Locked On

But why was the drug not here? Why were there only torture devices and tough-looking guys present? Where was the medical facility, the doctors, the FSB psychologists who would normally do this sort of thing.

Clark understood.

John looked at Valentin. “I get it. You are working for Paul Laska. I have a feeling he has something on you, personal or professional I do not know, that is making you do this.”

Valentin shook his head no, but he asked, “Why do you suggest this?”

“Because this is not your world. That you are here in person tells me you could not get FSB support. You are SVR, foreign intelligence. FSB has the interrogators here in Moscow that could do this, but where is the FSB? Why have you brought me into a fucking warehouse? You don’t have a government facility for this sort of work? No, Valentin, your own ass is on the line, so you are breaking rules. You’ve scrounged up a couple of ex — Spetsnaz guys here, am I right? But they don’t know how to do a proper interrogation. They will bash my fucking skull in before I talk.”

Valentin was not accustomed to being outsmarted; Clark could see this in his eyes. “You have been at this since before I was born, old man. You are a dinosaur like my father. But unlike my father, you still retain a little spark in you. I am sorry to say that I will be the one to extinguish ?that spark. Right now.”

Clark said nothing. The kid did not have state backing for what he was about to do, but he was no less motivated to do it.

Not good.

“Who are you working for, Mr. Clark?”

“Fuck you, sonny.”

Kovalenko’s face seemed to grow slightly pale. He looked to Clark as though he was not feeling well.

“Very well. You force my hand. Shall we begin?” He said a few unintelligible words to his two men, and they stepped over to the instruments on the table. While the thought of doctors in white lab coats was disconcerting to Clark in an interrogation environment, the concept of big men in track suits applying surgical instruments to his body was something beyond horrifying.

Kovalenko said, “Mr. Clark. I have degrees in economics and political science. I have studied at Oxford. I have a wife and a beautiful little girl. What is about to happen has nothing to do with me, with my world. Quite frankly, just the thought of what I am about to do to you makes me want to retch.” He paused, then smiled a little. “I wish I had my father here for this. He would know exactly how to ratchet up the pain. But I will try my own methods. I will not begin with something benign, I can see that the men of Fabrice Bertrand-Morel Investigations have already failed with that tactic. No… tonight we will begin by devastating your body. After this you will be out of your mind with pain and distress, but you will see how incredibly prepared I am to inflict the ultimate damage upon you, and you will not want to see where I go with phase two of my interrogation.”

What the fuck? thought Clark. This kid did not play by the rules. The men stepped behind Clark, they had blades in their hands. One grabbed the American by his head, the other took hold of his right hand.

Valentin Kovalenko knelt over John, looked him closely in the eyes, and said, “I have read your dossier multiple times. I know you are right-handed, and I know that gun hand of yours has served you well, ever since your nation’s silly little war in Vietnam. Tell me who you contacted in Moscow, tell me who you work for, or I will have my associate here cut off your right hand. It is as simple as that.”

Clark grimaced as the man on his right touched the skin on his wrist with a large cleaver. John’s heart pounded against his rib cage.

Clark said, “I know you are just trying to clean up this mess that Laska made, Valentin. Just help me bring down Laska, and you won’t need to worry about him.”

“Last chance for your hand,” the Russian said, and John saw that the young man’s own heart was pounding. The pale white skin on his face was covered with a fresh sheen of sweat.

“We are both professionals. You do not want to do this.”

“You do not want to make me.”

Clark began taking short, rapid breaths of air. It was inevitable, what was about to happen. He needed to control his heart’s reaction to it.

Valentin saw Clark resigned to his fate. A vein throbbed in the center of the Russian’s forehead. Kovalenko turned away.

The cleaver rose off Clark’s wrist. Hung in the air a foot above it.

“This is disgusting,” Kovalenko said. “Please, Mr. Clark. Do not make me watch this.”

Clark had no humorous retort to this. Every nerve in his body was on edge, every muscle tightened for the impending swing of the cleaver against his wrist.

Kovalenko looked back toward the American. “Really? You really will allow your body to be disfigured, your fucking hand to be severed, just to keep the information you have secret? Are you that fucking committed to some foolish cause? Are you that beholden to your masters? What sort of automaton are you? What kind of robot allows himself to be chopped to bits for some foolish sense of valor?”

Clark squinted his eyes shut. He’d readied himself as much as possible for the inevitable.

After thirty seconds, Clark opened his eyes back up. Valentin stared at him in disbelief. “They do not make men like you anymore, Mr. Clark.”

Still, Clark said nothing.

Kovalenko sighed. “No. I cannot do it. I don’t have the stomach to see his hand chopped off and lying on the floor.”

Clark was surprised; he began to relax, just a little. But Valentin turned back to him, looking up to the man with the big sharp tool. “Put that down.”

The man next to Clark heaved his chest. A little disappointed, maybe? He put down the cleaver.

Kovalenko now said, “Pick up the hammer. Break every bone in his hand. One at a time.”

The Spetsnaz man quickly grabbed a stainless-steel surgical hammer that rested on the table next to the cutting instruments. With no warning whatsoever he slammed the hammer onto John’s outstretched hand, shattering his index finger. He pounded a second and then a third time, while Clark shouted in agony.

Kovalenko turned away, jabbed his fingers into his ears, and walked to the far wall of the warehouse.

The fourth finger cracked just above the knuckle, and the pinky shattered in three places.

A final, vicious pounding of the back of Clark’s hand threatened to send him into shock.

Clark gritted his teeth; his eyes were shut and tears dripped out from the sides. His face was a dark shade of crimson. He took short bursts of air, fast replenishments of oxygen, to keep from going into shock.

John Clark continued to cry out, slamming his head back hard against the stomach of the man behind him. He yelled, “You motherfucker!”

A minute later, Kovalenko was back over him. Clark could barely see the young man through the tears and sweat in his eyes and the poor focus of his dilated pupils.

Valentin winced as he glanced at the shattered hand. It was already swelling, black and blue, and two of the fingers were twisted perversely.

“Cover that!” he shouted at one of his men. A towel was tossed over the damaged appendage.

Kovalenko shielded his ears from the worst of the cries of agony, but he shouted, as if angry at the man in the chair for forcing him to do this, “You are a fool, old man! Your sense of honor will bring you nothing but pain here! I have all the time I need for you!”

Even through his agony, John Clark could tell Valentin Kovalenko was on the verge of nausea.

“Talk, old fool! Talk!”

Clark did not talk. Not then, not in the next hour. Kovalenko was growing more and more frustrated by the mi?nute. He’d ordered Clark’s head held under a bucket of water, and he’d had his men pound the American’s rib cage, breaking a bone and bruising him so badly he could barely breathe.

John did his best to disassociate himself from what was going on with his body. He thought of his family, his parents, long since dead. He thought of friends and colleagues. He thought of his new farm in Maryland, and he hoped that, even though he would never see it again, his grandkids would grow up loving the place.

Clark passed out two hours after the torture began.