Collision(73)

He woke up in a room of plain cinder block, with a high window letting in a soft, cloudy gleam of light. He was tied to a wooden chair; his interrogators had a table and a lamp and a chair. The room had nothing else but the rubber hose, the pliers, the bucket, a trash can, and a leaky faucet; its slow drip played a maddening tune.

He had started to doze again; the ice water slapped his face. He opened his eyes to see Gumalar sitting across from him, eating a banana, frowning.

“Let us try again. I am an optimist.” Gumalar chewed, gestured with the half-eaten banana. “I have a contact who tells me that you are CIA.”

Choate’s stomach was as empty as a waterless well, but the smell of the banana made bile rise in his throat. “No . . . please, mister . . . I work for a database consulting firm . . .”

“Your work for Tellar Data is a lie.” Gumalar held up the CD that held the financial transactions of the aliases. “Why did you have this CD?”

“Please let me go.” The words were out of his mouth before he realized it, and a curl of shame unfolded in his chest.

“Your name is Randall Choate. You live in Manassas, Virginia. You have a wife and a daughter.” Gumalar lowered his voice. “My reach is long, Mr. Choate. If I want to reach out and touch your family”—he tossed the banana peel into the trash can—“I will. Now. You are CIA, sent here to spy on me.”

“No, no, no.” It was no struggle to put fear into his voice; they were threatening his family. The terror he’d felt for himself faded like the dusk, replaced by a darkness that thrummed in his chest. Kim and Tamara, Jesus, no. How did they know so much about him?

“Tellar is a CIA front.”

“No. No, sir. Please, whatever this misunderstanding is, you got to let me go. My company will pay you, is that the problem? They’ll pay to get me back.”

“I’m not going to give you back. You’re going to tell me what sort of operation is being mounted against me.”

“I don’t know anything . . .”

“This Englishman they call the Dragon,” Gumalar said. “Where do I find him?”

“I don’t know . . .”

More water, more torture, more ripples of pain shuddering under his skin. Gumalar’s thug clicked a pair of pliers in front of Choate’s face and made a grand show of removing his sock and his shoe.

Choate stayed silent, gritted his teeth, told himself not to scream.

With a deft yank the thug wrenched out one of Choate’s toenails. The thunderbolt of pain made Choate dry-heave and piss himself. He screamed and the thug hit him with the pliers, cracking his cheek. The thug kicked the chair over in a rage and beat him senseless.

Time passed, he did not know how long. The slant of light through the high window was different when he awoke. He was alone.

Suddenly from the next room, voices drifted through the wood: Let us see if this Dragon breathes fire.

Then Choate heard a scream. A man. No, no, you got the wrong guy, man . . . A voice with a soft rural English accent. The voice revved to a scream. Bloodyhellbloodyhellahhhhhh—God no God no . . .

They’d found the Dragon. Someone had betrayed them both.

Are you the one they call the Dragon?

I, oh, please don’t . . .

And then a horror, the sound of a sharp chunking into wood and a scream that would have unsettled the demons in hell. The scream lasted half of forever and then devolved into sobs and a moan. Slaps, mumbled questions about CIA operations in Indonesia. More screams. More.

The door clanged open, Choate opened his eyes. Men dragged what was left of the Dragon into the room. His wrists were bloodied stumps loosely wrapped in pillowcases, sodden red, his eyes wide with terror, his chin smeared with vomit.

“Who is this man?” Gumalar yelled, and for a moment Choate didn’t know if he was yelling at him or the Dragon.

“I never saw him before in my life,” Choate said and the Dragon hung his head.

“We will kill him if you do not talk.”

“You’ve already done half the job,” Choate said, and he spat at Gumalar. A fist started hitting him in the head, and after the seventh blow and a brutal kick, the chair he was tied to toppled to the floor and he fell with it. The world went hazy and gray.

Time meant nothing. He jerked his head up at the roar of a gunshot. Men mumbling, arguing, one saying in Indonesian, We can’t learn anything from him now, you stupid ass. For a moment he thought he’d been shot; but he wasn’t, he was alone.

He heard doors opening and closing. But his stayed shut. They would come for him now, kill him now. Voices grew louder, arguing in Indonesian. He heard the distinctive, soft grind of a body being dragged across concrete.