The Abduction: A Novel (30 page)

But what if it was more than that? What if the trail itself had been laid by the Americans? Could someone have decided it was time Mia was rescued – and, equally, that it was time for the kidnappers to die?

She went back to the autopsies. Both men found at the farmhouse had died from gunshot wounds to the head, fired from a distance of a few metres. Guns were also found near both bodies, confirming statements by the rescuers that they’d heard gunfire as they entered the property. But, curiously, no member of the rescue team had claimed the kills as their own.

She went back to the helmet-cam feed and went through it frame by frame. It was odd, she thought: first bullets were flying everywhere, and then there was footage of Special Forces soldiers standing over dead bodies. But those bodies were never actually seen alive.

Could both victims have been shot just before the rescue, by another kidnapper? A kidnapper who fired some shots and then melted away, forewarned, just as the rescuers approached? In all the confusion, the rescuers would simply have assumed that the kidnappers were killed in the crossfire.

She went through the report one more time. There was nothing else that either confirmed or contradicted that theory. But at the very least, she had her discrepancies.

SEVENTY-THREE

HOLLY TRANSFERRED HER
spidergram to a wall of her sitting room. Then she sat on the sofa opposite, staring at it.

Someone had tortured Major Elston by kidnapping his daughter. The agonies Mia had been subjected to might have been mild by comparison with what real detainees suffered, or even with a SERE exercise, but a man like Elston would have heard the screams from detention cells in Afghanistan and Iraq. He would know how much worse it could get. His imagination could be relied upon to do the rest.

A decorated war hero. A man of firm principles who was revered by his men. What had he been doing, or threatening to do, that generated such an extreme response?

There was, she realised, only one logical explanation.

She went straight to Gilroy.

“I should have realised sooner,” she told him. “Elston’s a
whistleblower
.”

“A whistleblower?” he echoed, trying the thought for size.

“Or was threatening to be. Right at the beginning, when the first film came out, he said something like, ‘How do I get in contact with them?’ He meant, ‘How can I tell the kidnappers that I’ll do a deal?’”

“It’s a good question, though. How did he?”

“Through me.” She shook her head, annoyed at her own stupidity. “I was giving Colonel Carver regular updates on Elston’s condition. And then I told Major Elston I’d been to see Joe Nicholls. I suspect that may have been what prompted the major to go direct to Carver, to tell him that he’d do whatever Carver wanted, if it meant getting Mia back. I even saw them together – I overheard Carver doing the deal.” She paused. “I think whatever the major discovered, it has something to do with drugs.”

“Well, he certainly won’t risk speaking out now Mia’s safe and sound. The best we can hope for is to find the evidence some other way.”

Holly thought. “I need to speak to Mia.”

She called Nicole Elston and asked if Mia would like to see some of the thousands of cards and gifts that had been flooding into Civilian Liaison since her rescue. Nicole said she’d just go and check. She sounded like any mother consulting with a busy teenage daughter over her schedule, Holly thought. It was hard to believe that this chatty, bright woman was the same person as the near-catatonic, medicated shell who’d endured the torment of her daughter’s kidnap.

Nicole came back on. “Sure, she says to come round.”

It was hard to believe, too, that the teenager Holly met at the Elston’s house was the same girl she’d last seen on film suffering the kidnappers’ abuses. Mia was wearing a woollen skiing beanie when they first sat down, but when she took it off Holly saw that the shaved hair was already growing out, and her voice was firm and strong. Thank heaven for the resilience of the young.

It was Mia who began talking about the kidnap. Holly let the teenager do it her own way, merely prompting with the occasional question.

Mostly she talked about Harlequin. It was clear that, while the teenager had deliberately forged a bond with him, the attachment had gone two ways.

“My friends say he was a monster,” she said with a shy laugh, twisting the beanie in her hands. “But I know he wasn’t all bad.”

She needed permission to grieve for him, Holly realised. Aloud she said, “Caliari made his own choice, which was to deprive you of your liberty and mistreat you. But it’s always too simplistic to divide people into monsters and heroes. Some of the very worst acts are done by principled guys. And maybe some of the heroes who rescued you are scumbags.”

“I guess.” Mia didn’t sound convinced.

“Are you getting any counselling?” Holly asked.

She made a face. “My parents want me to see the school counsellor, Mr McConnell. ’Cos we already know each other.”

Holly nodded. “I met him. The one who stares at your legs, right?”

Mia laughed. “Right.”

“If it would help…” Holly hesitated. “A friend of mine sees a psychiatrist who’s also a priest. My friend says he’s very good. I could put the two of you in touch.”

“Thanks. I’d like that.”

“And your father?” Holly prompted gently. “How’s he?”

“Dad’s OK. He’s not one for the big emotional homecoming, but we had a hug and a long talk, so…” She nodded. “He wants me to repledge – that whole purity thing? Not sure about that. But we’ll work something out.”

“Can I ask something, Mia?”

The teenager shrugged. “Sure.”

“Was there a period recently when your father became especially protective towards you?”

Mia nodded. “Yep, for sure. It was right after his last tour. After he came back he kept sitting me down for little talks about security. How I mustn’t give my name to anyone online. Be careful when you go out, be careful who your friends are, blah blah. He even wanted me to friend him on Facebook so he could see who
my
friends were.” She rolled her eyes. “Like that wouldn’t creep them out.”

“Is that when you got yourself a Carnivia account?”

“Pretty much.”

“Did the kidnappers ever mention Carnivia?”

“Only one of them spoke to me at all. The other two… one only spoke Italian, and the other just whistled.”

“The other
two
?” Holly looked at her, perplexed. “From what I read, there were only two kidnappers.”

Mia shook her head. “I know that’s what they’re saying, but I already told them – there was another one who borrowed Harlequin’s mask sometimes. Everyone says I must have been mistaken, because they only found two bodies, but…” She shrugged.

“And you never saw this man’s face? Nothing that could identify him?”

“Nope. I could only tell when it was him because he did this whistling thing under his breath.”

“Like music? A song?”

“Yeah.” She thought. “At the time I didn’t recognise it. But the weirdest thing is, I heard it on the base radio yesterday. I’m pretty sure it was Springsteen. ‘Born to Run’.”

Back at her apartment, Holly checked the official reports. They were quite clear: two kidnappers had been shot dead after shots were fired at the rescuers from inside the house.

On the spidergram she’d transferred from Daniele’s kitchen, she added three stick figures underneath Mia. Two she put crosses through. Under the third she wrote:
Whistling Man. Springsteen?

She wrote a quick email to Kat, telling her what Mia had said. Then she got into her car and headed north, towards the mountains.

SEVENTY-FOUR

THIS TIME SHE
gave no warning she was coming. Joe Nicholls answered the door in gym clothes, a light sheen of perspiration on his face. She’d clearly caught him in the middle of a workout.

“Boland,” he said, surprised. “What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got a few more questions.”

“I thought Mia was safe and sound.”

“She is.” She gestured at the door. “Can I come in?”

As he led her past his ski gear into the kitchen, she paused to check out the hall area. Tucked behind the door was a large military backpack. She hefted it experimentally. It weighed at least eighty pounds.

He turned and saw her. “What are you doing?”

She flashed a quick smile. “Pack’s pretty heavy.”

He grunted. “Sure.”

In the kitchen he sat down without offering her coffee.

“Well, you didn’t lie to me, Joe,” she said. “You just didn’t tell me anything that really mattered.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said neutrally.

“Something happened in Afghanistan. Something that involved you and the major. My guess is, you told him about some irregularity or cover-up you’d come across, he checked it out on his next tour, and then he came back here to tell you you were right. Whatever it was, it has a bearing on what happened to his daughter.”

For a long moment he looked at her, clearly weighing up whether to tell her or throw her out.

“I know about Exodus,” she added. “I just don’t know how it got Mia kidnapped.”

“Major Elston’s a hero,” he said at last. “Bravest man I ever met.”

“I know.”

He sighed. “We were doing snatches for the intel guys – at least, that’s what we were told. Go into insurgent territory, pick up a target, get the hell out. Routine stuff. We called it the Taliban Taxi. Except they weren’t – Taliban, that is. Not always.”

He looked at her to make sure she was following him. “Sometimes we took an interpreter along, to defuse any confrontations. Anyway, this one guy we picked up started jabbering away, so we asked the ’terp what he was saying. Turned out he was claiming he’d been snatched because he ran the opium collection point for a local businessman.”

“Sounds fair enough,” Holly said casually, although her ears had pricked up at the mention of drugs.

“Maybe, but the US Army didn’t have a poppy destruction programme at that time. Our orders were to leave the farmers alone, so as not to push them into the arms of the Taliban. Anyway, the target started saying the real reason he’d been lifted was because he didn’t work for Karim Sayyaf.”

“Who was…?”

“The local big cheese. Warlord, tribal leader, and the guy whose help we’d enlisted to govern the local population.”

“So the implication was that your man had really been accused because of some turf war between Afghans? That must happen quite frequently, I imagine?”

“Sure. We gave the targ a few taps with a rifle butt to encourage him to shut up, delivered him to base, and thought no more about it. But then it happened again – a target who claimed he’d been snatched only because he wasn’t one of Karim Sayyaf’s lot. It happened enough, in fact, that it was starting to look like a pattern.”

“So you told the major?”

Nicholls shook his head. “Not at that stage. But I did check the files, to see what had happened to these guys after we’d picked them up. My assumption was, if they were really nothing to do with the Taliban, they’d be given a grilling, sit around in the cells for a while, then get kicked out. But when I looked, I found the first one we’d brought in had been marked ‘Transferred to Project Exodus’. So I checked another, and that was the same. All of the opium guys were marked the same way.”

“And what is Exodus, exactly?”

“At first I assumed it was some kind of anti-drugs programme. But in fact, opium production in that area increased five-fold in the time we were there. Mainly because it was all concentrated under one man – Karim Sayyaf. Besides, when I looked through the files, I realised Exodus wasn’t just about our prisoners. Most of the detainees written up for it were medium-value targets who’d been interrogated, told us what they knew, and were now just hanging round the system, waiting for a decision on whether to charge them or send them home. Cell-blockers, we called them, ’cos they just took up space.”

Holly frowned. This wasn’t what she’d been expecting to hear. “And that’s what you told the major?”

“Affirmative. He asked me to write it all down, said he’d look into it next time he was out there. I mean, picking up Taliban is one thing, but if we were just helping some local poppy-grower corner the market, then the US Army was being made a fool of, right?”

“So you wrote your report. Then what happened?”

“I got shot.” He looked at her, waiting for the inevitable next question.

“You think, because of what you wrote?”

“No evidence of that. No evidence of anything, in fact. Except that the bullet went in my right leg.” He paused. “At the time, it was my left side that was facing the enemy.”

“And your military career was finished. All because you asked a few questions about a local warlord who was getting too much help.”

“Pretty much.” He shook his head. “Man, I struggled when I came out. I don’t have family of my own – Red Troop was it. Started taking drugs myself. The rest you already know. The major would have helped me anyway, he’s that kind of guy. But I think he felt responsible.”

“The pack by the door… that’s some kind of escape kit, isn’t it? In case the guys who shot you come back.”

He nodded. “On skis I’m as fast as any man.”

“Where would you go?”

He pointed a finger into the sky. “Up.”

She suddenly realised. “That pack’s a skyhook.”

He looked impressed she’d worked it out. “And a parachute. Prevailing wind here would take me straight over the border into Switzerland. Unless they bring their passports, I should be all right.”

She thought it over. “But what I don’t get is why anyone would go to such lengths to silence you both. A blue on blue, then a kidnap… I can’t believe Karim Sayyaf’s the first warlord whose support we bought.”

He shrugged. “Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, then. Maybe that bullet was a coincidence, and what happened in Afghan had nothing to do with Mia.”

“No,” she said. She was thinking about her spidergram, and the blank spaces that needed to be filled. “The operation to silence Major Elston was huge. So what they were protecting must have been huge too.” A thought came to her. “How much weight can a skyhook carry?”

“About two hundred and fifty pounds, depending on conditions. Why?”

“Nothing.” There was no point in endangering Joe Nicholls further by sharing the suspicion that had just flitted into her mind.

But he was already ahead of her. “You’re thinking some kind of Iran–Contra thing?”

She nodded. “Maybe.”

Back in her father’s time, Iran–Contra was the revelation that rogue US intelligence officers under Colonel Oliver North were illegally selling weapons in Iran and using the money to buy aeroplanes in Nicaragua; aeroplanes which were used to ferry cocaine, which in turn was sold to raise more money for weapons. Was it possible that something similar could be happening here – that the US Army’s support for a pet warlord had extended to getting involved with his drugs business? And if so, how was the money being used?

“But we’re a long way from proving anything like that,” she added. “Best not to theorise ahead of the evidence. Did you keep a copy of your report?”

He nodded. “It’s buried outside, under the woodstack.”

She glanced out of the window. Night had long since fallen.

“If you want to sleep on the couch, I’ll get it in the morning,” he added. “The ground will be frozen solid now.”

“OK, thanks,” she said. She’d have liked to have had the report in her hands straight away, but she couldn’t very well ask him to take apart a woodstack and dig up frozen ground in the middle of the night. The morning would have to do.

She woke around four, too wired to get back to sleep. Bits of that spidergram kept swimming in front of her eyes. Carver. Elston. Project Exodus. Drugs… Mentally she added some new names. Karim Sayyaf. Skyhook…

Tantalisingly, more bits of the solution kept slipping into her mind, only to vanish and dissolve when she tried to analyse them. Elston had been silenced to prevent him from revealing the military’s support for Karim Sayyaf, that much was clear. But it was also clear that Elston himself didn’t have the whole picture. There was something more, there had to be.

Late though it was, she decided to phone Kat and talk it through.

When she dialled, it started to ring, then failed from lack of signal. They were in the mountains, after all. She wandered through into the room Joe used for his workouts, noting the gym equipment and weights ranged around the walls, holding her phone up to check the bars on the screen.

Joe’s own phone was on a low shelf, plugged into a charger. She glanced at it, to see how many bars he was getting.

Several, but he was with a different provider. She was about to move on when she noticed something else.

Nicholls’ phone was the sort that displayed unread messages. There was one now. It read simply:

Copy that.

“Copy that” – military shorthand for “message understood”.

She picked it up and clicked on the previous message, the one sent by Joe. That, too, consisted of just two words:

She’s here.

Oh, Joe Nicholls, you fucking fucker
.

Loyalty to the army, she guessed, and fear of more reprisals, had trumped loyalty to Major Elston. But there was no time for thinking about that now. No time for anything. Swiftly she pulled on the rest of her clothes, then crossed to the window.

Below, in the main street, was a black van. Parked, no lights.

Watchers? Or a snatch squad?

As she watched, a light flashed inside the van, a phone screen coming to life.

They wouldn’t send a team all this way just to follow her, she realised. What was the betting Kat’s Dreadlock Guy was at the wheel right now?

She ran to the hall. Ski boots, a jacket. Skis. She weighed a third less than Joe, and the ski boots didn’t fit her feet too well, but at least they’d fit the skis.

“The prevailing wind’s into Switzerland,”
he’d said.
“So long as they haven’t brought their passports
.
”

As she opened the door, icy air blew in. Joe’s voice called sleepily from his bedroom, asking what she was doing. “Having a cigarette,” she called back. She doubted he’d believe her, but if it slowed him up by just a few seconds it would help.

The skyhook pack weighed almost as much as she did, and for a moment as she stamped into the skis she thought she’d topple over backwards. If she did, she knew she’d never get up again.

Crouched forwards to balance the pack’s load, she strained at the poles to get herself moving.

“What the fuck?” It was Joe, silhouetted against the door. “Boland, what the fuck are you playing at?”

She was moving now, desperately flailing at the ground with the poles, but it was agonisingly slow. If she could only get some momentum, the weight of the pack would become an asset rather than a drag.

She heard him curse as he ran barefoot after her into the snow. And then, with a final push of the poles, she was moving; enough to push off with her skis, left-right, gathering more speed as she crested the flat ground outside Joe’s house and swept down into the woods beyond. There was a path that led away from the village – she had no idea where, but she had no choice: downhill, and quickly, was the only option.

She was a strong skier, thanks to her father’s insistence that they had to make the most of their time in Italy by going every year. With her light frame, she’d been racing black runs since she was thirteen. But never with a weight like this on her back, and rarely at night. Luckily the snow bounced back what little light there was: she simply avoided any patches of ground that weren’t white, and trusted to her knees to deal with the bits that were.

As she passed below the village, she heard the sound of a van being driven at speed. Going up to the house, she guessed. Then they’d come after her. She hoped Joe didn’t have many spare skis.

After a few minutes she came to the edge of the woods. Below her a road zigzagged down into the valley. If she was really going to do this, it had to be here, before she left the shelter of the trees.

Taking off the skis, she dragged the skyhook pack off the path and examined the contents, using her phone as a light. The heaviest item was a large gas cylinder. Then there was a harness, with a coiled steel hawser attaching it to the balloon. The parachute was the ultra-light reserve type, weighing only a couple of pounds or so. She got into the harness, clipped the parachute to the front, and jerked open the ties around the hawser. She had no idea how the inflation mechanism worked, but trusted in the US Army’s propensity to keep things idiot-proof.

The words of the cook who’d watched the training exercise with her flashed into her mind.
“They say it’s a hell of a buzz. Mind you, they say that when they’re safely back on the ground.”

There was still no sound of a pursuit, but she knew Nicholls, at least, would ski silently and fast. If she waited until she heard him, it would be too late.

She fitted the balloon to the canister and yanked the handle. Instantly the rubber bulged, the balloon’s creases vanishing as the rushing gas filled it. Within seconds it was straining upright, held down only by the canister’s weight. Then with a shriek it tore itself free and was soaring into the air. As the hawser unspooled she adopted the position she’d seen in the training exercise: braced for the jerk, arms folded tightly across her chest.

The tug winded her. And then she was flying, the woods dropping away, the balloon’s urge to climb balanced now by her own dead weight. From the trees below, sparkles of light showed where someone was firing at her. No, not at her, she realised as the hissing bullets went high over her head – at the balloon, an even easier target. She was so high already that the fall would kill her.