Sidney Sheldon - Chasing Tomorrow

Hands, arms, legs, feet.

He was dressed, but not in his own clothes. What he had on was flimsy and insubstantial, like a hospital gown. A blindfold of something thicker and coarser had been tied around his head. Could it be a bandage?

“I need a doctor,” Jeff croaked. “Where are we?”

Another kick, this time to the collarbone. The pain was excruciating. Jeff couldn’t understand why he hadn’t passed out.

“ I ask the questions,” Cooper squealed. He sounded like a stuck pig, or an angry child who’d just inhaled the helium out of a party balloon. “The Lord will heal your pain. Only the Lord can help you now.”

Unless “the Lord” had a flair for emergency cranial surgery, and/or an ability to convince deranged psychopaths to release their hapless prisoners and walk into the nearest mental hospital, Jeff couldn’t bring himself to share Cooper’s confidence in His present usefulness.

He remembered another quote from the Bible, something Uncle Willie used to say: “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Jeff’s survival instincts began to kick in.

Step one was to figure out where he was. From the echoing quality of Cooper’s voice, he could tell they were in a very large building of some sort, something high-ceilinged and drafty. A church? No. All churches had a certain smell to them that this place lacked. A barn? That seemed more likely. When Cooper wasn’t spouting off about the Lord or kicking him like a dog, the silence was total. There was no sound of traffic, no ambient noise, no birdsong even. Just an enveloping blanket of soundless peace.

We’re in a barn, somewhere remote.

The cool temperatures suggested that it was nighttime. Also that they were probably no longer in the south of Spain. The plane ride came back to him . . . if it was a plane ride. And something else. A car?

He wondered how long he’d been unconscious. Hours? Days?

They could be anywhere by now.

Jeff tried to work back logically. What was the last thing he could remember? The pain in his head and body made it hard to focus for more than a few seconds. Thoughts and images came back to him piecemeal. He remembered the church in Seville. The smell of incense, the beautiful altar.

Then what?

The plane. The cold metal. Tracy. His mother.

It was so hard to untangle what was real from what was imagined.

Jeff’s mother had been dead for twenty-five years, but her voice, her screams, had felt so real. He felt himself on the brink of tears.

“Do you know why you’re here, Stevens?”

Cooper’s voice stung like a cattle prod.

“No.” Talking seemed to require an inordinate amount of strength. Each word was exhausting. “Why?”

“Because you are the lamb. The third and final covenant.”

Great. Well, thanks for clearing that up.

A weak smile played at the corners of Jeff’s bruised lips.

“Do you think this is funny?” Cooper seethed.

Jeff braced himself for another blow, but none came. What’s he waiting for?

He tried to put himself in Cooper’s shoes, to get inside his mind-set—not easy given that the man was clearly a card-carrying fruit loop.

He’s talking to you. That means he wants to engage in a dialogue.

He could easily have killed you by now, but he hasn’t.

Why not?

What does he want?

What does he need that you have?

Jeff’s mind was a blank. But he knew he had to do something, say something. He had to keep Cooper engaged. On instinct he said, “I’ll tell you what I think. I think this has nothing to do with the Lord, and everything to do with Tracy.”

Cooper erupted. “DON’T SAY HER NAME!”

Jeff thought, Jackpot.

“Why shouldn’t I say her name? She is my wife, after all.”

Cooper made an awful, howling noise like a dying animal.

“No. No no no. She is not your wife!”

“Sure she is. We never actually divorced.”

“It doesn’t matter. You defiled her. You took what was mine. You took something beautiful, something perfect, and you made it filthy. Like YOU.”

Jeff heard the little man scrabbling around on the floor. Then he felt himself being rolled over onto his stomach and the thin garment he was wearing being ripped off his back.

“You will atone.” Cooper let out a wild shriek, then struck Jeff hard on the back with some sort of crude whip. It felt as if it were made from electrical wire, with sharp metal tips that ripped into Jeff’s flesh like razors.

Jeff screamed

“You WILL atone.”

The whip came down again.

And again.

And again.

The pain was beyond words, beyond anything Jeff had ever experienced.

He was still screaming, but the sound seemed to be coming from outside him now. Inside, he had shut down, waiting for oblivion, knowing that it must surely come soon.

The last thing Jeff remembered was the sound of Daniel Cooper’s labored breathing, the little man gasping with exertion as the blows kept raining down. Then, like a lover, the silence rushed up to greet him.

“DO YOU PLAY CHESS?”

Jeff opened his eyes. He could see nothing but blackness. For a second he panicked. I’m blind! The bastard’s blinded me!

But then he remembered the cloth bandage over his eyes and took a breath. He waited for the pain to shoot through his rib cage as air entered his lungs. Or for his headache to return or his raw, flayed back to start screaming. But all the agony he’d felt before was gone. It was miraculous. Wonderful.

It wasn’t long before the obvious thought struck him:

Cooper must have drugged me.

But he didn’t care. Jeff’s whole body felt warm, as if a glow of contentment and well-being were heating him from within. He had no idea how much time had passed since he was last awake—since the beating—but whatever Cooper had given him felt great. The strange thing was that Jeff felt none of the mental fog usually associated with morphine or other opiate-based painkillers. His body might have been lulled into a false sense of security, but his mind was clear. Perhaps, he wondered, adrenaline was keeping him focused? Very obviously he was still in danger. Other than his hunch about Tracy, Jeff still had no idea why he was here or what Daniel Cooper wanted with him.

“Chess?” Cooper repeated. “Do you play? Oh, never mind, it’s a rhetorical question. I know you do.” His earlier anger seemed to have dissipated to the point where he sounded positively cheerful. “Let’s play. I’m white, so I’ll go first.”

Jeff heard the sounds of a board being set up, of wooden pieces being set down gently in their respective battle lines. He barely knew how to play chess, hadn’t played since his teens, in fact. But he sensed this would be a bad time to admit as much. Something told him Cooper wasn’t likely to go for a hand of poker instead, or to whip out the Monopoly board.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” Jeff asked.

“Of course not,” said Cooper. “I never forget things.”

Jeff said, “I can’t see. Or move my hands. How am I supposed to play chess if I can’t see the board or touch the pieces?”

Cooper seemed amused by the question. “With your mind, Mr. Stevens. I’ll tell you my moves and you tell me yours. Then I’ll move your pieces for you. It’ll be just like on the QE2 . The game you rigged between Melnikov and Negulesco. Remember?”

Jeff would never forget it. It was the first scam he and Tracy had pulled off together and it had worked like a charm. The two grand masters had sat in separate rooms and unwittingly copied each other’s moves. Jeff had run a book on the match for fellow passengers and cleaned up. The question was, how did Daniel Cooper know about it?