'Idiots!!!'
Dressed in brown monks' robes, tied in the middle with thick string which was fraying at the ends, their hair shaved in the middle into a perfect round spot, the two men kept their heads down and stared at the floor, cringing as The Leader berated them over and over. The tongue lashing had gone on all day, every time something reminded him of the one who had escaped – and he had been reminded often in the last twenty-four hours.
'Do you realise what could go wrong if word gets out? Do you? Do you?' he yelled. 'It won’t just be me, they’ll come after all of us. All of us.'
They kept silent, having answered this question too many times to count. Neither of them had a clue who would come after them. As far as they knew, the man in front of them was The Leader. Everything they did was under his orders. If they thought him mad, they kept quiet out of fear. They had seen too much not to be afraid. They had followed him from France – not that they’d had a choice, they did what they were told, and unless there was trouble, like now, life was good. Very good.
Shaking his head, The Leader began pacing the floor. 'How the hell can she have disappeared?'
Knowing this question wasn’t meant for them, and that the Leader was just sounding off, they still held their silence.
'Impossible.'
He stopped pacing and turned to them. Silently they waited their fate. The Leader did everything on a whim. If he wanted them dead, there was nothing they could do about it. Fighting would be futile, because everyone in his service would turn against them. They had done the same to others.
Just as he opened his mouth, his mobile phone rang. Frowning, he pulled it out, looked at the caller id, and smiled, his thick lips stretching across his fat face.
'Pray these have had more success,' he said quietly, as he pressed the answer button.
He listened for a few minutes. His face, already angry, grew even more so. Eyes bulging, he threw the phone across the room and, hands clasped behind his back, began pacing back and forth.
Stopping suddenly in the middle of the floor, he glared at them. 'Impossible. She’s only a woman! A slip of a girl. No peasant girl can outwit me. Impossible.'
They kept their heads down. A moment later they heard the door slam, then the key turn in the lock. Quickly they glanced at each other, their fear jumping the space between them. Finding out at first hand what it was like to be on the other end of the treatment they had been dishing out for years, the brother on the left felt his heart swell and burst with fear. As he collapsed in a heap, the other, a lapsed Catholic, fell to his knees, imploring the God he had neglected for years to save him.