The Weaver

The Weaver

Chapter One — ‘Kazim’

My hands are tied behind me to a rusty lift hook inside an abandoned shoe factory — one that once manufactured military boots for the Red Army during World War II. On my knees, a sackcloth wrapped around my face, I can feel blood dripping onto the floor. Part of my eyes are not fully covered. Someone had the grace to let me see exactly what I am facing and where I am. The uncontaminated, pure, distilled horror of it all.

My ears are deafened by the barking of a 180-pound Caucasian Shepherd trained to rip my head off if I move so much as an inch. The dog was raised by an Azeri crime boss solely for the purpose of feeding his enemies’ remains to his top combat dog — ‘Kazim’. The animal had developed a profound taste for the flesh of his master’s enemies and would chew through them like marshmallows. The distance between my face and that full-teethed, dire-wolf-like beast is measured in centimetres.

I am praying to gods from the time of the Incas, to whoever they sacrificed at Machu Picchu, to the Greek gods, pleading so loudly in my head that I half expect one of them to come down and save me — or at least send some damn miracle. But the tease of despair keeps slapping my consciousness, reminding me that the miracle I’m begging for is simply not going to happen. Because I—fucked—this—up. Real nice. This time.

I think about adjusting my body weight. My knees have been on this floor for almost ten hours. If that chain holding Kazim back breaks, I had better be prepared for the most excruciating pain I can possibly imagine. Perhaps then I will peacefully embrace the sweetness of death and watch the monster take me apart, limb by limb.

I have lost all communication with my unit. They have no trace of me. The last I saw, a few men took my tactical equipment and my SAT phone. I have nothing left but the cloth around my face. The only things I feel, the only things I have, are a cocktail of pain, fear, sadness, and hopelessness — the breath of the chained demon laughing in front of me, the cold of minus fifteen degrees, and the knowledge that I am stranded somewhere on the borders of Kazakhstan.

When you conspire with the KGB and sign up as a double agent — working undercover for three years on a drug operation to bring down a Serbian drug mogul — you had better sign your pact with the devil well in advance.