Seven Grams of Lead (24 page)

“Except the ante.”

“That’s how it is with games of chance, right?”

“What’s the ante?”

“Eight million.”

“And if the device works?”

“You wire the guy another two-ninety-two million. Then he supplies you with enough technical details that the e-mail you send taking credit to
The Washington Post
is the e-mail they publish. But it would be better to e-mail
The New York Times
because the
Post
won’t regain the ability to publish anything for weeks.”

Clouds dimmed the light through the latticework, shadows magnifying the reservations that creased the Iraqi’s brow. “How would I alleviate my concern that my friend’s service is gaming us?”

“To what end? To pick up a few million bucks by selling defective fireworks? To screw over an old pal from Moscow?”

“But he’s always been such a devoted servant of his country.”

“Of course. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have gotten the promotions to be in position to pull off an operation on the scale we’re discussing. Keep in mind his stepfather.”

“I know, he was Mukhabarat from Umm Qasr.”

“Not his father—may he rest in peace. His stepfather.”

“Ah, yes, the American Air Force colonel.”

“May he rest in peace.” Canning sipped his coffee. “Within the week.”

Canning’s resentment of the United States began the day his mother became one of the colonel’s personal spoils from the First Gulf War. The man soon uprooted mother and son from a village outside of Basra that wasn’t just idyllic; it was believed to have been the location of the Garden of Eden. In the States, he moved from one bleak military housing compound to another—that he provided a roof was the best that could be said for the guy. In a sense, Canning had been looking forward to this breakfast for twenty years.

Al-Hawrani set down his brioche and leaned closer. “The council would be concerned that the price reflects impure ideology.”

“You can assure the council they’re getting a hometown discount,” Canning said. “I have no doubt that, off the top of your head, you can name a dozen players who would happily pony up ten figures for this system.”

The Iraqi ceded the point with a grunt. “The Chinese have spent more just trying to steal the technology. But if your guy is flying the Son of Islam flag …”

“Sometime after this op, maybe immediately, he’s going to need to fly the coop. Why shouldn’t he have a golden parachute—not unlike the members of the National Council of Resistance of Iraq?”

Turning toward the window, al-Hawrani watched the Lyon train grind away from the station. He was deliberating, Canning suspected. The time passed slowly.

Finally, the Iraqi raised his orange juice and said, “To
al-Ba’ath.
”

Al-Ba’ath
translated loosely as
the resurrection,
Canning knew, but in this context it meant, specifically, retribution. Laboring to maintain an appropriately sober mien, he clinked the juice glass with his coffee cup.

There were two
new scorpions—that is, two that Thornton had seen during the few moments there had been light in the cell. So maybe more than two. He continued to play goalie from the cot, swishing the pillow, now in tatters, to ward the things off. The routine was interrupted only when a Souper Meal and water bottle dropped through the flap in the door. Each time he raced to the door and back along the safe path revealed by Flattop’s flashlight. These meals seemed to come on a random schedule, except that Thornton wasn’t hungry. Still the provisions were never enough and always repulsive. Days had passed since he’d slept. That is, it seemed days had passed. Maybe it had been a week. He could no longer delineate one day from the next. It didn’t help that the temperature
fluctuated between freezing and roasting. Then there were the runs. He’d had to heave the cot as if it were a sled, himself aboard, so that his ass was positioned inches above the toilet rim—not on it—so he wouldn’t sit on one of the damned bugs. The toilet didn’t flush. Or maybe it did, weakly, and he didn’t hear it over the men’s screams from the surrounding cells. Also a baby cried for hours on end. Thornton recalled that Iraqi interrogators, believing that no sound induced greater psychological stress, piped recordings of wailing infants into subjects’ cells. Or was that Russian interrogators? His mind wasn’t firing. Once, a gunshot in close vicinity left his eardrums throbbing. He felt hot blood leaking down his face, but it turned out to be a hallucination. A delusion, technically; he still couldn’t see anything. The point was, the new scorpions in his cell were more adventurous than the first, frequently tapping close to him. The other sounds he could tune out. But the bugs forced him to stay awake to maintain his perimeter. Since the Dark Ages, sleep deprivation had been recognized as an effective means of coercion. Or maybe it was the Middle Ages. Anyhow, in most modern democratic countries, depriving a detainee of sleep for more than forty-eight hours—or was it seventy-two?—was an illegal form of torture. After seventy-two hours, Thornton had read, your electrolyte balance drops to the point that your brain goes haywire. By now it had been forty or fifty hours since the
parilla.
Plus thirty or forty hours
awake before the
parilla.
And, Jesus Christ, the
parilla.
A minute on that thing probably equated to another 100 hours of sleep dep. The next ride could be worse. Electroshock torture often results in cardiac arrest. Thoughts of the next “interview” expanded in his head like toxic gas, further filling him with a nightmarish sense of foreboding.

Finally Flattop came to fetch him, then prodded him into the interview room. At the sight of the
parilla,
and Bow Tie kneeling beside it, tweaking a control knob on the retrofitted car battery, Thornton couldn’t get the words out fast enough: “I made up Meade. I made it up to stall you. I have some suspicions about Sokolov’s death, but, really, I don’t know shit.”

The interrogator rose, regarding him with sympathy. “We figured as much, Russell,” he said.

Flattop drew his HK45, pressed its cold barrel against Thornton’s right temple, and snapped the trigger.

Another delusion.

Thornton was still in the cell.

Don’t do that, he urged himself. Don’t do that again.

He felt a scorpion shimmying up his back. He swatted until his back was raw, and …

He must have imagined the bug.

But they did put a wolf in the cell. No, really. Thornton could smell its damp fur, hear its panting,
feel the damned thing padding closer.
Dreams and reality are blurring,
said an educated voice in his head.
Don’t let your mind get the better of you.

“Easy for you to say, buddy,” Thornton replied.

Hot, sticky perspiration coated him. A moment later he was shivering uncontrollably. And he itched all over, ached all over, especially his spine. His skin was cracked with rash or infection. He coughed; his lungs felt like they were clogged with dust. He couldn’t remember his survival plan anymore. Just that he’d had one at some point. In his entire life, he’d never panicked. Now, as if the natural order of things had been reversed, or gone out the window, he felt nothing but panic. It cost him the ability to feel anything. He—his life—was eroding like a flooded riverbank.

He heard snakes and gongs and gunfire.

It was the door unlocking.

Maybe.

He shook cobwebs from his head.

The door opened outward, bringing the shape of Captain South, the other guard, slowly into the gray gap. Must be Flattop’s day off. Or night off. Thornton caught a whiff of musk and salt. No dream, unfortunately. It was
parilla
time.

His panic intensified, his heart beating harder and harder, hard enough to explode. Which might be better than the
parilla,
he thought, when a slender woman in a prison jumpsuit like his stepped in front of the captain.

Mallery.

“Russ, are you okay?” she asked.

“Glad to see you,” he said, though he wasn’t entirely sure that he was seeing her.

“I got us a ride out of here.” She inclined her head toward the captain. “We need to hurry.”

Thornton said, “Glad
to see you,” but it appeared to Mallery that he no longer had glad in his repertoire.

“I got us a ride out of here,” she said, cocking her head toward Albert, the boat captain. Since ferrying Mallery here—hours after bringing Thornton, he said—he had served as her guard. “We need to hurry.”

Thornton remained cross-legged on his cot, swinging a big wad of filth—originally a small pillow?—from side to side. His skin was gray, even in the pink wash of Albert’s flashlight. He’d lost more weight in a week than Mallery would have thought possible, and he would have probably looked gaunter still if all the caked-on grime and matted blood were hosed off. A ghost of the man she remembered.

“Albert has a boat,” she tried. “He’s packed clothes for you, first aid, and food.”

“And cold beer, man,” added the boat captain.

Thornton squinted against the light; otherwise his expression remained blank. He kept up whatever he was doing with the pillow. Mallery found the scene heartrending.

“Russ, we’re getting off Torture Island,” she said. “You with me?”

He focused on her. “I hope they’re treating you okay.”

It had been nothing close to okay. “Four-star compared to this,” she said. “How about we go anyway?”

“Hang on.” He shook his head. “Are you actually here?”

“For now.” Exigency tugged at her. The longer they lingered, the greater the likelihood that their escape would turn into an extended tour of the basement.

“How is this possible?” Thornton asked.

“The pen is mightier than the sword, especially when you use the pen on a checkbook.” Mallery doubled the pace of her words to stress the need for haste. “Albert’s now a fairly wealthy man, and he stands to get even wealthier.”

A grin shone through the captain’s anxious countenance.

Thornton seemed stuck in a daze. “You wrote him a check?” he asked.

“Wire transfer, actually,” Mallery said. “But if he’s going to spend any of it, we need to leave.”

Thornton’s eyes darted around the cell. With what Mallery read as an understanding nod, Albert probed the floor with his beam. A large bug of some sort skittered away from the light. Thornton set down the pillowy thing, propelled himself to the edge of his cot, then stopped.

“What about the other guards?” he asked.

“There was only Soriano in this building,” Albert said.

“The guy with the flattop?” asked Thornton.

“Right.” Mallery inched toward the door. “Let’s talk more on the boat, okay?”

“There
was
only Soriano?” Thornton seemed to be getting up to speed.

“Improvisation on Albert’s part,” Mallery said, biting back her anger. The original plan had been to lock up the other guard. In the process of locking him up, deciding that it would be “better he tells no tales,” Albert suffocated him.

Thornton fixed lucid eyes on Mallery. “How it is with the best-laid plans,” he said, pulling himself up by the wall—or trying to. He couldn’t grip the slick cinder blocks.

She hurried over, catching him by the elbows and helping him to his feet.

“That bar you wanted to go to in New York: I’ve got your tab there,” he said, staggering toward the door. “For life.”

With a smile, she helped him into the hall. Pulling his arm around her back, she acted as a crutch. And
not much of one; she had her share of dings. They barely kept pace with Albert, who lit the way through the dark corridors.

At the exit, Albert stooped, bringing his right eye level with a panel on the side of the door. Bolts within the wall whistled free of sockets. He threw a hip into the crash bar, opening the door to an inky darkness. Fresh air rushed in, briny but still delicious to Mallery after a week essentially underground. Outside, particles of fog twinkled in the floodlights.

She tended to Thornton as Albert hurried ahead, his soft footfalls against the wood-slatted pier accentuating the silence. The fishing boats bobbing beside the dock were both around fifty feet long, with dented hulls and small wheelhouses near bows surrounded by forests of masts, poles, and torn netting. Disguise, Albert had told Mallery. Each craft had been retrofitted with a pair of monstrous ten-cylinder diesels, allowing for cruising speeds of twenty-one knots, or about twenty-five miles per hour.

Albert stepped aboard the farther of the two boats, causing it to dip, then opened the sea cocks so water would flow in. After untying the lines, he leaped back onto the pier. The current immediately sucked the boat to sea.

“Now they got no boat, we got one,” he said, hurrying back to the presumptive escape craft;
Mermaid III
was painted across her transom, above
Barbados, W.I.

He unfastened the
Mermaid III
’s lines, hurdled
her starboard rail, and landed at the helm. With a twist of the ignition key, he brought the surrounding seawater to a boil.

Mallery took Thornton by the wrist and led him down the steep, muddy slope to the boat. As they reached the pier, a tall man appeared from the darkness at the other end. Mallery recognized the bow-tied interrogator for whom she had recounted, eleven times including twice backward, every last detail she could recall from the moment her jet landed at Muskeget until her capture in New York. Doc Wade, Albert had called him once, when he thought she was out of earshot, causing Wade to shush him. Shock froze her, causing Thornton to pitch forward.

“How in the devil did you get out?” the interrogator asked, aiming a pistol at Thornton.

“Put that thing down on the pier, man,” said Albert, emerging from the wheelhouse, leveling his own gun.

The interrogator dropped his weapon but not his bombast. “Go now and you’re a dead man,” he said. “Wherever in the world you are, we’ll get you.” Turning to Mallery and Thornton, he added, “You two as well.”

“You’re working for the CIA, aren’t you?” Thornton asked.

The interrogator laughed. “Eliciting, are we, Russell?”