Soft Targets

On both hostages, the legs had been taped flexed, so that muscle cramps would almost cer­tainly result. More tape looped from necks to thighs, assuring that tall men would make smal­ler packages. Heavy adhesive bands strapped arms across their chests, the left hand of the second hostage heavily retaped over a crimson­and- rust bandage. Guerrero did a brief double-take, rolling the captive over to see the maimed left hand. Both hostages were conscious. Despite his gag, the injured hostage moaned at the rough movement. From Guerrero, a sigh: 'Will you rid the world of fingers, Hakim?'

The Fat'ah leader knelt to examine the ban­dage while Charlie, eyes wide in horror as he saw the hand of Maurice Everett, tried to speak through the gag. 'An ancient and honored custom, my friend,' said Hakim, smiling, and back-handed Charlie viciously to quell the interrup­tion. 'I mailed his left small finger by special delivery to the National Broadcasting Network people. I added a promise to forward more pieces—some of them yours—until my demands are aired,' he continued, staring into Charlie's face as he spoke. He wheeled to regard Guerrero. 'I might have delivered it myself while waiting for you!'

'Your demands, not Fat'ah's,' Guerrero mused aloud.

'I am Fat'ah,' almost inaudible.

'It is reducing itself to that,' Guerrero agreed ambiguously, then blunted the goad. 'What may I do now?'

Hakim retained a precarious control. 'Famil­iarize yourself with the house, cook a meal, mind your tongue if you would keep it. I shall arrange for our guests to—entertain us.'

As the dusk became darkness, Guerrero found that the nearest lights were over a kilometer away, too far to carry the sounds of Charlie George's interrogation. The Panamanian took his time, kept away from the torture room, and waited for Hakim to kill their captives in outlet for his frustration. It sounded as though Hakim was devoting all his attention to the comedian. When the screams subsided, Guerrero began to heat their stew.

Charlie George had more stamina than either of them had thought. He managed to walk, a tape-wrapped garrotte wire looped as leash about his throat, to the table, but fell trying to sit in the folding chair.

Hakim's smile was a beatitude, so well did his captive behave. Charlie's nose was a ruin, his right ear torn —'It will come off anyway,' Hakim chuckled—but his mouth had been left equipped for conversation. He was not disposed to eat and his hands shook so badly that Hakim laughed; but Hakim needed say only once, 'Eat it all,' softly. Charlie George ate it all. The sec­ond captive, trussed with tape and wire, moaned unheeded in the torture room, a supply of parts which might be maintained or dispensed at Fat'ah convenience. He was, Hakim felt, of only secondary importance.

Hakim produced a huge chocolate bar for des­sert and helped eat it. He felt no desire or need to deny himself the stuff, while the garrotte wire was in his hand. After the chocolate: 'An hour ago, you maintained that this satire is too wide-spread to halt,' he prodded the exhausted Charlie, 'and I say you will halt it, piece by piece.'

'You underestimate their greed,' Charlie replied, scarcely above a whisper. From time to time he clenched his teeth hard. 'Every night-club schlepper in the Catskills is inventing stealable material—and the public loves it.' he managed something that could have been a smile. 'You're a smash, Charlie.'

'You will call me `Hakim'.' The Iraqi flicked the garrotte wire, then looked at the wall a mo­ment. 'And the new series you mentioned? What is the investment?'

'One on ABC, one on CBS,' Charlie said. 'Buy 'em off if you can. Start with ten million apiece; they'll laugh at you.' With this unfortu­nate phrase he trailed off; exhaustion tugged at his eyelids. Hakim reached out with delicate precision and thumped the bloody ear. 'Ahhhh—I don't see what you gain by torture,' Charlie grunted. 'I have no secrets.' It was not a lie. Nor was it accurate.

Guerrero, taking notes, gestured at the captive with the butt of his pen. 'Perhaps you do not know what you know.'

'And perhaps you are being punished,' Hakim murmured.

'What else is new,' Charlie said, and was rewarded by a sudden tug on the wire. 'Sorry,' he managed to croak.

'Repeat after me: 'I beg forgiveness, Effendi',' Hakim smiled, and tugged again. Charlie did it. 'Now, the amputee in the next room,' Hakim continued. 'What is he to you?'

The uncomprehending gaze became wonder as Charlie grappled with a new surmise. 'Sy? Simon Kenton?' Charlie steeled himself for the garrotte.

'If that is his name. He is a close friend?'

Charlie swallowed. 'We get along; I don't hunger for his bod. He's a consultant; why is he here?'

'You will not question Fat'ah,' Hakim thumped the ear again, almost gaily. Charlie, through his agony, caught something subtly in­quisitive as his gaze swept past the face of Guer­rero. The Panamanian said nothing. Hakim pressed on with, 'But the network will know him by the fingerprint.' It was a question.

'They have his prints but he's my con­sultant—like twenty other people from time to time.'

'Now tell me again how NBN amassed those tapes to be aired in the event one of their people was taken.' With the change of topic, Charlie felt surer that the disguise of Maurice Everett had not been penetrated, that Fat'ah had kidnapped a major enemy by a fluke and still did not know it.

But how long before newspapers, in their zeal for all the news, made these murderous fanatics a present of the crucial datum? Perhaps Charlie could temporize, could claim he did not recog­nize Everett in his new guise, could hope for clemency. In his heart, Charlie knew it was all a crock of shit. They would tear him to pieces when they found out. Unless Everett's contacts could do a nose-job on the news, too. It was possible. Not likely, but...

Charlie, glad to change the subject, repeated the truth about NBN's contingency tapes. The networks had all considered the possibility that their stars might be ransomed, or worse, by ter­rorists. They would feel no pain.

The hostages would absorb all of that.

Hakim probed for some weak point in network thinking, asked questions that sometimes led nowhere. Eventually he saw that the answers were becoming more disjointed, less useful, and led the unprotesting Charlie to the torture room.

Guerrero saw the captive trussed flat on a ta­bletop, feet toward the door, before Hakim was satisfied. Guerrero kept the butt of his ballpoint pen aimed at the doorway, putting away his gear as Hakim returned. Slumped in a corner, radiat­ing silent hatred, the second captive gripped his wrist and stared at nothing.

'I will set up the media center,' Hakim said mildly. 'You will feed the big one, Kenton, then install this lock on their door.' He handed Guer­rero a heavy push-bolt affair.

Guerrero ascertained that `Kenton' could feed himself with one hand temporarily freed, saw in the steady motions a reservoir of strength. He offered the big man a glass of water which was emptied in one draught, and reclaimed the glass by spreading his fingers inside the rim. Hakim had not seen the exchange. Guerrero caught the captive's eyes with his. 'You are wondering how you can surprise me while securely lashed with wire, Senor Kenton,' he said evenly. 'Of course, you cannot. Even if you could, you cannot surprise us both. You would be dead in sec­onds if you tried. It would be small loss. Suit yourself,' he added.

'I hear you,' was the growled response. No promises, no pleas, no hollow threats.

Guerrero had seen the same stolid calm in corridas, as a wounded Miura waited for the matador to make one little mistake. But Bernal Guerrero had graduated from Panama by making very few mistakes. 'Just remember that I know, and Hakim knows, what you are wondering,' he said.

Guerrero was wrong. Everett was wondering why they called him `Kenton' even after captur­ing him; why the Iraqi had grilled Charlie George about so many things without once men­tioning Maurice Everett; whether it was all part of the torturer's art to wear him down by forcing him to stay in the room, to hear the guttural screams of a friend in agony without being able to cover his ears.

It simply had not yet occurred to Everett that he was a target of purest opportunity, a means to distribute more tokens of Fat'ah power and Fat'ah horror without killing the comedian too quickly. Everett considered the care with which Guerrero had handled his water glass. Not with aversion, but with delicacy, as though his own use of the glass had made it special. Yet all he had given it were smudges. Fingerprints. And why study those when they already had him?

Unless they didn't know they had him.

A filament of hope began to glow in the core of Everett's being. He did not think Fat'ah had ac­cess to print files. In this he was correct, but at certain levels of international quid pro quo, a more potent organization than Fat'ah did have access.