Charlie Huston - Sleepless

I was sent a message by whoever released me: Kill this man for us, or else. The particular savagery and bloody-mindedness I expressed in the fulfillment of that unspoken contract composed the text of my own reply message: Leave me alone, or I’ll do this to you.

We heard one another, loud and clear.

In both cases of torture, the questions I had been asked bore little relation to any actions I had ever taken. Though I was most certainly guilty of any number of misdeeds for which I might have been held accountable, I was always quizzed on matters unrelated. And so it was again.

There were four people in the room with me. Well, six, but two of them were dead. One of those remaining four had collected some of my possessions. Papers, two external hard drives, two laptops and a tablet computer, five thumb drives, my slender bamboo-sided desktop tower, and anything else that might reasonably store information, including my DVR. Though I doubted they’d learn anything from the classic episodes of Twilight Zone and several cooking and gardening shows that I was addicted to.

Done with that, he’d unrolled a nylon tool caddy and sorted through various cables, fitting them to my phones and downloading assorted numbers and call logs before tossing the phones themselves into a knapsack. He’d be disappointed. The business phones were each assigned to a specific individual whose number I had memorized; they contained only one number each: their own. Call logs I erased after each call in or out from a particular phone. My personal phones were similarly barren of numbers. An advantage of a nearly photographic memory. I erased logs at day’s end in general. The phone I’d had on me when they attacked would have the helicopter pilot’s number, Vinnie’s incoming call, and a few others. Nothing I was concerned with.

A second survivor was at the glass wall that looked out over the basin. He took frequent peeks through a pair of binoculars and spoke in occasional whispers into his headset. The glass was thick, impact- but not bullet-resistant; still the faint whines of sirens and crackle of gunfire penetrated. He primarily spoke modern Hebrew, with an Israeli accent, though I did catch a frequent, emphatic “fuck.” The third, a man who could only be described as “battle-scarred and proud of it,” asked me questions that, while they didn’t confuse me, did confound me. The fourth had plugged in the soldering iron and placed it carefully on the Thor table while it heated.

The only obvious mistake they had made was in not wearing masks of any sort. Not that revealing their features marked them for an eventual vicious demise when I freed myself and set about to hunt them down one by one, rather that it revealed their intention to kill me no matter the outcome of their questioning. Tipping their hand a bit. For whatever it might be worth. Knowing I was going to die was hardly any comfort, but it did define the field of play, spurring me to actions I might otherwise not have taken.

The battle-scarred man referred to a number of laminated sheets of paper on a clipboard. I had seen something similar in the past. An interrogation script, it would have been prepared in advance, each question allowing for only a limited number of answers. Each of these allowable answers leading to the next question. All roads leading to one of two conclusions only: You are the fucker we’re after or You are not the fucker we’re after. It didn’t matter that I could tell them outright that the answer in my case was the second option. They would only accept one of these two conclusions if it were arrived at after the script had been followed.

The first act began.

“Who are you working for?”

Well, obviously I was going to give no answer.

Yes, there was a grim possibility that this ritual of pain was the death my life had been shaping. And yes, there would be symmetry in the design if I were to end broken and drooling, gasping out all my secrets under ultimate duress. But there could be no completion of my long endeavor if I blurted the name of my employer at the first request. The mental image of Lady Chizu’s bland disregard for that sort of weakness and lack of professionalism was enough to keep my lips sealed.

“What is the plan?”

Again, I had no answer. But here it was less a case of will and desire and more a case of being at an utter loss. It was possible he meant whatever plan I had to recover the drive from Haas, but his tone suggested something altogether more specific. In any case, I had nothing to say.

“Who are your accomplices?”

It took, you see, only three questions to realize that his script was not pertinent to me. It concerned suspicions he held regarding me but which had little or nothing to do with my true intentions.

“Are you working with the cop?”

A question that did little more than reinforce my growing feeling that I had been misapprehended.

“Where were you going to take Mr. Afronzo Junior?”

Here, a little light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

“What were your demands to be?”

Clarity, when it comes, is literally physical. Tension is released from muscles, shoulders unbunch, jaws unclench, brows unfurrow. The body lightens, becomes, for a moment, less earthbound. A delightful sensation. No wonder many people make of it a lifelong quest.

“Is your employer political or criminal?”

It was then that I might have begun to state my case. I could have told them that I understood that I had been observed in proximity to Mr. Afronzo Junior. That, yes, the behavior I exhibited was suspicious, and yes, I was surveilling someone. Yes, I understood that anyone in Mr. Afronzo Junior’s buffer zone who engaged in certain proscribed activities, such as spying, would have their faces extensively photographed, their actions videoed, their utterances parabolically recorded, and the resulting archive submitted for review by teams of experts in tightly sealed rooms where secrets were doled out a syllable at a time to protect against leaks. Yes, frankly, I might have said, this situation is as much of my making as anyone’s. I should have realized that the history attached to my features, mannerisms, and voice is precisely the kind that should set every red light on Afronzo security consoles to blazing, and taken greater care when I was observing the young man. Certainly I understood that of the vast range of threats I represented, the greatest was kidnap. And yes, the highest possible threat level should be applied to such as I, and action taken immediately. Nonetheless, I would have been forced to conclude, shooting a missile at a SoCal TOC observation post in order to distract me was perhaps an ill-advised overreaction. For, you see, I could have explained, you have the wrong man.

It was then, after those seven essential questions had been asked in an offhand manner, with no reply expected, that I could have launched that defense. I might even have gone so far as to have sketched the barest outline of my actual goals. But it would have been to cross-purposes. No, I had no intention of kidnapping Mr. Afronzo Junior, but I was seeking to take possession of a hard drive for which he had killed several men. Cut too close to that truth and the result would be the same. It was possible things would reach a point where I would speak the truth about my lack of interest in kidnapping the young man, but what lies I might concoct to cover my actual intentions escaped me for the moment, as I became distracted by the slight click the soldering iron emitted when it had reached the optimal temperature.

PARK WAS LOOKING INSIDE THE SAFE AT THE EMPTY BIT OF space where he had left the bottle of DR33M3R.

“It doesn’t matter.”

He ignored Bartolome’s words, going through the remaining contents of the safe. His legal documents, the gold coins, his weapons and spare clips, even his stash, all still there. But the print slides, the thumb drive with his reports, and the DR33M3R itself were gone.