Vojnomirovic shrugged. ‘Just don’t fuck it up, eh?’
‘Jesus, Voj, you can be such a schizy sonofabitch,’ said Curtis. ‘Don’t you turn Baltic on me now.’
Juraj Vojnomirovic had been drafted into the Serbian army that ‘cleansed’ Bosnia, after it had come to someone’s attention that he was a psychiatrist. They put his expertise to good use in the army’s interrogation team. His understanding and application of hallucinogenic drugs, the subject of a paper he’d written, had been far more effective at extracting information from spies and captured officers than the electrodes and smouldering cigarette tips conventionally utilised in such instances; and so his abilities soon came to the attention of Amnesty International and other human rights and United Nations groups. When the world came looking for people to blame for all the hate and loathing that had bubbled to the surface when the war had exhausted itself, Juraj Vojnomirovic’s name was on the list. But he had disappeared. His new employers, the Americans, were keen to remove him from the limelight while they learned from his practical experience.
Curtis leaned over the bench and checked the prisoner’s vitals one more time. Vojnomirovic was absolutely right. This was one mother-fucker they did not want to lose. On arrival, the prisoner had been asked in a civilised, straightforward manner to capitulate — help the good guys fight the evildoers and give straight answers to straight questions — but he had preferred silence. And so he’d been handed over to Curtis and Vojnomirovic. They put him on the standard program of deprivation: denied him sleep, sound, colour, human contact and even solid food for four days and five nights. The treatment had broken down much of the subject’s resistance, his heart rate and blood pressure indicating intense levels of stress. Three to five days were usually more than enough. Still, though, he had not broken, which meant one of three things: one, that his will was strong; two, that he had such heinous secrets lurking within that he was afraid to give them up; three, that he had nothing whatsoever of any value to divulge. The odds were strongly in favour of number two. So now it was time for the next phase: to administer the medicine that would storm his senses like a pack of rabid dogs whipped and beaten to insatiable levels of hatred.
‘Okay, Doctor Evil, let’s see what you can do,’ said Vojnomirovic. ‘I think this one is strong. I recommend starting with three hundred micrograms. Perhaps this terrorist would like to see what terror is all about.’
Curtis whistled softly. ‘Jesus, Voj, remind me never to get on your bad side. See you in — what — four hours?’
‘Yes, he should be well and truly softened up by then,’ said Vojnomirovic as he opened the door, letting in a wave of cool air freshly spiced with disinfectant that cleared Curtis’s sinuses.
‘Hey, when you come back, bring me a cup of coffee, will ya?’ Curtis called out to Vojnomirovic’s back as the door closed with a hiss, the rubber soles of his boots squeaking with the sound of a child’s rusty swing as he walked off down the linoleum corridor. Curtis looked at the subject again. The man’s eyelids were heavy and drool hung from his chin. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ Curtis said softly as he touched the keyboard on the laptop in front of him. The command sent a massive dose of EA-1729, otherwise known as lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, into the subject’s right radial vein. He then took a seat on a chair and waited for the first signs from the subject that indicated the hounds were at the gate. Kadar Al-Jahani had no idea what day it was or how long he’d been in captivity. His state of mind was such that he even doubted who he was, reality having been ripped from him by his captors. He was initially surprised by how well he’d been treated. There had been interviews and he’d been asked a barrage of questions, the interrogators almost gentlemanly in their approach. Naturally, he had refused to cooperate, erecting walls of silence behind which to hide. These Americans regarded themselves as a humane people, wearing their heightened sense of what it meant to be ‘civilised’ like a badge of arrogance. Surely they were incapable of the sort of torture his countrymen, with no civil rights niceties to adhere to, might have chosen to employ. But the Americans were no fools. What had surprised him were the questions. They obviously knew of his role in the embassy hit, about the gunrunning and, this was most disconcerting, they were aware of his relationship with Duat. How they knew these things was a mystery to him, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep his surprise at their knowledge of his activities from his eyes. But, he observed with immense satisfaction, they knew no details, naively expecting that he would supply them, that he would simply answer their questions. He told them nothing. That had changed their attitude.
They moved him from his original cell to one with walls, floor and ceiling the colour of sun-bleached bone. The cell was utterly silent. There was no night or day. They inserted a catheter in his penis and tubes carried fluids into his forearms. They strapped him to a chair naked and denied him sleep, jolts of electricity hitting the soles of his feet like broken bottles when he dared to close his eyes. And they left him alone with his breathing and his heartbeat.
Kadar Al-Jahani sat in this semi-conscious void where there was no light or dark, no stimulation save for the pain inflicted when sleep almost overcame him. Indeed, he had started to use the electric charges as his last anchors to the physical world when the realisation that he was on the verge of nothingness became too much to bear. And now exhaustion was his enemy. Every fibre of his body craved sleep like an addict denied supply.
The agony of complete dislocation caused tears to flow freely from his eyes and down his cheeks, the drops spattering on his chest and thighs. The sensitivity of his skin had increased a hundredfold and he cried out in alarm at the pain of the droplets hitting his naked nervous system. He believed the noise he made forced the walls to bow outwards, as if they were made of stretched rubber. He blinked with surprise and then he started to shake.
Lieutenant Colonel Randy Curtis heard the subject yell. He checked the monitor and saw the man’s body spasm, straining against the webbing. He appeared to relax momentarily and then the first of the convulsions began. He smiled with professional satisfaction. So far, the subject’s reactions were nothing extraordinary.
The Kadar Al-Jahani that was human had retreated far inside a long tunnel, largely protected from the assault of sensory deprivation the way a rabbit hides from a fox by retreating to the depths of its burrow. But something new was shaking the very foundations of Kadar’s world, something ominous and brutal that the conscious remnant of the man could not grapple with, and he shook violently with fear.
And suddenly Kadar Al-Jahani was back in his body, wrenched from hiding. He blinked. The walls appeared to breathe, expanding and contracting like diaphragms. Kadar felt himself being dragged slowly towards one of the walls with every breath. And then a white mouth pale as death opened in front of him as he drew near, revealing curved serpentine fangs leaking drops of green poison that steamed and hissed when they hit the floor. A blast of fetid air that smelled of eviscerated intestine rolled over him and he urinated with fear, filling the bag. He slammed his eyes shut to keep out the horror. And when he opened them again, he was no longer Kadar Al-Jahani the grown man, but Kadar the small boy, lying in his bed. He looked around frightened, for he knew that something terrible and deeply disturbing had turned the world he had known utterly inside out. He looked at the floor and it moved, a sea of cockroaches roiling and pitching over each other, and the air was full of their clicking sounds as millions of pairs of legs and mandibles thrust and parried.