The Evidence

You know when you walk through an airport and no one is there to greet you but your eyes swivel about constantly looking because you just might run into someone you know…

I grab my navy and grey backpack off the conveyor belt and heft it over my shoulder. Making a beeline for the exit and towards the taxi stand, at first, I don’t hear my name being called.

“Maximus Clearwater, Maximus Clearwater, please make yourself known to the nearest security officer.”

The voice becomes more insistent. I walk towards the parting automatic glass doors but two burly officers block my path.

“Maximus Clearwater?” one of the officers asks. I looked up, neither confirming or denying his apparent accusation.

“Mmm, depends who’s asking, I guess.”

Suddenly my legs are swept from beneath me. My head is slammed into the floor. I am pinned with arms behind my back. Blood seeps from a split lip, tasting like rusty iron. My backpack is tipped upside down, the contents strewn and kicked about by steel-capped boots. A beagle, looking enormous from my ground-level vantage point, sniffs about me and my belongings. Suddenly the canine detective sits on his haunches and lifts a paw. He rests it on my bag.

“Good boy. Such a good boy!” praises the canine officer, giving the fluffy snitch his toy and ruffling his fur.

Other passengers stand gawping, some filming, as an officer begins slashing at the interior lining of my bag. The USB flash drives that I had concealed across three continents spill onto the linoleum floor. 

“Damn you, dog,” I mutter. I look helplessly around the baggage collection area, my eyes misting as I see how close I had been to the exit, to safety and to Ruth.

The officers haul me to my feet and march me along so my feet barely touch the ground. Two stay behind to pick up my belongings and stow them into clear zip-lock evidence bags.

Where is Ruth? Why is this happening?

I am thrown into a metal chair. The legs are kicked from behind until I am tucked under the steel table in front of me. My hands are cuffed and connected to the table by welded chain. My eye is beginning to swell. A bag is slid over my head. I realise I hadn’t seen the actual faces of any of my arresting officers.

There is talking all about me but no one is speaking English. I had picked up a little Russian in my travels and a bit more German but none of that is helping me here. I am so disorientated. Surely Ruth would come any moment and clear all this up.

Bring in the big gun lawyers, Ruth and have me released. Place me in Ambassador Rickard’s personal quarters within the British embassy.

A straw is poked underneath the bag on my head and I am ordered to suck. Ice cold water flows over my tongue and down my throat. I pant, not realising how thirsty I was, and now, how hungry.

Hours later, it seemed, a new voice breaks through the foreign chatter. An English accent.

Ruth

“Ruth,” I yell. “Ruth, I’m here. Please, help me,” I begin to sob. “Help me, please,” I try to eliminate the pathetic whine in my voice but this makes my voice break like a pre-pubescent thirteen year old boy.

The English voice stops. Sharp footsteps echo along the linoleum floor.

“Have you fed him?” she asks.

 “No ma’am, just a little water.”

“Good. Keep him hungry. Soon we will transfer him to the cargo plane.”

She was supposed to help me share the truth. I am holding the evidence. I am the damn evidence.

My backside is numb from the cold metal chair. My brain is numb with the betrayal that I should have seen coming. Someone begins fiddling with my handcuffs. I go from being locked to the table to having my hands bound by my side. Some kind of belt is wrapped around my middle and tightened. Then the chair tilts back and I am scooped up on some kind of trolly.

“Take him to hanger two. They will be waiting,” Ruth says quietly.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

I am being wheeled through corridors. No light penetrates the sack over my head. Squeaking shoes and the huffing of some overweight officer pushing me along is all I can hear. Sweat begins to seep into my eyes and I feel as though I might throw up. The trolly begins ascending, the officer swearing and huffing. We must be on the plane. The officer stomps on what I assume are the trolley brakes. I am left here, to sweat and strain my ears for any noise that might tell me what is going on. I try to wriggle free, try to rock the trolley but I seem to be fastened to the wall of the plane. The engines begin to whine. Giant rubber wheels reverse the plane out of the hanger. The plan turns this way and that, taxiing towards the runway. As, the whine of the engine rapidly increases and the thundering wheels shake with the gathering speed, the vomit erupts from my throat and explodes inside the sack on my head. It drips over my face and shoulders.

The plane levels out, but the stench of the spew means my stomach doesn’t. I continue to heave until there is nothing left.

“You stink, Clearwater,” Ruth’s voice emanates from somewhere further up the plane.

“Yeah, no shit.”

Ruth chuckles. It was the same giggle I had loved when we were sailing around the Greek Islands together. And now Ruth has betrayed me. She won’t even take the sack off my head so I can look her in the eye.

“We were meant to take the bastards down together,” I say.

“Yes, but those bastards found out about our plan. Unfortunately for you, they pay a whole lot better.”

‘But don’t you care? Don’t you give a shit about what they are doing to them all?”

“Who are they to me, when I have an apartment in New York now and a personal chauffer? What do I care?” she purrs.

“I was never about the money for you before.”

“That’s before I had the money though,” Ruth shrugs.

There is a loud whirring sound and wind rushes into the cabin. The sack on my head is whipped away and I see the opening mouth of the airplane ramp. There is nothing but black sky dotted with a billion stars and a frigid wind that stings and freezes the vomit on my face. Ruth is fiddling with the locking clamp behind me. The one that attaches me to the wall.

“You can’t. You won’t,” I scream.

“But I can and I will,” Ruth says.

She unclips the trolly brakes. She pushes me towards the now fully extended cargo ramp.

I loll my head about looking for anything that could stop her. I beg, then scream for my life.

What can I say to make her change her mind?



A gunshot rings out, piercing my eardrum with the enormous bang. With a thunk, Ruth’s head hits the floor. Her body is slumped at unnatural angles.

I can’t see my rescuer. I can’t see who is tilting the trolly back.

“Thank you. Oh God, thank you,” I call out, trying to twist and see who is pushing the trolly. Unable to, I face forward. My face contorts and twists with confusion. I am again, being wheeled towards the opening of the cargo ramp. The whipping wind thrashes about, stinging my eyes and making me shiver. Then, I am airborne. Plummeting fast, the trees reach up and the earth rushes towards me.