Local time – 9:50pm, Sunday 17th June, 2011.
Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Alex watched the trucks disappear down the road. Once they were gone, the only sound that could be heard was a dog barking in the distance. With only a scattering of street lights along the side of the road, and without the headlights from the army trucks, the scene felt darker and more ominous. The transporter loomed next to them like a giant monster. The soldiers had never made her feel safe, but now it seemed almost absurd to feel safer that they were gone. She couldn’t even look at Henry, not wanting to see his expression of triumph at what Ahmed had done. When the last of the dust had settled in the convoys wake, she saw Ahmed jogging back towards them. His phone was in his hand, and as he walked he used both hands to remove the back cover. He seemed to be struggling with his injured hand. In the instant that Alex recognised what he was doing, Henry did too. Ahmed was destroying the SIM card, and the second code would be forever lost. Just as Alex was about to cry out for him to do it, and do it fast, a deafening crack filled the air.
As if in slow motion, Ahmed’s legs buckled beneath him and he fell sideways onto the dirty bitumen road. Holding the gun out in front of him, Henry went to shoot Ahmed a second time, but the gun clicked without firing. Alex cried out, and she shot forward into a sprint. She needed to get to the SIM card before Henry did. But he had a head start and his long legs reached Ahmed’s bleeding body before Alex could get close. She could see that Ahmed was dead before her mind had time to register it. The bullet had gone straight through his forehead. Henry snatched the phone from the dusty road, and then jumped backwards. Alex remembered Ahmed’s warning that it was password protected, but her heart sank when she realised the handset was not locked. Henry was scrolling through the contacts. He must have found what he was looking for as he held the phone above his head, like a sportsman with a trophy.
‘You’re not going to stop me Alex.’ His look of absolute arrogance spurred Alex into a burst of activity. He couldn’t shoot her. And one beautiful fact occurred to her. She ran as fast as she could back to the truck.
Alex hauled herself into the cockpit and slammed the door shut. It wasn’t locked, but the time it took to open the stiff latch and the drag open the heavy door, would give her time to grab her iPad. Henry bounded after her, and by the time he got to her door, she was holding the iPad above her head.
‘The code is in here! I’ll smash it if you don’t step away now!’ He kept his eyes on the iPad, and didn’t reach for the handle.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! You told me the code is Wenceslas S Q U! I’m not exactly going to forget that!’
Alex had to yell through the cockpit glass to make herself heard.
‘Yes, you know the letters! But you don’t remember the numbers! Bernie used a special code to transfer the letters to numbers. Only something I would know how to crack. You don’t have the numbers.’
Henry paced back and forth by the door, and Alex could see he was stumped. He hadn’t thought that far. His frustration turned to anger and he pulled down on the latch. She held the iPad in front of her and motioned smashing it on the dashboard.
‘Do you want me to smash it? You know I won’t let you torture anything out of me! I’d give up my life to stop a war in a heart beat.’ Henry let go of the door hatch and a strange, crooked smile appeared on his face. She could just make out him saying:
‘You bloody would. Wouldn’t you Alex? You’re just about stupid enough to do that.’ He seemed to resign himself to the realisation that he didn’t have the code. She was already preparing herself for him to try the door again, when she saw him turn, and walk around the front of the truck. He then opened the door to the other cockpit and pulled himself in. He looked to be deep in concentration, and Alex realised with horror, he was ignoring her, and putting his mind to working out the code. She knew it wouldn’t take him long.
As she sat trying frantically to think what to do, she remembered the last message on Henry’s phone and realised what it meant. He had stopped here because this was where he was meeting the person who had been giving him instructions. The person who’d had written ‘ditch the girl’. He would be here at any moment and she would have two men to deal with. And he’d certainly have a gun. If she broke the iPad, they’d kill her. They’d kill her if she didn’t. And they’d get away with it. Alex felt paralysed. How on earth had she thought she could come out of this alive? What could she do? Panic engulfed her.
A strange noise jerked her out of her terror. She looked around, trying to work out where the ringing sound was coming from. For a moment she thought it was Phil’s phone. But then she realised that the iPad in her hands was vibrating. She put it in her lap, and saw the screen had come to life. A Skype window was open and there was an incoming call. Taking her eyes off Henry for the moment, she clicked on the screen to answer it.