In the Valley of Death Part IV

[Silktie]

Warning: Violence

PART IV

London

Over the next few days they made very little progress. Every lead they followed turned into a dead end. It seemed that Harry had disappeared without trace. Ruth felt her heart crack a little more with every minute that passed without word, and her colleagues watched with concern as she turned increasingly into herself. She found solace in the work and not only tirelessly continued the search for Harry, but also fulfilled all her other duties without fail.

However, each evening as she stepped through the door of their house, reality came crashing back down on her and she watched sadly as Scarlet waited by the door all evening. In vain. Malcolm could see the melancholy settle on her shoulders as soon as they got home, and on the third night suggested as tactfully as he knew how that they should perhaps move to a safe house. Ruth considered the offer for a few seconds before declining.
“This is where I feel closest to him, Malcolm.”
She looked at him with a small smile. “Odd really, considering we spent most of our time on the Grid…”
Malcolm scratched a cat behind the ear. “Not really. This is where you knew just plain Harry, the man, rather than Sir Harry the Protector of the Country.”
Ruth swallowed hard. “Yes,” she said softly, lost in her memories for a moment.
“That’s why I don’t want to lose this connection to him. But thank you for the thought.”
He smiled crookedly at her. “I’ll take Scarlet for a walk.” He collected the dog and disappeared through the door, considerately giving her some time on her own.

While he was gone she wandered through the house, randomly touching some of the things she knew Harry loved. She cleared her mind of attempts to figure out his whereabouts, and thought only of him. His eyes, his voice, his laugh. The way sleeping in his arms made her feel so safe, so cherished. She lifted the bottle of Scotch standing on the sideboard and sniffed at it, remembering the way he tasted when they kissed after he’d had a drink. If she closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough, she could almost feel him in the room with her. She stood like that, her eyes squeezed shut, for as long as she could bear it before opening her eyes again.
“Hold on, Harry,” she murmured into the silence of the house. “We’re coming for you. I love you.”

* * *

Harry

The FDLR camp was situated deep in the equatorial forest that surrounded Bukavu. Harry’s first week with them was spent naked in a small metal cage. It was just big enough for him to sit upright with his knees drawn to his chest, a position that was pure agony for his injured knee. The bars of the cage were electrified, so that each time he fell asleep and touched them, he got a shock that left his heart thumping irregularly for a long time afterwards. By the end of the first day his muscles began to spasm from the prolonged period in the one position. They left him outside to the mercy of the elements, until his skin blistered from the sun. At night the mosquitoes would descend on him in swarms, and since he had no space to swat at them, he had to sit still and endure it as they sucked his blood from him. But it was still preferable to the intense heat of the sun during the day. From time to time his captors would hose him down to make the shocks even more effective, and to wash his waste away, as they would not allow him to leave the cage for the toilet. During these hosings Harry would try to capture as much water as possible in his mouth to supplement the small cup of water they gave him once a day. He also received one apple each day, and he was so ravenous that he ate every single part of it, right down to the pips.

The hallucinations started on the afternoon of the third day. As the sun beat down mercilessly on his blistered skin, he thought he felt a cool hand on his sweating forehead.
“Oh honey, you’re burning up.” It was his mother’s sweet voice, and he felt like crying.
“Mom…” He stretched out an arm to reach for her, but his hand touched a steel bar instead and the electricity coursed through him. When he was able to open his eyes one of the FDLR men was standing there instead of his mother, laughing at him. He closed his eyes again and let the tears flow down his face.

By the time darkness fell on the fifth day he could barely remember his own name, and this time it was her that came.
Ruth.
She was caressing his face and telling him to hold on, that they were coming for him. He knew, somehow, that she wasn’t real, and he opened his mouth and screamed his agony at the forest around him. When he stopped screaming she was still there, crouching just outside the cage.
“I love you,” she said, and he finally let go. He collapsed against the bars, and the man watching from the nearest building switched off the electricity.
“Bring him inside.”

* * *

London

Everyone on the Grid looked up as the doors slid open to reveal the DG and Home Secretary. They were accompanied by a tall, thin black man with a clean shaven head. He was smartly dressed in a conservative suit and his eyes swept across the Grid in a practiced manner as he entered. He gave the impression of not missing much.
“Who’s that?” Dimitri asked Ruth.
“That’s Michael Lewis. Head of Section C. Northern Ireland.”
“What’s he doing here?” Dimitri wondered.
Ruth didn’t answer, but she could guess, and it broke her heart.

Her suspicions were confirmed once they were all gathered in the meeting room.
“Michael will take over the duties of Section Head until such time as we get Harry back,” the DG announced. He paused before continuing more sympathetically. “We all would rather not have this situation, but things are getting missed due to the focus on finding Harry. I need this Section to once again concentrate on its main duties, which is identifying and countering terrorist threats. I trust that you will all give Michael your fullest cooperation.”
The silence that followed was shattered by the Home Secretary’s mobile phone. He held up a hand in apology before answering.
“Yes? … You’re sure it’s him? … We’d like a chance to talk to him, Ambassador … This is much appreciated, thank you.”
He looked at Alec.
“That was the Yemeni Ambassador. They’ve apprehended Al-Redhi in Yemen. They also found a crate with some bloody clothes in at the same place. These items, as well as Al-Redhi, are already on their way here and they are happy for us to talk to him.”

The room came alive with anticipation and purpose. Alec was about to start giving orders when he remembered Lewis. He turned to him.
“You’re the boss.” It was almost a challenge.
Lewis held the Section Chief’s look before smiling slightly. “Alec, you go with Dimitri. Do whatever is necessary to get something from this man.”
The DG and Home Secretary departed, but Lewis asked the rest of the team to remain. He studied each of them in turn, lingering slightly longer on Ruth.
“From this moment on, when anyone outside of this team asks, our main priority is no longer to find Harry. It is to do our normal jobs.”
The level of resentment rose to an almost tangible level.
“However, despite what we tell others, I give you a solemn undertaking that we will not give up, not stop looking until we’ve found him. But it can’t be at the risk of the country’s safety. Are we agreed on that?”
Six heads nodded in unison.
“In order to achieve this, I’m tasking Malcolm and Ruth with the primary search for Harry. The rest of us will pick up the slack from Ruth’s normal work as much as we can. Whenever they find something that we can check out, I will designate field officers to do so.”
He smiled at them. “I hope not to be here too long, and that Harry will be sitting in this chair again very soon. Dismissed.”

* * *

Ali Al-Redhi was seated at a table in a small featureless room in the Yemen Embassy. Alec and Dimitri were directed to the two chairs opposite. Behind them, two Yemeni Intelligence officers were standing against the wall, weapons casually dangling from their hands. Blood was trickling from Al-Redhi’s nose, and a bruise was forming above his eyebrow.
Alec turned to one of the men behind him. “What happened to him?”
The man shrugged. “We softened him up for you a bit.”

Dimitri stared at Al-Redhi. “Where is Harry Pearce?”
“Who?” The Yemeni reached up to touch the bruise on his forehead.
“Let’s stop with the games,” Alec butted in. He spread the photos on the table between them, clearly chronicling the accident and Al-Redhi’s presence.
“Where did you take him?”
Al-Redhi drew one of the photos to him and studied it.
“To Yemen,” he answered finally.
“Where in Yemen?”
“I don’t know. I handed him over to the pro-democracy movement, I don’t know where they took him.”
Alec and Dimitri glanced at each other.
“What would the pro-democracy movement want with a British Intelligence officer?”
The Yemeni had barely finished shrugging nonchalantly when Alec was around the table and grabbed the back of the man’s head. He shoved his forehead to the table, hard, and the man yelped in pain as his bruise made contact with the hard surface.
“You’re lying, you bastard! I swear to God I will snap your neck if you don’t tell me what you know.”
The man started whining pitifully, trying to twist his neck to look at the two men standing against the wall.
“Please, I do as you say! Please! It was his own…”

What happened next took place so fast that neither Alec nor Dimitri had time to react. One of the Yemeni Intelligence officers sprang forward, yelling “He has a knife!”
Al-Redhi was yanked from Alec’s grasp and there was a brief struggle before blood started spurting everywhere. Ali Al Redhi sank to the floor, his main artery severed.
Their only link to Harry was bleeding quickly to death in front of their eyes.

* * *

“Bloody hell, what happened?” Beth was first to notice their two blood-spattered colleagues enter the Grid.
“They slit his throat,” Alec responded as he threw his jacket on his desk in disgust.
“Tariq, see what you can get from the hidden camera Dimitri was wearing. Something was off about the whole damn thing.”
As Tariq scurried off with the camera, Alec looked around.
“Where’s Malcolm?”
“Harry’s clothes were delivered earlier. He’s seeing if he can get anything from them.”
Sighing, Alec nodded in the direction of Harry’s office and Dimitri followed him over.
“Ken, you come too.”

Michael looked up to see three men standing before him, two of them covered in blood. His only response was a raising of the eyebrows. Alec reported succinctly on what happened.
“He said he’d taken Harry to Yemen. I think we need to follow that up.”
The Acting Section Head nodded and turned to Ken. “Can Six help us with that?”
“Yeah. We have a few people on the ground there. Not as many as the Americans, though.”
“Naturally,” Michael mused. “Okay, Ken, get to Yemen and see what you can dig up. I’ll speak to the Americans, get them to help you out.”

* * *

Harry

It was dark and humid, and he was not alone. Those are the first things Harry noticed when he came to. Then the pain hit, a stinging, burning sensation over his head, shoulders and back. He tried to move but found his hands bound to the leg of the bed, preventing him from turning over. A groan escaped him and a man materialised out of the darkness. Harry had trouble focussing on his face and his head felt woozy. He tried to speak but found his tongue unwilling to comply with his brain’s commands.
“Good, you’re awake.” The man came closer and untied Harry’s hands, then helped him to sit up when he failed to do so on his own.

Harry shook his head, trying to clear the fog from his brain, but it didn’t help. It took great concentration to form a word, but he finally managed.
“Drugged… me?” he mumbled.
The man laughed, apparently delighted that Harry cottoned on so fast.
“You had severe sunstroke, and we must keep you alive until the time comes. It was necessary to keep you quiet while your skin healed.”
Frowning, Harry managed another few words.
“How long?”
“Oh, a few days,” the man said and smiled again.
Somehow Harry didn’t believe him. He suspected it was much longer than that. His companion sat down next to him and helped him drink some water. He was assisting Harry to eat some cassava, a strange mashy, stringy vegetable when the door opened.

Another man, tall, strongly built and very dark strode into the room. When Harry succeeded in focussing on his face he noticed a scar running along his left cheek to his ear, and he knew who the man was. Faustin Kanyarengwe was wanted by The Hague for crimes against humanity. Harry vividly remembered the photographs he’d seen of this man’s handiwork during the genocide. Kanyarengwe looked him over with cold eyes.
“He looks better. We can start tomorrow, no?”
The man next to Harry nodded mutely, and Kanyarengwe bared his teeth at Harry.
“You rest tonight. Tomorrow we have some fun.”
The way he said it left Harry in no doubt that he would not be the one having the fun.

* * *

London

Malcolm sat staring at Harry’s bloodied clothes. He had been working on them for the last three days, trying to coax a clue to Harry’s whereabouts from the cloth. Unsuccessfully to date. He sighed and picked up the once pristine white shirt, now stained brown by old blood. Harry’s head wound had bled copiously and the whole front of the shirt was speckled with his blood. Malcolm carefully folded the shirt and set it aside. He reached for the jacket next, once again noticing the tear in the lining. As he folded the jacket, it occurred to him that the outside of the jacket was not damaged in any way. Spreading it open on the table once more, he inspected the tear more closely, even lifting the lining and peering underneath. He saw nothing.

As he sat back with a defeated sigh, his eye caught the bloodied shirt again, and he realised. Blood. It would not show up to the naked eye against the dark material of the jacket. Scrabbling around in the forgery suite he located an ultraviolet light and switched off the lights. He once again lifted the lining and ran the light slowly over the dark material underneath. And there it was, clear as day. A message written in blood.

Tangiers. CIA/6

tbc

[Sparky]

Another fantastic chapter although I feel very sorry for Harry

[Aria]

Another wonderfully tense chapter, Silkte. Very painful reading for Harry fans. Loving Ruth's struggles to keep the faith. Hope you update soon.

[Tea Lady]

My goodness. Not sure I can make a joke here as I feel so terrible for poor Harry. Fancy doing that to him those nasty terrorist peoples!!

A good read Silktie.

[A Cousin]

Good old Malcolm!

Gripping, Silktie. Just all around fabulous!

[DogSoSmall]

Oh my word. I just want to keep on reading. I wish this was a book!

[HellsBells]

So tense!!!!
I did wonder when they would find Harry's clue, and then I thought Malcolm was going to miss it!
Can't wait for the next chapter.