Peter Kirsanow - Second Strike

Garin knew the purpose for the grotesque-looking man picking up the needle was to foreshadow pain, to instill fear and apprehension. Garin kept his gaze focused on the man’s eyes.

“You have no information useful to us,” the Butcher continued. He paused and cocked his head slightly in reconsideration. “Perhaps that is an overstatement. You may have some information, but it is likely to be of marginal consequence. Nonetheless, to be thorough I will extract it before we are done here.”

The Butcher tapped the tip of the needle with his thumb. A bead of blood appeared. Garin kept his eyes focused on the grotesque-looking man’s face but saw the needle in the periphery of his field of vision.

“What shall I call you?” Garin asked.

“Why do you care?”

“Decency,” Garin replied softly. “It’s only proper to know the name of someone you’re going to kill.”

“Delightful,” the Butcher responded, though his voice contained not even a hint of mirth. “We’ve already met in a manner of speaking. I believe you were introduced to some of my artwork in the nuclear facility at Yongbyon. We knew you were coming. We know what you are going to do before you do. So I was charged with eliminating any evidence of Russian assistance to the regime’s nuclear program.” A pause. “I have no name, Garin, although I suspect somewhere in the vast databases of your intelligence services there is a rather unimaginative reference to someone known as ‘the Butcher.’”

“Quite unimaginative,” Garin agreed. “But it will make for an interesting gravestone. A conversation starter.”

“Your attempt at bravado is understandable but misplaced. It will not change the futility of your circumstance. I assume by now you’ve determined that you are in the house you were watching. We are in a subbasement. This room was specially constructed to be soundproof. Steel-reinforced walls. Did you know that for years Saddam Hussein maintained such a room in the basement of the Iraqi consulate in the middle of New York City? His agents would torture Iraqi expatriates in that room, those with relatives still in Iraq. A superb way to control the population back home. It was only discovered after your country’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. The floor of the room was covered with thick plastic to catch the blood, intestines, and other body parts of the subjects.”

The Butcher caught the slight flick of Garin’s eyes toward the floor.

“You expect that your law enforcement will, eventually, come to the house because you’ve alerted them to my handiwork in the woods in back. They will not detect the entrance to this room. Regardless, we will be finished before they step foot in the house.” The Butcher shook his head. “No one will hear your screams, Garin.”

“Nor yours.”

The Butcher sighed. “Dispense with shows of insolence. I’ve been briefed about you. Primarily by Bor. You are a gifted operator. Tough. But the evidence shows Bor outwitted you. He is at least as talented and tough as you.”

“But you are not.”

“I have been around much longer than Bor. I have seen things neither of you have. I know toughness. I suspect you envision yourself as tough as Lieutenant Nikolai Garin. You are not.”

The Butcher noted a slight quiver of Garin’s mouth.

“You revere your grandfather. He exhibited insolence of a different kind. Insolence toward the communist state. That is hazardous even when you are not an officer in the Red Army. So he was detained by the NKVD at the end of the war in Germany. But he escaped through the barbed wire and past the guard dogs. I am told he evaded search teams, traveling nearly one hundred miles by foot through the snow and arriving in the American sector near death. You see him as heroic and you wish to emulate him.”

“Not really. I much prefer to emulate a braying jackass like you. More entertaining.”

“I confess I am unfamiliar with the colloquialism. But I, of course, recognize sarcasm when I hear it.” The Butcher drew his mangled face to within inches of Garin’s. “Nikolai Garin was a coward. He fled his country for a false promise of freedom. How ironic he came to this country. Every day your leaders erode those freedoms. You are like a frog in a pot on the stove; that is a colloquialism I do know.”

“You should also know that here in the US, mouthwash comes in a variety of delicious flavors.”

The Butcher pressed the tip of the needle directly on Garin’s throat. Not enough to draw blood.

“American politicians make vapid statements about torture to appease certain constituencies. Some assert torture is ineffective. Those in our business know better. Of course, as with everything in life, it must be done correctly. But used correctly, it is nearly foolproof.”

Garin remained absolutely still.

“Although, in honesty, definitions are important. What you Americans define as torture would be considered discomfort in my world. Discomfort is not foolproof. You are not about to experience discomfort, Garin. You are about to experience hell. Delayed retribution for your grandfather’s treason.”

“He was a greater patriot, a better Russian, than you. But he died an American.”

Finally, the Butcher thought, a reaction. Emotion. Now was the time for pain.

“There are more than one hundred major clusters of nerves in the average human body. Medical journals reciting research into pain management maintain that these clusters are the body’s primary locus of physical pain. They are incorrect. I have studied pain for forty years. In my experience pain is largely psychological. But in terms of inflicting maximum physical pain, the most vulnerable areas are not nerve clusters but locations adjacent thereto. It is as if the chemical reactions that produce the pain signal send the electrical impulse toward the cluster, where it is whipped toward the various nerve tributaries, accelerated and magnified in the process, like a comet whipping around a star, gathering debris, growing and quickening…”

“I gather your droning is part of the torture.”

The Butcher pressed the needle a millimeter into Garin’s throat, just perforating the skin. The location almost universally generated a spike of fear in the subject.

Garin didn’t flinch. The Butcher raised his eyebrows, somewhat impressed.

“Stoicism is a virtue indeed, but it is useless in this regard. That was, literally, a pinprick. A small preview of coming attractions. Soon your limbs and organs will be strewn about the floor. You will scream despite your best efforts.”

“Music to your ears, no doubt.”

The Butcher nodded. “A rhapsody. I wager I can inflict pain in such a manner that your screams will come in different notes and chords. Allegro and adagio. Once I made a Pashtun tribesman unwittingly perform an aria. So, a piece of advice: Holding back the screams is futile, and will only amplify the pain.”

Garin resolved to ignore that advice to his last breath. The Butcher watched as an unsettling look came over Garin’s face. It was a look the Butcher couldn’t remember having seen in a subject before. Beyond determination. Ferocity. As if the subject was the one inflicting the pain.

Let’s see how quickly that look turns to terror, the Butcher thought.

The Butcher withdrew the needle and glanced at the propane tank, as if giving brief consideration to dispensing with preliminaries and escalating the proceedings. He caught Garin noticing the glance. That should be sufficient.

Yet the unsettling look remained.

The Butcher repositioned the needle just outside Garin’s right ear and held it there for several moments. He saw Garin wince slightly. Anticipation was part of the torture. In those few moments the subject’s mind would imagine the precise quality and extent of the pain. The muscles would tense, particularly in the neck and jaw; breathing would become rapid and shallow. The heart would pound and blood would rush to the site of the impending perforation.