The Children's War (138 page)

4

“T
HEY
GOT HIM!”
Karl gloated, walking uninvited into Richard’s office.

“What? Who?” Richard managed to feign interest. Another poor dumb shit who had got caught. He hoped he was not expected to be present at the interrogation. He had grown somewhat inured over time, but it was still not easy watching torture. Joking about it afterward was particularly taxing. Maybe he could have an important prior engagement . . .

“That bastard—that ingrate. The one who stole my car and gun and papers!”

“What? Where?”

“Out East of all places. In Neu Sandez. I know one of the junior officers there. He phoned just to let me know! Goes to show you—they never really looked for him. I told them he was trouble, but they had to wait until he went and showed his face on American TV—then they took me seriously!”

“Hah. Poor bastard. What are you going to do with him?” Richard tried to sound calm. Was Zosia okay? Did they get her as well?

“Oh, nothing. He’s out of my hands now. Seems he’s offended someone much higher up than me.” Karl winked and pointed upward.

What, the elevator shaft? Richard wanted to say, but he nodded knowledgeably instead.

“They’ll take good care of him, I’m sure. I just hope I get a chance to witness some of it.”

“Is that likely?” Richard wondered.

“Well, I hear there’s going to be a film.”

“Really? How did they get him?”

“Oh, he was waltzing around town—in an officer’s uniform, can you imagine!—and he got caught by one of those terrorist bombs. Probably set it himself. Anyway, at the hospital, I guess they identified him.”

“Ah, was he, uh, alone?” Please, God, say yes.

“No. Seems there was some kid with him. Couldn’t be his though, she’s about five, and, well, he wasn’t having kids five years ago.” Karl scowled suddenly as if his thoughts were heading in a direction he did not like.

“I assume they’ll just release the kid,” Richard said, not believing that he had actually voiced such a naive opinion.

“Yeah, right!” Karl laughed. “That’s good. I’ll keep you posted! Maybe we’ll get to see the film. Would you be interested?”

“Very. I’d really like to see you get what you deserve, Karl,” Richard replied with a winning smile. Then, reaching for the phone, he added, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a call.”

5

“H
E’S
WAKING UP,”
the voice emerged from the darkness. His eyes fluttered but closed against the bright fluorescent lights. Finally he managed to open them, saw an unknown male face looking down at him. Behind that he could discern banks of lights, rows of beds. A hospital.

“So, Halifax, you’ve decided to come home.”

Peter grimaced in confusion.

“Oh, yes, your numbers gave us all the information we needed.”

Peter glanced down at his arm, at the numbers that had betrayed him, but he could not see them, they were bandaged—as were his other injuries. He was in a hospital bed; the back had been raised so he could see the room easily, and he realized as he tried to move that his wrists and ankles had been bound to the frame. He shuddered with fear. Joanna was nowhere in sight. Had she escaped?

“Or should we say Herr Doktor Halifax, hmm?” the voice prodded. “Seems you’ve made a little name for yourself, eh? A mathematician. Goodness, we never appreciated your talents, now did we? Maybe we’ll have you do some sums for us, eh? Calculate how long your life is going to last, eh?”

Peter closed his eyes against the moronic prattle, took a mental tally of his physical state. He felt hot and rather dizzy, and every part of his body hurt as if stabbed repeatedly. Yes, of course, the glass.

The bland voice continued as if tutoring him. “Did you enjoy your sojourn in America? Hmm? You said some terrible things about us there, didn’t you? About your homeland. See? We know!”

Peter opened his eyes to see a facsimile of a magazine page held in front of his face. It was in English—a page from a magazine article written about his American tour. The page was pulled away, and the head shook and a tongue clucked in disapproval. “You’re going to have to pay for that, you know. You belittled our land and our Führer. Such disloyalty! We can’t have that.”

Peter looked at the speaker, but he could think of nothing to say, so he remained silent. Where was Joanna? Was she safe?

“And then there is this fine uniform of yours and these papers! Now there we do have some questions. A five-year-old daughter—”

Peter closed his eyes in an attempt not to show any emotion. His tongue reached to the tooth that had been loaded with poison. Still intact.

“—when we know you were otherwise engaged five years ago. Confusing, eh?”

The man waited as if for a response. When Peter said nothing, he finally said, “Clearly you have friends we’d like to know about. But what were you doing getting involved in such an unprofessional bombing?”

“I had nothing to do with the bomb.”

“Probably not. Oh, well, just bad luck, eh?” His inquisitor smiled. He motioned to the guard nearby. “Untie him.”

They released him from the bed and helped him to his feet, then handed him his clothes and helped him to put them on. His arms were grabbed before he could do up the buttons of the uniform jacket, and his wrists were locked behind his back, then he was pushed in the direction of the door. As they half-walked, half-carried him out of the ward, he realized that he was surrounded by victims of the bombing. A visitor looked at him and his entourage and hissed aloud, “That’s one of the terrorists!”

“Kill him,” someone said.

“Slowly,” someone else muttered.

A woman who was walking between the rows of beds overheard and turned to look at him.“Murderer!” she hissed, and spat at him.

He shook his head but did not otherwise respond as his guards hustled him from the room. They led him out of the hospital and into a car. A short journey later they arrived at a nondescript town house. There was no sign over the door, no indication of what lay within. Inside, they passed two sentries and walked along a hallway and down a staircase into what was presumably the cellar. Peter’s inquisitor rapped on a door and it was opened to reveal a small, dark room with a window looking into another room. The guards remained outside as he and the inquisitor stepped into the room.

Peter’s heart sank as he looked through the one-way mirror. It revealed a similarly small room with only a table and a chair and one lonely occupant. Joanna sat calmly at the table. In front of her was a bowl of oatmeal or something, which she ate dutifully as though she had been ordered to do so. Peter’s companion smiled at his reaction. “So you know her.”

“No,” he replied steadily, “she’s just a kid.”

“I don’t think so. Her papers say you’re her father.”

“You know I’m not. She’s just some kid.”

“Then you won’t mind if we harm her.” The inquisitor pressed a button recessed in the wall. A woman entered Joanna’s room. She had a piano wire in her hands.

“No. Don’t,” Peter breathed.

“So, she means something to you?” the man asked as the woman stretched the wire between her hands. Joanna sat stiffly, staring determinedly straight ahead; she did not even turn to look at the woman.

“No, I just don’t want to see a kid hurt. Let her go! She’s just a kid,” Peter pleaded.

The man pressed the button again and the woman left the room. “Thank you,” he said sardonically. “You’ve told us all we need to know.”

Peter was led out of the room and back into the corridor. The turn of events surprised him—what were they playing at? He was led to another door and into a slightly larger room. There were few furnishings: a table off to the side, a high-backed metal chair with sturdy crosspieces near a wall, both bolted to the floor, and a camera on a tripod pointed so that it focused on the chair. It looked all too familiar.

He sighed. He had hoped they would wait a bit—give the encampment time to organize something. What could he tell them that would buy time? What useless information could he offer in exchange for a few hours? How much should he tolerate before he started talking? He was afraid they might resort to drugs immediately—if they did that, he would have to decide quickly, while he still had a free will, whether suicide was the only option. Would they release Joanna if he was dead? He suspected not; he suspected that she would remain alive only as long as they thought she could be used as a way of getting him to talk. So, he would have to stay alive even if they started using drugs. And he would have to keep his mouth shut about so much! He trembled as he realized how desperate his situation was—could he buy enough time? Could he get them to use violence instead of drugs? Perhaps he could provoke them into knocking him out: that would buy a few hours . . .

He glanced around. There were two guards as well as the interrogator, but no one was holding him at the moment. He bolted for the door. It was slammed shut before he could reach it, and his arms were grabbed by the guards. The interrogator hit him in the face, but only once. He struggled against them with all his might, tried to kick them, but all they did was drag him into the chair and tie him to it. He fought them the entire time, making their job as difficult as possible, but they remained unprovoked. His arms were draped over the back and
bound into place, and his ankles were tied to the legs. The base of his skull was pressed back against the top crosspiece, and a length of insulated electrical wire was wrapped around his neck, twisted once, and then wrapped around the crosspiece and the two ends carefully twisted together. The wire was not particularly tight, and given that his arms were already wrenched behind the chair, it did not affect his mobility greatly. Nor did it affect his breathing, and if he did not move, it did not even hurt him, but it did prevent him from lowering his head, and he guessed its intent was to keep him from bowing his head out of sight of the camera. Once he was safely immobilized, one of the guards punched him viciously in the stomach in retribution for his resistance; he jerked forward violently, discovered the exact painful limits of the wire, but did not, unfortunately, lose consciousness.

He closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself and waited for the inevitable. His tongue probed his tooth again. He had to stay alive for Joanna; he had to die if they came at him with a syringe. Which? Would they just release her if he died? Could he stay alive and say nothing to betray the encampment? Perhaps he could lead them on a wild-goose chase—start with useless information and drag them through an entire false confession. Then if they resorted to drugs, they would probe in the wrong direction, and he might say nothing useful. He took one second more to gather his courage and then opened his eyes.

The interrogator seemed to be waiting for something; he glanced nervously at the door and drummed his fingers on the table. After a moment, an SS officer entered the room, placed a file on the table, and went to stand, somewhat disinterestedly, by the door. As if this were his cue, the interrogator motioned toward the camera, and one of the guards went over to it and pressed a button. A red light indicated it was filming. The interrogator straightened, indicating his awareness of his important role as narrator, and approached his prisoner.

Peter surveyed the man calmly. Working around the pain in his jaw and stomach, he asked conversationally, “What do you want from me?”

“Many things. Many, many things. But that can wait,” the interrogator replied ominously. “You’ll talk to us by and by. I’m sure you’ll tell us everything you know. You’ll beg to talk to us, then you’ll beg to die. But we have other business to tend to first.”

“What other business?” Peter asked, hoping to initiate some sort of dialogue. He ignored the interrogator and directed his question toward the officer with the assumption that he was in charge; he hoped his action would distract the interrogator by irritating him. Anything to waste time.

The interrogator slugged him, snarling, “I ask the questions here!” Then, calming himself, he reached inside his jacket and removed a pair of dark sunglasses. He held them up and dangled them in front of Peter. “Do you recognize these?” he asked rhetorically.

Peter shook his head. They were not the pair he had worn in America, but they looked a great deal like them.

“Seems you are fond of talking about your eyes. Worried that we have damaged them, isn’t that so?” The interrogator did not wait for an answer, but instead clumsily shoved the glasses at Peter’s face to put them on him.

Peter winced, held his eyes shut as an earpiece jabbed into his eye. Finally, the interrogator managed to seat them correctly on Peter’s face. Cautiously, he opened his eyes; the interrogator had stooped down to look directly into his face and said sardonically, “There he is: darling of the American media. Doesn’t look so self-confident now, does he?” The interrogator glanced at the SS officer and was rewarded with a grunt of approval.

Peter felt himself trembling, but there was nothing he could do to calm himself; he knew all too well the odds against him.

The interrogator stroked Peter’s cheek. “Look at how the coward shakes!” he mocked, then smacked him lightly across the face. “Such a fine face—it would be a shame to cut it up. Hmm?” The interrogator’s hand stroked gently along Peter’s skin, plucked a piece of glass from his hair that had been missed. Then the interrogator smirked a bit, shook his head at the sunglasses. “But no, no—they just don’t work for you. We’ll have to do better.” In one abrupt motion, the interrogator backhanded Peter at the temple, sending the glasses flying across the room. They landed near a guard, who then stooped to pick them up.

“Crush them,” the interrogator ordered, and the guard mindlessly obeyed and destroyed the glasses.

It seemed an odd thing to do, and Peter did not bother to search for the veiled threat—it would be made clear soon enough. Indeed, the interrogator did explain the action: “You won’t be needing those! You won’t be needing anything! You so bitterly complained about what was done to your eyes—well, we’ll show you what you missed! After all your grievous accusations against us, we feel obliged to help. We will solve your problem for you and make sure you have no reason to complain about your vision ever again.”

With that the interrogator pulled out a switchblade, and holding it near Peter’s face, let the blade leap out. In response, Peter’s head jumped back the few centimeters that he had between his skull and the back of the chair. The interrogator menacingly brought the blade forward, and once Peter could move his head no farther back, the interrogator brought the blade in to touch his eye. Peter had squeezed his eyes shut in fear, but dared not move farther as he felt the razor-sharp edge against his eyelid. The interrogator drew the knife slowly over the eyelid and along the skin above and below his eye as if tracing a surgical pattern. Involuntarily, Peter squeezed his eyes ever more tightly shut, but he could do nothing to protect himself and he knew it.