He ate in the blackness, blinded, swallowing despite the pain it caused.
They beat him again, Carter and the tall man, as Wallace kept the pistol trained on him.
Every time the light faded, a hard slap dragged Ryan back to its harsh glow. Carter’s open hand left stinging shadows on Ryan’s cheek. An anchor in the waking world, mooring him to the pain.
When they were done, Carter crouched over Ryan’s shaking body. He reached out and grabbed a handful of Ryan’s hair.
“Get some rest, son. Tomorrow, you and me are going to have a talk. And we’ll settle this. Now, you have a good long think about what you’re going to tell me. Because if you don’t tell me what I want to know, you’re going to think everything up to now was just a tickle fight. Understand?”
With his free hand, Carter gave Ryan one last slap to the cheek.
“Good boy,” he said, and released his grip on Ryan’s hair.
He stood and went to the ladder. Wallace and the tall man followed him up to the doorway. The tall man pulled the ladder up behind them and closed the door.
In the darkness, Ryan wept.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
Skorzeny finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in the crystal ashtray. He heard the rustling of a newspaper at the other end of the line.
“Here it is,” Haughey said. “Exactly like you wrote it.”
“It’s done, then,” Skorzeny said.
“I don’t like it. These boys are dangerous, and you’re goading them.”
“I am simply playing them at their own game. Their weakness is greed. It will destroy them.”
“I pray you’re right,” Haughey said.
Skorzeny smiled. “Minister, I have never been wrong.”
He returned the receiver to its cradle.
It was as if Haughey believed no one had ever attempted to blackmail Skorzeny before. Several had tried over the eighteen years since the war had ended, and none had succeeded. Indeed, none had survived.
Though Luca Impelliteri had almost escaped death. Almost, but not quite.
A tour of Tarragona’s Roman amphitheatre, undergoing restorations since the previous decade, had been arranged for Skorzeny and the rest of Franco’s guests, with the mayor himself acting as guide. The guests clambered across the arced stone seating, built eighteen hundred years ago, where the region’s wealthy would have watched gladiators spar or Christians burn.
The ruins of the amphitheatre clung to the edge of a cliff not far from the hotel where Franco’s guests stayed, a sheer drop to the sea beyond its eastern walls.
The mayor stopped his lecture on the sins and virtues of the Romans, pointed, and cried, “You! Yes, you!”
A young woman, petite and full-bosomed, bare-legged in shorts, turned to his voice. “Me?”
“Yes, you,” the mayor called to her. “Who let you in? This area is not open to the public.”
A frown broke on her face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
She spoke her Spanish with an accent that might have been French.
“Well, now you do,” the mayor said. “Out you go.”
Skorzeny watched as she descended the rows of stone seats, dropping from one to the next, her arms held out for balance. As she passed Luca Impelliteri, she slipped. He caught her before she could fall into the gladiatorial pit below, his hands at her slender waist, pushing up beneath her breasts.
She smiled up at him, said thank you, brought her hands to his.
“My pleasure,” he said.
Skorzeny turned his attention back to the mayor, whose lecture droned on.
At that night’s dinner, the girl with the French accent replaced the young Spanish woman at Impelliteri’s side. She laughed at his jokes, let her hands wander beneath the table, and made no eye contact with Skorzeny.
As midnight passed, Skorzeny stood on the small balcony of his hotel room, his shirt open, enjoying the breeze on his bare chest and belly. He drew on his cigarette, wondering if Luca Impelliteri still lived. A crash and a scream from the floor above stopped his thoughts dead.
He remained still and listened.
Shouting, glass breaking. A door slamming.
More voices. Alarm, cries for help, calls for someone to stop her, she’s escaping.
Skorzeny’s throat tightened. He flicked the cigarette over the balcony and buttoned his shirt before going to the door. Opening it, he found other guests peering into the corridor, drink and sleep clouding their eyes.
“What’s going on?” a man asked in English.
“I don’t know,” Skorzeny said. “Perhaps someone had too much champagne.”
The Englishman smiled and nodded.
Then the voices from the stairwell at the end of the corridor, and the gunfire, and the girl’s dying cry.
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
“Back against the wall,” Wallace said.
Ryan obeyed, taking careful steps, his innards seeming to writhe with each one. He kept his genitals, still tender, cupped in his hand.
The ladder touched the floor.
Ryan waited, ready to strike at any man who came near him. None did.
Carter appeared in the doorway.
“Up you come,” he said.
Ryan blinked at him.
“Come on, let’s have you.”
Ryan shook his head. “No.”
Carter nodded to Wallace. Wallace raised the Browning and took aim. The pistol spat, the report deadened by the suppressor. The earth by Ryan’s toes exploded. By reflex, he hopped aside. Wallace giggled.
“No messing about,” Carter said. “Up here. Now.”
Ryan shuffled towards the ladder. He gripped the stiles with his hands, placed a foot on the second rung, and hauled upwards. Another rung, and another, and more until he had to stop, the effort tearing through his body. His head lightened, and he hugged the ladder close to keep from falling back to the floor.
Carter leaned out from the doorway. “Move it.”
Ryan climbed until he could crawl out into the hall. He stayed there, hands and knees on the wooden floorboards, as he recovered his breath.
Wallace stayed back, the Browning up and ready.
Carter grabbed Ryan’s hair and pulled. Ryan hissed at the stinging of his scalp. He followed it up until his feet were under him, reached out to the walls to steady himself.
Something cold and hard pressed against the skin beneath his ear. Slowly, he turned his head and saw the tall man, a pistol in his hand.
“Come on.” Carter walked through a doorway into a small room. The tall man jabbed the suppressor against Ryan’s ear, telling him to follow.
The room dripped with damp, the wallpaper long rotted and blackened. Through the tiny square of a window, Ryan saw overgrown hedges and shrubs, heard the singing of birds. A cottage somewhere out of the city.
A wooden chair had been fixed to the floor with nails.
“Sit down,” Carter said.
Ryan did so. Carter set about binding his wrists and ankles to the chair’s arms and legs with rope. Ryan smelled his sweat. The hard base of the seat chilled Ryan’s thighs and testicles.
Wallace and the tall man took up their positions, one at each side of the room, weapons held loose at their sides. Carter walked to another door, exited through it, and re-emerged a moment later carrying a metallic block and something that looked like a wand made from aluminium and bright orange rubber. Two cables joined the wand to the block.
Ryan’s heart raced. He steadied his breathing.
Carter set the block on the floor. Ryan felt the impact of its weight on the floorboards through the soles of his feet. He saw the terminals, and the wires wrapped around them, and knew it was a car battery. A small black box with a knurled dial was fixed to the battery with sturdy tape. The wires joined the box to the terminals, and two more wires led from the box to the wand in Carter’s hand.