Blokhin had put on a full-length leather slaughterhouse apron and tied it tightly around his waist. He pulled on heavy black rubber gloves, then wheeled the battery from the corner of the room and uncoiled the cables. A red star was embossed on the side of the battery. The cable ends were clamped to the battery terminals. The opposite ends terminated in dull copper alligator jaws that were wrapped in red felt, which Blokhin dipped into a bucket of water, soaking the felt wraps thoroughly. He touched the felts together, but no Hollywood sparks dramatically arced and snapped. Instead, the felts started smoking from the current, quenched by Blokhin’s dipping them into the bucket again. There was a sour, metallic, burned toast smell in the room. Nate heard a chair scrape behind him and willed Dominika to stay still. How long could he last? How long would Domi stay in her seat? Come on, baby, hang tough.
Blokhin casually leaned against the arm of Nate’s chair. “I require one thing from you, Amerikanskiy,” he said softly. “The name of your agent in Moscow.”
Nate smiled at him. “The name’s a secret malys, you small prick; that’s why we use the word ‘agent.’ ”
Blokhin’s eyes narrowed, and his face flushed. He touched a felt pad to each side of Nate’s left ankle and looked as Nate’s back arched and his left leg involuntarily shot out straight. The electric shock was excruciating, half hammer blows and half pulsing muscle spasm that engulfed his whole leg. Shit, this could go on for days. Blokhin removed the felts, and the sudden cessation of pain and spasm was a heavenly relief. But anticipating the next one was enough to drive one mad, which was the point of using shock—the prisoner’s dreading the next jolt.
Blokhin dipped the felts in the water again. “The name of the mole? We have all day and all night, until the battery goes dead or you lose your mind, whichever will come first.”
Nate remembered how good Blokhin’s English was. Nate shook his head to clear it. “You’re an ass-picking gorilla, mandjuk, dickhead.”
With a snarl, Blokhin pressed the felts on the insides of Nate’s thighs, an inch from his scrotum. Nate’s torso curled forward in a rigid bow against the chest strap, and his lower body started shaking spasmodically, the current running through his skeletal muscle fibers triggering synchronous contraction. The pain between his legs was all-encompassing, radiating through his penis, which immediately stood straight up, followed by a loss of bladder control. Blokhin removed the felts and stood back, avoiding the trickle of urine under Nate’s chair. The American raised his head, straightened, and looked at Blokhin through wet hair, which had fallen over his eyes.
“I require the name, Yankee,” said Blokhin.
Nate shook his head. He couldn’t take much more of the felts. And he was terrified that Dominika would soon react to save him. Only one hope: piss Blokhin off so much that the Spetsnaz sergeant would either kill him or so seriously damage Nate that the interrogation would cease, at least temporarily, thus distancing Dominika from a catastrophic reaction. The button would be Blokhin’s honor. Give it a try, hurry. Save her. His crotch burned and his thighs twitched uncontrollably. During the last spasm it felt as if he had pulled a muscle in his back.
“This is why we pitched you in Istanbul,” said Nate hoarsely in Russian, to give the insult more edge. “You are no man of honor, certainly not worthy of belonging to the Spetsnaz brotherhood. Ty zhenshchina, you are a woman.” If he ever got out of this, Domi would be sure to give him grief over that.
Blokhin’s eyes goggled at the insult, and he cast aside the battery cables, kicked over the battery cart, spilling the water bucket, walked over to a cupboard, and drew out a meter-length of rebar. His eyes were unblinking, like a lizard’s eyes, and his scarred forehead was a livid purple.
For what we are about to receive, thought Nate, looking at Blokhin’s face.
Blokhin hit him with the length of the steel bar across his left shin, causing a comminuted fracture of the tibia, shattering the bone into several pieces inside the leg and tearing the interosseous membrane that stabilizes the tibia and fibula, essentially rendering Nate’s left leg below the knee the approximate consistency of cooked pasta. Nate roared in pain, but it was a throaty roar of defiance, not the keening wail of a terrified prisoner. Nate looked at Blokhin as he roared, as if he would tear his throat out with his teeth, but the blocky trooper was unfazed—he handled the ribbed length of the rebar in both hands, lovingly, like Benny Goodman held his clarinet.
Blokhin appraised Nate’s left leg, which was already swollen and purple and bent unnaturally to one side. Nate could feel the grooves in the arm of the chair as he dug his nails into the soft aluminum; other men and women had clawed against the pain as he was doing now. For all Blokhin’s many talents for mayhem, sophisticated interrogation was not his specialty. “I require the name of the Russian traitor working for the Americans,” he said.
Nate lifted his sagging head, and a bead of sweat dropped off his nose. Pain radiated up his leg to his gut. “You’re supposed to ask the first question before you hit the prisoner, zhopa, asshole,” he whispered.
Faster than Nate could tense up, Blokhin brought the rebar down on Nate’s captive left hand, rebreaking his little finger, shattering three of five metacarpophalangeal joints where the digits meet the palm, and pulverizing the small bones of the intercarpal articulation of the wrist. Nate’s ruined hand swelled immediately, and his knuckles became dimples. The pain was overwhelming, sharp, electric, radiating up his arm to his armpit and across his chest, the associated nerves reacting to the crushing blows of the steel bar. Roaring like an animal made him hyperventilate and helped the pain. The cable tie on his left wrist was now cutting into his flesh as his hand turned purple.
Nate growled as Blokhin leaned close, coyly resting the tip of the rebar on Nate’s undamaged right forearm, a hint of more to come. “The name of your asset in Moscow?” asked Blokhin.
“Someone close to the top,” stuttered Nate, “but I cannot recall the name, so fuck you.” Through his pain, Nate heard the three senior officials behind him stir in their seats. That was it; Putin suspected everyone, even his closest advisers, and he was treating them just as Stalin had habitually denigrated his lieutenants. That’s why they were present—to observe and sweat a little, for Putin’s amusement. But where was the august Gorelikov? Was he above suspicion? “Wait,” slurred Nate, as Blokhin tightened his grip on the rebar. “There is one name I know. Conspirators meet at Blokhina’s house, your mother’s house, after the sailors leave.”