“I asked you if you can see now, Jason.”
“Yeah—yes, I can. I can see. Where am I—is this hell?”
The man behind the table bared his teeth, a smile devoid of warmth. “No, you are not in hell.”
“Where am I?”
“I will extend you this one courtesy and remind you again, Jason: it is best that I ask the questions and you answer. Agreed?”
Jason pressed his upper lip to his lower and nodded his head. This was bad. This was real bad.
“Good. Now, are you feeling anything yet?”
Jason shook his head. What did the man mean? What should he be feeling?
“Very well. Your name is Jason. You may be wondering who I am. You may call me Dr. Kaku, yes?”
“Okay.” Jason looked at the giant man.
“He has no name or title that concerns you,” explained Dr. Kaku. “Our time together, Jason, is limited. Though I suspect it will feel an eternity to you. The fickle nature of time. But we shall speak of that later, yes?”
Jason nodded because he thought it was what was expected of him. The big man next to the table watched him.
“Fourteen billion years ago, Jason—the age of the universe—all this was set in motion. I should say, the probability of our chance occurrence was initiated, though its realization in the present moment is no less unique. In this current moment, it is of the utmost importance that you listen to what I say and answer the questions I pose. You understand me, yes?”
“Yes. What are you? CIA?”
The man tch-tch-tch’ed again, holding up a finger and pointing at him. The giant crossed from the table to Jason’s chair faster than Jason thought he would be able to and one ham-hock of a hand—open-palmed—caught Jason in the side of the face. Images exploded in his head: Rudy—Aspen—the little girl bleeding out in the car.
When his head stopped reeling, when the images faded to bright lights in his head and then the lights to blackness, Jason opened his eyes and worked his jaw, trying to see if it or any of his teeth were broken.
“Consider me the Grand Inquisitor.”
“The Grand…” Jason rasped, his jaw apparently unbroken, “… the Grand Inquisitor.”
“Do you recognize the reference?”
Jason looked from Dr. Kaku to the giant now standing within arms reach of his own chair.
“You may answer,” assured Kaku.
“No.” He could taste blood in his mouth.
“You were a teacher, correct?”
“Yes.” The side of his face throbbed.
“Of history.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“Perhaps, if you had taught English, the following little demonstration would be unnecessary, or even…” mused Dr. Kaku “…ineffective. You may not understand why you are here, but you do understand the severity of the situation you find yourself in, yes?”
“Yes,” Jason licked his lip, the copper-taste rich in his mouth. He actually had no clue what was going on, but he knew it was as Kaku said, that he was in no position to ask.
“Good. Earlier, you felt a prick to your neck.” The man reached down to the table before him and lifted something for Jason to see. A syringe. “You have been injected with a variety of pharmacological agents. The specific ones are beyond your concern. And, honestly, even if I humored you with the clinical pharmacology, I think it would do little to edify you.”
“But—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” Dr, Kaku held up a finger. “No questions, yes?”
“Yeah, yeah no questions, right.” Jason kept his eyes on the giant. “It’s just—I don’t know anything. I mean, you can torture me, but—”
“Yes, yes, yes, Jason.” Kaku again looked and sounded like he had had this conversation many times before. “You know…” He placed the needle down, Jason noticing for the first time that there were several objects on the table. “For all our sophistication, for all our ‘advancements’ in enhanced interrogation techniques…” Kaku’s voice barely hid his scorn as he spoke the phrase “…we have nothing on the ancients and pre-moderns.” He retrieved a revolver from the table.
“Flaying, denailing, abacination.” As he spoke, Kaku shook the gun in his hand for emphasis. “What is sleep deprivation to the iron maiden of Nuremberg? What are stress positions to the Judas Cradle? We attempt to impose a veneer of humanity to an endeavor that is by definition inhumane, all in attempt to placate modern sensibilities. To remind ourselves, at every turn, that we—are—civilized.”
Kaku depressed the latch on the revolver and swung the cylinder free.
“Do you recognize the signs of an acute stress reaction, Jason? Much like the contents of your most recent injections, I could explain to you the myriad ways in which catecholamine hormones trigger physical reactions. I could detail the effects of epinephrine release on the medulla and the sympathetic nervous system. But, again, I doubt that would be satisfying.”
Kaku spun the cylinder. “I doubt that would be sexy.”
He thumbed the extractor rod and started to pluck individual rounds from the cylinder.
“The symptoms of shock, Jason—perhaps you are familiar with them? A daze or fog, a constriction in the field of consciousness, an inability to comprehend stimuli…”
As he removed the rounds, Kaku lined them up on the table in a row.
“…a withdrawal from one’s surrounding situation. Agitation and impaired judgment. Detachment and confusion. A continued re-experiencing of an event. I ask you this, Jason—” Kaku focused his attention solely on the man across from him “—do you know the difference between an acute stress reaction and what is today labeled post traumatic stress disorder? Hmmm?”
The doctor did not wait for an answer.
“Nothing.” Kaku sounded amused, as though he had just delivered the punchline of a joke. “If an acute stress reaction continues for more than a month, then it is classified PTSD.”
He placed the revolver on the table before him.
“So tell me, Jason…” Kaku held up two clenched hands, palms down “acute stress reaction…” he turned one hand palm up, opening it “…or post traumatic stress disorder,” he opened his second hand, “which one, do you think, is you?”
Jason gulped.
Kaku continued to hold his hands out and up, as if he were weighing something only he could see. The giant waited beside Jason’s chair.
An answer was expected.
“PTSD?” Jason guessed, his voice low, unsure.
“What was that?” Kaku leaned forward as if to hear him better.
“PTSD?”
The middle, ring and pinky fingers of Kaku’s right hand curled up, his index finger extended. He turned his hand right-side up, motioning from the giant to Jason.
Before he could react, Jason’s head exploded anew. Aspen—a little girl in a bee’s costume—a scorpion—Tucker—the giant’s open palm, fingers like sausages—this room—Dr. Kaku sitting across from him. Jason reeled but remained in place.
“When I ask you a question, Jason,” the doctor’s accented voice reached him from some distant place, “I wish to hear conviction in your answers, yes?”
“Yes.” Jason said it and then repeated the word because he was not sure he had said it.
“…you were not an English teacher, but you have heard of Dostoyevsky, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Dostoyevsky was quite a—how shall we say? Dissident in his youth. Were you aware of this?”
“Nah—no.”
“It is true. But then again, Czarist Russia of the mid-nineteenth century—we might imagine—fairly invited dissent.”
Kaku took the revolver back up.
“By the late 1840s, Dostoyevsky was a member of not one but two discussion circles…” As Jason watched, Kaku cracked the cylinder again. “…Durov’s circle ran a printing press and Dostoyevsky took an active part in publishing and distributing materials, materials deemed subversive of the government.” Kaku plucked
a round from the table and slid it into an empty chamber. “But it was Petrashevsky’s circle that the Russian police infiltrated. And when they made their arrests…” Kaku inserted a second and third round “…twenty-one of the Petrashevtsi—including Dostoyevsky—were condemned to death.
“Now, Tsar Nicholas I remitted the death sentence,” Kaku pressed the cylinder into position with the flat of his hand, “but the prisoners were purposefully not told of his decision. Can you imagine?
“The day of their planned execution arrived.” Kaku closed one eye and sighted down the barrel of the revolver. “The prisoners were marched outside.” He straightened his arm, the barrel of the revolver centered on Jason’s chest. Jason struggled against the ropes binding him.
“They were tied to posts…” Kaku raised the revolver, pointing it at Jason’s head “…to face the firing squad.” Jason struggled futilely against his fetters. “And then,” Kaku lowered the weapon to Jason’s chest again, “at that moment…” he cocked the hammer “…a messenger burst in bearing the Tsar’s reprieve.” Kaku squeezed the trigger, the hammer falling on an empty chamber.
Click.
“Dostoyevsky spent the next five years in a Siberian labor camp…” Jason sweat profusely in the chilled room “…but that part of his story is not germane to our endeavors here.
“I wonder…” Kaku placed the revolver down once more “…what are you feeling? You did not know your father. Dostoyevsky’s father was a tyrant, given to violent, drunken rages. You know, Jason, there are rumors that the man’s own serfs killed him—held him down and poured vodka down his throat until he drowned. Dostoyevsky’s mother succumbed to tuberculosis when he was sixteen. Do you have a favorite memory from childhood, Jason?”
Despite the situation, a scene materialized in Jason’s mind. He quickly banished it, having no intention of sharing it with this sadist.
“Yes?” Kaku had read Jason’s face. “Good. Another word of advice, if you would humor me, Jason. Sometimes,” the doctor extended the fingers and thumb of one hand and circled them in the air, “sometimes in the whorl—the cacophony of life—one must focus, center oneself. We must ignore the extraneous data and concentrate on this one thing. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“For example, this watch.”
Kaku dangled a watch by its band. Jason hadn’t seen it on the table or in the man’s hand until he had mentioned it.
What’s wrong with me?
He was perspiring madly.
“Do you recognize it?”
Jason took his eyes from the man’s mouth and stared at the timepiece. It was his watch. The one his students had given him.
“Yeah, yeah. Of course I do.”
Kaku placed the watch face-up on the table, gently, respectfully.
Jason’s head swam.
“I see where you are, Jason, and I want you to listen to me very carefully…”
Gripping the revolver by its barrel, Kaku hammered the watch to pieces with the butt of the firearm.
“…I want you to forget everything you think you know about time, Jason.”
Jason wondered if he should cry or scream. That was my watch. Should he be angry? A shadow was crossing the room to his side.
“…our time together will be short…”
Something in his neck.
“…but I trust it will be fruitful.”
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he was in a cell. It was cool and airy. His hand automatically went up to his throat, touching tentatively, searching, but everything felt as it should. He stood and walked to the bars, staring out onto a rock-walled passage. Jason strained to see as far as he could in either direction, his face pressed to the iron, the rock stretching unabated from floor to ceiling as far as his limited line of sight allowed.
The passageway was silent, as if deserted.
He considered his cell. It was cramped, no more than six by eight feet, crowded with a cot, toilet and sink.
Glancing again into the passageway, Jason took note of the camera mounted on the rock wall. He held himself against the bars, studying it. A green light above the lens flashed rapidly.
“hey…” His voice sounded weak, weaker than he wanted it to. He shook off his lethargy and mustered his strength. They didn’t have him tied down now. Even if the giant came for him, he could put up a fight. “Hey!”
The camera stared back, green light blinking.
“Hey!”
“They can hear you well enough,” a clipped English accent answered. Female.
Jason backed away from the bars, somewhat startled. The reply had not come from the camera or an intercom, but from some place in the passageway, somewhere close by.
“W-What?” he stammered.
“You don’t have to yell, love. They can hear you well enough.”
“Where are you?”
“In the cell next to yours I gather.”
“Who are you?”
“It looks like I’m to be your neighbor for the time being. And you are?”
“What do you mean for the time being?”
“And you are, dear?” she persisted.
“My name is Jason. And you can drop the condescending tone.”
“Good day, Jason. And I’m not condescending. I’m British.”
“Hello.” He didn’t think to ask her name. “Where are we?”
“Geographically—if I had to guess…” there was a melodic lilt to her English-inflection “…I’d guess they’ve got us somewhere in Eastern Europe.”
“Why Eastern Europe?”
“This is where they take people.”
“Where do they take people? Who?”
“Black sites, Jason. Extraordinary rendition. You have heard?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Jason scanned the interior of his inhospitable cell. “I don’t…I don’t like it here.”
“Very pithy, and very true. You voice a sentiment I share.”
“They can hear every word we say…” Jason stared at the camera, “…can’t they?”
“And they watch our every move as well.”
“Where are we?” Jason asked the unseen woman again.
“This is not a happy place, Jason.”
Images of Dr. Kaku and his ham-fisted companion bearing needles flashed through Jason’s mind. “No, it’s not.”
“Imagine a happy place.”
“What’s that?” He wasn’t sure he had heard her right.
“Imagine a happy place, Jason. When it gets to be too much, that is.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Imagine a happy place? Yes.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes. He can’t get into your happy place, try as he might. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Yet Jason wasn’t certain he did. “He told me a story. About Dostoyevsky, the writer.”
“I know who Dostoyevsky was. No need to condescend.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I’m kidding with you Jason.” She paused for a moment. “He told us about Lenin.”
“Us?”
“Yes. I was here with a man. A photographer. My friend, Per.”
“He told me about Dostoyevsky.”
“Yes, you’d mentioned that. And what did he tell you about Dostoyevsky?”
“How he was lined up against a wall, almost shot.”
“A mock execution.”
“Yeah.”
“And, let me guess, the whole time he was playing with a revolver?”
“Yes! Loading it and unloading it. And then he pointed it at me.”
“And then?”
“And then, click.”
“Click.” The woman sounded reflective.
She was quiet for some time, until Jason asked, “What’d he tell you about Lenin?”
“That Lenin’s brother was executed by the Czarist state. I’d known that already, of course.”
“Did he point the gun at
you too?”
“No. When he got to the point where Lenin’s brother is shot, he aimed his revolver at Per and pulled the trigger.”
“He killed your friend?”
“Right in front of me, yes.”
“Oh my god.” Jason was at a loss for words. “I’m…I’m sorry.”
“I am too. And I think I’m done talking for now, Jason. Be a love and give a girl some privacy, yes?”
“Wait—wait!” Jason tried to push himself through the bars, straining for a glance of the cell next to his and the woman in it. “What do I call you?”
The silence of the passageway was the only response.
Imagine a happy place
Her accent made him think of another.
A happy place
He’d met her at the beach the summer of his senior year in college. He remembered the songs of that summer as if it were yesterday. Blind Melon was crooning No Rain. They’d released the album a year earlier, but the video with the little girl dressed up as a tap-dancing bee came out the summer Jason and his buddy, Jack, drove down to South Carolina. They’d listened to it on the way down. It was on all the radio stations. The song held a peculiar, elegiac quality for Jason.
Aspen was at the beach with her girlfriend, Courtney. Courtney’s parents had a condo in the same complex as Jack’s parents. Jack had hooked up with Courtney. She’d mentioned something about Aspen having a boyfriend back home in North Carolina. Jason steered clear. He knew himself, knew he was simultaneously attracted and repelled by her beauty, intimidated. They’d engaged in a series of conversations to kill time, while Jack and Courtney made out under the stars. Like that wasn’t uncomfortable.
But it wasn’t. Jason found he could talk to this girl, the conversations were not strained. She was eighteen, about to turn nineteen. She had an older sister, and a mother who’d divorced but was finding happiness with another man. She was going to start junior college in the fall. She was beautiful, and when she spoke the southern twang to her voice was the most exquisite Jason had ever heard. He did his best to ignore her, skipping small rocks over the ocean surface.
Warlord: Dervish Page 4