Scott Mariani - The Doomsday Prophecy

He hadn’t noticed before that the man had slipped away while he and Charlie had been deep in conversation. That’s what people did in cafés, finish their drink and slip away – each table its own private, self-contained world. Nothing unusual about it. But he wished now that he’d taken more notice. Frozen up on the screen, caught in the exact moment it fragmented and belched fire and death across the café terrace, the laptop case was a dark blur under the empty table.

Ben turned away from the screen and stared hard at Slater, then at Jones. ‘So I was right. You planted that bomb.’

Slater waved his hand in the air. ‘I’m a businessman. I don’t plant bombs. I just pay other people to plant them.’

‘That recording was the last thing my agents sent to me before they went off the grid,’ Jones said. ‘What did you do to them?’

‘They’re both dead on a beach,’ Ben replied. ‘If you’re quick you might find them before the crabs finish what’s left of them.’

Slater smiled. ‘So you’ve decided to be straight with us.’

‘I’ll tell you something else too,’ Ben said. ‘I’m going to kill you soon.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘Yes. That’s a fact. Jones too. I’d get those graves ready.’

There was a silence. Slater paled, and covered it with a nervous laugh. ‘I was hoping you were going to be reasonable. This isn’t making it any easier for yourself.’

‘You’ve let me see your faces,’ Ben said. ‘You wouldn’t let me out of here alive anyway. So even if I knew where the ostraka were, which I don’t, I wouldn’t give you the pleasure.’

Slater tossed his empty chocolate wrapper into a bin. ‘Fine. But there are quick and easy ways of dying, and there are slow and horrible ways to suffer.’

‘I’ll have to decide which one you deserve,’ Ben said.

Slater sighed. ‘My God, you’re so stubborn. OK, let me show you something else.’ He gestured again at Jones. The agent pressed another button and from inside the DVD player came the clunking, whirring sound of the disc changer. The screen was blank for a few moments, then another image came up. A close-up shot of a gaunt, wasted man in grimy fatigues. He was in a filthy cell, or a cage, clutching at the bars. There was bright light shining in his face, showing the glistening fresh wounds and bruises on his jaw and cheek, the livid swelling of his right eye.

‘What you’re seeing here is from classified CIA archives,’ Slater said. ‘You don’t need to know what this is about. Same old story. Let’s just say the guy is privy to certain information, and these other guys want to get it out of him. He’s a tough fucker, like you. He’s resisted all kinds of torture. When the camera zooms out, you can just about make out the blood on his feet where they tore out his toenails. Any time now. There.’

Ben watched the images on the screen as Slater stood up and walked around. ‘See, I’m a bureaucrat,’ Slater said. ‘I’ll admit it. I like to hear the truth from people, but I’m not a guy who’s comfortable around blood and violence – at least not at close range.’

‘It’s different when you’re just making a phone call, isn’t it?’

Slater ignored that. ‘I could have you beaten into catmeat right now,’ he said. ‘I could have them cut off your fingers and ears, cut off your balls, fry you with electricity, dunk you in a tub, string you up by the thumbs, all that kind of shit. With your background, I’m sure you have a pretty good idea of what’s involved. But that’s more Jones’s line. Personally, I’d rather get what I want without the mess. I like things clean and clinical. If I have to have someone fucked up…’ Slater smiled. ‘Well, take a look at this guy.’

Ben was watching. As Slater talked, the prisoner onscreen was being forced down in his chair by guards in unmarked uniform. A third came into shot and stabbed a syringe in the man’s neck, pressed the plunger home and jerked the needle out with a squirt of blood.

Slater reached into his jacket pocket, took out a small amber bottle and laid it down with a clunk on the desk. Then he reached into the other pocket and brought out a small leather case. He unzipped it and laid it open on the desk beside the bottle. There was a syringe inside. ‘Know what this stuff is for?’

Ben gazed across at the bottle. ‘Yes, I do. But I thought Jones asked us not to discuss his personal condition.’

‘Oh, that’s so funny. You know what this is.’

‘I’ve heard about it.’

‘I thought you would have. The very best of its kind. Vintage stuff. Hard to get. Unfortunately, the good doctor who supplied it won’t be joining us.’ Slater gestured at the screen. ‘Now, this guy, he was like you. He absolutely insisted he didn’t know what they needed to know. Boy, he was so sure of himself. But then he talked, all right. One shot was all it took. Within an hour he was telling them everything, and then some. Remarkable. And you know what, they didn’t even have to put a bullet in his head afterwards, because look what happened.’

Jones thumbed the remote again, three times. The image accelerated to eight times the speed, and suddenly the picture changed: new camera angle, different lighting. The same man, but he had changed too. Radically. He’d gone from being a terrified, beaten-up prisoner to being a babbling, screaming lunatic jerking on his cage bars, eyes wild, teeth bared, foaming at the mouth. He was on a different planet.

‘Total insanity,’ Slater said. ‘The same guy, just six hours later. That’s what this shit does to you. The effects are irreversible, permanent. Sometimes they kick in within an hour or so. Some of the tougher ones hold out for much longer. But they all go the same way sooner or later. Raving psychosis till the day you die. You understand what I’m saying?’

Jones smiled. He paused the image on the screen, laid down the remote and folded his arms in satisfaction.

‘I understand,’ Ben said.

‘Good. Because I want you to think about that.’

‘Thinking of giving me a cocktail?’

‘Straight, no chaser,’ Slater said. ‘But not just yet. Here’s what we’re going to do.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s just after nine p.m. You have till ten to think about what you’d like to tell me. Then I’m going to reunite you with your friend Bradbury, and you can watch while I have this serum pumped into her. We’ll see what she has to tell us. You can listen in. It’ll be fun. And then, when I come back here in the morning, I’m going to let you see what it did to her before it’s your turn.’ Slater smiled. ‘I’ll be far away, sipping on a glass of Krug while you’re sitting in your cell downstairs enjoying your last hours of sanity. Soon afterwards, when you’re screaming in your cage like an animal, I’ll sign a paper turning you over to a state nuthouse where you’ll live out the rest of your miserable life, battering your head off a padded wall.’

‘Why waste the taxpayer’s money?’ Jones said. ‘We should just dump his raving ass in a backstreet somewhere.’

‘I like it,’ Slater said thoughtfully. ‘Now, enough talk. Jones, get your guys in here.’

Jones opened the door. The two men who had brought Ben up in the lift were standing out in the corridor. ‘Take this prick back down there and lock him up,’ he said. He pointed at the muscular one. ‘Boyter, you’re posted outside his door. McKenzie, you get back up here a.s.a.p.’

‘You have one hour,’ Slater said to Ben.

Boyter gripped Ben’s arm. ‘Let’s go, shithead.’

Ben stood up, shook off Boyter’s chubby hands, moved towards the door. He stopped, turned and fixed Slater in the eye. ‘Remember what I said earlier,’ he said softly. Then he was gone.