by Lee Child
I asked, ‘Did you see who dropped it off?’
‘A foreign gentleman.’
‘Did you recognize him?’
‘No, sir.’
The envelope was padded, about six inches by nine. It was light. It had something stiff in it. Round, and maybe five inches in diameter. I carried it back to the tea room and sat down again with Springfield. He said, ‘From the Hoths?’
I nodded.
He said, ‘It could be full of anthrax spores.’
‘Feels more like a CD,’ I said.
‘Of what?’
‘Afghan folk music, maybe.’
‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard Afghan folk music. At length and up close.’
‘You want me to wait to open it?’
‘Until when?’
‘Until you’re out of range.’
‘I’ll take the risk.’
So I tore open the envelope and shook it. A single disc spilled out and made a plastic sound against the wood of the table.
‘A CD,’ I said.
‘A DVD, actually,’ Springfield said.
It was home made. It was a blank disc manufactured by Memorex. The words Watch This had been written across the label side with a black permanent marker. Same handwriting as the envelope. Same pen. Lila Hoth’s handwriting and Lila Hoth’s pen presumably.
I said, ‘I don’t have a DVD player.’
‘So don’t watch it.’
‘I think I have to.’
‘What happened on the train?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can play DVDs on a computer. Like people watch movies on their laptops on airplanes.’
‘I don’t have a computer.’
‘Hotels have computers.’
‘I don’t want to stay here.’
‘There are other hotels in the city.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘The Sheraton. Where we were before.’
* * *
So Springfield paid our tea-room bill with a platinum credit card and we walked from the Four Seasons to the Sheraton. The second time I had made that trip. It took just as long. Crowded sidewalks, people moving slowly in the heat. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, and very warm. I was watching for cops the whole way, which didn’t aid our progress. But we got there in the end. The plasma screen in the lobby listed a whole bunch of events. The ballroom was booked by a trade association. Something to do with cable television. Which made me think of the National Geographic Channel, and the silverback gorilla.
Springfield opened the door to the business centre with his key card. He didn’t come in with me. He told me he would wait in the lobby, and then he walked away. Three of the four work stations were occupied. Two women, one man, all of them in dark suits, all of them with leather briefcases propped open and spilling paper. I took the empty chair and set about trying to figure out how to play a DVD on a computer. I found a slot on the tower unit that looked fit for the purpose. I pushed the disc in and met with some temporary resistance and then a motor whirred and the unit sucked at the disc and pulled it from my grasp.
Nothing much happened for five seconds. Just a lot of stopping and starting and whirring. Then a big window opened on the screen. It was blank. But it had a graphic in the bottom corner. Like a picture of a DVD player’s buttons. Play, pause, fast forward, rewind, skip. I moved the mouse and the pointer arrow changed to a chubby little hand as it passed over the buttons.
The phone in my pocket started to vibrate.
SIXTY-THREE
I took the phone out of my pocket and opened it up. Glanced around the room. My three temporary colleagues were all hard at work. One had a bar chart on her screen. Columns of bold bright colours, some of them high, some of them low. The man was reading e-mail. The other woman was typing fast.
I put the phone to my ear and said, ‘Hello.’
Lila Hoth asked, ‘Have you got it yet?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
‘Have you watched it yet?’
‘No.’
‘I think you should.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll find it educational.’
I glanced again at the occupants of the room and asked, ‘Is there sound on it?’
‘No, it’s a silent movie. Unfortunately. It would be better with sound.’
I didn’t answer.
She asked, ‘Where are you?’
‘In a hotel business centre.’
‘The Four Seasons?’
‘No.’
‘Are there computers in the business centre?’‘Yes.’
‘You can play a DVD on a computer, you know.’
‘So I was told.’
‘Can anyone else see the screen?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Play it,’ she said. ‘I’ll stay on the line. I’ll do a commentary. Like a special edition.’
I didn’t answer.
She said, ‘Like a director’s cut,’ and laughed a little.
I moved the mouse and put the chubby little hand over the play button. It waited there, patiently.
I clicked the mouse.
The tower unit made more whirring sounds and the blank window on the screen lit up and showed two distorted horizontal lines. They flashed twice and then the picture settled to a wide-angle view of an open outdoor space. It was night. The camera was steady. Mounted high on a tripod, I guessed. The scene was brightly lit by harsh halogen lights just out of shot. The colour was raw. The space looked foreign. Beaten earth, a dark khaki tone. Small stones and one large rock. The rock was flat, bigger than a king-size bed. It had been drilled and fitted with four iron rings. One at each corner.
There was a naked man tied to the rings. He was short and thin and wiry. He had olive skin and a black beard. He was maybe thirty years old. He was on his hack, stretched into a wide X shape. The camera was positioned maybe a yard from his feet. At the top of the picture his head was jerking from side to side. His eyes were closed. His mouth was open. Tendons in his neck stood out like ropes.
He was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him.
It was a silent movie.
Lila Hoth spoke in my ear.
She asked, ‘What are you seeing?’
I said, ‘A guy on a slab.’
‘Keep watching.’
‘Who is he?’
‘He was a taxi driver who ran an errand for an American journalist.’
The camera angle was about forty-five degrees, I guessed. It made the taxi driver’s feet look large and his head look small. He thrashed and bucked for a whole minute. He was raising his head and banging it down on the rock. Trying to knock himself out. Or trying to kill himself, maybe. No luck. A slender figure ducked into shot at the top of the frame and slipped a folded square of cloth under the guy’s head. The figure was Lila Hoth. No question about it. The video definition was not great, but there was no mistaking her. The hair, the eyes, the way she moved.
The square of cloth was probably a towel. I said, ‘I just saw you.’
‘With the pad? It’s necessary, to avoid self-inflicted injury. And it puts their heads at an angle. It tempts them to look.’
‘At what?’
‘Keep watching.’
I glanced around the room. My three temporary colleagues were all still working. They were all focused hard on their own business.
On my screen nothing happened for close to twenty seconds. The taxi driver wailed away, silently. Then Svetlana Hoth stepped into the frame from the side. She was unmistakable, too. The fire-plug body, the blunt steel-grey hair.
She had a knife in her hand.
She crawled up on the rock and squatted beside the guy. She stared up at the camera for a long second. Not vanity. She was judging its angle, trying not to block its view. She adjusted her position until she was crouching unobtrusively in the angle made by the guy’s left arm and the side of his chest.
The guy was staring at the knife.
Svet
lana leaned forward and to her right and placed the tip of the blade on a spot about halfway between the guy’s groin and his navel. She pressed down. The guy jerked uncontrollably. A fat worm of blood welled out of the cut. The blood looked black under the lights. The guy screamed on and on. I could see that his mouth was forming words. No! and Please! are clear in any language.
‘Where was this?’ I asked.
Lila Roth said, ‘Not far from Kabul.’
Svetlana moved the blade up towards the guy’s navel. Blood chased it all the way. She kept it moving. Like a surgeon or a wholesale butcher, casual and practised and expert. She had made similar cuts many times before. The blade kept on moving. It stopped above the guy’s sternum.
Svetlana put the knife down.
She used her index finger and traced the line of the cut. Blood lubricated its progress. She pressed down and put her finger right in the cut, to the first knuckle. She slid it up and down. She paused occasionally.
Lila Hoth said, ‘She’s checking that she’s all the way through the muscle wall.’
I said, ‘How do you know? You can’t see these pictures.’
‘I can hear your breathing.’
Svetlana picked up the knife again and returned to the places where her finger had paused. She used the tip of the blade quite delicately and nicked through what seemed to be minor obstructions.
Then she sat back.
The taxi driver’s belly was open, like a zipper had been pulled. The long straight cut gaped a little. The wall of muscle was ruptured. It was no longer able to hold back the pressure from inside.
Svetlana rocked forward again. She used both hands. She worked them into the cut and parted the skin quite carefully and rooted around inside. She was in there up to her wrists. She tensed and squared her shoulders.
She lifted out the guy’s intestines.
They made a shining, glistening pink mass about the size of a soft soccer ball. Coiled, sloppy, moving, wet and steaming.
She laid the mass on the guy’s chest, quite gently.
Then she slid off the rock and stepped out of the frame.
The camera’s unblinking eye stared on.
The taxi driver looked down in horror.
Lila Hoth said, ‘Now it’s just a matter of time. The cut doesn’t kill them. We don’t sever any important vessels. The bleeding stops quite fast. It’s about pain and shock and infection. The strong ones resist all three. They die of hypothermia, we think. Their core temperature is compromised, obviously. It depends on the weather. Our record is eighteen hours. People say they’ve seen two full days, but I don’t believe them.’
‘You’re crazy, you know that?’
‘That’s what Peter Molina said.’
‘He saw this?’
‘He’s on it. Keep watching. Fast forward, if you like. Without the sound it’s not so much fun anyway.’
I checked all around the room again. Three people, working hard. I put the fat hand on the fast forward button and clicked. The picture leapt into fast motion. The taxi driver’s head moved back and forth through a tiny jerky arc.
Lila Roth said, ‘Normally we don’t do this one at a time. It’s better to have a sequence. The second guy waits until the first guy dies, and so on. It builds up the dread. You should see them, just willing the previous guy to live a minute longer. But eventually they die, and the spotlight moves on. That’s when they have heart attacks. You know, if they’re going to. If they’re susceptible. But we can’t always arrange a live sequence. That’s why we use the video now, for an approximation.’
I wanted to tell her she was crazy again, but I didn’t, because she would have told me about Peter Molina again.
‘Keep watching,’ she said.
The picture spooled onward. The taxi driver’s arms and legs twitched. Strange brittle movements, at double speed. His head rolled left and right.
Lila Hoth said, ‘Peter Molina saw all of this. He was willing the guy to hold on. Which was strange, because of course the guy died months ago. But that’s the effect. Like I told you, the video is a fair equivalent.’
‘You’re sick,’ I said. ‘You’re also dead. You know that? Like you just stepped out in the road. The truck hasn’t hit you yet, but it’s going to.’
‘Are you the truck?’
‘You bet your ass.’
‘I’m glad. Keep watching.’
I clicked the fast forward button again and again, and the picture sped up to four times normal speed, then eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two. Time rushed by. An hour. Ninety minutes. Then the image went perfectly still. The taxi driver stopped moving. He lay completely inert for a long time and then Lila Hoth rushed into the frame. I hit the play button to get back to normal speed. Lila bent near the guy’s head and felt for a pulse. Then she raised her head and smiled a happy smile.
Straight at the camera.
Straight at me.
On the phone she asked, ‘Is it over yet?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
‘A disappointment. He didn’t last long. He was sick. He had parasites. Worms. We could see them writhing in his guts the whole time. It was disgusting. I guess they died too. Parasites die if their host dies.’
‘Like you’re going to die.’
‘We’re all going to die, Reacher. The only questions are when and how.’
Behind me one of the business executives got up and headed for the door. I turned in my chair and tried to keep my body between him and the screen. I don’t think I succeeded. He looked at me strangely and left the room.
Or maybe he had heard my end of the phone conversation.
‘Keep watching,’ Lila said, in my ear.
I hit fast forward again. The taxi driver lay dead near Kabul for a spell and then the picture shut down and was replaced by a flurry of video noise. Then it opened up on a new scene. I hit play. Normal speed. An interior. Same kind of harsh light. Impossible to say whether it was night or day. Impossible to say where it was. A basement, maybe. Floor and walls seemed to be painted white. There was a broad stone slab, like a table. Smaller than the Afghan rock. Rectangular, manufactured for a purpose. Part of an old kitchen, possibly.
A huge young man was tied to the slab.
He was maybe half my age and twenty per cent bigger all around.
He’s three hundred pounds of muscle, Jacob Mark had said. He’s going to the NFL.
Lila Hoth asked, ‘Do you see him yet?’
‘I see him.’
He was naked. Very white under the lights. Different in every way from the Kabul taxi driver. Pale skin, tousled fair hair. No beard. But he was moving just the same. His head was jerking back and forth and he was screaming words. No! and Please! are recognizable in any language. And this was English. I could lip-read quite easily. I could even sense the tone. Disbelief, mainly. The kind of tone a person uses when what was assumed to be an empty threat or even a cruel joke turns out to have been deadly serious.
I said, ‘I’m not going to watch this.’
Lila Hoth said, ‘You should. Or you’ll never be sure. Maybe we let him go.’
‘When was this?’
‘We set a deadline and we kept it.’
I didn’t reply.
‘Watch it.’
‘No.’
She said, ‘But I want you to watch it. I need you to watch it. It’s a question of maintaining the sequence. Because I think you’re going to be next.’
‘Think again.’
‘Watch it.’
I watched it. Maybe we let him go. You’ll never be sure.
They didn’t let him go.
SIXTY-FOUR
Afterwards I hung up the phone and put the DVD in my pocket and made it to the lobby restroom and threw up in a stall. Not really because of the pictures. I have seen worse. But because of anger and fury and frustration. All those corrosive emotions boiled up inside me and had to find some release. I rinsed my mouth and washed my face and drank some water from the tap and stood for
a moment in front of the mirror.
Then I emptied my pockets. I kept my cash, and my passport, and my ATM card, and my subway card, and Theresa Lee’s NYPD business card. I kept my toothbrush. I kept the phone that had rung. I dumped the other two phones in the trash, with the emergency charger, and the business card from the four dead guys, and the notes Theresa Lee had made from her partner’s messages.
I dumped the DVD, too.
And the Radio Shack memory stick, pink sleeve and all.
I didn’t need a decoy any more.
Then, cleansed, I headed out to see if Springfield was still around.
He was. He was in the lobby bar, in a chair, with his back to a right-angle corner. He had a glass of water on the table in front of him. He was relaxed, but he was watching everything. You can take the man out of Special Forces, and so on and so forth. He saw me coming. I sat down next to him. He asked, ‘Was it folk music?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was folk music.’
‘On a DVD?’
‘There was some dancing, too.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’ve gone all pale. Afghan folk dancing is pretty bad, I know, but it ain’t that bad.’
‘It was two guys,’ I said. ‘They had their bellies slit open and their guts lifted out.’
‘Live on camera?’
‘And then dead on camera.’
‘Soundtrack?’
‘Silent.’
‘Who were the guys?’
‘One was a taxi driver from Kabul and the other was Susan Mark’s son.’
‘I don’t take taxis in Kabul. I prefer my own transportation. But it sucks for USC. They’re down a defensive tackle. Hard to find. I checked him out. Great feet, they say.’
‘Not any more.’
‘Are the Hoths on the tape?’