Bailey answered her, and his concern was evident. Something was worrying him. He tried to read the man’s lips but it was beyond him. He was so busy concentrating on Bailey’s lips that the first he knew of the gun by his neck was when the cold metal pressed up against his flesh. “Don’t even think about moving,” said a soft American voice.
Joker kept the binoculars pressed to his eyes, his mind racing. A second man appeared at the passenger window. He reached through and pulled out the ignition key. “Drop the binoculars,” said the first man, “and put both hands on the steering wheel.”
Joker did as he was told. “What’s up?” he asked.
“You’re British?” asked the man with his key.
Joker seized the opening. “I’m a tourist, I’m lost,” he said.
The gun was rammed hard against his throat. “With binoculars?” said the man to his right. “Don’t screw us around.”
From what Joker could see there was only one weapon, and that was pressed against his neck. If he was outside that would have been a major mistake, he could have twisted away from the gun and the man would have been close enough to hurt, with a slash to the throat or a backfist to the nose, but there was no room to move in the car so he had to sit where he was and wait. If the man kept as close when Joker climbed out of the car he’d be reasonably sure of overpowering him.
“Okay,” said the man to his right. “Keep your hands on the wheel while I open the door. You move your hands, you’re dead.”
“Hey, I’m not doing anything, I’m just sitting here,” said Joker. He chewed his gum and tried to look unconcerned.
The car door clicked and swung open. The gun was still against his neck and Joker weighed up the odds of pushing the door, slamming it into the man and grabbing for the gun. He decided against it. He felt the gun move away as the man stood to the side to open the door all the way. Joker’s gun was under the passenger seat but he knew he hadn’t the slightest chance of reaching it. He would make his move as soon as he got out of the vehicle. Two men but only one gun. He’d been up against worse odds before and triumphed.
The man on the right side of the car opened the passenger door. He bent down and Joker turned to see what he was doing. As he moved he realised his mistake, but he was too late, the butt of the gun smashed into Joker’s temple and everything went red and then black.
Cole Howard became progressively more impressed with Helen as the day wore on. Brand new desks and filing cabinets were delivered before ten o’clock and late in the morning white-overalled technicians arrived to install enough telephones for a small army, and a digital switchboard which they put on her desk. Calls could be put through the board or go direct to the extensions. Half a dozen FBI agents had arrived from Washington headquarters and they had been briefed by Hank O’Donnell before hitting the phones, contacting FBI offices throughout the country and wiring over photographs of the assassination team.
A light lit up on Helen’s switchboard and she took the call, while Howard and Ed Mulholland stood in front of a white board, drawing up the President’s schedule as a series of boxes, using different colours according to the level of risk: black for inside meetings where no sniper could reach him, green for places where he was moving and an unlikely target, and red for those venues where he was exposed and potentially vulnerable.
“Ed, there’s a call for you,” Helen called over.
“I’ll take it here, Helen,” he called, gesturing at the nearest extension. It warbled once and Mulholland picked it up. He listened, grinned, said a few words and then hung up. He beamed at Howard, wide creases forming in his craggy face. “Report from our Baltimore office. Mary Hennessy stayed at a hotel there two days ago. Positive ID, and we’re getting credit card details now.”
Howard made a fist and shook it. “Yes!” he hissed.
“We’re on the right track, Cole, no doubt about it,” said Mulholland, eagerly. “And we’re getting closer.”
Consciousness returned to Joker like waves breaking over a beach, but each time his mind cleared an undertow of blackness would pull him back and he’d return to nightmares where guns fired, knives slashed and men died screaming. The pain was there whether he was conscious or not, a dull ache behind his right ear and a burning soreness in his wrists as if his hands were being sawn off with a blunt hacksaw.
During periods of consciousness his eyes would flicker open and he could see the tips of his shoes resting on the floor, limp as if they belonged to a dead man. He was somewhere dark and hot with metal pipes above his head and wooden panels on the wall. The pain in his wrists became sharper as if hot needles were being forced between the bones. His shoulders were aching and he could feel his arms being pulled from their sockets, then he surrendered to the dark undercurrent again and he dreamed of a dark woman, a long, sharp knife in her hand and evil in her eyes, laughing as she cut and sliced. Some time later his eyes flickered open and she was there, her face only inches from his, a cruel smile on her face, saying something, but he couldn’t hear her because of the ringing in his ears. He fainted again and when his eyes opened next she was gone and he was alone with the pain.
His arms had become tubes of meat, numb in the middle with intense, searing pain at either end. He lifted his head, a movement which sent waves of nausea rippling through his stomach, and fought to focus on his arms which were stretched out above him. His wrists were shackled by a shiny steel chain flecked with blood, and the chain was looped over a metal pipe which ran across the ceiling. The chain was supporting all his weight, and it was biting deeply into his wrists. He tried to push himself up with his feet but he could barely reach and he teetered on his toes. He was still groggy and the effort of balancing was too much — he slumped forward and the pain made him grunt.
Time dragged interminably. His head throbbed with the rhythm of his thudding heart, the chain around his wrists felt as if it had worn through to his bones, and he could feel the sockets of his shoulders about to pop. His mouth was bone dry and his throat had swollen up so much that he had to force each breath into his lungs. He squinted up at his wrists and he saw the chain was fastened with a small brass padlock. Another, bigger, padlock kept the chain secured to the pipe. He knew how to pick locks, but his hands were in such bad shape he also knew that it would be beyond him, even if he could reach them.
He tried to balance on his toes again, to give his arms some measure of relief, but when his toes failed him and he had to drop down, the pain in his wrists was a hundred times worse. He had no way of measuring time, but daylight was seeping into the room from somewhere behind him so he knew it wasn’t yet dark.
Over to his right was a flight of steps leading up to a door. At the base of the stairs was a workshop table and various tools were lying there: a file, a set of screwdrivers, a saw, pruning-shears, a pair of bolt-cutters. There was a box of table salt and a wooden block from which protruded the black plastic handles of a set of kitchen knives. Joker had a bad feeling about the knives and the salt.
His shirt was soaked through with perspiration and he felt beads of sweat dribble down the back of his legs. The door at the top of the stairs opened and a figure was framed in the light behind it. The figure reached for a light switch and fluorescent lights blinked into life, flooding the basement with stark, white light. Joker screwed up his eyes and tried to focus on the figure on the top of the stairs. Shoes clicked on the stairs and two other figures appeared at the doorway. Joker heard masculine voices and a harsh laugh and then she was standing in front of him. Mary Hennessy. Her hair was dyed blonde and lightly permed, but other than that she had changed little from the last time he’d seen her, face to face. “I know you,” she said quietly.
Joker tried to speak but his throat was too sore and dry to form words. He coughed and tasted blood at the back of his mouth.
She turned to the two men behind her. “Gentlemen, meet Sergeant Mike Cramer of the Special Air Service. A hired assassin for the British Government.”
; Joker shook his head but the movement made him dizzy and his vision rippled like a mirage. He groaned and tried to lick his dry lips. One of the men, with a receding hairline and a thick, black moustache, spoke. “Are you sure?” he asked Hennessy. His accent seemed vaguely Middle Eastern.
“Oh yes,” said Hennessy. “I’m quite sure.” She turned back to Joker and grabbed his shirt. She twisted and ripped it open so that his chest and stomach were bared, gleaming wetly under the fluorescent lights. She stepped to the side so that the men could see the thick, raised scar which ran from his sternum and across his stomach, down to his groin. Slowly, almost sensuously, she ran her index finger along the length of the scar, down to where it disappeared into his jeans. Joker felt his scrotum contract defensively. “I can see Sergeant Cramer remembers, too,” she said softly.
The Colonel was clearing his desk before going home, loading all confidential papers into the sturdy wall-mounted safe behind his desk and signing a stack of memos and requisition forms with his fountain-pen. The administrative work was the least attractive part of his job, but he knew that more careers died on the bureaucratic battlefields than ever were lost in combat. He treated paperwork exactly the way he faced a military operation: scouting ahead for ambushes, looking for terrain that would give him an advantage, and always keeping an eye over his shoulder for sneak attacks.
His telephone rang and he answered it as he read a report on a recent training exercise in the Brecon Beacons. The voice on the other end of the line was a typical upper-class British accent, polite but slightly bored, and the caller apologised for bothering the Colonel even though what he had to say was of the highest priority. “We have contact,” said the voice.
The Colonel put his pen down on the desk. “Where?” he asked.
“A house near Chesapeake Bay, not far from Baltimore,” said the voice. “Cramer followed a man there and was apprehended outside the house. We believe the man he was following was Matthew Bailey.”
The Colonel smiled. “Excellent,” he said.
“There was also a woman with Bailey. We don’t have a positive identification yet, but it could be Hennessy.”
“Even better,” said the Colonel. The operation was proving to be every bit as successful as he’d hoped. “How many men do you have on the ground there?”
“Two at the moment, but more on the way. I don’t want to move before we have sufficient manpower on site.”
“That is understood,” answered the Colonel.
“You realise there could well be some delay, and that Cramer has been compromised? I wouldn’t want any misunderstanding on this point.”
“That is also understood,” said the Colonel. That had been the position from the start. Mike Cramer was on his own. And he was expendable.
Joker coughed and spluttered awake, as water dripped down his face and splattered onto the concrete floor of the basement. He shook his head but immediately regretted it as the pain was acute, as if his brain was being squeezed by giant pincers. His eyelids were heavy and it required an effort of will to force them open. Mary Hennessy was standing in front of him, a red plastic tumbler in her hand. Satisfied that he had regained consciousness, she dropped the tumbler into a bucket of water which stood on the floor next to the workshop table. “Don’t fall asleep on me, Cramer,” she said. “I’d hate you to miss any of this.”
The bright fluorescent lights burned into Joker’s eyes and he screwed up his face as he tried to focus. His hands felt as if they’d swollen up like blood-filled balloons and that the slightest tear would cause them to burst. He tried moving his fingers. He could flex them, but the movement brought with it an agonising pain. He licked his cracked lips, trying to get some of the moisture from his face.
“Can’t talk, huh?” said Hennessy. “Perhaps you’d like a drink?” She bent down and refilled the tumbler. She held it to his lips but as his mouth opened gratefully she took it away. “Maybe later,” she said softly. “When you’ve told me what I want to know.” She let the tumbler fall back into the water.
He and Hennessy were alone in the basement. He didn’t remember the men going back up the stairs and closing the door, and he didn’t remember passing out. He was sure that the bucket of water wasn’t there the last time he was conscious. He looked down at it longingly. The surface rippled and Joker licked his lips again. This time, he tasted blood.
“Normally I give a little speech at this point,” said Hennessy, standing in front of him with her hands on her hips. She took an elastic band and used it to tie back her hair in a ponytail. “I explain that you’ll tell me everything eventually and that you might as well save yourself the pain. I usually lie, too. I explain that once you’ve told me everything, I’ll let you go.” She smiled. A few strands of hair were loose across her forehead and she brushed them away. “But you’ve been through this before, so we don’t have to bother with the preliminaries.” Slowly, her eyes never leaving his, she started to roll up the sleeves of her white linen shirt. It was hot in the basement and she was sweating, the moisture glistening on her tanned skin as she moved. “Do you have anything to tell me, Sergeant Cramer?”
Joker shook his head, the movement making him wince. The tendons in his legs felt as if they were on fire and his toes ached from the effort of maintaining his balance. His shirt was ripped open at the front and she’d unzipped his jeans so that his stomach was hanging out, the white scar lying against the flesh like a snake burrowing down into his groin. “Not Sergeant Cramer,” he said, the words coming out slowly. “Not any more.”
“That’s right,” she said, smiling brightly. “You left the SAS, didn’t you?”
She finished rolling up her shirt-sleeves and wiped her hands on her cotton shorts. She breathed deeply, her chest rising and falling, droplets of sweat dripping down her cleavage. She undid the top button of her shirt and waved the material to and fro, trying to create a breeze that would cool her skin.
“So what was the problem, Mr Cramer?” She put the emphasis on the civilian title. “Couldn’t hack it any more?” She picked up a large pair of scissors and tested the point with her fingertips. Satisfied with their sharpness, she stood by Joker’s side, so close that he could smell her sweat. She grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and pushed the blades of the scissors up his arm, catching the material. “Was that it? Couldn’t take the pressure?” She began to cut the shirt, along the top of the sleeve to the neck, taking care not to catch his flesh. The scissors made small tearing sounds like an animal feeding.
The tips of the scissors grazed Joker’s neck and he tried to twist his head away. The movement caused him to lose his balance and his full weight pulled down on the chains which bit into his swollen wrists. Hennessy waited until he’d hauled himself back on to the balls of his feet before continuing to cut away the shirt, this time from the sleeve down to the shirt tail. She reached the bottom of the shirt and it fell loose around Joker’s waist. She walked behind him, stroking his back with the handle of the scissors. Joker’s skin crawled. He wondered if he could kick her hard enough to do damage, but he dismissed the thought. Even if he killed her, the men were still upstairs and he could see no way of freeing himself from the chain around his wrists. “You’re not so fit any more, are you, Mr Cramer?” She cut the opposite side of his shirt away and threw the scraps of material onto the floor. She walked slowly back to the workbench and put down the scissors before turning back and scrutinising the man hanging before her. “I remember last time what a hard body you had, Mr Cramer. Flat stomach, strong thighs, muscular arms. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on you then. Have you taken a look at yourself recently?” She slowly walked up to stand in front of him and placed a soft hand on his stomach.
“Do you have a girlfriend? What does she think about the mark I left on you?” She drew one red-painted nail along the thick scar. “Or are you too embarrassed to show it to anyone?”
She forced down the zipper of his jeans and pulled them down around his knees. She left them ther
e, killing any idea he had of trying to kick her. In one swift movement she yanked down his boxer shorts, leaving him totally exposed. Joker felt his manhood shrink and his scrotum contract, sensing danger and trying to beat a retreat. Hennessy smiled at his reaction. “Can’t talk? Is that it?” She bent down and refilled the tumbler. “Perhaps a drink might help.” She threw the water into his face, hard. This time Joker managed to open his mouth and drink some of the water. He swallowed gratefully.
“So, why were you following Bailey?” she asked.
Joker dragged up what saliva he could and spat at her. He missed, and Hennessy smiled and shook her head sorrowfully. She refilled the tumbler with fresh water and put it on the workbench. “I thought you’d say that,” she said as she ripped open the box of salt. She poured a handful into the tumbler and stirred it with the blades of the scissors. “You know the routine, Mr Cramer. Any time you want me to stop, just start talking.” She picked up one of the kitchen knives and held it up to the light as she scrutinised the stainless-steel blade. She seemed unhappy with her selection and chose another. She walked over to Joker and held the tip of the blade under his nose, close to his left nostril. It was a short-handled knife with a sharp point, the type used to cut vegetables. She flicked the nostril with the blade, but not hard enough to draw blood. Joker stared at the knife. Hennessy rested the point against his left nipple and gently circled it with the blade, the way a lover might tease with her finger. She walked around Joker slowly, her eyes on his, drawing the knife along his skin but not cutting the flesh.
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