Gerald Seymour - Home Run

Mattie dragged him into the prison room and then his hands were closing on the man's throat. The guard picked feebly at Mattie's wrists, and his eyes bulged, and his tongue arced, and his voice choked, and his breath died. The Major had always said it would be easy, if they went for it. Nothing easier than chopping the heel of the hand on to the nape of a man's neck. Nothing simpler than locking the fingers around a man's throat, and taking the pressure on to his windpipe, so that it sealed. His fingers were a tourniquet, and the voice and the breath and the life of the second guard were dying. He felt no fear. He felt only a determination to carry out all that he had been told. The second guard was sinking to the tiled floor, and all the time he looked up and into the face of his killer.

Wrong place, dear boy, to come looking for mercy. It had been the second guard who had always smoked and seemed so casual and so indifferent when the real pain was being worked into Mattie's body down in the cellar. Never any mercy in the cellar from you, dear boy. The second guard had his hands on Mattie's wrists, and the stupid, pathetic creature had not had the wit to let go of the hands and to go for the pistol in the holster at his belt. Bad mistake, dear boy. Mattie heard the last choke shudder, and his fingers on the second guard's throat had the weight of the man's corpse.

He dragged the body of the second guard across the tiles and towards the bed.

A hell of a weight, and the tiredness was flooding into Mattie. With his foot he pushed them both under the iron framed bed.

He took the tunic and plimsoll shoes off the bigger of the two guards. The man was taller than Mattie and had the bigger feet, and his plimsolls went on to Mattie's feet over the bandages, and he took the holster belt, and when he had retrieved his own trousers from under the blanket, then he threaded the belt through the loops and put on the tunic. He had the pistol. He checked the breech and the magazine. It was East bloc manufacture and it was a hell of a time since he had last seen a pistol made in Czechoslovakia. He took bread from the food tray, forced it into his trouser pocket along with a chicken piece and a fistful of rice.

Mattie stepped out on to the landing.

He listened. There was a radio playing. He recognized a news bulletin on the radio, the Tehran Home Service, and he could hear low voices. There was no other way. The way out was down the stairs. The pistol stayed in his holster. If he had taken it out then he would have had to spend time learning its mechanisms, he had not that time. The Major had always said that the initial movement was what gave you the chance of escape. He went down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs. It was a good house for him. The house had concrete floors under the tiles, and a concrete staircase. No sound as he came down the stairs. The hallway ran the length of the villa, from the front door, and into the kitchen at the back. He paused again, he kept himself flat against the hall wall. Ridiculous, but he was actually listening to the news broadcast, something about the price of long-grained rice.

Come on, Mattie, get on with it. He saw the poster of Khomeini in front of him, across the width of the hallway, sellotaped to the wall.

… Up yours, dear boy… The voices that he heard were low, relaxed, and came with the radio from behind a nearly closed door that was opposite to him. The Major had said that the guards who most mattered were the guards that had never been seen by the prisoner.

There could be guards outside. Mattie had to accept that there might be guards outside the villa and that he had no idea of their positioning. He was listening, but his ears were filled with the radio broadcast, and the words of the men inside the room. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked past the door, trying to make himself upright. He should have brought the tray, either as disguise or something to throw.

He undid the catch on the holster, put one hand on the butt of the pistol and went into the kitchen. No one there. They had already eaten. His own food would have been the last to be prepared. The sink was stacked with plates and with cooking dishes. They'd come soon, perhaps when the radio broadcast was over. They'd wash the dishes and then they'd wonder where were the two guards who had taken the food tray to the prisoner.

Mattie told himself that he was going for the wall in the back yard, he was going and he wasn't stopping. If they were going to stop him then they were going to have to shoot him.

The kitchen was behind him. He had passed through the door and he would have been silhouetted in the doorway. He didn't know a way of going through a doorway, from a lit room and out into darkness, without throwing shadows.

The back yard, beyond the kitchen, was the only area outside the villa that he had seen, and he knew there was a high wall. If there was one guard outside then the likelihood was that he would be at the front, by the gate, but that was the area of chance.

He went on tiptoe across the yard. He had never heard a dog, and he didn't think there was a dog there. The Major had said that dogs were the nightmare of the escaper, but he hadn't heard a dog, not a guard dog nor a pet dog. He went for the wall. He went for the wall where there were the bullet marks in the concrete blocks. If they caught him, if they brought him back, then it would be at the wall that his life would end. He reached up. The palms of his hands and his fingers could just reach the top of the wall.

A terrible pain when he pulled himself up. In his shoulders and his upper back and down to the cage of his ribs. The hurt was from the times that he had been on the hook in the cellar.

He struggled to get his feet off the ground, and he scrambled with his knees to give him purchase up the wall. There was a moment when he had his head and his shoulders above the summit of the wall, and then he was balancing on his chest and the pain was excruciating. He could see into a street, and he could see low bungalows.

There were the headlights of an approaching car. The lights played on the centre of the road and lit up the walls of the buildings, and the lights were rushing closer to the wall of the villa, surging towards Mattie who was high on the wall and working to swing his legs on to the top of the concrete blocks.

Behind him, through the open kitchen door, came the signature music of the end of the news broadcast. He knew the music because most days at Century he listened to the recording picked up at Caversham. He thought that if he fell back from the wall then he would never find the strength again that had carried him to the top of the wall, and the music at the end of the broadcast told him there would in a few moments be guards in the kitchen. He had his elbows over the top of the wall, and he ducked his head as low as was possible, and his legs dangled, and the blood and the pain roared in his feet. He waited for the lights to pass, and it seemed to him impossible that the lights would not search him out for the driver. So bloody long. He seemed to hear the shouting in the kitchen, and the stampeding of feet, and he seemed to feel the hands grabbing at his knees and at his ankles and dragging him down.

The lights passed.

Quiet behind him, grey shadow ahead of him.

He heaved himself up and on to the wall. He levered one leg across. He rolled, he slid and fell.

Mattie tumbled eight feet from the top of the wall and down on to the weed verge at the side of the road, and he was winded.

Go for it. It would have taken more than the breath being knocked from his lungs to hold him. He was up and he ran.

He did not know where he was running. Distance was the name of the game. He hobbled down the street, away from the prison gate. Mattie ran for survival and running was risk.