The Horse at the Gates (29 page)

The room was always cold, the huge radiators beneath the barred windows barely giving off enough heat to warm the clothes he left draped across them overnight. The windows themselves were huge, four of them, ten feet high at least, sealed from the inside and obscured by rusted steel bars on the outside. Small air vents cut into the topmost panes circled lazily on still days, spinning with a low hum when the wind picked up. Beyond the bars, the windows overlooked an area of open grass, the double chain link fence with its impressive coils of razor wire, then the woods beyond that shielded the facility from the outside world. Sometimes he’d pull up the battered metal chair and sit at the window for hours, watching the clouds drift across the sky, the trees bending in the wind, the first flurries of early winter snow driving across the grounds. Lately he’d changed the chair’s angle, ignoring the world beyond the fence and instead concentrating on the comings and goings at the main gate. He was in Hampshire, near the town of Alton, of that he was almost certain because many of the delivery vans had the name of that town emblazoned on the side panels. Pedestrians came and went by a fenced-in chain-link corridor adjacent to the security hut. It wasn’t a large facility, just three main buildings including the one he was in, but it was certainly secure. After those first few days, he realised that his earlier fears of kidnap were unfounded. There were no demands, no talk of a ransom, no hope of a manhunt or investigation. He was simply a prisoner. Security, Sully often repeated, it was all in the name of security.

Outside his room, past the padded steel door, was a short corridor, a large washroom and toilets on the right-hand side. There were two empty utility rooms opposite, one of which Sully occasionally used to say prayers, a large felt arrow mark on the wall indicating the
Qibla
. At the end of the corridor was a steel mesh gate, always locked, and beyond that another world, a world of tortured screams and unintelligible shouts, a nightmare world that Bryce couldn’t shut out, even with the pillow over his head or the pills they forced him to swallow every morning.

The Turk was his only visitor now, just him and the nurse, Orla, although he only saw her at breakfast and supper for his medication. Physically, his body had healed well – still fragile, but stronger. However, it was his state of mind that he was more concerned with now. The reality of his existence here was solitary confinement, the prescription of unknown drugs that induced a frightening cocktail of vivid nightmares and varying states of torpor. There was a deliberate lack of exercise facilities, physiotherapy or even fresh air. Bryce had demanded to see the hospital administrator, but Sully had refused his request, just as he’d refused his requests for visitors, for phone calls, for internet access or newspapers, his desire to see Hooper and Saeed, anyone in authority. During bouts of livid anger, Bryce accused Sully of torture and false imprisonment, promising to have him locked up the moment he got out. The Turk simply laughed, calling Bryce delusional and paranoid, and threatened to have him moved to one of the occupied wards with the real nut jobs. Security, Sully repeated again and again. Bryce believed it was Sully who was not quite right, clearly enjoying the increasingly poor treatment he inflicted on his patient.

So, when Sully was around Bryce stayed quiet, acted dumb, sometimes forgetful, popped his medication, and usually did as he was told. He’d stopped asking questions, making demands, allowed his physical appearance to deteriorate. As far as Sully was concerned, the enforced confinement was working. He was no bother, a danger to no-one, just another ghost in a facility full of them. Outside the world turned, life went on, and Gabriel Bryce faded from view.

He pulled on a threadbare, navy blue dressing gown and shuffled down the corridor to the bathroom. He stood over the sink and stared at his reflection in the mirror, its metal frame rusted and spotted with tiny patches of green mildew. How he’d changed since coming here. The thick grey hair was gone, regularly shaved by Sully into a tight crop, the jagged scar on his head pale and prominent. The lines around his eyes had deepened and his broken nose remained uncorrected, the bridge raised and twisted, the nostrils slightly flattened. Grey stubble bristled around his chin and hollowed cheeks, but Sully had forbidden regular shaving, allowing it occasionally and only in his presence. He took his pyjama top off and saw the scars on his body, his ever decreasing waistline a testament to the standard of food and its increasing irregularity. He’d lost at least thirty pounds and aged ten years. In a recent act of degradation, Sully had forced him to strip naked, ordering him to crouch in the corner of his room while Sully took several photographs. Bryce did as he was told, the shame and anger boiling inside him. As the camera flashed he kept his mouth shut, dutifully adopting the poses that Sully ordered, staring blankly at the lens as his mind wrestled for reasons behind his forced humiliation. His only consolation was knowing that Sully continued to be fooled by his act.

He splashed tepid water around his face and neck, shivering in the chill of the washroom. Normally he’d shower but, with Sully here, the order of the day was the dishevelled, vacant look. He towelled himself dry, again wondering if it would’ve been better to have perished in the blast itself. He tried not to focus on what might have been but, trapped in this facility, he couldn’t help himself. Death by explosion; a quick but messy way to go, limbs torn off, body burnt and punctured in a thousand places. A state funeral, eulogies from European and world leaders, the masses filing silently by his casket, tearful and distraught at the loss of their leader. Well, perhaps not the last bit. The British public normally saved their collective grief only for royalty. When Queen Elizabeth had finally died, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house and the nation had mourned for weeks. Some grieved for the passing of an iconic royal personality, others – realists, as Bryce liked to think of them – mourned the end of an era, the final death throes of a nation state and the barely-noticed transition to European federalism. The royalists, the sentimentalists, they’d never realised that it was the old girl herself who’d signed the original treaties that sealed Britain’s political fate. Would they have mourned her passing so pitifully then? Perhaps, perhaps not. More importantly, was anyone out there mourning Gabriel Bryce’s continued absence from public life? Was anyone asking questions in the House, demanding updates on his progress? Maybe today he would find out.

His pulse quickened as he pushed the buzzer and stood waiting. An impatient Sully showed up a minute later, quickly unlocking the security gate.

‘Let’s go.’

Bryce did as he was told, elated to be leaving the deserted wing for the first time since he’d arrived. He shuffled behind Sully, head down, concentrating hard on masking his emotions. His eyes roamed the deserted corridors, the empty stairwells, taking in the signs on the walls that pointed to all points of the compass: Cowan Ward, Guthrie Ward, Toilets, Administration, Staff Only. Everything smelt of antiseptic, of stale food and urine. The floors were stained, the linoleum cracked and missing in places, yet in his mind Bryce danced along the corridors, twirling with delight at his new found freedom. The opportunity to reconnect with the world outside was a palpable thing, his thirst for information as acute as a man without water staggering across a wide desert. However, instead he stayed silent, trailing obediently behind his minder.

‘Where is everybody?’ Bryce eventually asked.

‘Watching TV,’ Sully replied over his shoulder. ‘Whole country will be glued to it tonight.’

Bryce was confused but said nothing, maintaining his vacant act. They passed through three more security gates without seeing a single person, then dropped down another stairwell to a wide landing. A heavy wood-panelled door bore the legend ‘TV LOUNGE’. Bryce’s heart quickened as Sully gripped the handle. Before he opened the door he turned to Bryce.

‘Behave yourself tonight and I might consider more TV privileges in the future. How does that sound?’ Bryce yawned, nodding dumbly. He followed Sully into the room. Like the rest of the building, the paint was peeling off the walls and everything smelt of damp. There were a dozen easy chairs arranged in a loose semi-circle in front of a large TV screen, which was flanked by two barred windows. Against the far wall was a long wooden sideboard with plastic cups and empty beakers of water. A bowl of fruit stood alongside the water, the bananas black, the apples brown and shrivelled. A movement caught his eye and it was then that Bryce noticed three of the chairs were occupied. Sully’s arm pulled him back behind the door.

‘You lot. Out,’ Sully commanded. Bryce peered through the gap, saw three men in navy blue sweatshirts and pants get to their feet and shuffle across the room to another door. Their appearance was as dishevelled as Bryce’s – heads shaved, skin bleached by a poor diet and a lack of sunlight, clothing hanging off their undernourished frames. Bryce noticed the eyes, too, the dark circles, the haunted expressions. They reminded him of death camp survivors from the Second World War and he felt an overwhelming sense of sadness for them, their broken minds, their shattered lives. The last of the NATO-led ISAF forces had left Afghanistan years ago, their defeat as resounding as that of any who had ventured into that Godforsaken country over the past two centuries. At the time, Bryce had campaigned heavily for the negotiations that ended the bitter war, a conflict that had claimed thousands of lives and billions of pounds. Ultimately, military force had failed, where dialogue and cultural respect, diplomatic strategies that Bryce had always championed, had won the day. Yet Britain still supplied troops and equipment to the UN peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, a mission that continued to destroy lives, like the poor souls now scuttling from the TV room. He watched the door close behind the last man, banished to their own miserable accommodations.

‘Sit here,’ Sully ordered, pointing to a chair at the front. ‘Tonight’s a big night.

‘Is it?’ Bryce muttered the words, feigning disinterest as he flopped into the chair. Yellow foam stuffing squeezed out of a tear between his legs.

‘You’ll see.’ Sully picked up the remote and settled into the chair next to Bryce, his legs kicked out before him. He started flicking through the channels then settled on the BBC, the screen filled by a low-angled aerial shot, slowly panning across a flat landscape of palm trees and ancient monuments, where dazzling lights and piercing laser beams lit up the evening sky in a myriad of colours, where a heaving multitude thronged before a giant, red-carpeted stage that was filled with suited and robed dignitaries. Bryce fought hard to keep his expression neutral as he stared at the TV, the camera flashes that lit up the night like a cosmic storm, the long line of limousines, the smart ranks of ceremonial troops, the camera zooming in towards the historic document that rested on its purpose-built plinth, waiting to be signed.

Bryce’s heart sank as he watched the TV. The world, and his place in it, had indeed passed him by.

Cairo had begun.

The ceremony was held in the shadows of the Great Pyramids of Giza. The sun had already set when the first European leaders arrived, their air-conditioned limousines whisking the dignitaries a short distance from the exclusive and heavily-guarded Mena House Hotel to the giant stage erected beneath the towering Pyramid of Cheops.

Saeed’s limousine was one of the last to arrive, depositing him at the bottom of a flight of red-carpeted stairs. He stepped out of the vehicle into a storm of camera flashes, the dazzling lights reflecting the gold embroidery of his knee-length black Sherwani jacket and silk trousers. Dozens more cameras tracked his graceful passage up the stairs and across the carpet where he received a standing ovation from the other EU leaders and the hundreds of European politicians and legislators seated before the stage. Saeed took his place in the front row, absorbing the atmosphere of a momentous spectacle about to unfold.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ remarked the German Chancellor seated alongside him.

‘Indeed,’ smiled Saeed.

The elevated stage was dressed like a movie set, two terraced rows of luxury seats fashioned like the thrones of the early Pharaohs. Forming the backdrop was a stand of massive columns resembling those at the ancient site of Karnak, decorated with intricate hieroglyphics and flanked by two huge sphinx-like statues with flaming torches set between their massive paws. The Pyramid of Cheops towered behind, a man-made mountain of stone bathed in a magnificent display of lighting that changed colour constantly as the sky darkened, while the gentle strains of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra drifted on the sultry air, adding to the sense of occasion. The Egyptians had outdone themselves, Saeed decided. Hooper, bowing and fawning before President Vargas in Washington, would secretly kick himself for missing this.

He raised his eyes above the minions seated in front of the stage and out across the desert, where an estimated one million people stood behind temporary barriers under the watchful eye of the Egyptian army, an endless sea of bobbing and swaying heads, a forest of arms above them, cameras flashing. Saeed had never been so close to such a crowd before, as if the whole of Cairo had turned out for what was to be an historic night. It reminded him of a scene from ancient history, an army stretched out across the desert, like Saladin’s perhaps, awaiting the horns that would signal the start of battle. It was a magnificent sight, and faintly unsettling. He smiled, wondering how many already had their bags packed.