Extraordinary Powers

by Joseph Finder

  But something was wrong!

  I looked at the ex-KGB chief and saw that he was terrified. Of what?

  He was looking at me. “Follow the gold!” he croaked. Meaning what exactly?

  “The name!” I shouted out to him. “Give me the name!”

  “I can’t say it!” he croaked, his hands flailing, indicating the policemen. “They—”

  Yes. Of course he could not say it aloud, not in front of these men. “The name,” I repeated. “Think the name!”

  Orlov looked at me, baffled and desperate. Then he turned to the policemen.

  “Where are my people?” he said. “What have you done with my—”

  Suddenly, he appeared to jerk upward. There was a spitting sound, a sound I knew at once, and I turned and saw that one of the policemen was targeting Orlov with a submachine gun, its automatic fire cutting a grotesque swath into the old man’s chest. His arms and legs danced around for a second as he expelled one last, horrifying scream. Blood flew everywhere, spattering the stone floors, the walls, the burnished dining table. Orlov, his neck half severed from his body, was crumpled into a nightmarish, bloodied heap.

  I let out an involuntary shout of horror. I had pulled out my pistol, outmanned though I realized I was, but there was no point.

  Suddenly there was silence. The submachine gun-fire had stopped. Numbly, I raised my hands and gave myself up.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The carabinieri led me, handcuffed, through the vaulted door of Castelbianco, and slowly over to a beat-up blue police van.

  They looked and dressed like carabinieri, but of course they were not. They were murderers—but whose? Dazed from the horror, I could barely think straight. Orlov had summoned his own people, his protection, only to be surprised when others had arrived. But who were they?

  And why hadn’t they killed me as well?

  One said something quickly and quietly in Italian. The other two, surrounding me closely, nodded and guided me into the back of the van.

  It was not the proper time to move, to do anything sudden, so I went along with them bovinely. One of the policemen sat across from me in the back of the van, while another took the wheel and the third kept watch from the front seat.

  None of them spoke.

  I watched my police escort, a chubby and dour young man. He sat maybe two feet from me.

  I concentrated.

  I “heard” nothing; just the loud muffled roar of the engine as the van negotiated the dirt road out of the estate. Or so I assumed, since there were no windows in the back of the van. The only illumination came from a dome light. My wrists, cuffed in front of me at my lap, chafed.

  I tried, again, to empty my mind, to concentrate. In the last week or so this had become reflexive. I would free my mind as much as possible of distracting thoughts—let it become a blank slate, in a way; a receiver. And then I would hear the eddies and floes of thoughts in that slightly altered tonality that indicated I wasn’t actually hearing anything spoken aloud.

  I made my mind as blank, as receptive as possible, and in time … I “heard” my name … and then something else that sounded familiar … in that faint, floating way that told me it was thoughts.

  In English.

  He was thinking in English.

  He wasn’t a policeman, and he wasn’t Italian.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  My escort looked up at me, betraying only for an instant his surprise, then shrugged mutely, hostilely, as if he didn’t understand.

  “Your Italian is excellent,” I said.

  The van’s engine quieted, then stalled. We had stopped somewhere. It couldn’t be far outside the estate—we had been moving for only a few minutes—and I wondered where they had taken me.

  Now the doors to the van slid open, and the other two climbed in. One covered me with a gun while the other gestured to me to lie down. When I had done so, he began to attach black nylon restraints to my ankles.

  I made it as difficult for him as possible—kicking, wriggling. But with a crisp Velcro crunch he managed to fasten the wide black bands, binding my feet together. Then he discovered the second pistol, concealed in a holster at my left calf.

  “One more, guys,” this one said triumphantly.

  In English.

  “Better not be any others,” said the one who seemed to be in charge. His voice was deep, raspy, cigarette-husky.

  “That’s it,” the other said, running his hands along my legs and arms.

  “All right,” the one in charge said. “Mr. Ellison, we’re colleagues of yours.”

  “Prove it,” I said, lying prone. All I could see was the dome light immediately above me.

  There was no response. “You can choose to believe us or not,” the one in charge said. “Makes no difference to us. We just have to ask you a couple of questions. If you’re completely honest with us, you have nothing to worry about.”

  While he was speaking, I felt something cold and liquid spread over my bare arms, then my face, neck, then ears: a viscous liquid was being applied with a brush.

  “Do you know what this is?” the fake policeman in charge asked.

  I could taste the sweetness at the edge of my mouth.

  “I can guess.”

  “Good.”

  The three of them hoisted me out of the dark van, into the blinding brightness of the day. There was no point to struggling now. I wasn’t going anywhere. Looking around as I was carried out of the van, I saw trees, brush, a flash of barbed wire. We were still on the grounds of Castelbianco, not far from the entrance, in front of one of the small stone buildings I had noticed on the way in.

  They set me down on the ground just before the building. I could smell the loamy earth, then the putrescent odor of rotting garbage, and I knew where I was.

  Then the one in charge said: “All you have to do is tell us where the gold is.”

  Lying prone on the ground, the back of my head cold from the moist earth, I said, “Orlov wouldn’t cooperate. I barely had the chance to talk with him.”

  “That’s not true, Mr. Ellison,” the middle one said. “You’re not being honest with us.” He lowered a small, shiny object, which I now saw was a razor-sharp scalpel, to my face, and I closed my eyes instinctively. God, no. Don’t do it.

  There was a swift stroke across my cheek. I felt the shock of cold metal, then a needlelike, sharp pain.

  “We don’t want to cut you too badly,” the senior one said. “Please, just give us the information. Where is the gold?”

  I felt something hot and sticky oozing down the right side of my face. “I have no idea,” I said.

  The scalpel was now resting on my other cheek, cold and oddly pleasant.

  “I really dislike this, Mr. Ellison, but we don’t have any choice. Again, Frank.”

  I gasped out, “No!”

  “Where is it?”

  “I told you, I have no—”

  Another stroke. Cold, then stingingly hot, and I felt the blood on my face, running into the sticky bait-liquid they’d painted on me. Tears sprang to my eyes.

  “You know why we’re doing this, Mr. Ellison,” the man in charge said.

  I tried to wriggle over onto my stomach, but two of them were holding me firmly down. “Goddamn you,” I said. “Orlov didn’t know. Is that so hard for you to understand? He didn’t know—so I don’t know!”

  “Don’t make us do it,” the elder said. “You know we will.”

  “If you let me go, I can help you find it,” I whispered.

  He gestured with his pistol, and the junior two picked me up, one at my head, the other at my feet. I thrashed wildly, but my mobility was limited, and they had a firm grasp on me.

  Now they thrust me into the cold, dark dankness of the tiny stone building, putrid with the high, ripe odor of rotting garbage. I heard rustling. There was another smell, too, something acrid, like kerosene or gasoline.

  “They removed the trash yesterday,” the elder said, “so
they’re quite hungry.”

  More rustling.

  The crinkle of plastic; more rustling, this time more frantic-sounding. Yes; gasoline or kerosene.

  They set me down, my feet bound. The only light in the tiny, awful chamber came in from the door, against which I could see silhouetted two of the false carabinieri.

  “What the hell do you want?” I croaked.

  “Just tell us where it is, and we will take you out.” It was the raspy, deep voice of the one in charge. “It’s that simple.”

  “Oh, God,” I couldn’t help saying aloud. Never let them see your fear, but it was uncontainable now. A scratching, more rustling. There had to be dozens of them.

  “Your personnel file,” he went on, “tells us you’re extremely phobic of rats. Please, help us out, and this will all be over.”

  “I told you, he didn’t know!”

  “Lock it, Frank,” the one in charge barked out.

  The door to the stone house was slammed shut and bolted. For an instant, all was pitch-black, and then, as my eyes acclimated to the dark, everything took on a doleful amber cast. From all around there was scurrying, rustling. Several large, dark shapes moved on either side of me. My skin prickled.

  “When you’re ready to talk,” I heard from outside the stone house, “we’ll be here.”

  “No!” I yelled. “I’ve told you everything I know!”

  Something ran across my feet.

  “Jesus…”

  From outside I heard a hoarse voice addressing me: “Did you know that rats are what you might call ‘legally blind’? They operate almost entirely by sense of smell. Your face, with its blood and its coating of sweet liquid, will be irresistible to them. They will gnaw at you out of desperation.”

  “I don’t know anything more,” I bellowed.

  “Then I feel very sorry for you,” the hoarse voice came again.

  I felt something large and warm and dry and leathery brush against my face, against my lips, several of them, then many of them, and I couldn’t open my eyes, and I felt sharp incisions along my cheeks, sharp, unbearable jabs, a papery whisk-whisk sound, a tail whipping against my ear, moist feet against my neck.

  Only the knowledge that my captors were standing outside, waiting for me to succumb, kept me from bellowing in terrible, indescribable fear.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Somehow—somehow—I was able to keep my mind focused.

  I managed to wriggle upright, hurling off the rats as I did so, brushing them off my face and neck with my hands. In a few minutes I had the nylon restraints off, but little good that would do me, as the men waiting outside no doubt figured: the only way out of this massive stone structure was the door, which was securely bolted.

  I felt around for a gun until I realized that of course they had taken both of them. I had a few rounds of ammunition strapped to my ankles, beneath my socks, but they were useless without something to fire them.

  As my eyes grew used to the dark, I made out the source of the fuel odor. Several gallon cans of gasoline were stacked against one wall, beside an assortment of farm equipment. The “rat house,” as my Italian friend had called it, may have been for storing garbage, but it also stored materials used in repairing Orlov’s land—paper sacks of cement, plastic bags of fertilizer, rakes, fertilizer spreaders, mortar tools, scattered two-by-fours.

  As the rats bustled about me—I kept my limbs in constant motion to discourage them from attempting to crawl on me—I surveyed the meager assortment of tools for a way out. A rake, I calculated, would hardly survive an assault on the steel-reinforced door, nor would any of the other farm tools. Gasoline seemed the most obvious means of assault—but assault on what? And what could I ignite it with? I had no matches. And what if I did spill out the gasoline and manage somehow to set it afire? Then what? I would burn alive. That would benefit no one but my captors. Utter foolishness. There had to be a way.

  I felt the dry whisk of a rat’s tail against my neck, and I shuddered.

  From outside, a deep voice intoned: “All we need is the information.”

  The obvious thing to do was to make up information, pretend to break down and blurt it out.

  But that would never wash. They would expect that; they would be too well briefed. I had to get out of there.

  It was impossible; I was no Houdini; but I had to get out of there. The rats, fat brown little creatures with long, scaly tails, scurried around my feet, making little grunting noises. There were dozens of them. A few had climbed up the walls; two of them, crouched atop a fifty-pound bag of fertilizer, leapt toward me, scenting the blood that was congealing on my cheeks. Horrified, I flung out my hands to brush them away. One bit my neck. I thrashed wildly, managing to stomp a few to death.

  I knew I would not survive here much longer.

  It was the fertilizer bag that first caught my eye. In the dimness I was able to make out a label:

  CONCIME CHIMICO FERTILIZZANTE

  A yellow, diamond-shaped label proclaimed it to be an “oxidizer.” The stuff was used on grass, usually. Thirty-three percent total nitrogen content, the label stated. I moved closer, squinted. Derived of equal parts of ammonium nitrate and sodium nitrate.

  Fertilizer.

  Was it possible…?

  It was an idea. The likelihood of its working was not especially high, but it was worth it. There was simply no other way out.

  I reached down and removed the Colt .45 magazine from the strap underneath my left sock. They had taken the gun but overlooked the slim magazine.

  It was full: it contained seven rounds. Not much, but it might do. I extracted all seven rounds from the clip.

  A voice from outside the rat house: “Enjoy the rest of the day, Ellison. And the night, too.”

  Containing my horror, I made my way across the rat-crowded stone floor to one wall. One by one I jammed each cartridge into a narrow crack in the mortar. Now there was a row of them, their blunt gray tips sticking out.

  With a rusty old pair of pliers I’d found, I whacked the nose of each bullet to loosen the tight friction fit between bullet and cartridge case. Carefully, I closed the jaw of the pliers over each bullet tip, pulling at it, wiggling back and forth, until the bullet came out of its casing. This part of the cartridge was the projectile, the business part, the part that was propelled into a target. But I had no need of it. I needed, instead, what remained in each cartridge: the propellant and the primer.

  A trio of rats squirmed over my feet, one scampering over my knee, clawing at the fabric of my shirt, trying to make its unspeakable way up to my face. I gasped in terror, shuddered, slapped at the rats, knocked them to the stone floor.

  Now, barely recovering, I removed each brass cartridge casing from the crack in the wall and slowly dumped the small amount of propellant from each one onto a scrap of paper I’d torn from one of the cement sacks. The six cartridges yielded a good little pile of propellant, a dark gray substance made of tiny irregular spheres of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.

  By far the riskiest step was next: removing the primers. These are the small nickel cups, situated at the base of each cartridge, that contain a small quantity of the high-explosive tetracene. They are also extremely sensitive to percussive force. And, struggling as I was in the dark, surrounded by scurrying rats, my concentration was not at its height. Yet this had to be done with great caution.

  So I searched the small stone house quickly for something like a drill bit, but there was nothing even approximating it. A thorough search of every dark corner of the small structure might have yielded me something usable, but I simply could not bring myself to plunge my naked hands into a dark, squirming niche. I am not proud of my terror of rats, but we all have our phobias, and this one was, as I’m sure you agree, not entirely irrational. I would have to make do with the ballpoint pen in my pocket. It would do adequately. I removed its ink cartridge.

  Very, very carefully, I inserted the tip of the ink cartridge into the flash hole at
the base of the casing and nudged the first percussion cap out. The second one went much more easily, and in a matter of minutes I had extracted each of the primer cups from six of the cartridges, leaving one intact.

  I felt something dry and scaly brush against the back of my neck, and I shivered. My stomach knotted instantly.

  As dexterously as I could, I slipped each primer into the intact cartridge, stacking them up, one atop the other. Into the remaining space I poured the entire pile of propellant, then packed it down tight with a forefinger.

  I had, now, a tiny bomb.

  Next, I located a suitable length of two-by-four, a (rusty) length of pipe, a discarded soft-drink bottle, a cloth rag, a large rock, and an almost-straight long nail. This search took several minutes, an eternity it seemed, with the rats writhing across the ground, an ineffably horrifying moving carpet, it seemed to me. My stomach remained knotted, a tight, sore muscle of tension. I found myself shivering almost constantly.

  With the rock I hammered the nail into the lumber until its point had just emerged from the other side. Now the fertilizer. Of the several fifty-pound bags, two had a nitrogen content that ranged from eighteen to twenty-nine. One had a total nitrogen content of thirty-three percent. That was the one I selected. I tore open the bag and scooped out a handful, sprinkling it onto another large scrap of cement-bag paper. A small claque of rats wriggled their way up to the pile, their whiskers twitching with curiosity and greed. With the soda bottle I knocked them away. Their bodies were far more solid and muscular than I had anticipated. If I had to speak, I could not have done so, I was so paralyzed with fright, but somehow my autonomic nervous system kept me working away robotically.

  Rolling the soda bottle over the smooth, rounded prills of fertilizer yielded a fine powder. Repeating this process several times, I obtained a large pile of well-powdered fertilizer. In ideal conditions this step wouldn’t have been necessary, but these were hardly ideal conditions. For one thing, the sensitizing agent should have been something like nitromethane, the blue fluid used by hot-rod enthusiasts to increase the octane in fuel. But there was nothing of the sort around. There was only gasoline, which would have to do, though it was far less effective. So powdering the nitrogenous fertilizer, thereby decreasing the diameter of the prills, increasing the surface area of the stuff and making it more reactive, was the least I could do.