Cops waited on the dock with batons, zip-cuffs, and riot helmets. Bartolome pushed through them. One of the cops flipped up her visor, the reserve who had processed Park.
"Where you going with him?"
Bartolome started down the steps, keeping Park in front of him.
"Out of your hair."
"Where? I got paperwork."
"What the h.e.l.l do you care? I just opened a s.p.a.ce in your cells."
The reserve waved at Park.
"Must be nice having a fairy G.o.dmother, a.s.shole."
The back door of the van opened and the cops on the dock started pulling the prisoners out, swinging the batons as they emerged, beating them to the ground and putting on the zips.
Bartolome unlocked a silver Explorer, planted Park in the pa.s.senger seat, and slammed the door before circling the truck and putting himself behind the steering wheel.
"You incredible a.s.shole."
He started the engine and pulled out of his s.p.a.ce, up a ramp, swerving to miss another incoming van, and bounced out the exit onto the street.
Late afternoon, sun dropping out of the zenith of the sky, an angry red. Columns of smoke rose, pillars supporting a low brown roof.
Bartolome pulled around a burning pile of uncollected garbage onto Sawtelle and looked upward as a gunship hovering over the 405 opened fire on someone below.
"Been a long day."
Bullets. .h.i.t a gas tank on the overpa.s.s, and a fireball burned the air.
Park touched where his father"s watch.
"What did you mean, Captain, "you have a family"?"
Bartolome gunned the Explorer into an alley running down the back side of Sawtelle.
"I meant you have something to lose."
A FIRST TASER had taken me to my knees in convulsions; a second Taser blacked me out. I had brief moments of awareness, a certainty that I had lost control of both my bladder and my bowels, pain as the razor being wielded to cut my clothes away nicked my chest, a blur of bodies in my living room, a wrench of nausea as I realized they were moving my furniture about, several mental blanks that could have been seconds or hours, stab of needle in my arm, and a fierce rush of intense lucidity that flooded through my bloodstream, directly to my heart and up to my brain.
Time had pa.s.sed. The sky was again dimming. I was naked on my couch, hands behind my back, a taut line of wire running from my wrists to a noose around my neck, legs splayed, ankles tied to the legs of a low table, this position giving them easier access to my genitals while preventing me from instinctively closing my legs when they began to use the soldering iron.
I had been tortured twice before.
The first time, I"d been barely twenty years of age. I was discovered someplace I should not have been, out of uniform, committing warlike acts. Clearly in violation of the Geneva Conventions, I could have been tried for war crimes. But I was tortured instead, encouraged to make a confession that included crimes I had nothing to do with, and to repudiate my country. After three days I did as I was asked. Three months later, after I had been included as part of a covert prisoner exchange, I returned with a squad of Degar guerrillas to the camp where I had been held, and took part in my first and only revenge killings.
The second time I was tortured I was nearly forty. I had been accepting several freelance contracts from an agency of my government, and returned excellent results on all of them. Results so excellent, in fact, that it was strongly suspected that I must be in possession of intelligence that could only have been pa.s.sed to me by members of the primary opposition. I was deemed both volatile and disposable by someone determined to clean the slate and to winnow from me the details of my supposed betrayal. As there had been no betrayal, there was nothing to winnow. After two weeks I began to lie. Simple lies at first, but growing ever more elaborate as each lie led to more questions, until they all unraveled. Thus, the torture continued. After another two weeks I ceased to lie. I ceased to talk. I ceased to scream or cry or beg for mercy. I silently repeated a mantra to myself that heartened me and bore me up: They will kill me soon. They will kill me soon. They will kill me soon.
But they did not.
Instead, apparently inspired by my silence, they stopped asking me questions. While continuing to torture me. Randomly, without discernible reason or purpose, I was subjected to a variety of abuses for an additional two weeks. I"ve come to suspect that once I became silent I had been judged a loss. Convinced that they had pa.s.sed the point where I might still be capable of revealing anything of value, my captors were quite prepared to kill me. I believe some spirit of frugality took hold, and I was kept about the place as a training subject. In those final two weeks I was a kind of living cadaver upon which students of the trade could hone their skills.
That I was let go at the end of those two weeks did not, I am quite sure, have anything to do with my ability to perform this service. Rather, someone somewhere lost his job. Footing in the intelligence trade is notoriously slippery. A pioneer one day, it takes only a single misjudgment and the trail is lost, the fall to the bottom long, the ground, when it comes, littered with other once-adventurous climbers. Whoever had commanded my capture, retention, and course of interrogation had made a mess where he lived. Not in regard to me, however. That I was released was merely a sign of how singularly this person had let down the side. I intuited a general cleaning of house, all the pet projects of this persona non grata undone and swept from the scene.
They could have killed me still. But that would have implied a belief on someone"s part, a belief that whoever was being cut loose from the firm had been on to something when they had me detained. So much more humiliating and nullifying to set me on my way. No harm, no foul. Though there was a use I could still be put to.
There was an interim, of course. Medical attention, which, as it was applied in my cell, I initially thought was a part of the torture. An effort to restore some of my health before beginning anew. But it wasn"t. A man wearing the same surgical mask worn by anyone who came into my presence asked me questions in a flat voice with no accent. A voice that was the product of excellent training. And for another two weeks my worst hurts were ministered to. Several times I was given injections that put me to sleep. Each time I believed I would not wake up. Each time I did.
The last time I woke in my cell a slight-framed person stood at the foot of the bed. From a manila folder this person drew several eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs with a glossy finish. The photos were all of the same person. A man with a conservative haircut and suit. Nondescript. Two of the photos showed him entering a residence, the house number clearly visible. One of the photos showed him driving a car, turning onto a street where both that same house and a street sign were clearly visible. Another photo showed him walking in a busy downtown area of a large city, a well-known tourist attraction in that city clearly visible. That was the last photo. The lights went out, a needle p.r.i.c.ked my arm, I went to sleep, and when I woke up I was home, in my own bed.
Not one to question a message so crisply enunciated, I called my travel agent that day, booked a flight to the city I had identified by the well-known tourist attraction, flew to that city, rented a car, drove to the street whose sign I had clearly seen, parked up a bit from the house I had also clearly seen, waited until the nondescript haircut and suit arrived and went inside, followed him in soon after, and killed everyone within.
No, this was not revenge. I did not doubt that this was the person who had ordered me held and tortured, but, as I was a mature man at this point, revenge was not on my mind. I was simply behaving in a prudent and professional manner. I had been told, as clearly as if the words had been spoken in my ear, that I should not take my release for granted, that payment was due. So I paid up.
And that was the last that was ever made of it. I have never worked since for my government; a mutual accord. Could, one day, there be an accounting? Could some drone of the services uncover a dusty file while in the process of digitalizing back data and, seeing an opportunity for advancement, approach his or her superiors with this nugget of ancient history, a loose end left perilously undone? Could a fellow pract.i.tioner arrive by stealth and tie off that dangling line? Yes, to all questions, yes. But the prospect did not keep me awake at night.
I was sent a message by whoever released me: Kill this man for us, or else. The particular savagery and b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness I expressed in the fulfillment of that unspoken contract composed the text of my own reply message: Leave me alone, or I"ll do this to you.
We heard one another, loud and clear.
In both cases of torture, the questions I had been asked bore little relation to any actions I had ever taken. Though I was most certainly guilty of any number of misdeeds for which I might have been held accountable, I was always quizzed on matters unrelated. And so it was again.
There were four people in the room with me. Well, six, but two of them were dead. One of those remaining four had collected some of my possessions. Papers, two external hard drives, two laptops and a tablet computer, five thumb drives, my slender bamboo-sided desktop tower, and anything else that might reasonably store information, including my DVR. Though I doubted they"d learn anything from the cla.s.sic episodes of Twilight Zone and several cooking and gardening shows that I was addicted to.
Done with that, he"d unrolled a nylon tool caddy and sorted through various cables, fitting them to my phones and downloading a.s.sorted numbers and call logs before tossing the phones themselves into a knapsack. He"d be disappointed. The business phones were each a.s.signed to a specific individual whose number I had memorized; they contained only one number each: their own. Call logs I erased after each call in or out from a particular phone. My personal phones were similarly barren of numbers. An advantage of a nearly photographic memory. I erased logs at day"s end in general. The phone I"d had on me when they attacked would have the helicopter pilot"s number, Vinnie"s incoming call, and a few others. Nothing I was concerned with.
A second survivor was at the gla.s.s wall that looked out over the basin. He took frequent peeks through a pair of binoculars and spoke in occasional whispers into his headset. The gla.s.s was thick, impact- but not bullet-resistant; still the faint whines of sirens and crackle of gunfire penetrated. He primarily spoke modern Hebrew, with an Israeli accent, though I did catch a frequent, emphatic "f.u.c.k." The third, a man who could only be described as "battle-scarred and proud of it," asked me questions that, while they didn"t confuse me, did confound me. The fourth had plugged in the soldering iron and placed it carefully on the Thor table while it heated.
The only obvious mistake they had made was in not wearing masks of any sort. Not that revealing their features marked them for an eventual vicious demise when I freed myself and set about to hunt them down one by one, rather that it revealed their intention to kill me no matter the outcome of their questioning. Tipping their hand a bit. For whatever it might be worth. Knowing I was going to die was hardly any comfort, but it did define the field of play, spurring me to actions I might otherwise not have taken.
The battle-scarred man referred to a number of laminated sheets of paper on a clipboard. I had seen something similar in the past. An interrogation script, it would have been prepared in advance, each question allowing for only a limited number of answers. Each of these allowable answers leading to the next question. All roads leading to one of two conclusions only: You are the f.u.c.ker we"re after or You are not the f.u.c.ker we"re after. It didn"t matter that I could tell them outright that the answer in my case was the second option. They would only accept one of these two conclusions if it were arrived at after the script had been followed.
The first act began.
"Who are you working for?"
Well, obviously I was going to give no answer.
Yes, there was a grim possibility that this ritual of pain was the death my life had been shaping. And yes, there would be symmetry in the design if I were to end broken and drooling, gasping out all my secrets under ultimate duress. But there could be no completion of my long endeavor if I blurted the name of my employer at the first request. The mental image of Lady Chizu"s bland disregard for that sort of weakness and lack of professionalism was enough to keep my lips sealed.
"What is the plan?"
Again, I had no answer. But here it was less a case of will and desire and more a case of being at an utter loss. It was possible he meant whatever plan I had to recover the drive from Haas, but his tone suggested something altogether more specific. In any case, I had nothing to say.
"Who are your accomplices?"
It took, you see, only three questions to realize that his script was not pertinent to me. It concerned suspicions he held regarding me but which had little or nothing to do with my true intentions.
"Are you working with the cop?"
A question that did little more than reinforce my growing feeling that I had been misapprehended.
"Where were you going to take Mr. Afronzo Junior?"
Here, a little light appeared at the end of the tunnel.
"What were your demands to be?"
Clarity, when it comes, is literally physical. Tension is released from muscles, shoulders unbunch, jaws unclench, brows unfurrow. The body lightens, becomes, for a moment, less earthbound. A delightful sensation. No wonder many people make of it a lifelong quest.
"Is your employer political or criminal?"
It was then that I might have begun to state my case. I could have told them that I understood that I had been observed in proximity to Mr. Afronzo Junior. That, yes, the behavior I exhibited was suspicious, and yes, I was surveilling someone. Yes, I understood that anyone in Mr. Afronzo Junior"s buffer zone who engaged in certain proscribed activities, such as spying, would have their faces extensively photographed, their actions videoed, their utterances parabolically recorded, and the resulting archive submitted for review by teams of experts in tightly sealed rooms where secrets were doled out a syllable at a time to protect against leaks. Yes, frankly, I might have said, this situation is as much of my making as anyone"s. I should have realized that the history attached to my features, mannerisms, and voice is precisely the kind that should set every red light on Afronzo security consoles to blazing, and taken greater care when I was observing the young man. Certainly I understood that of the vast range of threats I represented, the greatest was kidnap. And yes, the highest possible threat level should be applied to such as I, and action taken immediately. Nonetheless, I would have been forced to conclude, shooting a missile at a SoCal TOC observation post in order to distract me was perhaps an ill-advised overreaction. For, you see, I could have explained, you have the wrong man.
It was then, after those seven essential questions had been asked in an offhand manner, with no reply expected, that I could have launched that defense. I might even have gone so far as to have sketched the barest outline of my actual goals. But it would have been to cross-purposes. No, I had no intention of kidnapping Mr. Afronzo Junior, but I was seeking to take possession of a hard drive for which he had killed several men. Cut too close to that truth and the result would be the same. It was possible things would reach a point where I would speak the truth about my lack of interest in kidnapping the young man, but what lies I might concoct to cover my actual intentions escaped me for the moment, as I became distracted by the slight click the soldering iron emitted when it had reached the optimal temperature.
Chapter 17.
PARK WAS LOOKING INSIDE THE SAFE AT THE EMPTY BIT OF s.p.a.ce where he had left the bottle of DR33M3R.
"It doesn"t matter."
He ignored Bartolome"s words, going through the remaining contents of the safe. His legal doc.u.ments, the gold coins, his weapons and spare clips, even his stash, all still there. But the print slides, the thumb drive with his reports, and the DR33M3R itself were gone.
"It doesn"t matter, Haas."
Park turned from the safe, walked out of the closet, and looked at his captain.
"Who?"
Bartolome stood at the bedroom window, watching something in the yard.
"DEA. FBI. f.u.c.k, CIA. I don"t know. Guys in Washington suits. It doesn"t matter."
Park started to strip out of the shirt he"d worn all day.
"It"s all that matters."
"They make it, Officer. They make it."
"That"s the point."
Bartolome turned from the window.
"Yes, it is, but not how you"re thinking about it."
Park was at the dresser, digging in his shirt drawer.
"It doesn"t matter how I think about it. It"s either what it is or it"s not what it is."
"Jesus. Jesus, Park. Will you? Just look over here for a minute. Just. Officer, look at me for a f.u.c.king minute right f.u.c.king now."
Park looked at Bartolome. Beyond him, through the window screen, he could see Rose in the backyard, cross-legged on the dead lawn, picking dead weeds. Francine sat in the hammock strung between a palm tree and a ficus, the baby in her lap, singing a French lullaby.
Standing in the middle of the disordered living room when he came through the door, Rose had looked at him, looked around the room, said, Some men were here for you, and walked out of the room.
"There were men in my house. Men who are supposed to be working with us came here and stole evidence from my safe."
Bartolme sat on the edge of the bed.
"No wonder no one wanted to work with you. Haas. They didn"t steal s.h.i.t. Patriot II says they can take what they want when they want. And you didn"t have anything, anyway."
"I had Dreamer that was given to me by an Afronzo."
Bartolome came off the bed.
"Yes! And what is that? Are you listening to me? They make it. They make the stuff, Haas. Of course he had Dreamer. He probably has it coming out of his a.s.s. He probably s.h.i.ts it. And so what? You think what? That the Afronzos are illegally distributing Dreamer? Dealing their own invention on the black market? Why? So they can make more money?"
Park stood there with a clean T-shirt in his hand, saying nothing.
Bartolome nodded.
"Yeah, right? Motive, Haas. They have no motive at all to deal Dreamer off the market. All it would do is put at risk the most profitable revenue stream since oil. So he had a bottle on him and he traded it for Shabu? What does that get you in court against their lawyers? It gets you litigation for a hundred years."
He stepped closer to Park.
"No. It gets you riots. It gets you blood in the streets. It hits the gossip sites, ET and Gawker, and it gets you a bunch of people dead. Why? Because the kid is using extra bottles of his family product to score drugs? What we drove through coming over here, crackdown because some militia or insurgent or flat-out g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger took a shot at that TOC outpost. That won"t be s.h.i.t. People will die by the thousands. For something that just doesn"t matter."
Park twisted the shirt between his hands.
"What did they tell you?"
Bartolome crossed his arms.
"They came to me and showed me those pictures of you and Afronzo and asked me What the f.u.c.k? I told them I didn"t know what the f.u.c.k. They said you had something they needed to recover and asked what they could expect from you in the way of cooperation. I told them they could expect you to be a h.e.l.lacious pain in the a.s.s."
He looked out the window again.
Both men stayed where they were.
Bartolome looked back at Park.