Wells’s stomach tightened. Shafer had been right. Cao Se was a treacherous bastard. Or maybe the mole had given Wells up somehow. Either way the Chinese had known he was coming. Now he would just have to take his punishment, and stick to his story.
James Wilson. Thirty-seven. His first trip to China. Prunetime.com. Here to recruit engineers. A three-bedroom split level. Palo Alto. A wife. Jennifer, a doctor. Two kids, in grade school. Amanda and Jim Jr. Button-down blue shirts and pressed khakis. Marathons in his spare time. A comp sci degree from the University of Illinois. The biggest mistake of his life: passing on a job offer from Google in 2001. Until now, anyway. He didn’t know what he’d done, but this was all a misunderstanding. They had to let him go.
Would they believe him? No chance, Wells thought. But maybe he could make them doubt themselves, slow them down. At least notify the embassy, get the diplomats involved.
Wells knew he didn’t deserve what was about to happen. And yet he wondered if he did. Primordial justice for the killing he’d done over the years. Or maybe for something more: For the way his country had walked away from the Geneva Conventions. For Abu Ghraib and the ghost prisoners whose names the CIA had never given to the Red Cross. For water-boarding and stun guns and the torture that the lawyers had decided wasn’t torture at all. For the madness that had descended on Iraq since the invasion, the uncounted men and women and children who’d died because the fools in the White House told themselves the mission was accomplished back in May 2003. And the soldiers who’d been blown to bits because armchair generals in the Pentagon thought armored Humvees were a luxury, not a necessity. For everything that had happened in the lost days since 9/11.
Judge not, lest ye be judged. A stupid, stupid way to think. He wasn’t America, and the agony he was about to face would be real, not metaphorical. And yet Wells clung to the idea that he was due for this, for whatever happened next.
He didn’t know how else to endure it.
The door at the far end of the cell slid open, and the two power forwards who’d grabbed him at Tiananmen walked in. They were dressed for a workout, wearing T-shirts and sweatpants. They wore latex gloves and cheap rubber galoshes and carried identical zippered canvas bags. Metal batons dangled from belts on their hips.
Three more men followed. Wells recognized them all. The first was the man who’d put the black hood over his head. He’d seen the other two only in photographs. They wore PLA uniforms with stars on their collars.
Cao Se. And Li Ping.
Li and Cao stood at the back of the room silently as the third man rummaged through a bag he held. Wells tried to understand why Cao was here. Did he want to see the fool he’d duped? Was his presence intended to signal Wells that he ought to confess, that the Chinese already knew everything and it would be pointless not to? But then why not just say that? Why play this brutal game? Or did Cao want to let Wells know that he wasn’t alone, that Cao was still on the American side and had come to save him?
Maybe, though the odds were long. Anyway, he couldn’t possibly find out unless Li and the others left him and Cao alone. Meanwhile, Wells had to keep playing the role of terrified American tourist, an act that shouldn’t be too difficult.
‘I don’t know who you guys think I am, but you’re making a mistake,’ Wells said.
No one responded. The third man pulled a black box, slightly bigger than an eyeglass case, from his bag. He stepped toward Wells and held the box open so Wells could see what was inside.
A small set of pliers, and three scalpels. The steel blades gleamed under the lights. Wells’s stomach clenched. Use the fear, he thought. Any civilian in your position would be terrified. ‘Please don’t do this.’
Again the man reached inside his bag. This time he pulled out a red-painted metal canister that looked like an oversized beer can with a nozzle attached to the top. He pushed a button on the side of the can. A blue flame spurted out with a tiny whoosh. A miniature acetylene torch, the kind welders used for close-in work. The man twisted the nozzle until the flame glowed a bright blue, three inches long. He clicked off the canister and put it and the scalpel case on the folding chair.
‘I’m telling you. This is a mistake.’
The man reached into the bag once more. This time he held up the flash drive that the boy had given Wells in Tiananmen. Li Ping stepped quickly across the cell and in a single fluid motion hit Wells under the ribs, in the solar plexus once, twice, three times – and then three times more.
Considering his age, Li hit hard, Wells thought. Wells had a boxer’s abs, flat and tough, and the punches themselves didn’t hurt all that much. But every one rolled him side to side in his shackles, sending shots of pain through his damaged shoulder. Li and the men around him watched him without a word. They were on another planet, in another universe, one where pain didn’t exist.
Li took the flash drive from the man who’d been holding it. ‘Who gave this?’ he said in broken English.
‘A boy. In Tiananmen. This is all a mistake. Please, sir, I don’t know who you are, but you have to help me.’
Li spoke in Chinese. ‘He says, you know very well who he is,’ the man who’d been holding the flash drive said to Wells in English. He spoke with a heavy Russian accent. ‘He is head of the People’s Liberation Army. He wants you to know, he doesn’t speak much English. So he’s going to leave you now. But he wanted to see you for himself. The American spy who was so foolish as to come to the Forbidden City on this day.’
Li said something more. ‘And he says it is nothing to him if you live or die. This is your last chance to tell the truth. If you do, maybe the Chinese people will show some mercy. If not –’ The interrogator shook his head.
‘Tell him, I promise, he’s making a mistake –’
The interrogator said a few words to Li. ‘Okay,’ Li said in English. ‘Your choice.’ He stepped away. At the door, he turned to Wells and made a throat-cutting motion. Then he walked out. Cao followed wordlessly.
As soon as the door closed, the power forward stepped up, but the interrogator waved him back and reached into the bag. Despite himself, despite everything he’d seen and done, Wells was afraid. He pulled himself back. Think. Stay calm. They want you to imagine your tortures, to hurt yourself before they hurt you.
The interrogator lifted a piece of paper from the bag.
‘What is your name?’
‘Jim Wilson. James Wilson –’
The man shook his head. ‘Your real name. Please.’ The interrogator held up the paper for Wells. ‘The reason you’re here. The letter your embassy received last week. The instructions are quite specific. You are to come to the Forbidden City today. As you did. To wait at the stone that looks like wood at noon. As you did. And finally, you are to wear a green shirt.’ The man pointed at the corner where Wells’s shirt lay.
‘Coincidence. I swear.’
‘Coincidences don’t exist in our world. Listen to me. Please. You will save yourself much torment. You must know we examined the Forbidden City very’ – with his Russian accent, the word sounded like ‘wery’ – ‘thoroughly today, Mr. Wilson. Twenty-two other Americans. None with green shirts.’ He held up two fingers. ‘Only two visited the stone. Gerry and Tim Metz. From New York.’ He held up a Polaroid of a smiling couple, both in their sixties. ‘Do they look like spies to you?’
‘I don’t know what spies look like.’
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘No, sir.’
‘My name is Feng Jianguo. I specialize in these . . . discussions. I wish we could talk like men, solve bit by bit this puzzle of who you are. But General Li told me I don’t have time.’
Feng walked to Wells, leaned in, locked his eyes onto Wells.
‘Do you understand? I don’t have time. And I must know three things. First, your name. Second, what you were expecting to receive. Third, most important, the name of the man who you meant to meet.’
‘I wish I could help.’ Again Wells wondered. Was it
possible they didn’t know he was here to meet Cao Se? Or were they setting up some larger trap, something he couldn’t see?
‘If you are honest. I cannot promise you’ll live. Only Li can do that. But I won’t hurt you unnecessarily.’ He paused. He seemed to sense that he was losing Wells. ‘This way, once we start . . . even after you beg us to stop. As you will. We won’t stop. Once we start, we must be sure we’ve broken you. Do you understand, Mr. Wilson?’
‘Your English is very good. You give this speech a lot?’ Wells said nothing more.
Feng’s face never changed. The silence stretched on. Wells focused on the heat in his shoulder. He had an insane impulse to twist in his shackles, amp up the agony for himself before these men did it for him. He restrained himself. Plenty of pain coming. No need to rush.
Feng shook his head, walked away, shuffled the papers back in the bag.
‘A quiet American,’ he said. ‘One of the few. And all the worse for you.’
Feng pulled a black towel from his bag and stepped onto a chair. He reached up, draped the towel over the closed-circuit camera, making sure the lens was covered.
The power forwards reached into their pockets and slipped on brass knuckles, the kind that bridged four fingers at once. They stepped forward and set themselves on either side of Wells. Feng sat down, pulled a Coke from his bag. He sipped quietly as he waited for the show to start.
‘Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant,’ Wells said under his breath. A bit of Latin said by the gladiators before they entered the ring: Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die salute you.
And the torture began.
The power forwards took turns. The one on the left began, punching quickly, hard jabs, right-left-right-left. When he tired, the other took over, swinging more slowly but more powerfully, long hooks that crashed into Wells’s stomach and ribs. They stayed off his face.
Wells had a tiny advantage at first from the adrenaline he’d mustered when Feng was talking. He kept his stomach tight as long as he could, sneaking in breaths when they weren’t hitting him. But then his body twisted in the shackles, and his shoulder popped out. He lost focus for just a second and a jab caught him unready and his abs loosened and the punches crashed through and then he couldn’t breathe –
Black spots filled the room and the demon-men kept punching and he couldn’t breathe God he had never hurt like this too bad he wasn’t going to tell them anything –
Then the severed head of the guerrilla he’d blown apart in Afghanistan showed up, rolling around like a soccer ball with a face, smirking and chattering nonsense –
And just as the darkness closed in to give his oxygen-starved brain relief from its delusions, they stopped hitting him. Cruelty in the guise of kindness. They stepped back and watched him flail, their flat square faces impassive, like they were watching a lab experiment.
Wells couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get his diaphragm steady, and then finally he remembered. The trick was to relax, let the voluntary muscles go soft and the diaphragm work on its own. He sucked in the room’s stale air and pushed suffocation away. But the agony in his shoulder intensified as he returned to full consciousness. Wells wondered how long they’d been hitting him. Five minutes? At most. Five minutes down, an eternity to go.
They reached side by side into their canvas bags, pulled out water bottles, took a couple of sips each. Bert and Ernie, Wells thought. Or maybe Ernie and Bert. Just as his breath evened out, Bert nodded at Ernie and they stepped toward him.
‘Round two,’ Wells said aloud. ‘The beatings will continue until morale improves.’
Round three followed, and round four. The beatings didn’t get harder to take, but they didn’t get easier either. The brass knuckles shredded his skin, exposing his twitching abdominal muscles. Blood dripped from his stomach, blackening the concrete beneath him.
By round five, Bert and Ernie had tired and were cheating. One of Bert’s punches slipped low, catching Wells full in the testicles. Wells screamed, an inhuman howl, and thrashed against the shackles. Bert and Ernie stepped back as a pure white light filled Wells’s mind –
Bismillah rahmani rahim al hamdulillah –
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us –
English and Arabic, the Quran and the Bible, mixing inside him –
And tears dripping from his eyes, joining the blood on the floor.
Still they didn’t stop.
After the fifth round they stepped back, wringing their hands, giving Wells a momentary, pointless flash of pleasure. He’d made them work a little, at least. They’d cracked two, maybe three, of his ribs somewhere along the way, he wasn’t sure when.
They stowed the brass knuckles in their canvas bag, dabbed at their foreheads with a little towel that Ernie had brought – an oddly dainty gesture – and took a long drink of water.
‘Snack break, gentlemen?’ Wells nearly delirious now. ‘Like Rodney King said, can’t we all just get along?’ They ignored him. He wasn’t even sure they could hear him, wasn’t sure he was speaking aloud. ‘Can I ask you boys something? Are you partners? Not like Starsky and Hutch, but partners. Okay, Starsky and Hutch is a bad example, but you see what I’m saying.’
As an answer, Bert and Ernie pulled out their batons.
The change of weapon seemed to suit them. They worked his legs for a while, mainly his thighs, bringing the steel batons down with gusto. Then Ernie slammed the baton on Wells’s damaged left shoulder, a quick chop. Wells couldn’t help himself. He moaned. Ernie said something in Chinese to Bert and started to work the shoulder hard. The pain doubled and redoubled and redoubled again, all the way to infinity.
Drink this and you’ll grow wings on your feet.
‘God,’ Wells mumbled. ‘Please.’ He sagged against the shackles. The worst part was that they probably knew already. Most likely Cao Se had set him up. He was enduring all this for nothing.
Then the door slid open and Cao walked in.
THIRTY-THREE
AS CAO CLOSED the door, Ernie took one last shot, bringing his baton down so hard that Wells’s shoulder popped out again and didn’t slide back in. A whole new level of hell. Don’t scream. The room whirled, faster and faster. The severed head of the guerrilla stared at him, not on the floor this time but directly in front of him. Wells felt his stomach clench and the room-service eggs he’d eaten that morning at the St. Regis spill out of his mouth and land in a stinking pile at his feet.
The vomit tasted sour and acrid in his throat, but it brought him back to reality. Feng moved behind him and unshackled his legs so he could stand, though his arms remained locked over his head. Ernie and Bert popped his shoulder back in. The pain eased. A little.
Feng turned to him. ‘You see now, Mr. Wilson?’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve been here three-quarters of an hour. Imagine weeks. Months.’
But Wells was no longer listening. He was looking at Cao, trying to understand if this was the final act in his betrayal. Was Cao working with Li, or against him?
Cao trotted forward, hobbling a bit on his artificial left leg. He looked impassively at Wells’s flayed stomach and bruised legs.
‘Name?’ he said in English, heavily accented but recognizable.
Wells closed his eyes. He could hardly stay upright, but if he sagged the pressure on his shoulder became unbearable.
A finger poked at his abs. ‘Name?’
‘Wilson. Jim Wilson.’ Wells coughed, twisted his head, spat a clot of phlegm, thick and streaked with blood, onto the cell’s concrete floor beside Cao Se’s shiny black boots.
‘My name Cao Se.’ Cao paused. ‘You understand?’
Wells felt a glimmer of hope. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’
‘What you tell them?’
‘That I’m here on business –’ The effort of speaking left Wells exhausted.
‘Nothing. You tell nothing.’
‘That’s right. Nothing.’ Cao and Wells speaking their own languag
e now, one that Feng the interrogator couldn’t understand no matter how closely he listened. So Wells wanted to believe. Feng said something to Cao, but Cao cut him off and turned back to Wells. A thick scar ran down the left side of his neck, an old jagged wound. Shrapnel, Wells thought.
‘You American spy. Arrested in Forbidden City.’
‘I’m not a spy.’
Cao twisted Wells’s head in his strong little hands. Wells met his stare.
‘ Who? Who you meet there?’
‘Nobody.’ Wells snapped his head out of Cao’s hands, looked at the men standing behind him. Time to jump. Time to find out which side Cao was on. ‘What do you want me to say? I came to meet Chairman Mao. Only he’s dead. I came to meet you. You. Cao Se. Happy?’
Cao pulled a pistol from his bag, a long black silencer already screwed onto the barrel. ‘You confess? You spy?’
‘Sure. I confess.’
Cao stepped forward and put the silencer barrel to Wells’s temple. Wells wasn’t even afraid, just angry at himself for miscalculating, letting Cao trap him a second time. They’d played him so perfectly. He’d thought –
But what he thought no longer mattered. He closed his eyes, saw his head exploding, brains splattering the floor. Exley came to him then, and Evan –
And Cao fired, three times, the silencer muffling the shots, three quick quiet pops, pfft pfft pfft, a surprised yelp, then two more shots. Wells heard it all and knew he was still alive. Again.
He opened his eyes. Three men lay on the floor, Bert and Ernie dead, shot pinpoint between the eyes, Feng still alive, a hole in his face and two in his chest. He’d gotten a hand up. He moaned, low and tired. But even as Cao raised the pistol to finish him, a soft death rattle fluttered from his mouth, the hopeless sound of a balloon deflating, and his chest stilled.
Cao dropped the gun into his bag. He knelt down, careful to keep his boots clear of the blood pooling on the floor, grabbed a set of keys from Feng’s jacket, unlocked Wells’s arms. Wells could hardly stand. He leaned against a wall, fighting for balance.
The Ghost Agent Page 31
