The general was naked and tied to a wooden X bolted to the wall. The car battery and alligator clamps laid out on a cart were enough to indicate the crude methods the SVR had been using to dredge information. The general's eyes widened as Tuskin walked into the room.
"Pyotr! You have come to help me!"
Tuskin didn't say a word as they cut the general free and dragged him up the stairs and through the carnage they'd caused, pausing only to grab an overcoat for the man to wear. The older man collapsed as they left the building, and Tuskin threw him over his shoulder. They made it to the skimmer in five minutes and the door slid down to admit them.
Tuskin unceremoniously threw the general down onto the metal floor. As the old man gasped for breath, Tuskin knelt over him, his words a low hiss of Russian. "Who did you sell the bombs to?"
The general looked up and smiled painfully. "Ah, Pyotr. They have asked that for a week. You did not have to kill all those guards to play this game. I will never speak. Who put you up to this? Kolgorov? Roskin? What do they care?"
Tuskin pulled his knife out. "No game, Comrade General. I am not with anyone. I am for me. Who did you sell the bombs to?"
The general shook his head. "I fought in the Great War. I served for forty-eight years after. And what did I get? Nothing. So I made my own way as the rest of the country did. Isn't that what capitalism is supposed to be? Looking out for yourself? That I failed and was caught is my mistake. I will die with that."
Tuskin put the knife against the general's throat. "Who did you sell the bombs to?"
The general didn't flinch. "The SVR did all they could for a week. You can't do more. I am a dead man."
"Not yet," Tuskin muttered as he slid the knife down the man's body and pressed it in. "You don't know what pain is yet. The SVR were amateurs. I am not."
Hawkins stared unemotionally as the screams echoed against the metal skin of the skimmer. Tuskin used the knife skillfully, choosing maximum pain with minimal actual physical damage. The colonel's voice was ice cold as his hands worked. "I am not SVR. I am not Spetsnatz anymore. I answer to no one. There are worse things than death, Comrade General. You will experience them all. If you tell me who, I will make it short and easy. Until you do, it will never end. We can keep you alive. The SVR really didn't care who you sold the bombs to, because they thought the buyers were out of the country and it wasn't their problem anymore. You were an embarrassment and there wasn't much they could do about you or the bombs."
The knife twitched and the general screamed again, curling up in the fetal position, trying to escape. "Not like the electricity, is it, Comrade General?" Tuskin asked. "You knew after the shock that your body and mind were still there. But now, now, you don't know what will be left after the blade is done, do you?"
"Why, Pyotr?" The general sobbed. "Why are you doing this to me? The country betrayed us! You owe them nothing."
"I owe the people something," Tuskin said.
Hawkins grabbed his comrade's hand, preventing the fatal twist, and shook his head. "We need him," he mouthed to Tuskin.
"The people," Tuskin repeated. "All those who have lived their lives, simply trusting that those who held the power would at the very least not destroy them." The knife moved to a less lethal position and slid in.
The general screamed and vomited, the meager remains of his last prison meal spewing onto the floor. "Please, Pyotr! Please!"
"Who, General? Who?" Tuskin turned to Hawkins. "Hold his head still."
Hawkins reached down and grabbed the general's white hair, clamping his other arm around the neck, immobilizing the old man. Tuskin moved the point of the knife to just in front of the general's left eye.
"Pyotr! You wouldn't!" The eye was mesmerized by the bloody tip, centimeters away.
"Who? You have five seconds or I take out that eye. Then the other. I'll stop the bleeding, so you will survive. Then I will castrate you. Then your hands. And we will keep you alive. We will cauterize the amputations as we go so you don't bleed to death." Tuskin's voice was totally devoid of emotion.
"Five. Four. Three. Who, General?" Tuskin paused for a few seconds. "Two. One." The knife darted forward, piercing the eye. It took all of Hawkins's strength to keep his grip as the body spasmed wildly from pain. Tuskin levered down on the knife and the ruined eye popped out, dangling by the occipital cord. Tuskin neatly severed the cord and the eye fell to the floor.
"Stop screaming, General. That won't save your other eye." Tuskin reached down and picked up the eyeball, holding it directly in front of its partner. "You have five seconds or you never see again." Blood oozed from the hole in the general's skull. "I don't know who he was." The words spilled out like the vomit that had preceded them.
"You lie," Tuskin replied. He dropped the eyeball and stomped his boot on it, the noise causing Hawkins to flinch.
"No! I don't know. We never met face-to-face. There was a dead drop. He contacted me there and he left the gold there. After I had the gold, I put the two bombs in place for pickup."
"Gold? He paid for both in gold?"
"Yes!"
"The same person bought both?
"Yes!"
"An African?"
There was a brief pause, and Tuskin moved the knife closer to the general's eye. "I don't know!" The general shook his head. "He wasn't African."
"But the Africans exploded one of the bombs under Vredefort Dome," Tuskin said. "Was this man a front for them?"
"I don't know."
"You are wasting my time, old man. What do you know?"
"The Africans may have gotten one of the bombs-maybe both. But the man I sold them to-he was Russian. And he was military too."
Tuskin exchanged a look with Hawkins. "How do you know that?"
"He knew too much. He played me well. He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew that I would do it. It is someone who knew me but who never let me know who he was."
Tuskin frowned, lowering the knife slightly. "How did he do that?"
The general had his chance. Pulling out of Hawkins's relaxed grip, he impaled his throat on the knife. Tuskin cursed in Russian as he tried to stop the flow of arterial blood.
"He's gone," Hawkins said, grabbing the other man. Reluctantly, Tuskin pulled his hands away as the general's life ebbed out onto the floor.
"We have nothing," Tuskin said bitterly.
"We have it that the buyer was a Russian. And that he was military. That's a start," Hawkins said.
Tuskin stood. "What now?"
"We go to South Africa," Hawkins said.
"South Africa?" Tuskin asked.
"We talk to the ones who bought the Vredefort bomb from the Russian. Maybe they know who he is."
"You think this Russian still has the other bomb?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where these Africans are who bought the bomb?"
"Yes. I did some checking before I came through. The South African police have picked them up. A man and a woman. The man's name is Nabaktu. He was part of a radical splinter group of the Xantha party. He was assisted by a woman named Lona. They sent one of their members into the mine on a suicide mission with the bomb."
"There was no intelligence on that from my people," Tuskin commented.
"The South African authorities are keeping it quiet. They want to interrogate and then terminate them. They certainly don't want to have a trial. They have enough bad publicity as it is. The CIA picked up this info from a source they have in-country."