SEVEN
He was cold, although he sensed that someone had dressed him. Occasionally he would feel himself floating in a weightless, pink and green universe in which time had no meaning. Then there would be blank periods, hard black space, punctuated by vivid nightmares. Once he almost regained consciousness, and he dimly perceived plastic tubes sticking out of the veins in both arms.
Drugs.
It occurred to him in these periods of relative lucidity that they would be using a heavy concentration of scopolamine along with the Pentothal to enhance the nightmares. However, Chant knew all about drug therapy, and was confident that he was successfully resisting the questioning that took place while he floated in the pink and green sky. Since his captors would be well aware that they were unlikely to get what they wanted out of him with drugs, it occurred to Chant that he was being tentatively probed, softened up.
Of course, he was being transported out of Holland—illegally, through secret channels. The capture of the infamous international outlaw, John Sinclair, would have generated publicity around the world. Questions were certainly being asked, and although the CIA could do many things, they couldn’t silence the Dutch police, Interpol, Bo Wahlstrom. Even as he was being slipped out of Amsterdam, Chant knew that there would be a flurry of increasingly loud questions about the whereabouts of the man called so many different things by so many different people—traitor and hero, vigilante and avenging angel of justice, mercenary and idealist, thief and philanthropist, terrorist and bringer of mercy, torturer and saint.
Many people would want to know where he was, but there would be no answers. The Americans who had him would resist all the pressures, deny they knew anything about him. And he would have disappeared, apparently be gone from the face of the earth.…
There was a sensation of flight—of many flights. Each time when he would drift toward consciousness he would feel the sharp sting of a needle slipping into his veins. More Pentothal and scopolamine, questions and his answers. Resist. Talk nonsense. He was conscious of time passing, but without any frame of reference he could not tell minutes from hours, days from weeks. There were only the drugs and the questions.
He did not tell them anything.
When he finally regained consciousness fully for the first time since being gassed in the bare cell in Amsterdam, he found himself in a straitjacket—the ties on the arms looped around and secured behind the straight-backed chair he was sitting in. His bare feet were tied to the chair legs. The chair had been placed in the center of a room with no windows. The table before him was bare except for a hand-cranked electrical generator. Cables from the generator’s terminals snaked over the edge of the table and along the floor; the ends were clipped to Chant’s left earlobe and his right ankle.
Sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the table was a portly man in a sweat-stained safari jacket worn over a grimy white shirt open at the collar. On his left cheek was a thin, purple birthmark that extended over his cheekbone to beneath one puffy lid. His eyes were mud-brown, cold, intelligent but cruel. They were the eyes of a hate-filled fanatic. Still. Thomas Maheu had changed little in twenty years, Chant thought. His hair had been dyed a chestnut color, but the too-bright eyes were still his main feature.
“Hello, Maheu,” Chant said easily to the man who had once been responsible for overseeing all CIA covert operations in the entire region of Southeast Asia. “It’s been a long time. How’re tricks?”
“I finally got you, you son of a bitch traitor,” the big man said in a hoarse, gravelly voice. “I always knew I would, sooner or later.”
Chant yawned loudly. Maheu flushed, and his hand suddenly darted out and cranked the generator. Electricity flashed through Chant’s body, seizing his muscles and bringing him up stiffly in the chair; a steel fist squeezed his heart, while fingers of pain pulled his testicles.
Then it was over. Maheu took his hand off the crank; the current stopped, and Chant slumped in the chair.
That was just a taste of what he was going to have to endure if he was to accomplish the task he had come here for, Chant thought. His agony was just beginning. Yet he had prepared his mind well, and he was ready. “You really light up my life, asshole,” Chant said in the same easy tone. “I always knew you were an amateur in a job that was way too big for you. I’m really surprised they still let you hang around.”
“I’ll kill you, Sinclair.”
“So kill me, and then you’ll really put your ass in a sling. If you and the other big boys wanted me dead, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, would I?”
Maheu’s eyes clouded with frustration and rage. His fingers reached out and touched the wooden crank on the generator, but he did not turn it. “Where are they, Sinclair?”
Chant smiled. “Now, what on earth could you be talking about?”
“The Cooked Goose documents. You have files, affidavits from men you’ve talked to. I want to know where they are.”
“It could be that the quickest way to find out where—and what—they are is to kill me. I don’t know how much time has passed; maybe the files I have are on the way to newspapers right now.”
“Don’t try to bluff me, Sinclair. Nobody knows where you are now, and they’re sure as hell unlikely to know when you die.”
“My people know I was captured, you fat idiot. By now then know I’m missing, and they’ll know you have me. Maybe they’re waiting to hear from me, or maybe they’ll automatically release the documents if I don’t show up in a certain period of time.”
“Which is it, you prick?”
“That’s a good question, Maheu. Maybe you should just let me go.”
“Did you say anything to Wahlstrom or the Dutch police?”
Chant laughed. “If I had, the whole world would know by now about Operation Cooked Goose, the plan that would have made the Bay of Pigs look like the ultimate exercise in sanity. No, Maheu. Keeping my secrets, having something to hold over your head and the others’, is what’s going to keep me alive.”
“That’s what you think, traitor. Everybody says you can’t be broken, that you’ll die before you talk.” Maheu’s voice was a sibilant, hoarse whisper of hate. “That’s bullshit. I’ll break you myself, and it’s going to give me more pleasure than you can imagine. Because of you, one man, the United States lost that war.”
“Jesus Christ, you really believe that?”
“I still believe it! I believed it then, and I believe it now!”
“That’s because you’ve got shit for brains. You always did.”
“Operation Cooked Goose would have worked!”
“If you’re so certain about that, why be so concerned—even now, two decades later—that the American people are going to find out about the great plan you and a few others had cooked up, if you’ll pardon the pun?”
“You know the answer to that, Sinclair. It could never be known, but it would have worked!”
“It would have torn the country right apart, idiot—possibly even have caused another civil war. You couldn’t have kept something like that secret. Somebody would have been caught at it, or it would have leaked. The only good thing that would have come out of it would be the fact that you and those other creeps in the CIA and the Pentagon wouldn’t still be in power. You were always a raving paranoiac, Maheu. You had to have been the principal architect of that quarter-assed plan, and you managed to dig up a few other raving paranoiacs in high positions of power to let you off the leash. You’re the traitor, asshole, not me. In time, now that I’ve finally been forced into retirement, the truth is going to come out. I think you and I, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the world press are all going to have some interesting times ahead. You’re finally going to get all the credit you deserve.”
“Damn it, Sinclair, that would cripple the United States, and you know it! If that information ever comes out, we’ll tear ourselves apart!”
“Hey, I just want to make sure you get the credit you deserve.”
“Nothing
about Cooked Goose is ever going to come out, Sinclair! You don’t have any ‘people’ waiting on you; you play everything too close to the vest. You’re a solo act—always have been. Anything you’ve got is sitting in a safe deposit box somewhere in the world, and you’re going to tell me where.”
“You could be right. Then again, you could be wrong. If you are, and you make a mistake, that information is going to come out, and one of us is going to join our country’s Benedict Arnold shit list. Want to take bets who it will be?”
“Where are the documents, Sinclair?! What arrangements have you made?!”
“Why not try asking ‘pretty please’?”
“I’ll fry your fucking brains!” Maheu shouted, reaching for the crank on the generator, turning it slightly.
“Be my guest,” Chant said through clenched teeth after the charge had ripped through his body. “Fry my brains, and you fry your ass. What are you now? You were a regional controller. You must have had quite a career setback after I took off, but you’ve obviously bounced back off the floor. What do you do now, Maheu? Director of Operations? Whatever you are and have, kiss it all goodbye if the truth about Operation Cooked Goose ever comes out. If this country survives it, your great-great-grandchildren will still be talking about it. You think they’ll be proud of you, asshole?”
“You’ll destroy the Company for sure!”
“If I wanted to destroy anything in the United States, I’d have done it long before now. You’re the people who are pushing this, not me. It’s your collective ass you’re trying to save, not the Company’s, and not the country’s. But all will suffer. When those documents are finally released, and I think you know they will be, you and your buddies are going to be hanged by the balls. You’re going to make the history books for sure, Maheu.”
The words got the reaction Chant had been looking for; Maheu gripped the crank on the generator and began to turn it. An initial flash of pain became a white hot buzzsaw that ripped through his body. Maheu turned the crank even faster, and Chant knew that there was a very good chance that the other man, in his rage, would now kill him, regardless of the consequences. But he had wanted, needed, Maheu to begin cranking the electricity through him, for he needed the involuntary seizure of his muscles and spasmodic jerking of his body to cover what he was doing.
He used the ancient technique of po-chaki to seal a part of his consciousness away from the terrible pain; it was a mental sanctuary where he could, in effect, hide a small part of himself from agony for short periods of time, an eye in a hurricane of torment where he could marshal his kai, think, plan, and act. With po-chaki, a master could treat pain as no more than a temporarily distracting nervous sensation, almost a sister to pleasure, that was irrelevant to kai—power and purpose, the focusing of will. Actual physical damage was, of course, the real danger, and a very real possibility, but Chant could not do anything about that, and he dismissed it from his thoughts.
The electricity kept coming, coursing through him, grinding his bones, wrenching his muscles, slamming him up and down in the chair. He could feel his heart palpitating, at the same time as he felt his joints popping, his stomach and bowels churning.
Still, Giant maintained his concentration in the pocket created by po-chaki. In the brief milliseconds between pulses of electricity he performed satpi, first dislocating both shoulders, then inching to his right, bringing one arm up over the back of the chair even as the electricity burned in him.
He lost po-chaki almost at the exact moment Maheu stopped cranking the generator, and Chant moaned and slumped forward, even as he brought his shoulder joints back into their sockets.
He had done what he had to do.
“Any man can be broken,” Maheu said through clenched teeth. His jowled face glistened with sweat, and his safari jacket had turned a dark, stained brown. “You’ve caused me a lot of misery, and now I’ve returned the favor. I’m going to keep cranking this thing until you get smart. All you have to do to make me stop is to tell me what I want to know. I want to know exactly what you have on Cooked Goose, who you’ve talked to about it, where you’ve stored any records, and what arrangements—if any—you’ve made for having them released if you end up dead or missing.”
Chant spat out the taste of vomit, slowly raised his head. Visible behind the sweating Maheu, the shocked face of a young man stared at him through an open porthole in the door. “All right,” Chant said wearily, “let’s talk.”
“Good,” Maheu grunted with obvious satisfaction as he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his protruding belly. “Let’s hear what the legendary, indestructible John Sinclair has to say to his old boss.”
“Well, old boss, do you remember what I did to that Ranger bodyguard of yours who came after me with a knife?”
Maheu frowned, unfolded his hands, and quickly leaned forward in his chair, causing the wood to groan. “You want more electricity, Sinclair?”
“I could have killed you then but, as you know, I needed you to deliver my message back to Langley. That was a long time ago. Now I don’t need you as a messenger, so I’m going to do to you what I did to that Ranger.”
Maheu’s eyes went wide, the whites showing all around the pupils. He started to reach for the crank, and Chant tensed—but waited. Then Maheu abruptly jumped up, knocking over his chair, and stalked around the table. “You fucker! You want to play games with me?! I’ve been nice to you so far, but now I’m going to put those electrodes on the tip of your tongue and your prick. Five minutes from now, you won’t be able to talk fast enough!”
Maheu slapped Chant hard, then reached for the electrode on his earlobe. He saw Chant make a slight shrugging and rocking motion, then gasped in astonishment as Chant brought his arms up over his head, freeing them. An instant later the laces on the arm restraints had been removed, the chair legs had been snapped with a flexing of Chant’s knees, and the man with the iron-colored eyes and hair was standing before him. A hand shot out of the sleeve of the straitjacket, gripping Maheu’s neck.
The nails of the middle and third fingers on both of Chant’s hands were kept stone-hard by the regular application of special herbs, and always sharpened to a razor edge. Now these two nails on his right hand sliced easily into the flesh of Maheu’s neck, next to the jugular. Chant thrust, twisted and pulled, tearing out the other man’s throat. Blood spurted from the wound, spraying over Chant’s face, then over the ceiling as Maheu toppled backward. Chant set the bloody remains of Maheu’s throat on the table, then quickly shrugged out of the straitjacket.
The young guard who had been standing outside the door recovered from his initial shock and shouted. Then he flung open the door to the room and, closely followed by two other burly men in uniform, burst into the room and circled Chant, who found two submachine guns and a pistol equipped to fire tranquilizer darts aimed at his chest. Chant darted easily to one side, and a tranquilizer dart slammed into the wall behind him. Chant spun in the same motion, kicked one of the submachine-gun-carrying guards into the other. An instant later he had snatched their guns away. He walked up to the young man, who was standing watching Chant with his mouth open, and twisted the tranquilizer gun out of his grip.
Two more guards rushed into the room. Chant turned to them, smiled, then tossed both submachine guns to one side.
“Here,” he said, picking up Maheu’s bloody throat tissue and thrusting it into the startled young man’s open palm. “Send me somebody else. This guy and I never got along well.”
EIGHT
“I’m not afraid of you, Chant.”
Chant casually crossed his legs over the edge of the cot, leaned back against the cold, brick wall of the cell, and folded his hands in his lap. “There’s no reason you should be, Alan,” Chant said easily to Lieutenant General Alan B. Steen, who was seated, feet flat on the floor and back stiff, on the cot across from him. There were no other prisoners in the huge Army stockade cellblock. Steen had sent Chant’s guards away when he had entered
the cell, and the door had been locked behind him. “I have no quarrel with you. You were always my friend. We fought some good battles together.”
“This isn’t a good battle you’re fighting now, Chant.”
“You could be right. Then again, you may not be in a good position to judge.”
The black man with the large, sensitive black eyes smiled wanly. “And you could be right. Anyone who presumes to sit in judgment on Chant Sinclair is a fool. I would like to still consider you my friend.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“You want coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“Sorry about what Maheu did to you. We didn’t have anything to do with that, and we couldn’t stop it.”
“I know,” Chant said casually to the man who had fought with him in Vietnam, and who, also doubling as a CIA operative, had trekked by his side through the forbidden jungles of Laos and Cambodia.
“We still can’t,” Steen said pointedly. “The infighting over who’d have jurisdiction if you were ever caught was settled ten years ago. Your ass belongs to the Company.”
“I’m not worried about it.”
Alan Steen smiled thinly. “How’d you do that to Maheu?” he asked, not bothering to try to hide his approval. “You were always just about supernatural when it came to the martial arts, but I’ve never heard of anybody being able to tear out another man’s throat with his bare hands.”
“It’s just a trick.”
“Who taught you those things, Chant?”
“Actually, a number of people.”
“You won’t tell me the names of any of them, will you?”
Silent Killer Page 5
