Lies And Consequences Collection: The Complete Series

Excerpt from Lies And Consequences Collection

“Let's get one thing out the way before I go any further, Mr Elijah man.” Henry took a sip of whisky from the glass on the table in front of him and the service stenographer noted the pause in Mayler's account by adding a single blank space as he stopped speaking. Her normal way of dealing with such things was a single blank for brief, with a double-blank meaning a pause of some length. Before she could contemplate the occasions she had used a triple blank space, Henry Mayler had continued.

“It was me who was effing shot at Al Hasakeh on your behalf. I'm here as the injured victim of an operation that went wrong. Anyway, now that's said I'll get back to the story. After what happened in the bazaar I was acutely aware of the danger I had put myself in, but if there was to be any reaction I was expecting it inside the market, not outside. In my haste to get away I tripped over something just before getting to the car. My knee hurt badly and the fall shook me up but I managed to stand quickly and open the car door. That was when the glass in the door shattered. I had no idea what had caused it as I had heard no sound. For a split second all I could do was stare at what was once a normal car door, thinking it was something I'd done that broke it. Other than the normal loud noises of a packed Arab market I'd heard nothing that would indicate someone would be after us so soon. When I eventually got my head into gear the first reaction was to partially turn my head towards the back of the car, that's when it hit me. The only way I can describe it is that it was like having a cricket ball bowled very hard into my upper thigh. It hurt like hell. A similar thing happened to me when I'd played in a varsity cricket game in the Parks one year against a really quick bowler. I know this will sound stupid and melodramatic, but time seemed to stand still for me. Everything was moving in slow motion to the point of stopping.

“The bazaar went silent to my ears. I have no idea why I looked to the rear of the Mercedes and not the front, but that's where I looked. I was lucky in some ways as the bullet had hit hard muscles and was imbedded in them. I was thankful to have done lots of walking and standing in my job as a photographer. There was very little blood coming from the wound and just a small hole in my shorts and my upper leg. It was as I was looking at my wound that he pushed me into the car. I was completely dazed and out of it all. He was the opposite. He just stood there in the open, firing off round after noisy round in the direction from where the bullet in my leg must have come. He was shouting, but I haven't a clue what he said. All I could see was his mouth opening and closing very quickly. My ears were hurting from his gunshots as much as my leg from the bullet. The firing stopped and I had a peep through the back window. I saw one of them. He was black, but not an Arabian black. Perhaps a European black going by his modern, stylish clothes. He was on the ground and not moving, but there was another man running away in a zig-zag fashion.

“That man was tall, thin and had blonde hair. Hadad, that was my driver, was also on the ground by the rear door of the car. He was lucky, having taken only a grazing shot to the shoulder, and was meekly seeking cover. I helped him to stand and opened the door for him to get in. He lay across the backseat holding his shoulder. Then the Russian drove the car as though possessed with its tyres screaming under clouds of dust.

“It was I who noticed the car that was chasing us. Razin, the Russian, had his eyes notched up five times their normal size and fixed like glue on the road ahead, for that I was thankful; the car was travelling as if there was a rocket under the bonnet. I told him we were being followed and he pulled a gun from under the thawb that he wore. There was another gun, I presumed that to be the one he'd used outside the bazaar, tucked under his left leg as he drove. I remember thinking that I hoped the safety was on. Very calmly he told me that as soon as he had a chance he would pull our car off the road and ambush the one behind. That wasn't the exact language he used, but that's what it amounted to. He spoke in Russian but I can understand the language. He gave me the gun from under his leg and a new clip from the trousers he wore under the robe. He asked if I'd fired a weapon; I lied and said I had.

“We rounded a sharp bend, passed some low, sandy hills and then the road turned abruptly right in the opposite direction we wanted to go. Razin slung the car behind one of those sandy hills off the road and shouted at me to get out. Clutching his gun to my chest I did. He ran across the dusty road and hid. From across there he had the clearer shot than me and hit the driver before the car had fully rounded the bend. It veered violently towards me before it overturned once, then righted itself and came to a halt. I shot the passenger from where I'd been hiding, but Razin got to the car before I had and I saw him take something from the driver. I have given thought since then about what it could have been, but honestly I have no idea what it was other than it was small and flat like a phone. But I can't swear it was a phone. It could equally have been a letter. In fact, I think it was a letter. After he put two more bullets in them both he set the car on fire and we drove off, not speaking again until we reached Aleppo. I had the shell in my leg removed when I was taken to the British Embassy in Damascus. The stitches are due out tomorrow and my limp isn't so noticeable anymore. Is that enough for you?”

“Right, yes, thank you, Henry. We were both enthralled,” Elijah announced as he left the room holding the door ajar for the stenographer who followed, leaving Henry Mayler alone with his thoughts and his whisky.

* * *

If one leaves a single word on a blank sheet of paper seldom will it convey much in the way of meaning. This was how the in-house service stenographer had begun the typed recording of Mayler's story. One word at a time, until they started to make sense. The meaning they conveyed became a sentence that could stand on its own much the same way as a writer of fiction would construct a sentence.

Gradually the sentences she typed became paragraphs resembling the opening chapter of a work of prose. The collection of words that made those paragraphs were never enough to form a cluster of chapters, nevertheless, in more ways than one, the fantasy had begun and the writer of fiction had a story to tell.

This book is simply a collection of single words that left alone would have survived without a meaning.