The Tin Man

by Nina Mason

  “I’m a fan of your work,” he told her in a proper English accent. “And your grandfather’s.”

  Rage heated her chest at the mention of her grandfather. Where was he? What had this freak done to him? And for that matter, what was he planning to do to her? He stepped closer, making her whole body clench. She glanced around with rising dread. There were doors leading to other rooms. Closed doors. Was her grandfather behind one of them? And what horrors might await behind the others?

  “I understand you have the recording,” he said, his voice cool. “You will turn it over now or suffer the consequences.”

  Consequences? Thea gulped, noting again the doghouse, birdcage, and stretching rack. She began to sweat as scenes of torture and bondage from A Clockwork Orange flickered behind her eyes like a strobe light. She tried to scream at the tuxedoed man, to demand answers, but all that got past the ball-gag were muffled animal sounds.

  “Mr. Wint, please uncuff her.” The tuxedoed man addressed the command to one the freaky, perfume-reeking twins. “Then, please remove the gag. And everything she has on.” Thea shuddered as he shifted his eyes to the other twin. “And Mr. Kidd, please cue the music and fetch me my tool belt.”

  * * * *

  Now back in the Toyota, Buchanan weighed his options. He needed to help her, obviously, needed to get her the hell out of there, but how? He couldn’t just break down the door, couldn’t even call the police or the FBI. Hadn’t Connolly said The Babylon Group’s tentacles touched everything—even the regulatory and law enforcement agencies? He shook his head. Bloody hell. What was he going to do? He needed help—Lapdog’s help. But he wasn’t going to get it, was he?

  Buchanan felt desperate, disheartened, and helpless. The only option left was to break the story on his own. Meaning he’d have to do it via The Voice. Not that doing so was such a big deal. Sure, The News had more in the way of impact and influence, but his site was nothing to sneeze at. First, though, he needed to ditch the car and find a place he could set up the laptop. It was his only hope.

  Consulting the map, he decided to drive toward Georgetown University. Wherever there was a campus, there was bound to be a coffee house or internet café of some sort offering free Wi-Fi as a draw for the students.

  He drove across town and, when within a few blocks of the university, he started keeping an eye peeled for signs. Spying something at last—a wee bookshop-coffee bar combo near the campus—he parked in an out-of-the-way spot, wiped the car of prints, and grabbed Thea’s briefcase out of the boot.

  Hobbling through the glass door, he scanned the place, which was noisy and packed with students. Some sat quietly, reading or working on computers, whilst others talked and laughed in small groups. His eyes sought an empty table, but found none. He stood there, watching and waiting, hoping somebody would leave. The recording, still in his coat pocket, felt as dangerous as a vial of deadly virus.

  Someone got up. A lanky blonde in a tie-dyed t-shirt who’d been reading something that looked erudite and existential. A closer look at the cover revealed it was Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard.

  Of course it bloody was, he thought, rolling his eyes.

  Hurrying toward the table, he pulled out a chair and sat quickly. It was still warm with the girl’s body heat. He set up the laptop, connected to the network, and called up the Google screen. Moving his cursor to the search window, he typed: Robert Sterling, Olympus Enterprises.

  Nothing relevant. Just a static web page offering the company’s mission statement—a fat load of public relations bollocks as far as he could tell. There was, however, a phone number at the bottom of the page. Having nothing with which to write it down, he copied it, called up a word file, and pasted it into the blank document.

  Next, he searched for The Babylon Group. Seeing there was a link to Wikipedia, he clicked through.

  The Babylon Group, also known simply as Babylon, is the Arab world’s largest media and entertainment company. It is owned by the Saudi Prince Azi Zahhak and a group of investors, only one of which is known: Milo Osbourne, the CEO of Golden Age Media, who holds a 10 percent share. Babylon is a major pan-Arab media conglomerate, which includes newspapers, film production companies, magazines, television and radio networks, publishing houses, and record companies—many of them based in the United States and Great Britain.

  Buchanan scratched his head. How the devil was he going to get through to Azi Zahhak? Still, he at least had to try, didn’t he?

  Clicking back to the search results, he scrolled through several pages before he found a home page for the company. He looked around the site for a few minutes, but found no phone number. He then called international directory assistance. There was no listing for either Babylon or Azi Zahhak.

  Shite, he’d hit a dead end there. For now, at least.

  Not ready to give up, he checked the time on the monitor. It was almost half seven. Three-thirty in the morning in London. He punched in the number for Olympus, got a recording, and left a message for Robert Sterling.

  That left him with just one more source: Milo Osbourne. He looked up the number for Golden Age Media’s corporate offices and placed the call. After several transfers, he was connected to Osbourne’s executive assistant—a cold fish named Gina Metcalf who informed him that Osbourne was on his way to London.

  “I’ll see that he gets the message, though,” she added.

  “I need to speak with him tonight, if possible,” he told her emphatically.

  “I understand, Mr. Buchanan. And I will do what I can.”

  Heaving a frustrated sigh, he hung up, sat back, laced his fingers behind his head, and stretched his shoulders, which were stiff from so much time behind the wheel. If Osbourne called him back, would he have enough to file the story? He didn’t think so. All he had otherwise was Connolly’s interview.

  He sat there for a long while, thinking hard, but the only thing he came up with was trying Lapdog again. Logging on to The Voice, he clicked to the comments page.

  Posted by Editor

  Thea is in Tartarus.

  He doubted it would do much good, but what the hell? He couldn’t just sit there like a chump while they did God knew what to the woman he loved. He felt a pang. Hang on. Did he love her? He shook his head, feeling more wretched than before. He did love her, didn’t he? Seems his mum had been right all along. He did feel differently now that he’d met the right woman. Unfortunately, that woman was now in the hands of a sadistic sociopath. And there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it.

  * * * *

  As Thea floated up to the surface of awareness, her head began to pound. She opened her eyes, taking a moment to clear the haze that had settled over her brain. Where was she? What happened? Wherever she was, it was as dark as a cave. And stuffy. So stuffy she could hardly breathe. She realized then that she was lying on her side and—oh, shit—she was naked. The surface beneath her was cold and hard. Her wrists were bound behind her back. And there was something covering her face.

  She struggled to get her legs under her so she could sit up. The movement detonated an explosion inside her cranium. She stilled, breathing hard, praying the pain would subside. From somewhere, she heard the click of a latch, then the groaning of hinges. Her breath caught as footsteps came toward her. She began to tremble.

  “Who are you?” she cried out.

  “I will ask the questions, Pussy.”

  It was the voice of the tuxedoed man.

  She wasn’t all that familiar with the movies, but she assumed his addressing her as “Pussy” was a reference to some Bond girl femme fatale. “Ask away, freak show,” she challenged.

  “Where is the recording?” he demanded, clearly unamused by her nickname.

  “What have you done with my grandfather?” she demanded in return.

  Something struck her thigh. It hurt enough to make her grunt, but she was determined not to cry out.

  “No questions from you,” he said hotly. “Only answers. Where
is that recording? I know you retrieved it from that bank in Philadelphia. So don’t even think about handing me a line.”

  She felt something pressing on her neck. Was it his shoe? He stepped down as if he was driving a car and she was the gas pedal. She coughed and hacked, fighting for breath. She tried to roll, tried to dig in her toes, to scoot away, but to no avail. The need for air grew more urgent by the second. She could feel the pressure building in her face. Horrible gurgling sounds rose from her throat.

  “The recording, Pussy?”

  As he eased off, she coughed and gasped.

  He laughed like machine-gun fire.

  “Bite me,” she spat, still fighting for breath.

  He laughed again, closer now.

  She flinched when she felt his hands slide under her. Before she knew what was happening, she was rolling onto her back. His weight came down on her legs. Fingernails raked her from breasts to pubic hair.

  “You know, Pussy,” he whispered, making her jump, “you’re much too nice a girl to be mixed up in all this.”

  He was kneading her breasts. His fingers found her nipples, pinching hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She gritted her teeth, whimpering a little. She needed to pee. Urgently.

  “It’s even better with the clamps,” he said, making her shudder. “Or the wire cutters. Snip, snip. Snip, snip.” He cackled devilishly, obviously pleased with himself. “Of course, I could always do to you what Wayne Adam Ford did to his victims.” He paused, as if for emphasis. “Are you familiar with Wayne Adam Ford, Pussy?”

  She swallowed hard, but saw no point in answering.

  “I asked you a question.”

  From the rising anger in his voice, she got the feeling she was going to hear about Wayne Adam Ford—whoever the fuck he might be—whether she cared to or not.

  “Wayne Adam Ford was a California trucker who killed four women,” he went on, as predicted. “Raped them…beat them…snapped their spines…and, best of all, he cut off their breasts to keep as souvenirs. But old Wayne wasn’t like other serial killers. Oh, no. He was different. Some might even say special. Would you like to know why?”

  She’d rather not, but nodded anyway to avoid setting him off.

  “Wayne, it would seem, had a conscience,” he continued. “Unlike Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and other sociopaths, myself included, Wayne actually felt remorse for the terrible things he’d done. Or so he claimed when he turned himself in. And let me tell you something, Pussy: the psychiatrists are still scratching their heads over that one.”

  He stretched out on her then and took one of her nipples in his mouth. She shuddered with revulsion as he began to suck. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes as he pressed his pelvis against her thigh. That he was mightily aroused was evident.

  “You have lovely breasts, Pussy,” he said, releasing her nipple with a pop. “They’re just like my mother’s.” He released a sigh. “I miss her, Pussy. She nursed me up until she died, you know. Her milk always tasted so sweet. Just like cantaloupe. Sweet, ripe cantaloupe juice from her sweet, ripe melons. I kept them to remember her by. Would you like to see them?”

  Thea began to shake uncontrollably. Clearly, the man was insane. Not to mention a sadist. She cringed as she felt a hand working its way down her body. She squeezed her legs together as hard as she could, but his fingers forced their way between them. When he thrust them inside her, she began to thrash in protest. Withdrawing them, he took a deep, audible whiff.

  “You’ve had intercourse very recently,” he observed. “And I can guess who with. Did you enjoy it, Pussy? Was he a good lover? Did he make you cum? Do you like being fucked?”

  She gasped when she felt his teeth clamp down on her nipple.

  “Shall I bite it off, Pussy? Bite them both off? And your little clitoris, too? They still do that in some parts of Africa, you know. No more orgasms. And for what? To protect a man who will leave you the minute he learns you’ve been mutilated?”

  The pain was so intense, she was starting to hyperventilate.

  “Save yourself all that pain, Pussy. Tell me where he is.”

  She wanted to cuss him out, but bit her lip.

  “Would you like to know a secret, Pussy?”

  “I’d like…to know…who you are,” she said, straining for words.

  “Has your lover told you about his twin brother? How he died at Abu Ghraib? Did you not find it strange that a British journalist who was arrested by the secret police would end up in an American detention center?”

  Of course she’d found it strange, as had Buchanan, but what was he getting at?

  “I killed him,” he said, giving her a shock. “That’s right. In Abu Ghraib. He stuck his nose where it didn’t belong, just as you and his brother have. Would you like to know what I did to him? What I’m going to do to you?”

  His tone of voice was disturbingly diabolical, as if he were getting off on the things he was saying to her.

  “First, I hung him strappado,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

  She did. It meant hanging someone with their hands behind their back, usually dislocating both arms in the process. It was a torture method used by the Nazis, the North Vietnamese, and the Khmer Rouge, among other regimes. She’d done a story about it a couple of years back when Amnesty International gave Turkey hell for still engaging in the practice. According to her sources, it was disturbingly commonplace there.

  Prisoners in Abu Ghraib also were hung strappado. It was how Manadel al-Jamadi, a bombing suspect, was strung up while CIA interrogators beat him to death. Accidentally, allegedly. After they discovered their “error,” they packed him on ice and stuck him in the showers while they figured out how to cover it up. Some of the guards, including Charles Graner, the American soldier convicted of being the ringleader of the abuse, gave the corpse nicknames like “The Iceman,” “Mr. Frosty,” and “Bernie”—a reference to the movie Weekend at Bernie’s in which partiers pretended a dead man was still alive. Graner posed for pictures with the body, grinning with obvious satisfaction as he offered two thumbs up.

  The whole Abu Ghraib affair made her sick, as did the human rights abuses at Guantanamo and the British government’s collusion with torturers in Pakistan. It was all so dehumanizing, so hateful, so racist. But the fact that they were Iraqis—Muslims—justified it somehow. She wanted to believe Americans were better than that, that so-called Christians were better than that, despite all evidence, past and present, to the contrary.

  Forgive them, Father. For they know not what unforgiveable acts they commit in your name.

  The tuxedoed man went on boasting about all the ways he’d tortured Kenny Buchanan. She didn’t want to hear these things, didn’t need to know that he was capable of atrocities she couldn’t begin to fathom. But that was the idea, wasn’t it? This was psychological torture. He was trying to scare the living shit out of her so she’d tell him what he wanted to know. Well, she was scared all right. Scared to death, in fact. But she still wasn’t about to give up Buchanan or that disk.

  And then, she felt a painful prick in the muscle of her thigh. Had he injected her with something? Sodium pentothal perhaps to force her to give up Buchanan? As she tried to work out what to do, her mind grew fuzzy and, within seconds, completely shut down.

  Chapter 24

  Buchanan was still at the coffee house, working diligently on the story as he waited for Osbourne and/or Sterling to return his calls. He was trying very hard not to think about Thea or what that sadistic motherfucker might be doing to her. Trying, but not having much luck.

  He only prayed that, once the story was out there, Lapdog would come through. What was he anyway? FBI? DOJ? Treasury? His money was on FBI, just because it made the most sense. But, for all he knew, the guy wasn’t even law enforcement. Maybe he was a high-ranking official. A senator or a judge, perhaps. He could be anybody. Or nobody. Maybe he was just some random nut-job who’d only been yanking his chain. But that wasn’t likel
y, was it? He had, after all, been right about Professor Aslan. Would a crackpot know about the interview? He couldn’t imagine how. No, Lapdog must be a federal agent. It was the only thing that fit.

  And what about Zeus? Who the hell was he? How did he factor into all of this? Feeling stumped, he went outside to smoke a cigarette, hoping it would clear his head. Feeling more focused afterward, he returned to the table, ready to get back to work. First, though, he wanted to take a minute to check something out, partly out of curiosity and partly out of concern.

  Calling up a new window, he typed cock and ball torture in the Google box. To his surprise, the search engine instantly returned more than three million results. The first was an entry in Wikipedia. The link took him to an index page offering two choices: cock and ball torture (sexual practice) or Cock and Ball Torture (band). He clicked on the link for the sexual practice.

  Cock and ball torture (CBT) is a sexual activity involving torture of the male genitals. This may involve directly painful activities, such as wax play, genital spanking, squeezing, ball-busting, genital flogging, urethral play, tickle torture, erotic electro-stimulation, or even kicking. The recipient of such activities may receive direct physical pleasure via masochism, or emotional pleasure through knowledge that the play is pleasing to a sadistic dominant…

  Several of the words were highlighted with blue hyperlinks. Buchanan clicked around, wincing as he learned more. Ball busting was the practice of kicking a man in the testicles…wax play involved dripping hot candles on the nipples and genitals…spanking, squeezing, and flogging were self-explanatory…urethral play referred to the insertion of objects into the penis…erotic electro-stimulation entailed shocking the penis and testicles. Accompanying the article was a disturbing image of a penis attached to an electrical device used for the latter, the sight of which gave him a serious case of the willies.