Chapter Thirteen
Kusong, North Korea
June 2 -- 05:53 UTC/2:53 pm local time
Greg Toland sat in a room with no light. The only sounds that reached him sounded as though they came from far away, muffled by the heavy steel door that had clanged shut with a sound of finality three hours before. After the blindfold was taken off he had gotten one quick look at a man whose face was concealed with a balaclava before the door was slammed shut and locked. Since then he had remained stuck in one place, unable to move from the bed he had been restrained to.
For the last hour he had felt the pressing urge to urinate, but he was afraid to call out for his captors to let him relieve himself, and he had too much pride to piss his pants. So he held it. A spring was sticking right into the middle of his back, but he wasn’t able to move much and eventually he learned to accept its painful presence.
The five days since he had been drugged by the blond bitch seemed like one long bad dream to him. There had been a two day drive hidden in the back of a semi among boxes of dry goods, and then two more days chained to a radiator in a dingy house. Whenever he was allowed to leave the room his captors would put a blindfold on his face, but once, while being taken to the bathroom, he was able to peek under the bottom edge of it for a moment as he and two of the captors walked past a window. In the distance he saw a tall palm tree standing against a bright blue sky. His immediate thought was that he must be in either California or Florida, the two states he most associated with palm trees. Judging by the amount of driving time it had taken to get there he figured California was more likely. Then the possibility that they had crossed the border into Mexico crossed his mind, and he gave up trying to guess where he was.
Then there had been a long plane trip during which he had been hidden in a large crate lined in thick padding. He remembered reading somewhere that the cargo area of airplanes usually wasn’t pressurized, and for a while, as he felt the plane ascending, he wondered if he was going to die in that crate, packed in amongst random cargo. He kicked at the sides of the crate with his bound feet, tried to murmur loud enough to be heard through the tape on his mouth, but either no one heard or no one cared. He didn’t die, and much later, long after he had stopped trying to keep track of time, the plane had descended, meeting the earth with a jolt. He felt the crate being moved around and started kicking the padded sides again, but there was no response. When the crate was opened there were two masked men waiting for him. Another blindfold, followed by a long car ride packed into the trunk of a vehicle. And somehow, through it all, he had managed to hang on to his glasses, which he kept in a pocket whenever he was to be blindfolded.
And now he was in a dark room, strapped to a bed with a spring sticking into his back. The room was cool but not exactly cold. Dry air. The need to urinate proved too much for him, after all. He felt the wetness spread out, soaking into his pants and wetting his upper thighs.
Sometime later--he had no idea how long, he had lost all sense of time --there came the sound of a key being inserted into a lock and turning, and the steel door swung open with a bang. Another blindfold was put on him, but he could see weak rays of light peeking in around the edges. Someone undid the straps around his wrists and ankles, pausing once to laugh--he assumed that the fact that he had pissed himself had been noticed. He was handled roughly, made to stand and led from the room into a cold corridor. The light was brighter now.
Each of Greg’s arms were held by someone as he was led blindly for a couple of minutes, tripping once only to be raised back up quickly. Finally they led him into a room, at which time the blindfold was taken off. He had to squint against the light, which seemed overly bright to eyes which had been covered more often than not for five days.
Sitting in a chair behind a desk, facing Greg, sat an Asian man. He was not wearing a mask, and it was when he saw this that Greg knew for certain what he had suspected since he was taken captive--that he would never be a free man again. If his captors had given any thought to releasing him the man sitting before him would not have revealed his face. Greg supposed that all the men sporting balaclavas that he had seen up until then had just been disguising themselves out of habit, or perhaps on the off chance that he escaped before they reached their final destination. But now they truly had him; he was theirs to do with as they pleased.
“Good evening, Mr. Toland,” the seated man said.
“Is it evening?” Greg asked, more of himself than the other man.
“Yes, of course.”
The man pushed himself back from the desk and lifted one booted foot and laid it on the opposite knee. He and Greg stared at each other wordlessly for a moment; then the man laughed quietly.
“You must be wondering where you are, and why you have been brought here,” the man said.
“A lucky guess, or are you psychic?” Greg asked, scared of punishment for being a smartass, but too angry to care much.
The man simply smiled. He had nothing to gain by retaliating for the comment and risk injuring his captured butterfly.
“You can call me Adder,” the seated man said. “If you wish to call me anything at all.”
The man who called himself Adder stood up and came around the desk, pacing in front of Greg.
“You should be grateful, Mr. Toland,” Adder said. “You are going to be part of something marvelous.”
Adder paced one way, then the other as Greg stared straight ahead at the far wall.”
“We actually considered retaining you a year ago, when we first started our project, but others thought differently, and you were passed over for another man. He did much for us, but now he is gone. So now you are here.”
Adder stopped in front of Greg Toland and faced him.
“To be honest, our last man did the heavy lifting,” Adder continued. “We need you here in more of a supervisory role, a man of useful knowledge to help us finish what he started.”
“What are you talking about? What is it that you need me to do?”
“As I said, we need you to help us finish what we started. You could also say that we would like you to finish what you started.”
“What?”
Adder made a motion and a man entered from the hall and held out a think binder to Greg.
“Take it,” Adder said. “Read it tonight. It was put together by your predecessor, and it will catch you up with what you need you know, though perhaps not all you would wish to know.”
Greg took the binder from the nameless man and started opening the cover.
“No, no,” Adder said. “When you are settled into your accommodations. Read it then.”
Greg tucked the binder under one arm.
“I need a shower,” he said. “And some clean clothes.”
Adder looked down at the drying urine stain on the front of Greg’s trousers.
“Of course. Good evening, Mr. Toland.”
Again Greg was grabbed from both sides. The men who had ahold of him--neither of whom was wearing a mask, he noticed--led him to a shower room. He left his clothes and the binder in a pile near the door to the room, and a guard stood watch as Greg showered. There was no hot water and no soap, but it felt great to get clean. By the time he finished his shower another guard had brought a clean change of clothes, a plain gray shirt and matching pair of pants, both made out of a rough material. He put the clothes on, retrieved the binder and left his old clothes where they lay.
After this he was led to another room, not the dark room with the bed that had restraints, but a different one which he though must not be that different. The bed had no restraints, which was a plus. The room was small, but there was a small desk and a chair crammed up against one wall. The room was lit by two bare fluorescent tubes fixed to the ceiling, though Greg didn’t see a light switch anywhere.
The steel door shut loudly, and was locked. Greg stepped to the desk, pulled out the chair so that it was nearly touching the wall opposite the desk and sat down. He set the binder on the desk, opened it and
began to read. What he read both terrified and amazed him. He saw where he had been right all those years before, and where he had been very wrong.
He was just finishing reading the last few notes written in another man’s neat, tight script when the lights went out. In the darkness Greg closed the binder and sat for a while, thinking. Eventually he stood up, found his way to the bed and lay down. He found that the new bed was not much better than the first one. He didn’t think he would be able to sleep, but soon exhaustion had its way and he was asleep anyway. That night he dreamt of fire.