by Chris Mooney
Arkoff fired. A pop of compressed air escaping and something shattered against Fletcher’s bulletproof vest. Arkoff kept firing and the person near the Mustang – his partner, Marie Clouzot – was firing too.
Fletcher felt something sharp pierce his thigh, like a needle. Warmth trickled through his muscle as Arkoff ducked behind a tree. Fletcher fired off a round, saw the exploding tree bark. He fired again and felt another needle-sting on the back of his head.
He ran, stumbled and quickly righted himself. He pressed ahead until his legs gave out.
Fletcher collapsed against the hard ground. He had dropped the SIG, could see it lying just a few inches away among the brown dried leaves. He went to crawl for it, collapsed. His arms had turned limp, and his vision was fading. He saw a tranquillizer dart sticking in the meat of his thigh.
He heard approaching footsteps and then he saw a rifle. Looking down the gun sight was the pale, almost bloodless face of Arkoff’s partner, Marie Clouzot, the woman who had tried to kill him in Colorado.
IV
The Killing House
78
Malcolm Fletcher awoke to warm air and voices.
‘Sit still. It will be over before you know it.’
A woman’s voice, deep and husky. The kind cured from a lifetime of cigarettes and hard liquor.
‘Why can’t you give me Novocain?’ Alexander Borgia’s voice, and it was coming from the same direction as the woman’s – someplace straight ahead, only a few feet away. ‘Don’t you have any of that shit down here?’ Borgia asked.
‘Just grit your teeth and bear it,’ the woman replied. ‘You’ve been through worse – and you’re goddamn lucky I installed this thing. Otherwise, I never would’ve found you, and you’d still be freezing to death out in the woods.’
A great fog filled Fletcher’s head, but his senses were working, alert: he was lying on his left side, his cheek pressed against something cold and hard. It had the rough, gritty texture of sandpaper. He didn’t feel any bindings on his wrists or ankles. His mouth felt dry, and there was a throbbing in his forehead, a tight band of pressure that had the feeling of a hangover. The sedative loaded in the darts. One had hit his thigh and the other had grazed the back of his neck.
New sounds, some near by, some faint: a low, guttural moan. The rattle of chain link. And everywhere, raspy, sickly breathing. There was a pervasive reek of blood and unwashed skin, and, behind it, the distinct and overpowering stench of human decomposition.
His eyes slit open to a tight cluster of intensely bright lights. A pair of blurry figures stood on either side of what appeared to be a very long and very tall stainless-steel table.
Fletcher didn’t move his head or body; he wanted Borgia and the woman to think he was unconscious. He blinked, and kept blinking, until everything came into a sharper focus.
The light came from a portable floor-standing surgery lamp, its wide, twenty-inch elliptical reflector dish positioned over a stainless-steel operating table. Borgia stood behind the table. His face was still grotesquely swollen, but it had been cleaned up. A surgical mask covered his mouth and nose, and he had changed into a grey sweatshirt several sizes too big.
Fletcher glanced over Borgia’s shoulder, at the wall and corner shelves packed with sterilized bags of surgical scrubs and towels. He saw boxes of latex gloves, vials and syringes, and a wide assortment of medical equipment.
An operating room.
Back to Borgia: the man’s left sleeve had been rolled up and he leaned slightly over the table, his hand splayed across the stainless steel. His skin was covered with a dark liquid that was, most likely, Betadine. Borgia hissed through gritted teeth as Marie Clouzot made a small incision on the webbing between his thumb and index finger. Then she traded the scalpel for a pair of surgical forceps, dipped the ends inside the wound and came back with something small pinched between the prongs. She set the tiny object on the table, not far from Borgia’s hand.
Fletcher lost sight of it; Clouzot blocked his view, having turned to a nearby surgical cart. She was much taller than Borgia, stockier. She wore dark jeans, black boots and a pink, V-neck sweater that had the texture of cashmere. She also wore a surgical mask and latex gloves. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a tight bun.
Fletcher’s gaze focused on the barrier separating him from the operating theatre: a chain-link door secured by at least one padlock. His head remained absolutely still as he conducted a cursory examination of his immediate surroundings.
The same grey/silver chain-link fencing had been used to erect his walls and ceiling. Eye bolts secured the chain link to a galvanized stainless-steel frame. He had been imprisoned inside what was essentially a custom-made dog kennel: just enough room to lie down. Judging from the ceiling height, he wouldn’t be able to stand. To the right of his cage, fifteen to twenty feet away, was an open door leading to a dimly lit passageway of concrete.
His gaze shifted back to the operating table. Clouzot dabbed gauze on Borgia’s hand, then she picked up the needle and went back to stitching his wound. The operating lights were extremely bright but it still took Fletcher a moment to find the small object she had removed from the incision: a glass tube, the size of a grain of rice. Something was contained inside the glass. He was too far away to make out what this was, but his mind was working.
Slightly larger than a grain of rice, Karim had told him.
Then the information came to him: he had been riding with Karim to New Jersey, they had been discussing how Nathan Santiago could have been found, and Karim offered up a theory – radio-frequency identification.
A glass-encapsulated RFID chip slightly larger than a grain of rice can be tucked inside a pocket or sewn into clothing – or, in the case of biometric security, surgically inserted beneath the skin, Karim had said. The Mexican attorney general did that to his senior staff, had a chip implanted in that web of skin between your thumb and index finger. You notice anything like that on Santiago?
Fletcher hadn’t. But Clouzot, he suspected, had just removed an RFID chip from Borgia’s hand – Special Agent Alexander Borgia’s hand.
‘When do you think he’ll wake up?’ Borgia asked.
‘Hard to say,’ Clouzot replied, pulling the surgical thread. ‘One dart hit him in the thigh. The one that grazed his neck delivered maybe a quarter of the sedative. He’s a big man.’
‘So, what, another hour? Maybe two?’
The woman laughed, a deep, throaty sound. ‘You’re not going to let it go, are you?’
‘I have to try,’ Borgia said.
‘You can’t reason with a monster, Alexander.’
Borgia made no reply. The conversation ended, and was replaced by moaning, dry and plaintive whispers asking for mercy and forgiveness. Fletcher couldn’t see Clouzot’s face, but Borgia gave no indication that he’d heard the inhuman cries. Either he had inured himself to this suffering, viewing it as nothing more than a necessary by-product of his cause (whatever it was); or, like most psychopaths, his limbic system was defective, rendering him incapable of feeling empathy, fear, guilt and remorse.
Clouzot finished stitching Borgia’s wound and straightened. Fletcher, his eyes nearly closed, could see her boots as they whisked past him. He watched them until they disappeared through the passageway. He was listening to her footfalls when Borgia approached his cage.
79
Fletcher lay still, waiting, his eyes shut. The footsteps stopped in front of the kennel door. He heard Borgia’s laboured breathing.
‘Wake up,’ Borgia screamed, and kicked the cage door.
Fletcher didn’t flinch at the sounds; he remained motionless.
Another kick.
‘Wake up, you son of a bitch.’ Borgia kicked again.
Again. ‘Wake up.’
Clearly Borgia wanted a confrontation, but what would happen if the target of his rage failed to awaken? Would the man have the nerve to remove the padlock and enter the cage? Fletcher hoped the man had a key. Unlock
the padlock and come inside, Mr Borgia … No, he’s decided against it. Fletcher heard the man’s footsteps storm away.
Fletcher rolled on to his back. The stench in the room was overpowering; he breathed deeply through his mouth to clear the fog from his head. Eyes opening wide, he stared past the cage’s chain-link ceiling, at the hanging water pipe. It contained sprinkler heads. Was this how they showered the prisoners? He thought about Nathan Santiago, wondering how a seventeen-year-old had wrapped his mind around living inside a chain-link kennel minute after minute, day after day, year after year. How had Santiago and the others kept from going mad?
No, don’t think about that now, Fletcher told himself. A final deep breath and he sat up, groggy, head swimming.
They had removed his overcoat and tactical belt. All he had left was his shirt and trousers, his leather dress belt and boots. They had emptied his pockets. The tranquillizer dart that had hit his thigh had left a small hole and a crust of drying blood on the trouser fabric. He appeared to be uninjured. He swivelled around to examine the rest of the room.
Fletcher had seen many things over the long course of his professional life. He had seen hidden torture chambers used by serial killers, had viewed corpses dumped by roadsides – he had witnessed first hand the ways dark and sinister urges found expression on human skin and bone. But what lay inside this rectangular concrete room of dim light momentarily overloaded his senses: human eyes peeking out from behind chain-link kennels bolted to the walls and floor. The prisoners were young and old, male and female. Some wore threadbare clothing or no clothing at all. Some were slumped against the bars or curled into foetal positions. Some of the victims were missing hands or feet or both. He wondered if they had been surgically hobbled to prevent them from escaping.
They all had IV needles hooked into their arms or necks. Tubes ran out of the crates to plasma bags hanging from the water pipes. An industrial-grade padlock secured each door. He counted eight kennels and all eight were occupied.
A pair of corpses had been dumped in the far corner. Dr Dara Sin had started to bloat.
But not Nathan Santiago. The young man had been stripped of his clothing, and his chest cavity had been cut open to harvest his organs.
The sight crawled through Fletcher’s flesh and shot its way into his bones. He recalled his final words to Nathan: No one will hurt you, I promise.
‘Help me.’
The dry, whispery voice came from the adjoining kennel – a sickly woman dressed in dirty jeans and a roomy dark cotton T-shirt. She sat crossed-legged and was slumped against her chain-link wall, her mouth hanging open, the paper-thin lips cracked and crusted with sores. All of her teeth had fallen out.
Fletcher inched closer to her. ‘Are there others down here? Are there any rooms?’
The woman didn’t answer. Stringy blonde wisps of hair barely clung to her balding scalp.
Fletcher inched closer and said, ‘What’s your name? How long have you been down here?’
No answer. Fletcher pressed his back against the concrete wall. He sat with his legs tented and his forearms resting on his knees. Adrenalin was coursing through his system now; he needed to manage it, needed to focus and concentrate on the task at hand: escaping.
He was looking around the ceiling, searching for cameras, when he heard footsteps approaching from the passageway – marching, not walking.
Alexander Borgia’s slight frame filled the doorway. In addition to the roomy grey sweatshirt, he wore dark nylon running pants that were too long; the cuffs had been rolled up several times. No shoes or socks, just a pair of flip-flops that were too big for his small feet. The clothes on his short frame gave him the appearance of a boy who had dressed up in his father’s clothing.
Borgia gripped a Glock in one hand. In the other he gripped a cattle prod.
‘Good,’ Borgia said, his voice trembling with rage. ‘You’re awake.’
Fletcher had a hand on his belt buckle, watching as Borgia placed the cattle prod on the operating table.
Borgia approached the cage, the Glock held by his side. It appeared to be a .45 calibre. Fletcher suspected the clip was loaded with hollow-tipped rounds.
‘Was it worth it? All that money?’
Fletcher straightened his legs. Put his hands on either side of him and lay his palms flat against the floor.
‘My head is rather foggy, Mr Borgia, so I’m afraid I’m at a loss to answer your question.’
Borgia fumbled for something inside his trouser pocket. His hand came back and then he bent forward and rolled something underneath the kennel door.
Fletcher didn’t track the object; his eyes never left Borgia’s face.
‘Pick it up! ’
The occupant in the next cell flinched. A cry of anguish came from another cage and died, replaced by a chorus of low moaning.
Borgia didn’t register their presence. Looking only at Fletcher, he raised the Glock. ‘I said pick it up.’
Fletcher found a vial lying on the floor. It was half full of a clear liquid. Taped to its side was an aged, peeling label stamped with faded red lettering: Namoxin.
Fletcher went cold. Namoxin was the name of the experimental medication used to treat psychotic male patients who had been in the Behavioral Modification Project.
The question jumped out of him. ‘Where did you obtain this?’
‘You failed to destroy all the evidence, Malcolm.’ Borgia grinned in sour triumph. ‘As part of the new task force assigned to find you, I was given access to all sorts of classified files and evidence. I know how you and the other agents from Behavioral Analysis who started the Behavioral Modification Project worked –’
‘I had nothing to do with that,’ Fletcher said, surprised by the heat in his voice. ‘I was trying to expose it.’
Borgia wasn’t listening. ‘I read the files,’ he said. ‘Your war crimes are all laid out in black and white, everything you and the others did.’ He spoke with great fervour, working himself into a near-religious mania. ‘I know how you all got rich by working in collusion with select pharmaceutical companies developing this miracle vaccine to eliminate male violence. How you picked the test subjects. I know you helped bury the bodies – the ones you didn’t cremate at the psychiatric hospitals – and I even know how you and the others doctored the paperwork.’
‘I tried to expose the project,’ Fletcher said again.
‘Next you’ll try to convince me you didn’t kill the three agents who came to arrest you.’
‘They were CIA operatives, not federal agents. They had been sent to my home to kill me. The FBI retrieved the evidence I collected on the BMP, all the –’
‘Lie to me all you want, Malcolm. I know the truth.’
‘You mean your truth.’ Fletcher tilted his head to one side, his gaze narrowing. ‘Have you read any patient files? Seen any documentation on the Behavioral Modification Project?’
Borgia didn’t answer.
‘I didn’t think so,’ Fletcher said. ‘You haven’t been able to put your finger on any patient files or any documentation regarding the project because they don’t exist. The FBI destroyed every last shred of documentation to keep the truth from seeing the light of day – and, it appears, conveniently used me as their scapegoat.’
‘If you tell me, I’ll show you mercy.’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Where you buried my brothers and sisters,’ Borgia said.
80
‘You’re a patient,’ Fletcher said, more curious than surprised. ‘A former patient of the Behavioral Modification Project.’
Borgia’s head craned back. He stared up at the ceiling as though there were a hole up there through which someone was speaking to him.
‘Which hospital?’
‘You tried to save Ali Karim,’ Borgia said. ‘You risked your life and your freedom to keep Ali Karim from dying.’ His head snapped forward, and he looked back through the chain link. ‘You’re capable of empathy.’
‘Unlike you.’ Fletcher motioned with a sweeping hand to the others in the room. ‘How many people have you tortured and killed, Special Agent Borgia? How many children?’
The man blinked, confused. ‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ he said. ‘All I did was find them.’
‘Them?’
‘The doctors and nurses from the hospital, the ones who helped engineer a private mass murder,’ Borgia said. ‘All those patients who died, and what happened to the doctors and nurses who killed them? They were placed inside witness protection. They were given new identities and new lives and allowed to go back to work in psychiatric facilities all over the country. The Bureau couldn’t let their sins – or yours – become public knowledge, so they did what they did best – sweep everything under the rug.’
Fletcher thought back to Theresa Herrera’s missing medical records. WitSec had expunged them along with any other traces of her former identity when they placed her into witness protection. And the other families he had found – their medical records too had been obliterated.
‘And you found their new identities,’ Fletcher said. ‘And you gave them to Marie Clouzot and Brandon Arkoff.’
A thin, knowing smile and then Borgia added, ‘You did provide me with one piece of inspiration, Malcolm.’
‘Do tell.’
‘You taught me the importance of taking justice into one’s own hands. It’s the only way to mete out a punishment that properly fits the crime.’
‘One difference.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I didn’t dissect innocent children and sell their organs.’
‘I have nothing to do with that. My job was to find out their new identities and make sure they were properly punished.’
‘You mean tortured. I’m assuming your two companions are patients like yourself.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ Borgia said again.
