you.’
Nicholson still said nothing. The other men exchanged glances, then Westwood turned away. ‘I’ll go put the kettle on, Paul.’
Richter walked across and ripped both sleeves off Nicholson’s shirt. ‘John’s gone off to boil a kettle of water. When he brings it down I’m going to pour it over your left forearm. That should get the skin bubbling and blistering nicely.
‘Then’ – he gestured towards the table – ‘I’m going to take this kitchen knife and score the skin several times. You’ll bleed, but I’ll put a tourniquet on your upper arm so you won’t bleed to death. Then I’ll rub kitchen salt into the wounds, pour lighter fluid over it and set fire to it. And once the flame’s gone out, I’ll start all over again.
‘When I eventually get down to the bone, I’ll do the same on your other arm, then begin on your legs. I’ve got all day, so if you don’t tell me what I want to know you’ll never walk or have the use of your arms again. And after all that, I’ve still got the flasks, so even if you hold out saying nothing to the end, I’ve still won. You just think about that now while the kettle boils.’
Richter smiled, but there was no humour or compassion in it, and Nicholson realized that whoever this Englishman was, he was perfectly capable of doing precisely what he’d threatened. Nicholson knew that, because he’d seen eyes like those before. He looked at such a pair in the mirror every day while he shaved.
‘Of course,’ Richter said, ‘you can save yourself a lot of pain if you just answer a few simple questions.’
Nicholson silently shook his head. Just then the briefing-room door reopened and Westwood walked in, carrying a steaming kettle. Nicholson couldn’t take his eyes off this simple domestic appliance as Westwood stepped across to the table and put it down.
‘I don’t like this, Paul,’ Westwood’s voice was low and concerned. ‘It’s barbaric, and it’s not something I’m prepared to participate in.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Richter said. ‘Just go upstairs and watch the monitors, in case the hired help decide to come back. I’ll call you down when Nicholson’s decided to talk.’
Westwood nodded, his face still troubled, and headed back to the door. As it swung closed behind him, Nicholson raised his voice at last. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ Westwood couldn’t hear what Richter replied, and he was halfway up the stairs before he heard Nicholson’s first scream.
Henderson had worked out a kind of plan. It had to be quick and dirty, because the three of them guessed that the blond-haired man meant to do Nicholson harm, and they had no time to work out anything complex or sophisticated.
Murphy was an unknown quantity: he could even be the fair-haired man’s accomplice. Whatever, Henderson had decided that the safest option was to take him down too. Murphy had encountered Ridout and Henderson when arriving at the house, so it was Blake who was going to provide a diversion while the other two men entered the property at the rear.
Blake now sat behind the wheel, his Kevlar jacket ready on the passenger seat beside him, alongside the Uzi. A Glock was tucked into his shoulder holster. Henderson and Ridout both sat in the back as Blake turned the car round and headed back the way they’d come. About a hundred yards from the safe house, he pulled the Ford into the side of the road, watched as his two passengers climbed out, then looked at the dashboard clock. He waited three minutes, then drove on slowly and turned into the drive. He parked carefully and took a map from the glove box. Getting out of the car, he then walked across to the front door and pressed the bell.
John Westwood was sitting at the kitchen table, his mind a whirl of conflicting emotions. He could still just make out Nicholson’s howls of pain as Richter did whatever he thought necessary to make him talk. He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said he thought Richter’s technique barbaric, but at the same time he recognized that Nicholson was unlikely to say anything unless some extreme form of persuasion was applied. Richter’s method of persuasion was as extreme as anything Westwood could conceive, so he just hoped Nicholson would cooperate quickly.
The audible sound of the driveway sensor took him by surprise, and he immediately guessed that it meant trouble of some sort. He picked up one of the Glocks discarded on the kitchen table when Richter had disarmed the two guards. After checking that it was loaded and with a shell ready in the chamber, he headed into the den to look at the surveillance monitors. There he saw a Ford saloon outside, parked broadside on to the house so both its number plates were invisible. The guards had been driving a Ford, but so did a large proportion of the population of America. It could just be a travelling salesman or something.
Westwood proceeded to the front door as the bell sounded, checked that the bolts were fully home and peered at the small surveillance monitor fed by the porch camera. On the screen he saw a man staring down at a road map. Westwood pressed the button and spoke into the interphone system. ‘Yes?’ he inquired.
‘Oh, hi,’ the figure replied. ‘Sorry to trouble you, but I think I’m lost. Can you give me directions to Browntown?’
‘Easy,’ Westwood began. ‘Turn left out of the driveway and—’ He turned sharply, having detected a faint sound of movement behind him. He saw the approaching figure and raised the Glock far too late. Henderson easily brushed the gun aside and struck out with the butt of his own Uzi. The weapon crashed into the side of Westwood’s skull and he fell senseless to the floor.
Thirty seconds later Blake was also inside the house, pulling on his Kevlar jacket, as Henderson immobilized Westwood with a roll of plastic tape found in a kitchen drawer.
Nicholson had proved tougher than Richter had expected – tougher in trying to protect a secret almost half a century old than made any kind of sense. He’d hoped that Nicholson would simply start talking as soon as he saw what Richter apparently intended to do to him. Unfortunately that hadn’t happened. But using the boiling water and lighter fluid was the kind of brutality that really wasn’t Richter’s style – so he had got physical with Nicholson instead.
The human body is an extraordinarily sophisticated creation, and the human brain the single most complex structure so far identified in the universe. The brain controls the body through nerve impulses, primarily by instructing muscles when to move, and receives feedback from nerves providing information about the immediate environment. One of the principal functions of these nerves is to warn the brain of imminent danger to the body, and in order to achieve this many nerve endings are located in the skin.
Several of the more aggressive forms of martial art target these nerves to incapacitate or kill an opponent, but accurately applied pressure can also be used to cause intense physical pain. Pain, however, that is of brief duration, causes no permanent damage, and ceases the moment pressure is released. That was as far as Richter was prepared to go, and perhaps Nicholson had guessed this because, despite his screams and howls, he had still refused to divulge the secret of CAIP.
Richter looked down at him, considering. ‘Maybe I should try a different tactic.’ He walked over to the table and picked up the small flask. Then he glanced back at Nicholson and registered the change in his expression. The fear in his eyes was unmistakable.
‘Maybe,’ Richter walked back across the room, ‘I should just shoot a hole in this flask and close the door on you for a couple of days, leaving you at the mercy of these bugs you’re so determined nobody else should find. I’ve seen what they do,’ he added, ‘and it isn’t pretty.’
He stared at Nicholson, tossing the flask from one hand to the other. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘if I do that I still won’t know what the hell these bugs are, but I can probably get the CDC or else Porton Down to examine one of the other flasks and find out. But you’d be dead, so I still wouldn’t know what you were planning on doing with them. It’s getting close to the time when you have to make a choice: either die here in a locked room with only a flask full of lethal germs for company or start telling me all about CAIP.’
As Richter studied Nicholson’s expression he saw the first signs of a smile appear on the man’s face, and realized in the same instant that his gaze was focused somewhere behind him. He span round to find Henderson standing in the open door of the briefing-room, and himself looking straight down the muzzle of a Uzi sub- machine-gun.
Nicholson’s mocking laugh echoed round the room. ‘I think the cavalry’s just arrived, don’t you, Richter?’
