Carter hunkered down, looked into Ryan’s eyes. “Who are you protecting? There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
All Ryan had to do was speak the Mossad agent’s name. Tell Carter about the talk they had, and the newspaper on the Vauxhall’s dashboard. And it would be over.
Over.
They would kill him once they had what they wanted. Ryan knew the only thing keeping him alive was the truth he hid from them. If he talked, he would die.
“No one,” Ryan said.
Carter sighed and took another scoop of water from the bucket and threw it in Ryan’s face.
Ryan spat salty water, said, “No,” but the lightning struck beneath his eye, throwing his head back to crack against the wood of the chair. Another bolt of pain in his groin, another in his belly.
Consciousness shook and crumbled, dissolved, then reformed. Ryan saw the men as stretched figures, like a fairground hall of mirrors, colours bleeding together.
“Who are you protecting?”
“No one.”
Another blast beneath Ryan’s naval, another to his chest, another beneath his eye. A slap across his cheek, more water thrown over his torso.
“Who are you protecting?”
Ryan’s tongue seemed to swell inside his mouth, blunting the words. “No … one.”
Carter held the wand’s pronged tip against Ryan’s belly, kept it there, sparking, as Ryan’s abdominal muscles flexed and clenched through no will of his own, each spasm like a wild animal’s teeth sinking deep into his flesh, tearing at the meat.
It came clear in his mind, a lion, a wolf, whatever it was, snarling and snapping at his midsection. Feasting on him, eating him alive, watched by men who seemed to tower up to the heavens, and then all was darkness, the sound of a hurricane in the distance, and someone screaming who could not possibly have been Albert Ryan.
He stayed there, in the swirling black and greys, until he felt them dragging him down, deeper into the dark. Ryan fought his way up and out of it, dragging himself towards consciousness. And there, the pain, muscles still convulsing, his skin burning. He opened his eyes, strained for focus.
Carter spoke to Wallace, said, “That’s all he’s got. Finish him off.”
Wallace nodded, smirked, and stepped forwards. He raised the Browning.
Ryan saw the suppressor’s mouth opening before his eye, seeming to suck all the air from his lungs and the light from the room. He saw Wallace’s finger on the trigger, the knuckle whitening.
“Wait,” a voice said.
Wallace looked somewhere behind Ryan. “Why? We’ve wasted enough time on him already.”
“Step away,” the voice said. “Now.”
Wallace hesitated for a moment, then exhaled and shook his head. He lowered the pistol and moved back to his position across the room.
The owner of the voice stepped into Ryan’s vision. One hand in his pocket, the other holding a newspaper.
Goren Weiss said, “Hello, Albert.”
III
COLLABORATOR
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
Goren Weiss watched Ryan blink, his face contorted with confusion, his eyes unfocused. The Irishman shook his head as if trying to dislodge some veil.
Weiss asked, “How are you holding up?”
“I … I don’t …”
Weiss raised a hand, silenced him. “Okay, save your energy.”
Carter came to Weiss’s side, spoke in a low voice. “What are you doing? Let’s just finish him and get out of here.”
“No,” Weiss said. “Bear with me just a little while. Let me have a word with him.”
Carter looked from Weiss to Ryan and back again. “All right. Five minutes, then I’m putting him out of his misery.”
Weiss nodded. Carter went to the window and sat on the sill, glowering like a wilful child who thought he’d got his way.
Ryan’s eyelids rose and fell like heavy curtains. “What’s happening?” he asked.
Weiss placed his free hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Albert. I just want to have a talk with you. Take your time. Gather yourself. These gentlemen will wait.”
Ryan closed his eyes. Weiss fetched the chair from the far side of the room, dragged it back and sat down in front of Ryan, the newspaper in his lap.
“Seems like we’ve been here before,” Weiss said. “The last time wasn’t quite so trying, though, was it?”
“What’s happening?” Ryan asked again.
“Captain Carter insisted on questioning you in his own particular way. I regret allowing him to do so, Albert, but I had to know if you’d give me up or not. Please accept my apology.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Making sure things don’t get out of hand. I probably should have stepped in sooner. But you conducted yourself well, Albert. I’m impressed.”
“Tell me what’s going on. Please.”
Weiss nodded. “Okay. So you know what all this is about by now. It’s a business enterprise. Otto Skorzeny is sitting on a great big pile of money, and we want some of it. Not all, not even most of it. Just a taste.”
Ryan shook his head once more. “But you said … your mission.”
“My mission still stands,” Weiss said. “This is just a little side project. I’m not on company time, as it were. This project was undertaken initially by Captain Carter, he recruited his team, and I came onboard last. I still get control of Skorzeny’s ratlines, and I add a little something to my pension pot. Where’s the harm in that?”
“But those people. They died for this?”
Weiss smiled. “They were fucking Nazis, Albert. They did not deserve to walk and breathe among human beings.”
“Catherine Beauchamp. She didn’t deserve to die.”
Weiss shrugged in acceptance. “Maybe so, but she died by her own hand. If you hadn’t called at her door, she’d still be alive. You can’t hold that over me.”
“All this. For money.”
“Of course. What other reason do you need?”
Ryan did not answer. Instead, he asked, “Why did you bring me into this?”
“I didn’t. Charles Haughey brought you into this.”
“But you contacted me. You came at me in that bar.”
“True. When I found out you were sniffing around, I wanted to get the measure of you. Then I thought, why not draw you in? You were my inside man, Albert, the best kind. The kind who doesn’t even know it. So I dropped a few crumbs for you along the way. We’d gotten everything we could from Célestin Lainé. You would have figured out he was the informant eventually, and I wanted to see if that would lead you to Carter’s doorstep. I wanted to see if you could possibly endanger this project. Turns out you could, and I’m glad I reined you in before you did any more damage. And you might be of use to me yet.”
Weiss leaned across the gap between them, held the newspaper in front of Ryan’s eyes. Ryan squinted at the page, his mouth hanging open.
Weiss leaned back. “All right, I’ll read it for you.” He drew a breath and began. “ ‘To Constant Follower’—that’s us, by the way—‘I do not agree to your terms. I will, however, agree to one third of the amount for whichever one of you can prove he is the last of his kind.’ ”
Weiss looked over the top of the newspaper. “Do you understand what this means?”
“No,” Ryan said.
“It means that Colonel Skorzeny is clever, but perhaps not as clever as he thinks. In thinly veiled terms, he has said that he will pay half a million dollars to whichever one of us is willing to betray the others, kill them, and bring proof of such to him.”
Ryan’s gaze travelled between each man in the room.
Weiss tapped his knee to regain his attention. “But of course I anticipated this. We have discussed it in detail, and agreed against any such betrayal.”