Two men stepped out of the shadows. One held a pistol with a short silencer, muzzle pointed down. Both were Bangladeshis, dark-skinned, with close-cut black hair and clothes so absurd — pressed gray slacks, shined black shoes, short-sleeved shirts with tropical flowers and birds — that for a moment Gerrin thought they might be lost tourists. But no tourist would be reholstering such a pistol beneath the loose shirttail.
“Dr. Gerrin, you will come with us.” The voice was neither polite nor abusive, just barely civil, as though he were talking to a waiter.
“Who are you?”
“It is only a short distance. You can shower and put on clean clothes. It must be difficult for a man like yourself, going about so.”
They moved like a big scoop, one on either side, bringing him along.
“You are not from the city police,” Gerrin said.
The two exchanged glances and laughed. “No, that we are not. Thanks be to God.”
“What is your name?” Gerrin tried to sound authoritative. In his condition, it was not possible.
He understood that this had to do with Triage, and that somehow they had tracked him down, despite his certainty that no one could. Escaping from two such as these was not an option. The best he could hope for now was a trial before the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
The worst … For a moment his knees felt weak, and he knew it was not from hunger. Then he reminded himself that there was no death penalty with the ICC. He might spend twenty or twenty-five years in a relatively comfortable prison. He would be old when they released him, but there would be some years of life remaining. He would make the most of them. Perhaps he would even write a book while in prison. Surely some publisher would pay for the true story of the notorious Triage plot.
The first flash of terror passed, and he was surprised to find himself feeling something almost like relief. Carrying the secret of Triage for so long had corroded something within him horribly, and he knew it. Living in Karail, even briefly, had been worse than horrible and had brought back so many unspeakable memories that at times he’d thought his mind might crumble. No, a clean, well-lighted cell would not be the worst place on earth. He had just walked away from that.
They turned right at the end of the block. It was so dark that Gerrin did not see the black Mercedes until a third man opened its door and the dome light went on. The driver touched a remote control, and the trunk popped open. Gerrin’s two escorts picked him up — one could have done it easily enough — put him in, and closed the lid. As much as he hated being treated like this, it was easy to understand why they would not want him in such a car. He hoped that was the reason, in any case. The trunk was hot, but even here a Mercedes was lined with a velvety plush. Other than him, it smelled not bad for a trunk — the spare tire’s fresh rubber, that clean fabric, a sweet gasoline tang.
He thought about where they were taking him. A clandestine office of some kind, hallways echoing, most rooms dark. The messengers — for that was all they really were, fancy car aside — would deliver him to a security official in an off-the-rack dark suit, a white shirt too big in the neck, and a horrendous tie. He might be invited to sit, or perhaps not, given his condition. He would be told the reason for his detention and informed of whatever rights he had left, which, this being Bangladesh, were assuredly minimal.
They had mentioned a shower and fresh clothes. Prison garb, perhaps. He would be remanded to a holding facility while extradition proceedings played themselves out. There were only two possibilities that he could imagine: the ICC or the United States. Gerrin had not prayed in many years — in fact, for as long as he could remember — but he did now, briefly. Anything was worth trying to avoid the latter destination.
After a shorter time than he had expected, the car stopped. Sounds of doors opening, the soft rasp of leather soles on pavement. The trunk opened.
“You can get out now.”
Gerrin looked around. It was even darker here than the place where they had started. He saw no government offices, no safe house, no buildings of any kind, in fact. Behind the two men, there was a strip of littered, empty land, then a ragged chain-link fence, and beyond that, only empty darkness.
“I am fine. This is not so uncomfortable.” He understood how ridiculous that sounded, but he could not make his muscles remove him from the trunk.
The two men lifted him out as easily as they had put him in. He extended his legs, tested them, his ex-runner’s knees aching. “What are we doing?”
“You are not a young man any longer. We cannot have you suffer a heart attack or some such thing before we deliver you.” The two men exchanged glances, smiled.
“We walk a little.”
Deliver me? “I feel perfectly well.”
They scooped him along again, one on either side, to the chain-link fence. The ground was littered with trash, bottles, blowing paper. He could see that someone had cut a gash in the fence and peeled back the two sides. Nothing but darkness beyond. Like the mouth of a cave. Or hell.
The man who spoke reached toward his holster, and Gerrin could not stop himself from making a sound, half whimper and half groan. From his pocket, the man withdrew a slim metal case, rectangular and shining. He opened it, offered an unfiltered cigarette to his partner, and took one himself. The other man lit both, and they stood there smoking with great relish.
“Do I n-n-ot get one, too?” Gerrin asked. He was losing control of his mouth.
“You don’t smoke.”
“A last cigarette. I should get a last cigarette. It’s how they do it.” Babbling, he disgusted himself, but he could not stop the words.
The two laughed and shook their heads. When they were finished smoking, they flicked the butts away. The companion urinated with gusto. They put Gerrin back into the trunk.
They traveled for what he estimated to be about an hour. Then he felt several stops and starts, heard snatches of conversation that he could not understand. Lifted from the trunk, he stamped his feet to restore circulation, stretched his hands and shoulders.
When he opened his eyes, having finished his stretch, the two men and the driver were gone. Standing before him was a huge man with short, straw-colored hair, his cheeks rough with stubble, a red-checked shemagh wrapped around his neck. He wore dusty jeans, a khaki shirt, and a monstrous automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. Gerrin recognized him. The giant who had come with Barnard.
Behind the man stood two others dressed similarly. They had holstered pistols and carried assault rifles, neither M-16s nor AK-47s but a kind he had never seen. It would have been impossible to take the men for anything but Americans. Tall, thick with muscle, well-fed, and, most of all, the gun-muzzle eyes.
“Dr. Gerrin,” the big man said, and Gerrin shuddered. You hoped to hear a voice like that only once. He had the eyes of a natural predator — one who would know very well how prey went to ground, and where.
“Why do you not just kill me here and save us all the t-t-trouble?” Gerrin’s fear was talking again, words just bubbling out. It wanted to know what would happen to him, and he could not make it stop.
“What?”
“Just do it. Get it over with. Those others were supposed to, but they lost their nerve. So go ahead.”
“That’s not how we operate,” the other man said, and he glanced over his shoulder. Gerrin noticed for the first time a hangar with an odd black helicopter crouching inside.
“What will you do with me, then?”
“The right thing.”