Bravo two zero (26 page)

    "We could just leave you out in the desert to be eaten by the animals, Andy. Nobody would care, except your family. You're letting them down, you're not being brave, you're just playing into the hands of the people who sent you here. They're having a good time while people like you and me are fighting each other. You and me, Andy-we don't want to fight this war."

    I was nodding and agreeing with everything he said, and all the time I was doing it the wonderful feeling was growing inside me that I had actually beaten him. He saw me nodding, but he didn't know that inside my head my attitude was totally different. I started to feel better about my capture. Everything had felt so negative up till then. I was thinking: He must be believing this crap. He's chatting away and I'm agreeing with him. I couldn't believe I was getting away with it. I was on top of this discussion, and he wasn't even aware of it. I'd got something over him. This could be the start of a wonderful relationship.

    I was winning.

    "Just tell us, Andy, and we shall send you back to England. What unit are you from?" He made it sound as if he had the power to summon a private jet there and then to whisk me back to Brize Norton.

    "I'm sorry, I cannot answer that question."

    This time, as the kicks connected with my skull, there was a hissing, popping sound in my ears, and as I clenched my jaw, I heard the bones creak together. I felt blood trickle out of my ears and down my face. I was worried. Blood coming out of your ears is not a good sign. I thought, I'm going to be left deaf. Shit, I was only in my early thirties.

    "What unit are you with?"

    I was hoping desperately that he'd get on to something else, but he wasn't going to let go.

    I said nothing.

    "Andy, we are not making much progress."

    Bizarrely, the voice was still soft and chummy.

    "You must understand, Andy, I have a job to do. We're not getting very far, are we? There is no big problem, just tell us."

    Silence.

    More kicks. More punches. More screams.

    "We already have this information from your friend, you know. We just want to hear it from you."

    That was a lie. He'd have got jack shit out of Dinger. Dinger was harder than me; he wouldn't have said a word. The reason he had got himself so badly filled in was probably because he'd treated them like anybody else he didn't like the look of and told them to fuck off.

    "You must understand, I'm a soldier," I said. "You're a soldier, too-you must understand I can't tell you this."

    I was trying to get some affiliation, I was trying to put it over in a sobbing, pathetic way. I hoped to appeal to their own traditional fear of loss of face.

    "My family would walk around in shame for the rest of their days," I cried. "They would be disgraced, I'd be discredited for ever. I just can't tell you these things, I can't."

    "Then Andy we have a big problem. You're not telling us what we need to know. You're not helping the situation, you're not helping yourself.

    You could be dead very soon, for something that means nothing to you. I want to help you, but there are people above me who don't want to do that. Admit it," he said, in the tone of my best mate giving me advice.

    "You are an Israeli, aren't you? Come on, admit it."

    "I'm not an Israeli," I sobbed. "Look-I'm not dressed like an Israeli.

    This is British uniform, and you've seen my identification tags. I'm English, this is British uniform. I don't know what you want from me.

    Please, please. I want to help. You're confusing me. I'm scared."

    "This is stupid."

    "You've got my identification tags, you've seen that I'm English. I'm scared of what you're saying."

    His tone suddenly changed. "Yes, we have your identification tags, you haven't," he exploded angrily.

    "You're who we say you are, and as far as we're concerned you're an Israeli. If not, why were you so near Syria? What were you doing? Tell me, tell me, what were you doing?"

    Even if I'd wanted to answer, he wasn't giving me time. He hit me with a nonstop torrent of questions and raging rhetoric. "You mean nothing to us! You're nothing, nothing!"

    It must have been fun in his house. The kids wouldn't have known if he was coming or going.

    What do I do now? I asked myself.

    Let's get back to the Israeli thing.

    A dread was creeping into my mind concerning Bob. Bob had tight, curly black hair and a large nose. If he was captured or they found his body, he could be taken as Jewish.

    "I'm British."

    "No, no, you're Israeli. You are dressed like commandos "Everybody in the British army wears this uniform."

    "You'll die soon, Andy, for being so stupid, for not answering simple questions."

    "I'm not Israeli."

    It had got to the stage where I was having to remember what I'd been saying and what I had not been saying, because I knew that if these things were being written down-and I could hear the scribbling-I was going to get myself into severe shit.

    Let's keep on the Israeli thing. Maybe if this character keeps on talking to me, we can get a relationship going. Him and me. He's mine.

    He's my interrogator. He just might} | take pity on me.

    "I'm a Christian, I'm English," I set off again. "I don't even know whereabouts in Iraq I am, let alone if I'm near Syria. I don't want to be here. Look at me, I'm scared."

    "We know you're an Israeli, Andy. We just want to hear it from you.

    Your friend has already told us."

    I thought, Dinger looks like he could be a bit Jewish also, with his tight, wiry blond hair.

    "You're commandos."

    In their army only commandos wear DPM.

    "We're not! We're just ordinary soldiers."

    "You'll die for being so stupid. All we want is simple answers from you. I'm trying to help you. These people want to kill you. I'm trying to save you. How do you expect me to do that if you're not helping me? We want you to answer these questions. We need to hear it from you. You want to help us, don't you?"

    "Yes, I want to help." I was sobbing again. "But I can't help you if I don't know anything."

    "You're so stupid." The voice was aggressive, but he mixed some compassion with it. "Why aren't you helping us? Come on, I'm trying to help you. I don't want you to be in this situation any more than you do."

    "I want to help you, but I'm not an Israeli."

    "Just tell us and we'll stop. Come on, you're so stupid, aren't you?

    What's the matter? We're civilized people. But I need you to tell me that you're an Israeli. If you can't tell me that, then tell me why you're so near Syria?"

    "I don't know where I am."

    "You're near Syria, aren't you, so just tell me. These people will kill you. Your friend's okay, your friend has told us. He will live, but you're going to die, for something stupid. Why die? You're stupid."

    I heard his chair scrape on the floor. I was trying to take in what was going on without showing that I could focus. I was physically wrecked.

    I was hoping for just the slightest hint of humanity in this man. Shit, I could always turn the waterworks on so easily as a kid, win my aunties round, and get a packet of crisps. What was wrong with these people?

    I was going for an Oscar without a doubt-but a good percentage of what I was doing was for real. I was in real pain. It was a good catalyst for the reaction I wanted to portray. It was good to have this Israeli thing. Let's keep on that and hopefully they'll keep away from the other questions.

    "I can't help you, I just can't help you."

    I heard a big sigh, as if he was my best mate in the world and there was nothing left he could do to help me. The sigh said: I am your contact; it's only me that's keeping everybody at bay.

    "Then I cannot help you, Andy."

    As if on cue I heard another chair scrape and feet moving towards me.

    When I smelt the waft of aftershave, I just knew that the lad who was a dab hand with the rifle butt was on his way over to give me the good news.

    He was, too. He really read me my horoscope.

    I must have been getting used to being blindfolded because my senses of hearing and smell seemed to be more acute. I was starting to tell these people apart by their smell. The boy who was handy with the rifle butt wore freshly laundered clothes. Another one liked pistachio nuts. He'd put them in his mouth and chew, then gob the mashed shell into my face.

    The one who spoke good English smoked incessantly and had breath that smelled of coffee and stale cigarettes. When he launched into rhetoric, I got his spit all over my face. He also stank like a color supplement aftershave ad.

    His chair would scrape, and I'd sense him moving around. He'd speak like a gatling gun, then he'd do the Nice Guy bit and give me lots of "Everything's quite okay, it's going to be all right."

    As he was chatting very gently, I could hear him getting closer and closer until we were nose to nose. Then he'd yell in my ear.

    "This is no good, Andy," he said. "We shall have to get this out of you another way."

    What worse way could there possibly be of doing it? We'd had intelligence reports of interrogation centers and mass killings, and I thought, Here we go, we're going to get severely dealt with now. I had visions of concentration camps and electrodes clamped to my bollocks.

    Two of the boys set to with rifle butts.

    One particularly heavy blow caught me on the jaw, directly over my teeth. Only the skin of my cheek lay between the edge of the butt and two of my back molars. I felt the teeth crack and splinter, and then the pain of it hit me. I was down and screaming my head off. I tried to spit out the fragments, but my mouth was too swollen and numb. I couldn't swallow. The moment my tongue touched the sharp, tender stumps I passed out.

    I came to on the floor. The blindfold had fallen off, and I watched as blood poured from my mouth into a pool on the cream lino. I felt stupid and useless. I wanted nothing more than for the handcuffs to fall off so I could get up and deal with these guys.

    They carried on, giving me some good stuff around the back with the butts, twat ting my head, legs, and kidneys.

    I couldn't breathe through my nose. When I screamed, I had to draw breath through my mouth, and the air hit the exposed nerve pulp of my broken teeth. I screamed again, and went on screaming.

    It was getting outrageous.

    They picked me up and put me back on the seat. They didn't bother putting the blindfold back on, but I kept my head down anyway. I didn't want eye contact, or to risk another filling in for looking up. I was in enough pain. I was a big, incoherent mess, honking away, sniveling to myself as I slumped on the chair.

    My coordination was well and truly gone. I couldn't even keep my legs together any more. I must have looked like Dinger's double.

    There was a long silence.

    Everybody was shuffling around, leaving me to ponder over my fate. How long could I go like this? Was I going to get kicked to death here or what?

    There was a lot more sighing and clucking.

    "What are you doing this for, Andy? For your country? Your country doesn't want to know you. Your country doesn't care. The only ones who will really worry will be your parents, your family. We don't want a war. It's Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major. They're sitting back there doing nothing. You're here. It's you that will suffer, not them.

    They're not worried about you.

    "We've had war for many years. All our families have suffered. We're not barbarians, it's you who are bringing in war. This is just an unfortunate situation for you. Why don't you help us? Why are you letting yourself go through all this pain? Why do we have to do this sort of thing?"

    I didn't answer, I just kept my head down. My game plan was not to go into the cover story straightaway, because then they've got you. I was trying to make it look as if I was prepared to give them the Big Four and that was all. Queen and country and all that. I would go through a certain amount of tactical questioning and then break into my cover story.

    They were talking between themselves in low tones, in what I took to be quite educated Arabic. Somebody was scribbling notes.

    The writing was a good sign. It intimated that there wasn't just a big frenzy going on, with them getting what they could and then topping me.

    It made it seem there was a reason for not shooting me. Was there some sort of preservation order on us? It gave me a sense of security, a feeling that some officialdom somewhere was directing operations. Yes, said the other side of my brain, but you're getting further and further down this chain, and the longer this goes on the less chance you have of escaping. Escaping must always be foremost in your mind. You don't know when the opportunity is going to arise, and you've got to be ready.