Condemned, the first 5000 words, by Kevin P. Thornton.

(Finalist in the 2018 Arthur Ellis Awards for the Unhanged Arthur.

They never should have kidnapped the Colonel.

They did a good job, and they may have believed that the plan had been successful. They had after all accomplished their objective. Some hours later when the police were finally able to piece together what happened, they were forced to admit that it seemed to be a slick operation.

The best view came from the bank across the road. One of their CCTV cameras was mounted up above the parapet of the third floor, and the recording it produced was of exceptionally high quality. It showed the south-east corner of Soho Square as well as the end of Greek Street. It pointed almost directly at the discreet entrance to the club, nestled into the corner between two more imposing buildings, and it had captured the entire event.

Inspector Fiona Hazlitt had watched the crucial thirty-seven seconds of the video twenty-four times by now. She started it for the twenty-fifth time. The man left the building, the door shutting behind him, and walked across to the taxicab with the opened door. It was only if you watched carefully, that you saw the second man come up behind, tap him on the back of the neck and propel him into the vehicle. The second man then piled in behind him and they drove away even before he had shut the door.

“How did they spot it, Guv?” said Constable Johnson, sitting at the laptop and controlling the playback.

“What do you mean,” said Hazlitt. She knew what he was getting at, but one of the reasons why she’d made Inspector before she was thirty was because she could pick talent. She wanted to hear what Johnson thought.

“Well, we’ve watched this, I dunno’ how many times, and if we hadn’t been told he was abducted, and who he was, we’d never have caught on to this.”

“Yes,” said Hazlitt. “And?”

“So if we weren’t going to spot it, how the ‘ell did they? I mean, he left the club and the door shut behind him, so whoever was inside didn’t see what happened. Unless they have cameras. If they do, and we did ask them by the way, why won’t they share? I mean, who the hell are those people in there?”

“Good work,” said Hazlitt, and Johnson went red. “That is the Auxiliary Units Club , and they are the biggest band of cutthroats, renegades and killers this country’s ever produced. They’re all ex-special forces; SAS and all that lot, and they’re a bad bunch.”

“I thought they were over in Knightsbridge,” said Constable Johnson. Hazlitt arched an eyebrow at him, and he said, “That was my first beat,” by way of explanation.

“Ah. Well that one in Knightsbridge is the Special Forces Club and is all very establishment. The Princess Royal is their patron and they have a snooty address and ennobled members. This club isn’t the same. It’s more of a backdoor version of the other one. And to answer your question, they saw exactly what happened.”

“But how Guv?”

“Watch this.” She fast forwarded about thirty seconds. A small motorbike came out of the alleyway next to the club and turned into traffic, nearly causing a crash. It headed off in the same direction.

“Less than a minute,” said Hazlitt. “From seeing a barely see-able event on their hidden CCTV, to getting someone out there to try and find the cab. It took less than a minute for them to have somebody go after them. That is really good going.”

“Who are these Auxiliaries?” said Johnson. “It doesn’t sound very elite.”

“That’s the joke,” said Hazlitt. “The Auxiliary Units of WWII were a highly secret commando type group sent in behind the enemy lines. They had a life expectancy of less than two weeks when deployed and they really did carry cyanide pills in case they were captured. Naming the club after them was a little bit cute, but also pointed.”

“You mean they’re now auxiliary to requirements.”

“Exactly. They are the Deniables,” said Hazlitt. “You know that part in a Hollywood movie where the man in the suit looks at the team he has assembled and says, ‘If you are caught or captured we will deny all knowledge of you. There will be no rescue mission. We will leave you to rot wherever you are.’ These guys actually are them. The direct spiritual descendants of the Auxiliaries.”

“So they’re like Tom Cruise in all them Mission Impossible films.”

“Worse,” said Hazlitt. “Because the guys who hide out in that club are the ones who came back. Nobody wants them or their stories to surface and nobody knows quite what to do with them.”

And that was the thing, thought Hazlitt. Whoever had taken the Colonel had just bought themselves a world of hurt. Hazlitt wondered what had happened to the guy chasing the cab. He can’t have caught up, or else the Colonel would be free by now. The members of the Auxiliaries even though they were retired or pensioned off, were that good.

She also wondered how long it would take for Nick to get here.

“Put out an alert for any of the Colonel’s family coming through customs.”

“All right Guv, will do. How is it do you know so much about the Auxiliaries?”

“My Dad’s one of them.”

The man on the motorbike, as fast as he’d been, hadn’t really had a chance. The trouble with London cabs is they all look the same and once the kidnappers had gone down Greek Street they’d had a choice of Charing Cross Road or Shaftesbury Avenue, both major thoroughfares, both chock-a-block with taxis.

The man on the bike pulled over and pulled out his phone. “I’ve lost them, or more to the point I never really found them. You better phone it in.” He listened for a few seconds then said, “Not to the police yet. Not until you phone the family. Our guy, the younger son, has  disappeared off the face of the earth, but you can find the other one if you get hold of the Papal Nuncio. Tell him the Colonel’s been lifted.”

There is, somewhere in South Africa, a lovely road that runs into the hills. Those hills are undulating, delightful and verdant, and their praises cannot be sung of highly enough.

Clearly this was not that road. This one was worn, patchy and water-corrugated. The only undulations were on the track itself, the scenery was jagged and Tolkien-esque. The visitor was glad he’d rented a four wheel drive. It was also cold, gray and misty, and the only traffic he had seen in the last hour had been a Sotho tribesman tending to his cattle in the middle of this selfsame path. That had set him back ten minutes, but in the end he didn’t suppose it would matter much. He was travelling to a monastery, and the man he was coming to see would still be there whenever he arrived.

The Basotho Marian Retreat Centre, high in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains on the border between Lesotho and Kwazulu-Natal, does not look like the traditional monastery of sacred Benedictine rite or Monty Python skit. It was a collection of thatched rondavels surrounding a central building that had been converted into a church-kitchen-meeting room. Prior to its salvation it had been an unsuccessful motel, but the Church was many decades from its opulent building phase and the Saviour missionaries had been grateful to take ownership when it was left to them.

The Saviours were formally known as the Congregatio Sanctissimi Salvatoris; in church-speak the C.Ss.S, and in English the Congregation of the Most Holy Saviour. They were originally Hospitallers, caring and mending body and mind, all the way back to the crusades. Now they prayed and saved parishes with missions instead. It was still the same task that God had called them for, they argued, just on a scale befitting their lower vocational numbers.

The visitor looked around at the sere landscape, the motley huts, the common area with the holes still in the wall for the neon motel sign, and he sighed. The Saviours had, it seemed, been scarcely able to save themselves. The visitor wondered if that irony had been part of the attraction for the man he had come to see.

The monk at the far end of the back pew wasn’t quite a giant. He may have been some inches over six feet but he was made to seem bigger by the abbot, who had barely breached five feet as a young man and had been knocked back a little by the hands of time. They walked over together.

“How did you find me?” he said to the visitor.

“I’m a bishop. If you wanted to hide, a monastery was not the most inspired choice.”

The big man looked at the abbot who smiled, then shrugged like an Italian waiter.

“Rome,” he said, knowing it explained everything.

“Don’t worry, Abbot Anselmo,” said the bishop. “Brother Dominic doesn’t blame you. He knew he could always be found. That’s why he didn’t run far.” He turned and looked out the door. “It’s a lovely view.”

“It is a dismal view, but it is one I have become attached to,” said the big man. He turned to the Abbot. “Padre, I must go, but I will return.”

“No you won’t my son,” said the Abbot. “Go with God anyway. I hope you find what you are looking for, one day, some day.” He looked at the bishop one last time. “Though I doubt you will find it in his company.” He turned and walked away.

The big man smiled. “No matter how hard you try, you still can’t hide that you’re a snake oil salesman Finn.”

“The cardinal prefers us to go by the correct nomenclature, Papal diplomats.”

“Indeed.” He reached down and hugged his visitor. “Good to see you again anyway brother. How’s Dad?”

“Ah,” said the bishop. “Our Father is the reason I’m here. He has disappeared.”

The woman in the lab coat watched dispassionately from behind the one way glass. On the business side, the man was attached to a metal chair that was bolted to the ground. The back of the chair was high and every part of him was strapped in place, firm, taut and upright. Every part except for his head, which, despite the agony, the man in the chair held high in defiance.

On the other side of the room, the Electric Man pressed a button on the generator and a jolt ran through the wires attached to the victim’s testicles. He wrenched against the straps, grunting with the pain, his head and neck whipping back and forth. He nearly screamed, like he had nearly screamed every time before, but again he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

This was the sixth time they had brought him in here and tortured him. In his head that meant six days, but he knew he could be wrong. In Vietnam they had tried to disorient the prisoners, removing all sensory links, changing the times of meals, shortening or lengthening interactions. They had kept them awake, on their feet, under bright lights, trying to get them to confess. Back then he had held out for three years, five months and eleven days, and he had never given in.

He wasn’t about to ruin his record now.

The Electric Man had turned the power off, and after a moment or so, he stopped convulsing. This had been his third shock. If they did the same as they had done the other five times, they would shock him once more, then they would undo him and drag him back to his cell.

The man wasn’t complaining, but as torturing went, he wondered if they actually knew what they were doing. It was painful, right enough, and there was always that nagging worry that the shock treatment would damage his equipment. Back in the prisoner-of-war camps, the nearest he had come to cracking was when they threatened to cut off his testicles and feed them to him. He had always been proud of his virility and was old fashioned enough to link it to his fertility. If the electric shocks unmanned him in any way he would be disappointed, but on the other hand he had enough children that he knew about, and likely some he didn’t. He’d had wives and lovers, mistresses and girlfriends. If the electricity neutered him, well it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.

The fourth shock hit him like a bastard, and he grunted and writhed, convinced that this time they had seared his balls off. He could smell burning but he knew that it was probably his imagination. Still, the last one was always the worst, and he was grateful when they started to unstrap him and take him back.

They threw him in and locked the door behind him. He looked up from the ground where he lay. Just like every other time there was water and rice. It wasn’t much, but it was about what he’d had for a week in captivity in Vietnam. He drank slowly, ate, and found out that everything still worked when he went and relieved himself on the steel toilet in the corner.

He sat on the cot and started to analyze again what was happening. He had been at the club, drinking with all the men in suits that he despised, realizing he had become one. He’d left the club and . . . what? Woken up here? There were bits missing, which told him he’d been drugged, but by what. The years when he knew of such things were long gone.

“What is going on,” he muttered to himself.

They, whoever they were, had kidnapped him, but it wasn’t for ransom or else they wouldn’t be torturing him. And if they wanted to find out something, they weren’t doing a very good job. He was sure this level of discomfort would be excruciating for most people, but he wasn’t most people. If his kidnappers had looked into him at all, they’d have seen from his history that torture had never worked on him before. He had never told anything to the Vietcong, he had never given in to duress at any time in his life and he had never answered a question he hadn’t wanted to. He wasn’t going to here because they weren’t very goal-directed when it came to their torture techniques. They hadn’t asked him any questions.

So what were they trying to do? It felt as if they had read part of Casino Royale and found out how to torture someone, but not why.

He had an idea. He reached down and carefully examined his testicles. They were red and swollen, but they looked mostly healthy and unburnt. Just touching them hurt, but there didn’t so far seem to be any permanent damage.

“Restrained torture,” he mused. “What for? Why go to all this effort? This hasn’t been cheap to set up, yet there’s been no mention of a ransom, no recorded messages to show I’m still alive, and no requests for access to Cayman Island accounts . . .”

He stopped talking to himself, unsure if they had bugged the room. He would have, in their place.

If you don’t want information, and you’re not a sociopathic sadist getting your jollies, then what are the other reasons for torturing someone?

Science? He mulled that one over for a moment. There had been some crazy scientists in the past on both sides of the cold war doing crazy tests. Back in the day when he had been an active part of the war on communism and the like. Was this what this was? Was he some kind of nutty test control for a torture program? Had he been kidnapped by a modern day Mengele, or maybe even a mere Stanley Milgram? It would explain why the torture felt so surreal and structured. Even as he processed this he realized it was wrong. If this was some kind of bizarre test, why kidnap him. He was a solitary man, it was true, but not unimportant in his own field. It wouldn’t take long before his absence was noted and the authorities, some pretty powerful ones with three letter acronyms, would start looking for him. Why take that risk? In the entire world why pick him. There must be millions of people less noticeable.

So this was not likely to be some bizarre experiment.

What else?

He thought back over his life. You didn’t survive what he had been through without being tough, and you didn’t make the kind of money he had made and reach the position in life he had reached without being tougher than those around you. He had made enemies, pissed people off, angered women and humiliated men, all in the name of the great god mammon and the score at the end of the game. If this was about revenge, he could think of about a hundred people who wouldn’t even piss on him if he was set alight. But would any of them go this far.

“If this is because I’ve angered someone, they’ll never find me,” he thought. “Too many suspects.”

He leant back against the cold wall, exhausted, too tired to follow on with his line of thought. He fell into a comatose sleep.

When he woke, it was because of a noise he hadn’t heard in over forty years. He lay there and listened, unbelieving at first. The sound repeated itself, then paused, repeated then paused. It was a cadence of beats that would only be recognized today by maybe thirty or so survivors of the last time it was used. It was tap code.

And it meant that wherever he was and whatever they were planning to do with him, he wasn’t the only one. He started to tap an answer.

Nick drove when they left the monastery. He always did when it was the two of them. Finn was sixteen years older, and years ago he had taught Nick to drive on the farm roads near their home. It always seemed Nick had just never bothered to give the keys back.

The two looked at each other; Nick with a casual glance in the angled mirror, Finn fully and frankly, turned slightly inwards on the passenger seat.

“You’ve aged,” said Nick.

“Everybody has,” said Finn, “it just shows on some more than others.” He paused, looking at Nick carefully. “You haven’t. Aged that is.”

“Clean living,” said Nick.

“You mean you’ve killed no-one this year,” said Finn.

“Do you know that for certain,” said Nick, “or are you just guessing?”

Finn pursed his lips, angry with himself. In his line of work he could, and sometimes did, negotiate with warlords, criminals and worse. He was known in his professional diplomatic life for his tireless urbanity and equanimity; but his little brother vexed him like no other in the world, save their Dad. And Finn seemed to let it show every time they were together.

Nick struggled not to smile. In truth he had been pushing his brother’s buttons since he was fifteen and had decided to join the army. He knew Finn loved him and hated what he did. He felt the same about Finn.

If he had any regrets at his brother’s intrusion on his life, he didn’t voice them. He didn’t look back as they left. He didn’t ask where they were going when he drove down the mountain and threaded his way to the valley where the main road took people north to Johannesburg or south to Durban. And he didn’t ask before turning north, to Johannesburg, and the international airport.

Traffic was fairly light this early in the afternoon. Nick set the cruise control and settled back into the leather seat.

“Talk to me,” he said. “Why is this time so important? It’s not like he’s never disappeared before.”

“He was taken from the club yesterday in London. They notified me as I was leaving Dubai, so I changed my flight to come and get you. There has been no ransom note, the cabbie who picked him up has disappeared as has his cab, and there is no trace.”

“Taken? You seem sure of that. Could he not have just hired the cab driver to scurry him around on a scurrilous jaunt of some sort into the fleshpots of London? He has form for that kind of thing.”

“I was told he was taken. I did suggest that a search of the sordid side Soho may prove fruitful, but they seemed certain.”

“Then that’s where we need to go next,” said Nick. “Do you have a secure phone?”

Finn pointed towards the screen in the dash. “It’s linked in. Voice activated.”

Nick recited a thirteen digit number into the phone, then a password, then another.

Rensky answered. “For the last time Bishop Coil, I will not tell you where your brother is. Leave him alone. Let him go to hell in his own way.”

“Rensky,” said Nick. “It’s me.”

“Nick? Are you back? My god it’s good to hear your voice. Where are you? Never mind. You are with your brother, the phone is in the Free State, heading North on the N3. Are you heading to the airport? What do you need? Listen I have a contract in Syria for an elite team of….”

“Rensky,” Nick said. “You’re on speakerphone.”

“Chess players. The contract in Syria is for an elite team of chess players.”

“Right,” said Nick. “Better work on those prevarication skills. Listen up. We’ll be at Tambo airport in a couple of hours. Can you get us two first class seats to London on the next plane out? Also, call my Father’s club and tell them we’ll want two guest rooms. I’ll need clothes as well. I’m about 235 now, but tell my tailor to leave some room. I’ll be working again for a while and I expect I’ll bulk up a bit.”

“And where am I charging this to?” said Rensky. “Of course you know your credit is always good with me, but . . .”

“But you’d like to get paid and you don’t know what I’m up to or who’s paying me. Do you still have my brother’s credit card number from the Foundation? Charge that for now.”

“Do you need a passport?” said Rensky. Nick looked at Finn, who shook his head, eyebrows raised at the credit card information.

“No. When you book the tickets, tell them we’re Vatican diplomats. Talk to you later.” He hung up the phone.

“Vatican diplomats?” said Finn.

“What other kind of passport can you get?” said Finn. “Who am I travelling as?”

Finn reached into his pocket and handed over the document. Nick flipped to the important page.

“I’m travelling with my real name?” He said. “I can’t remember the last time I did that. That should make life interesting at Heathrow. What’s this? Gentiluomo as a job description?”

“I thought it was appropriate.”

“You listed me as a Vatican bodyguard? I thought diplomats were supposed to be subtle.”

“It’s a recognized job in the church,” said Finn.

“It was a recognized job until the last one died in 2001.”

“How in the hell do you possibly know that?” said Finn. “That is the most arcane and useless piece of information you have ever stored in your head.”

“I met him, shortly before he died. He came to our school. He was a nice man.” Nick smiled. “So I’m now an official bodyguard with a diplomatic passport? This should be fun.”

Nick stretched out on the plane and tried to sleep. He’d always been able to bank sleep, take it when he could, go without when not. It was a useful attribute in his former line of work but since he’d quit, sleep wouldn’t come easy.

Finn was across the aisle and a row behind. Rensky had worked wonders getting them on the flight, but not together. In truth he felt more comfortable slightly removed. He watched his brother, wondering about paths crossed and roads not taken. Finn had chosen the church from an early age and had been horrified when he had heard Nick was away to be a soldier. In Finn’s ideal world back then the only soldiers were soldiers of Christ, and he had tried in vain to change his brother’s mind, not realizing that the more he tried, the more determined Nick had become. It didn’t help that their Dad’s career was out there as a benchmark. The Coils were long on fighting and dying for other people’s countries and beliefs, but there weren’t that many priests in the family. Nuns, yes, but the men tended to want to beat the be-jaysus out of each other and anyone they could get their hands on. Finn was the anomaly in the Coil clan, not Nick.

He had watched from the sidelines as Nick’s career had progressed in a perfect arc even as his own life had become murkier and shadier in the shadows of St. Peter’s. Nick had all the attributes an officer needed. He was sporty had been selected for the combined services XV and XI every year up until his special forces posting, and had been spoken of as good enough to play for England either as eighth man in rugby or a fast-medium all-rounder in cricket.

Less importantly, for this was England, he’d also done well enough academically to be spoken of as ‘intelligent and willing to learn’; military speak for pretty damn smart. It was like he knew all the rules beforehand and played the game superbly, coming close enough to top honours at graduation to be noticed, without getting the fanfare for winning any of them. It was no surprise that he was posted to Dad’s old regiment as soon as he left Sandhurst, and no surprise either when he was sent for Special Forces selection. If ever there was a soldier more determined to serve at the sharp end of things, the evaluators had yet to meet him.

Nobody sails through the Brecon Beacons and selection to the SAS. Nick found it tough, but tough in a meaningful way. It was hard because it was worth it, and being selected was, he had felt, the pinnacle of his career. Even Finn on the sidelines acknowledged to himself that his brother was maybe made for this. The only difference between Nick and the men he served with was his size. Most Special Forces soldiers are compact; not small really as much as of a utilitarian size. If there was an ideal muscle to size ratio for efficient use of lung capacity and endurance – and there was – it would be a man between five foot seven and five ten, body mass index at the lean end, long wiry muscles and healthy normal-sized feet. Nick was wide as a linebacker, tall as a West Indian bowler, with shoulders like a Yorkshire farmer.

Most of the big guys don’t make it through selection. Their own body size conspired against them as it was too much work to carry all that weight up hill and down dale. But Nick had made it, and had been assigned to a team where he had spent four glorious happy years.

And then there was the incident. Even Finn, with all his access to the corridors of power, had not been able to find out what had happened. All he knew  was there had been a forceful disagreement in the field, Nick had resigned his commission before he was cashiered, and the next Finn knew was a grainy video shot, some months later of a team of expensive mercenaries, one of whom might have been Nick, helping to liberate Ramallah. Then he heard through his diplomatic contacts that his brother had been seen in Venezuela, Liberia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. Always working for big money and always skating too close to the edge.

Nick had become a mercenary, or to Finn’s mind, a killer.

Just like their Dad.