He opened a drawer and reached to the back, unhooking a hidden container. He opened it, staring at five blue pills. It was going to be a long interrogation, and according to the information he had received, Maria Valdez was a tough-minded partisan. Captain Wei sighed, shaking his head. He was weary beyond endurance with his tasks. Yes, he was good at it, perhaps the best in Mexico. But it was so tedious and predictable. Worse, his tasks had begun to bother him. This mutilation of flesh and twisting a person’s psyche, it hurt the soul—
Wei had been reaching for a pill. Now, his hand froze. Did humans possess souls? It was a preposterous notion. Humans were like any other animal, a mass of biological tissue with electrical nerve endings, a meat-sack of noxious fumes. People excreted, vomited, sweated and urinated, a wretched pile of filth that groveled under too much pain. Everyone broke. It used to be intriguing figuring out how to do it.
“No,” Wei whispered. His dark eyes had been reflective. Now the reptilian look appeared, revealing him as the predator he was.
The tips of his thumb and forefinger pinched a blue pill. He deposited the pill onto the tip of his tongue, using his tongue to roll the pill back. He gulped, swallowing. A tiny smile played on the edges of mouth. Soon, the drug would numb the pestering qualms that had become stronger this last year. One patient had told him these qualms were his conscience. As he aged—the patient had said—he must realize the end of this existence was much nearer than, say, seven years ago.
“Seven?” Wei had snapped. He’d wanted to know why the patient had picked the number seven. Seven years ago, he’d interrogated Henry Wu, who had been an insignificant worm, a former American caught on video during a Chinese food riot. It had been then that the first glimmer of… unease, yes, unease had begun with his various interrogations. Seven years ago, Wei had increased the number of cigarettes he smoked and the number of whiskey shots he gulped. These days, whiskey was not enough. He needed the blue pills to ease him through each tedious day. Unfortunately, these cost cash and he had begun taking more of them lately.
The desk buzzer sounded a second time.
Captain Wei straightened his uniform and marched for the door. It was time to fix the little traitor and pry information out of her.
He strode down a long corridor, a flight of stairs and passed several open windows. Mexico City seethed with traffic, with small cars thirty years out of date, with thousands of bicyclists and tens of thousands of pedestrians. Smoke stacks chugged black fumes into the air from coal furnaces. Yet farther away in the center of the city gleamed new glass towers, thanks to the latest construction boom with the influx of Chinese troops. Mexico was a land of extremes, with the basest poverty and the most incredible wealth.
Captain Wei left the windows behind, opening a door and descending to the basement. The first tendrils of drugged numbing soothed his bad mood. By the time he reached the patient’s door, the feeling had changed his mood altogether.
You are a meat-sack, Maria Valdez, one I will turn into a quivering hulk, a fountain of information.
Wei opened the door, expecting a number of quite predictable possibilities. The patient lay strapped to a table, naked, defenseless and primed for interrogation. An operative—a man—had shaved off every particle of the patient’s hair. Wei found that most effective with females. The operative had also attached a host of leads to sensitive body-areas. Maria Valdez should have pleaded with him now or glared in defiance or stared into space, in shock, or sobbed uncontrollably. She did none of these things. Instead, with eyes closed, the patient whispered, speaking to an imaginary entity, it appeared.
Wei scowled, with his good feeling evaporating. Invisible entities did not exist. There was only power and the scramble to be the inflictor of pain instead of the receiver. It was the law of the jungle, of tooth and claw.
“Leave us,” Wei told the operative.
The man bowed his head, hurrying for the door, never once lifting his gaze off the floor.
Wei listened for and heard the snick of the closing door. “Maria Valdez,” he said sharply.
The patient ignored him as she kept on whispering.
That would not do, no, no. Wei strode to the controls and tapped a pain inducer.
The patient grunted and her eyes bulged open. She twisted on the table. She was shapely, if too thin and bony for Wei’s tastes. She was also too tall, taller than he was—something he intensely disliked.
“Do I have your attention?” Wei asked in a considerate tone. It unbalanced and often unhinged patients to hear the solicitude in his voice and yet receive agony from his hands.
“I’m here,” she said, whatever that was supposed to mean.
They both spoke English, as Wei had taken language courses and become proficient in the American usage.
Wei now forced himself to smile. “I’m sure you understand the situation.”
“Yes! You’re one of the pigs invading my country.”
“My dear, please allow me to interject a factual point. You are the one who exudes a noxious odor. I refer to your sweat. We Chinese do not possess the same pig-like glands that you do.”
“Go to Hell!”
Captain Wei smiled, stepping away from the controls. He put a gentle hand on her left thigh, causing the patient to stiffen.
“You are in Hell, my dear,” he said.
“Wrong! In Hell, no one drinks beer.”
Wei frowned. What an odd statement. Was she already unhinged? “I do not care for your attitude.”
“That’s because you’re an invading hog,” she said.
“Maria,” he said, squeezing her thigh. It made her stiffen. He would teach her respect. Oh, she would learn to curb her tongue. First, he would begin her disorientation through soft speech. “You must not think of me as your enemy. I am here to help you.”
“You’re a worthless liar.”
A flicker of annoyance entered his eyes. “I can make your existence gruesome or I can ease your suffering. It is my choice. Fortunately for you, my dear, I am easy to please. All I ask is for a few tidbits of information from you.”
“I understand. I have what you want. But you have nothing I want except for your death, and I don’t think you’ll do me the favor of slitting your ugly throat.”
Wei smiled faintly. “You are a veritable she-tiger, but you are also a liar.”
“I curse you in the name of God.”
Wei’s smile slipped as he removed his hand from her thigh. Scowling, he went to the controls. He looked up at her. She grinned viciously, mocking him.
No, that would not do. He was in charge here. He would show her.
Captain Wei began to tap the controls hard with his fingertips. He winced once because he’d cut the nail down too much the other day on his left-hand middle finger. Then Maria Valdez screamed and thrashed on the table, causing him to forget about his own discomfort. Wei continued to inflict pain for some time, delighting in her various octaves. Finally, Maria slumped, unconscious.
Turning away, Wei stared up at the ceiling. What had overcome him? He’d never lost control of his emotions like this before. He was an interrogator, one of the best—no, the best in Mexico. He had a long list of questions his superiors wanted answered, yet now he’d needlessly tired out his patient. He should have already received a litany of her lies so he could compare her later answers and begin to pry out the truth. Never once during the torment had she cried out, offering to speak to end the pain. Obviously, the direct approach was the wrong method with this one. He must practice subtlety.