The Hostage (33 page)

Kinsella had taken the fight out of her but he had not pushed her far enough, not yet, not as far as he needed to.

‘I don’t know enough to argue against anything you’ve said, Father. And you could be right. But I don’t see what I can do.’

‘You mean to say that if you believed the Brits had used Hank as bait, risked his life for a political manoeuvre, that wouldn’t make you angry?’

‘Of course but—’

‘Then there’s one thing you’d better be clear about, Kathryn. And if nobody has suggested it yet, then I’m sorry to be the one to have to say it, but you had better be prepared for the possibility that you may never see Hank alive again.’

She looked into his eyes searching for the lie, but, surprisingly, all she saw was sincerity.

‘Why would they . . . why would anything happen to him?’

‘It’s a game they’re playing, Kathryn, but not a child’s game.’

‘But surely, being American, the best thing the IRA could do is to send him home.’

‘Yes, they could do that. But that might not be the most advantageous way to play the card that’s been dealt them.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t understand.’

‘Explain it to me,’ she suddenly snapped, wanting him to get to the point.

‘I’m not saying executing Hank is what they’re thinking of or what they plan to do. I’m just making you aware of their options.’

Her glare remained fixed on him, inviting him to explain.

‘Struggles like the one in Ireland need support, and not just local support and a bit of help from patriotic Irish Americans. It needs to be shown to the world. The more the world hears of the injustice, the louder it will call for its end. Britain doesn’t care what Ireland thinks, but it cares what the world thinks. A situation like this, Hank being kidnapped, is something the world would take notice of. They have to take advantage of that interest before it goes away.That’s why Hank hasn’t been released yet and why he’s not likely to be in the immediate future.’

‘But you said he could be killed.’

‘I’m getting to that . . . At the end of the game, when all the publicity has been had out of the kidnapping, when the world is getting tired of the news, to make the most of it, to squeeze the last drop from it, there has to be a change in direction, and a dramatic one. It can’t go on for ever. And so the question has to be answered. Will Hank come home or not?’

‘You make it sound like a TV soap.’

‘Sadly, the entertainment industry has taught us a lot about selling a story.’

‘But I don’t see why it would be an advantage for the IRA to kill him. Surely they’d look good if they let him go back to his family.’

‘It would seem that way, but history has taught us something else. The happy ending might be the best way to end a movie, but in the real world, sadly people only sit up and take notice when all they are left with is horror. Mercy does not live as long in memory as does horror. And the world will call even louder for the Troubles to end . . . The IRA won’t back down, so it will be up to the Brits to. History tells us they will. They’ve already started. Now they need to be pushed back even harder.’

It was as if Father Kinsella had been talking about another world. Kathryn was suddenly overcome with fear for Hank and loathing for everything else to do with the British and the IRA. She had never seriously considered that Hank would not return alive. Now all of a sudden, looking at it through Father Kinsella’s eyes, it seemed certain he was going to die.

‘You think they’ll kill him,’ she said, a tremor in her voice. It was not a question.

‘No, Kathryn. That’s why I’m here. If we can provide the IRA with the grandstand they want from this it will satisfy them. Don’t you see? If we point the finger at the Brits, and the American government too, tell the world they’re playing with the lives of our loved ones, making them pay the price for their political games, trying to paint a grand body of freedom fighters as terrorists, then the godfathers will benefit more by releasing Hank. Do you see it, Kathryn?’ He reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘Now do you see why we can’t just sit back and do nothing?’

She pulled her hand away and looked at him coldly. ‘Is it them telling you or you telling them?’

The priest dropped his gaze, but more in an effort to control his anger than hide any guilt. He then looked at her. ‘Whatever you think of me, or my beliefs, or how I deal with the rights and the wrongs of the world, I came here to help you save your husband. I’ll tell you straight, Kathryn Munro, I don’t think it will be easy, but I’m willing to try.’

He stood up and straightened out his jacket. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘before I walk out that door I want to know one thing. Are you going to help me save Hank’s life or not?’

She did not trust him, but he had her trapped. She despised him more that moment than ever before.

‘Well. What’s it to be?’ he demanded.

‘What do I have to do?’ she asked quietly.

‘Nothing more than what should come naturally to you. Whoever asks, newspapers or anyone else, just say you miss your husband and want him to come home to his family, and that you don’t trust anyone from the British or American authorities. We’ll talk further tomorrow.’

Father Kinsella walked to the front door and out of the house. It was only after he had closed the door behind him that she remembered he had not seen her mother or children. She sensed eyes behind her and looked around to the kitchen door where her mother was watching her. Before she stepped back into the kitchen, Kathryn thought she detected a look of guilt on her face.

Hank sat on the floor of a dark, damp room with his hands tied in front of him around a pipe running vertically upwards. A grubby hessian hood was over his head, tied loosely around his neck. He had been there long enough to discover the walls were metal, as was the floor, and added to that, the constant hum of engines and the occasional gentle bump of the entire room made it obvious to him that he was inside a boat of some kind, and not a small one either. The air was thick with the odour of diesel fuel and rotting garbage, competing occasionally with the smell of his own shit-filled and urine-soaked trousers. His captors had been less than considerate regarding his personal hygiene.

The hood filtered the light from a dim bulb that shone constantly in the centre of the ceiling. If there was a porthole in the room it was covered, but it seemed likely, considering the high temperature and close proximity of the engines, that the room was at or below the waterline.

Hank had explored with his legs in all directions and found what felt like a piece of heavy rope, a plastic bucket, a chunk of wood and a solid metal support welded to the floor, which was probably holding up a shelf somewhere above. He estimated he had been on board a day or so but it was hard to tell without a change in light. He had dozed off several times but for how long he wasn’t sure. He had kept an accurate count of the number of days for the first seven, until his only source of timing, daylight, was taken from him. The old garage filled with junk they had first kept him in had a hole in the roof. ‘They’ being the French people: Henri and the two apes who kidnapped him. Then after a drive inside a box for an hour or so he found himself in a dank room, which he presumed was a basement without any light other than the one that was switched on whenever someone came into the room. He estimated he had been in that place for three days but if he had been told six he would not have been surprised. A few years back he had taken part in an interrogation exercise in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was kept in a dark cell for two days with just food and water. Light and darkness were alternated, anything from minutes to hours between them, and when the exercise was over he thought he had spent three days more in the cell than he actually had.

Figuring out his surroundings was his only pastime. The thought of escape was always on his mind of course, but the opportunity had not yet presented itself. Not that he had a life-threatening, burning desire to escape. He would if he could, if it didn’t endanger him. His captors were very thorough and attentive though. The bonds they tied his hands and feet with were strong and whenever he was visited they were checked and if loose, retied. They had not removed his hood since he regained consciousness on day one, even when feeding him, which was a handful of bread, cheese or meat shoved under it and into his mouth, followed by a squirt of water from a plastic bottle. No one had spoken to him. Not a word. He’d heard voices on occasion but they were in another part of the building and muffled. When he was in the basement there were Irish and French voices. There was a woman’s voice once. English she sounded, but she could’ve been Irish. He thought she had fed him a couple of times. She wasn’t as rough as the others and her hands were soft. If he guessed correctly she was the one who had given him a piece of chocolate.

After the basement came the long drive in the back of a grimy van to his present location. They had carried him in a box from the van and rolled him out into the metal room and secured him to the pole.Those were all Irishmen, or at least the only ones who said anything were.

Hank felt low in energy, kept deliberately so by his captors no doubt. He was constantly hungry but his stomach had shrunk enough so that just a small amount of food would satisfy him for a while. The only plus side to not eating was that he didn’t need to take a shit, which he hadn’t done the last three days.

Oddly enough, being held captive had been one of Hank’s daydreams; however, he always saw himself in a cell and able to exercise every day and maintain his fitness. But being constantly tied up and hooded was not as bad as he would have imagined. There was something about Hank’s generally easy-going temperament and his ability to live within himself that helped him through the endless hours sitting in silence with only his thoughts for company. He had covered just about every aspect of his situation and the endless combination of outcomes. Kathryn had figured greatly in his thoughts, of course. He expected Helen and Janet had been told he was away on a long exercise. It was Kathryn he was most worried about.

A door opened and what sounded like several people stepped into the room. Hank wondered if it was feeding time, or better still, a trip to the toilet perhaps. The only positive thing about the shit in his pants was that it offered some insulation against the cold floor, once it had dried out a bit, even though most of it had worked its way up his back and over his thighs. A shower would have been unbelievable. He might have forgiven them for everything had they let him clean up and put on fresh clothes. It sounded like they were carrying something heavy as they shuffled across the floor.They dumped it unceremoniously a few feet from Hank. He could not make out the rest of the sounds accurately, but someone was doing something energetically enough to make them a little out of breath. Then the group made its way back through the door and it was closed.

No food, Hank decided. No toilet. And definitely no bath. He became annoyed. Fear had initially dominated all of his emotions, but as the days went by it melted into the background, for the most part, and he began to feel anger and impatience. It was not so much at being captured but the way he was being kept. In a strange way he had accepted being a prisoner almost immediately. He was a soldier and incarceration by the enemy was always a potential hazard of that occupation. He was annoyed at the way they treated him like an animal and decided the next time they came in he was going to voice his complaints. If the IRA considered itself to be a contemporary army, and indeed if it expected its enemies to think of it as such, it should act in as many ways as it could like one. That included the proper treatment of prisoners. What they were doing to him was torturous and uncivilised. Hank would try and make them see things that way the next chance he got. Then he heard something, close by, across the room. He wondered if it was a rat. Then he heard a sigh. It was a person.

Hank’s senses stretched to maximum sensitivity as he scanned for the slightest sound or movement. He moved his head, trying to get a glimpse of any change in the light. Another sigh, or was it a moan? Something scraped across the floor, like the heel of a foot, a leg straightening out, as if the person were sitting on the floor like Hank. It then went silent.

Hank waited an age for whomever it was to make another move. It seemed as if the person was asleep. The breathing had become rhythmic, quite loud, but it also sounded congested.

Some time later, as Hank was beginning to doze off, he heard the person start to cough and hack, trying to clear their throat.

‘Ah, Jesus,’ a voice moaned. It was a man.

Hank listened quietly, wondering when the man would acknowledge him.

‘Ah, God,’ the man said again. ‘Bejesus . . . Focken bastards,’ he cried out weakly.

It was obvious that the man was in pain. Hank wondered if he was a prisoner like himself. The man would surely be able to see Hank, unless he also had a hood over his head.

Hank deliberately scraped his foot across the floor. The man went silent. He’d heard him. Hank did it again. When the man spoke it was with a croaking sound, as if he had painful chest problems. ‘Why don’t you get the focken thing over with, yer bastards.’

He was Irish, Hank could tell that much, and he obviously thought Hank was one of them. That confirmed the man could not see him. Hank was about to say something but was suddenly suspicious. What if it was one of them? What if they were trying to trick him into talking? The first rule of imprisonment for a soldier is to say nothing other than name, rank and serial number.

‘Say something, you bastard,’ the man said. ‘Focken beat me up again if it makes yer feel any better.’

It seemed an extreme length to go to just to interrogate him. There was nothing he could think of that would be of any use to the IRA anyhow. Hank decided talking would be okay as long as he asked the questions.