by Aaron Elkins
I stared at the reflection for a long time, settling things in my mind. I wasn’t going to let this happen to me. This was it; this would be my low point, right here, on my knees in front of the toilet bowl. Dinner would be put off. I would wash myself and at least some of my clothing right now, I would start using one of the cartons as a lap table and stop eating off the toilet lid. I would begin ordering my life and regaining control of it.
As a start, against their explicit orders, I moved something in the tent. I shoved the toilet two feet farther from the cot, where the chemical smell would bother me less. My first small show of defiance.
Then I got to my feet and went hunting for the Camay.
LATER that night, I was still feeling my oats. This time I didn’t try to keep myself awake to avoid a panic attack. If it came, it came. Bring it on.
Chapter 26
It came. Somewhere in the middle of the night I found myself sitting straight up clawing breathlessly at the nonexistent metal collar around my neck. But for once in my life I was armed and ready. Before I’d gone to sleep, I’d repeated Zeta’s counsel several times to make it stick in my mind.
“You don’t fight it, you don’t try to avoid it or moderate it with pills, or relaxation techniques, or slow breathing, or anything else. You face it down, once and for all. In fact, you purposely make it as bad as you can for as long as you can, so you can prove to yourself that you can do it.”
Well, I can’t claim that I had the guts to try that last part—I mean, it’s plenty bad enough without me doing anything to make it worse, but I did honestly do my best not to just cover my head with my arms, draw up my knees, and mewl pitifully while it took me over, but instead to look it right in the eye: the hyperventilation, the racing heart, the awful, free-floating, unfocused terror, the certainty that I had gone over the edge and fallen into madness for good this time, and all the rest of it. I identified them, and I named them, and I told them to their faces they weren’t even real. I almost believed it myself.
And damn if it didn’t help. I can’t claim I came out of it the winner. But I felt a lot like that kid who has finally found the guts to stand up to the schoolyard bully and tell him to take his best shot: bruised and bloody and thinking maybe that it hadn’t been such a hot idea, but—what do you know?—still standing.
Progress.
With the garbage pail to use as a basin, washing up the previous evening had been cumbersome but not that difficult. To do it thoroughly required a lot of time and a few interesting contortions, but that was all to the good; regular, time-consuming, mildly demanding chores would help break the day into manageable segments.
The process had worn me out, though, so I waited till morning to work on my clothes and found that it proved even more awkward. Drying them was the problem. The only things I could get myself completely free of, and therefore drape over something while they dried, were my socks. Shirt, pants, and underwear could be gotten off only as far as the chains that connected me to the cot. So I was standing there, barefoot and bare-chested, with my wet socks hanging from the bed frame, futilely trying to spread out my washed and wrung-out shirt and pants somehow, when the entry flap was pulled open.
I’d kept my shorts on because I didn’t want to be caught naked if they chose to come in; they had enough of an upper hand as it was. Still, being in my three-day-old underwear didn’t help much, especially with a wet shirt dangling from one wrist and my wet pants dragging on the floor, so when I turned toward the entrance I felt at a distinct disadvantage. The newcomer was the third member of the group, the man I’d come to think of as the mastermind, the man that might, or might not, be the notorious Paris. Once again, aside from the ski mask, he was dressed in ordinary street clothes, a dark blue sweater over a light blue shirt, and what appeared to be the same corduroy pants he’d had on the other day. I’d yet to see the others in anything but head-to-toe black.
“Laundry day, I see.”
“Yes. Am I going to be able to get rid of this water somewhere?”
“Of course. I’ll have it taken care of for you.” Behind the politeness I sensed something fierce, a suppressed intensity. Anger? Anticipation? Of what?
“Thank you,” I said. “I could also use some more paper towels.”
“I’ll see what I can do. It’s nice to see you again.”
“Also some—See me again?”
“Well, it was a long time ago. It’ll come to you.” Seen through the mask’s mouth opening, his smile was all teeth: a grimace. “Sit down, will you?”
“I’d rather stand.” Almost naked and standing was better than almost naked and sitting, especially since I was a couple of inches taller than he was.
“I’d rather you sat.”
I hesitated. I was playing a delicate game here. I was stronger now. I’d no longer bow to every command; I would sometimes resist. But it was tricky. Annoying them was a dangerous proposition, and there was no point in doing it unless the benefits outweighed the risks. The idea wasn’t to make me obstinate in their eyes, but only to make me an independent being with demands of my own to be considered. There would be times and issues that would call for an aggressive approach on my part, but they had to be carefully chosen.
Whether or not I sat down on the cot, I decided, wasn’t one of them. I sat.
He looked down at me, his wrists loosely crossed in front of his waist, trying to seem very relaxed, but I wasn’t buying it. He was wound up tight, all right. Something was on his mind.
“So how’re you being treated? All right?”
“Pretty much. I haven’t been beaten up for two whole days now.”
“You haven’t tried to escape for two whole days now.”
A reasonable point, I thought. “Are you in charge here?”
“Why?”
“I’d like to know about my wife. Baldursson too.”
“Baldursson isn’t your concern. And your wife is perfectly fine. We released her, exactly as I promised.”
“How do I know that?” Lori’s security was one of those issues I damn well intended to be aggressive on.
He let a beat go by. “Because, Bryan, I keep my word when I give it.”
I looked at him curiously, although of course the blank, ugly hood told me nothing. But that slight emphasis on the “I” put a curious personal cast on the statement. What was he saying, that I didn’t keep my word? It puzzled me, but I didn’t pursue it.
There were a few moments of uneasy silence, and then his shoulders rose and fell: a deep breath. “Your wife and your associates are naturally concerned about you, Bryan. They’ve asked for some proof that we have you and that you’re alive and well. It’s a reasonable request, and I’d like to reassure them. I’m sure you would too. There’s no need to worry them needlessly.”
“What you mean is, you need to prove I’m alive because you know they’re not going to pay for a dead hostage.” Unless I was way off base, he had just given me the opening I needed to find out for sure about Lori; the quid for his quo. I tried not to show my excitement.
From behind the hood came a thin, fake laugh. “Obviously, I’d better not forget who I’m talking to. Let’s not argue, then. You know all about these things, my friend. It’s done all the time: proof of life. It’s advantageous to all, so how about just getting it over with? I’ll ask you a few questions they’ve suggested. First: You keep a ceramic object on the desk in your den at home. What is it?
I said nothing. It was correct, all right. There was a cookie jar from Disney World with a cartoon of Pluto the dog on it, in which I kept Shep’s treats.
“You need to think about that? All right, here’s number two: Which side of the bed do you sleep on? And finally—which Mexican restaurant—”
“No.”
“No? What does that mean, no?”
“I’m not giving you anything until I know you’ve kept your part of the bargain. I want proof that my wife is free and that she’s all right.”
“We
ll, who do you think we got these questions from?”
“Other people, people I work with, might know—”
“Oh, come now. Which side of the bed you sleep on?”
“Look, even if they did come from my wife, that doesn’t prove she’s free, does it? Or that she’s alive now?”
He gave a phony sigh, as if gravely disillusioned.
“I’m hurt that you don’t trust me, Bryan.”
And why the hell would I trust you? “It’s not a question of trust,” I said. “I need confirmation, that’s all.”
“In other words, what you’re telling me is, you’re demanding proof of life?”
“Yes.”
His laugh, an incredulous one, seemed a little closer to genuine this time. “I’m sorry to spoil your fun, Bryan, but let me point out that that isn’t the way it works.” He used both hands to take in the tent, the chains. “You’re not in much of a position to make demands.”
“I am if you want me to give you what you need for proof of life—which you’ll have to have if you’re going to get anything for me. I’ll trade you, proof for proof. That’s the deal.” I waited, then went on. “Unless I’m mistaken, you know all about these things, my friend,” I said, pushing it a little. “You want something, you give something. That’s the way it works.”
“Oh, so that’s the way it’s going to be.” He came closer, sat on the square lid of the portable toilet with his knees perhaps three feet from mine and seemed to study me. “There are other forms of proof of life,” he said at last. “Do you think your wife would recognize your ear?”
“Hard to say.”
“Your finger, then. The one on your left hand there, for example—with the wedding band still on it.”
I shrugged. “Even if it was recognized, it wouldn’t be proof that I was still alive. You can get fingers and ears just as easily from the dead. More easily.”
I knew that the man sitting across from me on the toilet lid was as cognizant as I was of such things, but I thought it best to make sure we understood each other.
“That’s true, Bryan. But all the same, in the past I’ve found they do eventually serve to persuade. Sometimes it takes a second finger, or even a third, but in the end they seem to do the trick. I may be forgetting something, but I don’t recall it ever having taken more than three. I suppose you could spare three of your fingers, but why would you want to put us all through the unpleasantness?”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t convince Julian Minor. It wouldn’t convince my wife.”
“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of convincing you,” he said pleasantly. I had the impression that he was becoming more at his ease. The game playing was entertaining him.
I couldn’t help laughing, but it didn’t last very long. I’d been holding my ground so far by keeping out of my mind, or at any rate out of the foreground of my mind, the realities of my situation. I too was acting as if we were simply playing an elaborate game, the complex rules of which I and my opponent both knew. As far as it went, that much was true, but when the talk turned to severed appendages, somehow the fun went out of it.
Now, I knew that the probability of losing a finger or any attachment was low. Statistically speaking, mutilation of this kind, while frequently threatened, was seldom resorted to—only about one percent of the time, as far as our records showed. I also knew, however, that, statistically speaking, the probability of drowning in San Francisco Bay was similarly low, because only one percent of the water was deeper than five feet. Statistics were unreliable guides for individual behavior.
I was starting to feel some qualms now, no denying it.
And now there was a new worry gnawing at me. Why was he so resistant to the idea of proof-of-life from Lori? Could it be that they hadn’t . . . that she was . . . I didn’t let myself think it. Strange: Getting information about her welfare had been my top priority since I’d gotten here, but I’d never let myself really believe that she was anything but all right. It was reassurance I’d wanted, that’s all. Confirmation. But now . . .
“Look,” I said. “Obviously, it’s up to you. But I’ll tell you this: Unless I’m satisfied that she’s okay, you get no cooperation at all out of me. None, no matter what you do.”
“Is that right?” he said dryly. “And is that all it will take? No other little thing I can do for you?”
“You can let me have a razor and a toothbrush. And a comb.”
He didn’t move, but merely studied me hard, turned suddenly, and without another word to me, opened the flap and left, zipping it up behind him.
I had no idea if I’d won that exchange or lost it.
Chapter 27
A couple of hours later, after I’d wriggled back into my clammy but relatively fresh-smelling clothes and had some breakfast (not eaten from the toilet lid, but from a makeshift cardboard tray held on my lap), Stig and Gullveig came in to put me through the search-andransack routine again. Apparently, it was going to be a daily practice. While I was on my stomach on the floor, I asked politely if I might have a pen or a pencil. I was bothered more than I’d expected by not being able to write; that hadn’t been a problem when I was five. But they didn’t bother to reply.
Again, I need hardly say, they left without discovering anything. But I discovered something.
When they’d flipped over the mattress on the cot, I realized something that I’d noticed before, but that somehow hadn’t registered as important: It was a folding cot. It folded in the middle. Now I lifted the mattress off again to have a closer look. I’d like to have tried actually folding and lifting it to see how cumbersome it was, but I was afraid they’d hear me and come in. So I made some rough-and-ready measurements, using my foot (eleven inches, toe to heel) as a ruler. Folded, it would be about thirty-eight inches by thirty-one, and about eight inches thick. When I hefted it, I came to the same conclusion I’d reached earlier: It weighed about thirty pounds.
I could get my arms around the thing and carry it! Sure, I’d be weighted down by it and helpless to defend myself and hobbled by the chains, but if there came a time when no one was in the guard chair for a minute, or if the guard fell asleep—and assuming I didn’t trip over my own feet again—I could make it from the tent to the window in one or two seconds with the cot hugged to my chest. Once there, the cot would actually be an asset, adding both momentum and protection against the breaking glass when I went through it. And once outside, while running would no longer be an option, making noise would. Surely, the crash of glass and the clang when the cot hit the ground and the hullabaloo that I would provide with my lungs would bring out people from the nearby apartments, whatever time it was, and once that happened . . .
But for it to happen I had to know what was going on at the guard station. So over the next couple of hours I used my pinky and the handle of a plastic-coated spork, first to open up a space of an inch or so in one corner of the mesh window, and then to push the corresponding corner of the outside flap a little out of the way. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been a two-minute job, but under ordinary circumstances you don’t have to surreptitiously drag a metal cot around with you. And you don’t have to avoid making any noise while you work.
But it got done, to my great satisfaction—not only because I’d made progress (possibly delusional) toward escape, but because, by moving the bed, I’d once again defied their instructions to leave everything in its place. Anything that didn’t fit their mandates, no matter how trivial, was manna to my starving soul, a much-needed reassurance that I was still at least a little in charge of myself.
When I got hungry for the second time that day, at what I judged to be about six o’clock, I stuck to my earlier resolution and got going on my exercise routine. I was only a hundred steps into running in place when the sweat started popping out, so I stopped. It had taken me hours to wash and dry my clothes this morning, and I wasn’t ready to go through it again tomorrow. But I also didn’t want to turn back in
to the grubby guy I’d seen in the toilet-bowl reflection. So, before getting back to the workout I stripped down to my shorts again. I probably should have taken those off too, but even in these conditions—especially in these conditions—standards of modesty needed to be maintained.
I had finished running in place and doing push-ups and sit-ups and was sitting on the floor, swimming in perspiration, huffing and puffing, but feeling pretty good about myself, when the tent flap was zipped open, and in came Mr. Mastermind again.
I almost laughed at the absurdity of it. How come every time this guy walked in I was in my underwear? I pushed myself to my feet.
He got right down to business. “All right, Bryan, I’m here to confirm that your wife is safe. She was released unharmed one hour after we had possession of you.”
That wasn’t nearly good enough. “How do I know—?”
“Here.” He put a newspaper in front of my face. Morgunblaðið, the banner said.
I shook my head. “I can’t read Icel—”
He double-tapped a two-column photograph at the bottom, and there was Lori coming down the steps of what I supposed was the police station, with Ellert on one side and a uniformed officer on the other. It was nighttime, and she was looking down, so her face wasn’t all that clear, but it was Lori, all right, and although she looked harried and concerned—who wouldn’t?—I could see that she was okay. Neither of the cops was steering her by the elbow; she was taking the concrete steps on her own.
Ever since I’d first heard that the VBJ had her, I’d had a strange, sick feeling; the illusion that the floor beneath me was continually falling away, that either I was leaving the earth, or the earth was leaving me. But now the hard floor beneath the tent came back up to meet my feet, stable and secure. It was done. But my knees were momentarily undone by a crushing wave of relief. I sat down on the edge of the cot.
“Thank you,” I breathed. I suppose I might have asked why I hadn’t been shown this before, but I knew the answer—because leaving me in the dark about Lori was one more way to keep me unglued. Or was there more to it than that? Had this guy withheld the information because he was out ahead of me? Had he anticipated my reaction to his proof-of-life questions and kept something in reserve to trade for the answers? Could he be that savvy?
