by Jon Evans
The next few minutes seem to stretch out for eons. No one has anything to say. The rasping sounds as Campbell breathes sound like those of a dying animal. Keiran looks like he wants to throw up. Danielle feels the same way. Interrogation, what they called it before it happened, was one thing. Torture is another. But they have come too far now, taken too big a risk already, to even suggest stopping.
“All right,” Laurent decides. “We’ll try this one more time. Are you going to be loud?” he says into Campbell’s ear. “Bear in mind you have two hundred other bones in your body.”
Campbell gingerly shakes his head.
“Are you certain?”
Campbell nods. Laurent removes the gag. Campbell breathes deeply and gratefully through his mouth.
“You’ll answer our questions, won’t you?” Laurent asks.
“Yes.” It is more a moan than a word.
Laurent looks at Keiran.
“Project Cinnamon,” Keiran says. “We need the pass phrases.”
“What pass phrases?”
“To open the documents,” Keiran says, exasperated.
“I don’t, I don’t have them. They’ve all, Mr. Gendrault, the CEO, he’s the only one who knows the passwords.”
Danielle sags with disappointment.
“I’ve read your CV,” Keiran says harshly. “You’re a professional. Do you really expect me to believe that you let the CEO, and only the CEO, encrypt those files without creating a back door just in case he forgot his password down the road?”
Campbell doesn’t say anything.
“Do you need further encouragement?” Laurent’s voice is dangerous.
“Just a minute,” Campbell says, his voice raw. “I don’t, it’s hard to think. Yes. Yes, there’s a back door.”
“What is it?”
“PGP encryption. The phrase is Double Nickel Override. Nickel was my dog’s name. When I was a kid.”
“We don’t fucking care about your dog,” Angus growls, as Keiran types furiously.
“Got them,” Keiran says.
“What are they?” Estelle asks, coming to look over his shoulder.
A minute passes as Keiran and Estelle scan the documents.
“No,” Keiran says. “These are takeover documents. Letters of agreement, minutes of negotiations, financials, balance sheets. Kishkinda management is in secret takeover talks with some other company, behind Terre’s back. Zulu Fields. South African, I presume. Interesting. But nothing like what you’re looking for.”
“Who are you?” Campbell asks, confused now. “I thought – you’re not from Terre?”
Angus slaps him, and Campbell rocks back and moans. “Stop fucking around,” Angus growls. “We want the real files. The real Kishkinda files. The real groundwater reports. The real health studies. Accounts of which thugs and politicians you pay off, and how much. We want everything.”
“What are you talking about?” Campbell asks. He actually sounds angry. Alcohol has watered down his fear. “We don’t do that. We don’t pay bribes. No more than every company in India does. There’s only one set of groundwater reports. There are no secret files. I know the whole network, I’d know if there was. That’s a lie spread by ignorant fucking anarchists like you. We don’t poison people and we don’t pay anyone off.”
“Believe me, sweetheart,” Estelle says, “you’re not doing anyone any favours by lying. Least of all yourself.”
“I’m not lying. We’re clean.”
“Maybe,” Angus says, “just maybe, you actually believe that. But I think you’re in this shite up to your neck. And you think we’ll kill you if you tell the truth. But we won’t. Tell us and we’ll let you go as is. That’s a sworn promise.”
“There’s nothing to tell. There are no hidden files.”
Angus looks at the other corner of the table. “Is that true?”
Keiran shrugs. “I’ve downloaded their email archive, but it’ll take days to go through. And if I do find anything it will probably be encrypted.”
“He’ll tell us now,” Laurent says. “Won’t you?”
“I can’t. There’s nothing to tell.”
“Keep him quiet,” Laurent says. He walks to the sink, takes a large porcelain bowl from a cabinet, and begins to fill it from the tap. Danielle looks at him with horror. She just wants this to be over.
“I’ll tell you anything,” Campbell says desperately. “I’ll answer anything. I’m not lying. I can’t point you to something that doesn’t fucking exist. Please!”
“Quiet,” Estelle says, smacking Campbell lightly on the back of the head, almost like a disobedient pet.
Her victim cringes. “Please,” he repeats, quieter but no less passionate. “It’s true. We’re not hiding anything. Or if we are I don’t know anything about it. Please. I want to help you. I just can’t.”
“You want to help us,” Laurent says, coming back with the mostly-full bowl of water, putting it in on the table in front of Campbell. “An unlikely story.”
“What are you doing?” Angus asks.
“A little incentivization. Don’t worry. It’s harmless. No permanent marks, so long as you’re careful. And I’m always very careful.” Laurent smiles. Then he grabs the back of Campbell’s head and shoves his face down into the water.
Campbell tries to fight, but his neck muscles are no match for Laurent’s strength. The others watch and do not move. Campbell’s desperate writhing starts to subside. Danielle opens her mouth to say something, she doesn’t know what, when Laurent pulls his head out of the water, allows him two deep wheezing breaths, and shoves it back in. Campbell kicks his feet pathetically against the floor.
“Other people waste their time with knives, thumbscrews, fire, electricity, genital torture, you name it,” Laurent says, speaking slowly and distinctly. “All you really need are restraints and a bowl of water. It doesn’t even leave a mark.” He allows Campbell another breath. “People say drowning is one of the worst ways to die. Of course, you have to think, how would they know? But that’s what those who almost drown always say. That it was the worst experience they can imagine.” Another rattling gasp of breath. “Most people have no idea how painful long suffocation can be. Most people can’t take more than a couple minutes. Dunk them a few times and they’re yours for life. But you, my friend, you seem like a hard case. You’ll be here for quite a little while. Maybe you already decided to tell me everything, but I won’t even ask you for a good, let’s say, five minutes.” Two breaths. “When I do ask, just remember, if you get the answer wrong, you’ll get another ten minutes of this. Maybe I’m doing you a favour, you know? Helping you kick your oxygen habit.” A breath. “People say physical interrogation doesn’t work, but you know what? They’re not usually the same people who have experienced it.”
“Stop it,” Danielle whispers. “Stop. Laurent. Please stop.” She tells herself he must be acting. It must be tearing him up inside to do this. He cannot really be the icy sadist he seems right now. He’s only trying to intimidate Campbell. But she can’t sit silently and watch any more torture. This has to end.
“No names!” Laurent says angrily.
“Stop it. You have to stop. You’ll kill him.”
“He’s perfectly safe. I’ve done this before.” He pulls Campbell’s head out of the bowl for two more breaths, then plunges it back into the blood-clouded water.
“I’m not part of this,” Keiran says. He folds his laptop and picks it up. “I’ll be in my room.”
“No,” Angus says. “Keiran, mate, we need you. No one else understands the technical side of things.”
“Look at yourself. I should fucking give you up is what I should do.” Keiran stalks into his room.
“We don’t need him,” Laurent assures Angus, as he continues asphyxiating Campbell. “Believe me, this man will be more than willing to spell it all out.”
“Please stop,” Danielle begs. “Please. We can’t do this.”
“I know how you feel,” Estelle says quietly. �
�But we can’t let ourselves feel sorry for men like him. He knows who he works for. He knows they deliberately let thousands of people die for their profit margins. He’s not even wilfully ignorant, he’s worse than that, there’s a legal phrase, ‘depraved indifference’. Don’t feel sorry for him. Remember that he’s a monster. He’s the worst kind of monster, the kind that gets to go to parties and talk about his work and pretend he’s a normal human being.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“You’ve been to those villages,” Angus says. “You think it’s coincidence that every village around the Kishkinda Mine has cancer rates a thousand times that of the average Indian population?”
Eventually Laurent says, “I think he’s ready,” and pulls Campbell’s head out for good. Campbell spends thirty seconds coughing up water, his body convulsing as if with powerful electrical shocks. Then he vomits into the bowl and hangs limply in his chair, all strength gone, every slow and laboured breath a moan.
“Tell us where the hidden files are,” Laurent says.
It takes Campbell a few moments to muster an answer. “I don’t know,” he says, his voice so wheezy that Danielle has to strain to hear. “Please. I don’t know anything. I’d tell you if I did. I’d tell you anything. I don’t know. Please. Please.”
Laurent clenches his fist in Campbell’s hair and looks at Angus. “More?”
“No,” Danielle demands. “No. You have to stop. He doesn’t know.”
Angus looks at Estelle, who slowly shakes her head.
“No,” Angus says. “Let’s get him out of here.”
* * *
Danielle is already in bed when Laurent returns. In bed but wide awake. She twitches with revulsion when he reaches over and rests his hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t know how to react, whether to push him away, or pull him to her so they can try to help each other forget.
“I was so sure,” he whispers.
She rolls over to look at him. His eyes are wide and vulnerable. “Sure of what?” she asks, her voice harsh.
“That he knew something. I was so sure he was a monster I turned into a monster myself. I can’t believe I did that.”
“You said you’d done it before,” she says.
“Yes. Twice, in the Legion. To men I’d seen kill with my own eyes. But Campbell didn’t know anything. He was innocent. And I…” His voice trails off. He rolls onto his back and covers his face with his hands.
“You thought you were doing the right thing.”
He shakes his head. “You told me to stop. You told me again and again. And I wouldn’t listen. I was so sure.”
She takes a deep breath. “Listen to me. You made a mistake. We all made an awful mistake. And you…you did turn into a monster. I was, I was scared of you in there, you understand? Not just frightened for you. Frightened of you.”
“I’m sorry. Danielle, I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
“I know you are.” She moves closer, rolls on top of him, so she is resting with her head above his, their eyes just inches apart. “And it can’t ever happen again. You understand that? Not ever.”
Wide-eyed, he nods. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply with relief.
“You made a mistake,” she says. “So did I. Well, if there’s one thing I’ve gotten good at, it’s making mistakes. I bet you don’t have my experience. So let me tell you. You know what you do with mistakes? You learn from them and you let them pass. We don’t pretend it never happened, but we don’t pick at it either. We let it scab over and heal. That’s what we’re going to do. Understand?”
He nods again. She kisses him.
“I don’t deserve you,” he says, his voice warm but oddly distant. He sits up a little and looks at her as if he is seeing her for the first time. “I don’t. I truly don’t.”
“In the words of Clint Eastwood,” Danielle says dryly, “deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
She kisses him with a passion she does not really feel. He doesn’t move. She takes his right hand and puts it on her breast, then takes his left and kisses it, takes his thick fingers into her mouth, presses herself against him until she can feel him reacting. He frees his hands and grabs her, pulls her against his hardness as he kisses her harshly, and she sighs, feeling herself react to the inevitable tug of desire, letting herself disappear in it. Her hips start to move almost involuntarily against his. He opens his mouth to say something.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t say anything. Let’s forget about everything. At least until tomorrow.”
* * *
“I’m going back to London today,” Keiran says, over morning coffee and tartines at the Brasserie de la Reine. He does not look directly at anyone else at the table save for Danielle, who gathers she has somehow escaped his wrath, perhaps by protesting, however feebly, last night. “I’m done.”
“I understand,” Angus says. “But we need you to teach whoever we get to replace you. Give them the files you’ve found, the network access, everything.”
“I’ll send you a CD. I’m done. I’m leaving Paris today.”
“We all are,” Estelle says.
Danielle looks at her. “What?”
“We’ve got everything we can get here. We’re all going to meet with the foundation, back in London.”
“The foundation,” Keiran says scornfully. “And what can they do for you?”
“Give us direction,” Angus says.
“You don’t need direction. You need to have some fucking sense knocked into you. You say you want to help the world’s poor and you wind up torturing an innocent man. And you’re still trying to justify it. You don’t know fuck-all about the poor and downtrodden, you just want to fight the powers that be, because you love being a romantic outlaw. You say businesses exploit the Third World, and that’s why its people are so pitiable and deprived? You stupid selfish cunt. The Third World is hopelessly poor and sick and ignorant because it’s been hopelessly poor and sick and ignorant forever, and its governments are corrupt sociopathic kleptocracies. Free trade, big business, capital investment, globalization, all the things you hate, those are the only fucking hope of the people you say you want to save. What’s really going on is that you’re exploiting the poor, the sick, the slaves, you exploit them as your excuse to fight the only force that has a real fucking chance of helping them. You make me sick.”
“Keiran, mate –”
“Don’t call me mate. Our friendship is over. Is that clear?”
After a moment Angus nods. He looks like he has just been punched in the gut.
“I’m on the 3PM Eurostar. Pick a different train. I’m going to pack.” Keiran empties his espresso and exits the brasserie. Angus and Estelle look at one another.
“The foundation,” Laurent says. “At last. I hope they’re worth the wait.”
Part 4
London
Chapter 22
Danielle has not been to London for years. After two months in Paris it seems ugly, dirty, dark, unfriendly. They walk from Waterloo Station across the muddy Thames. Even at night the Circle Line is overcrowded and running late. They have to push their way through a crowd to get themselves and their luggage on board, and are rewarded with glares from other passengers that simultaneously condemn and look right through them, as if they are both evil incarnate and do not exist. Estelle has booked a short-term two-bedroom flat just south of Euston Station. The flat is small, the furnishings wilted and impersonal, the beds lumpy and creaky. Danielle wishes they could have stayed in Paris.
They meet the foundation’s representative the next morning in a temporary office near Green Park, gray-blue carpet and fake wood panelling and a conference phone in the middle of the oak conference table. It reminds Danielle of the office in Bangalore where she worked, once upon a time. The foundation is personified by a lean, wolfish white-haired man named Philip. Faded tattoos are visible beneath the sleeves of Philip’s blue button-down shirt. His business-casual dress is entirely at odds with h
is taut body language and alert expression. Danielle gets the same kind of impression she did from Laurent at first, that he is constantly holding himself back from physical action.
“You’ve done excellent work,” he assures them. “Bloody excellent. Don’t let anyone tell you different. And don’t get cold feet. I can see that you might. Don’t let it happen. You’re saving lives. You’re making the world a better place. The worst thing the money bastards who run the world have done is set things up so this is the only way they can be overthrown. They figure, people who aren’t willing to do the hard things can’t touch them, and the people who are willing, they are them. We have to be the third way. We have to be hard men with hearts of gold. I don’t like it any more than you. But that’s the way the game is rigged. It’s the only way to possibly win.”
“Spare us the inspiration,” Angus says. “Motivation is not our problem. Our problem is we stuck our necks out and didn’t find anything.”
“Of course you did. You broke their system wide open. If this Campbell doesn’t say anything – and you say you don’t think he will?”
“I think we put the fear of God into him,” Laurent says. “Or at least the fear of us.”
He actually sounds amused. Danielle looks at him and wonders where yesterday’s remorseful, self-doubting Laurent went.
“He promised to say nothing and to resign next month,” Angus says.
“And you believe him?” Philip asks.
“He was passionately convincing,” Laurent says.
“He might change his mind.”
Angus says, “He seemed impressed by our detailed knowledge of where his sisters and his sainted mother live.”
“We wouldn’t,” Estelle says quickly, seeing Danielle’s expression. “It’s a bluff. But he doesn’t know that. He’s got good reason to take our threats seriously.”
Philip looks at Danielle with a concerned expression. “Danielle Leaf, yes? You’re the recent volunteer?”
Danielle nods. Philip looks at Angus.
“We trust her completely,” Angus says firmly.