The Sacrifice Game

(98)

“T his isn’t good,” Leonidas said. There was blood all over No Way’s chin and when they wiped it off I could see he’d bitten through his lower lip. I guess they were worried about it because it was a torture-victim giveaway. Leonidas stuck some bits of gauze between No Way’s teeth and his upper and lower lips. It gave him kind of a Ubangi-woman look. No Way was waking up, and he drew in a breath to try and get a scream together-he’d picked up on their stealth factor-but Leonidas remuffled him before any noise came out. He taped a shock of hair back out of his eye.

“Come on,” Grgur said.

“Okay, it’s okay,” Leonidas said.

“Okay, No Way?” Grgur asked. “Can you hear me?”

“Uh-hunh.” I think he was trying to make himself pass out again, but the Royal Ordnance system was good at not letting that happen. Grgur gave him a hundred-volt wake-up buzz.

“Who is Jed’s backup?” Grgur asked.

“I am.” His vowels were just ragged grunts and he didn’t have any consonants left, but I could still understand him.

“All right. Listen. We already know the patrol was acting on a signal from you. We only want your confirmation of who set up the contact and how they were signaled.”

No answer. Of course, they didn’t actually have Clue One. It was just more standard procedure to tell the subject they knew he was lying. No Way wasn’t buying it, though.

Torture for information usually actually works well, but it can take time. No Way’s choice now was either to start changing his answers to try to buy time, or to keep to the true answers so they’d kill him as soon as possible. All guerrillas were trained to try to do the first, to hold up the interrogators for as long as possible. The main reason was what used to be called the “forty-eight-hour rule”: you stalled in order to give the other people in the cell time to relocate before the other side learned their whereabouts. The other was that there was more of a chance for you if your interrogators had to take you back to wherever with them. Once you were in prison, you were less likely to be executed. In this case there wasn’t anyone else trying to get away, although maybe No Way thought I might need to get out of here myself, and I’m pretty sure he knew there wasn’t any hope for him either. But he did pick up on the fact that these people were nervous, and had been spotted by someone. And so just to screw them up as much as possible-I think-he did the right thing. Which was to start off telling the truth and then to reverse himself as they turned up the screws and the physiological readings got harder to evaluate.

“No Way? Listen. Who’s your primary runner on the Guate side?”

“Cano.”

“Rank and first name?”

“Captain. Juan.”

“Would you please tell us how and when you signaled this patrol?”

“Fresh stolen phone. Leave text asking for a subscription to newsletter.”

“Would you please tell us the name of this patrol’s commanding officer?”

“No se.”

“Who have you told about this operation?”

“Cano y los GNAH.”

“Who else?”

“I can’t remember right now.”

“What have you told them about this operation?”

“Everything, your schedule, your objective, cargo, everything.”

“And what do you think is our objective?”

“Royal tombs.”

“What about the royal tombs?”

“Specific artifacts.”

“Which are?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Then please tell us that list and we’ll give you a cigarette.”

“Uh, de Vega,” No Way said, pretending to think. “De Rivera. Caballero, Negrin, uh, Azana y Diaz-”

“That doesn’t look right,” Grgur said. He made out like they were checking the names No Way gave them against a list, but I bet they weren’t really. “I’m going to have to give you a level six shock.” Grgur gave him a little jolt, only half a second, but No Way was so softened up I could see sweat bead up out of his skin and roll down like someone was squeezing the wet sponge of his face.

“Please don’t do that,” No Way said, “I’ll help you get into contact with them.”

“With who?”

“Whoever.”

“We’re not going to execute you, you know,” Grgur said.

“Thank you.”

“Is there anything you would like to tell us before we release you?”

“No.”

I could tell No Way wanted to keep them talking longer but he barely had the energy. He knew they were going to kill him anyway, but I guess he wanted to toss them a little more disinformation if he could. Or maybe, at the literal last minute, even he clung to life. It’s hard not to.

“Okay, that’s it,” Grgur said. “You’re sure you don’t have anything else for us?”

“No, no, I can tell you more.”

“Okay, what?”

“Deposit. Banco de Gran Caiman.” To me it was obvious it didn’t mean anything, though, it was just a false lead to take up their time, and I think they knew it too.

“Who’s the contact at the bank?”

“Zamora.”

“That doesn’t sound right.” There was an almost-silent scream and the voltmeter blasted up to forty thousand. At that level they only left it on for a quarter-second but it still knocked him out. No Way’s face and body twisted up and collapsed. His mouth was open and drooling. His heartbeat skipped and took two irregular spikes and then settled back to sixty-five. His EEG was heavy on the Theta.

“All right,” Leonidas said, “that’s twenty minutes already, that’s as much as we need to spend on this.”

“We’re going to give you a list of names of people who may be working at Pusilha. I’d like you to indicate which ones you’ve heard before, which ones your organization is following, or would like to follow, or wants to learn more about. You understand?”

“Okay.”

“Even if you’ve just heard the name before I want you to tell me, and then we’ll try to remember where. All right?”

“Okay.”

“Bastarrachea Manzano.”

“No se.” The program thought for a second and gave a combined reading of 7.6 out of 10.

“Juan Ramon.”

“No se.” It registered a 7.0.

“Froot Loops.”

“No se.” 7.8.

“Count Chocula.”

“No se.” There were a few differences in the readings, but the program flagged it at 8.1.

“Domingo Dzul.”

“No se.” The combined register jumped up to 9.

“Bacon and Eggs.”

“No se.” 9.5.

“Hmm,” Grgur said. “Let’s talk about Count Chocula for a second.”

He was right, I thought. That was the only really solid name they had. The readings had gone up after he’d said it because No Way had bitten his tongue or done some other tack-in-the-shoe thing to confuse the reading.

“Are you sure you’ve never heard of Count Chocula?”

“No,” No Way said. “I don’t remember product names.”

“If you had, what would you have heard about it?”

“I can’t remember yet.”

“Where would the name have come up? At an EGP base?”

“That’s right,” No Way said. He wasn’t caving in, by the way. He was trying to confuse them. He didn’t have enough of a secret to protect. At most, he wanted to protect me, to get any blame off of me and onto himself-even though for all he knew I was on their side, or had even called in the patrol. I wondered a lot about what he thought about that. I hope he trusted me. Or maybe he just figured I still had a chance and he obviously didn’t. Or he’d suspended his judgment for the purposes of his last act. And actually, in terms of sheer bearing up, he was one of the bravest subjects I’d ever heard of. Certainly as tough as anyone back in Ancient Mayaland.

“You’re sure you have nothing to add? You understand we’re going to kill you now.”

No Way didn’t say anything, he just rolled the pupils of his eyes back, which was the closest he could come to closing them.

“You’re sure? Okay.”

Someone’s right hand held a small nylon sandbag that had been tightly wound with duct tape against the left side of No Way’s head, above the ear. The matching left hand cushioned his head on the other side so his neck wouldn’t bend. Nothing happened for a minute and then the arms swung a second wrapped sandbag, like a big sausage, underhand against the first one. It was a variant on what police in the U.S. call the telephone-book technique, a way to give someone a concussion without leaving an external bruise. I could hardly hear the strike, but No Way’s heart rate skipped and spiked and his EEG scrambled up past 900 Hz and then dropped and bounced. No Way’s expression was all sort of submerged pain like a dog having a bad dream.

“Wait, hang on,” Grgur said. He swung the bag way back again, gathered up force, and struck. No Way’s pulse took a last spike and flatlined. His EEG kept going, though, in this really irregular way, like he was still thinking about a few dissociated things, ships and sealing wax and cabbages. Again, nothing happened for a minute. Leonidas’s hands went out of the picture. The image jiggled as Grgur picked up the phone and moved it into a close-up of No Way’s face with its wide-open doll eye and held it steady, long enough to show he wasn’t breathing. His temperature had already dropped a twentieth of a degree.

“Okay,” Grgur said. I got glimpses of the crew pulling the sensors off No Way’s head and cleaning and redressing him and everything, but I couldn’t really pay attention. I did notice they put him in a Chouinard rock-climbing harness, which probably meant they were going to dump him in a chultun like he’d been exploring and fallen. You’d think they wouldn’t even bother being so careful out in a place like this, but I guess they were just trained to be absolutely professional.