David Monnery - Samarkand Hijack

‘It’s in the office.’

‘Can you get it? We’ll ring from here.’

He got dressed while Janice descended a floor to the embassy office, thinking that he’d never heard her mention a boyfriend. Still, she handled the post, and for all he knew there were a dozen letters a day from England that arrived reeking of Brut.

Dressed, he poured himself another G&T, and took it out on the concrete balcony. In the forecourt below a couple of early drunks seemed to be teaching each other the tango.

Janice knocked again, and he went to let her in. ‘You do the talking,’ he said, ‘your Uzbek is better than mine.’

Nurhan Ismatulayeva and Marat Rashidov arrived at the Hotel Samarkand some five minutes after leaving the NSS building. The coffee shop in the lobby was full of local youths, all of whom looked like bad imitations of Western rock stars. The hotel restaurant was almost empty, but one long table had been set and not used, presumably for a tour party.

Nurhan showed the receptionist her credentials, and got a scowl in return. One of these days, she thought, it would be nice to have a job which encouraged people to smile at her. Maybe she could join the state circus as a clown.

‘The Central Asian Tours group,’ she said. ‘Are they in the hotel?’

The receptionist shook his head, his eyes apparently fixed on her black-clad lower thighs.

‘Do you know where they are?’

He shook his head again.

‘Look, friend,’ Marat said cheerfully, ‘let’s have a little co-operation here.’

Reluctantly turning his attention to the male member of the duo, the receptionist gave him a pitying look. ‘They’re not back yet – that’s all I know.’

‘From where?’ Nurhan asked patiently.

‘I don’t know. This is a hotel, not a travel agency.’ Seeing the look on Marat’s face, he added: ‘You could try the notice-board in the lounge – they sometimes put the itineraries up there.’

Marat went to look.

‘Which rooms are they in?’ Nurhan asked.

He sighed and opened the register book. ‘Three-o-four to 310.’

‘Keys,’ she said, holding out her hand.

‘All of them?’

‘All of them.’

He passed them over, just as Marat returned. ‘Nothing,’ the NSS man said.

They walked up the four flights of stairs to the third floor, and let themselves into the first room. Two open suitcases half-full of neatly folded clothes lay up against a wall. If the group had been hijacked it was without a change of underwear. A novel – A Suitable Boy – lay on the bedside table. Inside the front cover ‘Elizabeth Ogley, May 1994’ had been inscribed.

They had been through three of the seven rooms before Marat found what they were looking for. Inside another paperback – Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean – the folded piece of paper used as a bookmark yielded a handwritten copy of the tour itinerary. A trip to Shakhrisabz had been scheduled for that afternoon.

‘That’s it then,’ Marat said. ‘That road across the mountains is terrible. They’ve had a puncture, or driven into a ravine or something.’

Nurhan looked at the itinerary. ‘Bit of a coincidence,’ she said, ‘that the only time they go off on a jaunt into the countryside we get a call to say they’ve been hijacked.’

‘For someone in the know that would be the best time for a hoax,’ he suggested, but with rather less confidence.

‘I think it’s for real,’ she said, walking across to the window. A car was drawing up down below, not a tour bus. This would be her first real chance to prove herself, she thought.

‘We’d better call Zhakidov,’ Marat said.

They went back downstairs to the desk, and found the receptionist had disappeared. Nurhan used his phone to call in.

‘You’d better drive over to Shakhrisabz,’ Zhakidov said. ‘If you meet them on the way, fine. If you don’t, then find out if they ever got there.’

Nurhan was not pleased. ‘Why can’t we just phone our office there?’ she wanted to know.

‘Discretion, remember?

‘It’s a nice ride,’ Marat added for good measure. And besides, he thought, it would remove him from temptation for a few hours.

Another phone suddenly started ringing in the office behind the counter.

‘Maybe it’s them,’ Marat suggested. ‘Maybe someone got taken ill and they had to find a doctor in Shakhrisabz.’

‘Maybe,’ Nurhan agreed. She moved towards the office’s open door just as the receptionist re-emerged from wherever it was that he had been skulking.

‘I’ll answer that,’ he said indignantly.

‘If it’s anything to do with the Central Asian Tours party I want to speak to them,’ Nurhan said.

‘OK, OK,’ the receptionist said, picking up the receiver. ‘Yes,’ he said, in answer to some question, glancing across at Nurhan and Marat. ‘Wait a moment,’ he told the caller, ‘the police want to speak to you.’ He held out the phone for Nurhan. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

‘I am calling from the British Embassy in Tashkent,’ a female voice said in reasonable Uzbek. ‘I wish to talk to someone staying at the hotel. Brenda Walker.’

Nurhan cursed under her breath. ‘The group has not returned from their trip yet,’ she said.

‘Do you know why they’re late?’ the woman asked.

‘No. A problem with their bus, most likely. Do you wish to leave a message?’

‘Why are the police involved?’ the woman asked.

‘We just want to talk to the tour operators,’ Nurhan improvised. ‘Is there no message?’

‘No, I’ll try again in an hour or so.’

Nurhan put the phone down. ‘Why did you say “police”, you idiot?’ she asked the receptionist.

He shrugged. ‘You didn’t tell me not to.’

She looked at him. ‘The woman will be calling back. You will tell her the same thing I told her – that you don’t know why the tour group has not returned, but it’s probably that their bus has broken down. Is that clear?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then don’t fuck up,’ Marat warned him. ‘Or our next meeting will not be as convivial as this one has been. Now what sort of bus are they in?’

‘A small one. Green and white.’

The two NSS officers headed out through the glass doors in the direction of their car, oblivious to the disdainful finger being raised to their retreating backs.

Four hundred kilometres to the north-east Janice Wood was trying to explain the tone of the policewoman’s voice to James Pearson-Jones. ‘I’m sure she was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. Something’s happened.’

Pearson-Jones sighed, thought for a moment, and muttered ‘shit’ with some vehemence. ‘We’d better call London,’ he said.

‘And bring Simon in?’ she asked. Simon Kennedy was ostensibly Pearson-Jones’s number two at the embassy, with a portfolio of responsibilities which included that of military attaché. He was also MI6’s representative in Central Asia.

‘Yes, bring him in,’ Pearson-Jones agreed. ‘I’ll go down to the office and make the call.’

In London it was nearly four in the afternoon, and the tall patrician figure of Alan Holcroft had just arrived back at the Foreign Office from the House of Commons. Prime Minister’s Question Time had been its usual farcical waste of time, and Holcroft had sat on the front bench wondering why they didn’t put a cock-fighting arena by the dispatch box, and give the two sides some real blood to cheer about. He was quite willing to agree that the occasion was a useful theoretical demonstration of democracy in action, but could see no reason why anyone with real work to do should have to sit through the damn thing twice a week.