Chapter Fifteen

TLASS BUCKLED AT the knees. The saracen caught him before he fell and half carried him towards his vehicle – a black American SUV, the same one whose windshield he had washed so many times. Halfway there, he stopped.

He smacked Tlass hard across the face and saw the prisoner’s eyes spark with pain and fury.

During the planning, one of his major concerns had been that intravenous sedatives recovered from a body might contain a chemical marker that would allow them to be traced to a batch number. Such a number would lead to the regional hospital he had been working at in Lebanon, and it wouldn’t take diligent investigators – a team from the Syrian secret police, for example – very long to start working through the list of employees and find that he was supposedly on vacation during the relevant period.

There were, however, enough donkeys hauling carts in Beirut for the city to have developed a large and unregulated market in veterinary products. As a result, it was an ampoule of an untraceable horse tranquillizer that was ripping through Tlass’s body now, and the Saracen only hoped he had calculated the dose correctly – enough to inhibit any muscle control but not so much that it caused the victim to pass out. If Tlass’s eyes glazed over, the man would be useless – whatever else happened, the prisoner had to stay alert.

Whack! The Saracen hit him across the face again for good measure, then resumed hauling him towards the SUV. Just as he had learned by observing Tlass while he washed the windshield, he used the button on the key to unlock the doors, opened the rear one and bundled the prisoner inside.

The interior of the vehicle was like a cave. All through the searingly hot countries that extend from the Mediterranean down past the Arabian Gulf, there is one unfailing way to work out who has wasta and who doesn’t. The slang word for it is makhfee, and it means tint – as in the coating you put on car windows to keep the sun out. Restricted by law to 15 per cent, the more wasta you have, the more makhfee you can get away with.

Tlass had a great deal of wasta indeed, and the windows of his Cadillac were tinted to an intimidating 80 per cent – making the cabin almost completely private, ideal for what was about to take place within. The Saracen swung in behind his prisoner, slammed the door, climbed into the driver’s seat, put the key in the ignition and turned the engine on. He wasn’t going anywhere, but he needed the air-conditioning blowing as cold as possible. He flicked the switch that operated the rear seats and watched the bench lie down until Tlass was flopping about on a flat platform like a tuna on the deck.

Working to the choreography he had planned for weeks, he pulled rolls of thick electrical tape out of his pocket and scrambled on to the platform. Tlass watched in mute terror as the master grabbed his wrists, taping them to grab handles on the doors, spreading him out face up, just as Tlass had once done to a naked woman he had taken great pleasure in ‘interrogating’ until she became too exhausted to scream and he had grown bored and garrotted her.

The master then taped Tlass’s feet, thighs and chest to the platform, making sure he couldn’t move. What happened next, however, was the strangest thing of all – the master taped Tlass’s forehead and chin tight to the headrest, holding his head as rigid as if it were in a workshop clamp. Tlass tried to speak, wanting to know what the hell he was doing – after all, it wasn’t as if you could use your head to escape. But no words would come from his drooling mouth.

With quiet satisfaction, the Saracen saw him trying to speak, watched his terrified eyes dart about: he knew for certain that he had got the dose of sedative right. Certain that Tlass, spreadeagled, was incapable of movement, the Saracen opened the rear door, checked the surrounding area was clear, slid out and ran to his encampment.

In one crashing move he pulled the tarpaulin down from its anchors and piled his gas ring and other possessions on to it, leaving nothing behind to help the forensic analysts. He tied the tarp into a bundle, flung it over his shoulder and picked up his old cool-box, carefully packed by him earlier in the day, as if he were preparing for some bizarre picnic.

The last thing that he had stowed in it was what had caused him the most anxiety – a large bag of ice. For weeks he had mulled over the problem of how to acquire it but when the answer came it was disarmingly simple – he asked the friendliest of the security guards, the same one who had told him about the practice of the guards disappearing for Eid, to help him keep some drinks cool for his own simple celebration of the festival.

‘Would it be possible to have some ice from the refrigerator in the staff kitchen? ’ he had asked the guard, and the good Muslim had duly delivered it a few hours ago.

‘Eid Mubarak, ’ they had said to each other as the Saracen stashed it in the cool-box – on top of two small plastic containers, some food scraps and several bottles of cordial, which were really just a blind. The real contents of the cool-box – the rest of the specialist equipment he needed – were hidden in a concealed compartment at the bottom.

With the cool-box under his arm and the bundle on his back, he ran to the SUV. Tlass heard a rear door open, and his wild eyes swivelled to see the Palestinian load his possessions on board, swing himself in behind and slam the door shut. Ominously, the master reached forward and hit a switch, operating the central-locking system, sealing them inside.

The Saracen reached down and emptied the deputy director’s pockets, setting aside his cellphone, opening up his wallet, ignoring the money and credit cards and finding exactly what he needed – Tlass’s security key card.

Feeling more confident by the minute, he knelt down, carefully positioned himself close to Tlass’s head and took the lid off the cool-box. He unloaded the food and released the catch that allowed him to remove the false bottom. From out of the hidden compartment he took a heavy plastic pouch rolled and tied with a cord and laid it down beside him. Next he began to fill the two plastic containers with ice – and there was something in the calm and orderly way he did all these things that Tlass recognized.

The fucker’s a doctor! he said in his head, it being the only place he could speak right then. His eyes darted around frantically: the startling insight had made him more frightened than he would have ever thought possible.

What sort of sick fuck with all that study behind him – and a good career ahead as long as he kept his nose clean – would sweep up a parking lot? he wanted to know.

Somebody with a plan was the answer he immediately gave himself. And, in his experience, men with plans were usually fanatics, not the sort of people you could reason with – even if you could get your muscles to say the words you so desperately needed to.

The doctor took a pair of clear plastic gloves out of the secret compartment. They terrified Tlass in some even deeper place. What are they for?! he tried to scream.

As if in answer, the doctor spoke to him. In different circumstances, people had complimented him on his bedside manner. ‘I’m going to take your eyes, ’ he said.