The shower door was rolled open.
The hidden door to the Vault left wide.
He took five deep breaths before proceeding.
“Joey,” he said, stepping into the Vault. “The milk glass—”
The sight inside the Vault left his mouth dry. An adrenaline antihistamine reaction.
Various monitors had been yanked off the wall and rearranged on the floor, data scrolling across them. The computer bays had been dissected, torn from their racks. Cables snaked between hardware, connecting everything by no evident design.
Joey lay on her back like a car mechanic, wearing a tank top, her sleek arm muscles glistening with sweat. She was checking a cable connection. She rolled over and popped to her feet.
“Check this shit out!”
“I am. Checking this shit. Out.” Evan picked Vera II up off the floor, nestled an ice cube in her serrated spikes, and eyed her accusatorily: I left you in charge.
Joey breezed past him, using her bare foot to swivel a monitor on the floor so she could check the screen. The scent of girly soap tinged the air, lilac and vanilla, anomalous here among the weapon lockers and electronic hum.
She laced her fingers, inverted her hands, cracked the knuckles. “You are looking at a beautifully improvised machine learning system—262,144 graphics cores devoted to a single cause. Tracking down David Smith.”
Evan figured maybe he could forgive the milk. And the crumbs. And the smudges on the faucet.
He set Vera II back on the sheet-metal desk. She was now the only item in the Vault in the proper place.
He looked at the open door to the Vault and the rolled-back shower door beyond and bit his lip. Managed the words “Good job.”
She held up a hand, and they high-fived. “At least now you and Van Sciver? You’re running the same race.”
45
A Bit More Incentive
Listening to all that gurgling and choking wore on a man.
Van Sciver set down the watercooler jug of Arrowhead and wiped his brow. Enhanced interrogation was hard work.
Orphan L was strapped onto a decline bench, a soaked towel suctioned onto his face. Van Sciver had been pouring a steady stream of fresh springwater through the towel and into L’s sinuses, larynx, oropharynx, trachea, and bronchi. It didn’t actually reach the lungs.
It just felt like it.
Van Sciver had been waterboarded as part of his training. All Orphans were.
The discomfort almost defied explanation.
He’d been drownproofed as well, and by comparison that was a breeze. Bound at the bottom of a swimming pool, breathing in water, the head going hazy as in a dream.
But this felt like having a water hose opened up inside your skull. The more you gasped for air, the further you pulled the towel into your mouth, an octopus clutching your face, expelling an endless stream of fluid through your orifices.
Van Sciver nodded at Thornhill, who lifted the soaked towel from Orphan L’s face. For a time Draker bobbed on the bench, bloodshot eyes bulging, mouth guppying. He didn’t make a noise.
When the upper respiratory tract filled, water obstruction prevented the diaphragm from expanding and contracting to produce a suitable cough. You had to fight to earn your oxygen.
Five seconds passed as Draker contorted, clutching for air.
Thornhill gazed down at him with empathetic eyes. “I feel you, pal. I feel you.”
Candy leaned against the mattress cushioning the far wall, examining her fingernails. They looked freshly painted. Aubergine.
Van Sciver looked back at Thornhill, nodded again. Thornhill undid the straps around L’s chest and thighs, and L rolled off the bench onto his side. When he struck the floor, the impact loosed his lungs, his head seeming to explode with jets of water.
He coughed, heaved, coughed some more.
Thornhill slapped his back a few times, encouragingly. “There you go.”
Draker whipped up in a violent sit-up, driving his forehead at Thornhill’s nose. Thornhill wheeled back, nearly losing his footing. He looked down at his shirt, darkened by the spray from Draker’s wet hair. Draker’s head butt had missed him by inches.
“Whoa, cowboy,” Thornhill said, seemingly pleased by the effort. “That was close.”
Draker collapsed flat on the floor, spent.
Van Sciver squatted beside him, knees cracking, alert. “The boy,” he said. “The address.”
Draker gagged a few times. Van Sciver pressed two fingers into his solar plexus, and Draker vomited a water-clear stream so calmly and steadily that it was like opening up a tap. When he was done, he took a few seconds to catch his breath. Then he said, “What boy?”
“Right on,” Candy said. “Gotta admire the grit.”
She peeled herself from the wall and tested the plywood covering one of the rear windows. It was screwed in tight but not too tight. Which was perfect.
Van Sciver said to Thornhill, “Get the dog collar on him.”
The next technique, walling, was a Guantánamo Bay special. There they slipped a rolled towel around the detainee’s neck and used it to slam him into a semiflexible wall. The shoulder blades hit first, snapping the head. The collision gives off a sound like a thunderclap, like someone banging cymbals in the space between your ears.
Van Sciver preferred to use an actual collar. They were more durable, and his meaty hand never slipped. Plus, when he squeezed tight, he’d found, his knuckles shoved into the larynx, which added a bit more incentive.
Thornhill secured the collar around L’s neck.
“I don’t know about this, bud,” Thornhill said, flashing that carefree smile. “I was you, I’d just talk to the man.”
L lay there, curled on his side, panting. Van Sciver knew how it was. You had to enjoy the respites when you had them.
It was tough work from both sides.
“Get him on his feet,” Van Sciver said.
Draker was limp, his muscles turned to rubber. Candy and Thornhill juggled him up, holding most of his weight. He’d gone boneless.
Van Sciver seized the collar and dragged L over to the plywood sheet.
“Where is David Smith?” he asked again.
Draker couldn’t speak, not with the knuckles, but he managed to shake his head.
“Damn,” Van Sciver said, setting his feet and firming his grip. “You must really love the kid.”
46
Menu of Even More Specialized Services
At the edge of an industrial park in Northridge, through two security doors, past a warehouse humming with painters and restorers reviving valuable vintage movie posters, down a back hall tinged with the smell of petroleum and cleaning surfactants, Melinda Truong stood in a dark-walled photography room, fists on her slender hips, regarding Evan and Joey.
Melinda wore yoga pants and spotless robin’s-egg-blue Pumas that looked to be limited-edition and pricier than most vehicles. Straight black hair fell to her waist, which was gripped by a construction worker’s tool belt that required freshly awled holes so it could be cinched tighter in order to accommodate her tiny frame. The tool belt held an Olympos double-action airbrush, a 000 paintbrush, and various sizes of X-Acto blades, their grips padded with pink tape to discourage her workers from borrowing them.
She was the sole woman in the building. She was the owner of the operation. She was also the finest forger Evan had ever encountered.
One of her fists still gripped a retrofitted insecticide atomizer. Evan had interrupted her at the wet table over a Frankenstein one-sheet from 1931, cleaning a coffee spot off Boris Karloff’s cheek. The restored movie poster would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that was far less than she made from her menu of even more specialized services, conducted here in the photography room with its windows blacked out, ostensibly to prevent reflections during shooting.