Present Danger

44

Nausea. Whenever it seemed to subside, it would quickly come back. Dave couldn’t think about anything else, as fresh spasms gripped him.

He felt the floor beneath him rocking gently, and heard a faint smacking sound – water slapping against wood. He must be on a boat, below deck, in some kind of hold. The throbbing background noise was the engine; the rocking, which was making him feel so sick, was the boat’s movement through choppy waters.

Dave had no idea where he was, but he knew that he had been out of it for a long time. He wanted to flex his arms, but as he tried to lift one he found it held fast to his side. He was lying on a low camp bed and he saw that he had been tied up – very neatly, like a chicken painstakingly trussed before cooking.

So he was a prisoner. But whose? He tried to remember how he had got here. Gradually coming to, he found images were flickering in a bewildering sequence through his head. A small room, with a desk and chairs. Across the desk a man, speaking with a strong accent – a foreigner, who had been trying to sell Dave something, hadn’t he? He remembered the voice behind him, guttural, foreign, and a bulky man with a gun in his hand.

Then another room, some sort of library this time, and the cold unfeeling eyes of the man who’d injected him in the arm. What was his name?

Suddenly the hold door swung open and Dave was half-blinded by an incoming rush of light. He blinked and made out a figure looming in the doorway. A familiar man with a dark face – did he know his name either? – who was holding a tray, which he put carefully on the floor. Reaching down, he suddenly grabbed Dave with both hands and flipped him over like a fish, so that he flopped off the bed and lay face down on the floor.

He could feel the man fiddling with the rope that bound his hands. ‘Where are we?’ Dave managed to ask. The man ignored him. When he’d untied the knots he hauled Dave roughly up onto his knees and put the tray down with his free hand in front of Dave.

‘Eat,’ he said tersely.

Dave looked down at the plate, where a watery stew lay on a small pile of mash. It looked revolting, and his nausea surged again. He clenched his jaw, but there was nothing he could do to stop himself as he vomited straight onto the plate.

The foreign man stepped back in disgust, then quickly left the room. Dave moaned and retched again, propping himself on his hands and trying to still the spasms in his stomach. I need to get out of here, he told himself dimly, realising that his legs were still tied. He reached down and touched the knots of the ropes at each knee, then tried to pick at them with his fingernails.

The foreigner returned. He held a syringe in one hand and a pistol in the other. He pointed the gun at Dave and motioned him to leave the knots alone. Then the man leaned down, ignoring the spattered plate on the floor, and plunged the syringe straight into Dave’s arm before he had time to object.

‘Where are we?’ Dave asked again, this time more feebly. He felt fatigue settling on him like snow, and struggled to keep awake. It was no good; he barely noticed as his head fell back against the wall, and realised he could no longer keep his eyes open.

‘Suenos dulces,’ the man said.