The bag. She’d had a camera in the bag. She’d left it on the dresser, and he’d never given it a second thought.
He waved his hand in front of him. ‘Enough,’ he managed to say through dry lips. ‘Enough.’
‘That is your house, isn’t it?’ Vinson asked softly.
‘Don’t,’ Mason said, broken, a man seeing his political career, his marriage, his life, flashing before his eyes. He shook his head sadly. ‘Don’t.’
‘Your wife is a very understanding woman,’ Vinson said. ‘But I doubt she would understand this, any more than would the American people if this video were to be somehow leaked to the press.’
Mason continued shaking his head, seeing no way out, understanding how clever, how ruthless, Vinson truly was.
He wondered how Sarah had been turned. Had she been an agent of Vinson all along?
‘The girl?’ he asked, weakly.
Vinson shrugged. ‘Not a long-term deal, if that’s what you’re wondering. We got in touch with her after our meeting yesterday. Didn’t take long to convince her really, we offered her a lot of money. What do you think she was after with you in the first place? Power and money are what that girl’s interested in, and I guess at the end of the day, our money outgunned your power.’
Mason nodded his head, knowing how clever Vinson had been. A mistress was nothing, especially with a forgiving wife and a jaded American public. But dressing up as a Klansman to perform a mock rape of a black ‘slave-girl’? He’d thought the idea was kinky, knew some women had rape fantasies, just thought this was a simple step further along that route. More detailed, but essentially harmless. But he knew how it would be perceived by anyone else watching it, just as Vinson did. It would ruin Mason in every single way there was to ruin a man.
Abrams turned to him, watching him carefully. ‘So Clark,’ she said. ‘Given what we have just seen here, can I count on your support?’
Mason shrugged his shoulders, a pained, defeated look on his face as he spoke to his president. ‘Yes ma’am,’ he said miserably. ‘Yes ma’am, I guess you can.’
Cole looked with bleary eyes at the man standing in front of him, the pain between his legs intense; but the psychological effect was even worse.
Zhou grinned, holding up Cole’s bloody foreskin between his fingers. ‘Do not worry,’ he said, scarred face inches from Cole’s, ‘you can grow it back, right?’
He laughed again, throwing his head back, his body heaving with fits of deep, gruesome laughter.
The strange thing was, Cole was momentarily relieved; a part of him had thought that Zhou was going to cut the entire thing off at the root. And no matter how tough Cole was, there was no amount of training that could have prepared him for that.
But then fear and worry clouded his mind again, as he realized that this was just the start of what Zhou had in store for him; and if the man was willing to do this as his first move in the game, what depths of hell would he willing to visit at a later stage?
The man still held Cole’s severed foreskin in his hand, and he looked at it for a moment, studying it intently before he returned his gaze to Cole. ‘I like you, Dietrich,’ he said, up close to Cole’s face, so close that Cole could see his battered, bloody reflection in the monster’s pale glass eye. ‘You are a handsome man, I find you… attractive.’ He breathed in, sniffing Cole’s skin, his hair, with delicate appreciation. ‘Ah yes, I like you.’
Zhou backed away, holding the bloody piece of Cole’s body up again, making sure that he saw it. ‘I will go now, leave you to consider what my plans might be for you.’ He smiled again, strolled gently around the hanging man. ‘But I will give you a hint,’ he said as he went behind Cole. ‘It will involve this,’ he whispered, stroking the cleft between Cole’s naked buttocks, before coming back round to the front. ‘It will involve this,’ he continued, pointing to his own groin and smiling, ‘and it will involve this,’ he concluded, holding up the bloody razor in front of Cole’s eyes. ‘I will let your imagination do the rest. But believe me, by the time I finish with you, you will have told me everything and will be begging me to kill you.’
Zhou strolled casually to the cell door, turning back at the last second and winking at Cole with his good eye. ‘Until we meet again,’ he said, and strode through the door, locking it behind him and laughing to himself as he padded off down the corridor.
Left alone in the dark with just his pain and his imagination for company, Cole’s head hung down on his vomit-slicked chest and — despite himself — he started to sob bitter tears as he thought about what was going to happen to him when Zhou returned.
It was nearly eleven o’clock at night now, and the waters of the East China Sea off the coast of Shanghai were as black as ink, any natural light from the moon and stars completely covered by dense cloud.
Force One and the Politburo were aboard a pleasure cruiser which — having arrived in Shanghai that evening — they had caught from the Bund, the city’s famous waterfront thoroughfare which ran alongside the vast Huangpu River.
It was a CIA-chartered boat, run by members of the Shanghai station, and it had headed north up the river until the Huangpu emptied out into the East China Sea, at which point it had slipped unseen into the open waters.
It was now on the blind side of the small islet of Sheshan, waiting for their rendezvous.
They didn’t have to wait long, and the pleasure cruiser rocked up and down with the bow waves as the dark, menacing conning tower of the USS Texas breached the surface just fifty feet away.
It took just a minute more for the huge submarine to come fully up and settle, another minute for the hatches to open, and Navarone watched in pleasure as the Navy SEAL dive team who had helped release the SDV spread out along the deck, weapons at the ready.
Then he saw Captain Hank Sherman come on deck, nodding his head for the pleasure boat to come alongside.
Navarone’s boat did just that, moored against the titanic hull of the US submarine, and then — as the SEALs stood guard — a chain of sailors helped ferry the members of the Politburo across and onto the deck, feeding them onwards towards the hatches and the welcoming safety of the submarine’s interior.
The politicians had finally and mercifully discarded their disguises within the cabins of the pleasure cruiser, and were dressed in smart, casual clothes; relaxed, comfortable and — more importantly for many of them — made for the correct gender.
Once the Politburo members were gone, the sailors gestured for Navarone and the commandos to follow, but he shook his head.
Sherman came forwards immediately. ‘Hey,’ he barked quietly, ‘quit messing around, get in the sub. We don’t have time for games, damn it.’
Navarone knew he was right — the Texas must have been running around in these waters unmolested for days now, but their luck might not hold out forever. There was the entire Chinese navy out there somewhere, after all.
But Navarone wasn’t playing games.
‘We’re not coming back,’ he said evenly, having made his decision with the team on the boat ride over.
They had seen the footage on television in Shanghai, knew that Cole had been captured, and were damned if they were going to leave him there.