The Spy Across the Table

by Barry Lancet

  I shook my head. No words would come. Viewing the secret storehouse drained me. How many thousands had been dragged off to this underground house of horrors before me? My captors intended the visit to crush my spirit, if not my will. I wouldn’t fall prey to their ploy, but the effect of the Bone Room, with the cumulative impact of the torture and pain and unending circular conversations I’d endured, took its toll. I’d guessed wrong. My jailers’ persecution had not ceased. The attack simply came from a different angle.

  “You lucky man, Brodie Jim. Because your bone go in special room at end. You want see?”

  “No, thanks.” There was a thick, gravelly texture to my words.

  He shrugged. “No matter. Bone Room is your resting home.”

  “There will be calls for my release.”

  The White House would apply pressure, as well as the State Department and the American embassy in Beijing. And Brodie Security would bring heat through Japanese channels.

  “Already many call about you but you no checkout.”

  “Then your bosses haven’t gotten the big call yet.”

  “We got many big call. We got call from your Slater Joe, American president.”

  “Good, so we’re done here.”

  “Yes, Brodie Jim. You sign. All done. All go easy.”

  “You just said—”

  “Is true, you friend with your America president?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you spy.”

  “No.”

  “Why you know Slater Joe?”

  “I just do. It doesn’t matter. But if the White House contacted your government, then you will be releasing me soon. That’s why you cleaned me up. That’s why you stopped the torture. Getting me to sign a confession is a last-minute trick.”

  Over his ever-present grin, the tall one’s eyes began to dance. He translated my latest comments and the two men fell into another fit of mutual laughter.

  “Your spirit is high, Brodie Jim. Very good for spy but no help you.”

  “I’m not a spy.”

  “All was heard from your American president Slater Joe and all rejected by our president.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “It is truth giving.”

  “Your bluff has no meat.”

  The two men huddled, whispered between themselves, then separated. “We no understand ‘no meat.’ Sign confession and all go easy. You can eat and drink and die. We feed you beef too. I give pain pill. Bonus for you because I like you, Brodie Jim. Your spirit is high. With pain pill you no feel death visit. But you must no tell about pill. They secret.”

  “You can’t hold me. Anna Tanaka has left the country. I freed a kidnapped woman your people wanted to abduct again. The story is out there now.”

  “Girl no matter no more.”

  “This is revenge for what you couldn’t get.”

  The tall one cocked his head and huddled again with his partner. After a brief exchange he said, “Revenge not for missing girl. Revenge for two honorable Chinese family.”

  “You’re making no sense.”

  “You pretend no guilty again. No matter. You die. You eat and drink and die, or just die. No matter.”

  “Why? I haven’t done anything.”

  “Two honorable Chinese people dead in Changbai.”

  I froze. He was talking about the pair of traffickers whose throats Pak had slit with such precision. Zhou had mentioned them but I’d assumed his comments were meant as leverage to get me to reveal Anna’s location.

  “You can’t tie me to them.”

  “You crazy man, Brodie Jim. Your group kill them. Your Slater Joe no can help murder of two honorable Chinese people. You go Bone Room. No checkout.”

  “You’re lying. You allowed me to shower. You bandaged me up. What’s really going on?”

  He tapped the glass again. “No lying. You spy, you guilty, we shoot. You go in special Bone Room for foreigner. Party decide yesterday. We send fake bone for America.”

  “No trial?”

  “Yes, trial. But you spy, you guilty, you go bye-bye. We make you clean for killing photography. We send photo and fake bone to embassy. You cannot look messy when we make photo. You see? You dead but you clean dead. You lucky.”

  CHAPTER 84

  THE next morning a pair of guards I’d never seen led me back to the old interrogation room. For a brief moment I held out hope for a shift change, but the grinning man strolled in on the heels of the guards, shaking his head. “You no lucky like I thought, Brodie Jim.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Beijing want your signing. You sign now?”

  “No.”

  “You sign, we shoot, all over. No more pain. Better for you, you sign.”

  “No.”

  His morose partner produced the blade he’d used to carve a hole in my leg and at knifepoint backed me up until my heels hit the cement wall. He gestured for me to face the wall, and when I did, he leapt forward and with a snicker planted the point of his blade against the base of my neck while his taller partner fit my wrists into shackles hanging overhead.

  “See? No lucky.” His breath was laced with ginger and fennel.

  I said, “I thought you needed me clean.”

  “You sign now?”

  “No.”

  Morose walked over to the shelves and pulled a long stick off the top shelf, returned, and shoved the end of the implement under my nose. I craned my neck for a better look. It was a six-foot-long, three-inch-thick wooden rod encased in a quarter inch of black rubber.

  “You know?” the tall one said.

  “No.”

  “Hurting much but no mark leaving. Clean hurting, so clean picture. You sign now? I give pain pill.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Beijing want sign. You unlucky, Brodie Jim.”

  They started from the bottom and worked their way up. Calves, thighs, buttocks, back, shoulders. No bones, no joints. Just tissue and muscle and sinew, over and over, as if pounding out the toughness in bad beef.

  I lost consciousness in the middle of round three, when the moody one, mumbling something uncomplimentary in Chinese, took out his frustration with a home-run swing to my upper thighs.

  This time, I thought as the blackness swooped in, I might not make it back.

  * * *

  Hardened heels stormed down the concrete corridor outside my door. A loud, insistent voice broke through my death sleep. Keys jangled in the hall. The next instant the barrier was flung open.

  Five men swept into the room, among them a new figure in a navy suit, red tie, and highly polished black patent leather shoes with the rocklike heels I’d heard. Gathered around him were my two tormentors and a pair of guards. The grinning one snapped at the suited man in the red tie, who brushed the comment away with a disdainful wave. My tormentors stomped out. The man in the suit issued a sharp order and the two guards bowed and scurried away.

  I was alone with the stranger.

  He nudged me with the tip of a shiny black leather shoe. “Stand up, prisoner. I am here to escort you to the execution grounds.”

  When I didn’t move, he poked me harder. “You are able to stand, are you not?”

  “For the right reasons.”

  “I could have you beaten some more. How would that do?”

  “If I am to be shot, what do I care?”

  “There is ample time between now and tomorrow morning to inflict so much more pain, you will march gratefully to your own death. Do not tempt me.”

  His English was impeccable, with a European accent I couldn’t place.

  “The same answer applies. Besides, I haven’t signed anything.”

  “I have orders. No more waiting. Your signature will be forged.”

  “Hard to do.”

  “A sample has been found.”

  “The president’s people will know.”

  “The Western signature is a flighty, inconsistent thing.”

  This was an edu
cated man. His English was grammatical and nuanced and had flair. I’d narrowed the accent to Swedish or Swiss.

  “American experts will come down on the negative side.”

  He shrugged. “Then the games begin. Our experts will deny and qualify. There will be talk of stress and other contributing factors. But since the document will not be produced until long after you have been executed, the verbal tug-of-war will be pointless. Your politicians will soon lose interest. They will move on. They always do.”

  Which, unfortunately, was true, especially when it came to overseas negotiations.

  “I won’t go easily.”

  “Do as you wish. Nothing would give my superiors and myself more pleasure than to levy additional punishment on an enemy of the State.” The man reached into his jacket and pulled out a Chinese-made Norinco pistol. “Or I may just shoot you myself, here and now. Then we will film the execution of another prisoner who resembles you from a distance. The film will be grainy, the camera unsteady.”

  “You’ve thought of everything.”

  “More than you will ever know. So listen to me carefully and do exactly as I say and we will both survive this process with far fewer irritants. When they bring you a fresh prison outfit, you will change and allow yourself to be handcuffed. And then we shall leave for the execution grounds.”

  “And if I should refuse to budge?”

  The man stiffened. Towering over my bent and battered form, he fell seriously silent. Eventually he said, “I was warned you might be feisty.”

  “Good for you.”

  He cocked an ear toward the exterior passage. He heard no approaching footfalls. Maybe he would shoot me now and claim assault or a misfire.

  Instead he amazed me by doing the unexpected.

  Careful to stay beyond striking distance, he crouched down and said in a low voice, “I was given a message for you. A certain mutual acquaintance requests that you join me without delay or he may never have the pleasure of sitting down at Gary Danko with you for a full-course meal.”

  CHAPTER 85

  THE guards returned with fresh prison garb.

  I dressed, succumbing to a fit of dizziness with the effort and falling back against the cell wall for support. The three men looked on without comment. One of the guards told me to stop fooling around.

  I was handcuffed and directed to a conference room with eight chairs around an oblong table and a framed photograph of the president of China. The man in the suit snapped out another order. The guards produced a second pair of manacles and secured my ankles to the legs of the chair. Tea for one was brought and I watched my self-proclaimed patron drink it.

  As soon as the guards left, the man checked his watch. “Now we wait.”

  “For?”

  I still had no absolute proof the new player seated across from me was on my side. A reference to a San Francisco restaurant did not suffice as sufficient credentials.

  He looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. “The deputy warden here belongs to Chen, the man I am impersonating.”

  “You’re impersonating someone?”

  His brow darkened. “The guards may return any second, so listen, don’t talk. My disguise has one flaw. The look is perfect but I could not maintain a conversation with the deputy warden for long, so we must not meet face-to-face. Fortunately, he is systematic and predictable, and we’ve been able to keep my visit a secret, though he could still hear of it.” Zhou’s emissary glanced at his timepiece again. “Duty comes first. He finishes his rounds in eight minutes and will receive a call in ten minutes. The call should keep him occupied until we have left and before he can come looking for me.”

  “Will he be arrested?”

  “If this plays out successfully, most certainly.”

  “He will protest.”

  Zhou’s supposed surrogate smiled. “The more the better. Everyone is guilty in China once they are accused, especially those who protest the loudest.”

  “The innocent ones.”

  “You know our system well.”

  “Your English is excellent.”

  “I studied in Switzerland.”

  “You studied well.”

  “I accomplished many things there,” he said, giving me a cryptic look. Then he changed course: “Can you act?”

  “Passably.”

  “I need you to try to escape. Two times would be preferable. Once in the hall near the gate, and a second time when we return to the surface. Never mind about the feasibility. You should resist in a convincing manner. Can you do that for me?”

  “That kind of acting comes naturally.”

  His look turned grave. “Now the hard part. I need you to resist in such a way as you are . . . punished severely.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Our lives may depend on your performance. The better your acting the less our departure will be questioned or examined later. I wish my story to hold until we are well out of range.”

  After the beating with the rubberized rod, I wasn’t sure how much more pain I could stand. No bones had been broken or fractured, but the muscles and tendons were approaching dysfunctional.

  “Is that really necessary? You look the part. You sound convincing.”

  “Attempted escapes will allay the doubts of the skeptical. Your effort will be an additional layer of obfuscation to this charade.”

  “Was I really to be executed tomorrow?”

  “You still are.”

  * * *

  We made our way up to the upper level of the prison.

  The heady mildew scent lessened noticeably. Ahead stood the white iron grille I’d seen on the first day and the long tunnel leading to the basement of the farmhouse. My nostrils flared in anticipation of breathing untainted air.

  “Chen” took the lead position. His crisp steps echoed down the corridor. The senior-most guard followed a pace behind, then me, with two young guards bringing up the rear. There were too many of them. The idea of a staged escape attempt was a bad one. My hands were still handcuffed behind my back. Favoring the leg with the knife wound, my limp was prominent.

  Chen paused and said something to the guard detail, then he turned to me. “Deport yourself with dignity, Mr. Brodie, and your last hours shall be handled with equal decorum.”

  I flashed him a look of unbridled disdain.

  At the gate, Chen accompanied the senior guard into the office, where papers and a red ink pad were produced. Chen pulled a cloth pouch from his pocket, extracted a marble chop, inked it, and stamped the document. I inched forward. Chen lingered to talk with the gateman while he wiped the residual ink from the end of his chop with a tissue. The senior guard unlocked the iron barrier in preparation for our departure. I stepped forward, rammed an elbow into his ribs, and took off.

  I envisioned racing to the end of the hall and possibly as far as the basement steps, but my injured leg only made it five paces before it began to liquefy. Shouts rose up behind me. Footsteps pounded the concrete in my wake. Five seconds later one of the pursuers brought me down with a flying tackle. In the distance, the brisk footfalls of Chen’s patent leathers clacked on the cement.

  The next instant he loomed over me, his face a ball of fury. He aimed his gun at my head. Had I been played? Had I just given him a reason to put a bullet in my skull?

  He was cursing in Chinese. A long, fluid string. Some of which I understood. Then he began flinging orders. The guards jumped up and saluted.

  They pulled me to my feet. Chen snapped out another order and the closest guard plowed a fist into my stomach. I doubled over and hit the floor again. They began kicking me as the police in Changbai had done. Only then I hadn’t previously sustained a systematic pummeling with a rubber-coated bat. When I curled up in a protective ball this time, the blows struck the sensitive areas along my back and legs. A wave of unbearable pain subsumed me. I howled. No acting required.

  I waited for my newfound benefactor to step in but he never did.

 
; * * *

  I regained consciousness as they were lugging me across the farmyard. For the trek to the car, my restraints had been removed. They dragged me forward like a sack of rice, a guard in farmer’s garb at each arm, the tops of my bare feet scraping the dirt.

  They flung me into the back of another tangerine-orange Geely GC5 as battered and dusty as the one I’d arrived in. The eye in the sky would see it as the same car. Very clever. Same model, same plate number, different machine. Matching vehicles gave the Chinese authorities the ability to send prisoners from locations around the country with ease. As long as the traffic to and from the Farmhouse was regulated to avoid suspicion.

  My escort slipped in beside me. He slapped shackles around my ankles and handcuffs on my wrists, then we hit the road. Once more the car shook and rattled and wove its way between rocks and potholes. Zhou’s representative began speaking in a soft voice that didn’t carry above the racket. “You were convincing.”

  “I missed the second act.”

  “You did such a good job, an encore performance was not required.”

  “If it gives us some extra time, it will be worth it. Why is our mutual acquaintance doing this?”

  “He has his reasons and will explain when he is ready.”

  “When might that be?”

  “The timing is delicate.” He nodded toward the police radio in the console. “As you can see, we can still be called back at any moment.”

  “And if we are?”

  “Assuming we are not shot where we sit, I will be detained and you will be returned to the prison and executed tomorrow morning, on schedule.”

  CHAPTER 86

  WE returned down the same dusty dirt road, no doubt rolling over many of the same potholes.

  The jostling sent stabbing pains to the tender parts of my body, the number of which could not be counted on the fingers of two hands. I closed my eyes and bore the suffering in silence as the car bucked and bobbed. I drew substantial comfort from the knowledge that every bump in the road took us farther from the Farmhouse.

  The car radio crackled and my eyes flew open. I glanced sideways at Chen. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.