The Secret

They were Brady’s last words. A full stop was applied by Faisal putting a pistol shot through his head, causing his brains to splatter out over the stones and Mark to throw up.

Mark deduced that they were in some kind of cave complex when the blindfold was removed and he’d stopped blinking against the light. As a scientist, he immediately took on board that it was electric light, quickly correlating this with the distant but distinctive sound of a generator. Several computer monitors sat on a bench to his left. Two were manned by turbaned men; three others had screen-savers lazily doing their thing, tumbling cubes and fish going nowhere. Faisal stood there with an armed man on either side. ‘You have something we want, doctor. I’d appreciate your cooperation. In fact... I must insist.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Mark, glad he’d got the words out but afraid his insides were turning to water.

‘Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?’ said Faisal, holding up a disk salvaged from the contents of Mark’s briefcase, which were at his feet. ‘This is encrypted; I need the key.’

Mark swallowed, his head swimming with all that had happened. Cut to the chase? he thought. Cut to the fucking chase? That was the sort of thing English actors said in some crummy olden-days drama on TV, not some fucking psycho in a cave in the middle of fucking nowhere. When would this nightmare end? His head lolled in silent appeal. ‘I don’t have it.’

‘Shit,’ said Faisal although not angrily, more as if it had been the response he’d been expecting and he was mildly irritated. He punched numbers into his satellite phone and then held it by his side until it beeped twice. He examined it and nodded in satisfaction before turning it round and holding it up in front of Mark’s face. Laura and Jade filled the small screen. Their mouths were taped but their eyes spoke of the terror they felt. A knife blade hovered at Laura’s throat. Jade wore a badge that said I am 4.

‘Now, do we understand each other?’

The dam broke inside Mark and he unleashed every expletive he could think of at Faisal, who remained impassive throughout the outburst. When he finally ran out of energy and imagination, his curses degenerating into disjointed sobs and appeals, Faisal said simply, ‘Give me the key.’

Mark, unable to take his eyes off Laura and Jade, nodded silently and was released from his bindings. He picked up his empty briefcase from the floor and said, ‘I need a knife.’

Faisal nodded and one of the armed men handed Mark his knife, handle first, to the accompaniment of clicking gun mechanisms. Mark picked away at the stitching of an interior side panel of his briefcase and extracted a computer memory card. He handed it to Faisal who passed it to one of the men sitting at the monitors. After a few moments, the man appeared satisfied and indicated as much to Faisal, who smiled. The intelligence agent took back the memory card and put it along with the disk he’d held up earlier in an envelope which Mark noted was marked Vaccination schedules. He handed the envelope to one of his men and told him where to take it, adding, ‘When you get to the village, leave it at the clinic. Dr Khan will pick it up from there.’ Then he turned to Mark who was now suffering the agony of having betrayed his country on top of everything else.

Mark said, ‘You’ve got what you wanted. Let my wife and daughter go.’

Faisal didn’t bother with a reply. He nodded to the armed men flanking Mark and they gripped his arms to drag him outside, ignoring his questions and pleas before ending his suffering with a burst of gunfire that echoed off the surrounding rocks in a fading, repetitive requiem.

Back in Deansville, Laura’s and Jade’s lives also came to an end. Not being in the wilds of the Khyber, gunfire would have aroused suspicion in the small Maryland town, so a knife was used. What had started off as such a good day for the McAllister family had ended very badly indeed.

When Faisal received confirmation that the marines left to guard the vehicles down in the pass had been dealt with and that the vehicles themselves had been destroyed, he felt a warm glow of satisfaction. All he needed now was a message confirming that the information he’d obtained from the American had arrived safely at the pre-arranged collection point in the village for his mission to have been a complete success. He got it before sunrise.