spoon over the heat.
After perhaps a minute of boiling he dropped a cotton swab into the spoon, let it swell up with liquid, pushed the needle into it, and raised the plunger to filter the narcotic solution up through the cotton.
'My friend, you have kept your secrets against much persuasion, but sooner or later you must tell me what I need to know,' Luan said, approaching with the hypo. He spoke English well enough, though his tongue kept bumping against the wrong syllables.
Max sat there without response.
'You will not compromise your honor by breaking your silence,' Luan said. Coming closer. 'Your employers would be pleased with you. A man cannot be expected to tolerate more than you already have on their behalf.'
Max said nothing.
Luan shook his head. It had become something of a perverse, repetitive drill — the unanswered questions, the beating, and, once that failed, the junk. They were simply exploring their options, Max thought. Reasoning that sooner or later he'd either succumb to the pain or the desire for release. Insidious cocksuckers. Given intravenously, heroin rushed into the brain's pleasure centers within seconds. Addiction would take a while, but the craving for it…
That was the worst part, wasn't it? The part his mind had cringed away from acknowledging, and the reason it had shut itself down.
The craving had already wormed its fine but perceptible roots into him.
Luan came another step forward.
'I already know who you are, and who you work for, leaving only one thing unknown,' he said. 'What were you after, Max Blackburn?'
Silence.
'One last thing,' Luan said. 'Tell me.'
It occurred to Max that he would have been interested in hearing Luan answer that very same question… and that his ignorance on that score was a good indication Kirsten had managed to stay outside his tracking range. You dealt with the uglies of the world long enough, you came to understand they could rationalize the vilest actions imaginable… his present circumstances unfortunately being a clear case in point. Had they gotten her in their talons, they would have used any means available to squeeze her for what they wanted.
No, they didn't have her. Or at least it helped a little to think so.
He kept staring at Luan in silence.
The Thai's face had grown sorrowful. 'It shouldn't matter to me, but I want to give you fair warning. While you may not remember how to use your tongue at the moment, it is certain that you will before I leave here. You understand?'
Max swallowed dryly. No, maybe he didn't understand, not altogether. But he had an awful feeling that he soon would. He'd kept an eye on the big guard, watched him sidle over to the table, reach for a knife sheathed against his leg, then stand there near the burner with the weapon in his hand. It was a kris, its blade about six inches long and shaped like a sine wave….
Something new and different, he thought Luan was standing right in front of him now, regarding him with careful appraisal, his false sympathy only serving to counterpoint the menace in his gaze.
Finally he pursed his lips and discharged a sighing breath.
'No,' he said resignedly. 'I don't think you're going to take my advice after all.'
He turned partially toward the big watchdog.
Nodded.
Max glanced over at the table and felt his stomach tighten.
The watchdog had raised his knife to the flame, was holding it over the flame, its blade rapidly heating up, becoming radiant in the dimness of the barn.
'Xiang,' the Thai said.
The big man turned and advanced on Max, the knife flashing red-hot, almost seeming to pulse in his grip. Out of the corners of his eyes, Max saw two other guards suddenly appear from the shadows, one on either side of him. Each clasped a shoulder and pressed it hard to the chair, pinning him against the backrest. He strained against them, but their hands were as unyielding as the steel cuffs on his wrists.
He tensed throughout his body, his heart striking mallet blows in his chest.
In no hurry, Xiang hung over him a moment like a living, breathing mountain. Then he lowered the kris to his arm and sliced into his skin about an inch above the wrist, making a shallow, razor-thin incision that almost instantly withered around its edges from the heat of the blade. Max was seized with pain as Xiang carved into him, gliding the knife upward beneath his skin, stripping it away little by little, pushing the blade higher… higher… higher…
Squeezing the chair's armrests, Max fought not to scream, clenched his teeth so he wouldn't scream, a raspy, wounded-animal sound tearing out of him instead. Veins bulged in his temples. His head whipped back and forth. He smelled the sickly-sweet odor of his own cauterized flesh and nerve tissue as it peeled away from the rising blade. He thrashed convulsively, heard the legs of the chair pounding the floor, banging on the floor, the loud thump of wood against wood matching the jerky violence of his spasms. He could see nothing beyond the insane, brilliant pain, think of nothing but the scream locked away in his throat, trying to tear free of his throat like a trapped thing with claws and teeth flinging itself against the sides of its cage.
Max only realized the cutting had stopped some thirty seconds after the Thai ordered it done. He thought it must have taken longer than that for Xiang to actually slide the knife out of his arm, flicking a long… six inches long, at least… shaving of skin to the floor.
Finally, the guards who had been holding him down backed off and he sagged into the chair, gulping down huge lungfuls of air, the muscles of his ravaged arm twitching and jumping.
He felt his consciousness draining and willed himself back to clarity.
Luan's face hovered in front of him.
'Your employer, Roger Gordian,' he said. 'Tell me what he wants.'
Max sat there, motionless. Rivulets of sweat poured down his brow and stung his eyes. His arm felt coated with scalding oil.
Luan showed him the syringe.
'Tell me,' he said. 'I can make things better for you.'
Blackburn met his gaze. Inhaled. Exhaled. And then gave him a slow nod.
Luan grinned and leaned in expectantly.
'My boss is… P. T. Barnum.. and I'm looking for freaks for his tent show,' Blackburn said in a weak voice. 'Got them all here,' he said. 'A fat man' — he nodded toward the Thai—'a giant' — he nodded toward Xiang— 'and more geeks… than you can count,' he said, and rotated his head to indicate the guards standing to either side of him.
Luan's grin turned downward and mutated into something horrible and forbidding. He straightened, allowed the full weight of his gaze to press on Blackburn for a moment, then slowly shook his head.
'Stupid,' he said, and then gave Xiang a command in Bahasa, pointing at Max.
Pointing at his face.
Blackburn saw the giant take a step toward him with the kris, the two watchdogs who'd restrained him once more appearing at the fringes of his vision.
He thought about how to prevent them from carving him up alive, decided there was probably nothing he could do, and figured he would try anyway.
Summoning what strength he had left, Max threw his weight forward as hard as he could, and managed to rock to his feet while still cuffed to the chair — his wrists chained to the armrests, the back of the chair a rigid plank against his spine, forcing him to bend at the waist so he was almost doubled over.
The two guards' surprise at his sudden move made them hesitate for only an instant, but that was all the time Blackburn needed to launch himself at the Thai, slamming him backwards into the table where he kept the works. As the heroin packets and still-flaming burner crashed to the floor in a welter, the fire hurling a wavery mesh of shadows about the room, he saw the watchdog on his left come charging straight at him, waited for him to get close enough, and wheeled in a semicircle, catching him across his middle with the upturned chair legs. The watchdog yelped in pain and dropped to his knees.
