Stephen Leather - False Friends

She bent down and softly stroked his cheek. ‘We don’t want to hurt you like this, Harvey. No one wants to hurt you. But you have to tell us who you told about The Sheik. You did tell someone, didn’t you, Harvey? Just nod. You don’t have to say anything. Just nod.’

Malik’s cheeks were wet from crying but his tears had finished hours ago. He was exhausted, mentally and physically, but he knew that the moment he admitted anything it would all be over. They would kill him, he knew that for sure. He and Raj had been taken to meet Bin Laden and they had told MI5 and MI5 had told the Americans. They were directly responsible for the death of Bin Laden and if he admitted that then he was sure they would kill him. The one chance he had was to just keep denying that he’d done anything wrong.

His instructors at the al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan had taught him the basics of interrogation. Real secrets had to be buried deep and it helped to visualise them locked away in a safe or a vault. Then the safe was to be put in a deep dark place. That’s what Malik had done. The truth was in an old-fashioned safe with a rotary dial and each time they tortured him he focused on the safe. And he kept repeating to himself that so long as the safe stayed locked they wouldn’t kill him.

What the instructors hadn’t done was prepare him for the pain. In Pakistan he’d been slapped and punched and been made to stand for hours with a sack over his head, but that was nothing compared to what Nadia and her two companions had done to him.

The one with the gun had hit him on the knees with so much force that he was sure the left one had cracked. Later he’d brought the butt of the gun down on Malik’s right hand, breaking his fingers. Then he’d used the pliers. And all the time he’d been smiling as if he enjoyed every second of the torture.

The other man, the one with the knife, had been more precise with the pain that he’d inflicted. He had worked the knife into Malik’s hands with the precision of a surgeon. That was when they’d gagged him. The man would torture him for a few minutes then they would wait for him to stop crying before removing the gag and asking him if he was ready to talk.

He’d pretended to be confused, that he didn’t understand what they were asking. That was the first line of defence, the instructors had said. Play dumb. And if that didn’t work, say nothing. Then, if the pain became unbearable, lie. Lies had to be checked, which meant that the interrogation would have to stop.

The problem for Malik was there was no lie he could tell Nadia that would stop the punishment. She had only one question for him. Who did he tell?

At first he’d denied that he’d gone to Pakistan, but Nadia knew which camp he’d been in and who had trained him. Then he’d denied that he’d been taken to see The Sheik, but Nadia knew when he’d been and who had taken him to the compound in Abbottabad. She knew everything, Malik realised. And that meant she had been sent by al-Qaeda.

At just after midnight the man had stopped using the knife; he had produced a pair of pliers and gone to work on his toes. Malik kept passing out, and each time that happened they would wait until he woke up. The waking up was the worst time, because for a few seconds he’d imagine that it was all a dream and then the horror would pour over him like a cold shower, the realisation that the torture was real and that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Well, there was one thing he could do, of course. He could tell the truth. He could tell them that he was an MI5 informer, that he’d told MI5 where Bin Laden was hiding. If he told her that then the torture would stop. Everything would stop.

The more the men had tortured him, the gentler Nadia had become. She would stroke his cheek, call him sweetheart, tell him that she hated seeing him in pain. ‘Just tell me the truth,’ she’d said to him a hundred times or more. ‘Tell me the truth and I’ll make them stop.’ But Malik couldn’t tell her the truth because he knew without a shadow of a doubt that if he did they would kill him.

As dawn broke he was unconscious most of the time and the carpet around his feet was wet with his blood. That was when Nadia had started asking him about Chaudhry. She knew that he had been in Pakistan with him. She knew that Chaudhry had gone with him to the compound in Abbottabad. She began to ask more questions about Chaudhry. Who his friends were. Where he went, who he spent time with. How often he went to see his parents. Malik began to hope that Nadia was starting to believe that he hadn’t betrayed The Sheik and was looking for someone else to blame. Chaudhry. Malik tried to concentrate, tried to work out some sort of strategy that might result in him staying alive. If he could make them think that Chaudhry was the traitor maybe they would let him live. And if he could get away he would be able to get help; he would call MI5 and they would pull both of them out and keep them safe. As the minutes went by and they continued to hurt him and make him bleed he clung to the hope that he might somehow be able to fool them.

‘How long have you known Raj?’ she asked.

‘Since we were kids.’

‘Do you trust him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think he would betray The Sheik?’

‘No. I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘What about you, Harvey? Did you betray The Sheik?’

‘No. I swear. As Allah is my judge.’

‘Allah is not your judge today, Harvey. I am. And I do not believe you.’

Then the gag was pushed into his mouth and the man with the pliers began to work on his toes again and he screamed into the dishcloth.

When Malik came to, the man with the pliers was standing in front of him. There was blood on the serrated tips and what looked like pieces of flesh. The man was looking at Nadia and Nadia was staring at the door. Then there was a ringing sound. A doorbell.

Nadia waved at the man with the pliers to go into the kitchen. He knelt down and picked up his knife, then hurried over to the kitchen door. The doorbell rang again. The man in the Chelsea shirt aimed his gun at the door and whispered something at Nadia. She shook her head and pointed at the bedroom.

There was a knock on the door, three rapid taps.

The man in the Chelsea shirt disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door.

Nadia bent down and put her mouth next to Malik’s ear. ‘Make a sound, any sound at all, and I will slit your throat myself,’ she said. She patted him gently on the cheek, then walked slowly over to the door. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

Malik heard a man’s voice but it was muffled and he couldn’t hear what was said. The doorbell rang again, three short rings followed by a longer one.

Nadia slipped the chain lock on and opened the door a fraction. ‘Who is it?’ she asked. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m here to get Harvey,’ said a voice.

Singh hadn’t expected the girl to be so pretty, but he could see that she was nervous.

‘This is my apartment. There’s no Harvey here,’ she said. ‘You must have the wrong address.’

She tried to close the door but Singh put up his hand and held it open. ‘Harvey said he was coming here. You’re Nadia, right?’

She frowned. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Harvey did,’ said Singh. ‘He said he was coming to see you. Said he might stay overnight and that if he did I was to pick him up here.’

‘He gave you this address?’

Singh nodded and grinned. ‘How else would I know to come and ring your bell? Now stop messing about, Nadia. If Harvey’s still in bed then tell him to get his trousers on, will you?’

Shepherd listened, his gun pointing up at the ceiling. Singh was ad-libbing brilliantly, making it very difficult for her to close the door in his face. If anything he was doing too good a job because if Nadia did have Harvey captive in the flat there was a strong possibility that she might decide to do something about the man at her door.