Collingwood’s face showed emotion for the first time. “I’m doing my job,” he said, darkening with the fervor of a true fanatic. “My superiors may not like my, ah, methods, but I love my country, and if we don’t get the jump on this nation’s enemies, you can be sure as hell they’ll try and get the jump on us.”
“Your superiors don’t know what you’re up to,” I said. “Come to that, if you’re not taking a backhander from Storax, why the hell are you trying to bury a drug that doesn’t work?”
“But it does work,” Collingwood said, levering himself off the wall abruptly and pacing, and there was a zealous gleam in his eyes now. “It targets a particular genetic code. Do you have any idea what could be done with that?”
I stared at him blankly. “You’re talking about a bioweapon,” I said. I laughed. “Jeremy Lee’s family were originally from Korea. Is that what this is all about? You’ve gone to all this trouble for the possibility of developing a side effect into a weapon. What are you intending to do, Collingwood, stand on the battlefield and wait for your enemies’ bones to crumble?”
Collingwood stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. “You don’t understand the possibilities, just like the bureaucrats above me when I first got wind of this. The Storax people were trying to play down the whole thing, so they could get their license, but I saw what could be done with it, even if they didn’t.”
I didn’t want to let him reel me in, but I couldn’t help asking, “How ?”
He gave the slightest of smiles, as though he’d known I wouldn’t be able to resist his rhetoric.
“Any company that handles government contracts has to be checked out regularly,” he said. “I have unlimited access to Storax’s files and I like to be thorough.”
“So you’re a glorified filing clerk,” I said.
His face tightened. “You’re not an American, Charlie, and you don’t understand the threats facing this country,” he said. “But, right now, you’re one of them.” He glanced across at Vondie. “We need to contain this as fast as possible. Find out what she knows and who she’s talked to—and where Meyer and Foxcroft are likely to be,” he said. “Do it, but with no …
“There won’t be a mark on her,” Vondie promised, almost a purr. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Collingwood nodded and walked out without a backward glance. The door closed behind him.
“Well,
I fought them then, hard and dirty. Knowing what they were trying to do set off all kinds of echoes back down the line, reaching viciously into the past and slashing through reason and training to carve a strake of outright bloody fear.
Even through the white-hot smear of rage, I recognized the fact they had their hands tied. They’d been told not to do anything to me that was going to show, and I was giving it everything I had and a little more besides. So, even outnumbered, I was more than holding my own and I reckoned we were pretty much at stalemate.
And then, as Buzz-cut staggered back, doubled over and starting to retch as he clutched at his balls, Vondie finally stepped in with an exasperated bark of, “Oh, for fuck’s sake …” and stunned me.
I didn’t see her pull it. She reached under my thrashing arms and dug the double electrodes of the TASER directly into my rib cage just below my left breast, which was probably as close to my heart as she could get it.
There was an almost infinitesimal delay, then the stunner’s electro-muscular disruption technology stampeded over my neural pathways with all the tact and delicacy of a boot camp drill sergeant. It didn’t bother trying to modify the control signals from my brain to my muscles, it blasted them into the ether, screeching commands in their place that I was unable to ignore or defy.
I’d been trained against the older type of stun guns, to focus and to fight through the charge they delivered, but this was like nothing I’d experienced before. I gave it a damn good go, flailing, but my coordination was blown to shit. Fifty thousand volts through your chest will do that to you.
The pain had a jagged quality all its own, ripping out chunks of my nervous system and spinning them away like debris from an explosion, so that some parts of my mind seemed magnified a hundred times and others were just big blank holes of frenzied nothingness.
Next thing I knew I was on the floor, my body rigid. I was peripherally aware that my head was banging on the concrete and that was probably not a good thing, but I couldn’t stop the twitching dance of my limbs. My hands had distorted into the twisted claws of an arthritis-ravaged geriatric. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. It was the worst cramp I’d ever had in my life, the most violent fever, the meanest hangover, all rolled into one.
After that, I don’t remember much. They handled me roughly, yanked at my clothes, stuck something sharp in my arm. I think I heard someone groaning out the word, “Bitch!” over and over.
Then the corners of the room folded in neatly over my head, and I went under.
The first things that struck me, when I came round, was the nagging ache in my shoulders and wrists, and the nasty tingling in my fingers. I’d been sleeping, but something was very wrong with the angle. My head was lolling forwards into space, overextending my neck muscles.
They had strung me up, I realized belatedly, with all my weight hanging from restraints round my wrists. Padded restraints, by the feel of it, so they didn’t mark me.
I lifted my head, miscalculated how heavy it had suddenly become and had to right myself with a jerk that did nothing for the pain everywhere else. I wondered how long I’d been left like that. Not long, I reckoned, or I would have suffocated like a crucifixion victim.
“Back with us, huh?” said a woman’s voice I couldn’t immediately place. There was something familiar about the words, though. I waded sluggishly through my memory, sifting. My father. That was it. He’d said the same thing when I came round in hospital after I was shot. Shot. My father. My mother. New York. Boston. Parker. Texas. Storax. Terry.
Reality arrived like a subway train, bringing with it a wheezing rush of information. On reflection, I think I preferred things when they were more fuzzy.
I opened my eyes. Somebody had brought in an easy chair and Vondie was reclining elegantly on it in front of me. The chair had been carefully placed out of my reach, even if I’d had the energy to try. She was leafing through a file contained in a thick manila folder and swinging her crossed foot negligently.
She’d taken the time to primp while I’d been gone, I saw. Her platinum blond hair was immaculately pleated behind her head and her makeup was flawless. It helped to disguise the thick nose I’d given her, even if it failed to conceal the damage completely.
It didn’t take long to work out why she’d gone to the trouble, and the realization sent a greasy slither of fear coiling through my belly. They’d stripped me naked before they’d dangled me from the ceiling. Never a state of affairs that’s going to make you compare well to another woman and feel good about yourself. Not when she’s tall and slim and wearing a fistful of designer labels, at any rate. Quite a change from the chainstore brands she’d sported on the UK job.
I forced my stiffened legs to uncurl, biting back a groan as I straightened my feet out with slow, deliberate effort onto the cold floor beneath them, so I could take some weight off my arms.
They’d hung me just high enough so that, when I stood upright, the best I could do with my arms was bend my elbows a little, but they were still largely numb from the restricted blood flow. Eventually being cut down, I recognized ruefully, was going to hurt like a bastard.
“Did I miss anything exciting while I was asleep?” I said around a furred tongue.
Vondie smiled without looking up from her study, as though I wasn’t worth any greater response. I waited in silence, muscles shivering, while she played her games, knowing I’d been through this before, or something very like it, and emerged more or less intact.
When I’d been undergoing my Special Forces training, they’d allowed the full-fledged boys to have first crack at interrogating us. It was a matter of pride that they broke us, as they’d been broken in their time, and though I’d held out longer than most, they got to me in the end. They got to everybody in the end.
Vondie finished reading her page and looked up with a smile.
“Your record’s impressive, Charlie—in places,” she said. “Shame you didn’t make the grade for Special Forces, though. That must have stung—being one of the dropouts. The failures. Tell me, were you really raped, or were you just hoping you could screw your way to a pass? Should have started with the instructors. Oh, wait a minute—” She
