21

They are hostages and alive, off-road, and heading south in another white Toyota Land Cruiser.

Moe had put the hood on Benton’s head before pushing him into the back seat. He could hear Adar’s cries, Jamal’s heavy breathing, and Arwood’s bullshit, too, until something struck his remaining words out and Arwood finally stopped talking.

Larry must be driving, because Benton heard the diesel engine start while Moe was still beside him. Unless there are more than two of them now. Time will tell.

There is no good direction to travel in, but south is worst, because south of Ninawa province is al-Anbar and the great western desert where ISIL is retrenching. There are no mapped roads that pass through it. The highway from Mosul to Baghdad is far to the east. As far as Benton knows, nothing passes directly through the desert itself, but he doesn’t know much: a map is only a map, and not every road is documented on it.

They drive for more than twenty minutes. They are safer inside the car. They can be shot anywhere, so it’s unlikely to happen where it will make a mess.

The breeze from the open window presses against Benton’s hood, filling his nostrils with the fabric, and for a moment he can’t breathe. His neck cramps as he turns away. It is only when he lowers his head in defeat that the fabric bunches and he can breathe again through a small gap near the neck.

Benton’s inner thigh starts to vibrate.

His world is black, so he cannot see whether anyone else has noticed. The phone’s silent vibrations are muffled between the vinyl seat and his leg. He’d forgotten it was there. His captors didn’t search him after taking his primary phone and satchel away, because most men frisk others poorly.

Benton lifts his hips to keep the phone from vibrating against anything other than himself. There are wind gusts and engine rumble, tyre buzz, and scree kicking up into the chassis. They harmonise a dull white noise that fills the cabin and insulates the sound.

The sun is almost down. He can feel that. Desert voices belong to women. It would be nice to hear Märta’s voice, if only he could answer the phone.

Hello? he’d say.

Thomas? Where are you?

Held hostage. I should have listened to you.

Would you like to come back?

Yes, please.

This is the conversation he wants to have. It is not her voice, though, he is hearing. It is Vanessa’s.

Moe is sitting in the far-back seats. He says something to Larry, the driver, that Benton doesn’t understand. It must be something he doesn’t mind Adar or Jamal hearing. The vehicle turns. No one else says a word.

The driver slows, and later slows further. The light changes. They are behind a hill now, or in a garage, or the sun has set entirely. The temperature drops.

Märta — assuming it was Märta — has stopped calling. She tried three times.

Could it have been Charlotte? She’s been trying to reach him. She’s been wanting to tell him he’s a cretin for turning on her mother after ignoring them both. She wants to explain to him — he supposes — that he has no right to disappear at a time like this, to place something distant and historical and abstract like peace in the Middle East over something proximate and tangible and immediate like herself and her mother. She will be eloquent in her juxtapositions and her line of reasoning. She will be linear and faithful to logical progression, and she will substantiate her claims on accepted norms of social behaviour among adults, which she learned about from someone other than her father.

It couldn’t have been Charlotte, though. This isn’t his phone. It is Märta’s phone. She has called it three times, and he hasn’t answered. Now he has to trust that she knows what to do with silence.

The Land Cruiser stops after hours on the road and off it. The route has been too complex to memorise, and the sun has set, so Benton is completely without his bearings. All he knows, for certain, is they have gone up. Way up. When the door is opened, cold air rushes in, along with the new danger. It is almost welcome.

Moe yells at his hostages to get out, and slaps their heads, giving them a direction to walk. Adar has stopped her crying. There are no city sounds. There’s no traffic or village life. They are someplace desolate. Unwitnessed.

A third man comes out to meet them. His footfalls are crisp. He shuffles as he walks. He mumbles quietly to the other men. He sounds surprised. He is asking questions.

Benton names him Curly.

The longer Curly speaks, the angrier he gets at Larry and Moe. Whatever he says, he is saying in front of Jamal and Adar, who surely understand what’s being said. Which either means it doesn’t matter because it’s incidental, or he’s going to kill them all anyway, so it’s also incidental.

Nothing can be deduced here. Even Sherlock Holmes would be lost.

Moe grabs Benton’s arms and cuffs them behind his back, using a zip cuff.

Benton gently pushes his wrists outward as far as possible while Curly tightens them; too tight, but they would have been tighter if Benton hadn’t pressed back.

Moe pushes and slaps them as they walk blindly. After twenty steps from the car, Benton’s feet land on something different from the packed earth. It is smooth and manmade. The pressure on his ears increases. There is an echo. It is even colder. It smells like a musty cellar suffering from water damage.

It’s into this chamber that Arwood decides to speak. Again.

‘I said before that there’s money to be made off us. But I forgot to tell you this. If you don’t make a deal for our release, you’ll be the ones paying the price. My people are watching. I strongly suggest you make a low ransom demand, take your money, and get this done. Because if you don’t, you’re dead men walking.’

At least four distinct voices laugh. So there are four Stooges, who speak English well enough to chuckle at Arwood.

Which introduces Shemp as the fourth stooge. And this means that Benton is running out of Stooges faster than they are.

When Benton’s hood is removed, he sees nothing. His eyelids are sticky, and his vision blurry. The glaring bare bulb on the ceiling is little help. When he does manage to focus, he makes out a square room about five metres by five metres, with slits on the wall in front of him near the ceiling, like in a World War II pillbox. To his right is a door of drab-green sheet metal and rust. It is closed. To his left, there is another that seems more robust and may lead outside. There are two dirty mattresses on the floor behind him, and nothing else.

When his eyes focus, he sees that Arwood’s hood has been removed as well, his arms bound behind him. Jamal and Adar are there, too, standing in the corner as though they can avoid their circumstance by giving it a wide berth.

He turns, and sees that the door to the outside is closed as well. They are all boxed in together.

‘Everyone OK?’ Benton asks.

Jamal nods, and Adar is immobile and hangs her head. Her face has vanished into the darkness of her hair, which shields her.

‘We’re going to need a plan,’ Benton says.

‘Oh, I have a plan,’ Arwood says. ‘I wasn’t bluffing. We’re being watched. I’ve got people.’