I Am Pilgrim(244)

The Saracen stared at the still frame, his entire universe trembling, everything he thought he knew and understood shaken to its foundations. He looked at me, murderous and volatile. Somebody was threatening his child! He would—

He flew towards me, his eyes incandescent with anger, and in my wounded mind a gear finally meshed. It was the phone call I had tried so hard to count down to, the one which I had desperately wanted to hear. It was the only explanation for the woman’s distress and the Saracen’s anger …

Bradley had come through!

I tried to sit a little straighter, but I was still strapped to the board. Despite a wave of pain, I managed to remember what I had rehearsed in my hotel room when my mind and body were whole and terror was something which only other men knew. I had guessed that the moment of greatest danger would be when the Saracen realized it was a sting and that his child’s life was in the balance: he might lash out in fury and kill whoever was close at hand. I dug down and recalled what I had to say.

‘Be sensible and you can save your son,’ I said, half faltering.

‘How do you know it’s my son?!’ he yelled.

‘You can save him if you want,’ I repeated, not bothering to explain.

His sister had recovered enough to start screaming at her brother – half in Arabic, half in English, all in anguish – telling him not to waste time, to ask me what he had to do to save the child. The Saracen kept staring at me, unsure whether to surrender to logic or anger.

‘Look at the picture!’ Cumali yelled. ‘Look at your son!’

She pushed the phone closer to his face and he looked again at the child’s image. He turned to me …

‘What is happening? Tell me!’ he demanded.

‘Speak to the man on the phone,’ I replied.

The Saracen put the phone to his mouth and spoke in English, venomous. ‘Who are you?!’ he said, trying to assert control.

I knew Bradley would ignore it – just as we had planned, he would tell the Saracen to watch a video clip he was about to send. The first shot would be of a clock or watch to prove that it wasn’t faked, that we hadn’t staged it, that it was happening as we spoke.

The Saracen played the clip. He saw the clock and then he seemed to stagger. His sister, watching too, clung to him, crying out in a mix of Arabic and Turkish. The clip showed one end of the rope attached to the brass bolt that had once supported the kitchen light. The other end was the noose around the little guy’s neck. He was standing on the shoulders of the obese and sweat-drenched nanny. When her weak knees gave out, she would fall and the boy would hang.

It was a horrific scene, and it was no wonder that Bradley had objected so vehemently to it, but I needed something so shocking that the Saracen would have no time to act or plan. In truth, I couldn’t take all the credit – if that was the word – for devising it. I had read about it years ago – during the Second World War, Japanese troops had made captured European fathers support their kids in exactly the same fashion. They had then forced the children’s mothers to watch until their husbands stumbled and fell. Of course, to the Japanese, it was sport.

The Saracen lowered the phone and looked at me in hatred. While he stood rooted to the ground, Cumali flew at me, about to rip and tear at my injured face.

Her brother hauled her back – he was trying to think, his eyes darting around the walls of the ruins. It was a better indication of the prison in which he found himself than the bars of any cage. My mind was starting to function and I knew I had to keep the pressure on, to deny him any chance of disrupting the script I had written.

‘I and my people won’t tolerate any delay,’ I said. ‘Listen to the phone again.’

Robotic, in shock, the Saracen lifted the phone and heard a woman at the other end sobbing, hysterical, speaking to him in Turkish. It disoriented him – it was a language he didn’t understand – and he handed it to his sister.

She started to translate into Arabic, but I stopped her. ‘In English,’ I demanded.

She told her brother it was the nanny. ‘She’s pleading,’ she said. ‘She can barely stand! She says, if we can’t save her, at least save the child.’

She grabbed the Saracen’s shirt, losing control. ‘What in God’s name have you done? What have you led us into?!’

He threw her hand off and she stumbled backwards, breathing hard, staring at him in fury.

‘We estimated that the nanny would probably be able to stand for another six minutes,’ I said. ‘Of course, we could be wrong. It might be less.’

I was making it up but, in the desperate circumstances, nobody challenged it. The Saracen looked at the image on the phone and then at me. I knew that he was reeling, uncertain what to do.