Spider Shepherd 11 - White Lies (17 page)

‘So how do you know when it’s really over?’ asked Kassar. ‘How do you know it’s not a trick?’

‘Right before the exercise starts, an officer, usually high-ranking like a major, stands in front of you. He says that the exercise isn’t over until he stands in front of you and says, “The exercise is over. Well done.” That’s the only way the exercise can be ended, no matter what else they say.’

‘And how does it feel, when they’re torturing you?’

‘It’s not real torture,’ said Shepherd. ‘They don’t cut off your toes or use branding irons. It’s more psychological pressure and making you uncomfortable. It’s bad, but it’s bearable. You just go into shut-down mode.’

‘Shut-down mode?’

‘You become the grey man. You don’t fight them, you don’t argue, you’re polite and you call them “sir”. You don’t make eye contact, you just make yourself appear as weak and as inconsequential as possible. And you wait for it to end.’

Kassar sipped his water. ‘And you got through it?’

‘Sure. Most people do. The ones that fail tend to fail because they’re not fit enough, or the jungle gets to them.’

‘They train you in the jungle?’

‘Sure, they always have done. It’s probably the toughest part of selection. You can train for the hill walking and navigation and stuff, but nothing prepares you for the jungle.’

‘You know that the word jungle comes from Sanskrit?
Jangala
.’

‘I did not know that.’

‘A lot of English words have come out of this part of the world, mostly from the days of the British Raj,’ said Kassar. ‘But don’t worry, we won’t be fighting in the jungle. The north-west of the country is desert.’

‘That’s good to know,’ said Shepherd. ‘I was never a fan of jungles.’

The door crashed open. Raj lay with his back against the far wall of his cell. He didn’t open his eyes but drew his knees up to his chest and put his hands either side of his head. He’d lost track of time again. It could have been days or hours since the last beating. He remembered getting up to urinate in the bucket at some point and his urine had been red.

He heard footsteps across the rough concrete floor and he braced himself, even though he knew that it made no difference. He flinched as a hand grabbed his shoulder, then his arms were seized and he was yanked to his feet. He opened his eyes. It was the two big men. The one with the mole by his eye and the one with the pockmarked skin. Mole and Acne, he’d named them. Mole was the one who liked to kick him in the kidneys. Acne’s favourite technique was to stamp on Raj’s ankles.

‘Just kill me,’ said Raj, through swollen lips. ‘I don’t care any more.’

‘As you wish,’ said Mole.

They dragged him across the floor and down the corridor. This time they didn’t go to the room where he’d previously been questioned by Mahmud. Instead they turned left. Raj tried to walk but his legs had turned to jelly and he couldn’t support his weight. Mole and Acne didn’t seem to care whether he walked or not and simply dragged him along between them. Raj felt the skin scraping off his toes but there was no noticeable increase in pain as his feet already felt as if they were on fire.

He was barely aware of passing three wooden doors with small barred windows at head height before they reached a barred gate. Sunlight streamed through the bars, blinding Raj. Mole unlocked the gate and pushed it open.

The two men dragged Raj into a courtyard. He blinked in the blinding sun then focused on a group of men in camouflage fatigues with grey and white keffiyeh scarves wrapped around their faces. There was a wooden chair in front of them and Raj was thrown on to it. One of the masked men gave Mole a roll of duct tape and he used it to bind Raj to the chair. He was too exhausted to resist.

Mahmud appeared from a doorway on the other side of the courtyard. He walked slowly towards Raj. He was wearing sunglasses but he removed them as he stood in front of Raj.

‘Are you ready to meet your maker, Raj?’

Raj started hyperventilating, his nostrils flaring with every hasty breath.

Mahmud waved a hand at the group of masked men. ‘They are prepared to cut off your head, Raj. They know you are a liar and a betrayer and that you deserve to die. Is that what you want, Raj? Do you want to die? Do you want to meet your maker as a liar and a betrayer?’

‘I just want to go home,’ said Raj. ‘I don’t know anything, I can’t tell you anything. I’m no use to you.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Mahmud. ‘There is much you can tell me, and telling me will go some way to making up for the lies you have told. You know what the Qur’an says about lying?’

Raj kept staring at the ground.

‘And do not cloak the truth with falsehood,’ said Mahmud. ‘Do not suppress the truth knowingly.’ He placed his hand under Raj’s chin and gently lifted his head. ‘It is time to stop suppressing the truth, Raj. The truth is the only thing that will save you.’

Raj tried to turn away but Mahmud gripped his chin so hard that his nails bit into his flesh. ‘Is this really how you want to die, Raj?’ he said.

Raj stared back at him but didn’t answer. Eventually Mahmud released his grip on Raj’s chin. Tears were running down Raj’s face and he was finding it difficult to focus.

‘The members of your group here, are any of them spies for MI6?’ asked Mahmud.

Raj said nothing.

‘It is a simple question, brother,’ said Mahmud.

Raj was breathing heavily. He had been sure that he was about to be killed and was feeling light headed, as if his soul had left his body and had only partly returned. Nothing seemed real and he half expected to wake up at any moment and find himself back in his bedroom in London.

‘Listen to me, Raj,’ said Mahmud softly. ‘Listen to me carefully. I have given you enough time for reflection. You need to start talking to me now. You need to tell me everything. I know that you are an agent for MI6. I need you to tell me who else in your group is working for MI6.’

He folded his arms and waited. Raj looked up at him.

‘We are all brothers here to learn how to fight the infidel,’ said Raj. ‘We are jihadists preparing to fight the good fight.’

‘The problem we have is that you are a bad apple, Raj. And a bad apple spoils the barrel. We can no longer trust the people you were training with. Perhaps they are also traitors. Or perhaps you have already betrayed them. Either way they are no use to us. Worse than that, they are liabilities. They can no longer be trusted.’

He clicked his fingers and two men appeared from the doorway on the far side of the courtyard, dragging a third man. As they got closer, Raj realised it was Naseem. He was bare chested and his eyes were puffy and half closed. His hands had been tied behind his back and there were shackles binding his ankles.

‘You trained with Naseem, your brother from Bradford, and now he is a liability. He is a liability because of you, Raj. So you and you alone are responsible for what is about to happen.’

Raj turned his head away. Mahmud gestured at Mole and he stepped forward and grabbed Raj’s hair, forcing him to face Naseem.

Naseem was mumbling incoherently. His eyes were open but he didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on around him. One of the men holding him kicked Naseem’s legs from under him and he fell, hitting the ground hard. The men roughly pulled Naseem to a kneeling position.

‘You can stop this, Raj,’ said Mahmud. ‘Telling the truth will set him free.’

Raj tried to turn away but the man behind him kept a tight grip on his hair. Raj closed his eyes. It was a test, he told himself. They wouldn’t kill Naseem. There would be no point. They were trying to scare him, that was all.

‘Open your eyes, Raj,’ said Mahmud. ‘Open your eyes or they will remove your eyelids with a knife.’

Raj opened his eyes and blinked away tears.

There was a tall, thin man standing behind Naseem, a long knife with a curved blade in his hand. The man’s face was wrapped in a shemagh, his eyes shielded by impenetrable sunglasses. The knife glinted in the sun as he raised it above his head.

‘Raj, take this opportunity to make things right,’ said Mahmud.

Raj stared at the knife. They wouldn’t do it, he told himself. It was a test, that was all. They hadn’t gone through with their threat to behead him and they wouldn’t kill Naseem. They were only doing it to scare him. All he had to do was to keep protesting his innocence and they’d take him back to his cell.

‘Naseem is a good Muslim,’ said Raj. ‘He was the one who persuaded me to come to Pakistan to train.’

‘So if you are a traitor, he is too? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I am not a traitor, you have to believe me. This is a mistake. It’s all a mistake.’

‘There has been no mistake, Raj. We know you are a traitor. And if you vouch for Naseem, then he is also a traitor.’

‘Mahmud, you have to believe me, I am not a traitor.’

Mahmud shook his head sadly. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. He looked over at the man with the knife and raised his hand.

The man placed the curved blade against Naseem’s throat and pulled. Blood spurted across the dusty courtyard and a wide red gash appeared in Naseem’s throat.

‘No!’ shouted Raj.

The man gripped Naseem’s hair with his left hand as he hacked away at the neck. Naseem’s arms thrashed around for a few seconds and then stopped. The man hacked twice more and then the head came away, blood showering down on the rest of the corpse.

‘Allahu Akbar!
’ screamed the man.
‘Allahu Akbar!
’ echoed the rest of the men. The men either side of Naseem let him go and the headless corpse pitched forward and hit the ground with a dull thump.

Raj stared at the body in horror. The man holding the head began to dance around, waving it like a trophy as he yelled
‘Allahu Akbar
’ over and over.

‘You see what you’ve done, Raj?’ asked Mahmud.

Raj continued to stare at the blood pooling around the shoulders of the corpse.

‘If you had told the truth, Naseem would still be alive.’

Raj said nothing. His mind was in turmoil, unable to accept that Naseem had been killed in front of him. He wanted to believe that they had somehow faked the whole thing but he knew that he was clutching at impossible straws. Naseem was dead and Mahmud was right – it was Raj’s fault. Raj felt tears run down his cheeks.

Mahmud shouted something in Arabic and four of the men hurried towards a barred gate on the far side of the courtyard.

‘What are you thinking, Raj?’ asked Mahmud. ‘Do you think your handler is going to rescue you? Do you think they will send helicopters? We are in Pakistan, Raj. That is not going to happen. But even if we were in Iraq or Afghanistan, they would not come. The infidels are beaten, they are leaving with their tails between their legs. They don’t care about you, Raj. You’re old news. All you can do now is help yourself. You have taken a wrong turn, brother, but you can get back on the right path. Allah is a forgiving God, Raj. He understands that sometimes we fail. As it says in the Qur’an, everything in the heavens and everything in the earth belongs to Allah. He forgives whoever He wills and punishes whoever He wills. Allah is Ever-Forgiving, Most Merciful. He will forgive you, Raj. It is not too late.’

The four men returned with two more men. It was Sami and Labib. They were both managing to walk, just about. Sami’s right eye was closed and his lips had swollen to twice their normal size. His shirt was torn and his belly was hanging over his trousers. Labib’s face was also bruised and bloody. His mouth was wide open and Raj could see that two of his front teeth were broken.

‘You can’t,’ said Raj, shaking his head. ‘You’re a human being, how can you do this?’

‘The kafir is no better than an animal,’ said Mahmud. ‘And those Muslims who betray Allah are worse than the kafir.’

‘They haven’t betrayed anyone,’ said Raj. ‘They’re good Muslims. They’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘But how can I believe anything you tell me, Raj? Every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie. You know what it says in the Qur’an, brother? “The signs of the hypocrite are three: when he speaks, he lies; when he makes a promise, he breaks it; and when he is entrusted with something, he betrays that trust.” That is what you are, Raj. You are a hypocrite. So I cannot believe anything you tell me. You tell me that Sami and Labib are good Muslims, that they are not betrayers, but you are a liar and a hypocrite, so how can I believe you?’

‘They are good men, Mahmud. They are true to jihad. They are true to your cause.’

Mahmud held out his hands, palms upward. ‘And you, brother, are a proven liar.’

The man who had beheaded Naseem went to stand behind Sami. The curved blade was still dripping with blood. Sami began to struggle but the men on either side of him tightened their grip and held him fast. The man with the knife looked over at Mahmud, waiting for the signal. Sami’s whole body was trembling as if he was having an epileptic fit. Labib was struggling but was so weak that his captors had no trouble holding him.

‘Stop!’ Raj yelled. ‘For the love of Allah, stop!’

‘They are tainted, so they are of no further use to us,’ said Mahmud. ‘You have tainted them with your lies, Raj. Your lies are condemning them to death.’

‘I’m not lying, they’re good Muslims. This is nothing to do with them.’

‘What is nothing to do with them, Raj?’ asked Mahmud quietly.

‘This. All this. The things you’re accusing me of. It has nothing to do with me, you know that.’

‘I know nothing of the sort,’ said Mahmud. ‘The one thing I know for sure is that you are lying to me. So when you tell me that they are good Muslims …’ He shrugged carelessly. ‘How can I believe you?’

He looked over at the man with the knife and began to raise his hand.

‘Wait!’ shouted Raj.

Mahmud stopped and lowered his hand.

There was a large wet patch on the front of Sami’s pants.

‘I am telling you the truth, may Allah strike me down if I lie,’ said Raj. ‘They are good men. They have not betrayed you.’

‘And what about you, Raj? Have you betrayed me?’

Raj said nothing.

Labib screamed something but his accent made it impossible for Raj to work out what he was saying.