Abuse of Power (25 page)

Then they stopped, abruptly, followed by the sound of her sobs as she gasped for air.

Jack had a bag over his head—burlap, from the smell of it—and he had no idea where he was. He was sitting in a chair with a sagging wicker seat, his wrists tied to the slats that comprised the seatback. The chair was not bolted to the floor but even if he could hop it around, where would he go? His mouth tasted of blood, and his tongue was sore, which meant he’d managed to bite it during the struggle in the alleyway.

Worse yet, his head was throbbing and the room seemed to be spinning slowly. Around and around, like a Ferris wheel. He thought he might throw up.

But at least he was alive.

For now.

Listening to the woman sob. And he knew she wasn’t acting this time, a turn of events that surprised him.

Back in the alley he had thought she was with the gunmen—had attacked her because of it—but he’d obviously been wrong. And now that he knew better, this knowledge begged yet another question:

Had those gunmen been after him or her?

Someone said something to her—it sounded like English, but with the accent and echo he couldn’t be sure—and she responded. Her words were slurred and unintelligible from this distance. She sounded defiant, however, as if she were refusing to give in. Jack had no idea what they were doing to her, but he had a pretty good imagination and a very strong feeling he’d find out soon enough.

But before he could start feeling sorry for himself, the woman’s screams rang out again as she endured another round. Her wails increased in pitch and intensity and Jack strained against his bonds, wanting desperately to break free. He thought about those dark eyes filled with anguish, with pain. He didn’t know anything about her yet he wanted to help.

Her screams went on almost too long to bear—then suddenly she was silent. Eerily so. No sobs this time. No defiant words. Jack knew she had either passed out or was dead.

As he considered this, a metal door clanged down the hallway, opening, hitting a wall, then closing. Whoever had thrown it open wasn’t happy. Voices drifted toward him as two pairs of footsteps reverberated against the walls, moving in his direction. He wrestled with his bonds again, trying to loosen them, the rope cutting into his flesh, rubbing his wrists raw. There was nothing in the Krav Maga training manual to deal with this, except for the rubber-encased, bite-activated potassium cyanide pill that Mossad operatives carried between cheek and jaw like chewing tobacco. Which he didn’t have.

Then a door in front of him clanged open and a voice said, “Your girlfriend is a stubborn little tart, Mr. Hatfield. I’ve seen men twice her size break under half the stress.”

Jack would know that smarmy voice anywhere. It was Adam Swain.

A hand grabbed the burlap bag and yanked it from his head. Swain stood near the door and another man, an ape Jack recognized from the attack in the alley, tossed the bag aside. He stepped back, standing to Jack’s right. He was carrying a black baton.

They were in a cell of some kind, the cement floor filthy, a tattered mattress atop a rusty bed frame against one wall. The walls were mottled with peeling green paint, the room illuminated by a single work light attached to a portable battery.

Jack guessed that they were in an abandoned hospital of some kind. Judging by the reinforced doors, it was probably a psychiatric facility.

He felt gutted and he was scared. Not Iraq-scared, where the enemy just wanted to kill you. This was semipersonal. They were going to want him to talk. It was a strange sensation: a strange calm settled over him as he literally felt his ego and id go to opposite sides of his head, the first curious to see if the other would break. He felt his id manning up.

“Is she dead?” Jack asked.

Swain ignored the question. “You don’t look surprised to see me. You assumed we’d keep an eye on you?”

“Of course. I’m not stupid.”

“You almost fooled us in Tel Aviv with your little black hat routine. Very clever.”

“Apparently not,” Jack said.

Swain was flipping through the Israeli passport Jack had been carrying. He dropped it and smiled. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. We’re professionals, after all, and at least you tried.” He waved a hand. “And you’re here, aren’t you? In England. Which I’m sure the home secretary would be delighted to know.”

“What can I say? I like a challenge.”

“So I see,” Swain said. “But what about our agreement? I told you what would happen if you broke it.”

“Yeah, and I feel bad about that. I probably should’ve stuck around San Francisco so you could arrange a Dumpster death, or maybe toss me in a bathtub and slit my wrists.”

Swain’s eyebrows went up. “You’re assuming that was us?”

“Who else?”

“I just found out about al-Fida myself. Terrible way to go. Not that I really give a toss.”

“I thought you said he was an asset. Was that a lie?”

Swain didn’t answer.

Jack pushed. “So, if
you
didn’t kill him, who did?”

Swain smiled again. “Not everything is black-and-white, Jack. There are politics to consider. Protocol. There’s a very delicate balance at work here, and a lot of people involved. Dealing with a mongrel like al-Fida is below my pay grade.”

“Should I be flattered?”

Swain shrugged. “I don’t give a damn.”

“What about Bob Copeland? Was
he
flattered?”

“He made the mistake of associating with the wrong people, just as you have.”

“So why don’t you kill me. Get it over with.”

Swain huffed a dry chuckle. “I’d think you would have figured it out by now, considering what you just heard. My job isn’t simply to eliminate a problem but to extract information and respond accordingly.”

He nodded to the other man, who tucked the baton into a loop on his belt and disappeared into the darkness behind the work light. Jack flexed his wrists again, trying to pull a Houdini, stretch the ropes just enough to slip free. He heard the voice of his deceased father admonishing him, “
Don’t be a jack of all trades, Jack, and a master of none. Learn something well.
” One thing Jack knew well was the art of the long struggle, the art of war.

Swain pointed a Glock at him. “You see, old boy, killing you quickly would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise.”

Jack’s heart started to accelerate. The show was over. Ego and id were merging again. He had no idea what they were about to do to him, but he had the feeling the next screams he heard would be his own.

The thug came back carrying a bucket full of water, and Jack felt dread sluice through him.

“Look,” he said to Swain, his heart about ready to burst through his chest. “I don’t know what kind of information you’re hoping to extract from me, but I’ve got nothing. I only came here on a hunch.”

His wrists were burning, but he didn’t stop flexing, relaxing, flexing, relaxing. The rope was starting to loosen. Not much, but it was a start.

“That may be true,” Swain said, “but I have to be certain, Jack. Especially considering the company you’ve been keeping.”

“The girl? Just another hunch. I don’t even know her name.”

“Yet the moment I walked into this room, the first thing you did was ask about her. I could hear the concern in your voice.”

“She was screaming, for God’s sake! She’s a human being.”

“An attractive one,” he said. “Though not for much longer. We’re just resting her for act two. Your capacity for empathy is admirable, but you can understand why I have to find out if there’s more to it than that. And then, of course, there’s Operation Roadshow. That’s a very sensitive subject in my world.”

“What does the woman have to do with it?” Jack asked. Despite what was about to happen, he couldn’t help himself.

Swain was surprised as well. “You amaze me. Here you are about to feel more pain than I’d wish on any human being—well, almost any—yet you keep asking me questions. At what point do you stop being a reporter?”

“When I know the truth.”

Swain nodded. “All right, then. Here’s your truth.”

He gestured and the thug swung his arms, throwing the bucketful of water, drenching Jack’s hair, his jacket, his shirt, his pants. Then the thug pulled the baton free and flicked a switch in the base. It was an electroshock device. The click was the loudest, most terrible sound Jack had heard since the explosion in Iraq. It even beat the bomb back home because it was all about
him
.

He’d heard of the Chinese using these batons against practitioners of Falun Gong, jamming them into their prisoners’ mouths and letting loose as much as 250,000 volts of electricity. It was the torturer’s preferred method because it reportedly didn’t leave telltale marks.

He worked his wrists urgently, trying to loosen the damn rope. Ironically, the blood from the wounds that caused was helping to soften them. The wriggling was subtle, would look to the other men like anxiety, like panic—if they bothered to look. The room was poorly lit and their eyes were on his face, his pain. It helped that the chair was worn from repeated sessions like this one. Jack guessed that people had fallen over, taking the chair with them. The wood was slightly splintered, the armrests rough, providing an abrasive surface for his purposes. Whether it would be enough to cut through in time, or at all, was another matter.

“Here’s something that might interest you,” Swain said. “Something you learn by trial and error. You know why we tied you to the armrests?”

“To keep me from punching you in the balls?”

“That, yes,” Swain said. “We found that when we tied peoples’ hands behind the chair, they arched their backs and fell over. This way, they kind of crumple in on themselves.”

“Thanks for sharing…”

“You’re welcome.”

“… but you’re wasting your time,” he said to Swain, panic rising in his chest. His rapid breathing helped to cover the tactical back-and-forth, side-to-side motion of his wrists. “I swear to you, I don’t know any—”

The ape touched the tip of the baton to Jack’s abdomen, letting loose a wave of agony that swept through every bone, every muscle, every blood vessel and nerve ending in his body. It caused his legs to twitch, not kick, an involuntary muscular reaction. He had no control over them, over his bowels, over anything. The closest he had ever come to feeling anything like this was when he accidentally touched the exposed prongs of a plug in the wall. But that had only been an instant of pain. This didn’t stop. This burned every piece of him without letup.

He gritted his teeth against it; that lasted no more than a second or two.

Then he began to scream.

24

The ape withdrew the baton and Jack’s body went slack, the relief so sweet he wanted to kiss the guy for being merciful.

He felt strangely weightless. He could barely breathe and his abdomen throbbed. He felt as if a hole had been burned right through it.

“Operation Roadshow,” Swain said. “Tell me what you know.”

“… Nothing,” Jack managed, spewing strings of saliva. “Just the name…”

“You’ll have to do better than that. I’m told Mr. Copeland called you the morning he died. And I can imagine he was quite talkative.”

Jack shook his head. “He was drunk … drugged … He wasn’t making any sense … talked about a shoe.”

He added any useless information he could remember, trying to buy time.

Swain nodded, but clearly didn’t believe him. “Who else did you tell about it? Who are you working with?”

“No one…”

“Not even your friend from the yacht harbor? Or the black bird with the nice big neddies? You spend a lot of time with those two. Not that I can blame you in her case.”

Jack thought of Tony and Max and felt panic rising. “… They’re just friends,” he murmured. “She takes video … he watches my dog … they don’t know anything…”

“I really wish you’d be more forthcoming.”

Swain flicked two fingers at the thug and the baton touched Jack’s belly again. Jack wailed, pride gone, dignity evaporated, his body stiffening against the pain as it raced through him. And just when he thought his skin might rupture, the ape pulled the baton away, well-being immediately flowing through him.

Jack didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Two hits and he was about ready to sign over all of his real estate. His body ached from head to toe, his muscles twitching uncontrollably. He’d completely forgotten about loosening the ropes at his wrists.

He thought about that poor woman in the other cell, how this was a strangely bonding experience. He realized that if she wasn’t dead, it was a miracle.

“Anything else you want to share?” Swain asked.

“I swear to you…” he wheezed, “I don’t know anything.…” Jack didn’t even recognize his own damn voice.

“Then what are you doing in England, Jack?”

“A fishing expedition … That’s all … I was … I was…” He thought for a moment he was going to pass out.

“You were—”

“Following al-Fida…”

Swain nodded then flicked his fingers again. Jack tried to brace himself for the impact but there was no preparing for something like this. The baton touched his neck now, and a whole new level of pain shot through him. Flaming fingers reached into his brain, his lungs, rammed down to his stomach. He swore he could feel the shape of his own navel, ringed by fire. He felt himself slipping into darkness, running away to escape this agony.

Then it was done and a hand slapped his face, keeping him from passing out. He jerked his eyes open and, through the smear of tears, found Swain crouched in front of him.

“Not as easy as you thought, is it? Playing the crusading journalist. You’d think all those years, working all those wars, would’ve toughened you for this. But all I’m seeing is a weak little wanker about to piss his trousers.”

“I think … I already … did.…” Jack gasped.

His arms felt like putty but the cockiness of this son of a bitch pushed the right button. Jack rallied himself and started working his wrists again. If he could just get a hand free, he’d slap this prick so hard it would take a brain surgeon to repair the damage.