"We still send aid, don't we?"
"That only adds to the misery. It props up corruption."
Laura rubbed her sweating forehead. "I don't understand."
"It's simple. We must succeed where Vienna has failed.
Vienna did nothing about the terrorist data havens, nothing about Africa. Vienna is weak and divided. There's a new global order coming, and it's not based in obsolete national governments. It's based in modern groups like your Rizome and my Free Army."
"No one voted for you," Laura said. "You have no author- ity. You're vigilantes!"
"You're a vigilante yourself," the Inspector of Prisons said calmly. "A vigilante diplomat. Interfering with govern- ments for the sake of your multinational. We have everything in common, you see. "
"No!"
"We couldn't exist if it weren't for people like you, Mrs.
Webster. You financed us. You created us. We serve your needs." He drew a breath and smiled. "We are your sword and shield."
Laura sank back into the chair. "If we're on the same side, then why am I in your jail?"
He leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "I did tell you,
Mrs. Webster-it's for reasons of atomic security! On the other hand, we see no reason why you shouldn't contact your coworkers and loved ones. Let them know you're alive and safe and well. It would mean a great deal to them, I'm sure.
You could make a statement. "
Laura spoke numbly. She'd known something like this was coming. "What kind of statement?"
"A prepared statement, of course. We can't have you babbling our atom secrets over a live phone link to Atlanta.
But you could make a videotape. Which we would release for you. "
Her stomach roiled. "I'd have to see the statement first.
And read it. And think about it."
"You do that. Think about it." He touched his watchphone, spoke in French. "You'll let us know your decision."
Another goon arrived. He took her to a different cell. They left the handcuffs off.
Laura's new cell was the same length as the first, but it had two bunks and was a stride and a half wider. She was no longer forced to wear handcuffs. She was given her own chamber pot and a larger jug. of water. There was more scop, and the porridge was of better quality and sometimes had soybean bacon bits.
They gave her a deck of cards, and a paperback Bible that had been distributed by the Jehovah's Witness Mission of
Bamako in 1992. She asked for a pencil to make notes on her statement. She was given a child's typer with a little flip-up display screen. It typed very nicely but had no printout and couldn't be used to scribble secret messages.
The screaming was louder under her new cell. Several different voices and, she thought, different languages too.
The screaming would go on, raggedly, for about an hour.
Then there would be a coffee break for the torturers. Then they would set back to work. She believed that there were several different torturers. Their habits differed. One of them liked to play moody French cafe ballads during his break.
One night she was woken by a muffled volley of machine- gun fire. It was followed by five sharp coup-de-grace shots.
They had killed people, but not the people being tortured- two of them were back next night.
It took them two weeks to bring her statement. It was worse than she had imagined. They wanted her to tell Rizome and the world that she had been kidnapped in Singapore by the Grenadians and was being held in the underground tunnel complex at Fedon's Camp. It was a ridiculous draft; she didn't think that the person who had written it fully understood
English. Parts of it reminded her of the FACT
communiqué issued after the assassination of Winston Stubbs.
She no longer doubted that FACT had killed Stubbs and shot up her house. It was obvious. The remote-control killing smelled of them. It couldn't have been Singapore, poor brilliant, struggling Singapore. Singapore's military, soldiers Like
Hotchkiss, would have killed Stubbs face-to-face and never bragged about it afterward.
They must have launched the drone from a surface ship somewhere. It couldn't have come from their nuclear submarine- unless they had more than one, a horrible thought.
The sub couldn't have traveled fast enough to attack Galveston,
Grenada, and Singapore during the time of her adventure.
(She was already thinking of it as her adventure-some- thing over, something in her past, something pre-captivity.)
But America was an open country and a lot of the F.A.C.T. were Americans. They bragged openly that they could go anywhere, and she believed them.
She believed now they had someone-a plant, a spy, one of their Henderson/Hesseltines-in Rizome itself. It would be so easy for them, not like Singapore. All he would have to do was show up and work hard and smile.
She refused to read the prepared statement. The Inspector of Prisons looked at her with distaste. "You really think this defiance is accomplishing something, don't you?"
"This statement is disinformation. It's black propaganda, a provocation, meant to get people killed. I won't help you kill people."
"Too bad. I'd hoped you could send your loved ones a
New Year's greeting."
"I've written my own statement," Laura offered. "It doesn't say anything about you, or Mali, or the F.A.C.T., or your bombs. It just says I'm alive and it has a few words my husband will recognize so that he'll know it's really me."
The Inspector laughed. "What kind of fools do you take us for, Mrs. Webster? You think we'd let you spout secret messages, something you'd cooked up in your cell after weeks of your ... oh ... feminine ingenuity?"
He tossed the statement into a bottom drawer of his desk.
"Look, I didn't write the thing. I didn't make the decision.
Personally, I don't think it's all that great a statement.
Knowing Vienna, it's more likely to make them tiptoe their way into that termite castle under Fedon's Camp, instead of shelling it into oblivion, like they should have done way back in
'19." He shrugged. "But if you want to ruin your life, be declared legally dead, be forgotten, then go right ahead."
"I'm your prisoner! Don't pretend it's my decision."
"Don't be silly. If it meant anything serious, I could make you do it."
Laura was silent.
"You think you're strong, don't you?" The Inspector shook his head. "You think that, if we tortured you, it would be some kind of romantic moral validation. Torture's not roman- tic, Mrs. Webster. It's a thing, a process: torture is torture, that's all. It doesn't make you any nobler. It only breaks you.
Like the way an engine wears out if you drive it too fast, too hard, too long. You never really heal, you never really get over it. Any more than you get over growing old."
"I don't want to be hurt. Don't pretend I do."
"Are you going to read the stupid thing? It's not that important. You're not that important."
"You killed a man in my house," Laura said. "You killed people around me. You kill people in this prison every day. I know I'm no better than them. I don't believe you'll ever let me. go, if you can help it. So why don't you kill me too?"
He shook his head and sighed. "Of course we'll let you go.
We have no reason to keep you here, once your security threat is over. We won't stay covert forever. Someday, very soon, we'll simply rule. Someday Laura Webster will be an upstanding citizen in a grand new global society."
A long moment passed. His lie had slid past her comprehension, like something at the other end of a telescope. At last she spoke, very quietly. "If it matters at all, then listen to me. I'm going to go insane, alone in that cell. I'd rather be dead than insane."
"So now it's suicide?" He was avuncular, soothing, skeptical.