"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."