“No, it’s not important.”
Steen studied Chant for some time before speaking again. “The Company may think it is, Chant. There’s been some thinking over the past few years that maybe you’d originally been trained in Russia—that maybe you’d always worked for the Soviets.”
Chant merely laughed.
“How and where you were trained is one of the things they want to know, Chant,” the black general said in the same serious tone.
“And you were sent to try the friendly approach?”
“Sure. Wouldn’t you have been surprised if they hadn’t sent someone who’d known you back in the war?”
“Sure. And you’re a good choice. You’re one of the most honest men I’ve ever met.”
“I told them they were wasting their time.”
“Still, I’m glad they sent you. I’m also glad to see that you’re doing so well. It’s not easy for somebody from the Regular Army who worked for the Company to move up in the ranks of either, and especially not easy for people who did the things we did, knew the things we knew.”
Alan Steen shrugged. “I’ve been lucky.”
“You’re a damn good soldier—always were. Where are you stationed?”
“West Point. I’m Commandant.”
Chant raised his eyebrows slightly. “I’m very impressed, Alan. Congratulations. Obviously, you’re being groomed for very big things. I’m glad for you, glad for the Army, glad for the United States.”
“You were never a part of Operation Cooked Goose, were you? You told Maheu to go fuck himself the first time he approached you on it.”
Again, Chant raised his eyebrows slightly. “Is that what I did?”
“I know about Cooked Goose, Chant,” Steen said quietly.
“What do you know about Cooked Goose?”
“I know all about it.”
“That surprises me. If it’s true, I’m sorry for you. It’s an ugly secret, and the people who want to keep it hidden have a very nasty way of turning on you. I hope it doesn’t cost you your career.”
“They flew me in by private jet from the Point last night—after you’d disposed of Mr. Maheu. The CIA wanted somebody who’d been friends with you. I drew the assignment. The Company had to tell me everything; I insisted.”
“Don’t assume the Company ever tells you everything about anything. You know that.”
“Sure. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you cut this shit out now and tell the Company what they want to know. The thing was a piece of shit, but I agree with them that knowledge of it, and what you could do with that knowledge, threatens the security of the United States of America. The game’s over, Chant. Hang it up so they won’t bust you up.”
“Do you think I’d do anything to hurt this country’s security, Alan?”
“I’m not sure,” the general replied after a pause. “Always, even during the war, it was difficult to think of you as an American, in the sense that the rest of us were Americans. You were always … something else. I’m not sure I can explain it, or understand it myself, but there always seemed to be something inscrutable about you. One has the sense that you’re incredibly loyal without knowing exactly what it is that you’re loyal to. I can’t say whether or not I feel sorry for you, Chant. Maybe I envy you for the freedom you enjoy as a kind of international samurai. But then, you’re also a man without a country. I’m not sure how I feel about you, Chant.”
“But you are sure you don’t approve of what they wanted to do with Cooked Goose,” Chant said dryly.
“I told you it was a piece of shit—an abomination. What’s more, everyone I talk to who knows anything about it feels the same way.”
“It’s too bad they didn’t express that disapproval twenty years ago. The Director of Operations himself, and one or two people on the the Joint Chiefs, must have approved it.”
“Not the Joint Chiefs. It was a Company operation all the way.”
“I should have found a way to kill the Director.”
“He’s dead.”
“There may be people in Defense and State who were in on it.”
“It’s possible. I really don’t know. All the evidence indicates that it was Maheu’s original idea, and he ran hard with it.”
“Maheu was responsible for the deaths of a lot of innocent people in Laos, Alan. He was after me.”
“The record indicates that you killed a few people there yourself during your walk away from the war.”
“Not innocents. Maheu sent assassins, Cooked Goose people, after me. This was after he’d killed about two dozen people who fought on our side, as well as my controller. Is that on the record?”
“No,” Alan Steen replied quietly. “I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do.”
Steen sighed. “It doesn’t make any difference, Chant. We can’t let you keep this thing hanging over us. Will you tell me what documents you have and where they’re being kept?”
“No, Alan.”
“Will you tell me anything?”
“I’ll make a suggestion. The suggestion is, that while Cooked Goose may have been Maheu’s original idea, which was approved by the Director of Operations, a number of other important people may have been consulted—Senators, Congressmen … maybe even a macho President.”
“Impossible.”
“If you say so. But it must seem strange to you that Maheu wasn’t fired, or even assassinated. He had too much on too many people, and that’s why he continued to move up in Company ranks. A lot of those people may still be in power, they may be respected elder statesman, or they may be dead and revered. Being tainted by a linking with Cooked Goose isn’t going to do anyone any good. I was the last loose string—and I had to be cut off.”
“Is it true, Chant? About all the others?”
Chant said nothing.
“Why won’t you at least tell me that?”
“Because there’s no point. The best thing is for the Company to simply let me go.”
“That can’t be, Chant.”
“For twenty years, I said nothing and did nothing about Cooked Goose—despite the fact that the CIA was hunting my ass all over the world. It would be ironic if the truth about Cooked Goose came out now because they’d finally caught me, wouldn’t it?”
“No man can be allowed that kind of power, Chant,” Steen said with a shake of his head. “For one thing, there’s always the danger than an enemy government might catch you and get the truth out of you. If the Russians ever got hold of those documents …” The general rose to his feet and began to pace back and forth along the length of the narrow cell. “We’re all up to our ears in shit on this, Chant,” he continued at last. “I’m not going to insult your intelligence by implying that I can bargain with you; I can’t. There’s nothing I can offer you. They’re never going to let you go, my friend, because you’re a little more than a loose string—you’re a loose cannon, and always have been.”
“This particular cannon’s likely to blow up in everybody’s face if I’ve made arrangements for those documents to be released in the event I disappear for a certain length of time, Alan.”
Steen stopped pacing, and his dark eyes narrowed as he looked at Chant. “Obviously, that’s been considered. The Company’s decided that it has no real choice except to proceed this way; it has you, and it’s not going to let you go. They’re going to get the information they want out of you, Chant. Believe it.”
“Will they? Do they have another Maheu waiting in the wings?”
“Torture is not an official United States government policy, Chant, and you know it. The things that happened during the war were an aberration. Torture is expressly forbidden in all arms of the government, and you know that Maheu was acting on his own.”
“The Company has a way of getting around those niceties.”
“Damn right they do, and that’s my point. I don’t know what those spooks are planning for you, but I do know that they’re absolutely confident they
can break you. There’s no way they can take a chance on you ending up in some foreign prison and writing your memoirs. Do you understand that, Chant?”
“I’ve always understood that.”
“I believe them, Chant. I believe they can break even you. I don’t know how, but I think it can happen. I don’t want that. I can’t offer you any kind of deal on behalf of anyone but myself. But I promise that, in return for your cooperation, I’ll do everything in my power to see that the Company doesn’t kill you. Nobody’s ever going to hear of you again; that’s for sure. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be locked up someplace where it’s reasonably comfortable. That’s what I’ll press for, although I can’t promise anything. Will you cooperate, Chant?”
“No, Alan. But thanks for the offer.”
The other man studied Chant for some time, then moved to the cell door. He stood with his hands gripping the bars, but did not call out to the guard. “There’s something I don’t understand,” he said quietly, turning back to face Chant.
“What’s that, Alan?” Chant asked, idly staring at the ceiling.
“All of the people who were approached to participate in Cooked Goose were carefully vetted as to attitude and political leanings beforehand. For example, I was never approached.”
“Of course not. You were—and are—a soldier, not a political assassin. You’d have told Maheu the same thing I told him.”
“Then whose idea was it to approach you?”
“Certainly not Maheu’s,” Chant said dryly.
“Then whose?”
Chant was silent for some time, a wry smile playing across his face. “An old enemy,” he said at last.
“What?”
Chant looked at the other man. “When you were briefed on Cooked Goose, did they tell you that they’d brought in an outsider to act as a consultant and overall coordinator for the team they were trying to put together?”
Steen shook his head. “You were right, of course; never assume that the Company tells you everything about anything. Then again, the information may be classified beyond my—”
“Classified, bullshit,” Chant said with a laugh. “It’s been expunged.”
“Who was this man?”
“A man who dealt in Black Flame,” Chant replied, his voice suddenly distant.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did the Company. From the beginning, this man had foreseen what would happen if I ever found out about Cooked Goose. He was the one who insisted that Maheu approach me and tell me about it.”
“This man wanted the whistle blown on the very project he was supposed to coordinate?!”
“No, Alan. He wanted me killed. He guessed—correctly—that the Company would want me taken out as a security risk once I knew about Cooked Goose. The thought that I would finally be killed by my own people amused him.”
“Your ‘own people’? What was he?”
“He wasn’t American.”
“He was Japanese, wasn’t he?”
“He wasn’t American.”
“Who was he, Chant?”
“One of my teachers you asked me about,” Chant answered softly. “He was perhaps my greatest sensei; he was certainly the most evil, with a rather bizarre sense of humor. Forcing Maheu to tell me about Cooked Goose was his idea of an amusing, if deadly, practical joke.”
“Why a joke?”
“You had to have known him, know the circumstances under which he became my enemy.”
“What were the circumstances, Chant?”
Chant said nothing.
“Give me his name, Chant.”
“No, Alan. It’s not a name you’d want to know. More important, it’s not a name the Company would want you to know. A warning, my friend. If you get too inquisitive, and don’t watch your ass, you’re likely to end up in the same situation I’m in. You’ve done what the Army and the Company wanted you to do; you’ve talked to me. Now walk away from it. Go back to West Point and forget any of this ever happened—hope that they leave you alone.”
“Tell me, Chant,” the general said, drawing himself up. “I want to know.”
“Good-bye, Alan. Good luck.”
Steen studied Chant, knew somehow that the other man would speak to him no more. He called to the guard, who came and opened the door. “Good-bye, Chant,” he said quietly, then turned and walked away.
A half hour later they came to gas him.
NINE
This time chant awoke to find himself crucified on a cold stone wall, his wrists and ankles tightly gripped by shackles on chains that ran from sockets in the wall. He was cold, colder than he could ever remember being in his life. He was hungry, terribly thirsty. His breath misted in the frigid air as his cramped lungs struggled to draw in air, and the lower half of his naked body, like the stone floor below his feet, was covered with his own waste, involuntarily voided while he had been unconscious.
He sensed that the things he had brought with him were still in place, but they were irrelevant to his present situation; even had he wanted to get at them, he would not have been able to. There was nothing he could do but hang while his muscles cramped and his lungs labored, and he froze.
The cold numbed him. With an effort approaching desperation, Chant struggled to achieve, and remain in, a state of po-chaki during his periods of tormented consciousness, but the mental trance-state would not hold; each time it got smaller in space and time, shrinking under the constant onslaught of cold, hunger, and thirst. Po-chaki worked very well for enduring relatively brief periods of agony, but even this ancient, refined technique broke down under the incessant torture of crucifixion and freezing. His tongue seemed to swell, filling the back of his throat to choke him and make it even more difficult to breathe. Occasionally, mercifully, he would pass out.
Had he been left crucified for too long a period of time, he would have died as his lungs eventually collapsed under their impossible burden and he suffocated. On occasion, machinery behind the wall would rumble and the chains would loosen, snaking out from their steel sockets and gradually lowering him to the frigid stone of the cell floor. Exhausted, his resources drained, he would lie there in his own waste and desperately gasp for breath.
He must wait. He must wait. He must wait. What began as a silent refrain became a command. They did not mean to kill him—not yet. The cold, crucifixion, waste, hunger, and thirst were just a means of getting his attention before they started asking the inevitable questions.
He must wait.
Then, always just before he had quite caught his breath, the chains would retract into the wall, inexorably dragging him up and pinning him to the cold stone.
He began to pass out more frequently.
The next time he woke up, he found that he could breathe normally—and he was warm. Warm, citrus-scented water was falling over him in a fine spray from shower heads in the ceiling, washing down him and the cell, carrying his filth away into gutters gouged in the floor around the perimeter of the cell.
It was not a dream, Chant thought. He was awake, lying in his chains on the floor. He rolled on his back, opened his mouth, and drank deeply of the water pouring from the ceiling. His mind reeled. When he had drunk his fill, he collapsed, exhausted, on his side and let the water run over him, soothing his wrists and ankles where his shackles had rubbed the flesh raw.
He must wait.
The water abruptly stopped. Chant heard the heavy wooden door creak open, and he raised his head to see a man and woman carrying thick, Turkish towels shuffling toward him. Chant saw their half-naked bodies and groaned. It was impossible to judge their ages; both had snowy white hair, but what had been done to them would have whitened anyone’s hair. Both the man and woman walked bent over, their shuffling, crablike steps made possible by heavy steel-and-leather braces on their legs. From the scars radiating from their knees, it appeared that the joints had been crushed, along with most of the other joints in their bodies. They were covered with scars. The eyes
of both were very pale, as if their color had been washed out along with any reasons they may have had to live. In addition, both of the woman’s breasts had been cut off.
“Who are you?” Chant asked in a thick voice as the broken man and woman shuffled up to him, laboriously lowered themselves to the floor, and began to gently towel him off.
There was no answer. Both sets of hollow, washed-out eyes avoided looking at him as the toweling continued.
“My God, did they do that to you here?”
There was still no answer. The man and woman finished drying him off, then, holding on to each other for mutual support, struggled to their feet and shuffled out of the cell.
Almost immediately another broken man entered. Like the others, he could only walk with the aid of braces. In addition, he only had half a face; the other half looked as if it had been melted away, perhaps with acid. This man carried a tray, which he set down before Chant; on the tray were a tall glass and a frosted pitcher filled with an amber-colored liquid.
Chant tried speaking to this white-haired, broken man, but he was as mute as the others. After setting down the tray, he turned and walked away. Chant, sitting on a dry towel that had been left by the first couple, picked up the pitcher and sniffed at its contents; it was beer, ice cold. He poured himself a glass and sipped at it, shuddering with pleasure as the icy liquid flowed down his throat and into his stomach. He finished that glass, drank another. The light, salty taste of the beer stirred hunger pangs, and he wondered how long it had been since he’d eaten.
As if in response to his thought, the first couple reappeared. The woman carried a fresh pitcher of icy beer, and the man carried a tray that turned out to be stacked with sandwiches and fresh fruit. Chant looked at the food, at once feeling nauseous and dizzy as the aroma wafted into his nostrils. He half expected it to be snatched away when he reached for it, but it was not. The food was his. He forced himself to eat slowly, chewing carefully to get the maximum nutrition from the sandwiches and fruit, washing it down with glasses of beer.
Cigarettes, cigars, cognac, and a carafe of thick Turkish coffee were brought. Chant drank the coffee.
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