The Chemist

“Hello?” he whispered.

She stood still, waiting for the right moment.

For ten minutes, he alternated between wildly yanking against the restraints and trying to listen around the harsh noise of his breathing.

“Help!” he finally called out loudly. “Is anyone there?”

“Hello, Daniel,” she answered in a quiet voice.

His head jerked back, stretching his throat, as he looked for where the voice was coming from. It wasn’t the instinct of a professional soldier, she noted, to expose the throat that way.

“Who’s there? Who is that?”

“It doesn’t really matter who I am, Daniel.”

“Where am I?”

“Also not relevant.”

“What do you want?” he half shouted.

“There you go – you got it. That’s the question that matters.”

She walked around the table so he could focus on her, though she was still lit from behind and her face would be mostly shadows.

“I don’t have anything,” he protested. “No money, no drugs. I can’t help you.”

“I don’t want things, Daniel. I want – no, I need information. And the only way you’re getting out of here is if you give it to me.”

“I don’t know anything – nothing important! Please —”

“Stop it,” she snapped loudly, and he sucked in a shocked breath.

“Are you listening to me now, Daniel? This part is really crucial.”

He nodded, blinking fast.

“I have to have this information. There is no other option. And if I have to, Daniel, I will hurt you until you tell me what I need to know. I will hurt you badly. I don’t necessarily want to do this, but it doesn’t bother me to do it, either. I’m telling you this so that you can decide now, before I begin. Tell me what I want to know, and I will free you. It’s that simple. I promise I will not harm you. It will save me time and yourself a lot of suffering. I know you don’t want to tell me, but please realize that you are going to tell me anyway. It may take a while, but eventually you won’t be able to stop yourself. Everyone breaks. So make the easy choice now. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. Do you understand?”

She had given this same speech to many, many subjects in her career, and it was usually quite effective. About 40 percent of the time, this was when the subject would start confessing. Not often finish confessing, of course, and there was always some exploratory work to do, but there was a decent chance the first admission of guilt and some partial information might be surrendered now. The statistic varied depending on who she was giving the speech to; roughly half the time with most military men, the first divulgence would happen before any pain was administered. Only 5 to 10 percent of the actual spies would say anything without some physical distress. Same numbers for religious zealots. For the low-level toadies, the speech worked 100 percent of the time. The man in charge had never once confessed a single detail without pain.

She really hoped Daniel was just a glorified toady.

He stared back at her while she spoke, his face frozen in fear. But then, as she was concluding, confusion narrowed his eyes and pulled his brows together. It wasn’t an expression she’d expected.

“Do you understand me, Daniel?”

His voice bewildered: “Alex? Alex, is that you?”

This was exactly why one didn’t make contact with a mark beforehand. Now she was off script.

“Of course that’s not my real name, Daniel. You know that.”

“What?”

“My name isn’t Alex.”

“But… you’re a doctor. You helped me.”

“I am not that kind of doctor, Daniel. And I didn’t help you. I drugged you and I kidnapped you.”

His face was sober. “You were kind to me.”

She had to control a sigh.

“I did what I had to do to get you here. Now, I need you to focus, Daniel. I need you to answer my question. Are you going to tell me what I want to know?”

She saw doubt in his expression again. Disbelief that she would actually hurt him, that this was really happening.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But like I said, I don’t know anything important. I don’t have any bank account numbers or, I don’t know, treasure maps or anything. Certainly not anything worth all this.”

He tried to gesture with his trussed hand. Looking at himself as he did, he seemed to realize for the first time that he was naked. His skin flushed – face, neck, and a line down the center of his chest – and he pulled automatically against the restraints as if trying to cover himself. His breathing and heart rate started spiking again.

Nudity; whether black ops agents or just low-level terrorist gofers, they all hated it.

“I don’t want a treasure map. I’m not doing this for personal gain, Daniel. I’m doing this to protect innocent lives. Let’s talk about that.”

“I don’t understand. How can I help with that? Why wouldn’t I want to?”

She didn’t like the way this was going. The ones who clung to the claim of ignorance and innocence often took longer to break than the ones who owned their guilt but were determined not to sell out their government, or their jihad, or their comrades.

She walked to the desk and picked up the first picture. It was one of the very clear surveillance shots of de la Fuentes, a close-up.

“Let’s start with this man,” she said, holding the photo at his eye level and using one of the work lights as a spot.