The bolts slid back and the door squeaked open. She closed her eyes and began to count under her breath. She had to be strong, for her father, for Nathan, for herself. She could do this. Whatever they asked her to do, she could survive it.
‘Up!’ Tariq’s voice ordered.
A pair of hands grabbed her left arm and hauled her from the floor. She winced as the fingers dug into her skin, feeling it bruise.
‘Where are you taking me? What are we doing? Where are we going?’ she shouted out for Nathan’s benefit.
‘Shut up! Move!’ Tariq demanded.
She made him drag her up the corridor. She knew what she was going to be asked to do, and she knew the plan was to cooperate, but she didn’t want to make it easy for them.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked Tariq.
She had to connect with them on a human level, that’s what Nathan had told her. Despite their beliefs, hurting, maiming, and killing was wrong, and she had to appeal to their moral core. Most people still had one, no matter how deep their involvement with dark practices. Try to sensitize them and connect with their humanity. She wasn’t sure she had ever tried that with anyone she cared about, let alone someone she despised.
‘Shut up!’
‘Is that the only English you know?’ Autumn asked. ‘Because back at the church, you seemed quite fluent.’
The comment earned her a thump in the back with the gun/machete/broom handle, and she took a breath and let out a cough.
She was pushed forward then, and another set of arms took hold of her and propelled her downwards. She found the seat of a chair and her hood was pulled from her head. Straight away, the light in the room distorted all her senses. She blinked and blinked again and tried to focus on her new surroundings and the people in them.
‘Miss Raine,’ the leader addressed her.
She looked up at him. He wore the uniform shawl over his head and face, and sunglasses covered his eyes. He looked like an archetypal terrorist. If she wasn’t so terrified by the sight of the guns the other members of the group were holding, it might have been amusing. But she knew how feared As-Wana was by the world. The group was eclipsing the horrors committed by Al-Qaeda. Hundreds had died already, and they were persistent. The threat never went away.
‘We will not hurt you, Miss Raine, as long as you do exactly what we say. We are not bad men. We just need to speak with your father.’
‘My father’s dead.’
Autumn turned away from him, but as she moved her head he grabbed her battered cheek and snapped her head back toward him. She gasped and met his eyes. They were black, like bottomless holes of dark earth, no sign of light or life.
‘Do not dare to think we are foolish!’
‘I don’t… I wouldn’t… I’m sorry,’ Autumn whimpered.
The pain was too much, her resolve was slipping already. Who was she trying to kid that she had this in hand?
‘You will look right into the camera,’ the leader said, and thrust a piece of paper at her, ‘and you will read this.’
Thirty-Six
There was the small edge of the head of a nail, well, he assumed that’s what it was, sticking out just slightly from the baseboard. He needed to get out of the bindings. It would take a while to loosen the rope enough to start working his hands out. He also needed to take care not to make it look tampered with in case they came back for him later.
He rubbed the rope against the nail and thought about Nigel Farlow. That man had changed everything for him back then. Could the name and some of the knowledge that man had imparted end up saving him now?
He felt one small twine come free. It was like a jailor had opened the gates.
*
Autumn looked at the writing and tried to decipher it. Some words were smudged and crossed out. It looked to be in English, but it was poorly written and almost illegible.
‘If you read it, no harm will come to you,’ the leader said.
She could feel his eyes on her, but she concentrated on the words on the page.
This wasn’t a plea for her father to come. This was a statement, a list of his ‘wrong-doings,’ which would be paid for with her life. It was supposed to be subliminal, she guessed, but what if it was too subliminal? What if her father didn’t believe them? What if he thought national security was more important than her? It was more important than her, obviously, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be sacrificed for it. And what if he didn’t even see the plea? They weren’t going to be broadcasting it on the BBC World News or NBC, were they? What if her father didn’t watch the Iraqi/Afghan/Arab television networks? She didn’t even know exactly where As-Wana originated from!
‘It says here, you’re going to kill me, but you just told me no harm will come to me. Which is it?’ Autumn asked, trying to steady her voice.
She locked a gaze with the leader of the group, but it was hard to know whether he was looking back at her because of the dark sunglasses.
Across the room, her eyes moved to Tariq. She knew it was him because of the shoes he wore. He was toying with the strap on his machine gun, and she couldn’t stop herself from counting his movements. One… two… three… four… five.
She let out a cough, and the noise was met with the blunt end of a gun punched into her already bruised cheek. She retched, and her body folded in two on the chair as she hugged her legs to her.
‘Do not anger me! Do not try to be clever!’ he screamed, his voice only slightly muffled by the scarf covering his face.
‘I’m sorry! I’m
