Splendid Isolation

by Helena Maeve

  “Dorset was here seven months ago,” Manuel pointed out. He had been at the Cottage long enough to know that Cole had enough underlings to do his dirty work for him. He didn’t need to show up in person for his orders to be carried out.

  Cole gave a meditative tilt of the head. “And I was otherwise engaged. Your point?”

  The sound of approaching footfalls spared Manuel from having to answer.

  He heard Arthur tried to bar passage to the other residents, but breakfast was too powerful a call. Silas alone raised his voice in a noisy protest.

  Manuel had no difficulty picturing the woman who didn’t speak glaring fiercely at Arthur for his attempt to delay.

  Soon the other minders would become involved.

  “We should take this elsewhere…before we end up with a revolution on our hands,” Cole mused. “I seem to remember a patio somewhere around here…”

  Manuel didn’t move. “I’m not allowed outside without my tracker.” It was a privilege to be off the electronic ball and chain at all.

  “Today,” Cole answered primly, “you are.”

  He turned on his heel and summarily made for the conservatory, leaving Manuel to follow.

  The pressing desire to thwart his wishes couldn’t measure up against Manuel’s curiosity. With bound hands, he picked up his mug on the way out of the kitchen.

  The garden was an unkempt jungle of weeds and rebellious, fuzzy dandelions. A few shrubs persisted in the shade of an ancient sycamore. Someone, perhaps imagining lazy summer afternoons with a cup of tea and a good book, had once thought it sensible to slot a bench beneath the drooping branches. The wood had rotted since, leaving sunken boards and a naked, rusted iron frame to mark the focal point of the yard. Weeds grew around it, hiking higher along its orange-black skeleton with every passing year.

  It was an appropriate vista, given the circumstances.

  “Do you not have a lawn mower here?” Cole wondered, as he slid back one of the patio chairs. Steel legs scraped the flagstone loud enough to startle a pair of wagtails hopping along the hedgerow.

  Manuel followed their flight with his eyes. “I’m not allowed to use knives or razors. I doubt I’d be allowed gardening supplies.”

  “Hmm.”

  “It grows on you,” he went on, because he could—because needling Cole was the first fun he’d had in days. “We call it bush country. Besides, I don’t spend much time out here.”

  Partly because he wasn’t permitted, but mostly because his daylight hours were otherwise accounted for. For some reason, most of his interrogators preferred the snug den at the front of house as a venue for their work.

  The lie detector was still there, awaiting further use, along with other implements necessary to the extraction of truth. The recently installed floor drains were particularly useful when it came to more enhanced techniques.

  “Yes, I’ve read the reports.” Cole sipped demurely at his tea. “I didn’t see a tree in the living room. Did you take it down already?”

  A spark of annoyance flickered under Manuel’s skin. He laughed it off. “What do you think this is? A halfway house?”

  “No tree, then.”

  “No.” Silas had kicked up a fuss about it during one of his more lucid moments, claiming that it was part of his Christian faith.

  The response from the higher-ups remained the same. No tree, no Christmas supper.

  “We watched the Queen’s speech, though,” Manuel recalled, though he was hard pressed to remember what Her Majesty had said.

  The clearer the past became, the more recent events seemed to blur and fade.

  “Fancy that,” Cole retorted, flatly.

  When he didn’t elaborate, Manuel wondered if he was being mocked. He knew that Cole had it in him to be cruel. This job coaxed out malice in those who strove to hide it and engendered it in those who had none, but it wasn’t just that.

  Cole had been cold and calculating long before Section had sunk its teeth into him. Now he was…angry, Manuel realized suddenly.

  We become the people we’re meant to become. And Cole wanted to be above house calls.

  Manuel didn’t sit, but standing beside the cast iron table while Cole lounged in his seat offered no illusion of superiority. At length, curiosity got the better of him.

  “So is this the last and final warning?” he asked, maneuvering around handcuffs to bring the tea to his lips. “Tell us what we want to know or else?” He knew full well that he hadn’t been the most forthcoming since he’d turned himself in.

  It seemed sensible that Cole would start to question the deal he’d made.

  “I don’t threaten.”

  “Yet,” Manuel amended, forcing a tepid smile. I know how you think, remember?

  His tea tasted better than it had when he or Arthur made it. He drank it with small gulps, savoring every swallow.

  Were this the only area in which Cole excelled, it would have been easy to brush aside the show of kindness. As it stood, his generosity only served to trigger a hitch in Manuel’s pulse.

  Section never offered a carrot without brandishing a stick. Someone had said as much to him once—someone he trusted.

  “This garden really is a mess,” Cole mused after a long, silent beat.

  Manuel hummed in agreement. He was fairly certain they weren’t talking about the jungle of nettles and weeds.

  Chapter Two

  Cole didn’t stay long for his impromptu visit and he didn’t ask any questions Manuel found suspicious.

  After breakfast, Cole checked his watch and stood gracefully from the patio chair. They exchanged no goodbyes and Manuel didn’t ask if they would do this again. He had very few cards left to play. Squandering them on vagaries like loneliness wouldn’t help in the long term.

  “You all right?” Arthur asked, once the nondescript Renault in the driveway could no longer be heard rumbling down the crooked coastal lane.

  “Of course.” Manuel rinsed out his cup and slotted it neatly into the dishwasher, handcuffs clicking all the while. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Arthur’s answer was a shrug. Sometimes, he seemed genuinely concerned for Manuel. It was…touching. It also meant that poor, smitten Arthur would never climb any higher in Section ranks.

  This industry called for compartmentalization. Cole was a perfect example. Arthur got attached.

  “They’re ready for you,” he told Manuel with a bracing sigh.

  Cole’s drop-in must not count as a session.

  Manuel gripped the counter with both hands to steady himself. Hope was dangerous. He knew that better than most. “Thank you.”

  It was his turn to suck in a deep, fortifying breath. No use delaying the inevitable.

  He followed Arthur without complaint. He’d seen Silas dragged by the elbows when he refused his daily, mandatory check-ins. He’d watched the poor wretch finger the ring of bruises around his forearms after. Leather bands had bitten into his neck where they’d secured him to the chair. Stress positions were par for the course, but their minders were authorized to use additional force—and they often did—if they perceived a need.

  Manuel had no desire to give them satisfaction.

  He recognized the woman setting up in the den as soon as he entered. She was one of the first to start prying into his checkered past, a street-smart blonde with thin lips and a very limited range of facial expressions.

  “Ms. Horne,” he greeted. It gave him no comfort to know the names of his inquisitors, but any and all intelligence could prove valuable.

  Whatever the terms of deal he’d made, he didn’t count on being a resident at the Cottage forever.

  “Mr. Sosa.” Horne gestured him to his usual seat in the center of the room.

  “My social calendar is getting so crowded,” Manuel bragged. “First Cole, then you… I wonder who’s next? Think the prime minister has an opening?”

  Horne’s double take was worth the slight pinch of handcuffs as she secured each wrist to the armre
sts. “Agent Cole was here?”

  “You didn’t know?” Manuel sucked his cheeks in. “Oh, perhaps I wasn’t meant to say…”

  It was gratifying to see frost settle over her features as she realized her mistake, though the sense of triumph was short-lived. Once he was secured at wrist and ankle, Horne connected the wires of the polygraph and set up the camera.

  Manuel did his best to avoid staring directly into the glowing red bead. He disliked this portion of the day.

  If he let himself think too much about it, he could grow to hate his jailers instead of merely disliking them. There was only short leap from simmering discontent to violence. Others had already done it. Silas, for instance, raged and scratched at his handlers. The mute woman occasionally soiled herself and laughed while the grunts grimaced through the clean-up.

  The blue-haired girl once screamed for a whole six hours, nearly non-stop.

  Manuel worried that he might become tempted to take more definitive means.

  “This is nine-thirteen, January fifth,” Horne recited. “I am Salma Horne, interviewing Manuel Sosa.”

  He flashed her a smile. “You sound like the BBC.” He knew the whole song and dance by now. It was an unpleasant routine, but fundamentally preferable to the alternative. Sometimes you take one for the team.

  “What shall we talk about today, Ms. Horne?” What about your superior officer? “And may I just say how smart you look. Is that a new blazer?”

  Horne ignored him, as she always did. “During our last session you confirmed your ties to the Macias crime syndicate operating out of Cuba…”

  “Did I?”

  A jolt of electricity raced up Manuel’s ankle in retribution, twisting sinew and bone into ripples of agony. The pain was always sharpest at the beginning, though the dials were still low and he was still rested, full of energy.

  “Okay, okay…” Manuel gripped the armrests. The pain subsided. “Yes. Christ, someone’s in a bad mood today.”

  It had only taken the MI6 six weeks to pry the first straight answers out of him. Manuel portioned out his more valuable secrets. One for Remembrance Day, one for Christmas—and what he couldn’t hold back, mere trivia, confessed to in between. At the rate they were going, it would be another seven months before he told his torturers that he had never actually met the capo of the infamous Macias family and didn’t spend more than a handful of days making nice with his lieutenants.

  Cuba wasn’t in his top ten most pleasant memories, but it served as a distraction. He needed to bide his time until he was able to leave here with some guarantee of security.

  “Walk me through your involvement with the Macias clan,” Horne requested. Her black pen stood poised and ready over a blank notepad. She might have been a therapist or a tutor, if not for all the contraptions she used to narrow down Manuel’s answers to verifiable facts.

  He often delayed before he spoke, but this morning he must have done it a beat too long, because Horne reached for the switch at her elbow—the one connected to a device less intended to analyze Manuel’s responses than meant to trigger them.

  A sharp jolt of electricity coursed through the wires connected to the handcuffs. Steel-on-skin made for an effective conductor.

  Manuel jolted in his seat, gritting his teeth against the pained moan that snagged in his throat.

  “Fuck. All right, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell, you. Christ, stop!” The overwhelming spill of agony desisted. His chest heaved. “It started in ’94…”

  * * * *

  After Horne came the whole battery of torturers. Alford, Peterson and McClure took turns assailing him with questions and rewarding silence with pain. By the time the night-time handler half walked, half carried Manuel up the stairs, he was grateful for his spartan room with its rattling plumbing and drafty, single-pane windows.

  He all but kissed the floor as he stumbled over the threshold.

  Dusk had settled firmly over the Channel and there was no reflection on the water, nothing of interest to see outside his window.

  He crawled into bed fully clothed, dog-tired.

  Arthur would have made some effort to help him change before he conked out. His replacement—a bull-faced orderly who went by the name Kazinsky and walked around with a police baton strapped to his belt like a warden in an American prison movie—simply fastened the cuffs to Manuel’s ankles and stalked out of the room.

  “Hey! I need to take a leak.”

  Kazinsky paused in the doorway and jerked a shoulder. “Should’ve thought of that before.” The door thudded shut.

  Manuel’s raised middle finger went unnoticed.

  It wasn’t his most effective comeback, but it had been a long day of repetitive questions and a liberal use of high voltage when he faltered.

  A migraine pounded behind his eyes. Kazinsky had to get him again in an hour or two so he could make his daily phone call. He’d piss then.

  The thought of waiting on some little thug to grant him permission rankled. It was easier with Arthur, who showed diffidence to everyone around him and didn’t seem to know how to behave around Manuel when he was tied up.

  That’s the bargain I made, Manuel recalled, staring up at the damp stain on the ceiling.

  Shadows played over the walls at the foot of the bed, a cold January wind restlessly combing through the branches of the sycamore tree. Some looked like monsters and some looked like people he’d known, and there wasn’t much practical difference between the two.

  Manuel must have dozed off. One moment he was alone in the room, the next, he blinked and Kazinsky was standing above him, silhouetted in the hallway light. The tip of the baton rested not so lightly against Manuel’s thigh.

  His right wrist had already been unfastened from the headboard, enough to make the other three points of his fetters seem all the more limiting. A sharp, mind-bending ache radiated from the bruise on his hip, up his flank and into his brainstem. Jab, jab, jab, as if Kazinsky wanted him to remember.

  Pique wrenched Manuel from blissful oblivion and slammed him into full awareness with a jolt. There were only so many humiliations a man could take.

  He’d had enough.

  On instinct, Manuel made a grab for the handler with his free hand. It wasn’t confusion that had him close a fist around the end of the baton and yank hard, just the once.

  Once was all it took.

  The truncheon flew free of Kazinsky’s loose grip. He stumbled back with wide eyes. “You-you can’t do that!”

  No? Watch me.

  Too far to do much else, Manuel pitched the baton at his face. It cost him a potentially useful weapon, but the reinforced, steel-weighed handle made impact with Kazinsky’s nose with an all-too satisfying crunch. Totally worth it.

  Manuel let out a loud guffaw, exhilarated by that brief brush with power.

  Then common sense set in.

  There were rules at the Cottage. Chief among them was an understanding that violence against the inmates—assets, as they were officially dubbed—was strictly prohibited outside of the interrogation periods, barring provocation.

  A bloodied nose courtesy of a misappropriated nightstick more than qualified.

  Kazinsky cupped his gushing nose with both hands. “Son of a bitch!” Spittle and blood flew from his lips when he shouted.

  “What’s goin’ on in here?”

  Silas’ third-shift handler burst through the door, alerted by the noise. Quick on his heels were handlers four and five, whose names Manuel hadn’t bothered to learn. They were never assigned to him.

  “Bloody hell! He socked you?” asked another.

  The only woman in the group pried Kazinsky’s shaking hands away from his face, grimacing. “What the fuck were you in ‘ere for, anyway? Christ…”

  Neither one looked at Manuel with more than wary distrust. He was a prisoner and they took care of their own.

  Punishment, when it came, would no doubt be apportioned appropriately.

  “Let’s get you out of he
re…”

  “Wait!” Manuel rasped. “I have to make a phone call.”

  “You’re dreamin’, mate.”

  “No, you idiot. It’s not a privilege. It’s part of the deal,” Manuel gritted out, increasingly frantic.

  I turned myself in with prerequisites. The idea hadn’t been his, but on the far side of seven months of having his brain picked by Section vultures he was a dyed-in-the-wool convert. Knowing he could hear a friendly voice at the end of the day was just about all that held him together.

  “Bad things happen if I don’t make that call.”

  The orderly pointed a finger at him in warning. “You shut your mouth, you bloody traitor!”

  Manuel raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Boy, if it wasn’t for these cuffs, we’d be having a vastly different conversation.”

  “You threatenin’ me?” crowed one of the men.

  “Yeah,” said Silas’ minder. “Who you calling boy? Think we’re afraid of you? You think you can lay hands on us?” He took a step closer, the one snarling dog in the pack to chance the first bite.

  All Pomeranians thought they were Labradors, but their bark was the most dangerous thing about them.

  Then he noticed Kazinsky’s baton.

  “Shit,” the female handler lamented, oblivious. “Think his nose’s broken. We need to get you to A&E. Russ!”

  Her cry rang out a beat too late to do anyone any good.

  Kazinsky’s baton gleamed in a white-knuckled fist, the slick, blood-smeared tip catching a shaft of moonlight.

  Manuel braced for the blow.

  Chapter Three

  The patio was quiet between sessions. A click of footfalls on the flagstone had Manuel sitting up in his chair. “I’ll be right in.” He wasn’t allowed a watch, so he didn’t know how many minutes had already elapsed.

  He wouldn’t have put it past his handlers to make the most of malleable time to keep him guessing. They were skilled in sensory deprivation of every other kind, as that one distressing week in solitary confinement attested.

  A hand landed on his shoulder.