Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sharky stirred and turned over on his back, but his foot was caught on something and he stopped. He tried wiggling it and felt the bite of a rope in his ankle. He was tied to something. He opened his eyes and his vision strayed crazily around the room. Nausea swept over him and he closed them again.
Pain mushroomed into his neck and temples.
He closed his eyes and lay still. He felt like he was moving, rocking back and forth.
I’m still dizzy, he thought.
Then he heard a weird scream, a sorrowful cry that seemed to echo over and over again, raising the hair on his arms.
My God, he thought, what was that?
It came again, a mournful shriek that died slowly and was answered a few seconds later by another echoing from farther away. He recognized the sound. It was a loon, lamenting insanely in the night, its demented love call answered by its mate.
A loon? He lay there sorting out the sounds around him. They began to make sense: ropes creaking, boards groaning, the rhythmic slap of water against wood somewhere below him. It was a boat.
He opened his eyes and blinked, trying to clear his fuzzy vision. The room was shadowed, lit only by a lantern that swung in an easy arc overhead. He lay hypnotized by it until the nausea returned. He gritted his teeth to keep from vomiting and turned his eyes away from the light.
It was a small room, a cabin, and he was lying on the lower bunk of a double-decker. One side of the room curved in and there was a porthole in it. Facing it, on the other side of the cabin, was a hand-carved lattice-work partition which separated the room from the hail. The door was heavy and made of some kind of dark wood, rosewood or mahogany. The far side of the room, opposite the bunk, was dark. The lantern shed a small pool of light over a table and chair which sat in the centre of the cabin. He smelled pork cooking in garlic.
In the darkness opposite him, a cigarette glowed briefly. He concentrated, trying to make out a shape, a form of some kind in the shadows but he could see nothing.
Then he remembered The Nosh.
God damn them. God DAMN them!
He fought back tears, but they came anyway, dribbling down the side of his face, and he readied up and wiped them away.
‘Well, welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Sharky,’ a voice said from the shadows.
He squinted into the darkness
‘Oh, don’t try to see me,’ the voice said. ‘It’s much too dark. It will only strain your eyes.’
It was a big boat, too big for the river. Then the loon cried again and Sharky thought, I’m on the take. Seventy miles from Atlanta.
A voice he did not recognize, hoarse and trembling with fatigue, said:
‘Where’s my partner?’
My God, he thought, was that my voice?
‘Unfortunate,’ the voice from the darkness said, ‘but the sacrifice was necessary.’ It was a weak, whining, nasal voice and Sharky hated it.
The rage built inside Sharky, like a tornado in his gut. But he held his tongue. Nothing more would be accomplished with dialogue. Escape was the only thing he could think about now. Concentrate on it, he thought. There will be a way. There will be a way. He looked down at his foot. It was lashed tightly to the foot of the bunk. His jacket was stained with The Nosh’s blood. The fire roared inside him again.
Let me take one of them out. Let me watch his eyes when he goes, the way I watched Larry’s eyes.
‘Hai, Liung,’ the voice in the shadows called oat and the door opened. Three men entered. They were Orientals, short and lean, their faces wide and hard, their noses broad, their eyes beads under hooded lids. They wore white tee- shirts, the cotton moulded around hard muscles and taut, flat stomachs. One of the three had a scorched hole in the shoulder of his shirt and a bloodstain down one side. Sharky could see the bulge of a bandage under the shirt.
Sorry it wasn’t a couple of inches lower and an inch to the left, you sorry son of a bitch.
Another one had a splint on his forearm.
Sorry, Nosh, sorry I didn’t do better.
The one with the splint on his arm stood near the door, his arms at his sides as the other two approached the bunk, untying his foot and dragging him to his feet. His knees buckled and they pulled him upright. His vision wobbled. The room went in and out of focus.
From the shadows, smoke curled like a snake, twisting into the heat from the lantern. Sharky concentrated on the corner, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.
‘If you’re trying to build a mental image of me, forget it,’ the voice said. ‘It’s much too dark. And there’s no need to say anything to my three friends. They don’t speak English. In fact they rarely speak at all.’
Sharky said nothing. He continued to stare into the dark corner of the room.
‘You can save yourself a lot of time and pain if you will simply answer one question for me,’ the voice said. ‘That’s all we’re here for. A simple sentence will do it, Mr. Sharky. ‘Where is the girl?’
Sharky said nothing.
‘Where is she? Where is Domino?’
Sharky continued to stare at the glowing tip of the cigarette.
‘All I want is the address.’
Sharky moved slightly towards one of the Orientals and then quickly twisted the other way, snapping his arms down towards his sides. As he did, the two Chinese exerted the slightest pressure on the nerves just above each of his elbows. Pain fired down Sharky’s arms to his fingertips and both arms were almost immediately paralysed.
‘Don’t he foolish,’ the voice said. ‘They can paralyse you with one finger — and they will. That was a simple exercise. The feeling will return to your arms in a minute or so. The next time they will be more persuasive.’
Sharky felt the numbness begin to subside. His arms felt I as though they had fallen asleep. They tingled as the feeling1 returned. He shook his hands from the wrists and flexed his fingers.
‘You see what 1 mean? Now can we make it simple, Mr. Sharky? Or will you require more complicated tricks?’
Sharky still did not talk. He peered hard into the shadows. Was it Scardi? The tobacco was brash and smelled rancid. Sharky concentrated on that for a few minutes. English cigarettes, he thought. But his accent is American. Sweat beads rolled down his face and collected on his chin, stubbornly refusing to drop oil.
Gerald Kershman, the man in the shadows, was becoming annoyed.
‘Stop staring over here,’ he said. ‘I find it irritating.’
Sharky stared stubbornly at the corner.
Kershman said something in Chinese and one of the men holding Sharky reached up with a forefinger and pressed a nerve beside Sharky’s right eye. The pain was literally blinding. The vision in the eye vanished. Kershman chuckled. He felt a surge in his testicles, a sensual thrill. He was growing hard watching Sharky’s ordeal. Secretly he hoped Sharky would prove difficult, that the torture would get more intense, and he began to tremble with excitement at the thought. He dropped his Players cigarette on the floor and, turning his back on Sharky, lit another. Then he said:
‘Time is of the essence. You will give up the information. It’s really just a matter of time.’ Then, sharply: ‘Pa t’a k’un tao chuo tze.’
The two Orientals jerked Sharky to the chair and forced him down into it. There were two straps attached to each arm and two others mounted on the table. They strapped his arms to the chair, leaving his wrists and hands free, and shoved the chair against the table and fastened the straps on the table over the back of each hand, tightening them until he could hardly curl his fingers.
‘Before we proceed any further, perhaps I should explain a little about the three Chins. They arc members of one of the oldest Triads in Hong Kong, Chi Sou Han. Since the twelfth century the oldest male of each of the three families of Chi Son Han has been taken from his mother at birth and trained to be the ultimate warrior. Their discipline is beyond the western mind. I have seen one of these men stand in a crouch for ten hours without a falter. They endure the most excruciating pain in silence.