He remembered General Wu’s anger at the state he had been in when brought to the cold, dank Zhongnonhai basements. The soldiers had beaten him black and blue, and Wu had been enraged — the general had probably wanted him paraded in front of the television cameras for propaganda purposes, something that could be forgotten now that he looked like a torture victim. Bruises and cuts covered his swollen eyes and cheeks, his lips distorted and puffy. There was no make-up in the world that could make him look any better.
He wondered what Wu had done to the soldiers who’d beaten him and lost Wu his public relations prize, and decided that it certainly wouldn’t be anything good.
Wu had watched Cole get strung up in the cold, dank basement room, and had then come so close that Cole could smell his sweet, oily breath. There had been no questions, just an examination, perhaps to check the resolve in the prisoner’s eyes.
He had turned away and spoken to Zhou, who had merely nodded his head and sat down to watch him.
Cole couldn’t even fall asleep, forced to balance on his tiptoes to help keep the weight off his arms and chest; he was strung up in a crucifix position, arms outstretched, and knew if he let his body collapse then he could well die of asphyxiation, the hyper-expansion of his chest muscles and lungs leading to increased difficulty of inhalation. He had been placed at such a height that the only way to keep the weight off was to stretch his feet down, touch his toes to the cold floor below.
And so he kept balanced there, the tips of his toes red raw, his body wracked with pain as Zhou Shihuang looked on.
‘What is your name?’ Zhou asked finally, his words in heavily accented English, his mouth barely moving.
‘Dietrich Hoffmeyer,’ Cole spluttered, knowing he had to at least try and put up the pretense.
Zhou just laughed humorlessly, looked Cole’s naked body up and down. ‘Dietrich Hoffmeyer is Jewish,’ he said, lips still barely moving. ‘According to records, circumcised at birth.’ He looked again at Cole, his meaning clear.
‘It grew back?’ Cole managed to respond, gasping through the pain.
‘You are a funny man,’ Zhou said, standing finally, his massive bulk causing a shadow to fall across the entire room.
And then he was there in front of Cole, inches from his face, his meaty, callused hand grasping Cole’s testicles and pinching them tightly between his vice-like fingertips.
The pain was immediate and intense, like a thousand fireworks going off in his groin, in his head, everywhere, and he thought he was going to pass out; and still the man was squeezing, harder and harder, and then Cole was sick, vomit trickling down his chin, his chest, and he choked on it, his feet slipping, his weight taken on his arms, across his chest and suddenly he couldn’t breathe, and still the man squeezed his testicles harder, and Cole was seeing stars now, his mind trying to black out, and he wanted to let it, why wouldn’t he let it? He could hear a noise, high and piercing, and realized it was his own screams, ringing and reverberating around the cold concrete cell; and then Zhou let go, but the pain stayed with him, leaving him weak, dizzy, confused.
‘If it can grow back,’ Zhou said with a smile, a razor blade coming up in front of Cole’s eyes, sweeping back and forth before him to leave him in no doubts as to what it was, ‘then you won’t mind if I cut it off again, no?’
He must be joking, Cole told himself, he’s got to be joking.
But then the razor was gone from his eye line, and the next thing Cole felt was a hot, burning sensation below, and the warm trickle of fresh blood dripping down his bare legs, and he screamed again like he never had before.
2
The meeting was in full swing, accusations being bandied about back and forth, and Clark Mason was enjoying himself tremendously. Whatever the truth of Wu’s accusations, they were being taken very seriously by the men and women in the Situation Room, people who were all too aware of the possible ramifications of unlicensed covert US action — the Bay of Pigs disaster, the Iran-Contra scandal, Project MK Ultra, the unfortunate list went on and on.
Foremost on everyone’s minds was the question of Wu’s response. If he felt the US had attacked him, what was his next move going to be? He already had over four thousand US servicemen and women in his sights, and plenty more American citizens trapped within the Chinese mainland itself. Would he kill them in retaliation? And if he did, what would the US government do then? How would it respond? Because if it did anything, Wu had made it abundantly clear that he had thousands of well-hidden nuclear warheads that he wouldn’t mind using.
To Abrams’ credit, she rolled with the punches well, betraying no weakness, admitting nothing. She was adamant that the US had no involvement, and urged the meeting to push on to consider contingency plans.
Just when it looked like it might be doing just that, Mason recognized the time to strike. ‘Just before we move on,’ he said in his charming manner, pleasant yet authoritative, ‘I would just like to add my comments, further to a visit I made yesterday afternoon. I—’
‘Let me stop you there, Clark,’ Abrams said, looking at her watch, keeping completely cool. ‘I say we have a ten minute break, then meet back here. Everyone’s a little hot under the collar, and I understand, so let’s back off a little and come back to things fresh.’ She looked around the table, then back to Mason. ‘That okay with you, Clark?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Damn her. What else could he say? She was still the president, for now at least.
The NSC members started to stand up, stretch their legs and filter out of the room, and Mason watched as Abrams approached him, hand on his arm. ‘I need to have a word with you,’ she breathed. ‘In private.’
‘Okay,’ he said, allowing her to guide him to a secondary conference room.
They entered the room and Mason saw Abrams lock the door behind them, noticed that all the blinds were drawn. He turned, surprised to see Bruce Vinson seated in a corner chair, his hand cradling a remote control.
‘What is this?’ Mason asked, worry starting to creep up on him. ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘Take it easy,’ Vinson said calmly. ‘Really. All it is, is a little private viewing. That’s all. Really. Relax. Take a seat.’
Despite his reservations, his distrust of Vinson, the man’s tone was so soothing, so reasonable, he couldn’t help but do what was asked of him. He took a seat across from Vinson, noticed that Abrams was already seated. He looked at the large screen on the wall, blank for now, and wondered what they were going to show him. Evidence of the US operation? Were they going to try and win him over, get him on the inside, make him an accomplice?
Well, they’d have another thing coming, he decided. He had his own plans, and he was going to stick to them.
The president was going down.
‘So what do you have to show me?’ Mason said, his confidence returning. ‘What’s this private viewing all about?’
‘Well,’ Vinson said easily, ‘let’s just show you, okay? You can make comments after if you want to.’
With that, he clicked his remote control and the screen fired up.
Mason, expecting to see military training footage, or else live feeds from in-zone helmet cams, was shocked to instead find himself staring at footage from his own house, Number One Observatory Circle.
From his bedroom.
The camera was directed at the bed, and Mason watched in horror as he saw himself stride out of the bathroom dressed in the white hood and robes of a Ku Klux Klansman, the semi-naked, ebony-skinned form of Sarah Lansing recoiling from him in mock horror.
He watched as he pulled her violently onto the bed and took her in pseudo-rape, watched the way she pulled his mask off, the way his face looked on the camera as he mounted and dominated the young black woman beneath him, face contorted in ecstasy.