Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

Chapter Six

Veil, it's Mongo."

"Mongo! Jesus, I've been trying to reach you for the past three hours. That massacre at your hotel is all over the news here. What the hell's going on over there? Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right," I replied, looking down at the front of my shirt and slacks still spattered and smeared with blood. I had lost track of time. First there had been my feeble efforts to help the victims, and then the hours spent in a police station being grilled as Pierre Moliere had looked on, anger and suspicion in his eyes. I was certain Moliere and the police were convinced, as Insolers had at first been convinced, that I was concealing important information about my role in events, and I had been surprised when they'd finally let me go. But they still had my passport, and I had acquired a not-so-subtle tail comprised of two plainclothes policemen in a pale blue Volvo. "The bullets that killed those people were meant for me."

"Get out of there now, Mongo," Veil said tightly. "When you hang up, go straight to the airport and-" "The police took my passport."

There was a short pause, then, "I'll be there as soon as I can, Mongo. I'll bring you false identity papers."

"You'll bring me nothing, Veil," I replied, noting that I sounded even colder than I'd intended, and I'd certainly intended to sound cold. "False papers wouldn't do me much good, now would they? I'm not exactly inconspicuous. Besides, I wouldn't leave now even if I could. It's too late for that."

"Mongo, listen to me-"

"No, Veil, you listen to me, because I have a few things I want to say to you. You may or may not be willing to talk about Chant Sinclair now, but if you are, I don't care to hear any of it. It's also too late for that. I don't know what's going on over here, and I don't know if I would have acted differently if I'd had more information, but it occurs to me there's a possibility that if you'd leveled with me at the beginning concerning what you knew or suspected about Sinclair, instead of giving me a half-baked warning you must have known I'd ignore, a number of men, women, and children would still be alive, and another man wouldn't be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. I don't care how many people have been looking for Sinclair, or how many years they've been looking; I intend to find the sadistic, murdering son-of-a-bitch, and I intend to kill him before he kills me, or kills anybody else who just happens to be in the line of fire. Any information I need, I'll get myself. I no longer consider you my friend, and I want as little to do with you as possible. Is that straight enough for you?"

"I hear you," Veil answered in a flat tone. "May I say something now?"

"Not quite yet. Now that you know how I feel about our relationship, I'm going to ask you to do something for me. I'd like you to touch base with Mary, reassure her. I'd call her myself, but she must have heard about the killings by now, and I'm not sure how she's handling this. I'm just not ready to talk to her yet, and I'm not sure she'd be able to concentrate on what I have to say. I need certain things done. I'm in pressure city here, and I'm just a bit strung-out. What I need on that end is someone who can keep a clear head in a heavy emergency, and you have the clearest head under pressure of anyone I know. If you don't want to do it after the things I said, just say so. I wanted to be honest with you up front."

"I'll talk to Mary," Veil said in the same flat tone. "What else do you require?"

"I thank you for that," I answered curtly. "Got some paper and a pencil?"

"Just tell me."

"After you talk to Mary, get in touch with Harper in Florida. Hold her off. She's supposed to land here Saturday, which I think is the day after tomorrow, and there's no way I want her anywhere near me. Just tell her I'm safe and that I'll call her as soon as I can."

"Harper's not going to go for it, Mongo." Veil paused, then added drily, "I can hear her now. She's going to call you a recidivist sexist pig for trying to stop her from helping you. You should call her yourself, no matter how strung-out you are."

"I don't need advice, Veil!" I snapped. "Just action! Simply tell her I don't want her around, okay?"

"I'll tell her. How long has it been since you've slept?"

"I really don't know. I'm a little foggy on time right now. I tried to call Garth, but he'd already checked out of his hotel, which means he's probably already in the air. He's due to arrive in a couple of hours at JFK, TWA flight two ninety-one from Brussels. He hasn't heard about what happened, or he'd be here. When he does hear about the massacre and finds out it happened at the hotel where I'm staying, he's going to figure I'm involved, and he's going to hop on the first available flight to Zurich. I would dearly love to have Garth here, but I need him there. I want you to meet him at the airport, be there when he gets off the plane. Mary's supposed to pick him up, so you'll have to coordinate things with her. I'm not sure how you're going to want to handle that, but I'd prefer that you talk to Garth first about the details, so that he understands the situation."

"I'll take care of it, Mongo."

"I think he'll want to stay in New York at the brownstone, because he'll need New York's research facilities. He may also have to call in a lot of IOUs to get the information I need, but he'll know to do it. I need absolutely every scrap of information on John Sinclair he can get, and I don't mean just the stuff that's been printed in the newspapers over the years. He should call Mr. Lippitt and ask him if he can tell us anything about a secret military operation in Vietnam code-named Cooked Goose, and Sinclair's possible involvement in it. In fact, if he can manage it, he should try to get hold of Sinclair's complete military record. Make certain there's nobody around when you talk to Garth about this, and Garth should make certain he calls Lippitt on a secure line. I think we're talking dangerous data here."

"Okay."

"The gunman at the hotel was probably Japanese. He had a big mark on his back that looked as if it had been made by tattooing over and around burn scar tissue. The tattoo was of black flames. It could be a yakuza mark, and I'd like Garth to see if he can identify it."

"Okay."

"You don't want me to repeat anything?"

"That's not necessary. Where can I reach you?"

"There's one other thing. Tell Garth to find out all he can about a man by the name of R. Edgar Blake, and make a note of any countess he may come across in the course of his research endeavors."

"I've got it. Anything else?"

"Not that I can think of offhand."

"Where can I reach you?"

"I'm not sure. I plan on keeping an even lower profile than usual. If the police will allow it, I think I'm going to move to a different hotel; obviously, the wrong people know I'm in this one. But until you hear differently, you can call or leave messages for me here. Just be careful what you say, since the desk clerk is reporting my messages to the police. My phone will probably also be tapped, if it isn't already; I'm making this call from a phone in the hotel lobby. I'll get back to you. Leave your-machine on."

"If I go out, I'll make sure there's someone I can trust here to answer the phone; that person will always know where to reach me.

"Yeah." I sighed. The anger and resentment toward Veil had drained out of me, and I was now grievously sorry for the words I had spoken to this man to whom I owed so much, including my life. I wished now I could retreat a few steps back along that crooked, pitted road of venomous words, but I didn't know how. "Thanks, Veil," I concluded wearily.

"I'll take care of things on this end, Mongo. I'll call Mary now and ask her to pick me up on her way to the airport, and I'll make sure Garth gets your message. If you move out before you hear from either of us, make sure you leave a number where we can reach you." "Right."

"May I say something now?"

"You may say something now."

"I want you to go to the Amnesty International offices in Geneva and talk to a man there by the name of Gerard Patreaux. He's an A.I. regional director." "He a friend of yours?"

"No. Unless he's familiar with my paintings, my name won't mean anything to him. But I know who he is, and I have reason to believe he can tell you things about John Sinclair nobody else can-if he chooses to do so. My suggestion is to tell him everything that's happened and then see what he has to say. And get some rest. Remember that you're not the one who killed those people."

"All right, Veil," I said quietly. I paused, swallowed hard. "Look, I want to say-"

"Keep your head down, Mongo," Veil interrupted, and hung up.

It seemed like his way of telling me the bridges of our friendship I'd burned couldn't be rebuilt.

A few hours of sleep gave me a second wind. John Sinclair wasn't a subject I wanted to discuss over the telephone with a man I'd never met, so I called the Amnesty International office in Geneva and, in my fractured French, asked for an appointment with Gerard Patreaux. Fortunately, Frederickson and Frederickson had, over the years, done a sizable amount of good works, pro bono, for the global human rights watch group, and-more fortunate still-Patreaux knew it. Patreaux, who spoke English with virtually no accent, said he would be delighted to meet with me and graciously invited me to his home that evening for dinner at eight. Despite the restrictions on my travel, I said I'd be there and wrote down the directions.

In the car, I told Carlo I wanted to be in Geneva within two and a half hours; the problem was how to elude my watchers in their pale blue Volvo while I was being driven around in a half-block-long limousine. Carlo's simple yet effective solution was to drop me off at the entrance to a chic restaurant known for its good food and leisurely dining. I went in, said "Ciao" as I walked right past the startled maitre d', kept going through the dining room into the kitchen, where I waved to the surprised cooks before proceeding out the back door, where Carlo was waiting for me in the narrow driveway used by delivery trucks.

At ten minutes to eight, Carlo was pulling the limousine up to the curb in front of Gerard Patreaux's modest stone house in a modest neighborhood just outside the Geneva city limits. Although Carlo insisted he had already eaten a large lunch earlier in the day, I knew he had not. I tried to get him to take some money to go and buy himself something to eat, but he refused. Gerard Patreaux suddenly appeared in the doorway of his home and solved the problem by inviting Carlo to come in and have a meal in the kitchen. This offer Carlo accepted. With my chauffeur ensconced in the kitchen and being served by a cook, Patreaux and I proceeded into his small study for drinks.

The Swiss was a slight man, five feet six or seven, with a gentle, caring face and expressive, light blue eyes. He poured himself a glass of wine, while I asked for a Scotch on the rocks. We chatted for a few minutes in the book-lined study, and I seized the first pause in the conversation to get to the reason for my surreptitious journey.

"Mr. Patreaux," I said carefully, setting my drink down on a stone coaster on the stone table next to me, "I have a reason for being here that I didn't want to mention over the phone. As a matter of fact, I could use your help."

He smiled, shrugged. "But of course. How may I be of service to you?"

"I need to talk to you about John Sinclair."

It seemed to me that the question startled him for just a moment. He set his drink down, patted his mouth with a paper cocktail napkin, then stared at me quizzically. "You mean John Sinclair the terrorist?"

"The same."

He continued to stare at me, his face revealing nothing more than puzzlement. "I'm afraid I don't understand," he said at last.

"I was told by a friend of mine that you might have vital information about Sinclair that I could use. It's very important to me."

Gerard Patreaux shook his head. "Who is this friend?"

"His name's Veil Kendry."

He thought about it, said, "I don't believe I know a Veil Kendry. It's an unusual name. I would remember."

"He said you didn't know him."

"Then why should he think I would know anything about John Sinclair that could not be found in the newspapers?"

"Mr. Patreaux, I don't have the slightest idea."

"Are you certain he meant me?"

"He definitely meant you."

The Amnesty International official thought about it some more, then raised his arms in an elegant gesture of helplessness. He was beginning to look slightly pained, and I was beginning to feel more than a little foolish. My anger toward Veil was beginning to build again.

"Did this friend of yours give any indication of what it was that he thought I could tell you?"

"No, sir." And he damn well should have.

"Perhaps he was playing a joke on you?"

"No," I said, my renewed anger at Veil now blending with frustration at the thought that I was probably wasting my time in addition to risking arrest and incarceration for violating the ban on my traveling outside Zurich.

"May I ask why gathering information about John Sinclair is important to you?"

I proceeded to fill Gerard Patreaux in on the sequence of events that had occurred since I had acquiesced to Emmet P. Neuberger's plea that I come to Switzerland to check on the investigation into the theft of his foundation's money. Then I told him about the death I was leaving in my wake. I had rather hoped that my narrative might jog his memory, but the only emotions apparent on the man's face were pain and pity when I described the bullet-ripped bodies of the people at the hotel who had taken the bullets fired at me. He had been sitting very straight as I spoke, his eyes cast down. After I had finished, he sighed heavily, then looked up into my eyes.

"Dr. Frederickson," he said softly, "I can appreciate the grave circumstances which brought you here, and your present state of mind. The events are. . so recent. You must be in a state of great shock. I deeply regret that your friend was misinformed."

It was my turn to shrug. "Yeah, well, that's not your fault."

"But you will still share a meal with me?"

There was a sour taste in my mouth and a knot in my stomach the liquor had done nothing to ease. I wasn't hungry. The fact of the matter was that I wanted nothing more than to go back to my hotel and go to bed. However, I was unwilling to offend the kind and gracious man who was my host, and so I resolved to try to be a gracious guest. I said that of course we would share a meal, and we rose and went into his dining room.

The fine dinner was built around thick Veal chops, and I found I had more appetite than I'd thought. Soon we were on a first-name basis, and I was glad I had come, despite my disappointment at not getting what I'd come for. I enjoyed the company of this man, and the meal and conversation provided a welcome respite from the tension and vivid memories of violent death that waited for me back in Zurich. Throughout dinner, as we chatted about the work of Amnesty International and other things, I thought I caught the other man watching me with an intensity that was incongruous with the relative lightness of our conversation, as if he were gauging, perhaps judging, me.

"Mongo," Patreaux said to me as he poured coffee for both of us, then lit a French cigarette of aromatic black tobacco, "if I may say so, I still don't quite understand why you are so intent on investigating Sinclair. This is clearly a police matter, and I'm told that Interpol, the Zurich police, and even the Swiss Army are pursuing the man with utmost vigor. What do you expect to accomplish that those combined forces can't?"

"They just want to catch him. I. . have something else in mind."

Patreaux dragged deeply on his cigarette, then blew a thin stream of smoke out the side of his mouth as he raised his eyebrows slightly. "Ah," he said in a curiously neutral tone, as if he did not wish to insult me by pointing out how ridiculous I must have sounded. "But how can you ever hope to find him in order to accomplish this 'something else' you have in mind?"

"Gerard, at the moment I don't have the foggiest notion. But the fact is that I'm highly motivated, since he seems to want to kill me. I don't know why, but I have the feeling that the key to understanding everything that's happening is in his past. If I can find out more about that past, it may give me the answer to the question of why he wants to kill me, and it may also give me some insight into how and where he may be vulnerable. It's a pretty faint hope, but it's the only one I have. I don't much care for playing the role of passive target, so I'm trying to find some way of going on the offensive. Poking around in his past is the only means of attack I have right now. If I can understand more about him, maybe I can find a way to defeat him."

"I see," Patreaux said distantly as he gazed over my head, as if there were something or someone behind me. He drew in another lungful of smoke, then abruptly stubbed out his cigarette, looked up at me, and smiled brightly. "Well, then, perhaps you would care for some brandy?"

'Thank you, Gerard," I said, rising from the table, "but I'm going to pass on the brandy. I think it's time I went home. You've been a wonderful host, it was a lovely meal, and I thank you."

I turned and started toward the kitchen to get Carlo, stopped when Patreaux said, "It's occurred to me just now that I may know what it was your friend was referring to when he said I might be able to tell you something about Chant Sinclair."

"Really?" I said, turning back to face the other man. The dinner, liquor, and talk had mellowed me, but now the tightness in my stomach had returned; but it was the kind of tension that hope can sometimes bring, and it was not unwelcome. "And what would that be?"

"You will have some brandy, then?"

"Sure," I replied in a neutral tone as I returned to my chair and sat down, watching him now as carefully as I thought he had been watching me all evening. "I'm not driving."

Patreaux rose and went to an antique, carved wooden sideboard, opened it, and took out a decanter filled with a dark amber liquor. He poured the brandy into two balloon snifters, handed one to me. He did not sit back down at the table, but stepped back against the wall next to the sideboard, where his face was half hidden in shadow.

"What occurred to me is that there's a story about Sinclair you may not have heard," Patreaux said casually. "As a matter of fact, it involves Amnesty International. I don't know how much of it is true, but it does contradict the general belief that Sinclair has never been captured. I can't verify the veracity of the story, and I frankly can't see how it could be of any use to you."

"I'd still like to hear it, Gerard."

The slight man now emerged from the shadows near the sideboard, sat back down across from me. He sipped at his brandy, then set the snifter down to his right. "One of Amnesty International's chief concerns is, of course, the abuse of human rights- especially the use of torture. Torture is a common practice in many countries, but what is confounding is that today there are upwards of fifty-five countries with governments that officially sanction the use of torture by the police and armed forces. Adding to the horror of this situation is the fact that, in most cases of torture, the aim is not to extract information, but to break the bodies and minds of dissidents; torture becomes a tool of political terror and oppression. The secret police will pick up a known dissident, break him or her beyond repair but still living, and then release that individual back into society, where the condition of the victim's body and mind will serve as a warning to other dissidents of what could happen to them if they do not mend their subversive ways."

The Swiss paused, either to gather his thoughts or to give me a chance to ask questions. I remained silent, watching him. I knew more than a bit about torture and its long-term effects, perhaps even more than Gerard Patreaux, but I didn't care to talk about it.

Patreaux took another sip of brandy, continued, "But there are, of course, cases where the purpose of torture is to extract information the authorities feel is vital to state security, or whatever, from an individual who feels it is equally vital to keep the information from the authorities, and would much prefer to die rather than talk. For these people, the perceived emotional anguish they would suffer from talking is greater than the physical agony they are suffering at the moment. If such a person is trained to resist torture, if he or she can successfully evade and dissemble under great duress, then the authorities and their torturers have a real problem. Such a person may very much wish to die, especially after the torturers' first pass at him or her, and this desire can often speed up the process. There is only so much agony the human mind and body can endure at one time before the nervous system begins to shut down, resulting in unconsciousness or a general numbing process. This kind of situation can be even further complicated when the authorities, for one reason or another, must eventually exhibit the victim to the outside world, and it cannot be obvious that the victim has been tortured. This is the problem faced by some renegade police departments in your Western democracies: torture may be used to extract confessions, or sometimes merely to punish, but care must be taken not to leave marks on the victim that could prove embarrassing at a subsequent hearing or trial.

"For these difficult cases, the average torturer-one who knows only how to break bones, burn flesh, or tear out fingernails until the victim talks-just won't get the job done. Since the torturers cannot risk the premature-from their point of view- death of the victim, a specialist is often brought in, someone who can manage to keep retuning the victim's nervous system to register a maximum degree of pain while keeping the victim alive. Very often this person is a specially trained physician. We call these people torture doctors.

"The most successful and notorious torture doctor was a man by the name of Richard Krowl, a renegade Harvard Medical School graduate who, at one time, was considered a brilliant researcher into the causes and treatment of chronic pain. He ended up a torture doctor after he was barred from both research and general practice as a result of conducting secret, unethical, and illegal research experiments at some university. apparently, he really believed he was conducting important research that could be done in no other way." Patreaux paused, shook his head in disgust. "You know, it's really quite remarkable how some people can rationalize virtually anything they do, no matter how vile."

"Indeed," I agreed quietly.

"After his teaching credentials and license were lifted, Krowl started free-lancing as a torture doctor for various Central and Latin American dictatorships. He ended up with his own special torture institute, if you will, a training facility for torturers located on an island twenty miles off the coast of Chile that was financed, for the most part, by the right-wing governments he was working for. We called it Torture Island, and it was there that Krowl and his staff of resident torturers carried on his so-called research into pain to his heart's content, using as subjects political prisoners his backers had sent there for no other reason than punishment and death. It was also used as a training school for would-be torturers sent there by the sponsoring countries. Krowl would also, on occasion, accept responsibility for extracting information from difficult subjects sent to him by any government or government agency willing to pay his reportedly very high fee. In fact, we have reason to believe that Krowl's services were contracted for, on more than one occasion, by such unlikely and mismatched clients as MI5, the Mossad, the CIA, and the KGB."

"But you could never prove it."

"Correct. Ironically, not a few of the torturers on Krowl's staff were former police officers from various countries who had been trained in interrogation techniques in the United States as part of law enforcement exchange programs. Americans, on the whole, aren't all that much interested in torture, as long as it's the citizenry of some other country who are being tortured. Your Congress routinely votes financial aid to right-wing governments widely known to employ torture as a means of political repression. For that reason, in a very real sense Torture Island was largely financed by the recycled tax dollars of American citizens. We felt the situation would change if we could obtain incontrovertible evidence that American citizens had been delivered into the hands of foreign torturers by an agency of their own government. We believed that the outcry in the American media would be sufficient to force the offending governments to withdraw their funding-and use-of Richard Krowl and thus shut down Torture Island.

"The problems involved in obtaining proof were formidable. Because he fancied himself a serious researcher, it was assumed that Dr. Krowl kept voluminous records on the island, but Torture Island was twenty miles offshore, in shark-infested waters, surrounded by jagged coral reefs, with sheer escarpments on all sides. In short, it was inaccessible by any means of transportation except helicopter. There was one scheduled helicopter run per week, to bring in supplies and ferry prisoners, and the skies were carefully watched the rest of the time by heavily armed guards."

"What about the testimony of former prisoners?" I asked, intrigued by this story of Richard Krowl and Torture Island, but wondering what any of it had to do with John Sinclair.

"The identity of any prisoner sent to Torture Island was always a carefully guarded secret. Many, probably most, of the victims sent there for interrogation were subsequently murdered, probably fed to the sharks. Those marked for return to their societies, even had we been able to identify and find them, would have had their minds so mutilated by the experience that their testimony would have been useless. So, for years, all we were left with were the persistent rumors."

Patreaux had finished his brandy, and he rose to pour himself another. I waited, increasingly impatient to hear some mention of John Sinclair, but reluctant to interrupt the flow of his words with questions. He poured more brandy into my glass, then began to slowly pace back and forth, his face passing in and out of the shadow cast by a standing lamp next to the sideboard.

"There was one outsider who did manage to get on the island," he continued in a tone so soft I had to strain to hear him. "According to the story, he got there by posing as a student sent there for one of Krowl's torture seminars by a Latin American government. In fact, he was an American investigator for Amnesty International. Reportedly, he was actually able to steal a large number of Krowl's files, and he somehow managed to escape from the island with this documentation. Unfortunately, he never got a chance to pass on any of it. He was captured by Krowl's security forces before he could get out of Chile. He was taken back to the island and tortured to death-not to gain information, of course, but to punish, and for use as an object lesson for any other investigator who might be tempted to try the same thing. Amnesty International received his remains in a sealed vacuum container-Krowl wanted us to be able to determine the details of what had been done to him before the corpse deteriorated. An autopsy revealed that he had taken a very long time to die. He had been partially devoured, eaten alive, and the bite marks were human. There were signs of crushed bones, charred flesh, punctured organs, unnatural surgery; so many unspeakable things had been done to him, and all as a warning to the rest of us who wanted to put Krowl and his torture institute out of business. Rumor had it that the man tortured to death was a friend of John Sinclair's."

I sat up straighter in my chair. "What was the man's name?"

"Harry Gray," Patreaux replied as he abruptly stopped pacing and turned to face me.

"This isn't just a story, is it, Gerard? This actually happened."

"I present it as a story, rumor, because there are so many details that can't be confirmed. Yes, there really was an American A.I. investigator by the name of Harry Gray, and yes, he was tortured to death and his remains returned to us in a vacuum container. Gray had been after Krowl for years. Obviously, A.I. would never authorize one of its investigators to place himself in such a perilous situation, so the notion that he got on the island by posing as a seminar participant is pure speculation, as is the rumor that he was a friend of Sinclair's. The rest of the story, if you care to hear it, also falls into the category of pure speculation, rumor. There is no way to corroborate any of it."

"I'm sorry I interrupted you, Gerard. I definitely want to hear the rest of it. Please go on."

"There was a rumor that not only was Harry Gray a friend of Sinclair's but that, for years, Sinclair had been providing him with both information and documentation concerning human rights abuses around the world."

I thought about it, shook my head. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I get the picture. Why would Sinclair do that? Talk about human rights abuses; Sinclair is a torturer and murderer himself."

"Obviously, I have no answer for you; I am simply repeating the rumors. However, if it's true that Sinclair, for whatever reason, did want to pass on information about other people's criminal activities, he would certainly be in a position to do so. Allow me to make a few observations. While it's true that all of Sinclair's activities seem cloaked in violence, violence does not appear to play a key part in the operations themselves. As with his theft of the Cornucopia funds, he virtually always seems to rely on treachery and deceit, not force, to accomplish his primary goals."

"You're saying he kills people because he feels like it, as a kind of celebration for pulling off another successful scam, not because he needs to."

"That would seem an accurate assessment. His operations are very carefully planned, meticulously executed. Often, the victims are themselves corrupt. He seems to purposely choose targets- be they individuals, groups, corporations, or even entire governments-that have something to hide. Because of the nature of the way he initially sets up his operations, through infiltration, he is usually in a position to find out about others' criminal activities and to obtain incriminating documents. Why he would choose to pass on such information to someone like Harry Gray, or anyone else, is a question probably best left to the psychiatrists.

"In any case, the rumors surrounding this incident say that when Sinclair learned of his friend's death, he vowed vengeance on Richard Krowl and the rest of the torturers on that island. To that end, so the story goes, he managed to get himself on the island, just as Harry Gray had done."

"By masquerading as a participant in one of Krowl's torture seminars?"

"No. After the Harry Gray incident, screening procedures for participants had been tightened considerably."

"But you said the island was virtually impregnable."

"He had himself delivered."

"Delivered?"

"By the CIA-so the story goes. You see, there is a lot of speculation that Chant Sinclair is privy to a great many secrets he's not supposed to know, and that the CIA is desperate to make certain Sinclair never shares those secrets with anyone. That's one theory. Another theory is that the CIA wants to know Sinclair's secrets. If we assume the first theory to be the correct one-the CIA knows what Sinclair knows, and wants to make certain the information never becomes public-then it stands to reason that, if Sinclair were captured, the CIA's first priority would be to find out if Sinclair had indeed shared his secrets with anyone, or if there might be a cache of pertinent documents that could surface after his death. Naturally, Sinclair couldn't be expected to just tell them what they wanted to know, and he is a very tough man. The CIA would probably be perfectly willing to torture him themselves, but they couldn't be certain they were up to the job of getting the truth out of him before they killed him. They would require the services of a top expert interrogator-torturer if they hoped to break Sinclair. The point is that Sinclair wanted to get on Torture Island, and he correctly guessed that the CIA would pack him up and send him there if they ever got their hands on him."

"Jesus Christ," I said softly. "You're saying he engineered his own capture, knowing he would almost certainly be sent to a place where he would be tortured?"

"So the story goes, Mongo. In his judgment, it was the only way he could get on the island and infiltrate Krowl's organization-as a prisoner. Supposedly, the man who actually arrested him was an Interpol inspector by the name of Bo Wahlstrom."

"The same man Sinclair tortured to death?"

"The same."

Connections. Wheels turning within wheels within wheels behind clouds of smoke. A hall of mirrors. I raised my brandy snifter to my lips, found it was empty. Patreaux produced the decanter, came around to my side of the table, and poured me a generous refill. After he had finished, he lit another cigarette and stared at me, as if he were waiting for me to ask a question. I obliged.

"Supposedly, nobody knows what Sinclair really looks like, so how did he manage to get himself arrested? Did he just walk up to Wahlstrom and say, 'Here I am'?"

"Hardly. That would have raised suspicions in some people's minds that Sinclair was up to something. As a matter of fact, Sinclair arranged for Wahlstrom to arrest him by prevailing upon a friend to inform on him."

"What's the friend's name?"

"I've never heard it mentioned. If there's any truth at all to the story, the identity of the friend who informed on him must have died with Bo Wahlstrom."

I stared into the amber depths of my brandy, pondering the kind of courage it would take to risk not only death but prolonged, indescribable pain administered by the world's most accomplished torturers, in the incredible hope that he could somehow manage to turn the tables on these men, despite the shackles on his wrists and ankles. Now that, I thought, was self-confidence.

I found Gerard Patreaux's tale very odd and disquieting. A man who would risk so much to avenge the death of a friend and shut down a torture factory would not seem a likely candidate to go around burning out the eyes of innocent people, or send a gunman to shoot up a hotel sidewalk crowded with men, women, and children. Yet, this was the first time I had ever heard anything said about John Sinclair that even remotely hinted that there might be another side to him; all of the stories I'd read or heard focused on the death and torture for which he was responsible.

Which also led me back to the big question of where Veil, who had suggested I come here, had heard the story, if such was the case, and why Veil hadn't told it to me himself.

Finally, there was the elaborateness and detail of the story, which somehow made me doubt Patreaux's claim that he had thought of it only as I was leaving. I now believed he had been carefully watching me all evening, vetting me in his mind, trying to determine if I was worthy to hear this account. It was almost as if I'd had to pass some kind of test; having succeeded, being told this bizarre story about John Sinclair was my reward. It was all very strange.

Wheels within wheels. Nothing will be as it seems.

"There's a simple way to verify this story," I said quietly. "If Sinclair actually was arrested by Wahlstrom, then Interpol would have a record of it."

Patreaux smiled thinly, shook his head. "If such a record does indeed exist, I would not count on ever seeing it."

"Why not?"

"Because it would be so intensely embarrassing to many of the involved parties, on any number of counts. First, you must remember that Interpol is still trying to live down the fact that it virtually served as an arm of the SS during the war. They would certainly not want it known that they voluntarily, and secretly, turned an international criminal, one who is wanted in dozens of countries, over to the Americans as a kind of special favor. For its part, the CIA would certainly not want it suggested that they even condone torture, much less that they turned over someone-even a man as vile as John Sinclair-to specialists like those who worked on Torture Island. Finally, none of the parties involved would want it known that they had once actually had Sinclair in their clutches and had allowed him to escape. If the story is true, and we will probably never know for certain, it seems Sinclair accomplished everything he had set out to do. I can report to you as fact that Richard Krowl is dead, and Torture Island no longer exists; and we all know that Chant Sinclair, at least for the moment, is alive and well, running all over Switzerland giving various law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the world fits."

I put my hand over my glass as Patreaux raised the decanter to offer me more brandy. "Is that it, Gerard?"

"That's it. Like most of the legends surrounding Sinclair, virtually none of the important parts can be substantiated. Now, may I ask if you think that hearing this little tale can be of any help to you?"

"I don't know, Gerard," I replied absently, trying and failing to see through the clouds of smoke what engine, if any, the turning wheels were running. "I just don't know."

I rose, thanked him again for the fine meal and conversation, and he escorted me to the door. My belly was full, but my mind felt empty; I felt sure I was missing things, not seeing connections I should be making. Veil's behavior still baffled me, and I felt I was leaving something important behind me in this house, with this man. I had the distinct feeling that Gerard Patreaux had been trying to tell me even more than he had-or that he had told me and I'd missed it.

The Amnesty International administrator opened the door for me, but I didn't move; I stood in the doorway, looking out into a night aglow with pale moonlight. Carlo was sitting in the limousine, reading a magazine by the car's interior light. He seemed to sense my presence; he looked up and saw me, put aside his magazine, and turned on the car's engine. The haunting feeling that Gerard Patreaux had left something vital out of his story had grown overwhelming.

I slowly turned back, asked, "Are you the friend Sinclair prevailed upon to inform on him, Gerard?"

Shadows moved in the man's expressive blue eyes, but he did not otherwise react. If anything, he almost gave the impression that he had been expecting the question and was vaguely surprised that it had taken me so long to ask it. "You are, of course, making a joke," he said, and laughed.

"If it's true, Gerard, why can't you just come out and tell me? If Veil knows about these things, why couldn't he just come out and tell me?"

"Perhaps your friend didn't want to waste your time repeating what may be only fairy tales and gossip," the other man said evenly.

I started to protest, stopped when Patreaux raised his hand. "Mongo," he continued, "even if what I told you is a fairy tale, like most fairy tales it may have a moral. The moral of the story I told you about John Sinclair risking his life on Torture Island to avenge a friend could be that you shouldn't believe everything you read or hear about this man. Things aren't always what they seem."

"I'll bear that in mind, Gerard," I said, shaking his hand once more before going to the car. Before getting in, I looked back toward the house, where the slight figure of Gerard Patreaux was silhouetted in the open doorway, black against light. I waved, but the figure remained still. I got into the limousine, and Carlo drove off into the night.