Specter (21 page)

It was the best he could do for her ... and he hated taking the added precaution of having Papagos tell her they were hunting for Vlachos, not that they already had him. If they did pick her up, that was what she would tell them ... another fiction that might delay a police search by a precious few more hours.

If they were lucky, Jaybird, Mac, DeWitt, and Vlachos were already at the new hotel, waiting for them, while the police were searching the streets.

Nikki couldn't know about any of that, of course. She did seem grateful, though, now that these mysterious foreigners were letting her go when she'd been imagining the worst. When they all got out of the car, she came up to Murdock, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on his cheek.
“Sas efharisto poli, kirie,
” she said, her eyes shining.

“Hey, L-T,” Roselli called. “Who's your friend?”

“She says thank you very much,” Papagos added.

“How do you say, ‘You're welcome'?”

“Parakalo.
”

“Parakalo,
Nikki.”

“Hey, L-T,” Roselli said, grinning as the girl hurried off, bare feet slapping on the concrete. “I think she kind of likes you.”

“Shut up. Let's find that hotel.”

They left the parking garage in two groups to avoid attracting attention, sticking to side streets where possible and taking separate routes to the hotel. Frazier led Magic and Razor, while Papagos stayed with Murdock. Navigation through the city streets actually proved to be relatively simple, since both the communications antenna above the fairgrounds to the northwest and the huge sports stadium to the east were easily recognizable, easily spotted landmarks.

Murdock and Papagos were delayed only once, waiting for a few minutes in an alley as a police car cruised slowly past on Papaphi Street. They found the Dimitriu without trouble and slipped up the fire escape in back, to find that Frazier, Brown, and Roselli had gotten there just minutes before them, while Sterling, DeWitt, and MacKenzie had arrived with their prisoner nearly an hour earlier.

“So that's Stathis Vlachos,” Murdock said.

“I think he may be starting to come around,” DeWitt said. “From the size of that lump on the back of his head, I'd say Jaybird damned near took his head off.”

“Stepano?” Murdock said, jerking his head toward the room's single small window. “Let's talk. Over here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Murdock began filling him in on what the SEALs had learned from Nikki in the car, speaking quietly so that if the prisoner was awake, he would not hear. “So he's Macedonian,” he concluded. “Or, I should say rather, at least he speaks Macedonian. Don't know how much English he has, but the girl said his Greek wasn't all that good. I think he's from up north.”

“I had already wondered about that, Lieutenant,” Stepano said, his blue eyes flat and cold. “Judging by what Razor, Scotty, and Magic told me when they came in.”

“I'd say this one is in your department.”

“Yes.” Stepano appeared to be studying the prisoner. They had him on the bed, still tied hand and foot, still wearing nothing but his boxer shorts. He did indeed appear to be coming around, moaning and twisting his head back and forth. “Sir ... how rough can we be with him?”

Murdock sighed. “Son, that's a hard one, but I'd have to say you can be as rough as you need to be. We've
got
to know what he knows about the hijacking. The names of his mysterious friends in the DEA. Where he's from. Who he works for. And we've got to get the goods fast. Solomos is probably turning this city inside out right now looking for us, and we probably don't have more than, oh, let's say six hours. We might have more, but I don't want to stretch it too close.”

“Maybe we can scare it out of him,” Roselli said, joining them.

“Maybe,” Murdock said. “Unfortunately, folks in this part of the world are used to the idea of torture. This guy couldn't be working for the Greek government and not be aware of what would happen if he got caught.”

“Shit,” Roselli said. “We're gonna torture the guy?”

“We can't,” Murdock said. “Even if we wanted to, we can't.” He pointed at the room's nearest inner wall. “These walls are only a little thicker than paper. If he starts screaming, we'll have Solomos and his men breaking down the door ten minutes later. Count on it.”

“Is possible that we can use the fact that he is from Yugoslav Macedonia,” Stepano said quietly, his accent noticeably thicker as he thought about the problem. “And ... he does not know us, know who we are. What we are. I think I see way. . . .”

“He's all yours,” Murdock said. He signaled to DeWitt, who was standing next to the bed. “Two-Eyes? Take everybody out except two volunteers.”

“Me,” Roselli said.

“I'll stay,” Sterling said.

“Also, I need something,” Stepano said. “Perhaps Papagos can get some from hotel desk. Or at all-night drugstore.”

Papagos nodded. “Right, then,” Murdock said. “Let's get this over with. We don't have much time.”

After dispatching Papagos on his errand, they bound the still-groggy Stathis Vlachos to a wooden chair, using the handcuffs they'd taken off Roselli to secure his wrists behind his back, then binding his arms and torso to the chair's straight back with a length of nylon line left over from the evening's activities. Next they pulled off his shorts, then tied his ankles to the chair's rear legs, using more rope to spread his knees apart.

Stepano played the role of chief interrogator with the air of a man used to getting the answers he demanded. Roselli and Sterling carried out his instructions with the solemn air of men participating in some dark and mysterious ritual. Once, when Roselli moved a bit quickly while looping the rope around the legs of the chair, Stepano said, “Slowly, Razor, slowly. We want him to think about this, about what we are doing.” Then he'd added something in Macedonian, possibly repeating his words for Vlachos's benefit.

When they were done, the man could move nothing but his head. His legs were spread open and tied, his genitals exposed and vulnerable. Murdock watched full awareness returning to the prisoner's eyes, saw a flash of panic there ... replaced almost at once by a dark, urgent watchfulness.

They waited then for several moments, the silence in the room growing heavier. There were two quick knocks at the door, and Papagos entered, carrying a brown paper bag.

“Place it on dresser, p!ease,” Stepano said. “Thank you.”

Papagos did as he was told, then crossed the room to take his place next to Roselli and Jaybird. Murdock considered ordering him to leave, then decided against it. He had a right to see, to know.

God help us
, he thought blackly.
We're becoming as bad as the sons of bitches we're fighting.

Stepano stepped closer to the prisoner, leaning over until their faces were inches apart. He smiled, a hard, calculating expression.
“Kade e Gospogya Kingston?”

The prisoner snarled something back, bared his teeth, and spat. He was brave, certainly, Murdock was willing to give him that. Murdock couldn't imagine himself spitting in the face of anyone if he'd been in the prisoner's place.

The smile fixed rigidly in place, Stepano pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the spittle off his cheek. “Razor? Gag our friend, please.”

Razor tore off a strip from the bedsheet, stepped behind the prisoner, then pulled the cloth taut between the man's teeth, knotting it tightly. Stepano stepped close again, still holding the handkerchief.

“Yas sum od Goli Otok
,” Stepano said, and his voice, though still low, was as hard and as cold as ice.
“Razbi
-
ram?”

The prisoner's face went death white at the words “Goli Otok,” the name, Murdock remembered, of one of the prison islands that Tito's secret police, evidently, had made notorious.

Stepano kept speaking, his voice low, almost gentle as he carefully and neatly twisted his handkerchief into a thick, white rope. Next he looped it beneath the prisoner's genitals, then tied it in a knot, drawing the ends very slowly tight.
“Dali ste zheneti, gospodin? Imate li devoyka? Ah! Zhal mi e!”

Throughout all of this, the prisoner's eyes were starting from his head, as wide and as white as the gag in his mouth. Stepano next crossed the room to the dresser and, careful to keep all of his movements in clear view of the prisoner, slowly produced a can of lighter fluid, the kind used in refillable cigarette lighters. He held it to his ear, shaking it, then nodding approval.

Returning to the prisoner, he showed him the can, uncapped it, then began to pour it, a small dribble at a time, onto the knotted handkerchief. All the while, Stepano kept talking, and four or five times Murdock caught again that dread name of Goli Otok.

Murdock didn't understand the spoken words, but he could certainly imagine what Stepano must be saying . . . something about
this
was the way it was done, back at that prison on Goli Otok, and
this
was what happened to someone Stepano had known. . . . Was the SEAL claiming to be a victim of Tito's torture prison, Murdock wondered, or one of the secret police's torturers? It hardly mattered; the gentle-sounding words coupled with the look on his face as he emptied the last of the lighter fluid onto the skin of the man's penis combined to create an atmosphere of utter and complete madness. The sharp stink of the liquid bit the air. The knotted handkerchief was sopping wet, as was the matted black hair on Vlachos's belly and groin. His genitals lay flaccid in a puddle of the stuff on the chair between his open thighs, and some of it was dripping onto the carpet. He was whimpering through the gag now, a quavering, horrible sound, scarcely human.

When the can was empty, Stepano set it aside, then fished about in his shirt pocket, producing at last a silver cigarette lighter. He held it delicately between thumb and forefinger, so close to the prisoner's face that his eyes crossed as he tried to focus on it.

“Kade e Gospogya Kingston
,
Vlachos?”

The pitch of Vlachos's whimpering went up an octave, his head thrashing back and forth, his eyes huge. There was blood on the gag now. He'd bitten his lip or tongue.

“If I didn't know better,” Papagos said, “I'd swear he's trying to tell us something through that gag.”

Deliberately, Stepano flicked the lighter open and struck a spark, keeping the lighter well above the prisoner's groin. Flame danced on the end of the wick, reflected brightly in the terrified mirrors of Vlachos's eyes.

“Jeez, Steponit,” Roselli said. “Watch those fumes. . . .”

Stepano lowered the flame one inch ... two . . .

“You know, Steponit,” Papagos said, “in Greece, when you jerk your head up and back, you mean ‘no,' but when you turn your head to the side, like he's doing, you mean ‘yes.' Is that what you're trying to say, Vlachos? You're trying to say yes, you'll talk?”

“Nah,” Roselli said. “He's just shaking his head no, like he doesn't want a light.”

Vlachos's reply was a shrill, muffled unintelligibility, but it was clear enough what he was trying to say. “Roselli,” Murdock snapped. “The gag.”

The gag came off and Vlachos launched into a torrent of words, sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Macedonian. Papagos stood beside Murdock, trying unsuccessfully to keep pace with a running translation.

“He says he and four of his friends with the Eno-menai ... ah, the United Macedonian Struggle ... infiltrated the DEA ... something, something ... he's speaking Macedonian now. I don't ... okay, the idea was to take the plane to Skopje. The plane ... the crew, they're all at Skopje. The women ... ah, the congresswoman and her people . . . they're taking them off some place. Ah ... can't catch that.
‘Ohridsko Ezero
...
Gorica
...
Gora
...
Gorazamak
. . .'”

“That's Lake Ohrid,” Stepano said. “Gorica is a village on the shores of Lake Ohrid. Gorazamak is an Ottoman fortress nearby.”

“Thank you, Mister Travel Guide,” Sterling said.

“He's still speaking Macedonian now,” Papagos said. “I'm not getting this at all.”

“It is Serbo-Croatian,” Stepano said. “Not Macedonian. He's saying ... he's saying the Congresswoman and her staff were supposed to be taken off the plane and transported to this castle.”

“Taking the most important hostages off someplace safe,” Roselli said. “Someplace where we or Delta Force can't get at them.”

“There's no such place,” Jaybird said.

Vlachos was continuing to talk, the words tumbling out so quickly the prisoner began to stutter, his eyes still fixed on that horrible yellow flame wavering atop Stepano's cigarette lighter.

“He says that there was list of demands, due to be delivered to the American embassy in Athens tomorrow ... ah, later today, rather. We were to recognize Macedonia as including both Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia. Statement of principle, he says. We were to recognize EMA as the legitimate representatives of united Macedonia. This . . . this is crazy, Lieutenant. What he is saying, we would never do....”

“Since when are terrorists considered sane? In any case, he's not telling us the whole story.”

“Eh?”

Murdock locked eyes with the prisoner. “Mr. Vlachos here is not Macedonian. Or if he is, he's not working for Macedonian independence.”