Rutger? McBride stood where he was, stock-still, uncertain what was happening, but feeling, somehow, that things were beginning to slip away. Then his eyes drifted toward the ceiling, and he noticed the video camera for the first time, with the winking red diode just above the lens, and the lens pointing straight at him. Turning slowly, he caught a glimpse of the receptionist staring at him from behind her desk, and moving faster now, lunged for the box of curtain rods—
Only to be slammed against the wall.
“I see you’ve met Rutger—and Heinz,” Opdahl observed, getting up from his desk to greet McBride as the latter was escorted roughly into his office. “Have a seat.”
One of the security men shoved McBride into a chair across from the surgeon’s desk, while the second guard tossed the curtain-rod box onto the couch.
“Gesetzt ihm in eine Zwangsjacke,” Opdahl ordered, then switched to English as one of the guards left the room. “It’s for your own protection.”
“Fuck you,” McBride spat, and instantly regretted it as the remaining guard clapped him—hard—on the ears, igniting a wall of sparks behind his eyes. Opdahl laughed—“Owww!”—as McBride came out of his seat, only to find the business end of a 9mm pressed against the nape of his neck. He sat back down.
The first guard came back a moment later, carrying a straitjacket. Seeing it, McBride shrank into his chair, but with the Sig Sauer leveled at him, there wasn’t anything that he could do. The second guard yanked him to his feet, and pulled the jacket over his arms. McBride took a deep breath as the guard made him cross his arms, then snapped the buckles shut at the small of his back. This done, the guard pushed McBride into the chair, and looked inquiringly at his boss.
“Ich nehme es von hier,” he said, dismissing the guards as if he were brushing crumbs from the table. When they’d gone, he came around to the other side of the desk, leaned back against it and crossed his arms. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again: you’re a very brave man, Jeffrey Duran.”
“Jeffrey Duran’s dead,” McBride told him.
Opdahl smiled. “My point, exactly.” Finding a packet of Rothmans Silk Cuts, he lighted one, inhaling deeply. Then blew the smoke toward his captive, and said, “You’re going to hate me for saying this, but you know what? This is the first place I’d expect you to come.” He paused. “The receptionist had your picture on her desk.”
McBride didn’t say anything, just sat there fidgeting in his seat, hating the man in front of him.
Opdahl shook his head in mock confusion. “What were you thinking of? Did you think you’d take me by surprise? For God’s sake, man, I’ve got a profile on you that’s a foot thick—literally.” He paused. “So there’s really very little you could do—short of breaking into song—that would surprise me.” He laughed to himself, and tapped the ash from his cigarette onto the floor.
McBride looked on, guts churning, face impassive.
Opdahl turned his eyes toward the ceiling. “So now what do we do?” He lowered his eyes to McBride. “I’m taking suggestions.”
“Good. I’d suggest you go fuck yourself,” McBride told him.
Opdahl roared his approval with a big, hearty laugh. Then wagged his finger. “That’s funny, but bravado isn’t going to get you anywhere. Then, again, nothing will, so—why not?” He paused, and scrutinized McBride. Nodded toward the box on the sofa across the room. “What are you supposed to be? A workman?” When McBride didn’t answer, the surgeon’s lips puckered in an effigy of awe. “How imaginative!”
It wasn’t a conversation, really. McBride knew that better than anyone. Opdahl was having fun, playing with him—and that was fine. The longer the older man talked, the sooner Adrienne would come into play—though, in reality, McBride wasn’t counting on a call to the police being much help. What he was counting on was getting out of the straitjacket.
“Obviously, we can’t just let you go,” Opdahl told him, “though I suppose I’ll seem ungrateful when I don’t.” For a moment, the older man turned serious. “You did a terrific job with de Groot. I’m sure it wasn’t easy. He’s not like the others.”
“How so?” McBride asked.
Opdahl made a dismissive gesture. “The clinic here—well, it’s a cachement pond. On any given day, we have ten or fifteen young men and women with serious eating disorders—and/or a crippling dependency on drugs. Thanks to the charitable work that we do, quite a few of them come to us from foster care or state agencies. As you might suppose, this lack of family connectedness is convenient for the Program—as is the propensity of these poor creatures for generating distorted self-images of themselves.”
“And de Groot?” McBride asked.
“De Groot was different. We needed someone with Henrik’s expertise, so we made… “ Here, the surgeon waggled his forefingers in the air. “…an ‘involuntary recruitment.’“ He smiled. “So Henrik doesn’t fit the profile as well as we’d like.”
“Expertise?” McBride wondered. The guy ran a company that installed fire alarms and stuff.
“It actually requires rather a lot of medication to make him the charming lad you know,” Opdahl added. “So we’re grateful to you. We really are.” The surgeon hesitated for a moment, then furrowed his brows and leaned forward, moving his head from side to side, making a show of studying McBride. “My God, man,” he said, “you’re sweating bullets!”
It was true. McBride was sweating bullets, though not so much from fear as from his efforts to conceal the muscular adjustments he was making in an effort to get free. There was a trick to it, of course. Houdini had gotten out of straitjackets routinely and, as a kid, McBride had wanted to emulate him. He’d even toyed with the idea of asking his parents for a straitjacket on his twelfth birthday but, in the end, opted for a skateboard instead. Still, there was a trick—and it was one that he knew. In principle, at least—which he’d be the first to admit was a long way from actually doing it. Then again, he was highly motivated.
“I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Opdahl promised, flicking another ash onto the floor. “Though we’ll have to do something.” He paused, frowned, and thought about it. Then he looked up with a big smile. “I know! We’ll replicate ‘H.M.’ You remember H.M., don’t you?”
He did. And the thought of it made him look away, sickened at what Opdahl was suggesting.
The surgeon was suddenly incredulous. “Are you trembling?” He peered closely at McBride for the second time in as many minutes. “You are! Look at you!” And he laughed, a sort of burst transmission giggle, à la Dennis Miller.
And, in fact, McBride was trembling. He was losing motor control from the effort it was taking to free himself from the canvas jacket that pinioned his arms to his chest. The trick, which he’d read about in a children’s biography of the magician, was actually pretty simple. At least, in theory. As the straitjacket was being put on, the wearer was to make himself as big as possible (which McBride had done), expanding his chest, flexing his muscles, and keeping his elbows as far from his sides as his handlers would permit. Then, when the jacket was in place and the wearer relaxed, he’d have the wiggle room he needed to get out. (Or so he hoped.) Houdini had done it dangling from a rope, ten stories above the street. Of course, that was Houdini.
“Industrial accident,” Opdahl reminded him. “Textbook case! Old H.M. wound up with a pole through his head—like one of those arrow jokes, but real. And, as I think you know, he survived the pole, though he wasn’t what you’d call intact. Remember? He’d lost the ability to form long-term memories. So, every day, his wife would introduce herself to him and, every day, it would be like meeting her all over again. Same with his parents, same with his friends.” Another chuckle. “We could tell you the same joke every day, and every day you would laugh.” He looked delighted. “And you wouldn’t be depressed about it. Not at all! You’d be a lamb. Because every day would be—” his face lit up “—brand-new!”