her complexion was pale, the skin dry and unattended; there were deep, dark rings around her eyes. But, my God, he thought, what eyes.
They were pure sky-blue, but as he looked more closely-purely in the interests of dispassionate analysis, he told himself-Geisel noticed a slight asymmetry. One lid was very slightly heavier than the other and the two eyes were fractionally out of line. This imperfection in an otherwise flawless assembly-her lips were full, her cheekbones high, her nose straight and neat-served to add to, rather than detract from, her beauty. Without it, she would merely have been very pretty. With it, she was mesmerizing.
“I understand,” she said, “but I can’t discuss it…”
“Let me be frank,” he said, steeling himself. “For months you have refused my questions. But if Herr Carver is to have any hope of a recovery, I must have the information I need to treat him. You must understand-I am very used to dealing with patients who require extreme discretion. What you say to me goes no farther. But I need to know.”
“If I tell you, can you make him get better?” she asked.
“No, I cannot promise that. But I can promise you this: If you do not tell me, I have no hope of helping him. The longer you remain silent, the more certain it is that Herr Carver will remain like this forever.”
“I’m only trying to protect him.”
Her voice was little more than a whisper. She was trying to persuade herself as much as him. Her anguish was so stark that Geisel’s human instinct was to reach out and comfort her. But his professional self knew that he must do and say nothing. She had to have the space to find her way to her own decision.
Alix suspected that the timing of his approach was no accident. He must have known that she had been visited by Marchand yesterday, and had realized at once what that must mean. Carver’s bills had not been paid. Unless they were, he would surely be forced to leave. So now there was a ticking clock counting down to Carver’s expulsion, making the need for a cure even more desperate.
Alix struggled to defy the inexorable logic of her situation. Finally, she came to her conclusion.
“All right,” she said. “I will tell you… I tried to escape from a man, a Russian, like me. He was very rich, very powerful.”
“Was?” asked Geisel.
Alix ignored the interruption and what it implied. “He sent his men to take me back. Carver… Samuel found out where I was and came after me, to Gstaad. He hoped to exchange me for… certain information. The man who had taken me had no intention of making the deal. His men took Samuel and…”
She seemed unwilling or unable to finish the sentence.
“He was harmed?” asked Geisel.
“Yes. They stripped him, blindfolded him, and put him in handcuffs. Then they… excuse me…”
She stopped for a moment to compose herself, blinking rapidly and clearing her throat.
“Sorry,” she said.
“You were saying…?”
When Alix spoke again, she sounded dispassionate, almost matter-of-fact. “They placed a belt around Samuel’s waist. It was linked to a remote control. When the remote control was switched on, the belt gave him an electric shock, very strong, enough to make him fall to the floor and jerk around, with no control over himself. They made him do this in front of me, at my feet, to make him ashamed.”
“How many times did this happen, the shock?”
“Three or four times for sure, maybe more that I didn’t see.”
“Was that all?”
“No, that was just the start. Afterward, they took him down to a room and tied him to a chair. The room was painted white: every wall, the floor, the ceiling, all white. It was very cold, too. They gagged his mouth with a leather strap. They taped his eyes open, so that he could not close them or even blink. They put headphones over his ears. Then they turned on lights, bright lights, right in front of his eyes. And they put noise through the earphones, so loud, without stopping. That was how I found him. He had been like that for almost four hours…”
“I see…” murmured Geisel, thoughtfully. The story was horrific, but he tried not to be shocked by what he had heard. At that moment, in the context of his consulting room, it all had to be looked on as information that might help him reach a more accurate diagnosis. Only that evening, sitting at home with a drink in his hand, might he go back and contemplate Carver’s ordeal in more human terms.
“Now I understand the fear that consumes him,” he continued. “His conscious brain has blanked the torture from his mind, but his subconscious dreads its repetition. Still, there is one aspect of your story that puzzles me… If he was tied to this chair, completely unable to move, how did he escape?”
“I cut him from the chair,” said Alix.
“But there was this man you spoke of, with other men under his command…”
“Yes.”
“So how did you…?”
“I am not your patient,” said Alix. “Our conversations have no legal privilege.”
“Quite so… Still, with one woman and many men, I’m sure that whatever you did, it must have been in self- defense.”
“Exactly. It must have been like that.”
Geisel nodded to himself, coming to terms with what he had just heard.
