The elevator doors opened, and they stepped out. Chapel thought they might be in the basement of the hospital. The air was much cooler down there, and a little clammy. The walls were all tiled, and drains were set at periodic intervals in the floor, as if this level needed to be hosed down frequently. Even the lighting was different — harsher, more direct. Instead of the recessed bulbs on the higher floors, here the light came from hanging lamps, each of them inside its own steel cage.
It was not a good place. Combined with the subject of Kalin’s speech, it was enough to make Chapel’s skin crawl.
“Some men resist pain better than others. Some can go longer without food. The same dosage of a truth drug might open one man up and kill another.” Kalin shrugged. “All very frustrating. But some agent of the KGB, some man who will be forever nameless, took this problem and saw that it was actually an opportunity in disguise. If every subject responded to torture differently, then it was clear to him that the torture must be changed to suit the subject. That effective torture meant finding the one thing, the one breaking point, that would work for a given subject. If a man is afraid of spiders, for instance — if he has a phobia of them, then you will get more out of him by sticking his hand in a box full of the things than you would from weeks of a drug regimen. If a man loves his wife, you threaten her, not him. The trick, of course, is finding out just what the breaking point, the weak spot, is. Especially with a subject who won’t even tell you his name.”
They came to a section of corridor lined with long rectangular windows. Beyond the glass was only darkness. Kalin went over to one and flipped a switch, turning on lights in the room beyond.
Chapel wanted to run away. He didn’t want to know what was in that room, what Kalin thought was going to make him crack. He started to turn — it was involuntary — but the orderlies just grabbed him then. Held him in place.
“Take a look,” Kalin said.
Chapel forced himself to look through the window. His imagination, he knew, was running away from him; it couldn’t possibly be as bad as what his own mind could come up with. He looked and saw—
Nothing much. On the other side of the glass was what looked like a standard operating room. There was a slablike operating table and a couple of cabinets. A tank of anesthetic gas. Lights that could be shone directly on the table. That was it.
No box full of spiders. No Julia with a gun to her head.
Just an operating room.
“I’ve been watching you for some time now. When you first came to me, I had your prosthetic arm taken away. I thought that would leave you vulnerable, that you would have difficulty doing the most basic tasks. But I was wrong — you operate just fine with one arm. You have learned over time how to get by with only half the usual number of hands. That’s very commendable. I wonder if you could learn the same lesson all over again?”
Chapel’s eyes went wide. “No,” he said. “No. You can’t. You wouldn’t.”
“I can. I will. You are a nonperson. I can do anything to you I desire,” Kalin said. “You don’t even have a name. Tomorrow, if you do not answer all of my questions, I will bring you back here and we will cut off your right arm. And then you will have no arms at all. It will be interesting to see just how well you can adapt to that.”
They left him alone all day. An orderly came by with food a couple of times, but he didn’t respond to Chapel’s halting questions, even when he tried to ask them in Russian. It was clear that Kalin had given the order that Chapel be left to his own thoughts.
Which was a kind of torture all in itself.
“You hold out as long as you can,” Bigelow had told him. Every day he kept silent was another day for Hollingshead to distance himself and the DIA from Chapel’s activities. Another day for Angel to scrub his existence off the official records. Another day to make it look like the United States had never sent an agent to sabotage Perimeter.
But Bigelow had also told him there would come a time when he wouldn’t be able to hold out any longer. When the pressure was just too much.
He’d already given one arm for his country. Was he supposed to give the other one, too? Objectively he knew the answer to that question. If he was willing to give his life for America, why not an arm? He’d already proven once that he could survive that kind of loss. That he could learn to have a meaningful life as an amputee. He thought back to when he’d come home from Afghanistan, and he’d worked with a physical trainer named Top, learning how to live with one arm. Top had been a sergeant in Iraq who had lost an arm, a leg, and an eye to a roadside bomb. The man had given more than anyone could reasonably ask, but he’d never complained — and he’d never let it slow him down. With Top’s help, Chapel had learned to adjust.
Of course, part of that adjustment was getting a magic prosthetic that worked almost as well as what he’d lost. The artificial arm had made a huge difference in his life, made so many things possible for him. But that arm was gone. Kalin wouldn’t give him another one, and he certainly wouldn’t give him two. He would spend the rest of his life in this hospital — maybe years — struggling to learn to use his feet to feed himself, to clean himself.
And even that wouldn’t be the end of it. Once Kalin had taken his right arm — what would be the next step? If somehow Chapel managed to stay silent even through another amputation, Kalin wouldn’t just give up. He would find some other way to get the information he wanted.
There came a point where your country could ask no more of you, Chapel thought. There came a point where no matter how many oaths and promises you’d made, no matter how sincerely you had sworn to defend the honor of your country, you had to let go. You had to give in.
Maybe he had reached that point.
He was asleep when they came for him. Two big orderlies in white tunics picked him up and carried him out of his cell. Kalin waited for him by the elevator that led down to the surgical theaters.
Kalin had his notebook in one hand, and his pen in the other.
He was tapping the pen against the edge of the notebook. Impatient.
Somehow that was the thing that made Chapel snap. That made him try to fight.
One orderly held his arm, the other had his neck. He didn’t know if they were really hospital employees or FSB agents — but he could tell by how thoroughly, how efficiently they held him, that they’d had some training in how to restrain a violent person.
They’d never tried to hold on to an Army Ranger before, though.
Chapel’s legs were free. He stopped walking and forced them to drag him until his legs were dangling behind him, his bare feet squeaking on the slick floor. He brought one leg up and hooked it around the knee of the orderly holding his arm. The man wasn’t ready for that and he stumbled. The other orderly tried to compensate, but Chapel threw his weight to the side and all three of them went down in a heap.
The orderly who held his arm saw the floor coming toward his face and let go, using his hands to catch himself. That was all Chapel needed. He brought his arm back and delivered a nasty punch right to the kidney of the orderly holding his neck. The man’s breath exploded out of his mouth, and his grip slackened.
Chapel wrestled his way clear and scrambled to his feet. He could see Kalin reaching into his jacket pocket, maybe going for a weapon. If he went for Kalin, Chapel knew that would give the orderlies a chance to come at him from behind, so he ignored Kalin and dashed down the hall in the other direction.