Color seeped up into Richard Krowl’s pale cheeks, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “Who told you to do that?”
“Hey, look here—!”
“Get out, Bernard. Get dried off and dressed, then come back.”
“Don’t you want the tray set up?” Bernard’s tone was petulant, like a reproved child’s.
“Yes,” Richard Krowl answered after a short pause. “Let me know when you’re prepared.”
Chant heard Bernard turn around and walk away down the long corridor. At a nod from Krowl, one of the brown-uniformed guards came around, bent down, and removed two steel clips from what Chant assumed were the battery terminals. The other guard pulled two wires from a retracting receptacle on the wall next to Krowl’s desk, plugged them into jacks in the left armrest of the wheelchair.
“What am I plugged into this time?” Chant asked casually.
Richard Krowl pressed a switch to the right of his desk and the office was suddenly flooded with soft, white fluorescent light. Chant was surprised to see the woman called Feather seated on a small divan just behind the desk. She wore faded jeans, tennis sneakers, and a light sweater. Her raven-black hair shimmered as it fell in waves down across her cheeks and over her shoulders. As when Chant had seen her earlier, her eyes were staring straight ahead and were slightly out of focus. The expression on her face was vacant. She sat with her back straight, feet flat on the floor, hands folded almost demurely in her lap.
To the right of the divan, along the wall, were four earthenware pots. Three were filled almost to overflowing with white pearls. The pearls in the fourth, smallest pot gleamed in the light like liquid black fire.
“As a matter of fact, you’re plugged into a number of things,” Krowl answered at last as one of the guards zipped open the front of Chant’s coveralls and taped electrodes to his chest. “How did you get out of Southeast Asia after you deserted?”
“I walked out.”
“You won’t even tell me that?”
“I just did.” Chant nodded toward the pearl-filled pots. “Nice collection you’ve got there. It must be worth a few million.”
“Tell Bernard. I’m sure he’ll be interested in your estimate; I’m not. Who helped you get back to the United States?”
“Nobody. So you’re just into pain, not money. Saint Bernard is into both. He showed me how he uses other people’s guts to collect those things. The man’s a real moron, as I’m sure you’re aware. I also think I detected just a touch of sibling rivalry. Does having to take care of your moron brother ever try your patience, Krowl?”
“Everyone assumed you were dead. For almost four years they assumed you were dead.”
“Did they?”
“Not only did you manage to kill the five men tracking you, every one of them a skilled assassin, but you then managed to move undetected through more than five hundred miles of enemy-held territory—and you did this with everyone hunting you.”
“How about that?”
Krowl tapped the papers on his desk. “There’s a great deal of information here, but I suspect there’s also a great deal missing.”
“File a complaint with the people who gave you the dossier.”
“I don’t believe they know. You’ve always been a most secretive man, even before you began your new career as international criminal.”
“It says that in the dossier?”
“I believe it. As a matter of fact, the CIA has been most forthcoming, but I’m interested in more than an official history of John Sinclair’s deeds and misdeeds. It’s your personal background that intrigues me.”
“Mmmm.”
“You’re a very impressive man.”
“Oh, I’ll bet you say that to all the people you torture.”
“You always work alone.”
“Well, you know how tough it is to find good help these days.”
“How is it that Interpol was able to capture you so easily?”
“Easily? They’ve been after me for almost twenty years.”
“Why did you give up without a fight?”
“I didn’t feel like getting shot. If I’d known what was being planned for me, I think I’d have chosen the bullets.”
“The word ninja keeps popping up in written and oral descriptions of you. Did you know a man by the name of Harry Gray?”
“Can’t say that I did—or do.”
“Are you a ninja?”
“What’s a ninja?”
“Harry Gray fought in Vietnam. The two of you apparently had identical tours of duty.”
“So did a few hundred thousand other men.”
“Gerard Patreaux?”
“Is that a question?”
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“You were born in Japan, of American parents.”
“That’s right. I remember.”
“Your father was a high-level diplomat who died of a heart attack some years ago. Your mother died a year and a half later. You’re a highly educated man, with degrees from both American and European universities—including the Sorbonne. After graduation, you returned to the United States. You enlisted in the Army and specifically requested that you be sent to Vietnam. Why?”
“Why not? I’d never been there.”
“At the age of twenty-four, in Officer Candidate School, you defeated the Army’s best martial arts instructor; prior to that time, it seems nobody in the Army had even been aware that you had such talent—they certainly didn’t teach you. You were offered that man’s position, and you turned it down. You could have spent the entire war in the United States, teaching recruits. Yet you chose combat—insisted on it. Why?”
“I’d have made a lousy teacher,” Chant replied easily, then looked at the woman. “Hello, sweetheart. That was some time you gave me last night.”
“You are reputed to be an awesome martial arts expert—perhaps the finest in the world, with proficiency in a wide variety of weapons.”
“I should hire you as my press agent, Krowl.”
“I asked you if you are a ninja.”
“I asked you what a ninja is.”
“In addition to your warrior’s skills, you have astounding control over your mind and emotions; that I’ve seen—and am seeing—for myself. I’ve begun to suspect that you may even be able to exert some considerable control over your autonomic nervous system. You really caught me by surprise yesterday when I examined you in your cell. I wouldn’t have thought it possible that any man could have been in your physical and psychological stress-state and still exhibit heartbeat and respiration that fell within a normal range. You had to be afraid.”
“Of course I was afraid, Krowl,” Chant said simply. “I’m afraid now.”
“I know. But you mask it better than any human being I’ve ever met.”
“It’s not a question of masking anything; it has to do with not wasting energy.”
Krowl studied Chant for some time before he spoke again. His voice was very soft, almost a whisper. “It was quite a feat for you to manipulate all of the men in that room.”
“Is that what I did?”
“It’s what you tried to do, and you almost succeeded. Even crucified on a stone wall and not knowing what I was going to do to you next, you were absolutely cool—and scheming.”
Chant laughed. “Considering the fact that it wasn’t your ass hanging on the wall, you seem to know a lot about what was going on in my mind.”
“I merely observed—and marveled. Indeed, I suspect you are trying to manipulate this situation.”
“Yeah? How am I doing?”
“I’m not a fool, Sinclair. Surely, you must realize that. And I’m not like these other men. If you had fallen into the hands of any of them, you’d be dead by now—and your secrets would be safe. They would have totally botched the job. I won’t.”
“Are you looking for my approval, Krowl?” Chant said, and laughed. “You’re no fool, but you’re the biggest fucking hypocrite I’ve
ever met—and I’ve met a few, believe me. You want to set yourself apart from the other gorillas you have wandering around this place, but it won’t play. You’re just another gorilla with good grammar, Krowl, a garden-variety torturer with a medical degree and a few kinks. What are you trying to do, bullshit me to death?”
Again, Richard Krowl was silent for some time as he studied Chant, his pale eyes occasionally dropping to the pages of the dossier on the desk in front of him. Finally he looked up and nodded to the two guards, who turned and left.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Krowl said at last. “Maybe I have been looking to you for … something. I’m not sure what. You’re a most impressive man, from a personal as well as a medical viewpoint. I don’t often get to talk to men of your stature.”
“You poor, sad, pretentious son of a bitch. What are you, lonely for refined company? Just because a butcher kills slowly, with precision and without passion, doesn’t make him less of a butcher.”
“I’m not responsible for your being here, Sinclair. It’s your government’s responsibility.”
“Wrong. It’s not even the CIA’s responsibility. Let’s just say that I have a few very powerful enemies in very high positions of power, and they feel their interests are jeopardized by things I know. They’re responsible for my being here, and now you’re responsible for my suffering, as well as the suffering of every victim who’s ever been sent to this place. You will be personally responsible for my death. You may not take all this personally, Krowl, but I certainly do. You seem to be playing this mind game with yourself where you wind up thinking of yourself as some kind of government contractor providing screwdrivers to the Air Force. That isn’t quite the case, Krowl. You hurt and kill people, Doctor. You have a cretin brother who feeds live victims to sharks, remember? I’m here to tell you that you operate a chamber of horrors. What the fuck is it you think you’re doing?”
Krowl seemed disturbed. He ran his fingers through his hair, then turned in his chair and looked at Feather. The woman gave no indication that she knew, or cared, he was studying her, and after a few moments the torture doctor turned back to Chant.
“You’ve seen the maimed people on this island, Sinclair. I didn’t do those things. Those people wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for me.”
“The shark lagoon, Krowl.”
“The man Bernard killed was contracted to die. If he hadn’t been killed here, he would have been killed someplace else, by the people who sent him here in the first place. What’s the difference?”
Again, Chant laughed. “Krowl, you’re a moral and philosophical giant.”
“Every subject—”
“Subject?”
“Every man or woman who comes here has been marked for torture and death. In many cases, I make things easier for them. Their fate was sealed before my services were ever contracted for, and their suffering—like yours—is carefully calibrated to resistance.”
Chant glanced at the woman, who was still staring vacantly off into space. “There’s not a wasted scream around here, right?”
“Right.”
“You’re just a garbage man who does other people’s dirty work for them, Krowl. You also seem to conveniently forget that these people have good reasons not to talk. People you force them to name also end up being killed and tortured. The people whose dirty work you do torture for political or military reasons. You do it for money. You find that a more attractive motive?”
“I care nothing for money, Sinclair!” Richard Krowl snapped. He abruptly rose from his chair, turned, and stepped back toward the divan. He hooked the toe of his shoe over the lip of one of the larger earthenware pots, tipping it over. A thousand white pearls rolled out on the hardwood floor, skittering and clattering around the office, out the door, and down the long corridor. The woman didn’t even blink.
“Bernard’s going to be upset,” Chant said casually as the pearls continued to roll about with a cascading rush of clicks and pops.
“This facility and the services I provide do not increase the amount of suffering in the world by one iota,” Krowl said as he eased himself back down into his chair. His face was still flushed, and his pale green eyes seemed unnaturally bright. “The people who are sent here have already been marked. Here, at least, their suffering serves a purpose.”
“What purpose?”
The man with the long yellow hair again rose from his chair and walked across the room to a file cabinet. He slid open the top drawer, reached in, and took out a thick folder and a reel of computer tape. “I’m a scientist, Sinclair,” Krowl snapped, throwing the folder and the computer tape on the desk. “I’m a research neurologist. The work I do is important! It has value—inestimable value! It is research that involves the complex interface between the mind and the human nervous system. One day this work will be published, and then all the people who’ve condemned and ridiculed me will be forced to consult my work in order to do their own. The data that’s coming out of this research will one day be considered a standard of reference. Do you really think I’d choose to live on this godforsaken island listening to men scream if there were any other way to do this research?!”
Chant did not reply. Again, his gaze shifted back to the woman, and it seemed to him that her eyes grew slightly more focused as Krowl spoke. Chant saw her swallow; the tip of her tongue darted out and licked her lips.
“Pain—or, more precisely, the perception of pain—is a highly individualistic matter,” Krowl continued. “You, for example, exhibit an extremely high tolerance for pain. This isn’t because your nerves are any less sensitive than the average man’s, but because you react to the sensation of what we call ‘pain’ differently. Things like nervous overload, plateaus of pain, tolerance, the question of why some men and women perceive pain as pleasure—all of these things are poorly understood, and it is my field of research.”
“You were born out of your time, Krowl, as well as your place. There were any number of Nazi doctors who used the same rationale for the experiments they conducted on men, women, and children.”
“I’m not a Nazi, Sinclair! I don’t select the people who are sent here!”
“The German doctors didn’t select their victims either, Krowl. And now I understand why they threw you out of medical school. Christ, what kinds of experiments were you trying to do there?”
“There are certain experiments that can only be conducted on humans, because humans are the only species that displays such a wide differential in perception of, and reaction to, pain. It is a legitimate field of study, and one day the work I’m doing here will serve to alleviate suffering. Yours is the kind of knee-jerk reaction men who do controversial research have had to contend with down through the centuries.”
Chant shook his head, nodded toward Feather. “Why is she here? What did you do to her?”
“Feather has joined us because she is my assistant.”
Chant laughed. “Some assistant.”
“My research assistant, Sinclair,” Krowl said, narrowing his eyes. “Her real name is Maria Gonzalez. It may interest you to know that she’s also a physician.”
Chant nodded. “It does interest me. I asked what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything to her, except—”
Suddenly the woman called Feather shifted on the couch and shook her head violently. Krowl glanced at her, then looked back at Chant.
“So,” Krowl continued quietly, “I think we’ve chatted long enough, and now it’s time to get down to business.”
“Don’t rush things on my account, Krowl.”
Krowl closed Chant’s dossier and sighed. “As I’ve said, you are an exceptional man. A challenge. Perhaps, like others who’ve been sent to me, you believe that you will die before you reveal to me what it is I want to know—which is to say, what the men who sent you here want to know. I can assure you, Mr. Sinclair, that you will not die on me. Among other things, the electrodes attached to your body measure your heartbeat and resp
iration. Your suffering, as I’ve indicated, will be calibrated to your resistance. Beginning today, I’m afraid the procedures used on you will be a bit cruder than what you’ve experienced so far.”
“I thought the other procedures were pretty crude.”
“Not as crude as what you’ll undergo now. You will tell me what I want to know.”
“Will I?”
“Yes. What’s more, I think you understand that. Up to now, you might say that I’ve been trying to get your attention so that we could save time in the long run. Now you know that I’m very good at what I do, Mr. Sinclair. I can bring you to the point of death through horrible suffering, but then I will bring you back again for more horrible suffering. That will continue until you surrender your secrets to me. There is no escape for you, not in life, and not in death. I sincerely would not like to see you become one of the living dead here, like the man who ate your flesh, but that’s really up to you. I will—”
“I’m ready.” It was Bernard’s voice on the intercom speaker just above Chant’s head.
Krowl pressed a button beneath his desk, and the wall to Chant’s left slid open on recessed tracks to reveal another, larger chamber, which was equipped like an operating room. Very bright lights shone from overhead and were reflected with almost painful brilliance from banks of mirrors set up around the room. There was an operating table with bloodstained leather restraining straps. The floor was constructed of gleaming white tile, with half a dozen drains circling the table. Next to the table was a tray covered with stainless steel surgical instruments that gleamed in the bright lights. Just to the right of the table, built into the wall below a bank of mirrors, was an array of electronic monitors.
Bernard was waiting in the center of the room, a smile on his face. He was standing behind a long, low cart that had two compartments separated by an insulated partition. One compartment was overflowing with cracked ice, which was melting under the lights, running down the sides of the cart and into the drains set into the floor. In the second compartment was a large socket into which was plugged an electric branding iron.
“So?” Chant said to Richard Krowl as the torture doctor wheeled him into the second room. “What is it you want to know?”
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