flight when it landed in San Francisco. They followed my cab here.”
“Who?”
“Pros. With enough resources to put someone on the ground in San Francisco to meet my plane on a few hours’
notice. Could be the FBI. They know I’m looking for you,”
said Broker.
They heard rubber soles scurry across the deck in back, coming in through the front door.
75
Broker watched James smile his deluded smile and fantasize rescue. Watched the shudder of relief go through him when the two men rushed in from the porch. They wore running suits and sneakers. One of them had short cropped hair and a military stoicism to his sunken cheeks. The other was Rasputin.
They carried pistols. Slender automatics with silencers.
Which James may or may not have known would be very unusual sidearms for FBI agents to carry. But that was aca-demic, because James challenged them: “FBI?”
The gunmen shrugged at each other. With the droll expression of a homicidal clown, Rasputin slapped James in the face, unleashed a tirade: “
“What? Huh?” James blinked, confused, too off balance to track small crucial details, like the blue tattoos they had on the tops of their hands. Rasputin’s five-pointed star. The thin military-looking one wore a snake.
The Snake placed the silencer tube of his pistol firmly against Broker’s forehead and forced him two steps backward. “Stop,” said a voice behind him. The same precise English he’d heard on the phone yesterday. “Put your hands behind you, Broker.”
Broker did. Carefully, pinned in place by the pistol barrel.
A tearing sound. Then his wrists were efficiently wrapped with duct tape. Once his hands were bound, the Snake lowered his weapon and frisked him. Found a billfold, badge, picture ID.
“Turn around,” said Konic.
Broker turned and saw a lean man with short iron gray hair and a fading golf tan. Everything about him was quiet, expensively understated; his build, the statement of his casual clothes-rain jacket, sports shirt, khakis, loafers. The Snake handed Konic Broker’s ID. Konic inspected the items like a meticulous clerk who adds and subtracts lives.
“Broker, are these guys FBI?” Surging fear distorted James’s voice.
Konic uttered a remark in Russian. The Snake heaved a phlegmy laugh and cracked James across the teeth with his pistol barrel. James sagged to his knees.
It was not pretty. War never is. James looked like a broken piece of meat forked into the tiger house. But Broker felt remarkably calm. All his life he’d listened to his body, and now, his body told him he was not in danger. His experience told him he was in the company of professionals.
Konic gave directions in Russian. The gunmen tripped the now hysterical James and shoved him down onto his freshly sanded floor. Beige sawdust blotted his dirty cheek, his sweaty T-shirt.
Konic took Broker by the arm and led him to the kitchen table. He motioned for Broker to sit. Then he said, “How’s David?”
“David is fine.”
“You know each other?” James screamed.
Konic said, “Excuse me.” He walked to James and said,
“Mr. James, Keith Angland sends his regards. He apologizes for being such a bad shot.”
“Hey. Just a minute,” protested James. “You have this all wrong. Broker, tell them. Angland’s a cop. He set this THE BIG LAW/429
all up, but his wife meddled and it got all twisted.”
Konic smiled. “Some cop. He kills his own wife to protect his comrades.”
“No. No.” James tried to struggle to his feet. “
Konic smiled. “Of course, you’d say anything right now.
But a better choice would be the Our Father.”
Broker shut his eyes. So he’d been right, but he took no pleasure in it-not now, being a witness at this ironic execu-tion that was indirectly sanctioned by the U.S. Justice Department.
“Where’s the money, Mr. James?” asked Konic.
James whined. “It’s mine.”
“Where?” Konic could load a single syllable full of menace.
The gunmen positioned James on his knees. A European legacy of feudalism, Broker supposed. The victim must be seen as subject to authority. Even complicit in his destruction.
Broker resented and admired Keith Angland. A problem he’d always had with powerful men on missions, who crafted their plans out of human flesh.
Konic snapped orders. The gunmen tore off James’s tennis shoes and yanked off his dirty jeans. They manhandled him into the corner. He pressed his back into the crack of the wall, squirmed. His jockey shorts were damp with sawdust, gray sweat. His white legs trembled. His eyes sought Broker’s, pleading.
Konic speculated in a patient didactic voice. “I used to be an advocate of sleep deprivation. Drugs are useful. But in Afghanistan, the mujahideen pried our tanks open with their rifle barrels and killed us with rocks. I learned that techniques are secondary, if the will is present. So. We use what is at hand.”
Curtly, he spoke to his helpers. They immediately went to the belt sander and began to loosen the drum.
James pleaded with Broker. He was sitting in a puddle of urine now. “Do something. You’re a police officer.”
Footnotes, thought Broker.
James started to scream. The Snake immediately began to kick him into the corner, raging, vicious.
Konic walked to the TV and turned the volume up to the maximum to drown James’s screams. Irritably, he hectored Rasputin, who struggled with the unfamiliar machine, folding a sheet of the heavy coarse sandpaper into the drum. “
They hunkered down side by side. James screamed, drowning out Bernie Shaw’s TV voice. Rasputin’s and the Snake’s practical conversation as they tried to master the unfamiliar mechanism. Drum sanders were tricky, keeping the tension on the sheet of sandpaper while you tightened the drum.
Finally, they had it crimped in place. Rasputin, his eyes merry with experiment, rolled the heavy sander toward James. Blubbering, James drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.
Then Rasputin made the mistake of hitting the switch before he had a firm grip on the sturdy cross-T handle. The slack dust catcher on the exhaust inflated with the shock of an air bag. The machine roared and charged. It was an old model Clark, with an eight-inch drum and as thick as a squat fender off a stainless steel tank. They’d put the coarsest paper on. Looked to Broker like number sixteen-black rock grits.
The runaway sander hit James’s right ankle and ran over his foot cranking around five thousand revolutions per minute. His scream was lost in the snarl of the drum. A fine spray of blood, shredded skin and tissue spattered the wall.
His foot shook violently.
James catapulted beyond fear, swallowed his screams, racked by sick-dog shivers.
Delighted at this serendipity, the two thugs got the sander under control and turned it off. Ignoring James’s screams, they commenced a spirited discussion in their native language on the merits of the tool, pausing to point to various portions of James’s twitching body.
