“What’s the plan, Brook? How you going to get Krylov out?”
“Get out, get out, wherever you are.” Somebody was laughing. It was Wilfred Jennings Schnickelburger.
In the world outside his head Brook knew that time was passing for everybody but him. It came to him that what the clock and the calendar would call two days had passed, although they differed in measure and quality no more than two seconds or two years. During this period Brook saw Stark and Jasmine often. Invariably when they appeared he was beaten and Stark’s questions would race around in Brook’s head like white mice in a psychologist’s drum. At intervals there were other faces, slant-eyed, whom the Australian called by names Brook could not remember. The owners of these faces would try their hands at beating him, sometimes with bamboo sticks in various places, sometimes with their hands, sometimes with things he could not identify. Once there was “Han,” the noodle man. Brook told Battered Face, “I love you,” and “Go to hell.”
Jasmine gave him repeated injections.
“He doesn’t react normally, Toby. I am told it happens this way sometimes. Although rarely.”
“We’d have to catch the exception! That bloody dope of yours just isn’t doing the job, Jazz. Not on him.”
“We had better try another way.”
“You’re bloody damned right we’d better!”
When had they said that? Long ago? Just now? Or had he developed the gift of second sight and it was something they were going to say? Brook floated in a void, remaining perfectly still at the speed of light. He couldn’t have cared less.
Dreams ran before his awakening like ancient heralds. He hung by hairs from impossibly high places. He was chased through fuming bogs by unspeakably pathetic monsters. He gasped. He moaned. He jerked in his sleep. Twice he sat up and screamed, only to fall back into his nightmares.
Brook opened his eyes. He could see normally again. Probes of light dug into his eyes from the slits high in the wall.
He was alone.
He was lying on the floor.
He turned his head right, left. The room had been emptied of furniture; there was only the mat on which he lay. His body throbbed and burned; his mouth was full of cat fur.
He sat up and rubbed his face. It was greasy with sweat and blood and felt like mohair.
He went to the iron door on a zigzag course. The door was locked, and he returned to the middle of the room to eye the slits in the walls through the swelling. He was not sure why he wanted to reach them; they were too narrow to squeeze through. Anyway, they had left him nothing to stand on.
He saw now that he was naked and that his body looked as if it had run through a meat chopper. The sight of the welts and cuts and bruises reminded him of the pain he had not felt under the drug. He sank onto the mat for a few moments to discipline his nerve-endings. That was a bad time. When he rose again his body was wet; in its macerated condition he looked as if he were sweating blood.
He took his first hard look at the room and saw his shirt and tie and suit lying on the floor in a corner where someone had tossed them. He picked them up and found the contents of his jacket pocket undisturbed: the box of little cigars with four cigars still in it, the ballpoint, the pocket comb, even the gold obi cord he had removed from Kimiko’s neck. Stark had either overlooked them or did not consider them important. Perhaps not. But they were here and he was no longer empty-handed. Problem: how to use any or all of them to effect an escape.
Brook sat down on the mat again. He felt surprisingly strong; or the two-day assault on his nerve-endings had left them half numb. It might be a false strength. Better conserve it while he figured a way out.
A key rattled. Immediately he stretched flat and shut his eyes to slits.
The noodle man, “Han,” stepped into the room. He stood there in the doorway looking about, blinking to adjust his pupils to the gloom. His fighter’s face seemed to Brook to wear a stupid look. He held a carbine in the crook of his left arm. He stared at Brook lying there, still apparently out, for some time. Then he stepped back, and Brook heard him lock the door.
Brook sat up again. He rubbed his beard and began to crave hot water. He smelled foul, not only unwashed but sick. He looked about and saw the evidence; he had been sick, all right, and they had not bothered to clean the mess up. He got up and went over to the iron door. The carbine suggested that the noodle vendor was standing guard outside. He had probably been told to look in every once in a while to see if Brook was conscious; they couldn’t be sure just when the drug would wear off, they had given him so much of it. If they found him conscious they would undoubtedly go at him on a new tack; or rather on the old one, the tried-and-true torture technique instead of the fancy stuff Stark, out of his grandiosity, had tried. In his weakened condition they would break him very quickly. There was no defense against the old-fashioned methods.
So he must find a way to get through “Han,” and right away. There was always the possibility that “Han” was not alone on guard out there, but it was a chance he would have to take.
Brook put his clothes on tenderly. He looped the gold cord in one hand and with the other he banged on the door.
He stepped to one side as he heard the key in the lock.
The door swung open and the noodle vendor stuck his head in. Brook flipped the cord over his head, jerked him inside, kicked the door shut, kicked his man prone, straddled him, tightened the cord. He kept up the pressure until the noodle vendor’s flinging about stopped. It took some time.
Brook rose, stuffed the cord in his pocket, and opened the door a crack. From the light and the shadows of the rocks and bushes it was late afternoon, almost evening. In one direction, across the garden, Stark’s “castle” stood in peace; in the opposite direction the big green bell hung motionless.
Brook slipped out, shut the iron door with love, and headed for the wall.
Chapter 12
Benigno Lopez stood on the wharf in the fishing village of Umazaru and watched a glittering launch with a mahogany foredeck move in snugly along the pilings. Two sailors jumped off and made it fast with a pair of clove hitches on the fore and aft lines. A third sailor, with three stripes under the embroidered eagle on his arm, left the wheel, stepped ashore, and walked up to Benny.
“You Mr. Lopez?”
“That’s me.”
The sailor was all leather and raw bones and red hair. He had a Davy Crockett accent. “I’m supposed to deliver this here boat to you, Mr. Lopez.” He sounded incredulous.
“That’s right,” said Benny.
“It’s the Admiral’s barge,” the sailor growled.
“So what?” Benny said.
“It ain’t never been loaned out before.”
“My compliments to the Admiral. There’s a first time for everything.”
“I just don’t know,” the sailor said. He scratched the red sandpaper under his chin.
“You don’t know what, sailor?”
“Well, now, look it here, this boat is my baby. Keeping it shipshape is my job.”
“And a fine job you’ve done,” Benny said warmly.
“Yeah. But I mean I don’t feel right loaning this boat out to just anybody.”
Benny nodded. “I understand. I imagine you’ve got your orders, though.”
“Yeah. Only my orders is also take care of the boat and be goddam sure nothing happens to it. So how about you take her away from the dock, Mr. Lopez, and bring her back in again. Just so I know you can handle her.”
“I never handled a motorboat before in my whole life,” Benny said.
The sailor looked appalled. “The hell you say! Look it here, mister, orders or no orders—”