The Rainbow Man: Beginnings

PROLOGUE.

He was watching TV with Lucy when the news came on and told him that life as he knew it was about to end.

Somewhere in Yemen.
The words were spoken slowly, carefully, measured. It was an educated voice. It had probably lived in London somewhere, he thought. Ax knew the man had traveled. He knew that the man was unimaginably rich. “They” knew he had been born in Saudi Arabia, but nobody knew where he really called home these days. They had been searching for him for years, so they said.

“We are going to hurt you now. We are not going to ask any questions. The questions will come later.” The voice was soft, almost gentle. “We are going to hurt you because we can. Eventually we are going to kill you, but first we are going to torture you. You are going to be our little Jesus and you are going to beg for crucifixion. For we shall rain upon you the suffering of all our children, that you may be cleansed in the fire of repentance. “

“Your own people gave you up, you know? How do you think we found her, and then you, so quickly? Don’t you know that they have plans? And you, a mere soldier are just another tiny cog in a vast wheel you cannot even see far less comprehend. Their plans are much, much bigger than you. They are grand plans. They, however, are arrogant. As you are. Their plans are nothing compared to ours. No matter. Soon it will soon be time to begin your journey to salvation.

Allahu Akbar.”



Beginnings.

Ax turned right and walked towards the town center. He would go somewhere for a beer. Maybe two. He liked walking but he was pissed off with Charlie. He was pissed off with his life. He had nobody to talk to. Maybe he should call Nav. The Navaho. He knew how to listen. Jade was dead. Dead. Who could he tell? No one. He had no one. Nav would know. There was nobody else. So, he decided to walk. Glasgow at night. Dangerous. Even for him. Even for Nav. But he felt invincible this evening. Then, he heard a van pull up behind him and as he turned he heard another van pull over in front of him. Trouble. This he knew. He made his muscles hard, prepared. One guy got out. He was wearing a balaclava, was dressed in black jeans and a black bomber-jacket. He was also pointing a gun at Ax. Ax stopped then turned and looked behind him. It was the same thing. Balaclava, jeans, bomber-jacket and gun.
Ax watched the first guy walk towards him and knew, he fucking knew he was in trouble. It was in the way the guy moved. Easy. Confident. Like a cat. He gently waved the gun, pointing to the van. “In the van,” was all he said. Ax swore to himself, turned and walked towards the van. At the very last moment he turned and lashed out at the first guy with the gun. If he was going go down he would go down fighting. But the man was either expecting his move or was extremely fast. Ax found himself on his knees at the van door, holding his stomach and gasping for breath. At that moment he could smell the rain mixed with petrol on the pavement. “They said you might put up a fight,” the man said. Then he sighed and smashed his gun down. Ax barely felt the gun smash into the back of his head before the world went dark and his face hit the pavement. He did not feel the boot in the back of his head.

When he came to he was tied to a chair in an empty room. He looked around. It looked like a garage except there were no oily rags and it did not smell of petrol. Ax laughed at himself. A man was sitting in a chair in front of him, the two goons from before were standing on either side.
“Do you know why you are here?” asked the seated man. It was a deep voice, the words spoken without haste. Ax tried to place the accent but failed. “You could have gotten away, that time,” he said, “Of course, we would have taken you the next time.”
“We wanted you to see how easy it is. We wanted you to see how easy it was for us. Now you can see. It was easy. We could have killed you.”
Ax just looked. True enough. But, that was information. If they had wanted him dead he would be dead. He frowned and cocked his head to one side. “Let me go and I’ll show you fucking easy, “ he said.
The man just looked and said nothing.
“What do you want?” asked Ax.
“Ah, what we want,” said the man in the chair. He got up then and walked towards Ax. He stopped four feet away. “Do you wish to live?” he asked. Ax did not answer. It was a fucking stupid question. “You should be dead, you see,” said the man. “And if you don’t die soon you will be in prison, doing life, for killing Charlie’s four goons.”
So, this was Charlie’s doing, thought Ax. Fuck. He should have killed the fucker when he had the chance.
“We can spare you all that.” The man took a pair of black, leather looking gloves out of his pocket and put them on. Ax watched him push the leather tight between his fingers on both hands.
The man stopped then, took a step forward. Stopped, now three feet away from Ax and looked him directly in the eyes. “We are going to give you a choice, you see.” English, thought Ax, definitely English. “The choice is this. Either you join us, or you go to jail for life. Of course, we may have our fun with your first. He made fists with his black-leather-gloves.
Ax screwed up his face again. “Who the fuck are you,” he asked. His voice held no fear. Rather, it was a menacing voice, deep and quiet.
“Ah,” said the man. “Again, you are a fighter, we were told this. It is good. And you appear to be quite rational, too. This is also good. Who we are? Well, we are not the police, I’m sure you have worked that one out.” The man smiled then. It was not a happy smile. It was the coldest smile Ax had seen. Completely without humor, he thought.
“We work for a, let us say security, company. People hire us to, do things. You will join the British Army. Go through basic training. Do some S.A.S training. When you are finished that we will take you and really train you. You will become good at things you do not even know exist. We have heard about you. You have never, and will never hear about us. We think you have skills we can use. You will be very well rewarded. Both financially and in terms of your own freedom. You get to live, for one thing. Still, the one thing you can never, ever do, is refuse to take the work we will offer you. You will, in every sense, belong to us. We have many tools. Tools for different jobs. You will become one of our tools, for one of our many jobs.”
Again the man stopped talking and looked at Ax. Ax did not know what to think. “You are out of your fucking mind” he said. It was half a question, half a statement.
“We never joke,” said the man. The punch, that long awaited punch arrived. It was hard. Jesus, sweet jaysus it was hard. Side of the face, leather on skin. It hurt. Then, the voice again, “We are going to take you to a place. You will stay there one week. We will give you some training. You will see that we are serious. You will get an idea of who were are and what we do. It will hurt. If after that week you pass our tests we will keep you and your journey will continue. Well, your journey will begin. If you do not come up to scratch? Well, that is easy. We dump you back on the streets of Glasgow and pass a dossier to the police telling them everything they need to know about you. Your life will be over. And you can say goodbye to that little Chinese bitch once and for all. The one you saved? We will kill her first.“

The next thing Ax felt was a black bag being put over his head. They pulled a chord tight around his neck. He heard the chair being unbolted from the floor, then felt himself, still in the chair, being carried. The chair was thrown into what he guessed was another van, the door shut, engine started. The vehicle started to move. He had no idea where they were going.
Of course, his mind went into overdrive. He was cuffed and blindfolded in the back of a cop-van. It must be a cop-van, he thought, otherwise he would be dead. Of course, maybe they were just taking him to a kill-house.
Later, much later, he felt the van slow down then stop. They opened the door and pulled him out. Took the chair off. Ax nearly fell to the floor. Two of them took him, half carried, half dragged him. He could feel them, one on each side. Into a police station. It was 30 miles from where they had picked him up but Ax did not know that. Nor did it matter. Ax tried to twist the handcuffs but they would not move. He had red welts on his wrists already but he could not see that. They marched him to a cell, took off his blindfold. “M4” said the duty sergeant. He looked like a large, hairy monkey, thought Ax, a large hairy monkey with crossed, hairy arms.
“Na, he’s OK,” said one of the cops, “M1 him.”
“I said, M4,” said the monkey.
So, they marched Ax to a cell. Took his clothes. Ax could see. So he did not resist. He watched everything, everyone. They left him for 30 minutes alone and naked in the cell before someone opened the little hatch and threw his clothes back in. A voice told him to get dressed. The hatch slammed shut, the noise of it echoing back. Ax got dressed.
He knew they were watching him from the camera on the ceiling. He turned and looked at it, then said, very quietly: “Get someone in here, now.” So softly spoken, so quietly, but with so much menace.
When he said that, they came.
They took him for an “interview” with a, what he guessed passed for a female. Her name was Valerie, she said with a false, fat smile. She was short and fat. Blond dyed hair gelled up into spikes. Thick, black glasses. Bright red lipstick over thin lips. Ax just looked at her, like she was some weird specimen, an unknown reptile. She started to ask questions. Monkey M4 man was there. Ax thought to himself. Go fuck yourselves. Valerie started. “Now, Ax, I am here to help you, I’m going to ask you a few questions,” she said. Ax looked at her, hard and then asked her if she knew Zimbardo? No. Karl Jung? Who? She had no idea. Then who the fuck are you he asked, with your monkey in the corner. Ax looked at the large man standing with his arms folded and a half smile on his face. Ax smiled back. “You know?” he said, “I bet if there were no camera’s here you would take a chance. It is good there are cameras. Because I would beat your stupid little monkey face into the ground, sunshine.”
Monkey man smiled. He could wait. Written all over his face. Ax smiled back. He could wait longer.
“Valerie? Are you trained?”
“In what,” she asked.
Ax leaned closer before saying, “In, fucking, anything?” He spaced the words, giving her stupid little head time to take in each word. He spoke very quietly, as before. It sounded just as menacing. Valerie looked down at her notebook, wrote, or pretended to write something. If she could even write, thought Ax. “Jesus, seriously, that really looks like you can write,” he said smiling and leaning back in his chair.
She did not smile back. “OK, Axel, we are going to take you back to your cell for five minutes, then you will be released.” She scraped her chair back and slammed the door on her way out.
“Idiot,” thought Ax. A couple of baby monkeys came and led him handcuffed to his cell.
One hour later someone opened the hatch and threw in a blanket. The hatch was closed before the blanket landed on the floor.
Ax smiled his smile. Nobody knew him.