The Fifth Vial

by Michael Palmer

  Huddled in a fetal position on the packed road, Ben was unable even to speak. He had eaten little for some time, but what there was in his stomach made a sudden, uncontrollable reappearance through his mouth and nose.

  “Up,” Vincent said, kicking him once more, this time in the back of the knee. “I’m going to show you to the hospitality room. When you and I are finished, you’re going to envy that passenger of ours.”

  Thirty-Three

  But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?

  —PLATO, The Republic, Book I

  “All right, let’s do it again. Who are you?”

  “Callahan. Benjamin Michael Callahan.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Detective. I…I’m a private detective. For God’s sake, please—”

  “From where?”

  “I-Idaho. Pocatello, Idaho…. No, please don’t do that again. Don’t—”

  Vincent touched the electric prod to the side of Ben’s chest. The shock, more intense than any pain Ben had ever experienced, exploded down his arm and around his back, sending every muscle in its path into agonizing spasm.

  Ben screamed and then screamed again.

  He was absolutely helpless.

  There was no place to go, no one to intervene, and no way he could get Vincent to let up.

  Helpless.

  The interrogation had gone on for hours, with the electric prod being the main source of pain, along with a device that screwed down on his fingernails. After being beaten, he had been dragged to a room in the basement of the hospital, stripped naked, and lashed to a high-backed wooden chair. A dozen shocks later, plus some work on his hands, he had wet and soiled himself, and from what he could tell, had passed out as well—probably more than once.

  Twice, a Brazilian aborigine, short but extremely powerful, had dragged him to a shower stall and allowed him to wash off in cold water. Then he was shoved back onto the chair, and the torture and interrogation began again, with Vincent, reminding him over and over about their encounter in Cincinnati, relishing every scream.

  “How did you learn about the RV?”

  “S-someone in Soda Springs wrote down the license plate.”

  “Don’t bullshit me!”

  “Please stop! I’m telling you the truth. I swear I am.”

  Again the prod, this time on the inside of his thigh. Again the hideous nerve pain and muscle contractions. Again the screaming.

  Ben knew that he was going to be tortured from the moment Vincent had slashed him across the face. He also knew that although it would likely be the last thing he did, he had to keep Alice Gustafson’s name from them. Once she read the letter he had sent her and freed Seth Stepanski, there would be plenty she could do to make a dent in the Whitestone Laboratory’s illegal organs operation—but only if she was alive. If Vincent and his people got to her, his own death would be meaningless. His focus, as they dragged him to the room, likely the last place he would ever see, was to concoct a story that was close enough to fact and held together well enough in the telling and retelling to be accepted as the truth.

  “How did you find us in Cincinnati?”

  “I’m a detective, for crying out loud. That’s what they hired me to do. With the license plate number it really wasn’t that hard.”

  “Who else knows about all this?”

  “No one. No one. Just me. No one knows anything about this except me…. No! No more!”

  Whether it was from being chilled to the bone or from the breakdown of his nervous system, he couldn’t stop shaking.

  There were some forms of pain Ben could handle—headaches, ankle sprains, viruses, strep throats, even the pounding Vincent had administered. But from the deepest memories of his childhood, he had hated and feared being drilled by the dentist. Even with Novocain or whatever they used for numbing, the anticipation of just the slightest touch on a dental nerve was almost more than he could stand. The prod in Vincent’s hands was like a hundred drills into pulp, only there was no numbing medicine. None at all.

  Again the killer shocked him, this time on the base of his neck. Every muscle in his body seemed to contract. His jaw viciously snapped shut, causing him to bite through the side of his tongue and snap off part of a tooth.

  “Again, who hired you?”

  “The…the Durkins. From Soda Springs. Their son was killed by a truck in Florida…. The coroner there thought someone had stolen his bone marrow. It’s the truth. I swear it is.”

  “I’ll decide what is and isn’t the truth, and if I decide you’re messing with me, I swear I’ll open you up from ass to eyeball with this thing. Now tell me again, how did you end up in Texas?”

  Ben had no trouble making it seem as if he couldn’t stand any more of the cattle prod. His situation was hopeless, and all he wanted now was to get out of his life with as little further pain as possible, and to take with him the ort of nobility that would go with not exposing Organ Guard and its devoted founder. He retold the story of the Whitestone Laboratory in Soda Springs, and his almost inadvertent glimpse of the address on the case of blood vials to be shipped to Fadiman.

  The shocks became less frequent, though no less terrible. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Vincent motioned his helper to throw Ben into the shower stall again. His chest and abdomen were covered with bile and drool. Unable to stand on rubbery legs, he sat on the grimy tile and supported himself against the wall as the chilly water beat down on him. He extended the shower as long as he could stand it, then unsteadily crawled back to his chair.

  Vincent was gone. Beside the chair were a large, clean white towel and a pile of neatly folded clothes—a pair of chinos, a gray tee, thin white socks, and a pair of black, spit-polished high-cut boots. The aborigine motioned for him to get dressed.

  Ben had wondered how, when his torture was no longer entertaining, he would be terminated. He had expected, even hoped, for a bullet to the brain. Now, he didn’t know what to think. Dressing was an excruciating, slow process. His legs were almost too battered and the muscles too spent to bend, there were electric burns over most of his body, and his swollen, bluish fingers were too stiff to handle the laces. After watching him struggle for fifteen minutes or more, his guard tied him back in his chair and then laced the boots. Next he went to a small refrigerator in one corner of the torture chamber and brought over a bottle of water and a thick chocolate bar, and freed one of Ben’s hands. Ben tried to connect with the man.

  “Do you understand me?” he asked.

  The guard stared at him blankly.

  “I asked if you understood me.”

  There was no way Ben’s bruised jaws could even make a dent in the cold chocolate. Just as well, he thought. His stomach, raw from retching, was in no shape to accept any food. Glumly, he sipped the water through cracked, bloodied lips. His body was throbbing, his vision blurring, then clearing, then blurring again. From time to time during the days when he was younger and more philosophical, he would ponder the unanswerable, wondering how old and where he would be when he died. It felt strange and more frightening than he could have imagined to have that moment actually arrive.

  But why had he been dressed up?

  Ten minutes passed. Then another ten. Ben, too dry even to sweat, felt himself slipping in and out of consciousness, and would have fallen over had he not been strapped to the back of the chair.

  The opening and sharp closing of the door startled him awake. Even having endured pain that was beyond pain, even somewhat prepared for facing certain death, what he saw drew an instant band of fear around his chest. The man he knew only as Vincent, his torturer, was about to become his executioner.

  The apparition that was the man stood before him, feet apart, head erect, looking taller and stronger than a park statue. His face was expertly streaked with camouflage paint, which matched his shirt and pants almost perfectly. His long blond hair was tucked beneath a commando watch cap. But that outfit was not the source of Ben’s fear. Across the
killer’s back was slung a quiver containing a dozen or so long arrows, and in his left hand, held just off the floor, was a complex-looking bow.

  “Let me introduce you,” Vincent said. “This is a Buck Fever Compound Bow with a seventy-pound draw and a PSE shoot-through arrow rest. These here are thirty-one-inch Epic carbon arrows. Straight and true all the way. We ain’t got much time for tracking and hunting on these trips. And decent game is in pretty short supply here anyhow. So what’s a hunter to do?”

  “I…don’t think I can even stand up,” Ben said.

  “In that case, this is going to be one goddamn short hunt. Now listen and listen closely. Rio is maybe eighty miles south and east of here. Belo Horizonte is almost due north, a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty miles, but in that direction there’s some powerful steep hills—mountains, some might call ’em. In between, there’s any number of little towns and villages where you might find a friend. Personally, I don’t think you’re gonna make it, but you never know. First, you gotta get away from me, and I don’t think folks would accuse me of bragging if I said I was a pretty good shot with this thing.”

  His free hand flashed out, grabbed Ben by the hair, and pulled his head back as far as it would go.

  “I need some fresh blood of yours to keep the scent,” he said. “I promise you, Callahan, if you don’t make this a challenge for me, if you don’t put up enough of a fight, I’m going to wound you someplace that won’t kill you, and have you dragged back in here for a serious go-round with the prod that will make this last session seem like a carnival.”

  He released his grip, but before Ben’s head could flop forward, Vincent hammered him across the face, reopening the gash his gun barrel had made.

  Ben ignored the blow, and the pain, and the blood streaming down, soaking into his shirt. To his way of thinking, he wasn’t being given a chance to live, but rather a chance to die outdoors and with a modicum of dignity. He had won the battle against this man and against Whitestone. Alice Gustafson and Organ Guard were safe. Now, it didn’t matter that he was about to lose the war. He had long ago lost his faith in the Church—in any church, in fact—but now he sensed that if his childhood priests and catechism teachers were right, and there was a heaven, he at least had a shot at getting there. He only hoped he could put forth a decent effort and that the end wouldn’t hurt too much.

  Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  “Untie me,” he heard his surprisingly forceful voice say.

  Vincent nodded to his assistant, and it was done. Ben clenched his teeth as best he could, and pushed himself upright. A wave of dizziness and nausea threatened to topple him, but he forced himself to remain erect, and even managed to take another pull from the water bottle.

  Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

  With the Hail Mary reverberating in his mind, Ben took one painful, awkward step toward the door. Then another. He wondered what it would feel like to have a high-powered arrow pierce his body. These weren’t summer camp archery arrowheads Vincent would be firing at him. They were the hunters—the ones with three or four metal sides coming to a lethal point at the tip.

  Another step—this one somewhat easier. He took a deep, steadying breath, and passed through the door into the mid-afternoon sun. Vincent strode out after him.

  “Straight ahead,” he ordered. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  Ben forced himself upright. He had won. Now it was time simply to play out the string. Just two months ago, if someone had told him he would be dying for a cause he believed in, he would have leaned back in his scarred desk chair in his tawdry little office, and laughed until he cried. Where was Madame Sonja when he needed her? The whole business of being tortured would have been so much easier if he had only known in advance he was going to make it—if he had only known in advance that he was going to safeguard Alice’s name and mission to the death. He wanted so much to see Vincent’s face when he told him that the game was over, and that Whitestone had lost. But of course, that would have to remain his secret.

  He forced his chin up and trudged forward, one painful, unstable step at a time. Then he paused, took one last swig from the water bottle, and tossed it into the brush. They were on the gravel road, out of view of the hospital.

  It was time.

  “Let me get this straight,” Ben asked, his voice raspy and not as strong as it had been, “if I kill you, I can just go free?”

  “That’s it,” Vincent said, perhaps a little irritated. “Get away and you’re free. Kill me and you’re free. Get shot, you lose.”

  “Has anyone in this little game of yours ever gotten away?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Then I’ll just have to be the first.”

  “You have a minute, asshole. Sixty seconds and thwack! My eyes will be closed, but my ears won’t. Go any way you want. I owe you big time for Cincinnati, so I’m only going to wound you with the first shot—and maybe the second one, too, now that I think about it.”

  “Say when,” Ben said.

  “When.”

  When!

  Just like that, Ben’s life was on the clock. Several precious seconds had passed before he moved. The brush to his right seemed slightly thinner than to the left, so he plunged in that way, not trying for stealth, but rather to stay on his feet and put at least a little distance between him and the man who was about to kill him.

  “Forty-five seconds!”

  The voice seemed inches away. Ben slapped aside branches, and pulled himself ahead using the trunks of trees. The initial pitch was mainly downhill, but the terrain was rocky and uneven. If there was any path or track that could at least partially mask his progress, he didn’t see it. Several large boulders announced the beginning of an uphill push. He should have gone the other way, he thought. In his condition, uphill was an enemy. Oh, hell, what difference did it make? This wasn’t a matter of life and death, it was a matter only of death—only of when. He was in his last seconds on earth. His life, which had once held so much promise, was about to end painfully, and suddenly thoughts of what he had missed, of what had never happened, were shooting through his mind.

  “Thirty seconds!”

  Vincent’s voice seemed marginally farther away.

  The hill, much steeper now, would have been no problem for him if he hadn’t been so battered. As it was, the dizziness and nausea were intensifying. Maybe he should hide—find a place of dense growth and try to burrow in and wait his killer out until dark. Ridiculous! For one thing, he hadn’t put that much ground between them, for another, branches were breaking with every step, and finally, he realized, where he was, the undergrowth had fallen away. If he continued standing, Vincent would have a straight shot from many yards away.

  At that moment, Ben stumbled and pitched forward, slamming heavily into a massive granite rock face that was four or five feet taller than he was. The rising ground around the monolith made Ben think he could at least make it up to the top. Then what? The best he could think of was throwing himself down onto the killer and trying for one of the arrows. The best of no options.

  “Fifteen seconds!”

  Ben wondered how far he had gone. A hundred yards? Probably much less.

  On his hands and knees, he forced himself uphill and around the huge boulder. He was light-headed and gasping for air, but inch by inch, he moved ahead.

  “All right, asshole!” Vincent called out. “Time to die.”

  Ben flattened himself near the top of the rock. He was probably at such an angle from the ground that he couldn’t be seen, but he still felt exposed. He held his breath and listened. There was only the machine thrum of thousands of insects. He glanced about. There were some tall trees—maybe mahogany or eucalyptus—and thick undergrowth, extending six or seven feet off the ground, but his chance to run was gone. His only hope was to stay out of sight and pray th
at Vincent passed directly beneath him, or that somehow, he had started off in the opposite direction.

  Again, Ben held his breath. This time, he heard something—a rustling of the brush not far to his left. Vincent was close—very close. Ben turned his head, but did not lift it. Instead, he pressed his cheek against the granite and peered in the direction of the noise. The underbrush was definitely moving, and the moving force was headed in his direction. If Vincent circled the rock to the uphill side, that was it. Hunt over. Ben knew he should have kept running. His only chance now, and not much of one at that, was to wait until it seemed the killer was right beneath him, then hurl himself down.

  The noise of cracking twigs and shifting brush was even closer now. Just to the left of where Ben lay. Staying flat, he shifted his weight as best he could. At the movement from above, Vincent would be swinging his bow upward, trying to get off a quick shot. Ben would avoid the arrowhead, fall on him, and quickly go for the quiver.

  Quiet…listen…look…Don’t breathe…. Don’t breathe…. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…and…NOW!

  Ben pushed to his knees, prepared to leap, but Vincent wasn’t beneath him. Instead, an emaciated feral dog, tan with white legs and a long, narrow snout, was sniffing its way through the bushes. Ben felt a surge of hope. Maybe Vincent had gone the other way after all. Maybe there was still time to run. At that moment, he was shot from behind. The arrow slammed through the muscle at the base of his neck, glancing off his collarbone before exiting with the arrowhead and four inches of shaft exposed just below his jaw.

  Stunned by the impact and the shocking pain, Ben pitched to his right, fell heavily onto the surface of the huge rock, and then toppled off. He landed on his side, air exploding from his lungs. Through the corner of his eye he could see the point of the arrow, and the part of the shaft that was protruding from his body.