I… c… 2… z… s… o… t… G
A message appeared on the screen: “Password failed. Remaining attempts: 2.”
No! The fear and tension gripped Carver again, even tighter than before. Where had he gone wrong? “I’m sure there are two zebras on the sodding grass,” he muttered. And then he realized he’d solved the problem: not “I see” but “There are.” Yes, that was it.
T… r… 2… z… s… o… t… G
There was something crushing about the computer’s immediate response: “Password failed. Remaining attempts: 1.” He was almost sick with nerves.
“Think, you stupid bastard, think!” He was talking out loud now, nodding his head, jerking his upper body against the restraints.
“The zebras, two of them, on the grass… aren’t they sleeping? They can’t be. So what the hell are they doing? Dozing, lying… lying, dozing… Lying. They’re definitely bloody lying.”
One last deep breath. One final hover of his index finger over the keyboard. Then he went for it.
T… r… 2… z… l… o… t… G
Nothing happened. For an endless, heart-stopping second the screen was completely blank. Frantically, Carver hit the space bar again and again. Then the familiar Windows desktop appeared, the screen was dotted with icons. And hidden away within the gray plastic box, a tiny transmitter beamed a single signal.
For Zhukovski was right. It was a booby trap. But the computer was not where the danger lay. Slipped within the padded sides of the carrying case were two sheets of C4 explosive and thermite incendiary accelerant, linked to a radio-operated timer detonator. That timer had just been activated by the space bar: thirty minutes’ delay for each strike of the bar. In precisely four hours it would set off a firebomb that would instantly incinerate anyone in its vicinity and reduce the Chalet Constanza to ashes and cinders.
Carver raised his head to the ceiling, then punched the air with his fists.
He remained on his own for a couple of minutes. He guessed Zhukovski would wait awhile to make sure there was no detonation. Then the white door opened and four of the Russians filed back in. Kursk had his gun out, as always. Rutsev alone was missing from the gang.
Zhukovski walked across to the chair and picked the Hitachi off of Carver’s lap. “Thank you, Mr. Carver,” he said. “You have done me a favor and provided rich entertainment. I was greatly amused by your ridiculous little aide-mémoire, trying to remember how many zebras were – what was it? – lying on the grass.”
Carver fought the temptation to tell Zhukovski that the joke would soon be on him. The bomb would detonate at a time when the chalet’s inhabitants would be fast asleep, with their bodies shut down and their minds least capable of swift response, even if they awoke. By then, either Carver would have found a way out of his captivity, or the Russians would have destroyed him. The odds were heavily against him, but he hadn’t given up yet. He felt a strange mix of profound mortal terror, knowing that he had only hours to live, and equally deep elation. At least he’d go down fighting. At least he’d make them pay.
And maybe, even now, there was a chance he might escape. If he could only get out of this damn chair.
“Why don’t you let me help you?” Carver pleaded. “I can get into the files.”
Zhukovski looked at him with an expression of pity at his boundless stupidity. “I don’t give a damn about the files,” he said. “And if curiosity should strike me, well, Moscow has the finest cryptographers in the world. If you truly have found someone able to crack these codes, which I doubt, be assured that I will have no problem doing the same.”
He bent down by the chair, his hands on his knees, so that his face was level with Carver’s.
“Let me tell you what does matter to me,” Zhukovski said. “I want to see you suffer. I want you to die as slowly and painfully as possible. You fucked my woman. It does not matter how or why. If word should spread that you did this and escaped with your life, both my friends and my enemies – many of whom are the same people – would see that as a sign of weakness on my part. But if stories of your torture spread across Russia, if men sitting over bottles of vodka tell horrific tales of what happened to the man who tried to cross me, if they see that my woman is more slavishly devoted to me than ever… well, then they will know that Yuri Zhukovski is not a man to be trifled with.”
He turned to Titov and issued a series of instructions that prompted another leering grin to break out across his henchman’s emaciated death’s-head face. Titov put the stun-belt control in the back pocket of his trousers, then stepped up to the chair and pushed Carver’s head against its solid metal back, hard. He placed a strap across his forehead and tightened it so that the leather seemed to dig into his skull. A second strap was forced across his mouth, then yanked tight so that it both gagged him and tugged against his loosened teeth and cracked jaw bringing agonizing pain with each tiny movement.
Carver was frightened now, really frightened. When he’d tried to jump Zhukovski, he’d known it wouldn’t work. He was just trying to engineer a situation in which he could play the part of a beaten man, begging for his one chance of salvation: the computer. He’d been prepared to take whatever punishment Zhukovski could hand out, the end justified the means. But he was no longer playacting. His terror was entirely genuine.
Carver had seen a TV show once about a British prisoner of war who pretended to go crazy, so that the Germans would hand him over to the Red Cross. But by the time he was finally free, it was too late; the pretense had become reality. He had truly gone mad. Carver was like that prisoner. When the cuffs were taken from his wrists, he made no attempt whatever to resist as his hands were secured to the arms of the chair. He did not want to give Zhukovski or his men the slightest excuse to press the white button that had so completely enslaved and unmanned him. Just the thought of what it would be like to squirm and jerk against his restraints, the imagined pain that would cause, was enough to leave him in a ferocious sweat. The final straps were tightened without any further bolts of electricity. He almost wept with gratitude.
There was a smooth efficiency to Titov’s actions. His normal twitchiness had been replaced by the calmness of a man who took deep comfort and satisfaction from his labors. But he had not finished his handiwork. First, he reached behind the chair and picked up the headphones, which he placed over Carver’s ears. There was no sound, simply a muffling of the world around him, as if he had stuck his fingers in his ears.
Next, Titov grabbed the roll of tape. He pulled out a strip about four inches long and tore it off with his teeth. Then he leaned forward and pulled on Carver’s eyelids, forcing them down.
As soon as Carver realized what Titov was doing, he immediately closed his eyes. He wanted his captor to know that he was cooperating. He was doing everything he possibly could to be good.
Carver felt the sticky grip of tape on his right eyelid, then a jerk as it was pulled up, and a second grip as Titov smoothed the other end of the strip onto his forehead. His eye was open now, wide open. And he could not blink. Then Titov did the same thing to his other eye. He took a step back from the chair, placed himself directly in Carver’s line of vision, and took the dreadful black box out of his trouser pocket. He held it up next to his grinning face in his left hand. He stretched his right arm out in front of him and raised his index finger. He looked at the box. Then he turned his head and looked at the finger. And then he winked.
Carver heard the muffled sound of laughter. At the edge of his vision, he could just see Dimitrov and Rutsev doubled over. But Carver didn’t care about them. His full concentration was on Titov’s finger as it slowly, ostentatiously rotated in the air, swooping from one side of his body to the other, closing in until it was just inches from the black box and its gleaming white button.