In the Valley of Death Part V

[Silktie]

Warning: Violence, Language

PART V

London

Ruth looked over at Harry’s office, noticing the occupant inside bent over some paperwork. She had not gone in there since Michael had arrived on the Grid, finding it too painful to see anyone else seated at Harry’s desk. Michael seemed to understand, and whenever he wanted to talk to her, he would come out and speak to her at her station. But she knew that what she wanted to discuss with him this morning should be done in privacy, so steeling herself, she went over and knocked on the door.

Michael looked up in surprise. Ruth was the last person he expected to see hovering in his door. He ushered her into one of the chairs in front of the desk before sitting down behind it again. For some reason he felt awkward, and had to fight down the urge to get up and move away from the desk. He had been careful not to change anything in Harry’s office since his arrival. Although the chances of getting Harry back alive diminished with every day that passed, he didn’t want to create the impression that he for one second thought his stay here might become more permanent. And more than with anyone else, he was solicitous towards Ruth’s feelings. He was well aware of the depth of her relationship with Harry, and he didn’t want to upset her more than she already was.

She perched on the edge of the chair, her eyes flitting around the office she knew so well. Everything was the same, except for the man behind the desk.
“Erm… I wanted to talk to you about Harry’s disappearance.”
“Yes?” Michael said carefully.
“We’re getting nowhere with trying to locate him. I think it’s time we concentrate on the reason behind his kidnapping. Uhm, try to figure out where he is by figuring out who has him.”
Michael studied her. “You don’t think Al-Redhi was telling the truth when he claimed that the Yemeni pro-democracy movement is behind it?”
Ruth finally met his eyes. “No, I don’t. We have studied the footage of his interrogation, and we know that he didn’t have a knife. He was killed because he was about to say something he shouldn’t. I have also looked into the pro-democracy movement, and there is no way they have the means to plan and execute such an elaborate operation. And they have absolutely nothing to gain by kidnapping Harry. In fact, it would only damage their reputation and diminish international sympathy for them.”

Michael leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. “Okay, so give me your theory.”
“In order for my theory to make sense, there is something you need to know first.” She weighed her words carefully.
“About three months ago, Harry stopped a shipment of UK weapons from going to the Yemeni government. It was a black op from Six, and it didn’t have government backing. The aim was to assist the Yemeni government in putting down the pro-democracy movement, to bring a halt to the momentum of the protests developing all across the Middle East. We suspected the plot had strong CIA backing, and that it was an attempt to stall these protests before it spread to Saudi Arabia. It would put the West, and the US in particular, in a rather difficult position if Saudi Arabia began to use force against its own citizens calling for democracy.”

The Acting Section Head stared at her. “I see. You’re sure the op didn’t have government backing?”
Ruth nodded. “Harry took it to the Home Secretary, who knew nothing about it. If there were government involvement, it was not sanctioned by the PM.”
“I see,” he said again. “So what, you think the Yemeni government got pissed because Harry stopped the shipment and decided to get rid of him?”
“No,” Ruth responded decisively. “I think Six, with the possible collusion of the CIA, got tired of Harry interfering in their illegal operations and decided to get rid of him, with the help of the Yemenis. Remember what Al-Redhi said just before he was killed: It was his own.”
Michael closed his eyes. “Christ, Ruth, that is a very serious allegation-“
He was interrupted by Malcolm rushing through the door.
“Harry managed to write a message on his jacket. He was taken to Tangiers. And he also indicated that the CIA and Six were involved.”
Michael’s eyes swivelled back to Ruth, and she could read in them that he knew that she was right. Things had suddenly become much more complicated.

* * *

Harry

The days passed in a haze of agony for Harry. He was kept in a windowless room that was dark whether it was night or day, so that he could not be sure of the passing of time. It was hot and humid inside, and he had flies and mosquitoes for constant companions. He wondered, in a rare moment of clear thought, how they got into the room when he could not see a single chink of light or feel the slightest draft of air anywhere.

They came for him at irregular intervals, dragging him to another room where he would be shackled to the wall while they beat him. Two, sometimes three big men would take turns pummelling every inch of his body while Faustin Kanyarengwe looked on. After the first such beating Harry started pissing blood, and he hadn’t stopped since. He lost count of the amount of cracked and broken bones he suffered. Some days, for variety, they would shackle him facing the wall, and whip him with a sjambok until his back was covered in blood. His periods of consciousness became less and less, his body slowly shutting down from the prolonged abuse. He began to crave the rare times when he was alone in the dark dank room, and conscious enough to appreciate the respite. He spent these interludes thinking about Ruth, remembering every minute of the time he’d known her, from that first day when she’d walked into the meeting room dropping her files all over the place, to their last moment of togetherness in the corridor. Sometimes he would hallucinate and see her sitting in the room with him, and he’d hold whole conversations with her. But always, a tiny part of him knew that it wasn’t real, and he did his best to hang onto that part, to not be broken totally. That little part of him refused to give up on the hope that he would one day see her again.

Sometimes, they would take him to the torture chamber and tie him to a chair, and Faustin would position another chair in front of him and hold long political and philosophical discussions with him. Harry, able to grasp that the man fancied himself as some sort of intellectual, tried manfully to hold up his end of the conversation, but found his mental faculties dimmed by pain, malnutrition and dehydration. Still, it was his only chance to establish some sort of connection with his captors, and he did his best to make the most of it.

Today seemed to be one of those days. Harry tried to focus on the man in front of him. He was sweating, and on top of everything else he felt like he was getting the flu.
“So,” Faustin began, “you a… big man, or how they say, an important man in England?”
Harry shook his head. “’Fraid not.”
Faustin snorted. “Then why did your people send you here?”
Harry contemplated, his sluggish mind trying to come up with something plausible.
“A woman,” he finally said. “The man who sent me here wanted my woman.”
Faustin laughed uproariously. “Very good, Englishman!” He regarded Harry with amusement. “But not true. I know you’re a spy. So, you’re a Big Man. I call you Boss from now on. You westerners think you’re better than us. We all savages here in Africa, no Boss?”
Harry closed his eyes. He was feeling nauseous and was developing a splitting headache.
“Not all,” he muttered, “just the ones who commit genocide and hack women and children to pieces because they’re from another ethnic group.”

Faustin’s eyes flashed with anger. “It is us or them, Boss. We don’t do it to them, they will do it to us. You people are too squeamish to do what must be done; you talk, talk, talk and get nowhere. That’s why you will never win your ‘war on terror’. You’re too afraid to see the whites of your enemy’s eyes and watch the life flow out of them. Like I will soon do with you.”
He smiled in satisfaction.
“I look forward to it,” Harry said softly, not sure how much more he could endure before his body gave up completely.
Faustin regarded his captive critically. “I congratulate you. You’re lasting much longer than we thought you would. Not as soft as you look.”
Harry tried to keep his head upright. “Oh good, didn’t want to disappoint.”
The large man laughed again. “You funny man, Boss. I like you,” he decided on the spot.
Feeling a flicker of hope, Harry chose his next words carefully. “Thanks. I like you too.”
As Faustin seemed pleased by that, Harry decided to push his luck a little more.
“Perhaps we can come to some sort of agreement.” Thinking of Ruth, he added quietly, “I’d very much like to live. Very much.”
“You offering me money?” Faustin’s voice had required a hard edge and Harry knew he had miscalculated.
“No. Don’t have any,” he added as an afterthought.

This elicited another laugh. Faustin considered the battered man in front of him. “Tell you what, Boss. You offer me the same weapons your people are giving me for killing you, I spare you. What you say?”
He watched Harry keenly.
Harry closed his eyes and fought down the impulse to throw up. Images floated in front of him, of women and children sliced to pieces with pangas by this man’s men. He so desperately wanted to live, to see Ruth and his children again. Just this once, perhaps it would be acceptable if he did it just this once… The bile rose up in his throat.
“I’m going to be sick,” he moaned. Faustin loosened his arms so he could lean sideways and throw up next to the chair. When he was done, he was hauled upright and shoved to the door.
“You think about it, Boss,” Faustin said as he departed.

* * *

London

It was late at night when they gathered at the Home Secretary’s house for a secret meeting. Only Towers, Michael and the core team attended. Ken Willis was most definitely not invited. After Ruth and Malcolm had briefed them on the latest developments, Towers took over.
“From now on, only the people in this room must know what you’re doing. Michael, you report directly to me. Not even your DG can be in the loop.”
Michael nodded reluctantly. He had always been a man who played it straight, by the rules. This situation was making him very uncomfortable. However, he knew that Towers had the ear of the PM, and therefore convinced himself that this undertaking had the support of the Head of State.
“What will you do next?” Towers asked Ruth.
“We should send someone to Tangiers to get the records of all the yachts that were anchored there on the day the ship carrying Harry docked. Someone must have seen something. Once we have the list, Malcolm and I will begin the process of finding them and questioning them.”
“I’ll go,” Dimitri said. “I have a contact in the Moroccan Navy.”
“And we should put surveillance on Ken.” Everyone looked at Ruth in surprise, so she explained further.
“If I were Six I would use the opportunity of us asking for their help to plant a mole. If we can find out where he goes and who he meets we will have a better idea of who else is involved.”
And so the final push to find Harry started.

* * *

It took Dimitri a few days to get the information they wanted. Ruth and Malcolm then began the laborious process of contacting all the millionaires whose yachts had been there, and questioning them on whether they’d seen anything. It was a frustrating, time-consuming process which made Ruth despair of ever making progress. Each night she went home, missing Harry so much she could barely breathe some nights, before falling asleep with Scarlet and the cats on the bed with her so as not to feel totally alone. She dreamed of him, every night without fail. Sometimes the dreams were filled with horrible images of him being tortured, other times he was here in their house with her, in the bed with her. Strangely it was usually from those that she woke up crying.

After two frustrating weeks Malcolm finally found something. A retired British businessman had been there, and he remembered seeing the ship in question.
“I remember because it was nice to hear an accent from home,” he told Dimitri and Beth when they visited him.
They looked at each other. “Can you describe what you saw?” Dimitri asked more out of hope than conviction.
“Oh, I can do better,” said the man, holding up a video camera. “I have it on tape.”

They gathered in the meeting room to watch it together. The camera panned around the harbour. It was sunrise, and the sun bathed everything in a golden light. Then it focused on a ship a few berths away. On the deck a crate could clearly be seen, with two white men standing next to it, talking, before moving on.
“Tariq, zoom in on those two men.”
He did so, and as the two men came into focus, all the blood drained from Ruth’s face, and for the first time they heard Malcolm swear.
“That fucking bastard,” he said vehemently, looking at the unmistakable face of Oliver Mace.

* * *

I took two more weeks for them to make further progress. After tracing Mace’s movements to southern Spain, Dimitri and Beth had gone there to investigate, and found that he was living luxuriously in a villa whilst running black ops for Six. But there was no sign of Harry. Their focus shifted to the second man seen in the video with Mace, and after database searches failed to identify him, Beth suggested that they check among the private security company community operating in Africa. At long last one of her old contacts came through and identified the man as an American pilot specialising in flying weapons and other goods into Central Africa for the CIA. After identifying the plane he used, they eventually traced its flight to Bukavu on the date in question.

“There is a South African private security company operating out of Lubumbashi, in the south of the DRC,” Beth stated.
“It consists of former Recces, hard unscrupulous men trained by the old regime who’ll do anything for money. My former outfit used them on occasion. They may be our best option.”
Towers nodded. “Do it. I don’t care what it costs, I’ll authorise it.”
Thus Beth and Dimitri found themselves on the MI5 jet bound for Lubumbashi.

* * *

As they anxiously waited for word that Beth and Dimitri had arrived, Ruth kept herself busy to try and stop from going insane with worry. Ever mindful of the reason behind Harry’s disappearance, she monitored local Six/CIA communications minutely in the event they tried to move the shipment of weapons again. It came as no surprise to her, then, when she realised they would try to do so that night, this time by flying the shipment out.

She rushed to inform Michael, and was in the middle of explaining her information when Tariq appeared in the doorway.
“You need to see this.” His voice was tight with anxiety.
They followed him to his computer, where a video link was open, the camera focussed on an empty chair.
Michael frowned in confusion.
“What’s going on?”
“I got an e-mail with the link attached,” Tariq explained. He opened the mail and they read the message in silence.

Stay tuned to see what happens to people who stick their noses in where they shouldn’t.

“Oh, no…” Ruth said, unable to tear her eyes from the message. A phone rang behind them. Alec snatched it up and spoke briefly.
“Beth,” he reported. “The South Africans found out where he’s being held; they should be there in an hour.”
“Not soon enough,” Ruth murmured in anguish.
Her words were prophetic as there was sudden movement on the video link. They watched in mute frustration as a man was half-dragged, half-carried into view and deposited on the chair.
“Jesus,” Alec said quietly. Ruth clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. Malcolm had gone very pale. He moved to stand next to Ruth and gently pushed her down into a chair, before resting his hand on her shoulder in a futile attempt at comfort.

The bedraggled, emaciated apparition before them was almost unrecognisable as the man who had once bestrode the Grid with such assurance, such authority. He was sweating and shivering at the same time, and sat there mumbling to himself. They could make out a few words here and there.
“Couldn’t… women, children… sorry… Ruth…”
Malcolm had to swallow before he could speak. “He’s delirious. The sweating and shivering – he’s clearly running a high fever. Probably malaria, taken where he is.”
Seeking refuge in facts.

A powerfully built black man wearing a balaclava came into view and handed Harry a piece of paper.
“Read this,” he commanded.
It took tremendous effort from Harry to focus on the paper. He squinted at it, then shook his head.
“Too many els…” His voice faded away at the end and his head dropped forward.
“What?” The other man sounded confused. When Harry didn’t respond, he shook his shoulder roughly, and Harry lifted his head again.
“Imperialists. Only one ‘l’.”
Harry’s captor was not impressed. “Read it!” he yelled.
Harry shook his head. “I refuse.”
In fury the man pistol-whipped Harry, causing a cut to open above one eye and blood to stream down the side of his face.
“Read it!” the man ordered again.

The blow seemed to have cleared Harry’s head as he managed to look straight into the camera.
“No.”
He cowered as his assailant drew back his arm to deliver another blow, but the blow never came. Instead the man squatted down next to Harry.
“Come now, Boss. Your friends are watching. Don’t make me hurt you in front of them.”
“Friends?” Harry queried.
“Yes. Your people back in England. They’re watching right now.”

Harry stared at the camera, trying to compute what Faustin had said. They’re watching, Ruth was watching. He crumbled.
“If you let me talk to them first, I’ll read it.”
Faustin considered. “Okay. Because I like you, Boss,” he said magnanimously.
Harry looked into the camera. “Don’t let them win,” he said as strongly as he could. “Ruth… You know what this is about. Don’t let them win.”
When Faustin stepped forward again Harry hurriedly continued.
“Ruth… Oh God I love you. Tell Catherine and Graham I love them, and I’m so sorry for everything. You remember me well, yes? Don’t remember… this. Remember… reading Ovid in bed together.” He smiled softly. “Or dancing barefoot in the sitting room. The weekend in Paris.”
“Enough,” Faustin interrupted. “You read this now.”

Harry looked at him, his eyes filled with anguish.
“Please, I beg you. I want to live. So much. Please.” He spoke softly, with dignity.
“You will give me the weapons?” Faustin asked in response.
Tears welled in Harry’s eyes.
“No. I can’t.”
“Then I can’t either.” The gun was cocked with an ominous click and pressed against Harry’s temple.
Harry was breathing deeply, erratically, as he tried not to break down completely.
“Oh no… I’m so sorry Ruth. I love you. Promise me you won’t let this destroy you. You live, you hear me? You live.”
He turned his head and stared down the barrel of the gun.
“Will you do me one favour? Shoot me through the heart.”
Faustin nodded and pressed the gun against Harry’s heart.
Harry kept his eyes on the camera, as though he could see Ruth on the other side.
Faustin began to pull the trigger and Harry spoke one last word.
“Ruth,” he whispered a heartbeat before the shot reverberated around the room.

On the Grid, they watched his body jerk with the impact, before his head fell slowly forward. He didn’t move again.

tbc

[A Cousin]

DON'T YOU DARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Aria]

AAAAARRRRRRGHHHHHH!!! Totally heartbreaking!!

[Tea Lady]

NOW LOOK HERE SILKTIE, THAT IS SO CRUEL !!!!

Those South Africans better haul ass and move quick smart, do you hear!!

Ovid in bed *sobs*

[DogSoSmall]

How do you write a soundless scream?

[cateau1]

Nooooooo! Don't do this to us! Only Nitrus will like this ending .

[MrsHat]

We need a smiley with tears!

You can't leave us there Silktie!!

[Angie]

Oh no!!!! This is such a gripping story! Can you really have killed Harry? Please no.....please let it be the guard who has been shot instead *clutching wildly at straws* Poor Harry has suffered enough. Please update soon!!

[Sparky]

Poor poor Harry..... and Ruth.

Brilliantly written and captivating story!

[Obsession]

let it be a stun gun... I agree with sparky, brilliantly written and totally captivating story!