“Yes it is. What have you heard about him?”
What was I supposed to say? “I’ve heard about him all right. I’ve heard he’s pretty good at gassing kids in Iran?”
“I know that he’s a man of power, a strong leader.”
“This is correct. Under his leadership we shall soon be rid of all you Westerners. We have no time for you. We don’t need you.”
It wasn’t rhetoric; his tone was still conversational.
I finished the rice and got stuck into the tomatoes. I had great trouble eating them because my mouth was so swollen and numb. It was like coming back from the dentist after an injection and thinking you’ll have a cup of tea, but it dribbles down your chin because you have no control. I was noisy and uncouth as I slobbered away, tomato juice trickling down my chin. The tomatoes tasted lovely, and I was just sorry that the sores in my mouth stopped me from chewing them properly and extracting all the flavor. The bread was a problem, too. I just gulped down big hunks without chewing. No matter: I wanted to get it all down my neck as fast as I could in case they started playing games and took it away from me halfway through.
The colonel peeled an orange as he watched me. In contrast with the chimpanzee’s tea party down on the carpet, he did it with studied elegance. With the aid of a small knife he made four careful cuts down the skin, then peeled off each quarter in turn. He opened out the orange segment by segment.
The fruit had been presented to him on an ornate china plate on a tray, with a silver knife and fork. There was a definite class system in operation, the jundies running around with a teapot pouring tea for these two lads, while they just sat there.
Now and again the colonel would pick up a piece of orange and put it in his mouth. Down on the carpet his prisoner slobbered and slurped. Talk about Beauty and the Beast.
My stomach was feeling really good, but it wasn’t just the food that was making me happy: while I was eating they weren’t asking me questions. It gave me time to think.
Sure enough, as soon as I’d finished I was handcuffed again, and we carried on the conversation from where we’d left off. He was still talking as if we’d already agreed that the equipment found after the initial contact on the MSR was ours.
“So, Andy, explain to me some more about the equipment. What else did you have? Come on, we need your help. After all, we have helped you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m getting all mixed up. I don’t understand.”
“What were you doing with explosives?”
The tone still wasn’t aggressive.
“We didn’t have any explosives. I don’t really know what you’re on about.”
“Andy, you were obviously going to destroy something because you were carrying PE4, which is a high explosive that is designed to destroy things. You appreciate why I cannot really believe the story you are telling me?”
His mention of PE4 was another indication that he was UK-trained, but I ignored it. “I really don’t know what you’re on about.”
“We have some of your men in hospital, you know.”
That one got me. I tried not to show any shock or surprise; I wasn’t supposed to be connected with any villains from the MSR.
“Who are they?” I asked. “What condition are they in?”
My mind was racing. Who could it be? What might they have said? Was he just bluffing?
“They’re Okay, they’re Okay.”
“Thank you very much for looking after them. Our army would be doing the same for your injured.”
If they had anybody in hospital, it must mean they were interested in keeping them alive.
“Yes,” he said casually, “we know everything. A few members of your group are in hospital. But they are fine. We are not savages; we look after our prisoners.”
Yes, I know, I thought-I’ve seen the footage of the Iran-Iraq war; I’ve seen how you look after your prisoners.
There was nothing I could do about it, but I had to respond the way I thought they wanted me to. It’s all a big game, one that you start training for as a kid. You learn how to lie to your mother or teacher, and turn on the tears whenever you want.
“Thank you for helping them,” I said, “but I don’t know anything that I can tell you.”
“Well, we agree that you were with the group that abandoned its packs, and that we followed you all the way along.”
“No-you’re confusing me. I don’t understand what you mean about abandoned packs. We don’t use packs. We were deserted; we were stuck in the middle of your country. I’m just a soldier; I go where I’m told and I do what I’m told to do.”
“But, Andy, you have not explained to me what you were told to do. You must have had a mission.”
“Look, I’m on the lower echelon of the military system. As you know yourself, we work on a need-to know basis. We are only told what we need to know, and because I’m so low down on the chain I get told nothing.”
Bingo-this seemed to strike a chord. At the top of the card which gives the sequence for an orders group it says: Remember Need To Know. He had obviously had some sort of teaching from the Brits, probably at Sandhurst or Staff College: the Iraqis had been in the Western powers’ Good Lads Club for a number of years.
The colonel looked puzzled and asked the major something in Arabic. The junior officer gave a lengthy explanation. I felt good about this. I’d actually come back at him with something that they seemed to accept. Maybe they thought I really did know jack shit. Maybe they could equate my situation with their own. We were all soldiers. Obviously he was a major and the other one was a colonel, but they would still receive orders from brigadiers and generals. The long shot was that they’d take a certain amount of pity on us, or think that we were really not worth the trouble of trying to get any more information out of because we were just a bunch of bonehead squad dies who’d screwed up.
“That is fine, Andy. We will see you later on. It is time for you to go now.”
He sounded like a therapist winding up a session.
“Thanks very much for the food. I am trying to help, really I am, but I just don’t know what’s required of me.”
They put the blindfold back on and, rather surprisingly, took the handcuffs off. I felt the blood rush back into my hands. They lifted me and took me outside. The cold hit me. It had been so warm in the office, scoffing tomatoes, bread, and rice.
I was quite happy that this was another major hurdle over with, and that I’d got some food out of them. Chances were they’d been going to give me some anyway as part of the good-guy routine, but it just made me feel better to have asked for and received it. I was fairly confident at this time that my story was holding up, even though I wasn’t entirely happy with the performance I’d given. At the end of the day, whether they believed it or not, as. long as they had me down as thick and ignorant, it didn’t really matter to me. Hopefully I’d just be pigeonholed as totally irrelevant and too thick to get any creditable information out of.
I still hadn’t got my boots, and I couldn’t walk properly on my raw feet. But I was mentally fit, and that was all that mattered. They can break any bone in your body that they choose, but it’s up to you whether or not they break your mind.
I hobbled down a long, cold, damp corridor with lino floors, and they sat me down at the end. It was completely dark-not a flicker of light came through my blindfold. From time to time I could hear the echo of footsteps moving along other corridors and crossing this one. Perhaps it was an office complex.
After an hour or so there was again the sound of footsteps, but they were more irregular and shuffling than usual. Shortly I heard the sound of labored breathing. A guard took my blindfold off, and I watched him walk away. The corridor was about 8 foot wide, with tiled walls and doors every 15 feet or so. Down to the right there were two other intersections with corridors coming off, and that went down maybe 100 or 125 feet. It was dark. There was a Tiny lamp right at the other end of the building, glowing at the junction.