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—
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
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.
“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.
33
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.
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 language 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.
“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
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.
“You my prisoner now,” Cao said. “Stay quiet. Understand?”
Wells nodded. Already he was pulling on his pants. Even the lightest touch of the cloth set his bruised and swollen legs afire. He tried to put on the green T-shirt but couldn’t get his arms over his head. Coursing under the sharp pain of his broken ribs was a deep throbbing bruising that was getting worse by the minute. He wondered if he was bleeding internally.
Cao gently pulled Wells’s T-shirt over his head. Then he cuffed Wells’s hands behind his back and nudged him forward. They picked their way through the blood and brains on the floor as carefully as children stepping over sidewalk cracks. And not for the first time Wells wondered why he’d been allowed to live, and what price he would pay.
CAO SLID THE CELL DOOR OPEN. Behind it a short corridor ended in another steel door. Cao punched numbers on a digital keypad until the second door snapped open. They walked down a concrete hallway to a
