Nail knew they were working over his captured comrades, just as they had worked over him. He knew it because they often played his comrades' screams over the speakers in his cell when he was not, himself, under the torture.
They'd gotten pretty direct in their approach. They were being direct now.
'What is the address for the safe house you used in Ciudad Balboa?' Mahamda asked.
The captive spat out an address. Mahamda consulted an earpiece stuck into his right ear and shook his head, sadly. 'Your answers don't match, Mohammad. You know the price of that.'
'Please… no… I am telling the truth,' Ouled Nail begged.
'Perhaps you are and perhaps you are not. Listen to this.' Mahamda turned on a speaker so that Ouled Nail could hear the pleading screams of his comrade. Nail couldn't know it, but the transmission was on a time delay controlled by the interrogation team to ensure that no one undergoing questioning could, between screams, coach anyone else on a story.
'He's just lost a fingernail,' Mahamda said calmly. 'Now it's your turn.' He flicked off the speaker and turned on a microphone. He nodded at an assistant.
Mahamda's assistant grabbed Ouled Nail's middle finger on his left hand firmly, then took a pair of needle- nosed pliers and jammed one end under the nail. The terrorist shrieked into the microphone then, sobbing, begged, 'For the love… of Allah… please… please tell them… the truth.'
It took three nails each before the addresses given matched perfectly. There were seventeen more nails to go, along with much skin, many teeth, and a virtual infinity of nerve endings. Indeed, there were more than enough nerve endings to learn everything Ouled Nail had ever known or even suspected.
Neue Ulm, Sachsen, 21/1/461 AC
Senta Westplatz was busy packing for her return trip to Sumer. An agent of the freedom fighters was supposed to give her the tickets at the airport. In the background Fernsehen Sachsen droned. Senta paid no attention to the television until she heard the name of a friend and comrade, Giulia Masera, mentioned. Even that really didn't catch her attention-Giulia was often in the news-until she heard the words, 'kidnapped' and 'torture.'
She ran to the TV barely in time to catch the last four strokes of the whip that set her comrade to howling, much like a dog. Hand clenched over her mouth as she watched the spectacle, Senta was simply horrified, so much so that the knock at the door barely registered until it had been repeated several times.
Finally, Westplatz did go to the door, pulling her hijab over her hair automatically as she walked.
'Yes? How may I…?' she asked the deliveryman standing there, impatiently, holding a wrapped package.
The blow to her solar plexus came as a shock to Senta. She went down like a sack of rice, loosely and almost without a sound. The deliveryman entered the apartment, closing the door carefully behind him. He hit the woman once again, hard, in the chest. She wouldn't be screaming for help any time soon. From his pocket he drew a very small digital camera with which he took a short video of Senta moving feebly and gasping for air.
Returning the camera to his pocket, he then squatted down by the shocked almost-corpse and picked it up. He looked around quickly and identified the bathroom. Then he carried Senta to it, stripping her body and placing it in the tub. Another few seconds were spent recording that scene as well. After putting on some rubber gloves, he flicked the switch to close the drain and turned the tap to let the water fill.
Taking a towel with him, the deliveryman then went to the kitchen and carefully opened the drawers until he found a sharp knife. He had one with him, of course, but it would be better in the short term if the implement came from the house. Returning to the bathroom he found that Senta, still gasping desperately, had sat up. He pushed her back and grabbed her left wrist, which he twisted toward the far wall. Senta struggled but feebly.
With the knife he made a long slash lengthwise up the radial artery. The cut went deep and blood spurted out, staining the tiled far wall and turning the water filling the tub red. The deliveryman released the arm and took another short video of the blood flowing. Then he took that hand and wrapped it around the handle of the knife, holding it firmly. With this he made a not very deep and deliberately ragged cut up the right wrist. Then he let both knife and hand go free. He watched for a minute as blood loss took away consciousness. When the water had mostly filled the tub he shut off the flow and waited for ten minutes. A quick check of the carotid confirmed the woman was quite dead. He took some more video of the corpse.
The deliveryman then retrieved the package and removed from it a change of clothing, another pair of rubber gloves, a false moustache, a digital camera and a plastic bag. He exchanged clothing, putting his old, blood-spotted clothes in the bag and the bag back in the package, which he rewrapped loosely. He put on the gloves and began to search the apartment. Since no suicide was very likely to be packing a bag for a trip, he returned the articles of clothing to what seemed logical places. In the course of his search, he found a folder at the bottom of the bag. He did not find any air or train tickets. The folder he set aside for the moment.
Continued searching of the apartment turned up nothing further, not even a computer. Walking to the door, folder and package in hand, the man stopped to listen for a few moments. Nothing. Then he opened the door, exited, and closed the door behind him.
By the time the police began to suspect that Senta had been murdered, the assassin would be long gone, leaving no personal trace. The video would be posted on the Globalnet as a warning to other Kosmos who might be inclined to help the Salafi Ikhwan.
SS Hildegard Mises, 24/1/462 AC
The walls of the cell were covered with color photographs of the victims of the bombs he'd helped set off in Balboa. He couldn't escape them; his eyelids had been sewn open. When he looked at the pictures, in his mind's eye he saw his own family laid out butchered as he was sure they would soon be.
Mohammad Ouled Nail wept as the cell door opened in front of him. Mahamda entered with that small dark man-Fernandez, he was called-who seemed to be in charge. Another man, taller and lighter skinned than Fernandez, stood there as well.
Nail's hands were bandaged but blood oozing from the fingertips had stained the white gauze red.
It wasn't just pain that made Nail weep; it was also the shame.
He'd thought he was tough and brave. He'd thought he had faith in his God. He'd been sure they could never break him. He'd been sure, too, that he could lie.
He knew, now, in his innermost being, that there was no God. He knew he couldn't keep a story straight when in agony. And he knew he couldn't take the pain.
His joints were, half of them, dislocated from the little metal framework-the 'Scavenger,' they'd called it- they'd placed him in and tightened. They hurt almost as much from the decompression chamber he'd endured. His face-they'd made him look in a mirror-was blotched with burst blood vessels.
The evil looking infidel, Fernandez, made his pronouncement. 'Murdering bastard! Turn him into a woman, then hang him… her… it.' Then, horror of horrors, the evil infidel had bent down and whispered, 'I'm sending a team to exterminate your family in Castilla, you son of a bitch.'
Topside, far from the screams, Carrera and Fernandez sat on a large pipe, staring across the dark vastness of the ocean toward the lights of the Yithrabi coast. In these confined waters the ship rocked gently, slowly. It didn't matter; Carrera was sick to his stomach anyway.
'Do you ever have nightmares, Omar?' Carrera asked of Fernandez.
The Balboan shrugged. 'Everyone has nightmares, Patricio.'
'Do they?' He shook his head. 'Not like mine, I don't think. Not like mine.
'Did you know,' Carrera continued, 'that I was raised to be a civilized man? I don't advertise it but my mother and father were progressives, cosmopolitans, in fact. I sometimes wonder if that's why I was able to transfer my loyalty from the Federated States to the legion; because I wasn't raised to be loyal to the Federated States, even though for many years I was and, to some degree, still am. An interesting thought, is it not; that maybe the end result of the destruction of ties to nations is not loyalty to mankind, but loyalty to even smaller and more exclusive groups than nations? To family most of all.'
Fernandez's mind was not the sort to worry about such things. He kept silent. Besides, what was wrong with having an ultimate loyalty to one's family? As far as he could see that was the default state of mankind.
Carrera flicked a cigarette butt over the side, then reached for a tumbler of whiskey resting on the deck by his feet. From this he drank deeply.
