#5. DESERT, TWELVE KILOMETRES EAST OF DAMASCUS, SYRIA
Wednesday May 6, 14:42
MOKHTAR'S EYELIDS were glued together with his own sticky blood and were difficult to open. He was buried up to his chin in earth. His mouth was parched and painfully dry and a terrible, sickening, rhythm thumped inside his head like a jackhammer slowly pounding the last remnants of sanity into dust against the bony anvil of his skull. The scorching, powerful stroke of the sun slapped the back of his neck. His lips and tongue were puffy and swollen and his nose was clogged with crushed cartilage, blood and broken bone. Despite his blurred vision, he could see, as his pupils adjusted to the fierce white light, fourteen white-robed figures swimming hazily into focus against the background brown, stone-strewn sand of the Syrian Desert. The pebbles they had pelted him with lay scattered in front of his face. Moussa Bashir, standing a few metres away, was taking photographs with a small digital camera.
Mokhtar felt tremendously thirsty and asked for water. Moussa hobbled one pace forward and spat in his face. Another stone struck him on the side of the head. Sunlight glinted sharply off Osama's round-rimmed specs. Mokhtar had always liked this intense, serious young man and tried to call his name. It emerged as a whispered croak.
They had caught him rifling through receipts in Talal's office. Finding correspondence with Hands across the Sands in Jordan, a letter confirming a $5000 deposit into the school's bank account, a receipt from an electronic goods retailer for switches and wire and one from a farm supply shop for fertiliser, and a receipt for a one-way bus ticket from Damascus to Baghdad dated the day before Yasser's gruesome and spectacular death, Mokhtar had excitedly emailed the photographs to Ahmed Ahmed, and only became aware slowly, very slowly, of the spectre in a white galabeya standing in the doorway.
''What are you doing, Mr Mokhtar?'' Osama asked primly, settling his owl-rimmed glasses on his thin, beaky nose.
''Looking for the key to the library,'' Mokhtar answered smoothly. ''Ah, here it is.'' He held up a small Yale key.
''And the phone?''
''I was about to ring Imam Talal,'' said Mokhtar. Osama's stony stare drilled through Mokhtar's eyes. ''What are you doing?''
Osama smiled icily. ''Spying on you,'' he answered. Mokhtar's heart froze.
Osama denounced him in class that afternoon. Mokhtar had not resisted. In fact, he had smiled. He had known where it would end. He had always known.
A jeep roared suddenly over the dune, sending a spray of sand shooting up from its tyres as it skidded to a stop. The street-boy Hisham stepped out, tiny alongside the giant Talal Hafez who was dressed in his usual white galabeya and round, lacy taqiyah cap. The bushy black beard which covered most of his chest bristled fiercely in the breeze. The sun, reflecting off the savagely curved, sharply pointed silver hook, threw spears of blinding light round the makeshift arena. Mokhtar had forgotten how impressive the man was.
''So, you treacherous bastard,'' growled Talal Hafez. ''Before Hisham cuts out your tongue then cuts your head off and shits down your neck, tell me who sent you to spy on me.''
Mokhtar was exhausted. His skull was bursting. He wanted to sleep, maybe to die. At least it would finish. He said nothing.
''The film of your execution, your torture, will be posted on the Internet,'' said Talal. ''Your wife, your parents, your children will see your suffering and weep at your stubbornness. Tell me who sent you, and I will not post the film. I will spare your family your pain.''
Family. Wife. Children. Mokhtar had none. He had married the Service, married his country. Ahmed Ahmed had said it was better that way. Oh, he had had a sweetheart a lifetime ago, a doe-eyed beauty called Alana Madani whom he had courted with flowers and cards and little soft toys, whose father built buses and whose mother baked cakes, whose brother Hamza, also an agent, had been his best friend… he hoped they would miss him.
He sensed a warm, wet trickle on his face and lifted his eyes. Hisham was pissing on him. Moussa was filming it. Everyone was laughing.
''Just kill me,'' croaked Mokhtar, tasting the urine musty on his swollen lips. ''Finish it.''
''Oh, we will,'' said Talal Hafez. ''But not till you talk.''
Carefully, almost tenderly, he placed the needle-sharp point of his shiny steel hook in the soft flesh beneath Mokhtar's left eyeball.
''When I have clawed out your eyes,'' said Talal Hafez, ''I shall put a biscuit tin over your head and leave you to cook. The temperature is already thirty-eight Celsius. The tin will act as an oven, concentrating the heat to perhaps one hundred and eighty degrees. Your blood will boil, your brain-fluid will dry, your saliva will evaporate, your skin will blister, your flesh will char…
The hook punctured Mokhtar's skin.
''I do not know exactly how you will die,'' said Talal Hafez, ''I only know it will be slow and excruciatingly painful.''
The hook dug behind Mokhtar's left eyeball.
The fourteen figures seemed to shimmer. God's angels, thought Mokhtar, come at last.
''The beauty of the desert,'' said Talal Hafez slowly, watching the blood burst from the wound, ''Is that out here no-one can hear you scream.'' Savagely he twisted the hook.