She felt the hands lifting her up and the hood being placed over her head. She knew it was early because she could hear the birds tweeting in a dawn chorus.
The hands guided her carefully, almost gently, on her journey. In her blindness, she became aware of the mud under her feet and the cool breeze of the morning as she walked. Was she being released? Were they moving her to a different location? Her guards gave nothing away, not even speaking, simply moving her in various directions with their hands.
The mud was replaced with concrete and then replaced with tiles, before finally turning into wooden stairs that she began to ascend; one guard behind her and one in front holding her hand, leading her. In the distance, she could hear voices, muffled.
When they pulled the hood off her head, she discovered that she was in a small room which held nothing but a desk and a chair. The man who sat behind the desk was, she thought, the man who had spoken to her in her cell, the man in command. He was shaven-headed, the scar running from his forehead intersecting the eye, and he was squat and powerful. Behind him stood his ever-watchful acolyte; thinner, younger and deadly.
The senior man pulled out his cell phone and placed it on the desk.
“When I say speak, you speak, do you understand?” he said.
She nodded yes.
“Do not try to pass information or you will be punished. Just let your people know that you are alive and well. That is all.”
Another nod, backed up with, “I won’t, I promise.”
He pressed the call button followed by the speaker phone button and finally checked his watch.
“Hello.”
“The girl is here. She wishes to speak,” he said, motioning for her to talk.
“Sabina?”
“Alex… Alex,” she said desperately
“Sabina, are you alright?” asked the Fisherman.
“I’m fine, just tired. I want to come home.”
There was a pause and then: “We are working hard to get you back. Don’t worry. I…”
“That is enough,” said Azrael. He picked the phone up, switching off the speakerphone. “You have you proof of life. Now I want the scientist delivered to me.”
There was another pause from the phone.
“I do not have the authority to hand him over. That decision is made far from here, by people above me,” said the Fisherman reasonably.
“Do not waste my time. I will kill the girl.”
“My friend, we are the same. We are soldiers in a war, but alas we are not Generals. My people would eliminate me if I countermanded their orders.”
“Then the girl will die. It is that simple,” said Azrael, his voice rising, but his tone deepening at the same time.
“Wait… let’s talk about this. I can ask my people, it is the most I can do,” said the Fisherman, stalling. “But it will take time for me to contact them.”
The line was silent for a moment and then Azrael said cruelly, “Then let me give you something to concentrate your mind. Bring the girl here!” He placed the cell phone back on the desk and activated the speakerphone again. “Hold out her hand.”
The two guards took her quickly, one holding her around the body to restrain her, the other holding her left wrist and forcing her hand flat on the table so that the fingers were splayed out. Sabina screamed and tried to struggle.
“Sabina! Sabina, what’s happening?” said the Fisherman over the speakerphone.
“NO!”
“Be quiet, child, it will be much easier if you do not struggle. Accept the punishment that your people have inflicted upon you,” said Azrael, watching her as she tried to thrash her body, tried to resist the forces holding her.
But it was no use, she was anchored to them. She tried to close her fingers, bunch her hand into a fist, but the guard increased the downward pressure, driving the fingers out again. She looked over at the Arab man and there was fear in her eyes. “Please, no… please don’t do this,” she cried desperately.
By way of response, he reached into his front trouser pocket, to a metal hoop that was jutting out. He inserted his index finger into the loop and pulled straight upwards. The knife instantly snapped open, the wave feature catching on the crease of his pocket and automatically opening up, causing the curve of the blade to glint in the light.
It looked such a wicked thing, she thought.
Azrael placed the tip of the blade, the point, so that it crunched into the desk and he felt it anchor to the wood. Sabina gasped as the curve of the steel blade hovered over the middle knuckle of her little finger.
“Please… please,” whimpered Sabina. But from the Fisherman on the other end of the phone there was only silence and a part of her mind, her reason, knew that there was nothing he could say or do now. His coldness gave her a sense of strength. She knew now that the inevitable was going to happen.
Without warning, Azrael forced the knife down with his full body weight. He felt the crunch of bone shattering under the weight, watched as the flesh retracted and the blood flowed free until the two parts of the finger were separated from each other. He flicked the top half of the finger away with the tip of his knife, his Karambit, causing it to leave a slug-like trail of blood between the two halves.
But of the girl, he didn’t hear her any of her screams. Oh, he knew that she screamed, screamed loudly, partly to acknowledge the pain and partly to get through the violence and make it out the other side. During his time as a soldier of the Jihad, Hasan-I-Sabbah, Azrael, had taken many limbs and many lives with his weapons; he was anaesthetised to human pity, pain and suffering. He might have been cleaning the carcass of a sheep with his blade; it was that impersonal to him.
The girl sagged between his two men and he ordered them to hold her upright again. He wiped the blade clean on the back of his trousers and replaced the tip of the blade once more into the wood of the desk and with no pause brought the blade down again, this time on the ring finger.
It was the same crunching noise and the same river of blood, but this time there was no fight left in Sabina and she simply collapsed into the arms of her guards.
Azrael turned to the cell phone on the table and said, “I have taken a finger for each of the days I have wasted here, but a final warning; if you do not give me what I want, I will take everything else from her.”
He swiped the red telephone icon and the call was killed. He turned to Yusuf. “Take the girl back to her container, treat her wounds and show her kindness, she is but a tool for us to use. Then gather the men, I will speak to them.”
“What will we do?” asked Yusuf, confused, his eyes still staring at the fingers and the blood on the desk.
Azrael smiled. “We do what all good warriors do, Yusuf, we prepare for war and we wait.”