The Accident Man

78

Zhukovski spoke into a telephone. A few seconds later, Kursk, Titov, and Rutsev reappeared. Carver was placed in the middle of a five-man procession. Kursk led the way, carrying a gun, a Beretta 92. He walked side-on, pointing the gun behind him at Carver, whose left arm was held in Rutsev’s heavy grip. Titov came next, holding the belt’s remote control. Zhukovski made up the rear. Only Dimitrov was missing.

The line of men went through the living room and into the hall. Kursk signaled Carver to stop. Then he walked to the far end of the hall, farthest away from the front entrance, to what looked like a standard wooden door set into an alcove under the main stairs. Its domestic appearance was misleading. When Kursk opened it, his grunt of effort suggested a far heavier, more solid construction – something designed as a barrier to people and sound alike. Another sign from Kursk told Rutsev to lead Carver toward him. Once again, Carver was covered twice over: the gun in front of him, the belt control behind.

The side door opened onto a set of bare concrete steps that led down to the basement of the chalet. Kursk went ahead, got to the bottom, turned to face back up the stairs, and shouted, “Okay!” The other men then started to walk down into the basement. The stairs opened into a narrow corridor lit by the harsh flickering of a bare fluorescent tube.

Carver recognized the feel of the concrete beneath his feet. He could smell stale exhaust fumes. The garage where he had first arrived at the chalet must be down here. But that was not his destination. Instead, Kursk led the group through a thick steel door into a completely bare, windowless room, roughly twenty square feet.

The walls were a brilliant chalk white, as were the floor, the ceiling, and the inside of the door. He caught a familiar whiff of new paint. This was the place where he had been left before, blindfolded.

He looked around and realized he had missed some of its salient features. A closed-circuit TV camera at one corner of the ceiling was focused on the room’s only furniture, a single high-backed metal chair, right in the middle of the room. It was bolted to the floor and set at right angles to the door. Leather straps had been attached to the back, the arms, and the legs of the chair, ensuring that anyone sitting in it could be totally restrained. A black wire snaked from a socket on the wall to a pair of headphones resting on a hook attached to the back of the chair. A second hook held a roll of duct tape.

There were more fluorescent lights on the ceiling. On the wall directly opposite the chair a large, shallow box, maybe four feet wide and three high, had been fixed. It had a black frame, but the biggest surface, facing the chair, was made of clear Plexiglas. The interior was white and fitted with yet more lights. They had not yet been switched on.

The room was no warmer than it had been before. Carver could feel the sweat chilling on his skin. He felt dazed, his mind fried by successive electric shocks. His face throbbed. His back and ankles were painfully tender. He longed for a sip of water to ease his raging thirst. But he wanted to take a piss just as badly. It had taken all his concentration not to wet or soil himself when the shocks had ripped through him. Now his bladder was sending stabbing reminders through his guts. He had to hold out. He would not allow Zhukovski to see him reduced to this.

Rutsev pulled Carver over to the chair and shoved him into it. Then he strapped him down, securing his chest, waist, and thighs. The straps’ buckles were fastened behind and underneath the chair. With his hands still cuffed, he had no hope of reaching them. His head, however, was left free. Rutsev had to remove Carver’s leg irons to bind his ankles to the chair legs. Carver longed to kick the fat-faced Russian, just for the pleasure of causing him pain. But the stun belt was still around his waist, its control still safely in Titov’s hands, and Kursk had his gun trained on him. There was no purpose in taking the risk. He had more important things to do.

Rutsev was wearing a watch. It told Carver the time was 12:14. That was good to know.

Dimitrov came into the room, carrying the computer case. He unzipped it and removed the laptop, handing it to Zhukovski. The case was left on the floor a few feet from Carver’s chair, impossible for him to reach. Everyone except Alix was there. Carver supposed she must be upstairs, getting herself ready for a long, hard, sweaty night with the boss.

Zhukovski turned to Carver. “I will give you the computer,” he said. “You will not open it, or start it up, or do anything until my men and I have left the room and the door has been closed. If you try anything that even looks suspicious, you will be shot. We will be in another room, watching you through that camera.” Zhukovski gestured at the CCTV that peered down from the ceiling. “When you have opened and started the computer and successfully entered the password, raise your hands.”

Kursk moved to the door and stood there, his Beretta pointing at Carver, while the other men filed out of the room. Then he too slipped through the door, walking backward, keeping the gun on Carver until the last possible second. The door slammed shut. Carver heard the scrape of metal on metal and then two sharp impacts as a pair of bolts were slid into place. He was alone. He had the laptop. Now he could start to fight back.

First, though, he had to open the damn thing. With his hands cuffed together, he couldn’t keep the Hitachi still with one hand and press the catch with the other. He ended up holding it almost vertically, jammed against the strap across his thighs. It flopped open and that movement was almost enough to send it crashing off his lap. Carver slammed his linked fists down on the open keyboard, stopping it just in time.

Then he sat back and let his pulse slow back down. He took a couple of deep, calming breaths, then pressed the power button, waited for the password box to appear.

His mind was blank. He didn’t have a clue what should go in that narrow strip of pure white screen. Those repeated bursts of electroshock must have battered his brain as thoroughly as a pummeling from a heavyweight. His circuits were fried. His short-term memory had been burned away. No wonder he hadn’t been able to remember where Alix grew up.

Carver tried not to panic. He fought against the tightening in his throat, the fluttering in his stomach and the desperate sensation that his mind was skidding out of control. He had to dig deep into the furthest recesses of his consciousness. The information was there, somewhere, if only he could find it.

There was a word image, he knew that, a way of making sense of the eight letters and digits. Something about zebras. But how many sodding zebras? Two? Three? No, two, definitely two. What had they been doing? Lying? Dozing? Or was it sleeping?

He collected his thoughts. The sentence had to be eight words long. He closed his eyes and tried out the various possibilities. He felt like a child doing a spelling test. Okay. He was pretty certain he had it now.

His linked hands hovered over the keyboard as he rehearsed the sentence: I see two zebras sleeping on the grass. That was it.

But what if he was wrong? Larsson had been adamant: He only had three chances to get it right or the hard drive would be wiped out – that much he could remember. Well, no point waiting all night. His right index finger hovered over the keyboard, then started tapping.

I… c… 2… z… s… o… t… G

A message appeared on the screen: “Password failed. Remaining attempts: 2.”

No! The fear and tension gripped Carver again, even tighter than before. Where had he gone wrong? “I’m sure there are two zebras on the sodding grass,” he muttered. And then he realized he’d solved the problem: not “I see” but “There are.” Yes, that was it.

T… r… 2… z… s… o… t… G

There was something crushing about the computer’s immediate response: “Password failed. Remaining attempts: 1.” He was almost sick with nerves.

“Think, you stupid bastard, think!” He was talking out loud now, nodding his head, jerking his upper body against the restraints.

“The zebras, two of them, on the grass… aren’t they sleeping? They can’t be. So what the hell are they doing? Dozing, lying… lying, dozing… Lying. They’re definitely bloody lying.”

One last deep breath. One final hover of his index finger over the keyboard. Then he went for it.

T… r… 2… z… l… o… t… G

Nothing happened. For an endless, heart-stopping second the screen was completely blank. Frantically, Carver hit the space bar again and again. Then the familiar Windows desktop appeared, the screen was dotted with icons. And hidden away within the gray plastic box, a tiny transmitter beamed a single signal.

For Zhukovski was right. It was a booby trap. But the computer was not where the danger lay. Slipped within the padded sides of the carrying case were two sheets of C4 explosive and thermite incendiary accelerant, linked to a radio-operated timer detonator. That timer had just been activated by the space bar: thirty minutes’ delay for each strike of the bar. In precisely four hours it would set off a firebomb that would instantly incinerate anyone in its vicinity and reduce the Chalet Constanza to ashes and cinders.

Carver raised his head to the ceiling, then punched the air with his fists.

He remained on his own for a couple of minutes. He guessed Zhukovski would wait awhile to make sure there was no detonation. Then the white door opened and four of the Russians filed back in. Kursk had his gun out, as always. Rutsev alone was missing from the gang.

Zhukovski walked across to the chair and picked the Hitachi off of Carver’s lap. “Thank you, Mr. Carver,” he said. “You have done me a favor and provided rich entertainment. I was greatly amused by your ridiculous little aide-mémoire, trying to remember how many zebras were – what was it? – lying on the grass.”

Carver fought the temptation to tell Zhukovski that the joke would soon be on him. The bomb would detonate at a time when the chalet’s inhabitants would be fast asleep, with their bodies shut down and their minds least capable of swift response, even if they awoke. By then, either Carver would have found a way out of his captivity, or the Russians would have destroyed him. The odds were heavily against him, but he hadn’t given up yet. He felt a strange mix of profound mortal terror, knowing that he had only hours to live, and equally deep elation. At least he’d go down fighting. At least he’d make them pay.

And maybe, even now, there was a chance he might escape. If he could only get out of this damn chair.

“Why don’t you let me help you?” Carver pleaded. “I can get into the files.”

Zhukovski looked at him with an expression of pity at his boundless stupidity. “I don’t give a damn about the files,” he said. “And if curiosity should strike me, well, Moscow has the finest cryptographers in the world. If you truly have found someone able to crack these codes, which I doubt, be assured that I will have no problem doing the same.”

He bent down by the chair, his hands on his knees, so that his face was level with Carver’s.

“Let me tell you what does matter to me,” Zhukovski said. “I want to see you suffer. I want you to die as slowly and painfully as possible. You fucked my woman. It does not matter how or why. If word should spread that you did this and escaped with your life, both my friends and my enemies – many of whom are the same people – would see that as a sign of weakness on my part. But if stories of your torture spread across Russia, if men sitting over bottles of vodka tell horrific tales of what happened to the man who tried to cross me, if they see that my woman is more slavishly devoted to me than ever… well, then they will know that Yuri Zhukovski is not a man to be trifled with.”

He turned to Titov and issued a series of instructions that prompted another leering grin to break out across his henchman’s emaciated death’s-head face. Titov put the stun-belt control in the back pocket of his trousers, then stepped up to the chair and pushed Carver’s head against its solid metal back, hard. He placed a strap across his forehead and tightened it so that the leather seemed to dig into his skull. A second strap was forced across his mouth, then yanked tight so that it both gagged him and tugged against his loosened teeth and cracked jaw bringing agonizing pain with each tiny movement.

Carver was frightened now, really frightened. When he’d tried to jump Zhukovski, he’d known it wouldn’t work. He was just trying to engineer a situation in which he could play the part of a beaten man, begging for his one chance of salvation: the computer. He’d been prepared to take whatever punishment Zhukovski could hand out, the end justified the means. But he was no longer playacting. His terror was entirely genuine.

Carver had seen a TV show once about a British prisoner of war who pretended to go crazy, so that the Germans would hand him over to the Red Cross. But by the time he was finally free, it was too late; the pretense had become reality. He had truly gone mad. Carver was like that prisoner. When the cuffs were taken from his wrists, he made no attempt whatever to resist as his hands were secured to the arms of the chair. He did not want to give Zhukovski or his men the slightest excuse to press the white button that had so completely enslaved and unmanned him. Just the thought of what it would be like to squirm and jerk against his restraints, the imagined pain that would cause, was enough to leave him in a ferocious sweat. The final straps were tightened without any further bolts of electricity. He almost wept with gratitude.

There was a smooth efficiency to Titov’s actions. His normal twitchiness had been replaced by the calmness of a man who took deep comfort and satisfaction from his labors. But he had not finished his handiwork. First, he reached behind the chair and picked up the headphones, which he placed over Carver’s ears. There was no sound, simply a muffling of the world around him, as if he had stuck his fingers in his ears.

Next, Titov grabbed the roll of tape. He pulled out a strip about four inches long and tore it off with his teeth. Then he leaned forward and pulled on Carver’s eyelids, forcing them down.

As soon as Carver realized what Titov was doing, he immediately closed his eyes. He wanted his captor to know that he was cooperating. He was doing everything he possibly could to be good.

Carver felt the sticky grip of tape on his right eyelid, then a jerk as it was pulled up, and a second grip as Titov smoothed the other end of the strip onto his forehead. His eye was open now, wide open. And he could not blink. Then Titov did the same thing to his other eye. He took a step back from the chair, placed himself directly in Carver’s line of vision, and took the dreadful black box out of his trouser pocket. He held it up next to his grinning face in his left hand. He stretched his right arm out in front of him and raised his index finger. He looked at the box. Then he turned his head and looked at the finger. And then he winked.

Carver heard the muffled sound of laughter. At the edge of his vision, he could just see Dimitrov and Rutsev doubled over. But Carver didn’t care about them. His full concentration was on Titov’s finger as it slowly, ostentatiously rotated in the air, swooping from one side of his body to the other, closing in until it was just inches from the black box and its gleaming white button.

Carver’s taped eyes widened even further. His gagged mouth emitted a pathetic, wordless whimpering. His sweat was slick against the back of the metal chair. Titov let him suffer, relishing every second of Carver’s terror. Then he put the box back in his pocket and turned away.

He was leaving the room! The torment was over!

Carver saw Titov walk out of his field of vision. He saw Dimitrov pick up the black computer case and take it with him as he too departed. He heard the slamming of the door and the clicking of the bolts. For a few moments Carver just sat there, naked, cold, and immobile in the silent solitude of his gleaming cell.

Then, without warning, the white box on the wall opposite him burst into blazing light, a white-hot glare that burned into his defenseless, wide-open eyes. At the same time, the headphones burst into life and his ears were pounded with a deafening burst of white noise, like the static of an untuned radio. The noise exploded in his skull, filling his brain with a random roar that had no structure or meaning, nothing that his mind could grasp or comprehend. The light attacked him like a blow-torch. And there was absolutely nothing he could do.

The noise and the light would go on forever and he could not turn them off. He could not close his eyes. He could not block his ears. He could not move any part of his body. He could not even hear himself when he screamed.