And it’s Karp’s fault, him and his fucking family, he thought. The hatred that roiled beneath his ruined countenance competed with the chill of fear that the thought of Karp dredged up. Nemesis. Ever since he’d met the man, the word had popped into his mind whenever he pictured his enemy’s face or remembered how the district attorney foiled his plans. Nemesis—the Greek goddess of retributive justice, only in this case nemesis was six feet five, still taut and muscular, and the district attorney of New York.
Erik calmed himself by thinking of the girl he held prisoner. He’d intended on raping Lucy Karp in St. Patrick’s and only his “little brother’s” interference had prevented it. Still, he’d fled with her as his hostage, fantasizing how he would wait and then someday send Butch Karp photographs of his impregnated daughter. Sweet revenge for dear old Dad. But then that lunatic Grale showed up in the nick of time and the end result was Lucy’s rescue and this…this…this monstrosity of a face.
There was a knock at the door. “Stay out of sight, Andy,” he told the voice. “I don’t need you fucking this up again.” When Andy didn’t respond, he shouted, “Come in!”
The door opened and Crawford entered. The congressman smiled and extended his hand as he walked across the floor. “So tonight’s the big night.”
Erik ignored the hand and comment, but noticed that Crawford kept his eyes averted from his ruined face. He reached for the silver mask and fastened it in place. “Is everything ready in Trinidad?”
“Yes,” Crawford replied. “As soon as word is received that the Sheik is safely in our hands, everything else will be set in motion.”
“The Sheik,” Erik scoffed. “Everybody’s so dramatic. What is this, a comic book? Is Karp Batman? Does that make me the Joker…or the Riddler? Perhaps we should refer to Nadya as Catwoman—she’d look great in a tight leather suit.”
Crawford started to laugh but stopped when he saw the blue eyes behind the mask blazing with anger. “Do you think we can count on Grale showing up tonight with al-Sistani?” the congressman asked to cover his blunder.
Who knows when you’re dealing with a madman? Erik thought, suppressing the little voice in his head that added, Two madmen. But he was quite sure that Grale would arrive as scheduled.
It was good to know an enemy’s weakness. Ever since the St. Patrick’s debacle, he’d been aware that Grale had a weakness for Lucy Karp. However, because he himself could not love a woman, and used them only for his pleasure, he had not at first thought of her as his opponent’s Achilles’ heel. Only when the traitor Treacher appeared at a certain import-export business and gave the password “Flashfire” as a sign that he was helping al-Sistani, and suggested that Lucy be taken hostage, had Erik seen the possibility.
The question had been whether to trust the filthy Judas who suggested it. Greed was something Erik understood. The promise of riches—indeed Treacher had already been paid an initial amount as promised by al-Sistani—had to be a terrible temptation for a bum on the streets. He himself would have jumped at the chance under similar circumstances, so he was inclined to believe it anyway.
Still, he didn’t just buy the man’s story without corroborating evidence. He’d been convinced by a spy he had among the ragged human offal who called themselves the Mole People. The spy told him that Grale was showing signs of increasing mental illness and a growing obsession with Lucy Karp. He seemed to consider himself the self-appointed guardian angel of the entire Karp family, except for the young woman he desired.
Perhaps he grows tired of spending cold nights alone beneath the streets of New York, Erik mused. Who better to warm your bed than an unwilling wench?
The depth of his obsession seemed confirmed when Lucy Karp’s abduction was reported to Grale. The spy described Erik’s enemy as having turned into a frothing-mad lunatic. And when he learned that one of his own, Treacher, had been behind it, he’d sworn to kill the man in the most horrible way he could devise.
Erik thought it funny to use Treacher as the go-between to carry his message: al-Sistani for Lucy Karp. “If I return, he’ll know the deal is on,” Treacher had said, trembling before the dilapidated throne of David Grale. The madman had glared down at him, his hand around the handle of his long knife, the tip of which he’d buried in the arm of the chair when the preacher was brought before him. “If I don’t, there’s no deal and Lucy dies.”
Treacher was allowed to return with a time and place for the exchange, as well as a counteroffer: al-Sistani for Lucy Karp and Edward Treacher.
“Don’t worry,” Erik had told the frightened man. “I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re going to be a wealthy man, and I’ll even help you disappear.”
Erik’s spy had reported the meeting between Treacher and Grale, and how Grale had later sworn to cut his former friend’s head off. It hardly mattered; if all went according to plan, neither Grale nor Treacher were going to survive the night. As he’d told Dean Newbury, Lucy Karp was more than just a commodity to be traded for al-Sistani; she was the sacrificial lamb he would use to lure Grale into a trap.
Erik shuddered with the anticipated pleasure of killing the man. If Karp was his nemesis, then Grale was the sword of retribution. When he was dead, Lucy Karp would be at Erik’s mercy again. And there would still be enough time to torment Karp with knowing his daughter was suffering at his enemy’s hands before the district attorney also met his fate.
“Grale will show,” Erik assured Crawford.
“What about Karp?”
“What about him?”
“Well, I’m not superstitious,” Crawford replied. “But that guy or some member of his family always seems to have your number.”
Quick as a snake, Erik slapped the congressman across the face, hard enough to knock him to the floor. “I’ll take care of Karp,” he said. “Just make sure you’ve done your part, or I swear you’ll wish you were dead.”
Crawford got up on an elbow and rubbed his bleeding lip. He swallowed hard and nodded. “I understand,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Good,” Erik replied. “Now get out of here. I need a nap before I’m off to renew my acquaintance with Miss Karp and David Grale.”
When the congressman had picked himself up and left, Erik turned back to the view of Manhattan. The sun had set and a gray mist was rising from the rivers and the harbor. The lights of the city’s skyscrapers and the Brooklyn Bridge were winking on.
Erik rubbed his brow. He needed a nap; the headaches were getting worse—sometimes he seemed to even black out and couldn’t account for time. He looked again at the skyline; it made him feel better to imagine how it was about to change.
Soon, he thought, they’ll bow before me like before a king, and then they’ll all regret what was done to me. Karp most of all.
Lucy felt another presence in the room where she sat hooded, naked, and bound to a chair, shivering in the dark, her hair still wet from the last visit by her torturer. But she had not heard the door open or anyone in the room, until the slight rustling of cloth, as if someone in a robe or dress was moving around her.
“Prepare yourself, my child, he’s coming,” a woman said softly in Spanish.
“St. Teresa?” Lucy’s voice was tinged with fear. While to some, having a patron saint might sound reassuring, St. Teresa of Avila’s presence meant that imminent, potentially fatal danger was near.
“Yes, it is I,” the apparition replied. “You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?”
Lucy tried to gather her thoughts to answer the saint. She had no idea where she was…except I know we crossed a bridge, she’d told herself. I could hear it when the sound of the tires on the road changed. But New Jersey? Brooklyn? Queens? The only man she’d seen since she’d been dragged into the building, stripped of her clothes, and searched was her torturer, Abu, a hulking Yemeni who rarely spoke except to interrogate her. When he was gone, the room was dark and silent; no outside noises or light penetrated the space. The only other human contact was the
voice of a man who called himself Erik, who issued orders to Abu over a cellular speakerphone with a lisping yet somehow familiar voice.
Lucy shook her head. “I can’t think,” she told the saint.
After her abduction, she’d assumed that she would be questioned about what agency she worked for and who else was involved. So she was prepared and refused to answer. So they tortured her by waterboarding.
Abu would come into the room, lay the chair on its back with Lucy strapped in, and then pour water over the hood. It mimicked the process of drowning through forced suffocation and the inhalation of water; if she tried to breathe, all she got was water, down her nose, down her throat. Intellectually she understood that she was not really drowning, but there was no way as she gagged and convulsed to convince her body or her subconscious mind that she wasn’t dying.
Her torturer seemed indifferent to what he was doing. Except for a brief comment before the first time—“for my brothers at Guantanamo”—he seemed to neither enjoy nor dislike tormenting her. He asked his questions dispassionately, and even when challenging or accusing her, his voice rarely displayed much emotion.
Lucy tried to resist. When she realized that she would not be able to hold out, she even hoped that Abu would make a mistake and kill her. But she soon realized that Abu was very skilled, and she would not be allowed to die—at least not until they had what they wanted. So she’d decided to begin reluctantly answering questions while she was still somewhat coherent and could control what she talked about.
Lucy first stalled by answering some of Abu’s questions in a variety of the languages she was adept at speaking, as though she’d partially lost her mind but was trying to cooperate. At first this confused Abu, who stopped the torture apparently to confer with his superior and possibly interpret what she’d said, which were essentially nonsense rhymes. When he returned, he punished her with a session in which he didn’t even bother to ask any questions. But he said that when he returned the next time, she would answer “truthfully in English” or the waterboarding would begin immediately.
When he returned, she answered his questions in English. But she did so as she’d been taught by one of Jaxon’s men, a survival specialist, with partial truths and information that was either already known to her captors or harmless to her people. She said she worked as an interpreter for a VIP security firm run by former FBI agent Espey Jaxon. They did work for private companies and individuals, as well as the government.
“Then what were you doing in Dagestan?” Abu asked.
Lucy wasn’t surprised. She thought her abduction would be tied to Nadya Malovo and that by answering at least somewhat truthfully, she would be perceived as cooperating without revealing any new information. “I was there as an interpreter for a team attempting to catch a terrorist named Ajmaani.”
“You were there to assassinate this person,” Abu accused.
“I was part of a team sent to kill her,” she agreed. “But my job was to interpret and help the team by speaking for them when necessary.”
“Why was the team sent to kill Ajmaani?”
Lucy shrugged against her bonds. “She’s a terrorist,” she responded. “If there was more to it than that, no one told me. We received information that she was in Dagestan, and our clients asked us to eliminate her.”
“The terrorist U.S. government, you mean,” Abu said.
“I’m not given that information,” she replied. “I’m just an interpreter.”
Suddenly, Abu slapped her—hard but not as hard as she would have expected. Still, it was a rare demonstration of emotion. “Liar!” he said.
Lucy pretended to cry. “That’s what I was told,” she insisted. “If there was another reason, they didn’t share it with me.”
“What do you know about the Sons of Man?”
Lucy shrugged as if the question had little meaning to her. Though I’m learning something new, she thought. “Not much. Some right-wing end-of-the-worlders, I think. Mostly stuff for conspiracy buffs. Just some nutcases waiting for ‘the revolution’ to take over the world. To be honest, we’ve heard rumors, but they’re below the radar compared to guys like Osama and freelance terrorists like Malovo.”
Once she started talking, Lucy was a font of useless information, playing her role to the hilt as just a low-level flunky for a private security company—one of hundreds that sprang up after 9-11, run by former federal agents looking to improve their retirement prospects. Then the questioning stopped. She wondered if she’d simply bored her captors, but she also had to admit that interrogating her had not seemed to be the priority.
In fact, it had been many hours since she had seen Abu or heard any sounds except the traffic. She wondered if she would now be killed and sometimes quietly cried for real. She wanted to see her parents and brothers and say all the things she’d been meaning to say. And most of all, she wanted to feel Ned’s arms around her one more time and tell him that she was sorry that she would not be able to share a life with him, or give him the children they’d talked happily about teaching to ride.
Lucy felt the saint’s hand on her shoulder. “Poor child, I remember the horror of the toca—the despicable tortura del agua—during trial portions of the Inquisition. Some misguided inquisidores believed that the use of water for torture had a profound religious significance.” The saint sighed. “All these centuries and man still delights in the pain of others.”
“Who’s coming?” Lucy asked.
“You don’t know? I think you do. You recognize his voice. His face…his old face has haunted you for a long time. He is the deceiver…”
“Satan?”
The saint paused. “No…the Great Deceiver doesn’t like to do his own dirty work. He manifests himself through others, such as this one, whose face you once knew but won’t now. Still, he has the same evil spirit he has always had.”
“Why did you come to me now? Am I going to die?”
“That hasn’t been determined yet,” Teresa replied. “I’m here to tell you that you will again soon be faced with two choices. One is safer and may still accomplish what you set out to do, but it is uncertain. The second is fraught with danger, and you may die even if you succeed.”
“Then why would I choose the second option?”
“Because he’s the only one who can stop himself.” Lucy felt the saint’s hand suddenly tense and then her grip fade as her voice and presence receded. “No matter what, child, I will be with you…. Hecomes.”
“Wait, I—” Lucy’s reply was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. Over the past several days, that sound had come to be associated with the terror of drowning, and she shivered involuntarily with fear.
Someone walked across the room toward her. He moved with a stiff gait, as if one leg lagged, and his breathing seemed wet and labored.
“Ah, the lovely Miss Karp,” he lisped. “I trust you have been enjoying Abu’s hospitality.”
Lucy recognized Erik’s voice and didn’t speak. A moment later, she felt the man grab the hood and yank it from her head. Although the light in the room was dim, after so long in the dark it still hurt her eyes and she blinked, trying to focus on the shape of the man in front of her.
Even as her sight cleared, she wondered if her mind was playing tricks on her. The man seemed to be wearing a silver mask. The mask was void of emotion one way or the other, just a blank slate, but the icy blue eyes beneath it glittered with malice.
“Why the disguise?” Lucy asked. “Do I know you?”
Erik tapped a shiny cheek with a finger. “Ah…‘that fate which condemns me to wallow in blood has also denied me the joys of the flesh. This face—the infection which poisons our love.’”
“Okay, I get it,” Lucy replied as if bored. “The name Erik…the quote…you think you’re the Phantom of the Opera. And who does that make me? Christine Daae? ‘Who was that shape in the shadows? Whose is that face in the mask?’ Either way you’re a freak, and I know who you are…Kane.” The
name came out of her mouth as a curse.
Sociopath, former candidate for mayor of New York City, terrorist, and murderer, Andrew Kane seemed surprised. But then he threw back his head and laughed so hard that he began to cough. When at last he was able to stop, he lifted his mask and laughed again at the expression of repugnance on her face. “I see you like my new look. ‘Pity comes too late, turn around and face your fate, an eternity of this before your eyes!’”
“I don’t pity you,” Lucy said. “The inside of the man finally emerged on the outside, that’s all. But I do pity Andy having to live with you. Is he in there still, or have you managed to kill him and that last shred of decency from your twisted mind?”
Kane’s ravaged face contorted for a moment as though he struggled for control. Then his scarred lips twisted into a half smile. “No, Andy’s still with us, unfortunately, though if I could kill him without harming myself I would,” he said. “But that’s the sad thing about my particular version of schizophrenia—we’re all in this together.” He giggled. “What’s the old saying? ‘You can choose your friends, but you don’t get to choose your relatives.’ Well, with multiple personality disorder, I guess you could say you don’t get to choose your body-mates, either.”
Kane walked around behind Lucy, reaching out with his hand as he passed to caress her cheek and neck. “We’ll have a lot of time to catch up. But aren’t you the least bit curious what happened after we last saw each other…and why,” he said, leaning over so that his glistening cheek was next to hers, “I look like this?”
Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) Page 21