Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

Traffic cleared. Jonathan eased the car onto the street, turning left, away from the station. Four blocks down the road, he pulled over and rolled down the window. “Get in.”

Simone climbed into the car. Pulling her coat around her, she took in the car’s interior. “This is Emma’s?” she asked.

“Guess so.” Jonathan joined the autobahn, heading east. A roadside sign read, “Chur 25 Km.”

A shadow crossed Simone’s face. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the hotel. We have to find out who sent those bags.”

“Hotter.”

A guard turned the nozzle regulating the butane burners. Blue flames flared from beneath the enormous copper vat. The temperature gauge showed one hundred forty degrees. The needle inside it began to rise.

It was called the Pot, and it dated to the early seventeenth century. Five feet high and again as wide, it had been a fixture of the public laundry works in Aleppo when Syria had been a province of the Ottoman Empire. The needle touched one hundred fifty degrees. Immersed to his shoulders in the rapidly heating water, Gassan began to kick frantically. He could not allow his feet to touch bottom for fear of being scalded.

The needle passed one hundred sixty degrees.

It had been a long night. Gassan had showed impressive pluck. He had suffered and still not divulged a word about to whom he’d delivered the fifty kilos of plastic explosives. Colonel Mike no longer looked so cleaned and pressed. His mustache drooped with the sweat of his exertions. The evil of the place had sunk into his pores.

“Hotter.”

Bubbles formed at the edge of the cauldron. Gassan began to call out. No prayers for him. No pleas to Allah. Just a stream of obscenities cursing the West, cursing the president, cursing the FBI and the CIA. He was no zealot. He was that other thing. The terrorist defined by his actions. The rebel with no cause but to destroy.

Philip Palumbo sat on a chair in the corner. He had grown tired of the pitiable cries long ago. He’d run out of sympathy for dirtbags like Gassan around the time that he’d worked the bombings in Bali. Twenty bodies. Men, women, and children enjoying a seaside jaunt to the tropics. All dead. A hundred more wounded. Lives ended. Lives ruined. And for what? Just the usual tripe about getting at the West. The way Palumbo saw things, we all had a contract with society to treat our fellow man fairly and to obey the laws. Break that contract, go outside the boundaries of fair play, then all bets were off.

Gassan wanted to kill innocent people. Palumbo intended to stop him. Turn up the heat and let’s get the party started.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” said Colonel Mike with infuriating calm. “On January tenth, you met Dimitri Shevchenko in Leipzig. You transferred the plastic explosives into a white Volkswagen van. Where did you go after that? You had to give the explosives to someone. I don’t imagine you fancied keeping them any longer than necessary. You’re a smart boy. Lots of experience. Tell me what happened next. I’ll even help you. You delivered the explosives to the end user. I want his name. Talk to me and we’ll stop these unpleasantries. To tell you the truth, I don’t sleep well after this kind of thing.”

The questions hadn’t varied in ten hours.

Outside, dogs could be heard baying at the full moon. A large transport rumbled past, shaking the walls.

Gassan began to speak, then pursed his lips and drove his chin into his chest. A guttural scream formed in his throat and erupted into the room.

“Hotter,” said Colonel Mike.

The flames grew. The needle touched one hundred eighty degrees.

“What are their plans? Give me the target. I want a place, a date, a time.” Colonel Mike was relentless. A man was either made to do this kind of thing or not. Colonel Mike had been born to torture like a jockey to riding.

One hundred ninety.

“The first thing that falls off is your dick. It bursts like an overcooked sausage. Then your stomach will swell inside you and your lungs will begin to boil. Look at your arms. The flesh is peeling off. The sad thing is that this can go on for a long time.”

Gassan’s eyes bulged as he continued to hurl imprecations at the unfairness of his predicament.

“What was your contact’s name? How will they use the explosives?”

Two hundred degrees.

“Alright,” screamed Gassan. “I will tell you. Get me out! Please!”

“Tell me what?”

“Everything. Everything I know. His name. Now, get me out!”

Colonel Mike raised a hand to the guard controlling the gauge. He stepped closer to the vat so that the heat drew sweat on his forehead. “Who is the end user?”

Gassan gave a name Palumbo had never heard before. “I delivered it to him personally. He paid me twenty thousand dollars.”

“Where did you deliver the explosives?”

“Geneva. A garage at the airport. The fourth floor.”

The dam had broken. Gassan began to talk, spewing information like water from a ruptured main. Names. Aliases. Hideouts. Passwords. He couldn’t speak fast enough.

Palumbo got it all on tape. He stepped out of the room to review the information. Five minutes later, he returned. “A few of the names check out, but we’ve got a lot more to get through.”

“And so?” asked Colonel Mike. “Any other questions for our distinguished guest?”

“Oh yeah,” said Palumbo. “Mr. Gassan’s been in business a long time. We’re just getting started.”

Colonel Mike nodded at the guard.

“Hotter.”

Jonathan reached Arosa in ninety minutes. Driving to the top of Poststrasse, he parked across from the Kulm Hotel, three hundred meters up the road from the Bellevue. Simone sat slouched in the passenger seat, smoking.

“There’s no reason for you to stay,” he said. “It’s better if we split up. I can take it from here.”

“I want to,” she answered, peering out the window.

“Go home. You’ve done your duty. You held my hand when I needed it. I can’t be responsible for you.”

It was obvious the suggestion irritated her. “No one’s asking you to be,” she snapped. “I’ve made it this far looking after myself, thank you very much.”

“What are you going to say to Paul?”

“I’m going to tell him that I helped a friend.”

“That’ll sound nice when you call him from jail. All you’re doing is getting yourself deeper into trouble.”

Simone shifted in her seat, swinging her gaze at him. Her cheek was purple where the policeman had struck her. The bruise contrasted violently with her usual immaculate appearance. “And what are you doing? Tell me that, Jon.”

Jonathan had told himself that he was going to take things one step at a time. Technically, he knew that he was on the run, but it wasn’t the police-either the honest variety or the other kind-that scared him. It was the truth. “I’m not sure yet,” he said after a moment.

Simone sat up straighter. “How many brothers do you have?”

The question caught him off guard. “Two. And a sister. Why?”

“If this was happening to one of them, would you go home?”

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” Simone continued. “I’m married to a man who treats his work as his mistress. I have my children at school and I have Emma. I’m every bit as confused as you about what she was up to. If I can help you in any way find out, I want to try. I understand your concern for me and I appreciate it. Tomorrow, I’ll go to Davos to see Paul. I’m sure that by then we’ll have this straightened out. But if we have to confront the police, I am going to be with you.”