by Blake Banner
I smiled. “I’m glad you can see that. It might save you time and pain. Let’s go.”
He and Njal climbed out and I put the SUV in the garage. Then I opened the door to the house and we went in.
The living room was basically a nave, fifty feet long and thirty feet across. The ceiling was high and supported by crude tree trunks that had been painted white. On the far right, a large, crude fireplace stood cold, on the left, a wooden staircase rose to a door on the upper floor.
The furniture was basic: a heavy pine table, four chairs and, by the fire, an old sofa, a couple of rush-bottomed wooden armchairs and a rocking chair. A door in the far wall led to a bathroom and a huge, stone-flagged kitchen at the back of the house.
“The bedrooms are upstairs,” I said to Timmerman, “though I can’t vouch for the condition of the beds. How do you feel about rats?”
Njal said, “I take the groceries to the kitchen, see if the fridge and the cooker work, yuh? I leave you to talk.”
I said, “The electricity is connected. The fridge should be on, but the cooker runs on butane. You need to flip the switch on the big, orange canister by the cooker.”
He took the stuff we’d bought and disappeared through the door. I pointed at the fireplace and said to Timmerman, “Sit. Let’s get this over with.”
I could see his hands had started to shake and the reality of his situation was beginning to dawn on him. That dawning brought with it actual terror. Terror is not an hysterical state. Hysteria is what precedes terror. Terror is a feeling of emptiness, of helplessness. It’s a kind of paralysis. Timmerman was very close to that state.
He crossed the dusty, terracotta tiles looking like a very old man. He sat in one of the armchairs and watched me sit opposite him, in the rocker. I pulled my Camels from my pocket, aware that in this moment he would perceive everything I did, every action, every look, as an immediate threat. His imagination would be running wild, and I played on that. I took my time pulling a cigarette from the pack and poking it in my mouth. I flipped the Zippo open, let him see the flame, and leaned into it. I took a deep drag and leaned back in my chair.
“You need to understand a few things, Jean-Claude. The first thing you need to understand is that there is a way out for you and your family.”
I saw his breath shudder, though he tried to hide it.
“If I betray Omega, you have no idea what they will do to me, and to my family. Nothing you can do can come close…”
I smiled and shook my head. “Are you forgetting, Jean-Claude, my father was Gamma, my brother was Alpha. I am the man who crippled Omega in the U.S.A. There is very little you can tell me about Omega that I don’t already know.” I sighed. “Pain and horror have a limit. They are not infinite. There is only so much you can do to a human being, and then they start to shut down. And trust me when I tell you that I can take you, and your family, to that limit. We need to establish that fact in your mind, Jean-Claude, before we can move on.”
He was smart enough to register the implied threat and he nodded. “All right, I understand.”
“Good. Now, here’s the thing, Jean-Claude. Help me, cooperate with me, and I can guarantee that Omega will never touch you.”
He gave a bark of laughter. “You are out of your mind! You are out of your mind! If you think I will believe this, or if you believe it yourself, you are out of your mind!”
I flicked ash and watched him. He watched me back. He wanted me to prove to him that what I was saying was true. In that moment, it was what he most wanted on Earth. I waited and let him come to me.
He erupted: “I am Omega! You think I do not know the capabilities of my own organization? You think I do not know how far they will go, to what lengths they will go, to punish disloyalty?”
“I’m quite sure you know. You also know that I am fully aware of that. And I am telling you, in spite of that, if you cooperate with me, I can guarantee that Omega will never come after you.”
“How can you guarantee such a thing?”
“I don’t need to. Let’s face it. I have you, and I can have your wife and your daughters here in twenty-four hours. Cooperate with me and you have a chance. Don’t, and you all die. So I don’t need to guarantee you anything. You will cooperate one way or another. Nevertheless, I am making that guarantee, even though I don’t need to.”
I left him to think about that. I stood and made my way to the kitchen. Njal was putting things in the fridge. The two bottles of Jameson’s were on the side by the cooker. I grabbed one and two glasses. I also took the packs of boot laces and stuffed them in my pocket. He said, “How is it going? How long you think before he breaks?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Not long. Tonight, maybe. Tomorrow morning.”
He closed the fridge and turned to look at me. “You gonna have to hurt him?”
“I hope not.”
He nodded. “I hope not, too.”
“This going to be a problem for you? I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
He shook his head. “No. I’m in, all the way.”
I returned to the big living room. He was standing silhouetted at the open door.
“You want a drink?”
He turned to face me, saw the bottles. “Jameson’s. Irish whiskey. Yes, thank you.” As I stood at the table and poured, he gave a small snort of laughter. “This is a very unusual form of torture, I have to admit, where you give your victim Jameson’s whiskey.”
I didn’t smile. I handed him his drink. “I haven’t started torturing you yet.”
He stopped with his glass half way to his lips and swayed. His skin went pasty gray. I said, “Drink.”
He took a pull and I pointed back at the chairs by the cold fireplace. “Sit.”
He returned to his chair. I stayed by the table, watching him and sipped my drink.
“You said in the car that I was one of you. But here is what Ben never understood, and what you don’t yet understand. You, Omega, the people you employ, you are all defined by one quality. You have no respect for people. You consider yourselves somehow an elite, and because the rest of the world is not part of that elite, you feel entitled to do whatever you please with them: experiment on them, take their money, take their lives, play with their minds, steal their memories and their thought…” I shrugged. “Piss on their souls. You have no respect for anyone but yourselves.”
I returned to the rocker and sat.
“I think humanity sucks. If ever nature got it wrong, it was when it created humanity, but still, there isn’t a human being on Earth I don’t respect—not even you—for the simple reason that you are alive, and you are capable of pain. But there is more, Jean-Claude. We have minds, and if freedom is at all possible, it is possible in the mind. And when you steal a person’s mind, a person’s self, you steal their capacity to search for freedom, and in my opinion, for what it’s worth, you commit the most grotesque act that a human being is capable of committing. So you see, at a very fundamental level, I am not one of you.”
Somehow that seemed to confuse and scare him as much as anything else I had said. I shrugged. “Why am I telling you this? Because, before I start, I want you to understand that I don’t want to do it. You have a way out.”
I drained my glass and flicked my cigarette butt into the cold fireplace. Then I reached down and pulled my knife from my boot and laid it on the table.
“We are coming to the time, Jean-Claude. I am going to ask you a question. If you give me the right answer, we can avoid the whole unpleasant business of hurting you, and then hurting your family. Give me the wrong answer and we turn down a very dark path. I will have to prove to you that I am serious. No matter what you do or how much you beg, I will have to prove to you that I am serious.”
His breathing had become slightly erratic and he looked scared. I only hoped he was scared enough. He said:
“What do you want to know?”
I looked at him for a long moment, then raised my eyebro
ws. “I’m not sure I like your question, Jean-Claude.”
His eyes went wide. His face, drained of blood, went white. “Why?”
“It sounds as though you are suggesting there are some questions you won’t answer.”
He shook his head. “No, no… That is not what I meant! For God’s sake! I was just asking, what do you want to know?”
I waited another moment till I was sure he was close to panic. “Is there anything you will not tell me, Jean-Claude? Is there any question you will not answer?”
He closed his eyes. His chest was rising and falling fast. “No.” It was barely a whisper. “No, there are no questions I will not answer.”
I picked up the knife, stood and walked slowly behind him.
“I need you to believe that I am able to switch off my compassion and go all the way.”
“I believe that. I promise you. I have seen it.”
“I could take a finger, but I am not sure that would convince you.”
“I am convinced, Mr. Walker.” He was close to tears. “Please, stop this. I have told you, I will give you any information you want.”
“Perhaps your hand…”
“No! Please! Just ask me! I will tell you anything! Please just ask me!”
Now he was begging me to ask him anything I wanted about Omega. I figured that was a good time to ask.
“Where is the mainframe for Omega Europe’s central computer?”
He froze. “What? No…!”
I didn’t hesitate. I had hoped he would answer, but I had also known that this was going to be his most likely reaction. I took a small step with my left foot and rammed the Fairbairn & Sykes hard down through the back of his hand and into the wooden arm of the chair. His scream was horrific and spasmodic. I took the boot laces from my pocket and tore open one pack. With his right hand, he was desperately trying to pull the knife from his left. I grabbed his wrist and wrenched it over to the other arm of the chair. I bound it tight and went to hunker down in front of him. He was gasping, close to hyperventilating. His eyes were bulging wide and his pupils were dilated. Beads of sweat were standing out on his brow. I bound his ankles to the legs of the chair and stood.
“I gave you every chance, Jean-Claude. I warned you and I asked you if there was any question you would not answer. How far do I need to go? Do I need to remove a finger? A hand? An arm?”
He was shaking his head. “No, no, no, please! I am sorry! Please!”
“Both arms?”
“No, no, no…”
“Where is the Omega Europe mainframe?”
His face crumpled. He squeezed his eyes shut and wailed like a small child, repeating over and over, “No, no, no…please no…”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You leave me no choice…”
FOURTEEN
I went to the door and shouted down to the kitchen.
“Njal! Bring the knife block and the whetstone!”
Timmerman had stopped sobbing and was watching me with huge, staring eyes. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to take off your arm.”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t take me seriously…”
He started screaming, wrenching at the chair. I felt sick to my stomach but I couldn’t show it. I went up to him and backhanded him hard across the face. His eyes rolled and he sat groaning. I heard Njal’s boots in the passage, approaching from the kitchen. I grabbed Timmerman by the scruff of his neck and shouted into his face.
“I told you! I warned you! Don’t make me have to prove it to you! I asked you if there were any questions you would not answer! You said no! And the first damn question I ask you, you refuse to answer! Now I’m going to have to prove to you that I am serious!”
Njal put the block of knives on the table with the whetstone. Timmerman was shaking his head and sobbing. “Please don’t do this… please…”
“Don’t do it?” I was bellowing at him. I grabbed the biggest knife in the block and advanced on him. “Don’t do it?”
Njal said: “I told you he would do this. He is wasting your time.”
I grabbed his T-shirt at the shoulder and rammed the knife hard through the cloth. He screamed again. I tore off the sleeve and reached my hand out to Njal. “Give me the whetstone. I’m going to take off his arm.”
He started hyperventilating again, screaming on every out breath. Njal handed me the whetstone and I sharpened the blade. Then I found the tendon that connected his arm to his chest and placed the blade against it. I stopped and looked at his face.
“Here is how it’s going to go. I ask you one more time. Hesitate and I take off your arm. We cauterize the wound with a blowtorch. Bandage you up and go to the next arm. Hesitate and we take off that arm. Then we move to your legs. After that, when you are just a body and a head, we go and get your daughters and bring them to see you. Is that how you want your daughters to remember their daddy? Is that how you want to remember them?”
His lips trembled.
I snarled, “Don’t say I can’t do this! I can! And I will! One! Just one wrong word! One hesitation in the wrong damned place—and I go through the tendon, and then there is no turning back! Think very carefully about the next sound that comes out of your mouth!”
He stared me in the eye, trembling and sobbing. “There is no mainframe…”
I rammed the knife home. It must have hurt like hell, but it did no major damage. The real damage was in his mind, with the build up I’d given him. This was the proof I needed him to have. I cut no arteries and severed no tendons, but in his mind I was taking off his arm. He screamed. It was a horrible, hysterical noise. I left the knife wedged in and turned to Njal, shouting over Timmerman’s screaming. “Call HQ. Tell them La Grandville is go. Bring the wife and the kids here.”
I seized his shoulder in my left hand, grabbed the handle of the knife with my right and snarled at him, “This is going to hurt, a lot!”
And in that moment, he went beyond the point of endurance. Few men would have gotten as far as he did. He became barely human. He screamed and gibbered and thrashed and wept, and among all the noise, he begged me to stop and swore he would tell me what I needed to know.
I waited for him to stop, fed him some whiskey, and when his hysteria had subsided, I took hold of the handle of the knife and said, “The only sound that need come out of your mouth, Jean-Claude, is an address. Not umm, not but, not err, not please or no; a place, an address, a location. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Where is the mainframe for the Omega Europe computer?”
“Luxembourg.”
“Where in Luxembourg?”
“At the Centre de traduction des organes de l'Union européenne.”
I frowned. “At the center for translations? Why?”
He sobbed as he spoke. “It is the perfect place. It is at the heart of the European Community. It uses a huge number of computers and it has very sophisticated software. The building has three floors above ground, two wings and three floors of basements. The Omega mainframe is the third basement, in a private laboratory. Nobody questions its presence there. Everybody assumes it is part of the network for the parliament or the Court of Justice. Both are ten minutes walk away, less.” He had gone very pale and looked like he was going to pass out. “And as you say, who would think of looking there?”
I turned to Njal. “Upstairs, in the bathroom, the first aid kit.”
I gave Timmerman another sip of whiskey. “Keep talking, Jean-Claude. We’ve been to a bad place. Let’s not go back there. Tomorrow morning, you can be on the plane back to Brussels, see your kids, put all this behind you.”
He nodded and closed his eyes, muttered, “Please…” and began to sob.
“I need access to one terminal. Just one terminal. How do I get in?”
“You need Iris recognition, thumb print and a password which is unique to every person.”
Njal clattered down the stairs with the first aid kit and a c
ouple of blankets, and knelt beside Timmerman. He pulled the knife from his shoulder and started tending the wound. As he did it, he spoke to me. “What you want to do about this knife in his hand?”
I pulled out my cell and walked to the open door. I pressed a random number and put the phone to my ear. Then I glanced at Njal. “Take it out. Patch him up.” Then I spoke into the phone.
“This is team one. Listen, are the packages still at La Grandville? I need you to move in and pick them up. Expect resistance.” I paused like I was listening. I was aware Timmerman had turned and was looking at me. I ignored him. “No, I don’t want them brought here. I don’t want them hurt. Not for now. Take them to the house in Chalabre. When they get there, let Muriel call him.” I paused a little longer, then said, “OK,” and put the phone in my pocket.
I walked back to the chair as Njal yanked out the knife from his hand. Timmerman let out a small cry. He had gone yellow and lost focus in his eyes. I said, “Stay with me a little longer, Jean-Claude. You heard my conversation just now?” He nodded and mumbled something affirmative. I said, “Is there anything you want to change about what you just told me? Because we are going to hold on to you and your family until I am done in Luxembourg.”
He shook his head, closed his eyes and passed out.
I poured myself another shot of whiskey and lit another Camel. As I held the Zippo to the cigarette, I noticed my hand was shaking and was glad Njal hadn’t seen it. I drained the glass and poured another shot.
Njal stood. “You gonna leave him tied up?”
I shook my head and he bent to untie the laces.
After a moment, as he hunkered down to untie his ankles, he said, “You’re a bad son of a bitch.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
He stood, put the blankets around Timmerman’s shoulders and held out his hand to me. “Give me a cigarette.”
I threw him the pack and the lighter. He lit up, took a deep drag and spoke with smoke wafting from his mouth. “You got information from him in a few hours that he was never going to give. And all you did was cut him twice. Two minor injuries, that probably didn’t even hurt so bad.”