Second Strike

CHAPTER 58

^{NORTHERN VIRGINIA,}

^{AUGUST 17, 10:22 A.M. EDT}

The Butcher slowly arranged his instruments of torture on the table before the subject, believing from long experience that the revelation of each was torture in and of itself, the subject’s mind conjuring horrors nearly as awful as the physical pain to come. The Butcher was a master, taking great pride in his craft. He had done this scores of times before over nearly two dozen years. He knew the human body as well as any surgeon or physiologist. He had tweaked and adjusted his repertoire to inspire maximum dread, unbearable agony. And an irresistible compulsion on the part of the subject to cooperate.

The instruments varied slightly from subject to subject. The Butcher had an instinct regarding such things, refined by experience. Judging from the subject’s appearance and what the Butcher had been told about the man, the Butcher suspected he might require more than one session, each fairly protracted. But he was confident he’d extract any information, however useless it might be, before the event was scheduled to occur.

The subject was fit and densely muscled, thick cords of veins bulging in his neck and arms. Pounding and pulverizing implements such as mallets, vises, and hammers would be less effective than piercing or slicing instruments. Accordingly, the Butcher selected a nine-inch-long stainless steel needle and placed it on the table. Its slow insertion in the ear canal or eyeball could, obviously, inflict horrible pain, the shock of which often resulted in unconsciousness—counterproductive to the objective. Consequently, the Butcher employed the needle as a primer. He would prick the ear canal or eyelid enough to elicit a shriek and a pearl of blood, but immediately withdraw it, the promise of worse pain to come.

To the right of the needle, the Butcher placed a finely honed, slightly parabolic six-inch razor with which he would peel off the subject’s epidermis, an endeavor that required skill as well as patience.

His mentor had insisted that for maximum pain the razor should first be applied to the scalp at the front hairline, scaling the skin backward over the skull. But the Butcher found this to cause too much blood to stream into the subject’s eyes, producing a disorientation that impeded eliciting useful information. Instead, the Butcher preferred slicing across the back of the subject’s hand at the knuckles and slowly pulling the skin toward the elbow, pausing every few centimeters to use the third object he’d placed on the table—a simple propane torch.

The appearance of the torch almost invariably generated panic in his subject, but its actual purpose was to cauterize the area from which the skin was pulled back: slice, pull, pause, torch; slice, pull, pause, torch. Effective, even if the acrid smell of seared flesh, blood, and bone sometimes made him wretch.

The Butcher would need no other instruments. He sat a few feet away from and opposite the subject, whose ankles, waist, and wrists were strapped respectively to the legs, back, and arms of a high-backed metal chair. He observed the subject almost clinically for a few moments, somewhat fascinated by his taciturn expression. Probably catatonic from fear, thought the Butcher. Unsurprising.

He wondered how long the subject would live.

The smile had been fleeting, so much so that Garin couldn’t be sure it had actually been there.

The smile—if it had been there—had been replaced by an analytical expression, that of a predator assessing the vulnerabilities of its prey.

Garin conducted his own analysis: He was in trouble. His hands and feet were bound to a heavy iron chair by multiple swaths of heavy-grade duct tape. His torso was bound upright against the back of the chair. Save for the implements the grotesque-looking man had just arrayed on the metal table, the room was empty of anything Garin could possibly use as a weapon, and there was no possibility of reaching such implements. The room itself was approximately eight feet by twelve, consisting of cinder-block walls and poured concrete. The door was metal and looked several inches thick. The concrete floor was covered with a sheet of plastic.

The fog that had enshrouded his brain had lifted quickly, but he still had a vague, unsettled feeling throughout much of his body. The last thing he could remember was lying on the ground with his arm around Bulkvadze’s neck, the giant’s weight suddenly becoming inert. Garin had no recollection of confronting or even seeing the grotesque-looking man, and he was sure if he had he wouldn’t have forgotten him.

“You killed Bulkvadze,” the Butcher informed him in a voice that surprised Garin. It was urbane and cultured, with perfect diction. Incongruous, coming from a face that brutal. It was tinged with a Russian accent so slight that only someone who heard the language regularly would catch it. “Unexpected given the substantial size disparity and his initial tactical advantage. Normally, I would have given him four-to-one odds of defeating you within ten seconds.”

Garin’s expression remained taciturn, inscrutable.

“You should be dead, not Bulkvadze.”

“Speed kills,” Garin said, his voice low and quiet.

“That has been my experience as well. But there are times when death can come slowly and deliberately. This shall be one of those occasions.”

Garin’s face remained inscrutable.

“I suspect you think that my purpose is to pry information from you, to employ the judicious application of pain to determine what you and your government know about what we are doing and how you plan to deal with it.” The Butcher picked up the needle from the table. “That is a bit theatrical. Although I will secure information from you, my charge is simply to kill you if Bulkvadze failed. How I do so is up to me.”

Garin knew the purpose for the grotesque-looking man picking up the needle was to foreshadow pain, to instill fear and apprehension. Garin kept his gaze focused on the man’s eyes.

“You have no information useful to us,” the Butcher continued. He paused and cocked his head slightly in reconsideration. “Perhaps that is an overstatement. You may have some information, but it is likely to be of marginal consequence. Nonetheless, to be thorough I will extract it before we are done here.”

The Butcher tapped the tip of the needle with his thumb. A bead of blood appeared. Garin kept his eyes focused on the grotesque-looking man’s face but saw the needle in the periphery of his field of vision.

“What shall I call you?” Garin asked.

“Why do you care?”

“Decency,” Garin replied softly. “It’s only proper to know the name of someone you’re going to kill.”

“Delightful,” the Butcher responded, though his voice contained not even a hint of mirth. “We’ve already met in a manner of speaking. I believe you were introduced to some of my artwork in the nuclear facility at Yongbyon. We knew you were coming. We know what you are going to do before you do. So I was charged with eliminating any evidence of Russian assistance to the regime’s nuclear program.” A pause. “I have no name, Garin, although I suspect somewhere in the vast databases of your intelligence services there is a rather unimaginative reference to someone known as ‘the Butcher.’”

“Quite unimaginative,” Garin agreed. “But it will make for an interesting gravestone. A conversation starter.”

“Your attempt at bravado is understandable but misplaced. It will not change the futility of your circumstance. I assume by now you’ve determined that you are in the house you were watching. We are in a subbasement. This room was specially constructed to be soundproof. Steel-reinforced walls. Did you know that for years Saddam Hussein maintained such a room in the basement of the Iraqi consulate in the middle of New York City? His agents would torture Iraqi expatriates in that room, those with relatives still in Iraq. A superb way to control the population back home. It was only discovered after your country’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. The floor of the room was covered with thick plastic to catch the blood, intestines, and other body parts of the subjects.”

The Butcher caught the slight flick of Garin’s eyes toward the floor.

“You expect that your law enforcement will, eventually, come to the house because you’ve alerted them to my handiwork in the woods in back. They will not detect the entrance to this room. Regardless, we will be finished before they step foot in the house.” The Butcher shook his head. “No one will hear your screams, Garin.”

“Nor yours.”

The Butcher sighed. “Dispense with shows of insolence. I’ve been briefed about you. Primarily by Bor. You are a gifted operator. Tough. But the evidence shows Bor outwitted you. He is at least as talented and tough as you.”

“But you are not.”

“I have been around much longer than Bor. I have seen things neither of you have. I know toughness. I suspect you envision yourself as tough as Lieutenant Nikolai Garin. You are not.”

The Butcher noted a slight quiver of Garin’s mouth.

“You revere your grandfather. He exhibited insolence of a different kind. Insolence toward the communist state. That is hazardous even when you are not an officer in the Red Army. So he was detained by the NKVD at the end of the war in Germany. But he escaped through the barbed wire and past the guard dogs. I am told he evaded search teams, traveling nearly one hundred miles by foot through the snow and arriving in the American sector near death. You see him as heroic and you wish to emulate him.”

“Not really. I much prefer to emulate a braying jackass like you. More entertaining.”

“I confess I am unfamiliar with the colloquialism. But I, of course, recognize sarcasm when I hear it.” The Butcher drew his mangled face to within inches of Garin’s. “Nikolai Garin was a coward. He fled his country for a false promise of freedom. How ironic he came to this country. Every day your leaders erode those freedoms. You are like a frog in a pot on the stove; that is a colloquialism I do know.”

“You should also know that here in the US, mouthwash comes in a variety of delicious flavors.”

The Butcher pressed the tip of the needle directly on Garin’s throat. Not enough to draw blood.

“American politicians make vapid statements about torture to appease certain constituencies. Some assert torture is ineffective. Those in our business know better. Of course, as with everything in life, it must be done correctly. But used correctly, it is nearly foolproof.”

Garin remained absolutely still.

“Although, in honesty, definitions are important. What you Americans define as torture would be considered discomfort in my world. Discomfort is not foolproof. You are not about to experience discomfort, Garin. You are about to experience hell. Delayed retribution for your grandfather’s treason.”

“He was a greater patriot, a better Russian, than you. But he died an American.”

Finally, the Butcher thought, a reaction. Emotion. Now was the time for pain.

“There are more than one hundred major clusters of nerves in the average human body. Medical journals reciting research into pain management maintain that these clusters are the body’s primary locus of physical pain. They are incorrect. I have studied pain for forty years. In my experience pain is largely psychological. But in terms of inflicting maximum physical pain, the most vulnerable areas are not nerve clusters but locations adjacent thereto. It is as if the chemical reactions that produce the pain signal send the electrical impulse toward the cluster, where it is whipped toward the various nerve tributaries, accelerated and magnified in the process, like a comet whipping around a star, gathering debris, growing and quickening…”

“I gather your droning is part of the torture.”

The Butcher pressed the needle a millimeter into Garin’s throat, just perforating the skin. The location almost universally generated a spike of fear in the subject.

Garin didn’t flinch. The Butcher raised his eyebrows, somewhat impressed.

“Stoicism is a virtue indeed, but it is useless in this regard. That was, literally, a pinprick. A small preview of coming attractions. Soon your limbs and organs will be strewn about the floor. You will scream despite your best efforts.”

“Music to your ears, no doubt.”

The Butcher nodded. “A rhapsody. I wager I can inflict pain in such a manner that your screams will come in different notes and chords. Allegro and adagio. Once I made a Pashtun tribesman unwittingly perform an aria. So, a piece of advice: Holding back the screams is futile, and will only amplify the pain.”

Garin resolved to ignore that advice to his last breath. The Butcher watched as an unsettling look came over Garin’s face. It was a look the Butcher couldn’t remember having seen in a subject before. Beyond determination. Ferocity. As if the subject was the one inflicting the pain.

Let’s see how quickly that look turns to terror, the Butcher thought.

The Butcher withdrew the needle and glanced at the propane tank, as if giving brief consideration to dispensing with preliminaries and escalating the proceedings. He caught Garin noticing the glance. That should be sufficient.

Yet the unsettling look remained.

The Butcher repositioned the needle just outside Garin’s right ear and held it there for several moments. He saw Garin wince slightly. Anticipation was part of the torture. In those few moments the subject’s mind would imagine the precise quality and extent of the pain. The muscles would tense, particularly in the neck and jaw; breathing would become rapid and shallow. The heart would pound and blood would rush to the site of the impending perforation.

Garin gazed steadily at his tormentor’s face. The Butcher moved the needle a few millimeters closer, enough that Garin would notice the movement of the arm holding the implement. Garin blinked once slowly and clenched his jaws hard, resolved to suppress any scream, however involuntary, and keep it buried deep in his lungs. Don’t give the son of a bitch the satisfaction. Show him what Pop showed the monsters of the NKVD. Not just courage, defiance.

The Butcher slowly inserted the needle into Garin’s ear canal, being careful not to touch any portion of the skin and cartilage of its surrounding walls to heighten the trepidation. He manipulated the implement with the care and deftness of a neurosurgeon. The metal generated a ringing whine in Garin’s ear, so soft and ephemeral he was unsure if it was real or imaginary, but his mind fixated upon it defensively, a distraction from imminent agony.

Garin disciplined himself to continue staring at the Butcher’s face. His jaw was rigid but the remainder of his facial muscles revealed nothing to the Butcher, who concluded he would not prevail in a purely psychological battle, at least not this one. Garin was implacable. Severe physical pain was required.

So the Butcher inserted the tip of the long needle deeper into the auditory canal, slightly upward past the acoustic meatus and piercing the tympanic membrane, causing a shrieking burst of noise that shot through the auditory tube and was conveyed by the auditory nerve to Garin’s brain.

Garin couldn’t know whether he had successfully suppressed a scream. He lost consciousness when the needle traversed the middle ear and skirted just above the eustachian tube on its way to the cochlea.