Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

by George C. Chesbro

  "If I go out, I'll make sure there's someone I can trust here to answer the phone; that person will always know where to reach me.

  "Yeah." I sighed. The anger and resentment toward Veil had drained out of me, and I was now grievously sorry for the words I had spoken to this man to whom I owed so much, including my life. I wished now I could retreat a few steps back along that crooked, pitted road of venomous words, but I didn't know how. "Thanks, Veil," I concluded wearily.

  "I'll take care of things on this end, Mongo. I'll call Mary now and ask her to pick me up on her way to the airport, and I'll make sure Garth gets your message. If you move out before you hear from either of us, make sure you leave a number where we can reach you." "Right."

  "May I say something now?"

  "You may say something now."

  "I want you to go to the Amnesty International offices in Geneva and talk to a man there by the name of Gerard Patreaux. He's an A.I. regional director." "He a friend of yours?"

  "No. Unless he's familiar with my paintings, my name won't mean anything to him. But I know who he is, and I have reason to believe he can tell you things about John Sinclair nobody else can—if he chooses to do so. My suggestion is to tell him everything that's happened and then see what he has to say. And get some rest. Remember that you're not the one who killed those people."

  "All right, Veil," I said quietly. I paused, swallowed hard. "Look, I want to say—"

  "Keep your head down, Mongo," Veil interrupted, and hung up.

  It seemed like his way of telling me the bridges of our friendship I'd burned couldn't be rebuilt.

  * * *

  A few hours of sleep gave me a second wind. John Sinclair wasn't a subject I wanted to discuss over the telephone with a man I'd never met, so I called the Amnesty International office in Geneva and, in my fractured French, asked for an appointment with Gerard Patreaux. Fortunately, Frederickson and Frederickson had, over the years, done a sizable amount of good works, pro bono, for the global human rights watch group, and—more fortunate still—Patreaux knew it. Patreaux, who spoke English with virtually no accent, said he would be delighted to meet with me and graciously invited me to his home that evening for dinner at eight. Despite the restrictions on my travel, I said I'd be there and wrote down the directions.

  In the car, I told Carlo I wanted to be in Geneva within two and a half hours; the problem was how to elude my watchers in their pale blue Volvo while I was being driven around in a half-block-long limousine. Carlo's simple yet effective solution was to drop me off at the entrance to a chic restaurant known for its good food and leisurely dining. I went in, said "Ciao" as I walked right past the startled maître d', kept going through the dining room into the kitchen, where I waved to the surprised cooks before proceeding out the back door, where Carlo was waiting for me in the narrow driveway used by delivery trucks.

  At ten minutes to eight, Carlo was pulling the limousine up to the curb in front of Gerard Patreaux's modest stone house in a modest neighborhood just outside the Geneva city limits. Although Carlo insisted he had already eaten a large lunch earlier in the day, I knew he had not. I tried to get him to take some money to go and buy himself something to eat, but he refused. Gerard Patreaux suddenly appeared in the doorway of his home and solved the problem by inviting Carlo to come in and have a meal in the kitchen. This offer Carlo accepted. With my chauffeur ensconced in the kitchen and being served by a cook, Patreaux and I proceeded into his small study for drinks.

  The Swiss was a slight man, five feet six or seven, with a gentle, caring face and expressive, light blue eyes. He poured himself a glass of wine, while I asked for a Scotch on the rocks. We chatted for a few minutes in the book-lined study, and I seized the first pause in the conversation to get to the reason for my surreptitious journey.

  "Mr. Patreaux," I said carefully, setting my drink down on a stone coaster on the stone table next to me, "I have a reason for being here that I didn't want to mention over the phone. As a matter of fact, I could use your help."

  He smiled, shrugged. "But of course. How may I be of service to you?"

  "I need to talk to you about John Sinclair."

  It seemed to me that the question startled him for just a moment. He set his drink down, patted his mouth with a paper cocktail napkin, then stared at me quizzically. "You mean John Sinclair the terrorist?"

  "The same."

  He continued to stare at me, his face revealing nothing more than puzzlement. "I'm afraid I don't understand," he said at last.

  "I was told by a friend of mine that you might have vital information about Sinclair that I could use. It's very important to me."

  Gerard Patreaux shook his head. "Who is this friend?"

  "His name's Veil Kendry."

  He thought about it, said, "I don't believe I know a Veil Kendry. It's an unusual name. I would remember."

  "He said you didn't know him."

  "Then why should he think I would know anything about John Sinclair that could not be found in the newspapers?"

  "Mr. Patreaux, I don't have the slightest idea."

  "Are you certain he meant me?"

  "He definitely meant you."

  The Amnesty International official thought about it some more, then raised his arms in an elegant gesture of helplessness. He was beginning to look slightly pained, and I was beginning to feel more than a little foolish. My anger toward Veil was beginning to build again.

  "Did this friend of yours give any indication of what it was that he thought I could tell you?"

  "No, sir." And he damn well should have.

  "Perhaps he was playing a joke on you?"

  "No," I said, my renewed anger at Veil now blending with frustration at the thought that I was probably wasting my time in addition to risking arrest and incarceration for violating the ban on my traveling outside Zurich.

  "May I ask why gathering information about John Sinclair is important to you?"

  I proceeded to fill Gerard Patreaux in on the sequence of events that had occurred since I had acquiesced to Emmet P. Neuberger's plea that I come to Switzerland to check on the investigation into the theft of his foundation's money. Then I told him about the death I was leaving in my wake. I had rather hoped that my narrative might jog his memory, but the only emotions apparent on the man's face were pain and pity when I described the bullet-ripped bodies of the people at the hotel who had taken the bullets fired at me. He had been sitting very straight as I spoke, his eyes cast down. After I had finished, he sighed heavily, then looked up into my eyes.

  "Dr. Frederickson," he said softly, "I can appreciate the grave circumstances which brought you here, and your present state of mind. The events are . . . so recent. You must be in a state of great shock. I deeply regret that your friend was misinformed."

  It was my turn to shrug. "Yeah, well, that's not your fault."

  "But you will still share a meal with me?"

  There was a sour taste in my mouth and a knot in my stomach the liquor had done nothing to ease. I wasn't hungry. The fact of the matter was that I wanted nothing more than to go back to my hotel and go to bed. However, I was unwilling to offend the kind and gracious man who was my host, and so I resolved to try to be a gracious guest. I said that of course we would share a meal, and we rose and went into his dining room.

  The fine dinner was built around thick Veal chops, and I found I had more appetite than I'd thought. Soon we were on a first-name basis, and I was glad I had come, despite my disappointment at not getting what I'd come for. I enjoyed the company of this man, and the meal and conversation provided a welcome respite from the tension and vivid memories of violent death that waited for me back in Zurich. Throughout dinner, as we chatted about the work of Amnesty International and other things, I thought I caught the other man watching me with an intensity that was incongruous with the relative lightness of our conversation, as if he were gauging, perhaps judging, me.

  "Mongo," Patreaux said to me as he poured coffee for
both of us, then lit a French cigarette of aromatic black tobacco, "if I may say so, I still don't quite understand why you are so intent on investigating Sinclair. This is clearly a police matter, and I'm told that Interpol, the Zurich police, and even the Swiss Army are pursuing the man with utmost vigor. What do you expect to accomplish that those combined forces can't?"

  "They just want to catch him. I . . . have something else in mind."

  Patreaux dragged deeply on his cigarette, then blew a thin stream of smoke out the side of his mouth as he raised his eyebrows slightly. "Ah," he said in a curiously neutral tone, as if he did not wish to insult me by pointing out how ridiculous I must have sounded. "But how can you ever hope to find him in order to accomplish this 'something else' you have in mind?"

  "Gerard, at the moment I don't have the foggiest notion. But the fact is that I'm highly motivated, since he seems to want to kill me. I don't know why, but I have the feeling that the key to understanding everything that's happening is in his past. If I can find out more about that past, it may give me the answer to the question of why he wants to kill me, and it may also give me some insight into how and where he may be vulnerable. It's a pretty faint hope, but it's the only one I have. I don't much care for playing the role of passive target, so I'm trying to find some way of going on the offensive. Poking around in his past is the only means of attack I have right now. If I can understand more about him, maybe I can find a way to defeat him."

  "I see," Patreaux said distantly as he gazed over my head, as if there were something or someone behind me. He drew in another lungful of smoke, then abruptly stubbed out his cigarette, looked up at me, and smiled brightly. "Well, then, perhaps you would care for some brandy?"

  'Thank you, Gerard," I said, rising from the table, "but I'm going to pass on the brandy. I think it's time I went home. You've been a wonderful host, it was a lovely meal, and I thank you."

  I turned and started toward the kitchen to get Carlo, stopped when Patreaux said, "It's occurred to me just now that I may know what it was your friend was referring to when he said I might be able to tell you something about Chant Sinclair."

  "Really?" I said, turning back to face the other man. The dinner, liquor, and talk had mellowed me, but now the tightness in my stomach had returned; but it was the kind of tension that hope can sometimes bring, and it was not unwelcome. "And what would that be?"

  "You will have some brandy, then?"

  "Sure," I replied in a neutral tone as I returned to my chair and sat down, watching him now as carefully as I thought he had been watching me all evening. "I'm not driving."

  Patreaux rose and went to an antique, carved wooden sideboard, opened it, and took out a decanter filled with a dark amber liquor. He poured the brandy into two balloon snifters, handed one to me. He did not sit back down at the table, but stepped back against the wall next to the sideboard, where his face was half hidden in shadow.

  "What occurred to me is that there's a story about Sinclair you may not have heard," Patreaux said casually. "As a matter of fact, it involves Amnesty International. I don't know how much of it is true, but it does contradict the general belief that Sinclair has never been captured. I can't verify the veracity of the story, and I frankly can't see how it could be of any use to you."

  "I'd still like to hear it, Gerard."

  The slight man now emerged from the shadows near the sideboard, sat back down across from me. He sipped at his brandy, then set the snifter down to his right. "One of Amnesty International's chief concerns is, of course, the abuse of human rights— especially the use of torture. Torture is a common practice in many countries, but what is confounding is that today there are upwards of fifty-five countries with governments that officially sanction the use of torture by the police and armed forces. Adding to the horror of this situation is the fact that, in most cases of torture, the aim is not to extract information, but to break the bodies and minds of dissidents; torture becomes a tool of political terror and oppression. The secret police will pick up a known dissident, break him or her beyond repair but still living, and then release that individual back into society, where the condition of the victim's body and mind will serve as a warning to other dissidents of what could happen to them if they do not mend their subversive ways."

  The Swiss paused, either to gather his thoughts or to give me a chance to ask questions. I remained silent, watching him. I knew more than a bit about torture and its long-term effects, perhaps even more than Gerard Patreaux, but I didn't care to talk about it.

  Patreaux took another sip of brandy, continued, "But there are, of course, cases where the purpose of torture is to extract information the authorities feel is vital to state security, or whatever, from an individual who feels it is equally vital to keep the information from the authorities, and would much prefer to die rather than talk. For these people, the perceived emotional anguish they would suffer from talking is greater than the physical agony they are suffering at the moment. If such a person is trained to resist torture, if he or she can successfully evade and dissemble under great duress, then the authorities and their torturers have a real problem. Such a person may very much wish to die, especially after the torturers' first pass at him or her, and this desire can often speed up the process. There is only so much agony the human mind and body can endure at one time before the nervous system begins to shut down, resulting in unconsciousness or a general numbing process. This kind of situation can be even further complicated when the authorities, for one reason or another, must eventually exhibit the victim to the outside world, and it cannot be obvious that the victim has been tortured. This is the problem faced by some renegade police departments in your Western democracies: torture may be used to extract confessions, or sometimes merely to punish, but care must be taken not to leave marks on the victim that could prove embarrassing at a subsequent hearing or trial.

  "For these difficult cases, the average torturer—one who knows only how to break bones, burn flesh, or tear out fingernails until the victim talks—just won't get the job done. Since the torturers cannot risk the premature—from their point of view— death of the victim, a specialist is often brought in, someone who can manage to keep retuning the victim's nervous system to register a maximum degree of pain while keeping the victim alive. Very often this person is a specially trained physician. We call these people torture doctors.

  "The most successful and notorious torture doctor was a man by the name of Richard Krowl, a renegade Harvard Medical School graduate who, at one time, was considered a brilliant researcher into the causes and treatment of chronic pain. He ended up a torture doctor after he was barred from both research and general practice as a result of conducting secret, unethical, and illegal research experiments at some university. apparently, he really believed he was conducting important research that could be done in no other way." Patreaux paused, shook his head in disgust. "You know, it's really quite remarkable how some people can rationalize virtually anything they do, no matter how vile."

  "Indeed," I agreed quietly.

  "After his teaching credentials and license were lifted, Krowl started free-lancing as a torture doctor for various Central and Latin American dictatorships. He ended up with his own special torture institute, if you will, a training facility for torturers located on an island twenty miles off the coast of Chile that was financed, for the most part, by the right-wing governments he was working for. We called it Torture Island, and it was there that Krowl and his staff of resident torturers carried on his so-called research into pain to his heart's content, using as subjects political prisoners his backers had sent there for no other reason than punishment and death. It was also used as a training school for would-be torturers sent there by the sponsoring countries. Krowl would also, on occasion, accept responsibility for extracting information from difficult subjects sent to him by any government or government agency willing to pay his reportedly very high fee. In fact, we have reason to believe that Krowl's services were contr
acted for, on more than one occasion, by such unlikely and mismatched clients as MI5, the Mossad, the CIA, and the KGB."

  "But you could never prove it."

  "Correct. Ironically, not a few of the torturers on Krowl's staff were former police officers from various countries who had been trained in interrogation techniques in the United States as part of law enforcement exchange programs. Americans, on the whole, aren't all that much interested in torture, as long as it's the citizenry of some other country who are being tortured. Your Congress routinely votes financial aid to right-wing governments widely known to employ torture as a means of political repression. For that reason, in a very real sense Torture Island was largely financed by the recycled tax dollars of American citizens. We felt the situation would change if we could obtain incontrovertible evidence that American citizens had been delivered into the hands of foreign torturers by an agency of their own government. We believed that the outcry in the American media would be sufficient to force the offending governments to withdraw their funding—and use—of Richard Krowl and thus shut down Torture Island.

  "The problems involved in obtaining proof were formidable. Because he fancied himself a serious researcher, it was assumed that Dr. Krowl kept voluminous records on the island, but Torture Island was twenty miles offshore, in shark-infested waters, surrounded by jagged coral reefs, with sheer escarpments on all sides. In short, it was inaccessible by any means of transportation except helicopter. There was one scheduled helicopter run per week, to bring in supplies and ferry prisoners, and the skies were carefully watched the rest of the time by heavily armed guards."

  "What about the testimony of former prisoners?" I asked, intrigued by this story of Richard Krowl and Torture Island, but wondering what any of it had to do with John Sinclair.

  "The identity of any prisoner sent to Torture Island was always a carefully guarded secret. Many, probably most, of the victims sent there for interrogation were subsequently murdered, probably fed to the sharks. Those marked for return to their societies, even had we been able to identify and find them, would have had their minds so mutilated by the experience that their testimony would have been useless. So, for years, all we were left with were the persistent rumors."