Chapter 11
"I clung to nothing. In a way I was calm, but it was a horrible calm because of my body. I saw with it's eyes, I heard with it's ears, but it was no longer me; it sweated and trembled by itself and I didn't recognise it any more."
~Jean-Paul Satre~
Oh, how he'd missed the sun after weeks of Kosovan rain. It hovered low over the meadow, giving the trees and barns long shadows like a giant's stride, and its orange beams illuminated the fluffy seeds hanging in the air. Every so often a bee would bump lazily around the deep blue gentians, saxifrage and vervain.
Ajla picked the individual grains from an ear of the hardy Dalmatian wheat as she reclined on the steps of the homestead, throwing them to the muddy ground. It was a foreshadowing of the ordeal to come, the seed must first die and then be resurrected.
They conversed in French, their only practicable common language, about farming, about family, about the war. Ajla asked him to tell her once more, the story of the woman who'd saved his life, kept him alive. Her calm, soft voice cut through the sunset. "Do you think she'll wait for you?"
"She has her own life," Sherlock scoffed, pushing the unruly hair out of his eyes again.
Ajla's expression shifted. She actually pitied him, he realised. It was much more than he deserved, although his relationship with this nineteen year old girl had improved somewhat since he'd held her hostage with a sawn-off shotgun to the head. He'd stumbled into this timber framed farmhouse in a clearing in the Kosovan hinterland, almost hoping it was uninhabited, it was so ramshackle.
But that was not to be.
Bosniak refugees were not to be trifled with, he'd learned that pretty quickly, and it had turned into a stand-off before he could beg for water, food, or medicine. He'd released Ajla of course, and had moved over to the kitchen window, gasping for breath, reconnoitring the rest of the farm for imagined pursuers.
Her father, Zlatan, had reached out to him and uttered comforting words in Bosnian, Serbian and then Albanian, with glassy eyes beneath bushy brows. Sherlock's head had snapped round at the words he'd recognised, and he'd realised that the man standing before him, both vulnerable and venerable, was in fact an educated man fallen on hard times. Zlatan had in turn recognised a kindred spirit, a fugitive, and knew what to do.
And that was how Sherlock, this violent intruder, had managed to charm them with a surprisingly eloquent apology and with the fire in his eyes. He'd explained his desperate behaviour and vagrant-like appearance. He was on the trail of a war criminal, they were comrades in arms. The hostage situation could be forgiven.
They'd realised that they could communicate more effectively in French, in which Zlatan and his eldest daughter, Ajla, were fluent, but his wife Lejla was unfortunately not. This only made her regard him with even more suspicion and she wasn't shy in letting her husband know she wasn't happy with the situation.
They'd accorded him a place to sleep and an opportunity to attend to his ablutions, and when the makeshift shower had pelted down cold water on his aching muscles it had felt like an absolution. Ajla had commanded him to sit at the scrubbed kitchen table and tended to his wounds, glancing out furtively from beneath her headscarf. Round-faced, wearing a greying Nike sweatshirt over her modest dress, she'd seemed so much younger than her years. The three younger girls had gathered silently at the door, used to keeping quiet when a stranger appeared. Lejla had looked on disapprovingly.
"I always wanted to be a doctor," Ajla sighed.
The sun finally dipped below the horizon and Sherlock lit up one of the cigarettes he'd rolled while they were sitting there on the rough-hewn, timber steps. "You'd be a good one," he said, thinking of the arnica ointment she'd dabbed on his bruises. He knew he'd be leaving soon, so he did what he could to preserve this brittle, unlikely friendship. "Do you think you'll ever leave this place?"
"I don't know. Father worked so hard to build this," she gestured around, "we're happy here. It would be a shame to throw away that legacy."
"It would be more of a shame to waste healing hands." He offered her one of the cigarettes, watching the last of the noctiluscent clouds disappear. "Besides, not many women of your age are worrying about their father's legacy."
She took the cigarette, allowed him to light it companionably. "When I was a baby - when we were hiding, my mother used to go out at night and look for people still alive in the mass graves. They would line them up along a trench, men, boys, anyone they could find and shoot them. But they wouldn't kill the girls. They would rape the girls and let them go. It was their version of ethnic cleansing. We escaped because we didn't exactly look like the Serbian's idea of the typical Muslim. Mother would go missing for hours. She would crawl along in the dark so that they wouldn't see her and she'd reach out for hands in the mud. I think she must have been looking for her brother. She saved twelve people that way. Father didn't know what she was doing on those excursions until much later. He thought she was grieving in her own way, going out and heaping ashes on her head. I think he was in denial about what was happening to our country, about what was happening to us. He was so proud; a teacher, a philosopher."
"Am I supposed to - supposed to feel something?" He took a drag, squinting at her sideways.
"I'm not special. Mother is special. But she never talked about those days. She's still not right, when I think about it."
After shaking off its violent, golden death-throws, the sunlight had retreated completely and a coldness came over the land, forcing them to stub out their cigarettes and seek refuge indoors. Sherlock wasn't sure if the water in Ajla's eyes was due to the story or the smoke.
Zlatan met them on the veranda and Ajla bowed her head, perhaps in shame for talking about him behind his back, perhaps of accepting tobacco from their odd guest, the incriminating aroma of which still lingered about her. She scurried off to do some chores.
"Take good care of that one," Sherlock said, falling into step with Zlatan as he headed for the kitchen, "she'll make you proud one day."
"Many a night I cried for my unborn son, until the light in Ajla's eyes made me see that a daughter can sometimes be the best kind of son."
Picking up his knapsack from the kitchen table, Sherlock checked the contents once again. Rope, ten millimetre polypropylene, a halfway decent knife, bolt-cutters, a meagre amount of medical supplies. He had food; something resembling dried ham, precious chocolate biscuits from the larder and some of the hard, stale bread that Lejla had made yesterday. He wasn't sure if it was always this inedible, or if she'd made it that way out of spite.
The light drumming of Zlatan's fingers on the table made him look up from his preparations.
"You'll be needing this." He offered up the shotgun that, not so long ago, Sherlock had threatened them all with.
Until that moment he'd been watching Sherlock patiently, knowing that his evenings of discussing science and literature with this rare visitor were coming to an end. He might even venture so far as to say they had become friends. If Zlatan had the inclination to look a little further inside himself, he would admit that he didn't want him to leave. Sherlock had provided him with a connection to the outside world, given him renewed purpose and just a little hope for justice. But he knew that he wasn't doing this for justice or revenge, this had nothing to do with the Balkan conflicts or the plight of their people, this was all about one man. He was the prey and Sherlock was the hunter.
"It's no good without the ammunition, and I'm not going to waste time tracking some down either."
"Take mine, then."
"You need that to protect your family, old man."
"I don't see how you are going to break into a military base without a weapon. You'll be defenceless."
"Not exactly defenseless. I'll come up with something, always do."
"If you - if you find him, when the knife goes in, think of us, won't you? I – I'm not a man who enjoys violence, but I cannot bear to think of one of these - these dogs escaping the tribunal."
Sherlock's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "Thanks for the Serbian lessons."
"Ajla doesn't want you to leave, you know. I think she's fallen for our lonely stranger."
Sherlock stopped what he was doing, looked at the man for a long second. "I'd bring you nothing but trouble. There's no life for me here. I kill everything I touch - " he took a sharp breath, "tell her to forget this ever happened."
"She'll be upset that you left without saying goodbye."
Sherlock shouldered the bag. "Two weeks ago she didn't know I existed. There's more to life than goodbyes."
"Are you sure you won't let me drive you across the border?"
"Like I said, it's much better for you if you forget we ever met."
"But you're exhausted. You've barely recovered - "
"I'll take my chances."
"Then Godspeed, my friend."
"Give your wife my thanks for the, uh, hospitality." And with that he was gone, leaving the back door banging in the autumn breeze.
Razor wire. Rottweilers. AK47s. These were a few of his favourite things, but not when they were being used in an offensive against him.
He'd once witnessed a Rottweiler devour a Poodle, watching with morbid fascination as the predator ripped out mouthfuls of skin and pink fur. Ironic that he might now be dispatched in the same way.
No one would ever know what happened to him. He hadn't checked in for months. For all Mycroft knew, he was already dead. He'd been stupid. The exhaustion, injury and loneliness had broken him down until he was incapable of making an informed decision. The only thing that would save him now, was if MI6 caught wind of a break-in at the installation. The chatter in the ether.
Tired.
He was so tired.
Deep down in his bones. He didn't even have the strength to fight them off any more. It wouldn't have even taken the half a dozen men to drag him out of the ditch. He knelt with his hands behind his head, surrendering to the Kalashnikov. A blow to the jaw rendered him unconscious and he welcomed the oblivion.
He had already come to the end of himself.
When he came to consciousness, he was chained to opposite sides of a room, arms splayed out, with communist era iron manacles circling his wrists. He was in a basement or dungeon, judging by the tiny sloping window, and by the slick of green moisture that clung to the walls. Under the window stood a table, festooned with all kinds of tools and torture devices.
A stranger was cutting off his shirt, pulling off his trousers.
"And we've only just met," he rasped in Serbian as the young soldier crouched in front of him and tugged down his shorts, before leaving quickly and quietly. God, it was cold.
He tried to place his feet firmly on the stone floor, only to be met with an excruciating pain that made his knees buckle. He crumpled once more and the manacles yanked at his wrists with a metallic clang. They must have beaten the soles of his feet while he was still unconscious. That was new.
No time to think – A bucketful of freezing water slammed into his naked body before he could brace himself and his genitals recoiled from the shock. That was how they began to break you, with humiliation. This was just the first course.
He couldn't so much as kneel without almost ripping himself apart. In order to breathe, he had to pull himself up on sinuous arms which were already threatening to pop out of joint. This must be what it feels like to be crucified, he thought.
"Why did you break in?" The interrogator approached. It was the first of many times he would say that line. Always the same words, over and over. Why did you break in?
In the darkened corner of the room, another figure lurked. Sherlock dared not look up through his curls. A pair of black, spike heeled Laboutins drifted in and out of view.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been here. No sun seemed to reach down into his dungeon. It must have been a couple of days because he was hungry and thirsty, and his nostrils wrinkled from the stench of his own waste.
They'd moved on from the pure humiliation now and started mixing it with a little physical intimidation. The interrogator wielded a whip with broken glass and metal spikes embedded in it. He knew how to use it, not laying into his victim without mercy, but leaving a good amount of time for the injury to register before the next lash. If you whipped someone too hard and for too long, all the injuries blurred into one and the subject would just fall unconscious. That was not what they wanted. No, they wanted to keep him alive, keep him awake for every piercing blow.
"Why did you break in?" said the interrogator.
Sherlock groaned and braced himself for the next lash. He grunted, reduced to an animal, as the jagged teeth first bit down and then ripped flesh out on the way back to their master.
"Go on, admit it," said The Woman, "you like it."
"Never," Sherlock grunted in English.
"What was that?" The interrogator couldn't see her.
"Everyone's a masochist if they'd just be honest with themselves." The Laboutins stalked around to the front of him. A perfectly manicured finger lifted his chin.
"You're not real - " Sherlock gasped.
"Why did you break in?" said the interrogator, preparing for another stinging, agonising stripe across his back.
"Just go with it," said The Woman, "you love it, you need it. You ARE pain. It's the only way to survive."
"Get out of my head – Ugh!" his head snapped back and his arms gave in at the blow. He hung there, shoulders all but permanently dislocated, unable to even muster the strength to breathe.
The interrogator sensed that he was dancing on the edge of the poison cup, losing the will to live, so he called for men to uncuff him and lower him to the floor. They dragged him to a tiny windowless cell and he was granted a brief respite in order to recover enough for the next round.
Some kind soul poured peroxide on his wounds. He cried out, arching his back like some patchwork monster as the fizzing liquid burned into the jagged edges of his necrotic flesh.
Another bucket of freezing water appeared next to him. His clothes were returned and thrown on the floor by his bruised feet. The door was locked as the soldiers left. He was alone again.
"Oh dear," said the woman, as he inched, painfully, infinitesimally slowly towards the bucket, "What a sorry state you're in. If I met you now, I wouldn't even look twice."
Every tiny movement required the utmost of concentration and his atrophied limbs screamed with every heartbeat. "You're not," he grimaced, curling up against the bucket, "helping."
"You know, the CIA always leave the actual physical torture for last. The home stretch. These guys are hardly professional. All the subtlety of a brick."
"Leave me alone!" he managed to spit as he drew himself to his knees, huddling naked and vulnerable at the bucket, trying to quench his thirst first and then his need to wash his trembling body.
"I can help," she said, swiftly dropping to her knees, stroking his filthy hair, "I can help you embrace what is happening to you, keep your mind intact."
Her voice was silken honey, a siren luring him onto the rocks, but just as filthy and emaciated as his corrupted corpse. He was already dead. It wouldn't matter if he slipped away. He would welcome whichever came first, sleep or death. But the worst was yet to come.
He somehow wrestled himself into his trousers and finally lay down, prostrate on the cold floor.
"That's it, rest your head, my weary prince."
He closed his eyes, banishing her. The blessed relief of the firm, cold ground cradled him for an exquisite second before the soldiers returned, crashing through the door, and dragged him onto a bench. He didn't resist them.
He was tied, hand and foot, and a dirty rag was thrust into his mouth. It was his sixth day of water boarding.
The Woman stood in the corner, watching dispassionately, unobserved by the soldiers, the mistress of pain. "Do you know why this works?"
Sherlock turned his head ever so slightly toward her as they prepared the hose. His eyes flashed with fire, ice and fear. But he would continue to hold on. He would not let them break him.
She continued as the water pounded down on his face. "The water never enters your nose or your mouth. It never enters your lungs. No, you will not drown. They know it is impossible for you to drown. What they are counting on is a reflex. They are waiting for your body to tell you that you cannot take any more, that you cannot handle the rising panic of the suffocating liquid bearing down on you. Your own body will betray you."
"Just tell us," said the interrogator, "why did you break in?"
The Woman laughed, a throaty, wicked cackle. "Why not? They'll let you sleep if you tell them. Your friends have abandoned you, after all."
Sherlock spluttered and gagged. NO, he roared through the rag, straining against his bonds, glaring at her.
It had been over two weeks. He'd spent his days and nights hanging from the chains, his arms dead, his feet rendered useless, and his mind numb. As a substitute for sleep, he let his mind wander through the corridors of his memory, seeking out the comforts he knew. Simple things, like silky russet fur and a rough lick of his hand. Lighting the fire at Christmas in Baker Street. Good Darjeeling in a fine bone-china cup. But then everything started to get muddled and sank into the muddy, Bosnian mass graves. He reached out to save the ones he loved, but he was too weak.
It wasn't the first time he'd pushed the limits of sleep deprivation, but this was extreme. He wasn't sure which way was up. He wasn't sure which way was down. He struggled to remember his own name. All he knew was pain.
Today, the interrogator brought a new toy. Fed up with Sherlock's lack of response, he'd employed the use of a common or garden metal pipe.
It slammed into his solar plexus, fraying the nerves and forcing him to double up involuntarily. Sherlock didn't care any more. He unclenched his muscles and stared blankly in front of him, tendrils of the ragged shock of hair tickling his nose.
"Why did you break - "
Another blow.
" - IN!"
But then, something was different. Something or someone was causing a stir along the corridor.
Soldiers on duty snapped to attention and someone muttered the Serbian word for inspection. An imposing figure swept into the room, made himself at home on the chair in the corner, and doffed his cap briefly.
It was a familiar face and a familiar voice, uttering, "please, by all means carry on."
Sherlock lifted his head ever so slightly. The interrogator never noticed the tiny smile creeping onto his face.
Time to execute his plan.