Andrew Klavan - The truth of the matter

I was in the backseat of a car, a midsize sedan. We were climbing up a winding, narrow road along what looked like the side of a mountain. There was forest rising at one window: green pine trees interspersed with winter-gray oaks and maples. At the other window, there was nothing but open space as if we were on the edge of a sharp drop.

I was sitting in the middle of the seat. The blond guard was to my left, the guard with the handlebar mustache was to my right. Up in front, the stocky guard-the one M-2 had taken out by the bunker entrance-was driving. Through the windshield, I could see another car on the road up ahead. I guessed the rest of the Homelanders were in there, including Waylon himself.

There was a squawk of static. The driver spoke into his shoulder mike.

“He’s awake.”

A voice-Waylon’s thick guttural accented voice-came back at once: “If he tries anything, bust him up. And I mean anything.”

Suddenly, there was a knife pressed to the side of my face. It was a wicked-looking dagger, the blade thick and sharp. The metal was cold against my bloodied skin, and the sharp edge dug into me. I couldn’t move my head without getting cut. I could only shift my eyes toward the guard with the handlebar. He was the one holding the knife.

“You hear that, tough guy? If you try anything, we’re gonna start cutting off pieces of you and feeding them to the squirrels out there.”

I didn’t answer. He pressed the blade against me even harder-so hard I thought it would slice into me.

“You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

With that, he pulled the knife away. I watched as he pushed his khaki jacket open and slipped the blade into a holster on his belt.

The car continued to climb. I rocked back and forth as we went quickly around one curve and then switch-backed into another.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Shut up,” said Handlebar.

“I’m just asking,” I said. I didn’t want him to think I was intimidated by him. I was intimidated by him, but I didn’t want him to think so.

“We’re going to a place where no one can hear you scream,” said the blond guard with vicious pleasure. “You’re gonna be doing a lot of screaming and we don’t want to disturb the neighbors.”

“Hey, knock off the conversation,” said Handlebar.

“I’m just saying,” said the blond guy, smirking. “I’m just giving him a little preview of what happens next.”

For a couple of minutes after that, I kept silent. I was thinking-or trying to think. It isn’t easy to stay focused when you’re scared out of your wits. But I was thinking: the last time I was in the clutches of these jokers, they were torturing me. Now it sounded as if they were planning to torture me again. So the question was: Why? Why take the time to rough me up? Why didn’t they just kill me the way they’d killed Waterman? They must be after information. But what was it they thought I knew?

I tried to go into my memory to get at the answer, but the pathways into the past seemed to still be blocked. Despite my memory attacks, my brain seemed to be giving up its information bit by bit at its own pace. There was something, though. Something I’d heard more recently, something I hadn’t been paying attention to at the time…

The car turned hard as we hit another sharp switchback in the road. I didn’t have a seat belt on and I was forced over until my shoulder pressed into Handlebar. At the window for a moment, there was nothing visible but blue sky.

Then the car straightened and we continued our racing climb up the mountain. I had to shift in my seat to sit upright. Handlebar gave me an irritated push, helping me along.

I decided to start talking again, see if I could get some hints about what the Homelanders were after. I had to try anything I could to get out of this and with my hands tied, I didn’t have a lot of options.

“So what’re you guys, sadists or something?” I asked- I tried to put a sneer in my voice as I said it. I thought maybe if I could taunt them a little, I could make them angry enough to answer. “What, do you just torture people for the fun of it?”

“I thought I told you to shut up,” said Handlebar darkly.

“Hey, I’m just making conversation. You know, to pass the time during the drive. Otherwise I’ll have to start singing ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.’”

“You do, and I’ll cut your throat.”

I smiled. It wasn’t easy: I didn’t feel much like smiling. Plus my face hurt, and smiling didn’t help it any. “You’re not gonna cut my throat,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

Handlebar pushed back the side of his jacket to show me the knife in its holster again. “Oh no?”

I manufactured another sneer. “No. It’s like your friend over there said, you’re taking me somewhere to work me over. That means you want to know something. Unless you’re just one of those weirdos who likes beating up on people…”

Handlebar turned away, refusing to answer, but the blond guy said, “I’ll like it. I’ll like doing it to you. I owe you for blasting me with that gizmo. So yeah, I’ll enjoy making you talk. And you will talk, believe me.”

“Wow,” I said. “You’re a real tough guy when you’re surrounded by friends with guns.”

Blond Guy’s eyes flashed and he drew back his fist as if to hammer me.

But Handlebar shut him down. “That’s enough,” he said. “Now shut up, both of you.” He seemed to have kind of a limited vocabulary.

Blond Guy lowered his fist. I went back to thinking. I was right, I thought, they did want information. But what?

And now I remembered… Something Waylon had said to me just before the bunker had blown up. I had been so keyed up waiting for the explosion that I’d barely noticed it at the time. Then, afterward, focused on my effort to escape, I’d forgotten all about it.

It was something Waylon said when he was taunting me. There’s only one other person who knows about you at all. And before you die-which will be in agony, by the way-you’re going to tell me who he is, and you’re going to die knowing that I’m going to kill him too.

It’s always amazing to me how just when things seem to be impossibly bad, impossibly dark, some distant light shines through, some little handhold you can grab to keep from going completely under. Here I was, helpless, tied up, being spirited away to some place where these clowns were planning to torture me to death, and suddenly I realized: Waterman and his crew weren’t the only ones, after all. There must be someone else who knows my mission, someone who can help me and clear my name.

For a moment or two, I racked my brain, trying to think of who it might be, but the name just wasn’t there. It wasn’t there yet anyway. If the drug Waterman gave me kept doing its trick, if I kept having these memory attacks, eventually the whole story would come back to me- maybe even including the name of my ally.

The car continued its winding climb up the mountainside. No other cars passed us. No other cars came up behind. We must’ve been pretty far from civilization at this point. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

I wondered how long it would take us to reach our destination, how much time I had before they started to work on me.

I turned to Handlebar. “You know what your problem is?” I said.

His face contorted with anger. “I thought I told you…”

“To shut up, yeah, I know.”

“Well, do it then.”

“You’re not much of a conversationalist, are you?”

He only snorted at that.

“All right, never mind. If you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you. You’ll go to your grave never knowing what’s wrong with you.”

Handlebar laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “Man, you are really something, aren’t you? You are really asking for it.”