The Fall of Night

Chapter Thirty-Four: Stockholm Syndrome

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Hazel carefully tested the bonds that bound her and smiled.

She was still terrified, but as her two… lodgers, the two Russians who had shot down an aircraft and killed thousands… had checked out the basement, she had realised that she had a chance. They’d left her tied up on the sofa, listening to the buzzing of the emergency channel, as the Russians searched the house from top to bottom, looking for a place they could imprison her. She had been shaking like a leaf as they left her alone, but no amount of straining had loosened the tape that bound her hands; it wasn’t like it was in the movies. She hadn’t been able to understand them either, but she was sure that the younger one — Sergey Ossetia, if that was his real name — had wanted to rape her; the older one had prevented him.

She had listened, fruitlessly trying to search for meaning in what might as well have been nonsense babble to her, as the Russians argued, and then started to search the house. She had wondered about the weapons, and what they would do if they found her husband’s small — and technically illegal — collection. They hadn’t seemed too worried about it when they found them, but they had been careful to lock them somewhere in their rooms, before searching her and removing her keys, phone — which was useless anyway — and even her small make-up case.

“I think that the basement would be best,” Rashid Ustinov had said, after they had completed their search. Hazel had almost flinched before the first burst of hope crossed her mind; it was just possible that they would make a mistake. “Hazel; remember, we will let you go once we are finished here, but if you give away our presence, we will have to kill you.”

Hazel had nodded; Ustinov had pulled out a small kitchen knife and carefully sawed the tape from her legs, releasing her and helping her to sit up on the sofa. She gasped in pain as the cramp stuck her; Ustinov massaged her legs gently until the worst of the pain faded, and then helped her to her feet. Her hands were still bound, but she had felt oddly safe with him, now that the first and worst moments were over. Ossetia eyed her as if he thought she was trouble; she concentrated on looking harmless while thinking about what she could do.

Stuart had taken her, once, to a course on hostage situations. There had been several officers’ wives kidnapped by one terrorist group or another, before British troops had largely been withdrawn from the Middle East. It had been worst for the Muslim soldiers, who were pressured by their co-religionists to abandon the armed forces or lose their families, but others had been at risk as well; Stuart had insisted on her learning about the dangers… and the first moments were always the worst. She could not fight, she couldn’t try to escape; the kidnappers might not be experts, but panicky amateurs. Once the dangerous moments were over, she could try to get the kidnappers to see her as a person, rather than a thing; she seemed to have succeeded at that already. Ustinov, for whatever reason, was treating her almost kindly.

He held her arm to steady her as he took her down into the basement. It was hardly the spider-filled dudgeon of slave girl movies, but a warm room that they had considered turning into another bedroom before the war had begun; Ustinov seemed fairly pleased with the arrangement as he searched the room again, just in case there was anything useful in the boxes they had dumped in the basement. There was nothing, Hazel knew; the junk they had dumped down in the basement was useless. He carefully sat her down on the floor and made his mistake.

“This should hold you fairly safely,” he had said, as he attached handcuffs to the pipe in the wall. It was a useless pipe, as they had found out when they had moved in; it literally did nothing, not even carrying water or gas or anything else useful. It was fairly simple to attach a handcuff to the pipe, release her hands, and attach the other end of the handcuff to her right wrist. She would have to sit on the ground, but it was better than being left permanently tied up with tape. “We will take care of you.”

“Thank you,” Hazel had said. He had been as good as his word, even though the bathroom facilities had left something to be desired; the four days she had spent in the basement hadn’t been completely bad. The two men had provided her with several piles of food, from sweets to more healthy options; they had even provided her with some books from her collection while they waited. They had been determined to keep their heads down for several days while the chaos faded off the streets, just so that they could start it up again at some moment that suited them.

“Food,” a voice said, glumly. She glanced up the stairs as Ossetia descended, carrying a small plate of canned beans and sausages. She was rapidly growing tired of the fare; unlike almost everyone else in Edinburgh, the two Russians had known to stockpile food to avoid shortages. His gaze flickered over the handcuffs, paused long enough to worry her on her breasts, and then fell to the tray in his hand. “There should be enough here for a while.”

“Thank you,” Hazel said, as Ustinov appeared as well. The older Russian looked grim. “What’s the matter?”

“We have an interesting opportunity,” Ustinov said, seriously. “We may have to leave you alone for a while.”

Hazel winced. She didn’t want them to get the impression that she would be delighted by them being out of the house… and, truthfully, if she had been wrong, she would be trapped if something like a fire happened. Stuart hadn’t been too worried about fires in their house, but normally they didn’t even play bondage games. They had three ways out on the ground floor, but only one way out of the basement.

“Don’t worry,” Ustinov reassured her. “We’ll be back in a couple of hours and we have turned off the gas. What could go wrong?”

Hazel smiled. “What’s the news?”

Ossetia smiled darkly. “The European forces are crumbling and our forces are sweeping towards the English Channel,” he said. “Hamburg and Berlin have fallen, while the French are fighting barbarians and ignoring us. Victory is certain, don’t you think?”

Hazel wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. “I don’t know what to think,” she admitted. “Has the power come back on permanently?”

“Yes,” Ustinov said shortly. “Didn’t it occur to you why the lights were on?”

Both Russians laughed. “We’ll show you the news later today, or perhaps a movie,” Ossetia said. “That assumes that you understand the news…”

Hazel flushed. Let them think of her as a dumb blonde if they liked. “I do,” she assured him. “I would like to see it.”

“Later,” Ustinov said. He held her eye for a long moment. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

She waited patiently until they both left, closing the door behind with an audible slam, and then forced herself to wait for ten minutes, listening very carefully for signs that one of them had remained in the house. She wouldn’t have put it past one of them to have tried to trap her, even if they knew she was trapped; neither of them seemed particularly stupid… but there was nothing. She shrugged off the blanket and considered the pipe carefully, remembering what Stuart had said when they had taken the house. The pipe looked as if it were firmly in place — and Ustinov had made certain she couldn’t just slide the handcuff off the pipe — but she knew that it was very lightly fixed behind the plaster walls. She took a breath, lifted both of her feet to the wall, and pushed as hard as she could. She held the pipe and pulled, her legs pushing against the wall, feeling something starting to give…

The pipe disintegrated with an audible crack. She fell back and landed hard on her rear, feeling her bottom bruise under the impact, but she was free! It was a matter of moments to pull herself together and run for the stairs; as she had known, there was no lock on the basement door and the Russians hadn’t had time to fix anything to add to her woes. Why should they have? They had known that she was firmly secure and at their mercy. The house no longer felt friendly, or welcoming; she half-thought about trying to find one of Stuart’s guns before remembering that the two men had locked them away. She had had days to plan what to do; she grabbed her coat and fled out of the house, onto the streets. The street was almost deserted, as always, but she knew her way; she had to find a police station and find help.

She slowed to a walk as she rounded the corner and lost herself in side streets. Part of her… didn’t want to betray Ustinov, although Ossetia was a danger to everyone in Edinburgh. Ustinov had spared her life; Ossetia, she was mortally certain, had wanted to rape and kill her. She paused to think, trying to decide, but the thought of her husband forced her mind to focus; what would Stuart want her to do? If Ossetia had been telling the truth, Stuart, like her, was in the middle of a war zone; he might even be dead. Cold rage burned at her, forcing her onwards; the police station wasn’t that far off from where she was. All she had to do was keep putting one foot in front of another and… she would reach them. She would find help.

An old man appeared in front of her. She sensed him wrinkling his nose; after so long without a proper bath, or even proper sanitation, she had to smell pretty bad. He wasn't a fine-smelling person himself; the absence of water supplies for a day had probably had all kinds of nasty effects…

But his voice was kind. “Are you all right, love?”

“Yes,” Hazel said shortly. He couldn’t help her; the police station was right in front of her. It dawned on her suddenly that she had no proof, nothing that she could show them; would the Police believe her when she told her story? She staggered into the police station and came face-to-face with a grim-looking Police Sergeant, his face scarred by some great heat; he looked as if he should be in hospital. “Constable, I…”

Her legs buckled and she collapsed on the floor. “I’ve got you,” the Policeman said. His voice sounded as if it were coming from a far distance; her vision blurred, and then stabilised as she pulled herself back together. “I’m Sergeant Adams, of the Edinburgh Police, recalled to duty since the war began. Are you all right, love? I can call the nurse if you want, or even a doctor, although our doctor has been tending to victims of the airplane and we might have to take you to hospital.”

Hazel burst into giggles. Adams reacted smoothly and called a nurse from the depths of the police station, who tended to Hazel’s arm, which had been squeezed tight by the handcuffs, as she told her story. They didn’t believe her at first, until the nurse pointed to the injuries on her throat and wrist; she was still covered in plaster dust from the wall and the pipe. One of the older Police officers had some experience with Special Forces and recognised the injuries… and then the Police got very interested indeed.

“Form a line with your documents and national insurance card,” a voice bellowed, in front of the job centre. Ustinov watched dispassionately as thousands of young Scottish men, some of them old enough to be doing a real man’s work, lined up as if they were about to be put in front of a wall and shot. The grim face of the Scottish Sergeant standing near the side of the building was easy to read; the young men could use some military discipline. Some of them were listening to music on their headphones, others were looking around as if they were searching for a way to escape; their nightmare was hard work and people ordering them about.

He carefully pulled himself back from the window before he was seen. The radio broadcasts on the emergency channel had been clear and to the point; every young man who had been on the dole was being conscripted into work battalions to help repair the damage that Britain had suffered during the first stage of the war. Failure to respond to the call was not an option; a welfare-dependent person — as the radio had put it — would receive no rations or other supplies if they failed to report for duty, or even face arrest. There had been the promise of a week to report, but Ustinov was pretty certain that most of them would be bending their minds trying to think of some way out of the nightmare; they were trying their hardest to avoid the sergeant’s disgusted gaze. The thought of actually being shot at…

He nodded once as Ossetia appeared at the end of the stairwell; they would have to move quickly if they were to take advantage of the opportunity. A simple bomb would destroy the job centre and the recruits; Moscow had been very clear on the need to hit the British where they lived. Britain, he had been told, was unique; they would have a chance to pull themselves back together before it was too late, something he hadn’t understood until he had seen the news reports of Russian armies grinding their way into Europe. The very fabric of British society had to be attacked… and if the young men who were conscripted felt that there was a chance that they would be blown up… they would be more reluctant to report. Even better, more of the population, normally law-abiding, would be reluctant to force them to report.

“Time to go,” he said, already cataloguing what they would need. If they were really lucky, their attack would be blamed on a terrorist group, but even if it wasn't, it would hardly matter. All that mattered was attacking the very fabric of British society; Iraqis had known for years that Saudi Arabia was behind their woes after the American Invasion, but they hadn’t been able to muster the determination to rebuild and crush Saudi, because the insurgency kept burning away at their new fabric. His force had been trained in destabilisation; a single car bomb could do the work of thousands of air bombs if placed in the right place. “Once we get back, we’ll find a way of using Hazel’s car to take a bomb past the job centre.”

Security in the heart of Edinburgh and around the aircraft crash site was pretty heavy, with nervous armed police officers patrolling some parts of the streets. There were fewer cars on the streets; posters had already begun to appear, printed off by some wag, about the need to conserve fuel. IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY VITAL? One asked; GO HOME, HENRY — ALL THE VILLAGE KNOWS YOUR JOURNEY IS NOT IMPORTANT, another warned, with the image of a beaten middle-aged man being kicked off by a railway guard. Edinburgh was slowly coming to grips with the thought that it was at war; as he turned into the street that held Hazel’s house, he saw other signs of panic. Some of the buildings near their building had been abandoned the day after the war began; he’d watched the people going with only a few suitcases, abandoning the rest to the looters.

“Home again,” Ossetia commented dryly. They climbed out of the car and locked the doors. There was a droll tone in his voice; after they bombed the job centre, they would have to change their bases before some bright spark with a CCTV system and supporting footage put everything together and found them. “Are you going to feed your pet…?”

Ustinov opened his mouth to reply, and then he saw them; men appearing from the houses, weapons held high. They weren’t police; they held themselves with an easy confidence, an ease of motion, an awareness that they were the best, that screamed Special Forces at him. Somehow, they had been detected; somehow…

“HANDS IN THE AIR,” a voice bellowed, loudly enough to shake the entire neighbourhood. They had to have all been evacuated; somehow, the British security forces had managed to get into position without them even noticing that they had driven right into a trap. If they had still been in the car, escape might have been possible, but in the time it would take to get back in, they could be killed several times over. “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING…!”

Ossetia snatched up his pistol and fired once towards one of the figures; a sniper bullet blew the top of his head off, before he could even hit one of the SAS soldiers surrounding them. Ustinov stared at them, calculating, and knew that it was futile; he could only get himself killed, not even taking one of them with him. They had him directly in their sights and he knew it.

Carefully, he raised his hands above his head and waited for the end.