Fire Hawk Read Free Page A

– and they would.
    The bumping of the wheels that had been causing him such discomfort ended suddenly. The truck’s tyres began humming on smooth tarmac. There was no more stopping for lights or crossroads. They were on some highway now. He forced himself to concentrate, to make an intelligent guess at what was happening. He knew what the pattern was. Foreigners arrested in the past had been interrogated in police cells, then moved after a farce of a trial to the main prison at Abu Ghraib, west of the city. Abu Ghraib. A place of misery and executions. His heart turned over again. Did they give prisoners fair warning when they were about to kill them, or did they just string them up?
    In the days that had followed his arrest, the worst part for him had been the isolation. Not knowing what was happening or why. No comfort call from the Red Cross. No diplomatic visit from the Russians who looked after British interests in Baghdad. It was as if the outside world had forgotten he even existed. He knew that once caught,a spy must expect to be disowned by his own people, but the reality of it had been hard to stomach.
    At first they’d questioned him without physical violence. His interrogator who’d spoken in a plummy English accent acquired, he guessed, at a British staff college several years back, had demanded he confess to spying and name his contacts. But he’d denied everything, maintaining he truly was Terry Malone, an exhibition contractor. Then after a couple of days the atmosphere had changed. They’d begun to rough him up. Instead of the catch-all about spying, the interrogator, whom he’d nicknamed ‘Sandhurst’, had posed a different question: what was it the middle-aged informant had whispered to him in the Rashid Hotel lobby?
    The switch of question had thrown him. Why were they asking it if the informant had simply been acting on Mukhabarat orders – and he must have been, he’d reasoned, because he knew his real name. Only a counter-intelligence service could have broken his cover, and he had no clue how. He’d begun to wonder if the tip-off man had gone further than his Mukhabarat masters had intended and revealed a secret in that fear-laden whisper. He’d bluffed it out with his questioner, pretending the informant had simply exhorted him to read the letter then destroy it. The interrogator’s response had been brutal. Concentrating first on the small of his back, the blows had knocked the air from his lungs. But he’d told them nothing. In later sessions they’d used sticks on his shins and glowing cigarettes on his chest. But he’d still said not a word about anthrax.
    Between beatings they’d returned him to his cell and deprived him of sleep and nourishment. How often the cycle had been repeated he didn’t know. He’d lost sense of time and place, floating on a cushion of pain, kept alive by his certainty that to admit anything at all would mean certain death. As his strength had faded, twoquestions had circled unanswered in his head. How the hell had the Iraqis broken his cover? And had they received his message in London – had Chrissie ever been given it and had she passed it on?
    Confirmation that the thin-faced informant must have exceeded his instructions had arrived soon after. They’d been interrogating Packer again, punctuating their questions with blows to his feet. Then suddenly they’d stopped, dragging him to another room and whipping the hood off. Dangling in front of him was a corpse, naked like himself. The anthrax messenger had been suspended from a rope by hands bound behind his back. His arms were half wrenched from their sockets, his eyes were cataract white, his belly black from the beating that had ruptured his innards.
    â€˜This will happen to you, Packer,’ Sandhurst had hissed from behind his head. ‘Unless you tell me what he told you.’
    Back in the interrogation room his