"Get to it," the Master Sergeant had told a corporal as Lieutenant Ashcroft released the doors and the corporal had nodded at two marines. Together they'd manoeuvred the blindfolded prisoner into the doorway, down some steps and onto a small patch of withered lawn.
Away to one side, a dozen SLRs whirred and a Fox Network reporter began her spiel to camera. Stating the obvious, as always. No one rushed forward or jostled for position. The rules for journalists had been set out in advance, in triplicate, to be signed by department heads.
They were the chosen, flown by the Pentagon to a tiny island in the Mediterranean owned by Italy. And the Italians had been delighted to loan its western tip to the Pentagon. It said so on the press release.
"Walk," demanded the Master Sergeant and Prisoner Zero did, while two marines on either side gripped his upper arms. The swathe of crepe hiding the man's eyes was held in place by a strip of duct tape that circled his entire skull. Plastic cuffs locked his wrists behind his back and a short length of shackle secured both ankles. His shoes were gone and so was the ring he'd worn on his little finger.
Some of the finest linguists at the Pentagon were currently failing to come up with a translation of the flowing script engraved into its red stone, despite using the latest in translation software. This was because it was written in an old form of Persian. Prisoner Zero had no idea what it said either.
He understood colloquial French, that much was now confirmed. A quick and dirty CAT scan having produced language recognition patterns for this, Arabic and rudimentary Berber.
That he spoke English was known from his interrogation.
If Prisoner Zero now failed to acknowledge a single order it was because he chose not to rather than because he didn't understand what was being said. Master Sergeant Saez had his own opinion on that but had been told to keep it to himself, especially while the press were around.
"So," said the small man, walking over to where Prisoner Zero stood shivering and naked in the early morning light. "This is our man, right?"
As if it could be anybody else.
Lieutenant Ashcroft sighed, mostly at the fact that the Pentagon's representative had excused himself the moment the lawyer came through the doorway and begun to introduce himself. Behind Miles Alsdorf stood Colonel Borgenicht, commandant of the newly named Camp Freedom. He was looking less than happy.
"Yes, sir. This is Prisoner Zero."
Both Colonel Borgenicht and the lawyer paused to examine the man, water dripping from his naked body.
"What happened to his hair?"
"I shaved it off, sir." The answer came from a Marine Specialist so short that she barely stood level with the White House lawyer, who had a career's worth of Cuban heels and hand-made suits behind him, even back in the days when he couldn't afford them.
"And why exactly did you cut it off?" asked Miles Alsdorf. He was holding a very expensive briefcase in one hand and wore this year's Rolex Presidential. Given what the White House was paying for his counsel on this matter, he could easily afford both.
Specialist Stone looked towards Lieutenant Ashcroft. Only the Lieutenant was busy not meeting her eyes.
"Because those were my orders, sir."
"And who gave this order?"
"A man in a suit, sir. He didn't give his name."
Miles Alsdorf's frown was usually reserved for opposing counsel. "You do know, don't you," he said, speaking to the Colonel, "that the President himself is taking a personal interest in this case?"
"So is the Secretary of Defense," said Colonel Borgenicht. The current spat between the White House and the Pentagon was their business. He was a career officer and hoped to keep it that way.
The corridor leading to his cage Prisoner Zero drew from memory, scratching it into the skin of his arm with a thumbnail. The only problem with this was that his map kept fading.
At the end of the corridor was a door and through that door could be found the hotel's swimming pool, its showers and changing rooms. Two marines had been in the process of emptying the pool, using an electric pump, when Prisoner Zero was marched by. Maybe they expected him to try to drown himself.
He currently wore a pair of trousers made from coarse orange paper, designed to fasten with a cord. The cord was also made of paper and broke easily. The prisoner knew this because he'd broken it.
He'd received four injections and been told he'd get antibiotics three times a day with his food. The cigarette burns on the inside of his thigh had been cleaned without comment by a marine paramedic, swabbed with some antiseptic and then dressed with a strip of synthetic skin. They were taking remarkably good care of him for someone they intended to kill.
And they did still intend to execute him, because more lethal injections were scheduled for two weeks to the day, Thursday 12 July. Although, as Master Sergeant Saez had pointed out, if the Pentagon was allowed its way, Prisoner Zero would already be up against a wall.
Fittingly enough, the wall Master Sergeant Saez had in mind was the one Prisoner Zero first noticed when Specialist Stone ripped free his blindfold the night before, and the prisoner found himself staring at a tourist hotel.
Almost pink in the twilight, the wall was meant to look as if it had stood forever. Only a workman had plastered the thing too soon, certainly before the mortar holding the breeze blocks had had a chance to dry, and angular cracks now indicated stress points in the structure underneath.
In the wall was a wrought-iron gate. This had been padlocked and sheeted on both sides with steel plates which were held in place by bolts. Next to the gate was a flowerbed and this had been trampled down. After the wall, the door and the flowerbed, the next thing Prisoner Zero had noticed was a curl of dog shit on the earth, turning to ash with age.
As Prisoner Zero scratched maps into his arm, Specialist Stone got busy painting out a window opposite Prisoner Zero's cage. Obliterating a stretch of ragged cliff with blue sea beyond, the dissonance between ochre rock and the utterly flat blueness of the Mediterranean an indication of the depth of the drop.
In one dimension, the blue was so close as to be part of the same, while in another it was obviously and entirely separate. As it was in the dimension beyond that.
Gulls, dark-headed and greedy, spun on the thermals above the edge of the cliff and then dropped away, like bit parts in some conjuring trick. Butterflies danced beyond the glass and then they were gone, along with the cliff, gulls and his sight of the sea, whitewashed away with a heavy brush.
It had all been very beautiful, in some ways more real than anything he'd ever seen, and yet Prisoner Zero had trouble working out what all this had to do with him. He should have been elsewhere. In America, most probably on the lawn of the White House with the latest rifle and laser sights. Saving the future from itself.
"Are they treating you well enough?"
Miles Alsdorf must have been told what to expect because his face expressed no surprise at finding his client held in a cage made by welding together huge sheets of steel mesh. The big surprise for Miles Alsdorf was that he'd won his fight for daily access.
The cage had been welded into place in the middle of the hotel weights room, which had been cleared of dumbbells and a pair of dual-stack multigyms, although mats were still piled below a large window; now whitewashed, padlocked and covered with mesh left over from welding the cage.
"Colonel Borgenicht's just been explaining it to me," Miles Alsdorf added, stepping into the room and shutting out the guards behind him. "They don't want to lose you."