Labyrinth

by Jon Land

  Locke said nothing.

  “The Committee is most unhappy with this crusade you’ve been waging. We thought we’d give you the opportunity to agree to a business arrangement between us. You possess some information we wish to purchase.”

  Locke held his ground, coiling his fingers into fists to still their trembling. Escape was clearly impossible. His greatest weapon was his calm, if he could keep it.

  “A purchase implies you have something to offer in return,” he said coolly.

  “An accurate analysis.” The dark man’s eyes moved toward the giant. “Show him, Shang.”

  Locke turned in time to see the Chinese giant pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He unraveled the layers and held it forward for Locke to see its contents.

  Chris saw the blood first, dried and purple, and then the object.

  Bile bubbled in his throat. The object was a small finger with a—

  “Oh, my God!”

  —ring still wedged past the middle joint. Greg’s Little League championship ring.

  “We offer the life of your son,” Mandala said flatly.

  But Locke had already sank to his knees, opening his mouth for a scream that was choked off by the giant’s hand.

  The jeep crept down the last of the desolate stretch toward what remained of San Sebastian. Dogan could still smell the residue from the fire in the air, could feel the death it had brought in the hot wind. The closer the jeep drew to the site of the massacre, the more uncomfortable he became.

  At the wheel was Marna Colby, a CIA operative who had spent the last four years at substations throughout South America and the six before that working under Dogan at Division Six. There were few women he had ever allowed himself to become attracted to; Marna was one of them because she tempered tenderness with strength. Dogan responded best to strength and a woman who showed it. Marna was as brave and skillful an operative as he’d ever worked with, and he had genuinely lamented her reassignment, both for her talents in the field and in bed. For Dogan, sex had seldom proved fulfilling. Marna provided an exception. But sex was the furthest thing from their minds now.

  The jeep had behaved like a loyal animal, pushing past or climbing over debris tossed into the road by the fire. One mile before they reached the remains of the town, the vehicle met its match in a series of huge branches charred black as charcoal. They climbed out and started walking.

  “Why so much interest from Division over a dead town?” Marna prodded Dogan. “I know we’re the last to hear things down here but if San Sebastian’s important, I should have been informed.”

  “The interest isn’t Division’s, it’s mine. And the interest comes from the hope that the dead might be able to tell me what the living can’t.”

  “It’s good you’re not expecting to find anyone alive. The fire got them all.”

  “Something else got them all. The fire was just a cover.”

  Dogan’s grim tone silenced her as much as his words. They continued walking, and with each step Dogan felt his heart thudding harder. Death was something you never got used to, and he could feel the agony of those butchered in the hail of bullets Lubeck had described. Maybe their ghosts walked the charred land. Maybe they could tell him what the hell it all meant.

  Finally they reached an empty piece of land marked with pieces of San Sebastian. What was left of a church bell lay half embedded in the ground, the crude foundations of collapsed buildings were now graves. Dogan moved past the church bell into the center of town and stopped with Marna lagging several yards back. The authorities had already stripped the ground free of bones but it didn’t matter. The feeling was still present.

  “It happened here,” he said absently. “The massacre happened here.”

  “Massacre? What are you talking about?”

  If Dogan heard her, he didn’t show it. He drifted about slowly, kicking at the dirt with his feet, occasionally lifting a charred piece of wood as if expecting a survivor to lie beneath it. He glanced around him.

  “Lubeck must have been sitting on one of those hills, probably with his back to the sun so it would be in the eyes of anyone who looked up in his direction. He watched them all shot. He saw it all.”

  “Shot?” Marna swallowed hard. “I wasn’t told anything about that. Christ, you’re talking about a town of two hundred and fifty people. I thought you said Division wasn’t interested in this.”

  “They’re not.”

  “Then why—”

  Dogan swung toward her, the intensity of his stare making her break off her words. “Listen to me, Marna, this is part of something much bigger. All of South America might be at stake.”

  She regarded him strangely. “You sound like Masvidal.”

  “Who?”

  “Masvidal. He’s the one-eyed leader of a bunch of terrorist Robin Hoods. They see themselves as the saviors of the continent.”

  “Terrorists?” Dogan said softly, and suddenly everything fell into place. He had found the mysterious third party who had been trying so desperately to kill Christopher Locke. “Who are they?” he demanded. “What’s their name?”

  “They call themselves SAS-Ultra. The SAS stands for South American Solidarity. They’re dedicated, or claim to be anyway, to freeing these countries from any foreign intervention whatsoever. The Carter Doctrine was prime fuel for their fire, but they’ve got a gut hatred for the Soviets and Cubans as well. I guess you could say they choose their enemies without prejudice.”

  “But they’re not part of the international terror network?”

  “No,” Marna acknowledged, “they’re the ultimate revolutionary isolationists. They even loathe publicity. I only know about them from some investigations I was pursuing on the destruction of oil fields in Paraguay. It turned up more questions than answers. I haven’t even got enough to file a report on them yet.”

  “What about Interpol or the CIA data banks?”

  Marna shook her head. “Nothing. Officially, SAS-Ultra doesn’t exist.”

  No wonder Vaslov found no trace of them, Dogan realized. The wind swirled through the town, its howling sounding too much like the screams of a child. Dogan suppressed a shudder. Marna wrapped her arms about herself.

  “But a group that wide in composition,” Dogan started, “would take one hell of a central organization.”

  “Masvidal is mostly to blame for that.” Marna’s eyes swept the dead town. “But you can forget about his troops having anything to do with what happened here. The people who were killed in this … massacre are the kind SAS-Ultra’s been fighting for, not against, if I’ve got my signals straight.”

  Dogan thought briefly. “But how do you suppose they’d react if a group as powerful as any nation moved in and started …” He grasped for a way of accurately describing the Committee’s methods. “… manipulating things? Displacing people and taking over huge acres of land for their own benefit?”

  Marna didn’t hesitate. “I think they’d go at them with everything they had.”

  It made sense, Dogan figured. SAS-Ultra was not part of San Sebastian but they were tied directly to the larger picture.

  Kill me and another will replace me.

  The threat the old hag in Schaan had shouted at Locke. Yes, SAS-Ultra possessed an inexhaustible supply of fanatical manpower, if not their own, then hired out from across the globe. The Committee had been using Locke all along to flush them out, and SAS-Ultra had responded by repeatedly trying to kill an innocent college professor made to look like their enemy. Sooner or later, the Committee would find and destroy them.

  Dogan looked beyond the edge of town to huge patches of dust between a pair of hillsides, a graveyard for the crops that had burned along with the people who nurtured them. Wordlessly he started walking, and Marna followed. Dogan moved right into the center of the dust patches, squinting his eyes against the wind. The ground was hard and parched. He felt a softening in his stomach. Here lay the key to everything, the missing piece of the puzzle. If only the grou
nd could tell him what horrible things had been done here before the massacre.

  Suddenly Marna was at his side, grasping his elbow.

  “Up there, high on that hillside.”

  Dogan held a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. He made out what looked to be a small shack camouflaged among what remained of the flora.

  “An old shack,” he noted. “Why the sudden concern?”

  “Because it wasn’t there last week.”

  Chapter 21

  “THIS DOESN’T HAVE TO be difficult,” Mandala said calmly as the giant Chinese lifted Locke onto a chair near a round table in the back of the room.

  The balcony’s glass doors were slightly open and a cool breeze slid through, awakening him to the madness.

  They‘ve got Greg! Oh, God, they‘ve got Greg!

  Thoughts of the severed finger, ring and all, sent a shudder through him. He couldn’t stop shaking.

  Mandala nodded to Shang and the giant started for the door, grabbing something from the dresser on the way. Mandala showed his gun. Locke noticed all lights in the room had been turned off except for a powerful pole lamp directly over him.

  “You have turned into quite an inconvenience for us,” Mandala said evenly. “But you can make up for that now. Your son will be released. You as well. All you have to do is answer a few questions.”

  Locke looked away from the dark man, flirted with the notion of jumping him while the giant was still gone, but dismissed it quickly after considering the gun. The man held it tightly, just out of range of a quick lunge. He was a professional and not about to be taken by a fool’s act.

  “Come now, Mr. Locke, you don’t want to make things any more hard on yourself than they already are. Why bother resisting? It is too late for you to do us any harm. We are unstoppable now. Only a few holes remain to be filled and we need you to point them out for us.”

  Locke remained silent.

  “Do you want further reassurances that your son will be released? I can’t give them. All I can give you is the promise that his finger might be only the beginning. If you don’t cooperate with us, we will cut him apart piece by piece.”

  The door opened and Shang returned with a white plastic bucket in his hand. Mandala returned the pistol to his belt. The giant’s presence was a better deterrent than bullets.

  “You see, Mr. Locke,” Mandala proceeded, “your son is being held by a team of Shang’s persuasion—experts in torture. They can remove any limb without the subject even passing out. Amazing, isn’t it? Tricks of the dreaded Tong Society, which was Shang’s first employer.”

  The giant lowered the plastic bucket to the table. It was filled with ice. Locke kept himself calm but left the fear plain on his face. He had to convince them he would give in. His chance would come, an opening to be taken advantage of. To create that opening, he had to make his captors underestimate him.

  The giant grinned.

  “Shang is quite an expert at torture himself, Mr. Locke. In fact, he quite enjoys it. But sensible men like ourselves are too civilized for such base undertakings, aren’t we? Simple answers to simple questions and Shang will stay just as he is.” Mandala settled himself in the chair across from Locke. “Now let us begin. You visited the Dwarf in Florence. Where is he hiding?”

  Locke swallowed hard, said nothing.

  “Where is he hiding, Mr. Locke?”

  Still no reply.

  Mandala shook his head as if disappointed. “We know you met with the Dwarf, Mr. Locke. Where can we find him?”

  Locke bit his lip to stop it from trembling.”

  “Shang!”

  In an instant the giant had leaned over Locke’s shoulder and grabbed his left hand, still bandaged from the wounds inflicted by the hag’s teeth in Schaan. Shang ripped the dressing off and grabbed the left pinky in one massive hand, clamping the other over the back of Locke’s hand.

  “Pain, Mr. Locke, is a great persuader,” the dark man said softly. “It is most effective when the level starts relatively low and is then increased gradually. I believe you must be given a sample.” He nodded.

  Shang bent the pinky finger back viciously until it snapped at the joint. Agony exploded through Locke’s hand and his teeth sliced through a section of his tongue. He had started to scream when the giant’s hand covered his mouth and forced back his breath. Blood bubbled in his ears. His left hand was trembling horribly. His pinky was bent at a sickening angle. The pain remained intense. Locke steeled himself against it as best he could.

  “As I said, Mr. Locke, just a sample,” the dark man explained. “It gets much worse from here.” He grabbed Locke’s battered hand almost tenderly and lowered it into the bucket of ice, covering the mangled pinky with cubes. The numbing started almost immediately, the pain retreating. “Relief is that simple. The comfort can continue in place of the pain. Just answer the question. Where is the Dwarf?”

  Inside Locke wanted to answer but he couldn’t let himself weaken. He focused on Greg and what they had done to him to maintain his rage, and thus his strength.

  “Very well, Mr. Locke, I will give you the benefit of the doubt on that one,” Mandala said patiently. “We will turn our attention to more important matters. Where is Grendel?”

  Locke stayed silent.

  “Where is the man you know as Ross Dogan?”

  Chris wet his trembling lips.

  “He is meeting you here soon, isn’t he? All we have to do is wait and he will come walking in.”

  Locke looked away.

  I‘ll kill you for what you did to Greg. Somehow, someway …

  “No,” the dark man continued, “he has gone somewhere, hasn’t he? He is looking for evidence to tell him what is going on. Tell us where he has gone, Mr. Locke, tell us where.”

  Chris just stared vacantly ahead.

  Mandala nodded quickly.

  Shang snatched Locke’s hand brutally from the ice and slammed it down on the table, clamping it there. The pain returned with a rush, exploding through the swelling portion of his hand. The giant was grasping his ring finger now.

  “Where can we find Grendel?”

  When Locke stayed silent, the dark man nodded again.

  Chris closed his eyes, feeling Shang’s hand tighten and lift. The snap sounded like glass breaking. The pain exploded everywhere and a kaleidoscope of colors burst before his closed eyes. He opened them to the sight of crackling silver lights. A scream rose within him, which the giant promptly choked off.

  Breathing hard, Locke glanced down at his two ruined fingers, twin distortions cracked clean at the joint. The pain was battering his head. He had never experienced anything like it.

  Mandala seemed to read his mind. “Yes, it hurts quite horribly, doesn’t it, Mr. Locke? Yet we are at the early stages of our evening. Would you like to hear what follows if you continue to be stubborn? We will repeat this process with two fingers on your right hand, and if you still persist we will be forced to become more … persuasive.” Suddenly Shang was flashing a knife in his hand. “You have undoubtedly heard of the Chinese torture in which the fingers are severed one knuckle at a time. Shang prefers a cruder version of this. The knife he is holding is a more elaborate version of a kitchen paring knife. He is a specialist in cutting the flesh away layer by layer until he reaches bone. One finger at a time. And you will not pass out, Mr. Locke. He will see to that.”

  Locke shuddered again, seized by a fear greater than any he thought could exist. These men were animals, brutal killers of woman and children, torturers. Dogan had described the Committee as being civilized, organized toward accomplishing their ends economically instead of with violence. Well, perhaps the architects of the Committee held to that credo, but the men they retained as soldiers simply ignored it. Locke knew he had to act while he still retained a measure of his senses. Any further agony might ruin his response and thought processes. He couldn’t afford that.

  The dark man was lifting his mangled hand back into the ice. It stu
ng his flesh at first but relief came quickly again after his skin grew accustomed to being pricked at by the sharp edges of the ice.

  Sharp edges … Yes, it might work! But there were two men to consider. If only one of them would leave the room or at least back off. If only …

  “Where is Grendel, Mr. Locke?” the dark man asked him. “Come now, my patience is wearing thin and so, I trust, is your tolerance of pain. Let us end this stupidity. We will find him whether you help us or not. How can you possibly think you can stay clear of us? We are everywhere.”

  Mandala paused to let his words sink in.

  We are everywhere… .

  Charney had said that too, and suddenly Locke saw the reality of his situation with stunning clarity. Nothing he could say here could save Greg’s life. If the boy was still alive. If he escaped, though, they might need to keep the boy alive to use as leverage against him later. It was time to move. Now!

  “Where is Grendel, Mr. Locke? I will ask you one—”

  Locke acted. Grasping the rim of the ice bucket as best he could with his twisted hand, he brought it up and over his shoulder, smashing it hard into the giant’s face in the hope that an edge might find Shang’s eyes. The giant reeled backward.

  As the dark man rose and went for his gun, Chris snapped to his feet, left side angling toward him. His next move astounded himself even more than it did Mandala. He used his ruined hand for the assault, not for surprise but simply because it was the closest, chopping hard into the bridge of the dark man’s nose. It was hard to tell at impact whose pain was greater. Locke screamed in terrible agony but still managed to tear the pistol from Mandala’s hand before the dark man pitched backward. Chris turned it on Shang, who was charging back toward him.

  Locke fired into his midsection, emptying the clip, the roar of the bullets sandblasting his ears. The giant slammed into the dresser and knocked it over with him to the carpet.

  The dark man was lunging for him. Locke twisted around the table and kicked him first in the stomach and then under the chin as he keeled over, slamming him against the wall. Wasting no time, Chris dropped the gun and scampered toward the narrow opening in the glass doors, ducked behind the curtains, and slid the doors open enough to pass through.