Muller turned immediately for the nearest phone, set into the wall alongside a passage that doubled back beneath the staircase toward the kitchen. The phone was out of its cradle, missing. Muller barely broke his stride as he whirled and ran at a pace he had not achieved for years out of the front door, wondering just who it was who had breached his security and, more worryingly, what it was they wanted.
The blow caught him low in the belly as he passed through the doorway and he crumpled as he sank to his knees, stopped dead by the attack. He saw boots alongside him just before a black sack was thrust down over his head and fastened tightly about his neck, his arms yanked behind his back and his ankles bound all at once with startling efficiency.
‘Bitte, bitte,’ he gasped through the sack. ‘Please, what do you want?’
Nobody replied as he was hauled to his feet and thrust into a waiting vehicle that he heard approach up the long, private drive, far from prying eyes. Muller was shoved into place on the rear seat, doors slammed all around him, and then they were on the move. A deep, angry voice growled at him through a distorter, the digitized oratory both impersonal and frightening.
‘You knew this day would come,’ it growled. ‘Shut up, stay still, do as we say and you might just survive it.’
Muller whimpered with fear but managed to hold his tongue for the drive. It felt as though he were cramped on the seat for hours when in reality it was barely twenty minutes before the car slowed and parked and he was dragged from its interior and guided unsteadily on his feet into a building.
The odours of stale air and bare wood drifted through his sensorium, the footfalls around him sounding hollow as though they were walking through the bare shell of a house, no furniture, no carpets.
‘Ich verstehe nicht,’ Muller mumbled finally. ‘I don’t understand.’
No response. Moments later, Muller was turned about and thrust downward onto a seat of some kind. His legs were swung up and around and then he was laid down, the back of his head cracking against solid wood. He felt straps securing his arms, chest and ankles and he began to weep inside the sack.
‘Bitte, bitte!’
The sack was torn from his head and he blinked in the light as he saw four masked men surrounding him. They watched him in silence, and he furtively hoped that this was some kind of horrific mistake.
‘Please,’ he gasped, ‘I work for the United States.’
‘We know,’ came the response. ‘Tell us, everything.’
Muller’s mind raced. ‘Everything about what?!’
The tallest of the men strolled to one side of the wooden board upon which Muller lay, and the old man saw a tray atop an old table nearby. On the tray were an assortment of power tools and a pair of garden shears.
‘Mein Gott, nein,’ he gasped as the masked man turned to look at him.
‘Everything,’ the man repeated.
Muller nodded frantically. ‘I’ll tell you everything about what you want to know! I don’t have anything to hide!’
The man nodded to one of his accomplices and the other man pulled a sheet of paper out from his pocket, unfolded it, and pinned it to the wall of the otherwise bare room. Muller focused on the image and recognized the face upon it immediately.
‘Mein Gott,’ he uttered again in horror. ‘It wasn’t?’
The picture of Major General Frederick Thompson looked down upon him as the masked men closed in all around. Their boots crackled against something on the ground beneath the table, and Muller looked down to see a large sheet of plastic spread beneath him.
He wept again as the tall man looked down at him, an electric drill now held in one hand. The drill suddenly spun with a shrill whine that filled the room, a six — inch long steel bit gleaming in the morning light streaming through a grubby window nearby as he growled down at Muller.
‘Talk.’
‘I don’t know what happened to Thompson!’ Muller pleaded.
The masked man nodded to his accomplice, who stepped forward and with one mighty tear ripped off Muller’s shirt and exposed the blotched, bare skin of his flabby belly. The man lifted the drill and lowered it toward Muller’s skin, the bit spinning in a frenzied blur a finger’s width above his defenceless flesh.
‘Talk.’
‘I don’t know what happened!’ Muller screamed in terror. ‘I don’t know!’
The masked man looked at his accomplice once more and the second man gripped Muller’s head and forced it back against the board. Moments later the drill lowered and Muller screamed as raw pain tore across his stomach and the drill whined and churned as it sank into his flesh. A splatter of blood sprayed against the masked man’s clothes as he worked and Muller screamed.
The drill was yanked free, dripping with blood as the masked man looked down at him once again.
‘Last chance! Talk, now!’
‘I’ll lose everything!’ Muller screamed in raw terror and pain. ‘Everything!’
The masked man turned away and lifted the drill once more and Muller’s last feeble resistance withered away and he shouted out.
‘I inserted the implant!’ he cried, staring at the ceiling through blurred tears and praying that there would be no more of the terrible pain.
The drill whined down into silence once more as the masked man looked down at him and shouted in his face. ‘Everything!’
‘They paid me!’ Muller sobbed. ‘Paid me to insert devices into the nasal cavities of my patients at Ramstein and Basra! I had to. They knew my family, my children. They said I would be well paid to do as I was told, that the patients would not be harmed!’ Muller sucked in a ragged breath, his vocal chords twisted with agony. ‘They didn’t say that it was the patients who would be doing the harming!’
‘Who paid you?!’
Muller closed his eyes, tears streaming down his quivering jowls.
‘There were no names, only meeting places and private payments via off shore accounts. I was given names and dates, nothing else.’
There was a moment’s silence as Muller’s captors seemed to consider what he had said.
‘How many?’ the masked man demanded. ‘How many implants did you complete?’
Muller tried to think straight. The pain in his belly was subsiding, but he was shivering with fear as he realized that he would be unlikely to get out of the room alive.
‘Twenty, thirty, I can’t recall!’
‘How much were you paid?’ another, equally distorted voice asked.
‘A quarter million dollars for each patient!’
‘Over how long?’
‘Five years.’
‘When was the last one?’
Muller detected a ray of light as he realized that his captors were no longer shouting at him, that there seemed to be a hint of compassion or concern detectable even through the digitized distortion devices they were using. Muller realized that anything he said could not be used against him, that his torture would nullify any confession.
‘Two months ago.’
‘We want names,’ a voice demanded, ‘names of all the patients you implanted.’
‘I’ll have to get them, they’re at my office,’ Muller said. ‘Please, let me go and I’ll help you!’
A long silence and then the masked man spoke again. ‘Too late, Muller. We’ll get the names ourselves.’
The drill howled into life and Muller saw it jab downward as white pain seared his stomach and he screamed at the top of his lungs.