skull. He didn’t know how much time they needed.
He was hit there again.
The questions came in a babble of languages. He didn’t answer.
He used the tactic he had been told of.
He hit the prisoner again with the wood. He couldn’t see the man’s privates but he could aim for the stomach, and was rewarded with a grunt. The breath bubbled blood in the mouth. When he had been in the north of Iraq, before the injury, men had been taken by the resistance – under supervision of the al-Quds – and denounced as collaborators. Those who served the Great Satan were condemned, but first they were encouraged – with planks, boots, lit cigarettes and fingernail extraction – to tell of their contacts, the safe-houses where they met intelligence officers, and the targets they spied on. Some died prematurely under questioning. Others talked in hoarse whispers and had to be carried outside to be shot. A few surrendered what information was wanted at the sight of the match lighting the first cigarette and walked to the killing place. Sometimes electricity was used but not often, or a man was hooded and made to kneel, then would hear a pistol being armed. He would feel the muzzle against the back of his head, then hear the click as the hammer came down. There was no bullet in the chamber, but he would foul his trousers and wet himself. They did that as much for amusement as to break a man.
He sweated. No window, the door shut, no fan. He had started with blows that had not exerted him and had won nothing. Now he hit with all the strength he could muster. They had been very few, the collaborators who had not bent under a beating.
His father had told Mansoor of what was done in the gaol at Ahvaz. The bombers and assassins – Ahvaz Arabs – suffered heavily as the interrogators built pictures of the networks controlling them, and were not pretty to view before they went to the gallows.
Mansoor had no doubt that pain loosened tongues and broke resolve. The frustration: he did not know who he had.
Mansoor had assumed that the man now stripped and spreadeagled in front of him, unable to protect himself, would talk after a brief display of defiance. The message sent by radio to the security section of the IRGC had not identified him as an al-Quds Brigade officer, although his name was on it, and his location at the border post on the sector that faced the Iraqi town of al-Qurnah. There, An intruder has been apprehended. Investigations are ongoing, and an officer with an escort should be sent tomorrow morning to take the prisoner into custody in Ahvaz. All deliberately vague.
The frustration grew with each blow he struck, and the silence that followed it. Twice, he had crouched beside the bloodied face and put his ear near to where the front teeth had been battered out because he was certain the man would answer him. He had heard coughing and groans. He did not know the identity of the man, or the purpose of his mission. It would have helped Mansoor had he gone outside, into the evening air, taken a chair close to a fire that would disperse the mosquitoes, and not allowed anyone close to him. Had he sat, sipped some juice and calmed, matters now clouded would have clarified. He stayed in the room, used the wood again, and yelled the questions. Who was the man? What was his mission? No answer came.
It had been a dream of glory.
In the dream, men came from Ahvaz in the morning. A prisoner would be brought from the cell at the back of the barracks and given to them. With the prisoner there would be an envelope containing a full confession, listing his name, his operation, his controller. The light would be coming up. His men would be armed, ready, and he would tell the senior investigators who had travelled from Ahvaz that he had no more time to talk with them as he would now be making a complex search of the area and would conduct a thorough follow-up. In the dream, he was congratulated for his diligence, and shown deference. In the dream, later, further praise came from his own unit. He had dreamed of the praise, had even recited in silence the words of congratulation showering down on him.
He hit the man again, and again, and again, drew more blood and darkened more bruises. The control had gone from Mansoor’s voice and the questions were no longer soft-spoken but shouted, high-pitched.
He lit another cigarette.
He started again, at the beginning, and asked the first question: who was he? As he had at the beginning, he dragged on the cigarette, let the tip glow, then bent over the stomach. His hand crossed the skin and went towards the hair. The urine ran. He pressed the cigarette down. The man screamed.
Badger heard him.
The scream – Foxy’s – was a knife cut in the darkness. Before, there had been the dulled sounds of the frogs, the coots and the ducks, and of the pair of pigs that still rooted in the edges of the reed bed. There were sprints by water birds and territory scuffles, but Foxy’s scream was a slicing wire, and another followed it.
He sat very still and very tense.
Badger would go when he had to. Then he would switch on his communications and make a last staccato call. He would give an ‘expected time of arrival’ at the extraction point, but not yet.
He expected that the dawn would come, the sun would poke up, announcing one more stinking hot day, and he would see – in the magnification of his binoculars – the arrival of military transport, lorries and jeeps. Soldiers, not these crap guys but trained men, would spill out and the search would begin, with cordon lines and others sent forward at the sides to give cover fire. Then it would be right for him to quit. He might also see, before he slipped into the water behind him and the forest thickness of the reeds, them taking Foxy away. He might be on a stretcher or might be dragged. If he was upright, his head would be slumped and a cloth bound around it. The blood, the cuts and bruises would be easy to see, even at that distance. He would have done what he could, stayed to the limits of obligation, and he would track back towards the extraction point. He was confident he would be ahead of the follow-up force – and two things were certain.
Two? Just two.
