Assassin

55

Carver came to with his brain as numb as a novocained tooth, his mouth as dry and malodorous as a chicken-house floor and his bladder as uncomfortably swollen as a porn star's boob-job. He'd been seated on a plain wooden kitchen chair. There were no restraints on his hands or feet. Tyzack was standing no more than ten feet away, bending over a small metal-framed table, arranging something on it. Carver couldn't believe his luck. He leaped from the chair, took two quick strides towards Tyzack…

… and was jerked back by a sudden, choking tug at his throat so violent that at first he lost his footing and thrashed around like a condemned man on the end of a noose before he could get to his feet and retreat, coughing and gagging, back to the chair.

Tyzack was convulsed with laughter as he turned to face Carver. 'I'm sorry, but that was priceless!' he gasped, trying to catch his breath. 'Excellent kit! It's bungee-jumping cord, in case you were wondering, and much too strong for you to have any hope of breaking it. The item round your neck is what's known among the sado-masochist fraternity as a slave collar. They tell me it's very comfy, nicely padded. I dare say that's why you didn't notice it straight away. It's padlocked at the back, incidentally, and I filled the lock with superglue, so you won't be picking it. Oh, and the shackle at the end of the cord, where it joins the collar, has been welded shut, so that won't come undone either.'

Carver looked around. He was sitting in the middle of a small wooden barn, maybe twenty feet by forty, illuminated by sunlight streaming through an open window high up on one wall.

The table at which Tyzack had been standing was directly opposite Carver. It was flanked by two large plasma-screen TV sets, angled towards him. More sets were arranged in a circle, surrounding him.

On the table stood a fifteen-litre bottle of mineral water, the kind that sits upturned in an office water-cooler. Next to it Tyzack had placed a single plastic cup and beside that a small cardboard box on which the word 'Japp' was printed in red and gold script. The final item, to the right of the table, was made of white plastic and stood about a foot tall.

'It's your bog,' Tyzack said, spotting where Carver's eyes were directed. 'Do you fancy a slash? I bet you do. You were out the best part of twelve hours. Must be bursting. Go ahead, don't mind me.'

Carver remained exactly where he was. Tyzack wasn't the only man with an agenda in the room. Carver was determined to get him to name Lincoln Roberts as his target. That meant messing with Tyzack's head, keeping him talking, getting under his skin, no matter what it cost him, or what pain he had to endure. Carver was used to pain. It didn't hurt half as much as the knowledge that he'd screwed up.

Tyzack shrugged. 'Suit yourself. Only here's the thing. You're going to be here quite a while, and very soon you'll be totally alone. I won't even be in this boring little country and there are no other houses for miles around. When I leave here I will activate a booby-trap system. A friend of yours installed it, top-quality work. Once I flick the switch, anyone who tries to get in or out is going to meet a very sticky end. So if you want to live, you've got to be able to get to that water and pray that I decide to come back.'

Tyzack gestured towards the cardboard box. 'I'm a generous man, so I've also left you some nice choccy bars, just in case you get peckish. They're called Japp, but they're really just Mars bars for Norwegians and I never met a soldier who didn't like a nice Mars. Helps him work, rest and play. But now I come to look at it, I have a feeling I made a mistake. I put this table too far away from you. Well, I must have done, otherwise you'd have got to me by now. Now, I'm prepared to move it all a bit closer, so you can eat and drink. But how much closer, that's the question. One has to be precise about these things and I'm going to need your help. What you're going to do is get up and see how far you can go before you get pulled back by the bungee cord, or strangled by the collar. Come on, up you get!'

Carver stayed exactly where he was. Tyzack glared at him. Then he walked round behind Carver, took three quick steps towards him and kicked the wooden chair out from under him. Carver fell to the floor, felt the cord yanking at his neck and was forced to scramble to his feet. There wasn't enough slack to let him sit on the ground, still less lie down.

'You don't get it, do you?' Tyzack shouted, returning to a point beyond Carver's reach. His mask of sophisticated, gentlemanly civility had slipped and all the years of suppressed rage and resentment were seeping out like the pus from a septic wound. 'I'm in charge now. Not you. Me. So you do what I say, right now… or I leave you here for the duration, without anything, until you're too thirsty, too hungry, too bloody knackered to stand it any more and you'd rather be dead. Now do you get it?'

'Kill me,' said Carver, matter-of-factly. 'Kill me now.'

Tyzack smiled. 'Giving up so soon? Really? What is it, want the easy way out?'

'No. I'm just thinking of your welfare. You'd better kill me now, because if you don't, I'm going to hunt you down and tear you limb from limb… you worthless, gutless, psychopathic piece of shit.'

Tyzack let the words sink in, and then he laughed again. 'Well done, defiant to the end! But how are you going to hunt me down if you're dead on the end of a rubber rope? How does that work? Do yourself a favour…' Tyzack had walked round behind the metal table while he was talking and shifted it fractionally towards Carver. '… See if you can reach it now.'

Carver had no choice. His only hope of staying alive long enough to find a way to beat Tyzack was to do as he said. So he got up and stepped gingerly towards the table until he felt the pulling on his neck. Then he stood with one foot in front of the other, the front leg slightly bent at the knee to brace him, took a deep breath, and leaned forward, hands outstretched.

He pushed his head and shoulders forward till the pressure on his throat was so strong he felt as though his windpipe and larynx would be crushed. He stretched his arms till they were almost pulled from their sockets. He held his breath until his chest felt close to bursting and sparks danced before his eyes. But still his fingertips were nowhere near the top of the water bottle.

He stepped back and crouched, bent over, hands on his knees, desperately dragging air down into his lungs.

'I don't think you're really trying,' said Tyzack with an exaggerated air of disappointment. 'I believe you need some encouragement. An incentive, so to speak.'

He walked away to the wall of the barn. Carver raised his eyes and noticed something else, lying on the floor: a thin, flexible bamboo cane, five or six feet long. Tyzack picked it up. He strode back towards Carver and stood calmly as Carver turned to face him. Then Tyzack lunged his left foot forwards so far that he was almost down on one knee and brought his right arm round in a fast, low, whipping motion.

The cane lashed into Carver's legs, just below the knee. He screamed in pain, lost his footing and then the screams were transformed to retching gasps as he fought against the cord and the collar pulling yet again at his unprotected neck.

Tyzack stood up straight and almost danced round Carver, as agile as a boxer. The next lash of the cane ripped into his lower back, the excruciating agony of a blow to the kidneys made even worse by the knife-tear that it reopened.

Carver screamed again… and again as a third strike of the cane cut into his shoulders.

'Try again,' said Tyzack, quite calmly, almost encouragingly. 'See if you can reach the bottle.'

Carver tried.

He pulled and choked and strained every muscle, while Tyzack flayed his back with the cane: once, twice, half a dozen more times.

Still he could not reach the bottle.

Finally Tyzack lowered the cane.

Both men were breathing heavily now, a sheen of sweat glistening on their faces and soaking their shirts.

'I think we've established that it's still not close enough. I'll make it a little easier for you,' Tyzack panted.

He shifted the table forward another few inches. Then he gave a sudden exhalation of breath, as if something had just occurred to him. 'Who's a silly boy?' he said. 'I almost let you get away with it. Can't have a cap on the bottle, can we? That way, you'd only have to pull it off the table once, pull it towards you and keep it at your feet. Can't have the choccies in a box, same reason.'

He unscrewed the top of the water bottle and threw it away. He also detached the white plastic carrying handle. Finally he emptied the box of Japp bars on to the table.

'Knock the bottle off now, and you'll be in serious trouble,' Tyzack observed. He picked up the cane. 'Now, let's try again.' It took barely ten minutes. But it felt like a lifetime of pain beyond anything Carver had ever known, an eternity of craving as he begged for breath, living on the very edge of unconsciousness, the blood and sweat mingling and stinging as his back became a pulpy intersection of cuts and welts etched and slashed across his skin. He pissed himself at some point, he didn't know when. But finally the table had been moved to a point where he could – just, if he went beyond the point where his body was telling him it was about to black out, into a new realm of agony – reach the water, and the chocolate bars, and even lift the lid of the chemical toilet.

'You'll be able to pee,' said Tyzack, who seemed strangely calmed by his physical exertion, his tensions temporarily released. 'You won't be sitting down on it, though, sadly, so it could get a touch Bobby Sands in here, if you catch my drift. Still, I'm glad we got that sorted. Now, why don't you sit down?'

Tyzack winced as he saw Carver's reaction to the contact between his flayed skin and the chair back. 'Oh, that's got to hurt,' he sympathized. 'Can't be helped though, eh? So… let's have a little talk.'

The sting of Damon Tyzack's hand slapping against his cheek cut through the fog of pain that was clouding Carver's mind.

'Wake up,' Tyzack insisted. 'We're going to chat, talk about old times. Ironic, though, isn't it?'

'Isn't what?' Carver mumbled.

'Me dragging you from the water. I mean, the helicopter, the ship – there's a certain symmetry to it all. The only difference is, I'm in charge now.'

Carver forced himself to straighten his whipped and bleeding back and look Tyzack in the eye. 'I never wanted to take you. Didn't think you were up to it. Trench disagreed. He denied it, but the truth is he'd got a soft spot for you because of your father…'

'I really don't think we need to talk about him.'

'Maybe, but he was ten times the soldier you'll ever be.'

This time, when Tyzack hit Carver, it wasn't just a slap.

Carver spat the blood from his mouth. 'Suit yourself,' he said. 'But the fact remains, I didn't want you. Trench did. Afterwards, of course, he admitted I was right.'

'Oh really, is that so? Well, I tell you what, since you're so keen to tell your side of the story, why don't you do that? And then we'll examine the evidence, compare it with my account, and see who's telling the truth…'