MemoirIn the "hole" - the tiny outdoor cellar where he spent most of his kidnapping - Peter Shaw was chained by his neck to a wall, kept in pitch dark except for eked-out candles, dripped on, bitten by flies, worried by slugs and rats, and starved of human contact except for the twice-daily delivery of food.
Thinking of those imprisoned in the past, such as Japanese POWs and early Christian martyrs, Shaw always came back to the same tenet: they suffered as a group, not alone.
We know from captives' accounts that loneliness is the worst privation - think of Brian Keenan's joy when John McCarthy entered his cell - and it was especially difficult for the gregarious Shaw. A Welshman who spent his career with the Midland Bank, he took early retirement at the age of 50 and began work setting up banking systems in the former Soviet bloc. This eventually led him to Georgia in 1996.
He was there during the Shevardnadze years but, despite the difficulties, loved Tbilisi for the people, the dilapidated glamour and the interest of his work: heading up a new European Commission-sponsored agro-business bank. This was a high-profile post which eventually led to his kidnapping and immediately laid him open to government-backed criticism in the media, as the bank's independence was resented. In 2002 he decided to return to Wales. Incredibly, he was kidnapped in his car in broad daylight on June 18th, two days before his flight home. The motive was basically mercenary: the ransom was $2 million (€1.54 million), while the bank's entire reserve was $5 million (€3.86 million).
Shaw's initial reaction was rage - he struggled, making the kidnappers' job more difficult but getting himself beaten up. This became a pattern: he earned numerous beatings but also his captors' respect. At the end of his ordeal, one of them said: "Peter Shaw, you strong man!" He replied: "Sasha, you c***!" (an epithet Sasha didn't understand).
For the first few weeks Shaw was moved from hideout to hideout. His environs, if depressing, were varied, and he established some rapport with his captors. Then he was brought to the "hole". His survival there was remarkable. A psychologist's introduction recommends this book as required reading for all at risk, a sort of kidnapee's manual.
How did Shaw do it? He developed a routine: waking, picking off dead bugs and slugs, re-stuffing his mattress, washing, burning his beard off with a candle because food stuck to it and attracted flies, doing what exercise the length of chain would permit, killing flies. His household chores completed, he would select a particular friend or relative to speak to. The conversation lasted two or three hours and usually contained a volume of apologies.
THE IMAGE OF this banker lying in the pitch dark apologising earnestly, volubly, and at length for misdemeanours that can only have been minor - he is clearly well-loved - is painfully funny. Many of those he conversed with were dead, and they answered back. The living never responded but the dead spoke in their particular idioms. His father's Nottinghamshire brogue said what one would expect: "Nay, lad. Y' can't be doin' wi' this!" Shaw does not think, even in the light of release, that these voices were hallucinations. Since he comes across as sober, plain-spoken and rational, his conviction has force.
Who knows how long routine and the dead would have propped him up? After four months in the hole he was released with a skull fracture, muscular wastage, candidiasis of the thighs and groin and a fungal infection of the toes, but mentally fine. He believes the Georgian government, embarrassed by international pressure, negotiated his release.
The Irish played a strong role - as EC special envoy to Georgia, Denis Corboy kept up relentless pressure. When I was growing up in Brussels, Corboy was a legendary figure, though I don't think Brussels would recognise the description Shaw gives of Corboy breaking furniture in ministerial offices! Shaw was contracted by the Irish-based DCI group of companies, whose executive chairman, Michael Boyd, led the FACC (Friends and Concerned Colleagues of Peter) pressure group. Also on the DCI board and very helpful was Garret FitzGerald. Peter Sutherland, as chairman of BP, which was due to construct a pipeline through Georgia, frequently brought up the case. Even (or should that be of course) Bono played a part. Shaw is very pro-Irish and it's easy to see why.
This is a satisfying read - we love endurance tests with happy endings, perhaps especially when the test is not self-imposed and certainly when it involves, as this one did, not just physical and mental but also spiritual strength. In a secular age of comfort, where challenges are mainly confined to the workplace, such endurance reaffirms the capacity of the human spirit.
It's also a curiously old-fashioned read. When every kidnapping on our screens now seems ideologically motivated, and ends in sickening video-recorded death, there is something straightforward about kidnappers who just want money. It is possible to negotiate with mercenaries; Shaw got lucky.
Bridget Hourican is a freelance journalist. From 1997 to 2000 she worked for the delegation of the European Commission to Hungary
Hole: Kidnapped in Georgia By Peter Shaw Accent Press, 255pp. £7.99