Even after twenty years, Chant well remembered the sensation of Wing’s teeth grinding in his flesh during their terrible battle, among the many scars Hammerhead had left on his body, there was a huge, ragged one on his right calf where the man’s teeth had come within millimeters of severing his Achilles tendon and permanently crippling him.
“Well, well, well,” Tommy Wing said, his lips drawing back from his teeth in a hideous grimace “John Sinclair, of all people.”
There was no other chair in the room, so Chant eased himself down on a corner of the large desk, noting with satisfaction that the other man—despite the .45 automatic he held in his hand—moved back slightly. “The name’s Alter, pal. Who the hell are you?”
“I ain’t your fairy godmother, Sinclair, and that’s for sure. Don’t try to bullshit me. I’ve been watching you for better than a month. You disguise your moves pretty well, but they’re still your moves. Also, I’ve seen you stripped. Don’t you think I’d remember the marks I put on you? How the hell did you get wind of this?”
“Get wind of what, Tommy?” Chant asked casually, gauging the distance between himself and the gun, deciding that the desk between them—combined with Hammerhead’s insensitivity to pain and uncanny capacity to absorb a blow—weighted the odds too heavily in the other man’s favor. In the present situation, he would make a move only if he was certain Wing was about to pull the trigger.
“What the hell are you doing here? How did you get wind of this setup?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tommy,” Chant replied, casually removing his wig and contact lenses, setting the items down next to him on the desk. “I got here the same way as everybody else. I’ve spent the last twenty years in prison. I changed my name, decided to change my appearance to go along with it.”
“What bullshit,” Hammerhead said, and laughed. “You’ve spent the last twenty years making life miserable for some very powerful and wealthy men—and becoming very wealthy yourself, in the process.”
“You seem to know a lot about me, Tommy.”
“Damn straight, Sinclair. And with all the people around the fucking world after your ass, look who’s got you. I like that.”
“I heard you were in a mental hospital, Tommy. How in hell did you get out of there? Did you do a good job brushing your teeth three times a day?”
Hammerhead’s bright green eyes glinted, and his free hand bunched into a fist. “You’re the only man who’s ever beaten me, Sinclair—you and those goddam funny moves of yours I was in the infirmary a month longer than you; they had to remove a kidney and four feet of intestine to stop the internal bleeding, and cut off my left nut to boot.”
“Look on the bright side of things, Tommy,” Chant said in a flat voice. “You got a free lunch; you must have chewed off at least a pound of flesh That’s not bad pickings for an amateur cannibal.”
Color rose in the other man’s pronounced cheekbones. “You’ve got a bad mouth, Sinclair; always did.”
“And you were always a terrific straight man. But I’m not going to touch that line; it’s too easy.”
“You should have killed me when you had the chance.”
“Hell, Tommy, I thought I had.”
“I asked you what you’re doing here, Sinclair, and I’m still waiting for an answer.”
“Maybe I’m after your job. From the looks of that suit you’re wearing, it pays well. I assume being locked up in a mental hospital for twenty years qualified you for this project. Did you come up through the ranks?”
“It’ll be a cold day in hell when you get my job, Sinclair; nobody’s going to hire a corpse. And when Mr. Blake finds out who I’ve got for him, I suspect I’ll be in for a pretty good raise.”
Chant felt his stomach muscles tighten slightly, and suddenly he understood how Tommy Wing had come to know so much about him. “So Blake College is named after that Blake,” he said, raising his eyebrows slightly. “How interesting.”
Hammerhead frowned. “You didn’t know that?”
“Tommy, there must be a hundred Blakes in the Manhattan directory alone. How is R. Edgar these days?”
“Still thoroughly pissed about that two million you stole from him. If you didn’t know about Blake’s connection to this college, what are you doing here? I think you’re full of shit.”
“How did you get hooked up with R. Edgar Blake, Tommy? Blake has dozens of top-flight professional killers on his payroll, so what would he want with you? Is he into hiring the handicapped these days?”
The blood drained from Tommy Wing’s face, and he swallowed hard “Figuring out how I want to kill you, and then doing it, is going to give me real pleasure, Sinclair.”
“Oh, hell, Tommy, we both know you’d love to nibble me to death. But if I were you, I’d check with R. Edgar first to see what he wants to do with me.”
“How’d you find out about this project?!”
“Have R Edgar give me a call, Tommy. I’ll tell him.”
“Somebody had to help you get in here, Sinclair. Who was it? Who knows you’re doing this thing?”
Chant felt something thick and cold begin to crawl up his spine: fear. “I’ve penetrated organizations a lot tighter than this one without any help, Tommy,” he said evenly. “If you know so much about me, then you know I always work alone. Now, why don’t you tell me what the program is really all about? What’s going on here?”
Hammerhead raised the automatic, pointed it directly at Chant’s forehead. “I think it might be to everyone’s advantage if I killed you right now,” he said in a low voice.
“You think R. Edgar will be happy if you do that, Tommy? I’m not so sure. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
Hammerhead’s response was to reach to his left with his free hand and press a button on an intercom built into the wall.
“Yes?” It was Montsero’s voice, the psychologist sounded even more nervous than before.
“Come get the son-of-a-bitch, you idiot This way you can see what he really looks like.”
Chant turned his head when he heard the door open behind him, found himself looking at his own reflection in Montsero’s aviator glasses. The psychologist, too, was holding a large automatic.
“Did he tell you anything?” Montsero’s voice was high-pitched, and cracked at the end.
Tommy Wing shook his head.
Montsero swallowed hard, licked his lips. “We have to know how he got here, and whom he may have spoken to about us. Can’t we do something to make him talk?”
Hammerhead’s laugh was loud and ugly “Like what? You’re looking at a man who’ll die before he tells you anything he doesn’t want you to know.”
“Who is he, Mr Wing?”
“None of your goddam business. What he is is somebody who has no business being here. That’s your responsibility, Montsero.”
The psychologist, upset and clearly frightened, took off his glasses. His protruding eyeballs seemed even larger. “Mr. Wing, it’s not my fault. He was referred here, just like all the others. There was nothing unusual. I had no way of knowing. I checked everything on his application, all of it. It was—”
“Shut up, idiot,” Hammerhead said curtly “The bottom line is that he fooled you. Did you tell the men what I told you to tell them?”
“Yes, sir,” Montsero whispered hoarsely.
“Good What we’re going to do is find a place to lock up Mr. Sinclair until I can get a call through to Switzerland Then I want a look at the application this man filled out, and I especially want a look at the referral sheet.”
“That’s no problem, sir. No problem at all.”
“This isn’t your style, Tommy,” Chant said softly, easing himself off the desk and looking directly into the emerald green eyes The fear had crawled all the way up his spine and was now wrapping itself around his neck. “If you want me killed, do it yourself Let’s go one more time, man to man, for old time’s sake. I’ve picked up some new moves you might like t
o see.”
Hammerhead’s green eyes suddenly glowed even brighter. “Sinclair, I’d like nothing better than to take you apart—which I just may do in a few minutes.” He paused, turned to Montsero and nodded toward the door. “Take him into the other room and wait for me. And watch your ass. If you think he’s fooled you so far, you haven’t seen anything until he makes a move on you; this is the fastest man with his hands and feet you’re ever likely to meet.”
“Mr. Wing, are you going to tell Mr Blake—?”
“Shut up. What I tell Mr. Blake is also none of your business. On second thought, we won’t lock him up; with Sinclair, it’s better to have him where you can see him. Just take him into the other room and sit him down in a chair. Have the other men stay away from him, and you keep your distance—stay at least ten feet away from him, and keep your gun aimed right on the center of his chest. If he twitches the wrong way, blow his heart out. We can’t be faulted for stopping him from escaping, and it’s probably what we’ll be told to do anyway.”
Montsero quickly backed out of the doorway and Chant found himself looking out into the lecture hall. Tank Olsen looked extremely uncomfortable and uncertain, while the faces of the other men—with the exception of Chuck Politan—were cold, hard, and accusing. Chant followed slowly after the man, confident now of escape despite the fact that Montsero had moved a good twenty feet away. Montsero was not Hammerhead, Chant thought; from the way the psychologist held his automatic, it was obvious that the man was not used to firearms. He would freeze for a split second, and that split second was all Chant needed to dive, roll, and come up under the man’s aim, It was only a matter of waiting a few moments until Hammerhead had busied himself with his overseas call.
“Get away from those other men, spy,” Montsero said from where he was standing near the first tier of seats. “I want you over here, sitting down. Move it.”
“I’m coming, Montsero,” Chant said, casually stepping down off the raised platform and walking across the well of the lecture hall, angling ever so slightly in the psychologist’s direction. “I’ll do what you say; just don’t get an itchy trigger finger.”
Now, he thought.
“I said you could count on me, Neil! I’ll get the bastard!”
To Chant’s dismay, Tank Olsen suddenly lurched forward and came lumbering down off the platform, head down and arms outstretched, heading straight for Montsero. The psychologist started, then swung the gun slightly to his left in order to fire a bullet into the head of the ex-convict.
By his lies, Chant thought, he had made Tank Olsen’s life his responsibility. The man was throwing away his life to save a supposed CIA agent Although the distraction created by Olsen’s sudden and unexpected movement would make it even easier for him to get to Montsero, Chant was not certain he could do it before the psychologist pulled the trigger—and he could not allow the huge child-man to die for him.
As Olsen swept past him, Chant leaped forward and hit him at the knees with his shoulder. Olsen did a complete flip in the air, landed hard on his back. In a single motion, Chant kept rolling, came up and hit Olsen on the chin with his fist, knocking the other man unconscious.
“Big, dumb son-of-a-bitch,” Chant said, shaking his head as he slowly got to his feet He could only hope that the psychologist had not heard Olsen’s words “He must have really taken a dislike to me, Montsero. He was afraid you were going to shoot me before he had a chance to kill me with his bare hands.”
Montsero, mouth open and gun shaking in his trembling hand, said nothing Chant heard a sound behind him, and turned to face Hammerhead, who had rushed out of the office and was now standing in a crouch, his legs braced slightly apart, his automatic raised and aimed with both hands at Chant’s head From the expression on Tommy Wing’s face, Chant knew the other man had not been fooled—and now his chance to escape was gone.
“You’ve got ringers all over the fucking place, stupid,” Hammerhead spat at the psychologist “See if you can get this right: come up and put the gun right at the base of his skull. If he moves his head at all, blow his brains out.”
Montsero did as he was told. As he felt the cold metal touch the back of his neck, Chant flexed his knees slightly and watched with the other men as Hammerhead slowly came down into the well, stopped in front of him. There was nothing Chant could do as the hand with the gun suddenly shot out and the barrel slammed into the side of his head, just above the temple. Chant tried to kick at the other man, but the strength in his legs was gone He put his hands to his head, then sank slowly down into a vast sea of shimmering, orange-streaked pain.
CHAPTER NINE
There would be no getting up from the torture chair this time, Chant thought. Leather straps around his ankles, wrists, and chest held him securely, with just enough play in the right wrist strap to allow his hand to reach the red button on the newly installed console beside him.
“Gentlemen,” Montsero said, his voice high-pitched with excitement, “you will now have the privilege of participating in an unscheduled but very interesting experiment. We are going to see how far the bond of loyalty between the two of you will stretch. You feel the electricity already. We’re beginning at a low voltage level, which will steadily increase. In a very short time both of you will feel considerable discomfort; soon after that, you will begin to scream. Either one of you can end the agony simply by pressing the red button next to you; that will kill the man sitting in the other chair, and then cut off the electricity. Very simple. Of course, things could be made even simpler if Mr. Sinclair would just tell us what we want to know. Then you could both live.”
Chant, who had been allowing his mind to float idly in his wa, his warm sea of good memories, now opened his eyes and looked at Montsero, who was sitting in a chair behind the table with the electrical-discharge apparatus. Hammerhead was standing directly behind the psychologist, feet slightly apart and hands thrust into the pockets of his expensive, Italian-cut slacks Hammerhead’s cold eyes were as vacant as the reflective surface of Montsero’s glasses.
“Hey, man! Shit! Whoever the hell you are, tell them what they want to know!”
Chant casually glanced to his right, where Tank Olsen was strapped into an identical chair that had been installed a few feet away. Olsen’s face glistened with sweat, and his eyes bulged with terror.
“There isn’t anything to tell them. Tank,” Chant said quietly. “Try to relax and remember the pleasant things that have happened in your life. Dying isn’t anywhere near as important as you think it is.”
“Tell them about you and me and the CIA!”
“Haven’t you already told them everything there is to tell?”
“They don’t believe me!”
“They believe you, Tank. I’m not with the CIA, and they know that I lied to you. I’m sorry.”
“Tell them about Insolers!”
“Insolers is one of them. Insolers contacted every man in the group and told him the same story He wanted to see how we’d react. It was part of the experiment.”
Olsen tilted his head forward, straining against the leather straps until the veins in his neck bulged and his face turned crimson. “What do you want?!” he screamed at the two silent, watching men.
“Mostly, they just want to kill me, Tank,” Chant said evenly “They’re going to kill you because you tried to help me.”
“But you tricked me, for Christ’s sake! Can’t they understand that?!”
“They understand it; it just doesn’t make any difference to them The fact that you transferred your loyalty to someone else in the group makes you useless to them, and you know too much. Also, these guys are sadists; it’s how they get their rocks off. I got you into this, Tank. I’m sorry you have to die, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. If I could trade my life for yours, I would; but they want you dead for their own reasons. The best you can do is to deny these bastards the satisfaction you’re giving them now. Nothing you or I can say is going to make any differe
nce, so you may as well tell them to go fuck themselves.” Chant paused, shifted his gaze to Montsero and Hammerhead. “Gentlemen, go fuck yourselves.”
The muscles in Montsero’s jaws clenched, but Tommy Wing merely flashed his hideous, merciless grin Chant caught a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he again looked to his right. Olsen, perhaps fully realizing for the first time what the red button was supposed to do, had his hand poised over it.
“I’m not going to press my button, Tank,” Chant said easily, speaking to the question in the other man’s terrified eyes. “I’m simply going to wait to die, and whether you kill me or they kill me is of monumental indifference to me. You must make your own decision as to what you’re going to do in the last moments of your life. I can’t advise you, except to say that I don’t think pushing that button is going to make a damn bit of difference; we’re still both going to die. Montsero and the cannibal are just playing games with your head.”
Olsen said something in reply, but Chant was no longer listening. The current running through his body was not yet strong enough to cause real pain, but the muscles in his arms, legs, and stomach were beginning to twitch involuntarily, and he wished only to retreat back into the pleasure of his wa and wait there until he ceased to exist. His fate was now irrevocably in the hands of others, and what happened—or when—was no longer of interest to him.
The last thing he glimpsed with his peripheral vision was Tank Olsen’s trembling hand descending toward the red button on his console.
CHAPTER TEN
Chant regained consciousness to the fetid smell of blood, vomit, and viscera. He opened his eyes, immediately understood Hammerhead’s parting grin: Tommy Wing clearly had a grisly plan of revenge marked out—a plan far worse for Chant than mere death.
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