Comes a Horseman (37 page)

Apollo clipped a wire to one of nine electrode patches he'd stuck to various parts of the Satanist's torso. He was reaching for another wire when Hyena groaned and bobbed his head. For the hundredth time in ten minutes, Apollo sent him back into the immunity of sleep with a quick turn of the knob on an IV bag. Apparently, the drug wore off nearly as quickly as it worked.

Alicia had already photographed the symbols with a digital camera. Brady had moved the lamp back to its original position, which illuminated Hyena from the front. Now he stood a few feet from her, his hands crossed over his chest, glaring at the unconscious attacker. Brady's reaction to her attack had surprised and delighted her. She wondered if he would have gotten so worked up if Hyena had attacked a male partner. Certainly, he would not have touched a male partner the way he had touched her throat. His fingers had been charged with electricity.

He turned toward her and she looked away, instinctively masking the movement by smoothing her eyebrow.

He stepped closer. “This room, is it in your name?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The other one is, 522. Not this one. I think this entire floor is unoccupied.”

“How'd you get in?”

The current generation of electronic door locks were notoriously difficult to pick.

She nodded toward Hyena. “Same way he got into my room.” She walked around the first bed, reached under a blazer, and withdrew a small object. She came back and handed it to him. It was an electronic gadget the size of a pack of cigarettes. A thin plastic card protruded from the top.

Brady flipped a small button, and a liquid crystal readout lit up.

“Takes about five seconds,” she informed him.

He cocked his head skeptically at the attacker. “
He
had
this
?”

“Looks like a homeless junkie, doesn't he?”

Brady turned the device over in his hands. No markings of any kind, and it was free of dirt, smudges, foreign matter. “Someone supplied it to him.”

“Someone's giving him orders.”

“There,” Apollo said, standing. “Ready when you are.”

Brady clicked off the device and tossed it onto the bed.

“What's going to happen here?” he asked.

“I'll let this creature rise into consciousness, but just barely,” Apollo explained. “I'll hold him in the twilight zone with this.” He pointed to the IV he'd been using to keep Hyena under. “Barbiturates. My own recipe.” His eyes flashed. “Sodium amobarbital, pentothal sodium, and seconal. Small doses, smaller than the ones I've given him so far. In the twilight zone, the mind can't think fast enough to fabricate a lie. She doesn't even realize that lying is what she should do.”

“She?”

Apollo looked surprised. “The mind.” He moved his open hand in an arc several inches over Hyena's head. “It is beautiful, simple and complicated, spiteful and forgiving, truthful and deceitful. Female, definitely.” The folds of his jowls rose into a broad grin.

He continued: “Holding someone in that state of near-unconsciousness is tricky. Too much sedative and they go under. Too little and they are aware enough to avoid the truth. And everyone is different. Some require lots of truth juice, others only a little. Some respond quickly, others not at all. Some get happy, others sad.” He thought for a moment. “Or agitated, as though the subconscious knows the conscious is saying things she shouldn't.”

Brady indicated the other IV bags. “Barbiturates in one. What are these other two?”

Apollo touched one. “Scopolamine, mostly. The original ‘truth serum.' I've found a squirt of this helps if my recipe doesn't take the subject all the way. A psychotropic drug. It can cause hallucinations and extreme panic. That's why it was abandoned. I've added other hallucinogens, very fast-acting ones, like the barbiturates. Confusion helps break down defenses.”

He touched the third bag.

“Stimulants. Benzedrine and Methadrine. The barbiturates relax the mind's inhibitions. The stimulants get her talking. Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap.” He used his hand to mimic a talking mouth. “No good having a mind willing to spill the beans if she is too groggy to talk.”

Simultaneous narcotics and stimulants. Alicia wondered how many of Apollo's subjects suffered coronaries or strokes. She hoped the EKG machine helped Apollo prevent such incidents.

Hyena began to groan again.

“Ready?” Apollo asked.

Brady looked at her, concern etching his face like age lines.

She nodded. “Let's do it.”

49

T
he EKG was on a coffee table near Apollo. He flicked a switch, and the machine's pens began recording Hyena's heart rhythms. The sound was like fingernails moving back and forth on a desktop. Apollo crouched behind the attacker's chair, his head barely visible.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
, Alicia thought.

His hands moved rapidly from one IV flow knob to another. “The drugs must be constantly adjusted,” he explained. “I'll ask a few questions to make sure our subject is in the proper state of mind. Then you can have a go.”

Alicia felt her stomach tighten. She'd seen several of these, what the Bureau called Amytal interviews. But she had never conducted any herself. She knew the questions had to be worded precisely or the answer could come from anywhere, including the subject's memories of childhood. So a question like, “Did you attack that man?” might yield an affirmative response, but what the subject was admitting to could be throwing an eraser at his fifth-grade teacher.

She reached for a small digital voice recorder on the bed and pushed a button. Hyena's head rolled up on its neck, then down again. As if startled, he snapped his head up. His lids were at half-mast.

“Uhhhhh . . . ,” he said.

Apollo's voice boomed from behind the chair. “Listen to me! What is your name?”

“Uhhhh . . .”

Apollo's hands jumped to a knob, then another.

“What is your name?”

The man's eyes flicked open. He stared directly at Alicia. The skin on her arms and at the nape of her neck tightened as the hairs bristled. She realized he was looking past her, at something only he could see.

His lips formed a silent word. Another.

“What is your name?” repeated Apollo.

The man's face revealed an
aha
moment. He said,
“Me`nya za`vout Malik.”
His voice was girlish and gravelly at once. A chain-smoking Girl Scout, Alicia decided. Coming out of that evil-looking body, it severely creeped her out.

Brady whispered, “Is that Russian?”

Alicia shrugged.

“Speak English,” Apollo demanded.

“Ang`liskam?”

“Da,”
Apollo answered.

“Hara`sho.
Uh . . .” Long pause. “English, yes.” Accented and slurred.

“What is your given name?”

“Malik.”

Malik,
Alicia thought. She wanted to think of him by that name. Somehow, it made him less frightening, more human.

“What is your complete name?”

He groaned in confusion or possibly distress.

“Malik, what is your whole name?”

“Malik . . . Ivanov.” His accent stretched out the first part of each word before clipping it off with the last syllable.

Apollo leaned around the chair, signaled with his head for her to approach. She knelt beside him.

“I've interrogated Russian subjects before,” he whispered in her ear. “Ivanov is Russia's most common surname. Like Smith in America. I can't tell if that's his real name or one he's making up. Malik is less common, so it's probably right.”

She nodded, rose, and stepped back next to Brady.

Apollo asked, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

He appeared ten years older.

“Where are you now?”

Malik appeared confused by the question. He looked around the room, fixing on Alicia and Brady for several seconds each. Slowly, the lids closed.

“Are you in your home?” Apollo clarified.

“Hotel,” said Malik, without opening his eyes.

“Did someone tell you to come here?”

Both Alicia and Brady stiffened.

“Yes.”

Apollo nodded at Alicia. Her turn.

She looked at Brady. He gave her an encouraging smile.

“Who told you to come to the hotel?”

Malik frowned, grimaced.

“Who?”

The scratching of the EKG pens became higher pitched—moving faster. Malik's breathing became labored, as though he were trying to draw wind through a towel. He whispered, “Scary movie.”

“I may have lost him,” Apollo said. “Just a sec.” He adjusted each IV knob. It made Alicia think of fine-tuning into a channel on an old television.

“Scary movie!” Malik yelled.

“Try a different line of questioning,” Apollo suggested.

Alicia's shoulders slumped. Who had sent him was what she wanted to know. She tried to think of something else to ask.

Brady said, “What do you know about the man with the dogs? The killer with the dogs?”

“Nice doggie.” Malik's hands moved in a gesturing motion. “Here, doggie.” Suddenly his face twisted into a savage beast's. His hands formed fists that he pumped up and down as much as his restraints would allow. He laughed, a chilling stutter of short breaths.

“I think in his mind, he's bludgeoning an animal,” Brady whispered.

Malik's fists stopped. His head stretched forward, his tongue came out, and he began licking the air. With each upward stroke, his tongue slid into his mouth, his lips closed, and he slurped.

“He's . . . ,” Brady said, but he did not finish. His face registered his disgust.

Alicia's hand covered her mouth. Malik was lapping the blood of some remembered kill.

“What do you know about Father McAfee?” she asked quickly.

The licking halted. The tongue ran greedily over the top lip, then the bottom. “Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee?” he questioned in a singsong tone.

“Yes. What do you know about Father McAfee?”

“A pig. He is a pig. He thinks he can hide. He hides behind his God.
God . . . is . . . nothing
.” He sneered, scrunching his nose wolfishly.

“Malik, have you been frightening Father McAfee?”

The laugh again. “Ohhhhh. Malik makes Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee understand.”

“Understand what?”

“His God is nothing. No protection, does not care.”

Apollo held up a hand, wanting to interject. “That's good, Malik. Yes, Father McAfee's God is nothing.”

“Nothing,” Malik repeated.

She knew Apollo had felt an infusion of sympathy was in order. He provided it as he would have a shot of morphine.

“What are your plans for Father McAfee, bad Father McAfee?” Apollo nodded, giving her control.

The noise Malik made was of a starving man set before a banquet. “Ooooooohhhhhh. Bad Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee.” He leaned his head back as if scanning the ceiling, but his eyes remained closed. “So high, the sanctuary.
Sanctuary
.” Sheer disdain. “Mac-Aff-eeeeeeee will hang from its chandelier.” A lecherous grin twisted his lips. “By his bowels he will hang.”

Ice water dripped down Alicia's spine. She shut her eyes, swallowed. Her arm throbbed. She had no doubt this was indeed what Malik planned for Father McAfee, that dear old man. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed dimmer. She turned to check the floor and wall lamps. Both were burning.

She asked her next question with her eyes fixed on Apollo; she could not bring herself to look at the creature in the chair. “Malik, did you steal Father McAfee's papers?”

His head lolled lazily.

“Hold on.” Apollo fiddled with the IV knobs, all the while watching the EKG. Satisfied, he gave her a nod to continue.

“Did you steal Father McAfee's papers?”

Malik's head snapped up. “Of course! Who said Malik did not? ‘Get the files, Malik. Bring them all to me.' Who said Malik did not?”

“No one said Malik did not. Malik did well. Who told you . . . who told Malik to get the files?”

“The priest.”

She eased her breath out. “Yes, the priest, but who—”

Brady touched her arm.

“Malik,” he said. “The priest told you to steal the files. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“What is the priest's name?”

“Randall.”

Adalberto Randall, the priest who had claimed to represent the Vatican archives. She glanced at Brady and nodded.

“Where is Father Randall now?”

“Home.”

“Where is home?”

“Not here. Home.”

“Malik, where is Father Randall's home?”

Nothing.

Brady: “Where is
your
home?”

Pause. More ragged breathing. When he spoke, his voice was an octave lower. The gravel in his throat became stones. “The pit is Malik's home. Black . . . dark . . . so
hot
!”

Alicia glanced at the voice recorder. Someone listening to the recording might not realize the voice was Malik's.

“Why hot?” Brady asked.

“Fire. Burning. Blood.” He began rocking at the waist. He opened his mouth in a wide grin. His gums were black, studded with those awful teeth. He let out a long, airy hiss. His breath hit her, rank and putrid. Hamburger gone bad.

She took a step back. The backs of her legs hit the bed, and she sat.

“Blood!” he called as if ordering a beer. “Let the child's blood flow! Cut it! Cut it now!”

“Malik!” Apollo's voice reverberated against the walls. His face reflected the same distress Alicia felt.

Malik jerk his head around. “Master? Master, is that you?”

Alicia leaned forward. “Who is your mast—”

“Master! We have the children! More children for you!”

His hands began flexing. His head rolled in a circle.