Brotherhood and Others (10 page)

He yawned, nodded, and said, “I'm going to take a walk around.”

“Mr. and Mr. Pale were kind of down on that idea.”

“Seems I'm always letting someone down,” Monarch replied, and left.

Monarch was most comfortable moving, and he liked to know the terrain around any place where he stayed stationary, prowling the area so he would get a sense of how an enemy might approach him. Flipping on the switch on an LED headlamp, he set out to do just that, opening various doors on the hallway, finding them empty but for the odd piece of pipe or lumber that lay in the dust.

At last he reached the door where he'd gone out to urinate. He stepped outside, extinguished the light. A bitter wind off the North Sea gnawed at his cheeks. Monarch shivered, thought to go back inside, but then decided to walk the perimeter of the abandoned factory.

The darkness did not bother him. From childhood, he'd had a knack for traveling in the shadows, using his peripheral vision to find his way. Padding along parallel to the factory wall through dead matted grass and weeds that soaked his pant legs, he toed aside rusty cans and piles of trash with the ease of a prowling cat.

The two-story factory was perhaps one hundred meters long, with a broken concrete pad out back that abutted a forested area. Looping to the building's east side, the dead grass was tamped down here and he moved at a quicker pace, smelling the night odors of spring on the cold moist wind. Halfway back to the loading dock, Monarch spotted a thin vertical strip of light glowing through a window on the factory's second story. He flashed on the image of the pale guys. What were they doing to DeGrave? What could they possibly do to him that would cause him to talk so quickly?

It was not his responsibility and above his pay grade, yet those questions would not stop. Monarch knew he should just return to Barnett and his team, have another cup of coffee, wait for the pale boys to do their thing, and concentrate on getting DeGrave in bed before sunrise. It's what he would do, he decided. No use clouding the mission.

But he'd taken no more than two steps when he heard echoing from the factory the mournful sounds of someone suffering.

*   *   *

Robin hit the floor and felt the breath blown out of him, dropped the wet rags, understanding that Antonia Valera had somehow gotten to her feet, hid behind the door, and slammed him in the face with it. He should have listened to Julio. He should never have left her alone.

The girl wrenched the door back open. The gag was still in, and her wrists remained bound, but her ankles were free. She tried to leap over Robin, going for the stairs, but his hand shot out, snagging her by the left ankle. He thought sure she'd sprawl on her face, but she was uncannily athletic and managed to stay upright enough to twist and kick at his face.

Robin deflected the blow, which finally upset her balance and she crashed onto her side. Still fighting for air, trying to stop her from kicking at him again, he threw himself on top of her and pinned her to the floor.

She struggled, staring up at him, her wide hateful eyes darting all over his hoodless face as if wanting to remember every bit of it.

“You had to do something stupid,” Robin said. “I was trying to be nice and you had to do something stupid.”

The girl said nothing, just continued to study his face coldly. He jerked her to her feet, pushed her onto the mattress, and retied her ankles. Then he undid her wrist restraints, got her arms behind her back, and bound her again.

He reached for the hood and she began to squeal like a wounded animal. She was claustrophobic. What did he care? She'd tried to run, hadn't she? He grabbed the hood. She screamed so loud against her gag that her skin turned purple. Veins quivered on her neck.

“Okay, okay,” Robin said, setting the hood down.

Her chest still heaving, Antonia Valera began to calm. Robin looked back into the hallway, saw the wet rags, debated, and then got them. He pushed her over onto her back and said, “Open your legs.”

Her fear exploded and he said, “I'm cleaning you. That's it.”

She studied his eyes and then looked past him up at the ceiling, relaxing her thighs. Robin ran the wet rags over her legs twice, tossed them in the corner, and got off the mattress. “That should feel better.”

She wouldn't look at him, but she nodded.

He turned away, thinking about Julio and Claudio. What would they say? Not only had he left her alone, she'd seen him, she'd studied him. Would she know him? Of course she would. He considered putting the hood back on, but decided that was dumb. She'd seen him. Up close. He was already screwed.

Behind him, he heard her trying to talk against the gag. He thought about just leaving her in the room while he sat in the hall, but then he went over and removed her gag.

“Thirsty,” she said. “And I need something to eat.”

He went to the food box, dug around, and returned with the water bottle. He held it to her lips and poured it into her mouth. Then he fed her some cookies and gave her more water.

“Thank you,” she said, when he got up.

“Following orders,” Robin said as he walked over and slid down the wall facing her.

She was studying him again. “Are you going to kill me now that I've seen you?”

“I've thought about it,” he admitted.

A silence. “Have you killed anybody before?”

Robin shook his head.

“Have those other two?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe.”

“What's that tattoo on your arm?”

Robin saw a piece of it sticking out from beneath the sleeve of his shirt. He tugged the cuff over it and said, “Nothing. And you ask too many questions.”

“Everyone says that,” she said, and sighed.

He studied her. Even though her hair was all crazy and her face was covered with tear streaks, she was pretty. “Who's everybody?”

“My teachers. My coaches. My mom and dad.”

“I wouldn't know,” Robin said.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

The girl thought about that. “You're not like them, the other two.”

Robin's face screwed up in anger. “I'm exactly like them.”

“No,” she said. “My mother has always thought me a fine judge of character, and you are definitely not like them.
You
could let me go.”

“Oh, right, and you go running to the police and then my friends come back, find you gone, and either way I end up dead.”

Antonia Valera's eyes roamed over him. “Is that why you do this? Because you think ‘your friends' will kill you if you don't?”

“No,” he said emphatically.

Before the girl could respond, Robin heard a key in the lock and the door down the stairs squeaked open.

*   *   *

Monarch stood in the darkness by the factory, listening to the low rolling and breakingtones of someone in agony. What were they doing to him?

Then the moaning stopped and all he heard was dripping. He felt as hollow and wrong as he had when seeing Claudio pull the hood down over Antonia Valera's head in the back of the Mercedes all those years ago.

Monarch understood full well that DeGrave was a nuclear mercenary who'd just left Iran. But when the hell had the agency gotten into torture? And who the fuck were those pale guys?

Monarch absolutely knew the smart thing to do was to return to the loading dock, complete his phase of the mission, and mention what he'd heard to his superior, a conniving guy named Slattery. But what would Slattery say? Probably nothing, even if he knew anything. The CIA wasn't about sharing knowledge, it was about hoarding it. It was another reason why Monarch was beginning to dislike working at the agency.

A soft sob echoed from the factory. Monarch turned on his headlight, aimed it at the factory wall, saw an old drainpipe bolted to the exterior. Turning the light off again, he climbed the drainpipe like a monkey, reached the second floor in thirty seconds, and stepped out onto a ledge. Back pinned to the wall, Monarch side shuffled down the ledge to the first set of windows. Locked.

But one of the windows in the second set was loose. He felt about the sash, sensing that the wood was punkie. He used a utility knife he had in his pocket to pry at the wood, breaking away chunks until the lock came free of the sash. He raised the windowand slid his leg inside, his foot probing for a floor. It was so dark inside he couldn't tell what was below him.

Cupping the headlamp, he flicked it on and spotted an iron catwalk about three feet beneath him. Turning the beam off once more, he eased around and dropped onto the catwalk, absorbing the impact and sound with his knees.

His hands groped to his sides and found the wall and the rail, which was wobbly. Monarch slipped forward, hearing DeGrave choking and pleading.

“Please,” he was saying. “Please, no more.”

Monarch could make out a crack of light showing beneath a door at the end of the catwalk about sixty feet away. The closer he got, he realized that there was also a thin sheet of light shining between the side of the door and the jamb. It was hitting the bank of windows where Monarch had seen the glowing outside.

He covered the last sixty feet to the door in complete silence, pressed his eye to the crack, and peered in.

*   *   *

Wearing one of the hoods, and carrying a second one, Robin met Julio out on the landing above the stairs.

“Why're you wearing a hood?” Julio demanded instantly.

“Because she can't,” Robin said. “She's claustrophobic.”

“Who the fuck cares?”

“What does it matter?” Robin asked. “Either way she can't see me.”

“But she can see what's around her,” Julio snapped. “Stuff she could tell the police when we let her go.”

“What? Four walls? A mattress? A box with some food?”

Julio's left eye squeezed almost shut, then he snatched the extra hood from Robin's hand and tugged it over his head. He made to move past Robin, but the boy put a hand in his way.

Julio stiffened as if he were going to jack Robin for touching him. Then Robin gestured at the tattoo on Julio's right forearm, which was showing. The Brotherhood's leader relaxed, nodded, and rolled down his sleeve.

He stepped inside. Antonia Valera lay on her side, the gag in again, the ends of which were tucked beneath her head but not tied. Robin prayed Julio would not notice.

“Take the gag off,” Julio said to him.

Robin leaped across the room, knelt, and made a show of fumbling behind her headbefore coming up with the kerchief.

“Your father says he won't pay your ransom,” Julio said.

Antonia Valera began to cry and look pleadingly at Robin. “I told you.”

Julio glanced at Robin, hesitated, but then said, “He won't pay the ransom unless he hears your voice.”

That seemed to calm the girl somewhat. “Give me a phone.”

“No,” Julio said, taking a couple of steps toward her and drawing a small shiny minicassette recorder that Robin recognized.

He'd clipped it off a businessman a few months before and Julio had asked for it in tribute. Julio put it down on the mattress in front of her, thumbed the record button, and nodded at her.

The girl paused a beat, glanced at Robin, and said in a tremulous voice: “Mom? Dad? It's Antonia. Please pay the ransom. I heard what you said about that movie, Daddy, but please! I don't want to be here anymore.” She collapsed, sobbing.

Julio reached out, clicked off the cassette player, and said, “Nice job. Any luck, and you'll be home by morning.”

He stood, said to Robin, “We'll be back when we have the money. Don't let her out of your sight.”

*   *   *

Monarch was taught methods to deal with torture when he was with Special Forces. But looking through the crack in the factory door, he knew he'd never seen or heard of what was going on inside.

At first glance the room could have been a modern in-patient surgery room. There was a domed operatory light in the center of the ceiling. DeGrave lay on a table below it, strapped down at his ankles, chest, wrists and forehead. Metal stands supported keyboards, screens,IV bags, and lines that ran into the backs of the South African's left and right hands. Electrodes were hooked to his head, chest, and arms and ran to machines monitored by Mr. and Mr. Pale.

They were talking softly to DeGrave.

“No!” The South African moaned louder. “No, I
don't
know. This is all just a bad dream, a nightmare.”

One Mr. Pale said, “You're right, it is like a nightmare, Stephan. But to suggest that you don't know is false, and you know it. Trying to say otherwise is useless. No matter how you fight it, our method will soon find its way, and unlock your amygdala. You have two of them, deep in your brain, left and right of your stem. The amygdala regulates memory, and emotion. It also regulates the magnitude of anxiety and fear surrounding a particular memory or emotion.”

DeGrave insisted: “I don't know what the Iranians are doing—”

“Too bad, Stephan,” the second Mr. Pale said.

Both men turned to keyboards and began typing.

They'd no sooner finished when DeGrave's eyes rolled up in his headand his face contorted as if against a broken tooth. Then his body began to writhe and arch against the restraint straps. It was like some Hollywood depiction of a demonic possession, only the South African appeared to be face-to-face with the devil in his mind, or at least the thing that frightened him most.

“No!” DeGrave shrieked. “No! Get it away! No!”

He was wracked by spasms and convulsions. The first Mr. Pale released the strap holding the South African's head to the table. DeGrave's head tried to come free of his neck. His eyes bulged wide as if the terror that had seized his mind were trying to push its way out his sockets.

Mr. and Mr. Pale simultaneously hit their keyboards and DeGrave collapsed backward, panting, covered in sweat, as if he'd just awoken from the worst nightmare he'd ever had.