The Ajax Protocol-7 (21 page)

Ronnie nodded at him. "He's not doing so good."

"Where are we?"

"They took us on board and threw us in the brig." That explained the vibration in the floor.

"Where are the others?"

"Selena and Elizabeth are next to us in another cell."

"We're screwed," Nick said.

"Yeah," Ronnie said, "my thoughts exactly."

CHAPTER 46

It was going on dark by the time the boat stopped moving and the engines shut down. The Cubans brought them up to the deck. The patrol boat had docked at the waterfront of a good-sized city spread out along a broad bay. An ancient fortress of stone dominated the harbor from a high bluff. The salt air smelled of fish and diesel and wood smoke from a cooking fire. It was like being thrust into the middle of a picture postcard. It was pretty but Nick could have done without it.

Guards marched them off the boat and shoved them sprawling into a windowless van that smelled of vomit. Someone slammed the door of the van and locked it. Lamont lay on the floor of the truck, mumbling to himself. Elizabeth and Selena sat next to him.

The van began to move. Selena laid a hand on Lamont's forehead. "He's burning up," she said.

"He dies, I'm going to make someone pay for it," Nick said.

"Where are we?" Ronnie said.

"All I know is that it isn't Havana."

"It's Santiago de Cuba," Selena said. "That's the only other big city in Cuba. The fortress is a famous historical site."

"Wherever they're taking us, we're going to be interrogated," Nick said. The words came out slurred. One side of his face was swollen from the hit he'd taken on the
Island Angel.

"We can't tell them who we are," Elizabeth said.

"They'll know who we are. They'll recognize me," Nick said.

He was right. After the incident with the President in Jerusalem, every intelligence agency in the world had his photograph. There were few places he could go without being recognized if any of them were looking.

"They might not," Elizabeth said. "It depends on who's in charge. But if it's the SDE, we're in trouble,"

"SDE?" Selena said.

"
Seguridad del Estado
, state security," Nick said. "Castro's secret police. They're bad people. The officer on that boat called us spies. We can count on SDE being in charge. They hate Americans."

"This isn't the Cold War anymore," Selena said. "It's a long time since the Bay of Pigs."

"Castro's revolutionary government has a long memory," Nick said. "The whole country is a throwback to the Cold War. Lots of things have gone wrong here and they blame us for all of it. We have to be prepared for anything."

The van came to a sudden stop. They heard doors slam. Then the back door was pulled open.

"Afuera!"
a soldier yelled at them.

They started to get out. Rough hands grabbed them and pulled them from the van, threw them down on a cobbled street and tied their hands behind their backs with plastic ties. The ties cut into Nick's wrists. He was hauled to his feet and frog marched at a quick pace toward a grim stone building with barred windows and through a door held open by an unsmiling soldier.

Two men marched him down a flight of stairs and along a dim corridor. They jerked him to a stop before a metal door with a massive lock. One of the men turned a key in the lock and pulled open the door. Someone cut the ties on his hands. Before he could move, a boot in his back sent him flying. The door slammed shut.

The floor was made of rough concrete. His back spasmed from the kick. He sat up and rubbed his wrists, waiting for circulation to return to his hands.

The cell was narrow and old. The only light came from a small, dim window high up on the wall. A stinking hole in one corner was the toilet. There was no place to lie except on the cold floor. Nick listened. Faint sounds came from somewhere in the building. Someone screamed in the distance. The cry trailed off in a babbling wail.

The light faded. He was in darkness.

Something ran over his leg. He pulled back, a reflex. Something scrabbled across the floor in the dark.

Rats. There were rats.
Nick made a serious effort to calm himself.
At least it isn't spiders,
he thought.
Too big to be a spider. Maybe.

He sat for a long time in the darkness and listened to unseen things scuttle in his cell.

CHAPTER 47

When the door opened again, Nick had no idea how long he had been sitting in the darkness. They took him into a room and pushed him onto a hard wooden chair and strapped him down. Two guards stood behind him. A small man sat in front of him, behind a wooden desk that looked like something left over from a 40s movie.

The Cuban had a thin mustache that did nothing to improve his looks or hide a bad complexion. He was dressed in a cheap brown suit and brown shoes. His shirt was a yellowed white under a narrow, black tie. He wore his hair slicked back and shiny under the overhead light.

The man ignored Nick. For several minutes he studied papers on his desk, making an occasional note. When he finally looked up, his eyes were black and dead, as if they had seen things that had extinguished the light in them. They were not good eyes.

"I am Captain Ortiz," he said. "I am going to ask you some questions. You will answer me truthfully. Do you understand?"

His voice was flat and colorless His English was clear, articulate. An educated man, which as far as Nick was concerned made him more dangerous.

"Why have you brought us here?" Nick said.

Ortiz nodded at one of the guards. He began beating Nick with his fists. Nick closed his eyes and tried to make himself tight and small. He could do nothing with his arms strapped to the chair.

"Enough," Ortiz said. The beating stopped. The guard stepped back.

"I ask the questions here," Ortiz said. "Do you understand?"

So that's how it's going to be,
Nick thought. He spit blood onto the floor. "I understand."

"You are Nicholas Carter, a spy for the American government." Ortiz held up a file in his hand. Nick saw his picture stapled onto it.

"I never did like that picture," he said.

"You do not deny that you are a spy," Ortiz said.

Nick said nothing. There wasn't any point.

"Why were you headed to Cuba?"

"For medical help."

"Where were you going?"

"Guantánamo."

The mention of Guantánamo seemed to trigger something in Ortiz. He nodded again at the guard. This time, the man took out a foot long length of heavy rope with a knot on the end of it and began beating Nick on his arms and legs. Each blow shuddered through his body. He grunted under the blows.

When Ortiz signaled the guard to stop, Nick felt like he was on fire. He couldn't feel anything except pain. And anger.

"That was for Guantánamo," Ortiz said.

"Guantánamo is the best thing there is on this piss ant island," Nick said.

This time both the guards beat him.

"Stand him up," Ortiz said. The guards unstrapped Nick from the chair, lifted him to his feet and gripped him by each arm. Ortiz got up from behind his desk. He came over and stood in front of Nick. His face was ugly with hatred. He shouted in Nick's face, spraying him with flecks of spittle. His breath stank of garlic and onion.

"My grandfather was killed by the Americans at the Bay of Pigs."

Ortiz reached out and grabbed Nick's left hand.

"Tell me why you are here."

"For medical help." With a quick movement, Ortiz bent the last two fingers of Nick's hand backward. The bones snapped with a dull, thick sound.

Nick screamed. The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

"Now you need medical help," Ortiz said. "You are a
Yanqui
spy. After I find out why you are here, I am going to send you to a place that makes your prison at Guantánamo look like a holiday resort."

Ortiz was only inches away. Nick head butted him as hard as he could. Ortiz went backward, his eyes rolling up in his head. As he went down, Nick kicked him in the groin.

The first blow from the guards knocked Nick unconscious.

When he came to, he was lying on the floor of his cell. One of his eyes was closed and swollen. His body was a symphony of pain. He moved and sharp pain shot up his left arm from his injured hand.

His hand was swollen and purple. The fourth finger and the pinky were bent to the side at a strange angle. Nick forced himself to look at it. He knew what he had to do. Before he could think much more about it, he took his right hand and pulled the damaged fingers straight.

He screamed and blacked out again from the pain. When he came back, he lay curled up on the rough floor. Then he forced himself over to a corner of the cell where dripping water had collected in a small pool. He picked a dead cockroach out of the water, cupped some in his right hand and drank it.

Weak daylight came through the filthy window. He wondered how the others were doing. He wondered if Selena was safe. He wondered how he could kill Ortiz. 

At least he had gotten to the son of a bitch. He wouldn't be pleasuring his wife for awhile. If he had a wife. If any woman would have a snake like him. Nick was sure he was one
Yanqui
Ortiz would never forget, but that kick in the groin had probably signed his death warrant. There was nothing left to lose. Before Nick slipped back into oblivion, he decided that the next time the door opened he would try to overpower the guard.

CHAPTER 48

Nick heard the lock being turned in his cell door. There was light in the cell but he didn't know if it was the same day. He'd been half asleep or unconscious. Every part of his body hurt. His left hand glowed with pain. He forced himself to his feet. The door opened.

Nick launched himself at the first man into the cell, like a linebacker taking down a fullback. The man grunted as they slammed into the wall. Then something hard hit him on the back of the head. The next thing he was aware of was the sound of voices. He was lying on the floor of the cell. There was something oddly familiar about one of the voices, but he couldn't figure out what it was. He slipped back into unconsciousness.

He was sitting tilted back, a belt strapped across his waist. The seat vibrated gently. He could hear the sound of engines.

A plane. I'm in a plane.

Nick opened his eyes. He was in a private plane, a business jet elegant with accents of wood and leather. Selena was in the seat across the aisle from him. She looked worn and tired, her face strained. She smiled when she saw him looking at her.

"Nick," she said. "You had me worried."

He looked down at his injured hand. Someone had set the bones and splinted them and wrapped the fingers in tape. Under the bandage, the hand throbbed with dull, steady pain.

Selena laid her hand on his arm. Her touch felt comforting, familiar. A tiny bit of the tension from the last few days melted away. He looked at her.

"Christ, I'm glad you're all right. When this is done..."

A voice from the seat behind interrupted him before he could finish.

"You are awake, Nick? Good."

It was a familiar voice, the voice he had heard in Cuba before he blacked out. Nick turned toward the speaker. A wave of dizziness rippled through him and was gone.

Korov. What the hell is he doing here?

"Where did you come from?" Nick said.

"Moscow, of course. Where else?" Korov got up and stood in the aisle looking down at Nick. "You look like shit," he said.

"Yeah. Nice to see you, too."

Nick looked around the plane. Harker was three rows ahead of him in the front of the cabin. Ronnie lay back on the seat behind her, sleeping. In the rear of the plane was a meeting area with chairs and a table. The table had been turned into an improvised bed for Lamont. Stephanie sat nearby, watching over him. She looked worried. At the very back of the plane was a small galley. A man in civilian clothes sat there, reading a magazine.

"How are you feeling?" Korov asked.

"A little dizzy. I've been better. Where are we? Where are we going?"

"At the moment we are over the Gulf of Mexico. As to where we are going, I was waiting for you to wake up before choosing a destination."

"You want me to tell you where we're going?"

"Yes."

"I need coffee."

Korov called out something in Russian. The man in the back of the plane came forward. Korov said something. The man snapped to attention and went back to the galley. A moment later he appeared with a tray and two cups of coffee.

Nick took a sip of the strong, black liquid and sighed. His mouth hurt and his face was swollen. He tasted blood. Probed with his tongue at a loose tooth.

"How did you get us out of Cuba?" Nick said.

"Cuba has few friends," Arkady said. "We have a special relationship with them, particularly concerning intelligence about America. We have influence. They told us they had captured a boatload of American spies and that the infamous Nicholas Carter was among them."

"Infamous?"

"Like your Jesse James, no? I made it clear that giving you to me would help with trade negotiations coming up soon with Moscow. After all, I am a ranking officer in SVR. The Cubans think I am taking all of you back to Russia for interrogation. What you Americans call rendition, yes?"

"Why bail us out?"

"Your director told General Vysotsky about Ajax. Then we found out you had been forced to leave Washington. You have made powerful enemies, Nick."

"Go on."

"The General believes your director is sincere in her desire to stop these madmen from deploying Ajax. He thinks you and your team have the best chance of doing it. You can't do that from a Cuban prison. He decided to intervene."

Nick saluted Korov with the coffee cup. "Good to see you, Arkady."

"And you, Nick. Now we must finish the job."

"We?"

"Tell me where we need to go. I'm going with you. Your director wanted an entire unit, but the General decided it was too risky. All you get is me."