A face loomed before me. It had a dramatic scar running down from the short stiff crew-cut to the bull-massive neck. The man had icy blue eyes and a big, reddish, square strong face, thick lips, a bullet-shaped head, an irregularly set nose, a cauliflower ear, big hamlike fists—in short he reminded me of a Nazi pugilist.
It was the man I had encountered on the stairs, the leader of the Death Squad. But more than that, it was the man I had fought in the Brazilian embassy in New York, when Hiroshi and I had come to recover our diamonds. He was as tough as they come, but I had bashed him pretty badly. Now he had me in his power, and he wanted revenge.
"I see you know me, Jason Striker," he said. "By sight, at least. I am Don Fernando Mirabal, Colonel of Army Intelligence. You may call me Colonel. And it seems you are in trouble with the law, now."
I didn't answer. It had already been apparent that the Death Squad had connections with the police. They had been after Dulce, and my involvement was coincidental—but I had given this man Mirabal some lumps, and he certainly wasn't going to let me off gently now.
"Why didn't you kill me?" I asked. It was not bravado so much as resignation—and apart from everything else, I was curious.
"I had thought you would be more intelligent," Mirabal said with satisfaction. "But I shall explain. We caught you in our net, but unlike the girl, you are an American citizen, of some repute. In fact, we anticipate demands for your release from both your country and the girl's."
Why would Cuba demand my release? I had done Fidel a favor once, through no particular choice of my own, and apparently he had a long memory and good information. Better than his cigars, certainly. Of course I had helped Dulce this time, and she was on a mission for her country. Well, that was a complication that was hardly going to do me much good here.
"But we had no reason to hold you. You had broken no law here. Yet it was necessary to hold you." Mirabal smiled. "So we turned you loose in temporary detention—and it seems you attempted a beastly act and provoked a near riot. That is against the laws of Brazil! Now we can keep you, and no other government can object. You really were very foolish; did you not know we frown on the raping of small boys?"
So that was it. I had been foolish; I should have smelled a rat, and stayed out of trouble.
"Very clever," I agreed morosely.
"Now I would like the answers to certain questions, some very simple questions," Mirabal continued. "But I hope you won't provide them right away. I really would like to get to know you better first. I am very curious to discover, for example, your tolerance to pain. But I am a fair man; I will first give you a chance to answer."
I believed him: he'd rather have me balky, so he had a pretext to torture me. Now that he could legally do so. Or maybe it wasn't legal, technically, but I was sure he had ways to get around such technicalities. I was already branded a troublemaker and a homosexual rapist in prison, thanks to his cute little trap, so my interrogation could be called legitimate. If I hadn't fallen into that snare, there would have been something else; Mirabal was not about to let me slip through unscathed.
"What mission brings you to Brazil?" he inquired politely. I kept my mouth closed. I was not free to tell him my real mission for Fu Antos, and the truth was, I had never found out what that mission was. Thanks to Mirabal himself, I had gone to jail before Kan-Sen had contacted me. Mirabal would never believe that, though. So it was pointless even to try explaining. In addition, the longer I kept him guessing, the better it would be for Dulce, who I was sure was also in his power. Let him conjecture at what complexities we were engaged in.
"You are silent," Mirabal observed mildly. "Good, good. I am not disappointed." He rubbed his knee, the one I had crippled in New York. He had evidently had surgery to repair the torn meniscus ligament, for there was a big scar there, but the leg seemed to be about as good as ever. He still limped a bit. "We have so much to do together, you and I." He paused, considering. "But first, a little tour. I know you will enjoy this."
He put out one hand and lifted me to my feet. I am not a small man, but he hefted my weight as if I were a child. What tremendous power! My bindings were really not unduly confining, but the moment I was on my feet I felt woozy. The drug followed by that crack on the head—I was in no condition to put up a fight at this stage.
We walked to another cell. Here a pretty young woman in a tight red print dress was strapped to what looked like a dentist's chair, her head tied back to the headrest, clamped between metal clamps, immobile, so that her mouth tried to pull open. Nevertheless she kept it tightly shut. Beside her was a tray of metal instruments. I did not like the look of this.
"Do you know her?" Mirabal inquired. Obviously he thought I did. That gave me a clue: she must be a captive member of the group Dulce was supposed to contact. If I had been associated with them, I would probably have met her. It could have been a nice meeting. She looked about eighteen and had a rather appealing figure. Slender, but with well developed breasts and thighs, and thick curly red hair falling down behind the chair. Her face was quite freckled, and there was a gold Star of David hanging from her neck. I concluded she was Jewish, perhaps a student who had gotten involved with the Communist Revolutionary movement that Dulce was trying to contact. What attraction did Communism have for these pretty girls?
"Never saw her before in my life," I said honestly. And felt like a liar, for I knew he would not believe me. Maybe I should have shut my mouth grimly and refused to answer, so as to lead my interrogator on a false trail. But that, too, would have been in effect a lie. Too bad I wasn't a philosopher, to unravel these fine points of ethics.
"Then you will not object to what happens," Mirabal said. He made a gesture, and a man came forward. "One extraction for Ester, for now," Mirabal told him. Then, to me. again: "Make yourself comfortable."
Some humor! There was no other chair in the room, and if there had been, I would have been hard put to it to sit without assistance. Mirabal was not about to offer help, and I was not about to ask for it.
The other man put on a white apron like a dentist's smock. He picked up a pair of fancy pliers from the table. He moved to the girl.
Then I caught on. "Now wait," I said. "You're not going to—?"
"So you do know the Jewess?" Mirabal inquired.
"I don't know her! But that doesn't mean I want to see her—" I broke off, afraid I was only putting notions in his head, though obviously Mirabal had plenty of notions on his own. His resemblance to a Nazi now seemed stronger, for he even proposed to torture a Jew. I didn't have to be Jewish to consider that an abomination.
"Proceed, Laureano," Mirabal said to the man. The assistant was a cadaverous but evidently wiry-strong fanatic. His skin had been burned by the sun to a leathery texture. I was sure he was a virtual arm of Mirabal, never questioning his master's will.
Laureano put his left hand over the girl's mouth, pressing with thumb and forefinger on the nerve complex on either side of her bunched jaw. The immediate pain of that pressure forced her mouth open. He then inserted the pliers into that open mouth, placing his left hand against her forehead. Now she whimpered, knowing what was coming, but unable to move. I saw the muscles of her arms tighten, and the nipples of her breasts quivered under the taut dress with her ragged breathing.
Laureano took hold of one of her back teeth and pulled. Ester screamed piercingly, for of course she had had no anesthetic. Dentistry is enough of a torture in the best of circumstances, and this was the worst. A healthy tooth.
The muscles of the man's arms strained, hauling brutally at that tooth, and the sound from the woman was appalling. The tendons of her neck stood out and the force of her futile struggles caused her dress to half-tear and pull open and drop down, exposing her right breast. The purple nipple became big and bright against the white. Her whole torso shook with the force of her agony.
I launched myself at the beast—but Mirabal intercepted me with a football-type straight-arm push that hurled me over against the wa
ll. My head cracked back, and for a moment I saw a field of twinkling stars. My head still hurt from the bruise the gun butt had made, and this aggravated it.
But the continued screaming of the girl brought me alert again quickly. I tried again to reach her, but Mirabal's powerful fingers caught my hair and twisted my head painfully, bringing me down once more against the wall. Oh, the butcher was enjoying this, yet I was helpless.
Then Laureano gave a final heave and jerked out the tooth. Triumphantly he brought it up, blood dripping from its surface. "Loosen her head, fool!" Mirabal snapped. "We don't want her to choke on her own blood!"
No personal concern, this. He was just making certain the poor girl didn't die before he was through torturing her. It was also for my benefit, for he had spoken in English so I would be sure to understand.
Her head was released and pulled forward. Blood and saliva drooled from her lips and over her chin, to drip onto her pale right breast. Her screams had stopped; now she was merely sobbing. No, not even that; she had, mercifully, lost consciousness. I sobbed for her, inside. This whole brutal scene had been unnecessary, pointless, since I knew nothing that could benefit Mirabal and the girl had not even been questioned. If Mirabal had sought to show me that he was ruthless and depraved, he had succeeded admirably.
"You see, that was not so bad," Mirabal said in a conversational tone. "She still has twenty-seven teeth left."
I would have killed him in that moment, had I been able. But I kept my face straight, refusing to give him the satisfaction of my impotent rage.
"Now we shall visit with another anonymous outlaw," Mirabal said, drawing me along with one hand. I had to move as he urged, or fall on my face.
In the next chamber was an old man, naked, bound face up on a table. He was shaking with fear; the girl's screams would have been loud and clear here. As Mirabal had surely planned; he obviously was expert at his specialty of torture, both physical and psychological.
"Another stranger?" Mirabal inquired, shoving me up for a good view. The man was around sixty, with well-manicured, long-fingered pianist hands: evidently a white-collar worker, a cultured man, one of the intellectuals one might expect to find supporting the opposition to tyranny. I'm no Communist and never will be, but if anyone offered me a way to fight tyrants like Mirabal, I'd ask few questions.
Communism thrives where there is poverty and repression, and it is easy to see why. What have the downtrodden masses got to lose? Abolish the Mirabals and the Laureanos, and you are halfway to abolishing Communism. Or so it seems to me.
I contemplated the white hair growing out from the once-shaved head of the victim, and his silver whiskers. He had a strong intelligent face, though his body was thin. Was there any way I could spare this victim whatever torture was planned? Only if I could convince Mirabal of the truth: that I knew nothing of the prisoner. And how could I do that? "Does it make any difference?" I asked.
"He looks thirsty," Mirabal said. He turned to Laureano, who had followed us in. "Give the poor man a drink."
A drink? What kind of torture was that?
Laureano smiled, showing a row of gold teeth. The effect was startling: on the one hand it suggested incredible poverty or debauchery to have cost him all his natural teeth, and on the other hand it showed equally incredible wealth to have them replaced in gold. The man with the golden mouth.
He brought out a gallon jug of water and a kind of funnel. He put the funnel in the prisoner's mouth and poured. The man choked and spluttered, but the water kept coming; he had to swallow or drown.
When about a quart was down, the torturer eased up enough to let the victim catch his breath. "I think he is still thirsty," Mirabal remarked.
Back went the funnel. This time the victim tried to clench his teeth, but Laureano hit him in the belly and jammed the funnel in as his mouth popped open to gasp. Then the victim tried to refuse to swallow, but Laureano pinched his nostrils until he had to breathe through his mouth—and then the water choked him again. He had to swallow. The water was mercilessly forced, until the man's stomach bulged like an unholy pregnancy. I had no idea how much water the human torso could accommodate, but evidently it was considerable, if health and survival was no consideration. But soon no more would go; it just poured out of his mouth as fast as it went in. It was evident the man was full; he was physically unable to take any more, though he drown in the attempt.
His stomach was distended grotesquely, as though ready to burst like a pricked balloon. I could not even contemplate what was happening to his internal tissues and vital organs.
"Strange," Mirabal remarked as the torturer looked at him for instructions. "I am sure he is not yet satisfied. Let us try another aperture."
They released the clamps that held the prisoner's arms and legs to the table and levered him over onto his stomach. I thought the pressure of his own body on that distended stomach would kill him, but somehow he was still breathing. Laureano attached a longer segment of hose to a water tap, then forced the end into the man's rectum and ran it far into the body, so that neither sphincter nor stomach muscle could stop it or force it out again. Then he opened the valve, letting the city water pressure ram the fluid into the victim's posterior. There was no way to tell how much it was; I could only watch with mounting horror. But at last the limit came; water squirted out and around the tube and no more would go.
Laureano jerked out the tube. The poor man was like a paper water bomb. He belched fluid weakly from his mouth, and it squirted out of his anus with every shallow, shuddering breath he took. The sheer compression of his lungs and innards could kill him at any moment. The water torture was not as dramatic as the tooth pulling, but actually it was worse.
Then he shuddered. His muscles strained as though he were making a superhuman effort to break free of his restraints, though at this stage the pressure within was far worse than that without. But this was no conscious effort; he was going into convulsions. The water that leaked from him now was turning red; it had burst his intestinal wall, and he was dying.
"Shall we see the next?" Mirabal inquired with a pleasant smile. I stared at him. He was completely unmoved by this horrible death. What punishment, in this world or the next, could possibly atone for the things he had done? But expression of my sentiment was pointless. "You're wasting your time," I said. "I don't know any of these people. I don't know anyone in Brazil. I can't tell you anything."
"Now you know that is not true," he said. "I can name three people you know. I am one, and Miss Planas is another." Dulce! Oh, no! They had her too, and I knew this monster was saving her for last. What would I do when he started pulling her teeth and filling her gut with water?
"You will really appreciate the third room," Mirabal said. The sadist!
But the next room was empty. What did this mean?
"Have a seat," Mirabal suggested, ever the perfect host. Then I understood. I was the third person I knew in Brazil. This torture was for me.
Such was my mood, I was actually relieved. They weren't going to torture Dulce.
But they could still torture her anytime. Maybe they would make her watch me, and when that didn't work, I'd have to watch her. Yet there was nothing I could do.
Mirabal was watching me closely. He had certainly softened me for this. I now had no shadow of a doubt that he would work me over until he was satisfied, and that would mean a fiendish death. And I had no way out.
"You think I am stupid," Mirabal said. "That I do this merely to repay you for our prior encounter, or to wrest information from you about connections you do not know."
"Yes," I agreed.
"But you do know the third person—the one whose place is here in this chair." Now his face twisted into a grimace of hate. "Fu Antos, boy master of ninjas."
My mouth dropped open. I had indeed underestimated Mirabal; I had been sure he knew nothing of Fu Antos and wasn't searching for such information.
"Tell me where he can be found, and you are spared this."
>
Fu Antos—who had cured me of the effect of the delayed-action death blow, and thus saved my life when no one else could. Who now required my service. Was I to betray him? I had no notion where the Black Castle was, but if I gave away the nature of my expected contact, Mirabal might be able to use that to trace down the ninja master.
I hobbled over to the chair and tipped myself into it. My aim was off, but Mirabal, still gracious, caught me and set me down gently. No, he didn't want me getting bruised or knocked out on my own; he had to do it his way. My only satisfaction was that I hadn't groveled; I had taken the seat myself, or tried to.
Mirabal did not remonstrate with me. He was not about to plead with a helpless victim for information. He was certain that his technique would bring it spewing forth. And I was not at all certain he was mistaken; I'm not good at this sort of thing. Once Kan-Sen had tortured me with a thumbscrew—that same Kan-Sen who was now my ally, to my shame.
They stripped off my shirt. This was some job, since they wouldn't untie me—a nice compliment to my defensive skills—they had to cut it away with a sharp knife. Then Laureano trundled in a squat machine. It seemed to consist of a series of standard automobile batteries, with wires running to a generator. There was a black control box with dials on it, and long cords and clips attached. The thing gave me the shivers.
"Are you sure you will not tell us what we wish to know?"
"You already know what I think of you." I had a little gas in my bowel, and I forced it out with a loud ripping noise to emphasize my point.
"If you maintain that attitude half an hour from now, I shall be surprised," Mirabal said mildly.
That gave me a new set of shivers. He was so certain, and he was not the kind to bluff. But even if I told him what little I knew, he would still torture me. As he had candidly said, he had a grudge, and didn't want me to capitulate too rapidly. And I would not betray Fu Antos—I hoped.