were travelling together. I wanted to go to them all, and I wanted to go to them with her.
The gearbox made a muffled complaint and the car slowed. We turned onto much rougher ground. I curled up tight.
The engine cut out.
Both front doors opened and there was the crunch of shoes on stones.
The tailgate was lifted and the blanket pulled away. The cold air hit me like a slap in the bollocks.
6
I was dragged past another vehicle, across a stretch of wet grass strewn with rocks and scree.
The night wind chilled me to the bone; my skin was like a freshly plucked chicken’s.
We stopped and I heard the sound of a heavy kick on wood. A door swung open and I was pulled through it into what felt like a sauna. The air was heavy with the odour of damp and bottled gas.
I stumbled forward a few paces then felt pressure on my shoulders. My arse connected with a plastic chair. Above me, I could hear the gentle hiss of burning gas. I leaned forward, clenching my teeth, waiting for them to give me the good news. I expected to get yanked upright any second, but they let me stay as I was.
Then, even more surprisingly, they pulled off the sack.
I kept my head down but my eyes went into overdrive. I was in a small room with rough stone walls and a compacted earth floor. In front of me was a blue plastic collapsible picnic table with metal legs, which looked as though it had come straight out of an Argos catalogue. Two hurricane lamps sat at either end of it, their shadows dancing across the walls. My passport and Charlie’s lay in between them.
The driver and his mate were behind me, breathing heavily after the exertion of frog-marching me from the car.
A pair of US desert boots appeared on the other side of the table. The chinos above them looked as though they’d been inflated by a high-pressure hose. A thin-barrelled.22 semi-automatic was pointing straight at my forehead, held rock-steady in a latex-gloved hand.
When I saw who it belonged to, the Georgian secret police suddenly seemed like the soft option.
My luck had finally run out.
Towering over me was at least 250 pounds of fat, topped off by an all-too-familiar whitewall haircut.
I didn’t like the way he was holding the weapon, but it didn’t look nearly as scary as he did.
Jim D. ‘Call Me Buster’ Bastendorf, the man we’d rechristened Bastard at Waco, had hardly changed a bit in the twelve years since I’d last seen him.
7
I looked down again, but kept my eyes on the weapon.
All of a sudden, my hands felt strangely comfortable round my head. All the same, I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. I had fucked up and had to accept whatever followed.
If he wanted me to beg, though, he had another thought coming. Fuck him. He was going to do what he was going to do, whatever I did, so what was the point?
I heard him move around the table. His nostrils whistled as he bent closer. Then I felt him jam the muzzle hard into my right hand.
I flinched as the working parts clicked. I couldn’t help it.
I opened my eyes. Bastard was still above me. He liked how I’d reacted; it made him smile.
‘Now, son, who the fuck are you?’
‘You’ve got my passport. Give it a read.’
He looked down at me. I knew from his expression that he still hadn’t made the connection between me, Anthony the Brit fag scientist, and a compound full of dead Davidians, and I wasn’t going to help him out. I was in enough trouble already.
‘You’re no American. Where you from?’ His brow furrowed as he studied my face and let his brain flick back a few pages. ‘I know you from somewhere, don’t I?’
‘Listen, we have you on film, handing over equipment at the Marriott in Istanbul and—’
The first punch was to my right temple and caught me square on. I managed to stay on the chair, but it was a while before my head stopped ringing and splinters of light stopped dancing in front of my eyes.
‘Shut the fuck up! You’re in deep shit, boy! The police want your ass, big-time. You’re responsible for the murder of their answer to that Bob fucking Geldof guy, and they don’t see the funny side of that. And you know what? I’ll give those fucks just exactly what they want if you don’t offer me a little co-operation.’
He hit me twice more. My hands took some of the pain but the second blow took me down onto the hard earth floor and came fucking close to dislocating my shoulder.
‘That’s what I want, co-operation!’
I tensed, eyes closed, knees up to my chest, ready for more.
I didn’t look up.
Bastard was a difficult man to ignore, but in my opinion it was well worth the effort. The heat on my back was good and I made the most of it while I waited for the starbursts in my head to burn out.
The two boys leaned down either side of me and heaved me back up onto the chair. I felt the cold steel of a blade against the right side of my chin. I flinched again, but was patted gently on top of my head.
‘Relax, Nick. The guys are just having a little fun.’ He’d put his Mr Nice Guy hat on, and although it was never going to fit, at least it made a change. ‘They’re just gonna cut the tape off you. Relax, son. We don’t wanna risk slicing out those baby blues now, do we?’
They dug a pair of scissors into the gaffer tape and started to cut and pull. As the tape was yanked away, it took clumps of my hair and eyebrows with it. There was a positive side to it, though; I felt the blood rushing back into my arms.
‘Sit up, Nick. Enjoy the party.’
I tipped my head a little and looked behind me. A patio heater fuelled by a king-size propane gas bottle was doing its bit for global warming, and the two boys were the shiny-headed bouncers I’d seen in the Pajero outside the Marriott. Both were still in black, and the one on the right was giving his gigs a polish.
‘How you doing, Nick, you OK?’ Bastard drew up another plastic chair on his side of the table, all sweetness and light. The weapon had gone but the gloves remained.
An aluminium thermos now sat between the lamps. The passports had gone.
‘Go on, son. Smell the coffee. It’s good and strong.’
I flexed my fingers, leaned forward, took the flask, and started to unscrew the lid. At times like this you’ve got to take whatever’s on offer. You’ve no idea when it’s going to come your way again. Besides, I’d been gagging for a brew for hours.
The two boys behind me shuffled from one foot to the other. I couldn’t decide whether they were just enjoying the heat, or readying themselves for the next bout in the programme. Whatever, it was clear they were still in the red corner, and I was still in the blue.
The venue for tonight’s entertainment was, as far as I could tell, an old farmhouse with exposed roof beams and tiles. The holes in the wall, where I guessed there had once been windows, were blocked with grey nylon turnip sacks like the one I’d been wearing.
I poured hot black coffee into two plastic cups and pushed one across the table with a smile. It smelled really good. ‘Where’s Charlie?’
He took a sip. He knew what I was doing. If I got drugged, he did too.
The coffee stung the cuts on my tongue, but so what? It tasted as good as it smelled, and warmed me all the way down to my stomach.
‘Any chance of my clothes?’
