The Reluctant Hero by Michael Dobbs Page B

is asking about you.’
    Slowly, heavily, with a body that refused to cooperate, Zac levered himself up into a sitting position, his back propped against the wall. ‘Harry?’ he mumbled through cracked lips.
    ‘Yes. He wants to buy you back. A most interesting man, your Mr Jones.’
    Zac stretched his legs, clumsily, and began to wriggle, like a fish on a line, as he tried to rub the pain from his shoulder.
    ‘In fact, I think he may have saved your life,’ the visitor continued. ‘You were due to die tomorrow.’
    Zac raised his head, perplexed. His lips moved, but no words came out.
    ‘Did they not tell you? The President in his wisdom had decreed it. But now . . .’
    Life, hope, began to stir once more in Zac. He leaned forward, expectant.
    ‘We shall keep you alive,’ the visitor continued, ‘and play the game. We can’t let you go, you understand that, don’t you? Not at any price. You really shouldn’t have been caught fucking the President’s wife. Not that you were the first, of course, and I think our beloved President suspects that. But you were the first to get caught, and that makes a difference. Now he demands retribution, and even though he is only half a man, he is still the President.’
    The visitor began to laugh, but gagged on the first mouthful of fetid air. He spat on the floor in disgust.
    ‘So we will wait for your friend Mr Jones to leave us.’ He paused. ‘And then, I’m afraid, you will die.’
    His smile was thin, surgical, like a wound. He was done here, for the moment. Amir Beg kicked the door to attract the guard.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The hotel room was what passed for five-star in Ashkek – clean, comfortable, and fiercely overheated. Whether the tropical temperatures were a constant condition, Harry doubted; he’d already seen enough hesitation of the lights to suggest that the power supply couldn’t be taken for granted. The hotel was topping up while it could.
    He’d been in bed half an hour but couldn’t sleep, his mind tumbling through what he had seen and heard. Could it be that, after all, Zac wasn’t here, as Beg had claimed? But Beg’s denials carried no weight. Harry had offered him a bribe; a corrupt man would have reacted to the temptation, and an honest one to the insult. Yet Beg had offered nothing but professed indifference. That couldn’t be the end of the story.
    As Harry lay on his bed, staring up at the whorls of plaster that decorated the ceiling, he heard a knocking at the door. A tentative sound. Not the secret police, then. When he opened it, he was astonished to discover Martha, wrapped in one of the hotel’s meagre dressinggowns and, from what he could see, little else. From her perch at the end of the corridor, the old hag watched everything.
    He couldn’t resist staring at Martha in surprise and more than passing approval before engaging once more with her eyes. ‘Am I supposed to invite you in?’
    ‘You’d better. Unless you want to disappoint Stalin’s Granny over there,’ she replied, nodding in the direction of the crone.
    ‘This isn’t what I expected,’ he said, closing the door behind her.
    ‘Don’t expect anything at all. You’re not my type.’
    He was mildly surprised to feel a flicker of disappointment pass over him.
    She stood in the middle of the room, her arms folded defensively across her chest. ‘I want to know what you’re up to,’ she demanded primly.
    ‘What I’m up to?’
    ‘There’s something odd going on – and you’re in the middle of it. Don’t pretend you’ve come here just to take a look at a few factories and—’
    Suddenly he held up a finger to his lips to demand her silence. He hadn’t made a close inspection of his room but he assumed it was bugged – nothing too sophisticated, not in a city that couldn’t even afford enough coins for the electricity meter, but there were basic precautions that needed attending to. He went over to the bedside radio and switched on the BBC World Service,