Charles Mccarry - The Tears Of Autumn

Christopher was drinking coffee the following afternoon when Glavanis and Eycken came downstairs. They had coffee with cognac in it, and Glavanis put two large steaks under the broiler.

Christopher said, “How much money did the man have on him?”

Glavanis shrugged. “None. The bodyguards had about two thousand in dollars, plus maybe two hundred thousand lire.”

“It’s yours.”

“What about our pay?” Eycken asked.

“That, too.”

“What do you want him to spill?” Glavanis asked.

“I’ll ask the final questions when you think he’s ready. Just work on him.”

“We have to ask him something,” Glavanis said. “Otherwise one can’t make the psychological progression-there’s no reason to put on more pressure if he isn’t asked a question he refuses to answer. It’s not logical. There’s no focus of fear.”

“Keep asking about a million dollars. Tell him you know he received it. Just keep hammering on that.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, for now. Talk to him through the loudspeakers-I’ve rigged a microphone. There’s a light for his eyes if you want it.”

“What about the water?”

Christopher hesitated. “If you need it, but be careful. I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.”

Eycken sipped his coffee, making a windy noise with his lips. “I have a lot of faith in water,” he said.

Glavanis washed the dishes before they went downstairs. They wore woolen ski masks that concealed their faces and muffled their voices. Eycken’s black beard curled from the bottom of his mask.

They worked for almost three hours. No sound of any kind filtered into the upstairs. Christopher watched a Clark Gable movie, dubbed in Italian, on television. Finally he heard the steel door scrape over the stone floor of the cellar, and Glavanis’s light footsteps on the stairs.

Glavanis came into the sitting room with his mask still on. “He’s ready,” he said. “Jan is with him. He’s a mess, Paul-he can’t control himself.”

Glavanis pinched his nostrils shut through the mask, laughed when this reminded him that he still had it on, and stripped it off his head. He smoothed his short black hair with both hands.

“He’s primitive, that man,” Glavanis said. “At first he kept screaming that he was going to kill us. Jan kept pouring water down his throat through the tube. In the end, he went to pieces in a bad way, he kept on saying ‘Mama! Mama!’ It was very strange-we gave him no pain, just the water.”

“Is he coherent?”

“More or less. He’s afraid Jan will drown him again. The water is very effective.”

“All right, let him rest for a few minutes. Turn off the lights and lock the door. I’ll be right down.”

Christopher went upstairs and put on an Italian suit, with the ribbon of a decoration in the lapel. With a gray wig and mustache and rimless spectacles Christopher looked different enough that Glavanis reached for his pocket when he saw him coming down the stairs. Christopher was carrying a small leather case, the kind used by doctors to transport hypodermics. He had draped a heavy dressing gown over one arm. Before he went into the cellar he removed his wristwatch and put it in his pocket; there were thousands like it, but he did not want Pigeon to remember it.

With the door closed and the lights reflecting from its polished white walls, the interrogation room looked like the inside of a dry skull. Frankie Pigeon, naked, was tied by his wrists to a ring in the wall. Long yellow stains ran down the inside of his legs. He trembled uncontrollably. The floor was slick with the water he had regurgitated.

When Pigeon saw the door open, he pressed his knees together and turned his lower body to one side in a convulsive movement, to protect his genitals. He looked at Christopher, then closed his eyes tightly. His limp gray hair had fallen over his face. Pigeon’s chalky body had been powerful in youth; now it sagged, and his round stomach heaved in and out as he worked to control his breathing.

Christopher put his briefcase on the table. “Buonasera, Don Franco,” he said.

Pigeon did not open his eyes. Christopher turned off the overhead lights. Now only the table lamp, fitted with a brilliant photographic bulb, was burning. Christopher stood behind the lamp in the shadows. He removed a large hypodermic syringe from the leather case, and holding his hands in the light, filled it from an ampule of yellow liquid. He laid the syringe on a white towel. Then he focused the lamp on Pigeon’s face. His eyes were open, and he stared wildly at the syringe.

“This is a very unhealthy place, Don Franco,” Christopher said, continuing to speak Italian.

Frankie Pigeon tried to speak and failed; he closed his eyes, concentrated, and tried again. “You get nothing from me,” he said in English.

“We have time,” Christopher said. “You must be very cold.”

He put a chair in the center of the room, in front of the table, and untied Pigeon’s hands. Pigeon fell to the floor, shuddering. Christopher lifted him and helped him into the bathrobe. “Please sit down,” he said. He went back to the table and adjusted the light so that it shone on Pigeon’s haggard features, but did not altogether blind him. Pigeon sat with one flaccid leg wrapped around the other; his body shook and he wedged his hands between his crossed legs.

“I want you to understand your situation,” Christopher said. “It’s possible for you to remain in this room indefinitely. Conditions will not change, except to get worse. No one will find you.”

Pigeon had stopped trying to control his shivering. “They’ll find me,” he said, “and when they do, you bastard…”

“No. You can forget about being rescued. It’s not realistic. Your men have no chance. You saw what happened in Calabria, within earshot of your house.”

Pigeon tried to speak again. It was difficult for him-his mouth opened and no voice came out. When finally he was able to utter sound, it was a high thin shriek; a beaded string of phlegm leaped out of his throat and fell through the beam of light.

“Who?” he screamed.

Christopher didn’t answer. He waited until Pigeon had calmed a little before he touched the hypodermic with the tip of a finger. As he spoke to Pigeon, he tapped the glass barrel of the syringe with his fingernail.

“This hypodermic is filled with the live bacteria of Hansen’s disease,” Christopher said. “I wonder what you know about Hansen’s disease.”

Frankie Pigeon’s eyes were fixed on the syringe and on Christopher’s rhythmically tapping finger.

“Hansen’s disease is caused by the Mycobacterium leprae,” Christopher said, “which is why it’s more usually called leprosy. It’s a peculiar disease. The incubation period varies greatly Sometimes the disease develops in a year or two after infection, but sometimes fifteen or even twenty years can pass before any symptoms appear. All that time, the germ works inside the body. It takes various forms. The neural form may be the worst -lesions develop on the central nervous system. It causes madness, loss of sexual potency, loss of bowel control, and so on. It can paralyze the lungs or eat them away. Other forms cause the fingers, the nose, the toes-even whole legs and arms-to rot. Parts of the victim’s body just fall off. Lepers have a strong, disagreeable odor. There is no cure once the disease establishes itself.”

Pigeon pushed back his chair, the legs moving silently over the wet floor. He stood up, crouching with one hand on the back of the chair to keep himself from falling.

“Get away from me,” he cried.

Christopher covered the syringe with a corner of the towel. “I want some information,” he said. “It has nothing to do with your organization. There’s no question of your betraying your own people-I’ve no interest in them or their activities.”