I Am Pilgrim(239)
‘Don’t put yourself through it,’ the Saracen said. ‘You are an American, Mr Spitz – a man without God. When you stand at the abyss, when you are being broken on the wheel, who will you be able to turn to for help?
‘You have made tiny mistakes, left enough evidence in your wake, to end up here. No, you’re really not that good.
‘Why do you think those mistakes were made? Whose hand was protecting me? Who do you think delivered you to this place? It wasn’t Leyla al-Nassouri. It was God.’
I said nothing, slumping a little, as if defeated. Muscleman and the Helper loosened their grip a fraction as they tried to support me, and I launched myself forward, using my head as the only weapon I had, hitting Nikolaides’ face with the top of my skull, splitting his bottom lip, feeling it spurt with warm blood, sending him flying backwards and making him spit two lower teeth.
Another few seconds wasted. Come on, Ben – not long now. Cheat a little.
The bull, bellowing with pain, hurled himself towards me and was only stopped by the Saracen’s shoulder as he stepped between us.
‘We’re wasting time,’ he said, and looked at Muscleman and the Helper. ‘Get started.’
I would have liked to have kept chatting, I would have liked to have chatted for another sixty-three seconds, but they didn’t seem interested. The two Albanian thugs dragged me back down the passage, and I was confused – I thought they would have had the truck battery or whatever equipment they needed right at hand.
The confusion vanished when I saw the overflowing marble trough and realized what it meant. Mentally, desperately, I tried to shift gears – I had prepared myself for pain, not terror. I had figured I could withstand the alligator clips or pliers ripping out my fingernails for a brief amount of time, but now I dragged my feet, trying to run the clock down – every second was going to count. If I started to talk, everything would be lost.
Forty-two seconds. The drug courier at Khun Yuam, the tough guy with the machete scars across his chest, had lasted twenty-nine.
The Saracen stopped at the marble trough and spoke to his sister in Arabic. I couldn’t understand the words, but his hand motion was eloquent enough – he was telling her to take a walk. What was about to happen was not suitable for a woman to witness.
Thirty-eight seconds. Don’t let me down, Ben.
Chapter Thirty-three
BRADLEY WAS TIMING it too, but he was using a watch so his count was different – and more accurate than mine. He figured forty-six seconds.
The obese nanny was drenched in sweat and her legs looked as if they were going to buckle at any moment. Worse still, she was standing in a pool of urine – she had peed herself the moment she realized what Bradley had in mind. At gunpoint, working to my instructions, he had ordered her and the little guy into the centre of the room, directly under the sturdy roof beam. Now, seven minutes later, the woman continued to whimper and beg for help in Turkish and, though the boy had overcome his first fit of fear and yelling, he was still crying and asking for his mother.
The whole event was tearing Bradley’s nerves to shreds and, when he wasn’t checking his watch, he stared at the floor looking as if he was going to vomit. Despite her distress, the nanny noticed it and couldn’t work it out: maybe he wasn’t such a bad man after all. It encouraged her again to muster her limited English and implore him to release them.
‘Quiet!’ Bradley yelled, repeating it even louder and raising the gun at her when she still wouldn’t stop.
She shook again with tears, the little guy’s sobs grew more pitiful, and all Bradley wanted to do was to get it over with. It was ahead of time, but he took the nanny’s phone off the charger and – despite my insistence that he had to stick absolutely to the schedule – he rationalized it by telling himself it would take time to dial Cumali’s cellphone and there would be a delay while she answered.
It rang four times – come on, come on!
It answered – thank God, he thought – and he heard a woman’s voice speaking in Turkish. He only caught a few words before he talked loudly over her, asking if it was Leyla Cumali and telling her to listen carefully …
The woman kept speaking, her tone unaffected. It was if she was a … Bradley realized – it was an automated voice.
The nanny – tottering on her feet, all three hundred pounds of her bearing down on her weak knees, saw through her tears that something was badly wrong: Bradley was close to panic. He was breathing hard, not saying a word – the voice was speaking in a language he didn’t understand, he had no way of deciphering it and he didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t in the manual – where the hell was the Turkish cop?!