Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

That lunge that Orlov had made at me, his only clumsy move. He knew I would push him to the ground, that he’d be able to roll over and set off the emergency button with his hand or knee or foot.

But something was wrong!

I looked at the ex-KGB chief and saw that he was terrified. Of what?

He was looking at me. “Follow the gold!” he croaked. Meaning what exactly?

“The name!” I shouted out to him. “Give me the name!”

“I can’t say it!” he croaked, his hands flailing, indicating the policemen. “They—”

Yes. Of course he could not say it aloud, not in front of these men. “The name ,” I repeated. “Think the name!”

Orlov looked at me, baffled and desperate. Then he turned to the policemen.

“Where are my people?” he said. “What have you done with my—”

Suddenly, he appeared to jerk upward. There was a spitting sound, a sound I knew at once, and I turned and saw that one of the policemen was targeting Orlov with a submachine gun, its automatic fire cutting a grotesque swath into the old man’s chest. His arms and legs danced around for a second as he expelled one last, horrifying scream. Blood flew everywhere, spattering the stone floors, the walls, the burnished dining table. Orlov, his neck half severed from his body, was crumpled into a nightmarish, bloodied heap.

I let out an involuntary shout of horror. I had pulled out my pistol, outmanned though I realized I was, but there was no point.

Suddenly there was silence. The submachine gun-fire had stopped. Numbly, I raised my hands and gave myself up.

The carabinieri led me, handcuffed, through the vaulted door of Castelbianco, and slowly over to a beat-up blue police van.

They looked and dressed like carabinieri, but of course they were not. They were murderers — but whose? Dazed from the horror, I could barely think straight. Orlov had summoned his own people, his protection, only to be surprised when others had arrived. But who were they?

And why hadn’t they killed me as well?

One said something quickly and quietly in Italian. The other two, surrounding me closely, nodded and guided me into the back of the van.

It was not the proper time to move, to do anything sudden, so I went along with them bovinely. One of the policemen sat across from me in the back of the van, while another took the wheel and the third kept watch from the front seat.

None of them spoke.

I watched my police escort, a chubby and dour young man. He sat maybe two feet from me.

I concentrated.

I “heard” nothing; just the loud muffled roar of the engine as the van negotiated the dirt road out of the estate. Or so I assumed, since there were no windows in the back of the van. The only illumination came from a dome light. My wrists, cuffed in front of me at my lap, chafed.

I tried, again, to empty my mind, to concentrate. In the last week or so this had become reflexive. I would free my mind as much as possible of distracting thoughts — let it become a blank slate, in a way; a receiver. And then I would hear the eddies and floes of thoughts in that slightly altered tonality that indicated I wasn’t actually hearing anything spoken aloud.

I made my mind as blank, as receptive as possible, and in time... I “heard” my name... and then something else that sounded familiar... in that faint, floating way that told me it was thoughts.

In English.

He was thinking in English.

He wasn’t a policeman, and he wasn’t Italian.

“Who are you?” I asked.

My escort looked up at me, betraying only for an instant his surprise, then shrugged mutely, hostilely, as if he didn’t understand.

“Your Italian is excellent,” I said.

The van’s engine quieted, then stalled. We had stopped somewhere. It couldn’t be far outside the estate — we had been moving for only a few minutes — and I wondered where they had taken me.

Now the doors to the van slid open, and the other two climbed in. One covered me with a gun while the other gestured to me to lie down. When I had done so, he began to attach black nylon restraints to my ankles.

I made it as difficult for him as possible — kicking, wriggling. But with a crisp Velcro crunch he managed to fasten the wide black bands, binding my feet together. Then he discovered the second pistol, concealed in a holster at my left calf.

“One more, guys,” this one said triumphantly.

In English.

“Better not be any others,” said the one who seemed to be in charge. His voice was deep, raspy, cigarette-husky.

“That’s it,” the other said, running his hands along my legs and arms.

“All right,” the one in charge said. “Mr. Ellison, we’re colleagues of yours.”

“Prove it,” I said, lying prone. All I could see was the dome light immediately above me.

There was no response. “You can choose to believe us or not,” the one in charge said. “Makes no difference to us. We just have to ask you a couple of questions. If you’re completely honest with us, you have nothing to worry about.”

While he was speaking, I felt something cold and liquid spread over my bare arms, then my face, neck, then ears: a viscous liquid was being applied with a brush.

“Do you know what this is?” the fake policeman in charge asked.

I could taste the sweetness at the edge of my mouth.

“I can guess.”

“Good.”

The three of them hoisted me out of the dark van, into the blinding brightness of the day. There was no point to struggling now. I wasn’t going anywhere. Looking around as I was carried out of the van, I saw trees, brush, a flash of barbed wire. We were still on the grounds of Castelbianco, not far from the entrance, in front of one of the small stone buildings I had noticed on the way in.

They set me down on the ground just before the building. I could smell the loamy earth, then the putrescent odor of rotting garbage, and I knew where I was.

Then the one in charge said: “All you have to do is tell us where the gold is.”

Lying prone on the ground, the back of my head cold from the moist earth, I said, “Orlov wouldn’t cooperate. I barely had the chance to talk with him.”

“That’s not true, Mr. Ellison,” the middle one said. “You’re not being honest with us.” He lowered a small, shiny object, which I now saw was a razor-sharp scalpel, to my face, and I closed my eyes instinctively. God, no. Don’t do it.

There was a swift stroke across my cheek. I felt the shock of cold metal, then a needlelike, sharp pain.

“We don’t want to cut you too badly,” the senior one said. “Please, just give us the information. Where is the gold?”

I felt something hot and sticky oozing down the right side of my face. “I have no idea,” I said.

The scalpel was now resting on my other cheek, cold and oddly pleasant.

“I really dislike this, Mr. Ellison, but we don’t have any choice. Again, Frank.”

I gasped out, “No!”

“Where is it?”

“I told you, I have no—”

Another stroke. Cold, then stingingly hot, and I felt the blood on my face, running into the sticky bait-liquid they’d painted on me. Tears sprang to my eyes.

“You know why we’re doing this, Mr. Ellison,” the man in charge said.

I tried to wriggle over onto my stomach, but two of them were holding me firmly down. “Goddamn you,” I said. “Orlov didn’t know. Is that so hard for you to understand? He didn’t know — so I don’t know!”

“Don’t make us do it,” the elder said. “You know we will.”

“If you let me go, I can help you find it,” I whispered.

He gestured with his pistol, and the junior two picked me up, one at my head, the other at my feet. I thrashed wildly, but my mobility was limited, and they had a firm grasp on me.