Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  Always electricity. And always starting with the entire body. Hoffmann pretended to watch, because that’s what he was supposed to do. But he looked to the right of it, if he concentrated his gaze there, the rest went out of focus, became the blurry movements of blurry people.

  He’d continued to participate in torture in the city, even volunteered to build credibility. Usually that meant shooting the indebted person’s body in various places. Sometimes it meant cutting. But he’d never really felt the screams in his gut and his chest, never been pushed that far. They usually went out to the Río Cali, and it felt more like going to the dump to drop off trash. Shoot a bit, cut a bit, maybe do something to one of their eyes. They’d screamed, but never like in the jungle. Never like Crouse.

  From the bag that El Mestizo had ordered this morning, which had now been carried into the cramped cage, he pulled out two cables, like jumper cables for a car, but thicker. The red cable he connected with the clip to the iron frame, plus, and the black one, minus, around the big toe of the speaker’s battered, nail-less foot. Then he stretched out both the red and the black until they reached the gas generator the two soldiers brought in. He yanked the pull cord a few times and the generator started chugging, a noise similar to a lawnmower or an old boat engine. The other end of the red cable was connected to the positive pole of the generator and the other end of the black cable to the ground terminal, and he held them like that for exactly two seconds. The iron frame flashed and sizzled and electricity arced out from Crouse’s body. His head fell against his chest and his cries transformed to gasps while his muscles cramped.

  This is when the doctor interrupted the torture—just like El Mestizo had instructed him to. This one was unusually young, even for a PRC doctor, recruited at the end of his second semester at medical school—they were rarely more educated than that. An instrument. That’s what he was. Whose purpose was to patch up and whisper, Why are you silent, my friend, that madman is crazy and will continue torturing—speak now in front of the camera as they ask you to. His job was to keep the hostage alive, to be tender, to play the good cop, But you, why should you have to go through this, cooperate now, he’ll never give up.

  The young man held up a stethoscope that coiled out from his hand and to Crouse’s chest, listened to his lungs and heart. “Did you let the current run through his whole body?” And subsequently examined one foot, smoke rose from where the clamp had closed its jaws around the skin. “Which way?”

  “Yes, from his toes and up through his arms.”

  The young doctor wasn’t a particularly good actor, overreacting as he breathed in the smell of burning flesh and delivering his rehearsed lines to El Mestizo as if reading them from cue cards. “His heartbeat is a bit irregular.”

  “So?”

  “You can keep going if you turn down the amps a bit. That is, if you don’t want his heart to stop; if you want to keep him alive.”

  El Mestizo turned toward Crouse, with exaggerated, theatrical gestures. “You heard him, Mr. Speaker? In that case, we should probably move the cables. You won’t be producing much sperm after this, but you’ll live a bit longer.”

  He loosened one end of the red cable, the one attached to the iron frame, and held it out.

  “Mr. Speaker? Maybe you’d like to talk a little?”

  Crouse’s motionless head still against his chest, loosely hanging, saliva ran from the sides of his mouth.

  “Well, then, Mr. Speaker. It’s up to you. Keep on making bad decisions.”

  El Mestizo slowly moved the red cable toward Crouse’s body, toward the lower, naked portion. And then, hellish screams exploded from the wooden cage and reverberated through the jungle as the cable touched his testicles for the first time, screams that continued and got louder. No matter how much Hoffmann concentrated on looking to the right, he couldn’t help but hear everything.

  El Mestizo had wandered around the prison camp for almost ten minutes, seemingly without aim, from caleta to caleta, into them and around them and even up onto the roof of a couple of them. Even went to the large pit, dug when the camp was established to a depth of three meters according to regulation. At first glance it seemed like a grave, but when the stench hit you, it was clearly a toilet. Then on to the kitchen, to the laundry, and to the food storage. Then he returned to the cage, went back in looking happy, like a man returning from a long journey, who’s found what he was looking for.

  “Mr. Speaker?”

  The copper wire around Crouse’s wrists and ankles had been cut off and he had been released from the iron frame. But despite kicks and punches from the female guard, he refused to sit on the floor, exhausting whatever limited energy he had hidden deep in his chest as he held tight to the bars and leaned forward against them.

  “So, more electricity would kill you. But you’re not supposed to die. Until you talk.”

  El Mestizo held out his hands and showed his findings from his tour of the camp—on one of his palms rested a plastic pipe and on the other some rusty barbed wire.

  “After electricity I usually prefer scalding water. Or waterboarding. But for you, I’ll make an exception and move on to this.”

  He moved the plastic pipe and the barbed wire back and forth in front of Crouse’s down-turned face, making sure that the prisoner really saw it.

  “This method comes from Europe, which is where I first saw it. I found this pipe, a simple fifteen-centimeter PVC pipe, under the refrigerator in the kitchen. When I insert it into your anus and through your rectum, and it’s sitting firmly in place, we move on to the barbed wire, an unusual variety I found on the roof of one of the cages. As you can see, Mr. Speaker, no tiny little barbs, but long narrow spikes, slightly bent, which cause a lot more damage.”

  He dragged the sharp spikes along Crouse’s chin and cheek, the blood rushed down his neck onto his shirt collar, which was not particularly white anymore.

  “Up to that point, you probably haven’t felt much—I will cover the pipe with a thick ointment, like you would for any thermometer or prostate examination. But soon, with the insertion of that barbed wire, it will become uncomfortable.”

  El Mestizo wiped off the wet, bloody barbed wire spikes on one of Crouse’s shirtsleeves.

  “I will feed the barbed wire into the pipe, which at this point is in your rectum. That won’t feel like much either, the plastic protects you quite nicely. And that’s when I will ask you one more time if you’d like to recite the commandant’s short script in front of that camera, or if you want me to continue. If you keep making bad decisions and don’t say what we want you to say, it will become a bit rough for all of us. Then I will have to start pulling out the pipe, while keeping that barbed wire in place. And all those spikes, they will be laid bare inside your bowels, will perforate your intestinal walls as I pull it out. You will be ruined forever, Mr. Speaker. When we’re done, when all this rusty barbed wire is back out, you will have to wear a bag on your stomach for the rest of your life, and you are going to scream and cry every time you empty the contents of your cut-up bowels.”

  The camera didn’t look expensive, but it was the kind that could take both pictures and short video clips. The commandant filmed himself and Speaker Crouse sat on the cage floor while he spoke straight into it; he was completely out of energy and to stand up defiantly was no longer an option. He quietly read the handwritten note that someone had formulated in correct and academic English. Hoffmann wondered who had held the pen—no one in the camp spoke like that, the few that spoke any English at all had heavy accents and limited vocabularies.

  Speaker Crouse had resigned, accepted, and given up immediately as the plastic pipe touched his skin. What they had demanded him to say wouldn’t put anyone else in danger, it had never been about that—only about not letting those bastards win, or think that they’d won. But as the plastic pipe met his body and it became about him being damaged for life, he had raised his arms yelling “stop,” turned around, and pointed at the tripod that carr
ied the camera.

  The first time. But it didn’t feel like it used to. Usually it was this moment that transformed all the time, all the lies, all the fear to confirmation—the feeling of finally arriving, of having succeeded, perhaps even feeling a little bit pleased with his own cleverness. This time it wasn’t like that. After two years, Hoffmann had reached the very core, the apex of the group he’d been paid to infiltrate—but it was too late.

  Crouse had just finished recording a video that would be uploaded to the Internet tomorrow in the city, and the commandant was putting away the camera, when she stepped out of the only caleta they didn’t have access to. Catalina Herrador Sierra, alias Mona Lisa. The Queen of Hearts. A tall, slender, beautiful woman in her forties. She wore the same uniform as the others, but with insignias Hoffmann had never seen. The third most powerful person in the PRC, elected to the PRC’s highest governing body. The woman the media was describing as the ideologue. A meeting with one of the Shadows.

  In the past, Hoffmann had only been allowed to follow El Mestizo to a certain point, and then stayed overnight with others who weren’t approved to go all the way. The Shadows. That’s what they were called, since only a few knew where they were or how to contact them: usually, like now, in some camp somewhere in the jungle.

  The last time this happened was when he infiltrated the Polish mafia in Sweden and he’d been unexpectedly summoned to Warsaw. Like now, he’d penetrated deeply into the organization, but had yet to stand face to face with the absolute power. A taxi ride from the airport to Wojtek International’s headquarters, to Zbigniew Boruc and Grzegorz Krzynówek, had changed everything and had been the result of many years of planning that first time around. He’d been introduced by his contact, Henryk—another man who trusted him without knowing he was encountering a lie—to the deputy CEO and the Roof, the ones who controlled the company from a black house in the district of Mokotów.

  Now El Mestizo was Piet’s contact person, the man he’d manipulated to get here, all the way to the Queen of Hearts. Her smile seemed genuine as she met El Mestizo and received the memory card of Crouse’s monologue. She hugged him, a tight, heartfelt hug you’d give to someone you trust and who shares your values.

  “And here he is . . . El Sueco. We’ve never met.” She held out her hand to Hoffmann. “But war changes things. As do kill lists. And those of us on them have to choose to trust each other fully. Just like Johnny has chosen to trust you and vouch for you, fully.”

  And when Hoffmann took her firm hand, she took a step forward and hugged him too.

  Just like Johnny has chosen to trust you and vouch for you, fully.

  Hoffmann held the powerful woman in his arms and thought about how all first times have their own first time. El Mestizo, not yet Johnny, after a few months’ acquaintance had decided that his new European employee would become his bodyguard. And Piet Hoffmann had never been so close to someone so dangerous who he also happened to like and who sincerely seemed to like him back. The first of the first times they had arrived at another one of these prison camps in the jungle, and El Mestizo had declared that he wanted them to take a walk, wanted to show him the surroundings. Hoffmann thought that a walk was just that. Until he realized it was the opposite, that he was the one being shown to the surroundings. The whole camp had to see that the new guy was El Mestizo’s friend, receive the message that from now on those who touched El Sueco were touching El Mestizo.

  A confidence he would soon destroy. Because that cage right there in front of them, and the broken American politician sitting inside, was his and Zofia’s and Rasmus’s and Hugo’s only way out.

  THE JUNGLE AT night was an enchanted world. The sounds, the smells, the immense power of what man couldn’t rule over—the animal kingdom. Mosquito nets that had been rolled up like hard little branches were unfurled and tied together with strings to fend off clusters of insects buzzing in the darkness, the birds flapped and screamed against the black sky, and suddenly it was cold, a cold as intense and oppressive as the heat of the day.

  Piet Hoffmann, a few hours earlier, found his way to the caleta that was his until dawn, sank into a simple bed, not much more than a straw mattress and a sleeping mat—but didn’t fall asleep. He was waiting. For the guards stationed at every corner of the camp to relax to the snoring of the rest, and for El Mestizo, who had repeatedly left his caleta for long talks on his satellite phone, to find peace. It had been impossible to make out what he was talking about, though his voice didn’t sound like usual. El Mestizo strove to speak in a controlled, low-key manner no matter how dangerous or urgent a mission or situation was, but now he spoke in a loud, disoriented voice, oscillating between threat and despair.

  Hoffmann left his lumpy bed and sat down by the upturned wooden box that served as a makeshift table. Took a pen from his vest pocket, used a piece of toilet paper as a notepad. And he started to write.

  Coordinates

  The plan. This was how it begins. This was what he had to do first. In a moment or two he could sneak out while the guards were looking the other away, and after El Mestizo had turned off his phone.

  Low Earth Orbit

  The next step of the plan. To force those bastards to delete a name from their list. To avoid certain death.

  Time window

  And then the next.

  Cesium-137

  And the next.

  Prism bomb

  And next.

  Magnets sled

  He folded the piece of paper, a square that became an even smaller square until it fit in the bottom of the leather holster of his knife. And went outside. The chill felt like an angry animal wrapped around his body. He moved straight toward the stench of the toilet pit, the first checkpoint, then diagonally to the right between Crouse’s cage and the kitchen. The guard was sitting outside the grating with no clue that another human had just passed by his loaded automatic weapon. When he reached the second checkpoint—a nearly thirty-meter-tall sapucaia tree—and the narrow path that Cristobal had cleared with his machete, the darkness became compact. Black turned even more black. But to use a flashlight, or even a match, was unthinkable. Any light would cut like a living being through the dense greenery.

  Six hundred and twelve steps. Then the clearing, the open area between the prison camp and the base camp, without any densely woven canopy. He stumbled across thick tree trunks and wandering root systems, felt thorns penetrating the fabric of his pants and stung his hands against a swaying bush, which reminded him of the nettles that grew along ditches in Sweden.

  Then he did just as he had at the riverbed near the cocaine kitchen. He took out the GPS receiver from one of the pockets of his bulletproof vest, pushed mark and read the decimal degrees—the coordinates of his exact latitude and longitude recorded in code.

  68.779812, 22.3529645

  The type of information he collected when locating a cocina, a shipment, a warehouse. Then forwarded to his handler at the DEA.

  But not this time. This particular row of numbers was for him—it was for opening the door of a cage, for a trade, a life for a life.

  THERE’S AN ODD sound when a helicopter takes off from the dry grass of an abandoned meadow and returns to a cloudless sky. Dull, pulsating—a discomfort that takes hold in your chest as the air is cut to pieces by whipping blades. Hoffmann didn’t really like helicopters. Illogically assembled metal and plastic that traversed large areas and suddenly came to rest, completely still, hundreds of meters in the air. But here, next to a roaring river in a wayward jungle with no roads, there were no other means of travel. Plus, you never, ever, show weakness. He’d thanked Cristobal the boatman and again hugged the Queen of Hearts, members of a company who wished each other luck, then jumped into flying machines headed in different directions.

  El Sueco and El Mestizo landed where they parked the car the day before and were attacked by sultry, trapped air as they simultaneously opened the doors of the car for the next phase of their trip home. They drove se
veral kilometers along dry, dusty gravel, which gradually turned into a thin layer of steaming asphalt, before either of them spoke.

  “We’re traveling through Medellín, Peter.”

  The anxiety in El Mestizo’s voice, the one Piet Hoffmann never picked up before but could now discern again. We’re traveling through Medellín. The same anxiety in his voice the night before, when El Mestizo had been convinced he couldn’t be heard above the moisture of the Amazon and the anguished screams of prisoners.

  “A thousand-kilometer detour, Johnny. Nineteen hours.”

  “Do you have a problem with that? You got someplace to be?”

  Yes—I do have a fucking problem with that. Yes—I need time to go home and make sure my family is all right before I head to a meeting in a café in Bogotá with Erik Wilson, my former handler who set me up with the job of informing on you.

  Everything he couldn’t say. While El Mestizo clearly showed that he too didn’t want to talk about his mission. In order not to obstruct—destroy—their relationship, to be able to continue gathering information for another, actual, employer, Hoffmann had long ago decided not to insist on explaining how hard it was to protect a man who wouldn’t trust you.

  As always, they stopped every couple hundred kilometers, to stretch their legs and change drivers. Or, they usually did. But about halfway there El Mestizo had fallen asleep. Heavily. Snoring loudly, sometimes with his head against Piet’s shoulder. And Hoffmann—as he increased the speed to gain some time—realized what he’d already suspected: anxiety, like a faint breeze around each breath, was real. He’d never seen his employer sleep. Johnny Sánchez, over their two and a half years together, met each moment watchful, ready. Spying. At first Hoffmann had tried to rationalize it—El Mestizo was probably just exhausted, a person’s screams affected him, too. Maybe he was carrying the horror of that torture around, though he never showed emotion except with his daughter. The sturdy man next to him, who had killed and tortured and injured and coerced so many times before, maybe he was reachable, affected after all? Or . . . maybe it was a lack of oxygen? The air that became more elusive with each kilometer they traveled up toward the city, which was spread out just beneath the sky?