Escape From Desire

He didn’t say anything more and Tamara had the conviction that subject was not one he wished to take any further. For some reason they seemed to have been teamed together for the walk possibly because everyone else was already with somebody, and she wished passionately that she had never decided to participate in the walk. She didn’t like the atmosphere pervading the forest and she didn’t like the prickles of awareness she experienced every time some inadvertent movement brought her into physical contact with Zach Fletcher.

He glanced at his watch and frowned.

‘We ought to be heading back. There’s no dusk as we know it at home here. Another couple of hours and it will be fully dark.’

He walked forward, catching hold of the guide’s arm, and spoke to him. The guide shook his head vehemently.

‘No turn back yet,’ he told Zach. ‘Soon, but not yet. Not much further now,’ he added with the air of a commander urging his flagging troops to greater effort.

‘How much further can “not much” be?’ Sue groaned when they had walked for another fifteen minutes. ‘I’m bushed!’

Tamara could only agree. She felt hot and sticky and was longing for a cooling shower. Perspiration had darkened the front of her hair, and her mouth felt dry. She was also beginning to regret the lunch she had refused, distinct pangs of hunger assailing her. She had some biscuits in her bag, but it was too much effort to put it down and search for them. Everyone else seemed tired too; everyone, that was, apart from Zach, who despite the sweat stains marring his shirt, still seemed able to keep up with their guide without flagging.

Ahead of her Tamara saw the guide stop. They had reached a small clearing where a fallen tree had created a tiny space.

With groans of relief the small party came to a standstill, with the exception of the guide, who for some reason appeared to be slightly nervous. Tamara watched him as his eyes darted round the clearing as though looking for something. Zach wandered over to her side.

‘Something wrong?’

He too was watching the guide, and although he hid it well Tamara thought she glimpsed a certain disquiet in his eyes, before he veiled them and said smoothly, ‘Ready for the return journey? I—’

He broke off suddenly as the clearing was invaded by half a dozen men carrying machine guns and dressed in camouflage fatigues.

At her side Tamara heard Zach swear under his breath, and then they were being herded together like so many cattle, the muzzle of one gun pressing icily against Tamara’s throat as she stumbled over an exposed tree root.

‘Just what the hell is all this about?’ Zach addressed the question to the man who was obviously in charge of the small group, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take command; none of the other men challenged his right to do so, and Tamara suspected they were all, like her, too dazed, to think of asking the question ‘why’.

Motioning to them to keep still with his gun, the man came forward while two of his men menaced them with raised guns.

‘You are to be held hostage until our Government releases the men it wrongly imprisoned six months ago,’ they were told in excellent English. ‘It is time the rest of the world knew what is happening here in the Caribbean. We are tired of incompetent capitalism, governments who allow us to starve, who refused to educate children above the age of fourteen, who condemn their own people to a life of poverty and degradation.’

‘Holding us hostage would not alter anything,’ Zach told him. ‘But if you release us without harm now, I promise you that we will make sure that you are allowed to put your view to your Government.’

None of them moved a muscle. They were all looking to Zach to provide a lead they could follow. Tamara couldn’t believe it was actually happening. She looked round for their guide, but he was nowhere to be seen. Dot was clutching George’s arm, her face pale and strained. The two honeymooners were in each other’s arms, while Sue and Heather moved a little closer to their husbands. Only she had no one to turn to.

‘Yes, and then they would throw us in prison with our comrades,’ the guerrilla sneered. ‘No, my friend, we need you too much to release you. Without you our Government will never set our comrades free; they will be shot. Come …’ he ordered roughly, ‘we have four hours’ march ahead of us. It will be at least that time before your hotel raises the alert, and by then they will have no chance of finding you. Very few people know this forest as well as Kennedy here does,’ he told them, with a jerk of his gun in the direction of a grim-faced islander, one of the two who was standing over them with a gun.

Out of the corner of her eye Tamara saw Heather sway towards Chris, her face paper-white.

‘Oh, God help us, Chris,’ she moaned softly. ‘What are we going to do?’

Her words seemed to release a wave of panic over all of them. Tamara herself shivered uncontrollably despite the clammy heat; only Zach remaining cool and controlled in the face of their predicament.

‘Come,’ the leader of the guerrillas commanded. ‘It is time to leave.’

‘You can’t get away with this!’ Alex Browne protested in a tight voice. ‘The English Government …’

‘Is many thousands of miles away, my friend,’ the guerrilla mocked him, ‘and the time when nations were prepared to risk any confrontation for the sake of their subjects is long past. Your Government will do nothing for you …’

‘And neither will yours for you!’ George burst out. His skin had an unhealthy purplish tinge and Tamara saw Dot reach out towards him, shaking her head warningly.

‘It’s his blood pressure,’ she murmured to Tamara, adding in terror, ‘Oh, my God, what’s going to happen to us?’

‘You cannot expect us to walk as fast as your men,’ Zach pointed out to the guerrilla. ‘If you intend to take us all hostage you will have to keep us alive—your Government will never hand over your comrades in return for lifeless bodies, and if you want to keep us alive you will have to make allowances …’

The islander frowned, appearing to consider Zach’s statement, and then turned and said something in a rapid patois to one of his companions, who shrugged and grimaced.

‘We cannot afford to waste time,’ he told Zach.

‘And neither can you afford to take risks with our lives,’ Zach reiterated smoothly. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to just take one of us hostage, while allowing the rest to go free? Especially if we were to guarantee that your story was printed in the British newspapers; that way your cause would receive far greater publicity than it would simply by holding us to ransom. Your own Government is hardly likely to make public the knowledge that people cannot holiday safely on St Stephen’s.’

Tamara held her breath while the guerrilla leader consulted with his companions. Would he accept Zach’s suggestion? She had no doubt that if he did, Zach intended to be the one to volunteer to remain behind, and she wondered if she had been mistaken after all, and he was in some way connected with the Army. It wasn’t a question she could ask.

The sun was dropping swiftly towards the horizon, fear an almost tangible emotion in the small clearing as they waited for the guerrillas’ decision.

‘You,’ their leader commanded roughly, turning back to Zach, ‘do you give your word that what we want will receive publicity?’

‘Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword knew what life was all about,’ Zach muttered sardonically under his breath to Tamara, as he inclined his head, and then looked across at George.

‘Mr Partington will inform the British Consul of what has happened and of our bargain—the freedom of my companions in return for publicising your cause.’

‘Our Government has no wish to quarrel with Britain and is sure to release our comrades once it is known that we hold a British hostage.’

Tamara wasn’t so sure. There had been several cases in the Press recently where lone Britons had been kidnapped and held for many months without the Government doing anything to negotiate their freedom. Or at least that was the way it seemed on the surface.

‘Very well then,’ the guerrilla leader pronounced. ‘Your companions may go free.’ He shouted a command to one of his men, who came forward, machine gun at the ready, and indicated that they were to follow him.

Tamara went last, unable to resist one backward glance at Zach. He was standing with his back to them. What was he thinking? she wondered. Was he afraid? Surely he must be.

‘Wait!’

The curt command halted her, as the guerrilla leader stepped forward and grasped her arm. She had been walking alone at the rear of the small column and she shivered under the cold assessment of eyes that seemed to strip her clothes from her body.

‘You will stay.’ Turning to Zach, he added grimly, ‘Alone you might just be foolish enough to try to escape—you have the look of that sort of man about you, my friend, but now that we have your woman you will stay. And if you try to leave we will kill her.’

From a distance Tamara heard Dot’s brief protest, before George silenced her, unaware of the look of helpless appeal in her eyes as they clung to Zach’s rigid back.

It seemed an aeon before he turned, pivoting round slowly, no expression at all in his eyes.

‘Do not argue with me,’ the guerrilla leader told him, ‘otherwise they shall all stay.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Tamara wanted to protest. ‘I’m not his woman,’ but the words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t bear to look at the others as they stumbled out of the clearing, her last hope that the guerrillas might relent and allow her to leave fading as she heard their footsteps die away.

‘Come,’ the guerrilla leader ordered. ‘It is time we left. You were right,’ he told Zach, ‘the others would have held us up. If you try to delay us by falling deliberately behind I shall give your woman to my men. It is many weeks since they have had a woman. Our camp is remote, and our life there too spartan to attract women like yours.’

Tamara, who had gone ice-cold when she heard his threat, refused to look at Zach, too mortified by the guerrilla’s assumption to meet his eyes. Why didn’t he tell the other man the truth? That they were little more than strangers.

She knew the answer several seconds later, when, under the pretext of helping her up a steep incline, Zach muttered softly to her, ‘I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t the time for petty conventions. If I told them the truth I’d be condemning you to gang-rape. As long as they think you’re my woman they won’t touch you. Even among mercenaries there’s a certain code of ethics, and besides, they probably think that if any of them tried to touch you I’d react in the same way that they would in similar circumstances—kill with my bare hands,’ he elucidated grimly, ‘and none of them would want to be the one I took with me before they cut me in half with those neat little Russian toys they’re carrying!’