by Lee Child
‘It’s a painkiller,’ the guy said. ‘An analgesic. For your leg.’
‘My leg is fine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Just back off.’
So he did. He went out through a stout wooden door painted the same white as the walls. The door looked old. It was vaguely Gothic in shape. I had seen similar doors in old public buildings, City schools, and police stations.
I dropped my head back to the cot. I had no pillow. I stared up through the bars at the ceiling and prepared to settle in. But less than a minute later two of the men I knew came in through the wooden door. Two of the federal agents. The two sidekicks, the leader. One of them had a Franchi 12 with him. It looked loaded and cocked and ready. The other guy had some kind of tool in his hand and a bunch of thin chains looped over his arm. The guy with the shotgun stepped up close to my bars and poked the barrel through and jammed the muzzle into my throat and kept it there. The guy with the chains unlocked my gate. Not with a key, but by spinning a dial left and right. A combination lock. He opened the gate and came inside and stopped beside my cot. The tool in his hand was like a pair of pliers, but with blades instead of milled grips. Some kind of a cutter. He saw me looking at it and smiled. He leaned forward, above my waist. The shotgun muzzle pressed harder into my throat. A wise precaution. Even with my hands strapped down I could have folded forward from the waist and delivered a pretty good head butt. Not my best, maybe, but with plenty of snap from the neck I could have put the guy to sleep for longer than I had been out. Longer than the silverback, perhaps. I already had a headache. Another big impact wouldn’t have made it much worse.
But the Franchi muzzle stayed firmly in place and I was reduced to the status of a spectator. The guy with the chains untangled them and laid them in place, like a trial run. One would cuff my wrists to my waist, one would chain my ankles, and the third would connect the first two together. Standard-issue prison restraints. I would be able to shuffle along a foot at a time and lift my hands as far as my hips, but that was all. The guy got the chains all locked and fastened and tested, and then he used the tool to cut off the plastic cuffs. He backed out of the cell and left the gate open and his partner pulled the Franchi away.
I guessed I was supposed to slide off the cot and stand up. So I stayed where I was. You have to ration your opponents’ victories. You have to mete them out, slowly and meanly. You have to make your opponents subliminally grateful for every little bit of compliance. That way maybe you get away with giving up ten small losses a day, rather than ten big ones.
But the two feds had had the same training I had had. That was clear. They didn’t stand there getting all beaten and frustrated. They just walked away, and the guy who had fitted the chains called back from the door and said, ‘Coffee and muffins through here, any old time you want them.’ Which put the onus right back on me, exactly like it was designed to. Not stylish to wait an hour and then hobble through and wolf stuff down like I was desperate. That would be getting beaten in public, by my own hunger and thirst. Not stylish at all. So I waited just a token interval and then I slid off the cot and shuffled out of the cage.
The wooden door led to a room about the same size and shape as the one the cages were in. Same construction, same colour paint. No window. There was a large wooden table in the centre of the floor. Three chairs on the far side, full of the three feds. One chair on my side, empty. Waiting for me. On the table, all lined up neatly, was the stuff from my pockets. My roll of cash, flattened out and trapped under a sprinkling of coins. My old passport. My ATM card. My folding toothbrush. The Metrocard I had bought for use on the subway. Theresa Lee’s NYPD business card, which she had given to me in the white-tiled room under Grand Central Terminal. The phony business card that Lila Roth’s local crew had given to me on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 35th Street. The computer memory I had bought at Radio Shack, with its loud pink neoprene sleeve. Plus Leonid’s clamshell cell phone. Nine separate items, each one of them stark and lonely under the bright bulbs on the ceiling.
To the left of the table was another door. Same Gothic shape, same wooden construction, same new paint. I guessed it led onward to another room, the third of three in an L-shaped chain. Or the first of three, depending on your point of view. Depending on whether you were a captive or a captor. To the right of the table was a low chest of drawers that looked like it belonged in a bedroom. On it were a pile of napkins and a tube of nested foam cups and a steel vacuum flask and a paper plate with two blueberry muffins. I shuffled over in my socks and poured a cup of coffee from the flask. The operation was easier than it might have been, because the chest was low. My chained hands didn’t hamper me much. I carried the cup low and two-handed to the table. Sat down in the vacant chair. Dipped my head and sipped from the cup. The action made me look like I was yielding, like it was designed to. Or bowing, or deferring. The coffee was pretty bad too, and only lukewarm.
The fed leader cupped his hand and held it behind my stack of money, as if he was considering picking it up. Then he shook his head, as if money was too prosaic a subject for him. Too mundane. He moved his hand onward and stopped it behind my passport.
He asked, ‘Why is it expired?’
I said, ‘Because no one can make time stand still.’
‘I meant, why haven’t you renewed it?’
‘No imminent need. Like you don’t carry a condom in your wallet.’
The guy paused a beat and asked, ‘When was the last time you left the country?’
I said, ‘I would have sat down and talked to you, you know. You didn’t need to shoot me with a dart like I was something escaped from the zoo.’
‘You had been warned many times. And you had been markedly uncooperative.’
‘You could have put my eye out.’
‘But I didn’t. No harm, no foul.’
‘I still haven’t seen ID. I don’t even know your name.’
The guy said nothing.
I said, ‘No ID, no names, no Miranda, no charges, no lawyer. Brave new world, right?’
‘You got it.’
‘Well, good luck with that,’ I said. I glanced at my passport, as if I had suddenly remembered something. I raised my hands as far as they would go and leaned forward. I shuffled my coffee cup well out of my way, which left it in the space between my passport and my ATM card. I picked up my passport and squinted down at it and leafed through the pages at the back. I shrugged, like my memory had been playing tricks on me. I went to put the passport back. But I was inexact with its placement. A little hampered by the chains. The stiff edge of the little booklet caught my coffee cup and tipped it over. Coffee spilled out and splashed on the table and flowed right over the far edge and into the fed leader’s lap. He did the thing that everyone does. He jumped back, half stood, and batted at the air as if he could divert the liquid one molecule at a time.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
His pants were soaked. So now the onus was on him. Two choices: either disrupt the rhythm of the interrogation by taking a break to change, or continue with wet pants. I saw the guy debating. He wasn’t quite as inscrutable as he thought he was.
He chose to continue with wet pants. He detoured to the chest of drawers and dabbed at himself with napkins. Then he brought some back and dried the table. He made a big effort not to react, which was a reaction in itself.
He asked again, ‘When was the last time you left the country?’
I said, ‘I don’t recall.’
‘Where were you born?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘Everyone knows where they were born.’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘We’ll sit here all day, if necessary.’
‘I was born in West Berlin,’ I said.
‘And your mother is French?’
‘She was French.’
‘What is she now?’
‘Dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It wasn’t your fault
.’
‘Are you sure you’re an American citizen?
‘What kind of question is that?’
‘A straightforward one.’
‘The State Department gave me a passport.’
‘Was your application truthful?’
‘Did I sign it?’
‘I imagine you did.’
‘Then I imagine it was truthful.’
‘How? Were you naturalized? You were born overseas to a foreign parent.’
‘I was born on a military base. That counts as U.S. sovereign territory. My parents were married. My father was an American citizen. He was a Marine.’
‘Can you prove all of that?’
‘Do I have to?’
‘It’s important. Whether or not you’re a citizen could affect what happens to you next.’
‘No, how much patience I have will affect what happens to me next.’
The guy on the left stood up. He was the one who had held the Franchi’s muzzle hard against my throat. He went directly left from behind the table and walked out, through the wooden door, into the third room. I glimpsed desks, computers, cabinets, and lockers. No other people. The door closed softly behind him and the room we were in went quiet.
The main guy asked, ‘Was your mother Algerian?’
I said, ‘I just got through telling you she was French.’
‘Some French people are Algerian.’
‘No, French people are French and Algerian people are Algerian. It’s not rocket science.’
‘OK, some French people were originally immigrants from Algeria. Or from Morocco, or Tunisia, or elsewhere in North Africa.’
‘My mother wasn’t.’
‘Was she a Muslim?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m making inquiries.’
I nodded. ‘Safer to inquire about my mother than yours, probably.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Susan Mark’s mother was a teenage crack whore. Maybe yours worked with her. Maybe they turned tricks together.’
‘Are you trying to make me mad?’
‘No, I’m succeeding. You’re all red in the face and you’ve got wet pants. And you’re getting absolutely nowhere. All in all I don’t think this particular session will he written up for the training manual.’
‘This isn’t a joke.’
‘But it’s heading that way.’
The guy paused and regrouped. He used his index finger to realign the nine items in front of him. He got them straight and then he pushed the computer memory an inch towards me. He said, ‘You concealed this from us when we searched you. Susan Mark gave it to you on the train.’
I said, ‘Did I? Did she?’
The guy nodded. ‘But it’s empty, and it’s too small anyway. Where is the other one?’
‘What other one?’
‘This one is obviously a decoy. Where is the real one?’
‘Susan Mark gave me nothing. I bought that thing at Radio Shack.’
‘Why?’
‘I liked the look of it.’
‘With the pink sleeve? Bullshit.’ I said nothing.
He said, ‘You like the colour pink?’
‘In the right place.’
‘What place would that be?’
‘A place you haven’t been in a long time.’
‘Where did you conceal it?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Was it in a body cavity?’
‘You better hope not. You just touched it.’
‘Do you enjoy that kind of thing? Are you a fairy?’
‘That kind of question might work down at Guantanamo, but it won’t work with me.’
The guy shrugged and used his fingertip and pulled the stick back into line, and then he moved the phony business card and Leonid’s cell phone both forward an inch, like he was moving pawns on a chessboard. He said, ‘You’ve been working for Lila Hoth. The card proves you were in communication with the crew she hired, and your phone proves she called you at least six times. The Four Seasons’ number is in the memory.’
‘It’s not my phone.’
‘We found it in your pocket.’
‘Lila Hoth didn’t stay at the Four Seasons, according to them.’
‘Only because we told them to cooperate. We both know she was there. You met her there twice, and then she broke the third rendezvous.’
‘Who is she, exactly?’
‘That’s a question you should have asked before you agreed to work for her.’
‘I wasn’t working for her.’
‘Your phone proves that you were. It’s not rocket science.’
I didn’t answer.
‘He asked, ‘Where is Lila Hoth now?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘How would I know?’
‘I assumed you scooped her up when she checked out. Before you started shooting darts at me.’
The guy said nothing.
I said, ‘You were there earlier in the day. You searched her room. I assumed you were watching her.’ The guy said nothing.
I said, ‘You missed her, right? She walked right past you. That’s terrific. You guys are an example to us all. A foreign national with some kind of weird Pentagon involvement, and you let her go?’
‘It’s a setback,’ the guy said. He seemed a little embarrassed, but I figured he need not have been. Because leaving a hotel under surveillance is relatively easy to do. You do it by not doing it. By not leaving immediately. You send your bags down with the bellman in the service elevator, the agents cluster in the lobby, you leave the passenger elevator at a different floor and you hole up somewhere for two hours until the agents give up and leave. Then you walk out. It takes nerve, but it’s easy to do, especially if you have booked another room under another name, which Lila Hoth certainly had, for Leonid, at least.
The guy asked, ‘Where is she now?’
I asked, ‘Who is she?’
‘The most dangerous person you ever met.’
‘She didn’t look it.’
‘That’s why.’
I said, ‘I have no idea where she is.’
There was a long pause and then the guy moved the phony business card and the cell phone back into line and advanced Theresa Lee’s card in their place. He asked, ‘How much does the detective know?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘We have a fairly simple sequence of tasks in front of us. We need to find the Hoths, we need to recover the real memory stick, but above all we need to contain the leak. So we need to know how far it has spread. So we need to know who knows what.’
‘Nobody knows anything. Least of all me.’
‘This is not a contest. You don’t get points for resisting. We’re all on the same side here.’
‘Doesn’t feel that way to me.’
‘You need to take this seriously.’
‘Believe me, I am.’
‘Then tell us who knows what.’
‘I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know who knows what.’
I heard the door on my left open again. The leader looked across and nodded some kind of consent. I turned in my seal and saw the guy from the left-hand chair. He had a gun in his hand. Not the Franchi 12. The dart gun. He raised it and fired. I spun away, but far too late. The dart caught me high in the upper arm.
FORTY-FOUR
I woke up all over again, but I didn’t open my eyes immediately. I felt like the clock in my head was back on track, and I wanted to let it calibrate and settle in undisturbed. Right then it was showing six o’clock in the evening. Which meant I had been out about another eight hours.
I was very hungry and very thirsty. My arm hurt the same way my leg had. A hot little bruise, right up there at the top. I could feel that I still had no shoes. But my wrists and my ankles weren’t fastened to the rails of the cot. Which was a relief. I stretched lazily and rubbed a palm across my face. More stubble. I was heading for a regular beard.
I opened my eye
s. Looked around. Discovered two things. One: Theresa Lee was in the cage to my right. Two: Jacob Mark was in the cage to my left.
Both of them were cops.
Neither one of them had shoes on.
That was when I started to worry.
* * *
If I was right and it was six o’clock in the evening, then Theresa Lee had been hauled in from home. And Jacob Mark had been brought in from work. They were both looking at me. Lee was standing behind her bars, about five feet away. She was wearing blue jeans and a white shirt. She had bare feet. Jake was sitting on his cot. He was wearing a police officer’s uniform, minus the belt and the gun and the radio and the shoes. I sat up on my cot and swung my feet to the floor and ran my hands through my hair. Then I stood up and stepped over to the sink and drank from the faucet. New York City, for sure. I recognized the taste of the water. I looked at Theresa Lee and asked her, ‘Do you know exactly where we are?’
She said, ‘Don’t you?’
I shook my head.
She said, ‘We have to assume this place is wired for sound.’
‘I’m sure it is. But they already know where we are. So we won’t be giving them anything they don’t already have.’
‘I don’t think we should say anything.’
‘We can discuss geographic facts. I don’t think the Patriot Act prohibits street addresses, at least not yet.’
Lee said nothing.
I said, ‘What?’
She looked uneasy.
I said, ‘You think I’m playing games with you?’
She didn’t answer.
I said, ‘You think I’m here to trap you into saying something on tape?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about you.’
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘Those clubs on Bleecker are nearer Sixth Avenue than Broadway. You had the A train right there. Or the B or the C or the D. So why were you on the 6 train at all?’
‘Law of nature,’ I said. We’re hardwired in our brains. Middle of the night, full dark, all mammals head east instinctively.’
‘Really?