“Yes,” she managed to croak.
Smith had a length of wire ready in his pocket. He grabbed Linda’s arms and placed them at the small of her back. One-handed, he looped the wire around her wrists and twisted the two ends closed. The wire was high enough up her forearms that she couldn’t reach it with her fingers. A second piece of wire bound her wrists to the reinforced belt loop of her camouflage fatigues. In just seconds Linda Ross was trussed up like a Christmas goose. Only then did he take his weight off of her. Linda coughed violently as her lungs began working again. Her face was bright red, and her eyes burned with rage.
“Why are you doing this?”
Smith ignored her. He retrieved his satellite phone from his pack and powered it up.
“Answer me, damnit!”
He stripped the baseball cap off her head and stuffed it into her mouth. With so much jungle overhead he couldn’t get a clear signal. He grabbed Linda and started walking toward a clearing about fifty yards away. He dumped her into the grass and sat opposite her. He noticed he had an e-mail that had come in first thing this morning:
Change of plans, my friend. As you know my intention all along was to use official channels for our search. Going with the Corporation was a risky choice. My negotiations have finally paid off. I have made expensive arrangements with a Myanmar official for a squad of soldiers to be sent out to the monastery. They know who you are. Together, you should be able to wipe out the Corporation team and complete the mission.
Smith scratched at the stubble on his jaw. This changed everything, and explained how the chopper happened to show up at the exact right time. This meant the first team sent into the jungle was probably attacked by smugglers rather than the army. Just bad luck on their part.
Smith wrote out his text:
Wish I’d read your e-mail sooner. I’ve spent the last hour running from the patrol. No harm done. BTW I have them. Cabrillo and another taken prisoner. I have their woman with me. Bound and gagged. Instructions?
A minute passed before the reply lit up the screen:
I knew you could do it! And three Corporation members grabbed in the process. Interesting. It seems the Oracle gave them far more credit than they deserve. It appears they are no longer a threat. What of the other team I sent? Any ideas?
Smith replied:
Basil was shot, most likely by drug runners. Munire drowned. He had them in a bag. They had been under the dais, just like it said in the Rustichello Folio I stole in England. I am about an hour away from the army unit. How do I make contact?
The response came a moment later:
I will get word to them that you are coming back to their location. They will stand down. You can fly with them back to Yangon. A jet is waiting.
That beat having to hike out. In the cosmic scheme, it made up for being in a firefight where he was never a target. He thumbed in another message and hit SEND:
What do I do with the woman?
Is she attractive?
Smith looked over at Linda and assessed her the way a butcher looks at a cut of meat.
Yes.
Bring her along. In case the Oracle didn’t misjudge as badly as we think, she makes a good bargaining chip. If we don’t need her, we can sell her. See you soon, and well done, my friend.
Smith shut off the satellite phone and put it back in his pack. He again looked over at Linda. She glared at him with laser intensity. He smirked. Her anger had absolutely no effect on him.
“On your feet.”
Linda continued to stare defiantly.
“I was just told to keep you alive,” he said, “but that is an order I needn’t worry about obeying. Either get on your feet or I shoot you now and leave your corpse to the vultures.”
Her defiance lasted another heartbeat or two. He could tell when she finally accepted that she no longer had choices. The fire remained behind those eyes, but her shoulders sagged just a little as tension ran out of her body. Linda rose. With her in the lead, and Smith just behind her enough so that she couldn’t try anything, they retraced their path and headed back to the monastery.
JUAN MARKED TIME by the twin ravages of hunger and thirst. The hunger was a dull ache that he could handle. It was the thirst that was driving him mad. He had tried pounding on the door to get someone’s attention, but he knew that they hadn’t forgotten him. They were breaking him down bit by bit through deliberate deprivation.
His tongue felt like a seared piece of meat that had been rammed into his mouth, and his skin had stopped sweating so that it felt papery and brittle. No matter how he tried not to think about it, images of water flooded his mind—glasses of it, lakes of it, whole oceans of it. It was the worst form of torture. They were letting his mind betray him the way Croissard and Smith had. He realized that the waterboard treatment had only been a lark, a way for them to amuse themselves. If it had worked, fine. If not, they already had the second phase of his interrogation mapped out.
This was their tried-and-true method of breaking prisoners, and he was quite sure it had never failed.
Suddenly the bolt securing his door snapped back with a metallic echo, and the hinges squealed like nails on a chalkboard. Two guards were there. Neither had weapons other than the rubber truncheons slipped under their belts. They stomped into the room and lifted Cabrillo from the floor. The Burmese are not usually big people, and these two were no exception. In his exhausted state, and with only one leg, Cabrillo was deadweight, and the soldiers staggered under him.
Cabrillo was dragged down the corridor toward where he had been waterboarded. The dread he felt was like a load of stones had been packed around his heart.
But they continued past the door and went farther down the hallway to another interrogation room. This one was square, cement, and had a table and two chairs. One was bolted to the floor, the other was occupied by the interrogator with the cultured voice. On the table was a carafe of water, its sides dewy from the humidity, and an empty glass.
“Ah,” the interrogator greeted him with a smile that was part bonhomie, part reptilian. “Good of you to join me, Mr. Smith.”
They were still using that name, Juan thought. They either hadn’t tortured MacD or he hadn’t broken. Or this guy was smart enough not to reveal what he’d learned from their other prisoner.
Juan was dumped into the chair, and it took everything in him to remain erect and keep his eyes on the interrogator and not ogle the pitcher. His mouth was too dry to speak.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the interrogator said, pouring water into the glass so that the ice cubes clicked musically. “I am Colonel Soe Than. In case you were wondering, you have been our guest here at Insein for two and a half days.”
He set the glass in front of Cabrillo. Juan sat as still as a statue.
“Go ahead,” Than encouraged. “I will not think any less of you.”
With a studied deliberation, Juan reached for the water and took a measured sip.
Then he set the glass back onto the table, less than a quarter of it gone.
“I do admire your strength, Mr. Smith. You are one of the most disciplined men I’ve ever come across. By now, most people would have upended the carafe and sucked it all down. Of course, the abdominal cramps that accompany such a foolish mistake are as brutal as the original thirst.”
Juan said nothing.
“Before our time together comes to an end”—he glanced at his watch; it was the black military-style chronograph that Cabrillo had brought on the mission—“which should be in a half hour or so, I wonder if you would at least tell me your real name.”
Cabrillo took another slow sip of water. His body craved it, but he forced himself to put the glass back on the table. He cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse croak. “No joke. It really is John Smith.”