Chris Ryan
The Increment
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my agent Barbara Levy, editor Mark Booth, Charlotte Haycock, Charlotte Bush and the rest of the team at Century
EPIGRAPH
'I do not wish to kill or be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable.'
PROLOGUE
Rain fell in the darkness outside the Moschea di Roma, Rome's only mosque; but despite the cold drizzle outside, inside Abdul-Qahhar felt warm. There were many men here for evening prayer, filling the magnificent interior of the mosque with the heat of their bodies and the comforting sounds of their chants as they knelt towards Mecca. And as prayers came to an end, they stood up and shook hands with one another, smiles on their faces as they chatted with exquisite politeness under the huge, ornate, white dome of the mosque.
'I invite you to join us for tea,' said the man with whom Abdul-Qahhar had enjoyed a number of conversations in the past couple of weeks.
'Thank you,' Abdul-Qahhar replied. 'But tonight I think I will just go home. Allahu Akbar.'
The man shrugged his shoulders, but in a friendly manner.
'Allahu Akbar,' he replied in the traditional way, before smiling and turning to another group of friends who had congregated nearby.
Abdul-Qahhar had not been in Rome long. When he arrived he was just another foreign student at the university and barely knew anybody; but the first thing he did was hunt out the mosque, and soon he had been embraced by the arms of that community. Like-minded people in a strange land.
Prayer was important to Abdul-Qahhar. It refreshed him. So much so that he found he did not mind the rain as he stepped out of the mosque and down the steps. It was not far to his little bedsit, which he had chosen because it was so close to the mosque, and he arrived there quickly — wet, but not disconsolate. He put his key to the door of the apartment block, but as he did so it opened anyway, as the elderly lady who lived two floors below him exited.
'Buona sera,' he said with a smile, doing his best to pronounce the unfamiliar words in an understandable way.
The old lady stared aggressively at him, then brushed past, mumbling to herself. She had never been friendly, at least not to him. It was common enough for people to be like that. Abdul-Qahhar might be wearing fashionable Italian jeans, but no amount of denim could hide the colour of his skin, and there were many people, especially in these difficult times, who saw no more than that. It made some of his fellow countrymen angry, but Abdul-Qahhar wasn't an angry kind of person. Be polite to everyone, that was his motto. Be polite to everyone, and they will soon learn that they have nothing to fear from you.
'Buon Natale,' he called after her. 'Happy Christmas.' Of course, Christmas meant nothing to him, but he understood its importance, especially to the inhabitants of Rome, living as they were in the shadow of the Vatican. As Christmas was just around the corner, he saw no reason to refrain from offering festive greetings to the Italians he encountered in his day-to-day life. Normally they seemed pleasantly surprised.
The old lady did not turn back, however, so Abdul-Qahhar closed the door behind him and climbed the stairs, not bothering to hit the button that illuminated the time-controlled overhead light, because he knew it didn't work. Instead he groped in the darkness, his hand sliding firmly up the wooden banister. On the second floor was the smell of cooking; on the fifth floor he heard the ever-present radio playing Christmas music. Abdul-Qahhar's apartment was on the top floor, and up here it was silent.
The bedsit was sparsely furnished, but his needs were few. A bed, a desk, a bookshelf and a small hob for preparing food. He stripped out of his wet clothes and placed them on the enormous, elderly radiator that heated the entire apartment surprisingly effectively, then went to his meagre closet and pulled out some dry jeans and a T-shirt. He found it strange wearing these Western clothes instead of the more comfortable dishdash, but he could not wear the all-in-one Arabic garment in the streets of Rome, or any other Western city for that matter, and he knew he had to get used to a different style of dress. He fixed himself something to eat, then sat cross-legged on his bed and immersed himself in his battered, treasured copy of the Koran. He should really be studying, but sometimes he hankered after the nannying effect the holy book had on him, and this was one of those times.
As his eyes scanned from right to left and he absorbed the poetry of the text, Abdul-Qahhar lost track of time. When finally he looked at the small clock on his bedside table, he was amazed to see that it was nearly midnight. Regretfully, he closed the book, placed it on his little bookshelf, and went to the sink to fetch himself a glass of water.
He stopped. There was a noise from somewhere. From outside. But he was on the top of the building, eight floors up. It must have been just a bird, or perhaps the rain. Walking to the window he pulled back the frayed curtains, but saw nothing other than the rooftop of the opposite apartment block and the clouds scudding in front of the silvery crescent moon. He drew the curtain again and put the noise from his mind. Sometimes the pipes could make strange sounds in these old buildings, sounds that could be creepy in the middle of the night. That was it. The pipes. He returned to the sink, turned on the tap, filled his glass and sipped it thoughtfully.
Abdul-Qahhar was halfway back to his bed when there was another noise. He turned his head quickly towards the door. It seemed to have come from outside, in the corridor, and this time round there was no mistaking it: it was no bird; it wasn't the rain; it didn't sound like the pipes. It sounded to him like there was someone there, outside his apartment.
The blood ran cold in his veins.
'Chi è?' he called. And then, because he was unsure of his Italian, he lapsed into English, a language with which he was more confident and which was more widely understood than his native Arabic. 'Who's there?'
There was a pause, a silence. And then, with the sudden force of a thunderclap, they came at him from two sides.
The door burst open and Abdul-Qahhar just had time to see three men, dressed in black and wearing dark balaclavas, burst in before the window shattered and another two landed only feet away from him. All five men brandished ugly-looking weaponry and the guns were pointed his way.
'Hit the floor!' one of them shouted in a muffled American accent. 'Hit the fucking floor. Now!'
Abdul-Qahhar felt a harsh blow on the back of his knee and collapsed, jelly-legged, to the floor.
'Hands behind your back,' the American voice instructed as the barrel of a gun was placed against his head. He did as he was told, and as his wrists were roughly handcuffed with what felt like strips of plastic, a warm, moist sensation spread through the cloth of his jeans.
'He's pissed himself,' a terse voice said — an English voice this time, one of the men who had come through the window. There was no distaste in the way he said it, just a cold, clinical tone of observation. Certainly he didn't sound surprised.
'Hood him,' the American instructed and instantly a piece of course material was forced over Abdul-Qahhar's head, then tied uncomfortably round his neck; he could breathe, but only just.
Too scared to speak, he was manhandled to his feet and pushed forward, through the door of his flat and down the steps. None of the men said a word as he was rushed down the seemingly endless flight of stairs and out into the pouring rain. Above the patter of the raindrops on the ground, he heard another noise. It was the engine of a vehicle, and it was being revved. Abdul-Qahhar heard the sound of doors opening, and without ceremony he was bundled into the back and pushed over. He shouted out in Arabic as his head hit the metal floor.