The Confessor (25 page)

The wince slowly drained out of Dewey’s face and he let out a long exhale, his cheeks puffing up like a blow-fish. For the first time, he took a good look at Geiger . . .

The guy was certifiably strange – he never blinked, and the odd walk, and the fingers flicking at his sides – but the weirdest thing was his voice.
Dewey . . . I can tell you with near certainty that your training will not play a major role in what happens tonight in this room
. How do you say that deadpan straight-faced and without even a touch of
I’m fucking with you, Jack
attitude?

He watched Geiger go to the two space heaters and bring them back – placing one on each side of Dewey – and then turn them on. Their quartz hearts immediately started to glow. Dewey could feel it.

‘We’ll start with them on low,’ said Geiger.

Dewey’s head hurt like hell – and his lower back was knotting up – but most of all, he was mad. No one had bothered to mention that he was tailing a world-fucking-famous torturer.

Geiger took up a position before his captive, five feet away.

‘Dewey, there are things I need to know. First, I need—’

‘Fuck you, dude.’ Dewey had the expression of a bored bartender, and the tone to match.

‘First, I—’

‘Fuck you.’

Geiger stepped toward him, and bent down until they could smell each other’s sweat.

‘Dewey . . . It’s best if you—’

‘Fuck you, man,’ and this time Dewey grinned. He felt better now.

Geiger’s hands flashed up and applied swift, synchronized, sideways chops to both sides of Dewey’s neck – something out of a magician’s stage act without the ‘Voila!’ – and Dewey’s head instantly drooped to his chest and his shoulders sagged, a marionette who’s had its strings cut, gone from the waking world for a while.

Geiger went to the table, poured a cup of water, and drank it all down before he took another breath. Then he inhaled and poured a second cup. Something was catching up to him. Running him down from behind. He heard the smooth, solitary lope, knew the effortless breath. Soon it would pull even with him, stride for stride – and he would turn and look into his own face. The Inquisitor. He felt the faintest shiver wash over his shoulders. It was dread.

Geiger turned his head for the
click
but the bones would not accommodate the gesture. He tried the other direction, but instead of obeisance some defiant cervical faction fired a thin, hot squiggle up the back of his skull. The tail-end of the sensation tickled the back of his eyes – tiny minnows darting around the optic nerve – and then they swam away. A noise made him turn, and he watched another drop of water fall from the hot-water tank on the wall into the pail on the floor.
Plop!
He understood that the actual volume of the sound was lower than it seemed to him – that his brain was taking the aural information it was receiving and amplifying it – and he understood what that meant.

Geiger walked back to Dewey and started massaging the back of the man’s neck, giving it a firm slap every five seconds. Dewey did a short, reflexive headshake as he came to.

‘What the . . . fuck, man?’

Dewey felt buzzed, a little wired – almost as if he’d had a couple of hits of really good grass – but not
high
. He felt
low
– the sense of something heavy slowly spreading out in his mind, weighing him down. That dream-sleep sensation when you’re trying to run down the road but your quads feel like wood and it’s all stumble and trip. Fear.

‘How long was I out?’

‘Approximately one minute.’ Geiger slowly raised himself up on his tiptoes, stretching the calves, holding the position for a few seconds and then slowly coming back down, working the Achilles. And then up again . . .

‘Dewey . . . I feel I know you somewhat better now.’

‘Is that right? So we gonna go out for a drink later?’

Geiger settled down on his feet and began to stretch at the waist, side to side, to loosen the damaged hips.

‘Everything in IR has meaning. What you say – and how you say it, and when you say it. Your facial expressions, body language, your breathing patterns.’ He walked to the table, picked up the knife, and then started into his slow stroll. It would become a perfect circle, ten to twelve feet in diameter. ‘And the converse matters equally. What you don’t say, what you don’t do. Unfortunately, as I said at the start – I don’t have time to take what I’m learning and use it to shape an approach.’

The Inquisitor was beside him now, in step – a prodigal son, the necessary evil – ready to do whatever was required.

‘There’s a story about Dalton – that during Operation Desert Storm, the allies captured one of Saddam’s henchmen, a very tough individual, and interrogated him for days without success – so they brought Dalton over. The first time Dalton asked a question the Iraqi didn’t answer and Dalton sliced off his bottom lip with a rotary knife. Then he went to work with a nail-gun – and very shortly after that the man told Dalton what he wanted to know. Some say the story was hype – but Dewey, the point is – Dalton made a career out of proving there are ways to acquire information quickly.’

Geiger stopped before him. ‘I need certain information – and if you interrupt me before I finish I will put you out again, and the next time you wake up you will be missing a part of your body.’

It hit Dewey again, a sudden gust – ice-cold, wrapped in elastic warmth. Geiger’s voice. Like a perfectly programmed machine – no fluctuation, edgeless, without a soul – and to see it come out of a man’s mouth made it all the more harrowing.

‘You’re on the clock now, Dewey. We’ll go one by one. First . . . Who do you work for – Soames or Dalton?’

‘Soames.’

There were no signs of life in Geiger. Not a blink, not a breath. To Dewey, he looked like a life-sized cardboard cutout.

‘I work for Soames, man. I’m on your side, asshole.’

Dewey replayed his answer in his head. The delivery sounded pretty good to him. He watched Geiger come closer – and turn the knobs on the two heaters. The soft gold of the quartz heating elements grew richer, brightening into a sun-flare yellow with a hint of orange. He felt the heat reaching him in a smooth wave, and his body – especially the sides of his forearms and calves – was starting to get that prickly, pre-sunburn feeling.

‘What the fuck, dude? I told you the truth.’

‘That’s also a lie.’

‘And what the fuck makes you so sure?’

‘Did you notice before . . . with the music – “Frère Jacques” – that a few of the notes were just barely out of key?’ Geiger straightened up. ‘That’s what a lie sounds like to me.’

His forearm levered at the elbow and the side of his fist slammed into Dewey’s upper thorax, with the second intercostal nerve the target. It was one of the Inquisitor’s frequent maneuvers, and Dewey seized up – the neural explosion bringing his pulmonary activity to a sudden stop, lungs in abeyance, awaiting a sign to resume their duties – but Dewey was too distressed to give the cue. He would have doubled over but the tape round his chest held fast and would not allow it – yet his struggle was so forceful that the chair moved an inch on the floor.

The staggered, breathless
caaack! caaack! caaack!
spurting out of him was like gunfire from a small-caliber weapon, and the only thought his mind was able to start and finish –
I can’t breathe –
vanished when Geiger put the point of the knife beneath his nose and rested it in the dent of the philtrum. Dewey froze, and the sudden shift in his focus was a reboot for his lungs. He tried not to move while he resumed breathing, and tried even harder to find a clue behind the slate eyes about what acts Geiger was truly capable of performing. The exposed hair on his arms and legs felt like it was about to catch on fire.

‘Shall I ask you the first question again,’ Geiger said, ‘or move on and then come back to it?’

Dewey went cross-eyed trying to look down at the blade. ‘Take it easy, Geiger. Eeee-zeeee.’

Geiger’s grip on the knife tightened and a droplet of blood sprouted beneath Dewey’s nose.

‘If you work for Soames, then what is her plan – if she gets to Dalton.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean?’

‘If Soames and you and Victor get to Dalton, who comes out alive?’

Dewey had seen guys mentally overload and never understood what it felt like – until now: a house of cards – one layer of fear on top of another, until you finally cave in from the weight of it all. The weird audio . . . the darkness . . . the pain . . .

Geiger’s grip was white-knuckled. A thin, crimson worm wriggled to life beneath the blade.

‘Dewey . . . If Soames gets to Dalton, what happens to Harry and Matheson?’

. . . the heat . . . the immobility . . . the glimpse of something cold and final hanging out on the corner of his vision, biding its time. Dewey tasted blood. It painted red-tinted pictures in his head that he didn’t want to look at.

‘Listen to me carefully, Dewey. You haven’t lived very long, and you haven’t made many important choices. This is about truth. That’s what it always comes down to. If you tell me the truth, then you give yourself a thousand other choices after this. If you choose not to, then it may be the last choice you ever make.’ Geiger lowered the knife. ‘I don’t know if you can hear the clock, Dewey – but it’s ticking. Do Harry and Matheson live or die?’

‘Listen . . . I’m the low man in this thing – okay? If I talk, I’m dead. They’ll kill me, man – even if you don’t!’ He wasn’t used to hearing his voice at this high a pitch.

‘Soames is not your main concern right now.’

‘I’m not talking about Soames. Vic—’ He snapped his mouth shut, but he was one syllable too late. He winced and his chin dipped to his chest. ‘Fuck me,’ he muttered.

Geiger’s fingers were suddenly playing a mad concerto on his thighs. ‘You said “Vic”.’ It was one of those out-of-the-blue IR moments – digging for gold and almost tripping over a nugget of silver. ‘As in Victor?’

Dewey was shaking his head at himself, like a kid who’s been put in a corner by the teacher for being bad. ‘Fuck me . . . fuck you . . . fuck everyone,’ he sighed.

Geiger resumed his circular route. He felt the touch of a shake in his steps.

‘You work for Soames . . . but you’re worried about retribution from Victor . . .’ He could see a hint of a shimmer on the edges of his shadow as it followed him about. ‘. . . Why?’ He stopped still – and his eyes locked on Dewey. ‘Because you work for Victor, too.’ He was like a philosophy professor in a lecture hall, stumbling on the answer to a dense theorem. And now he had it. ‘And you and Victor both work for Dalton.’

Dewey’s chin was tucked deep into his chest now. His sigh could have filled a balloon.

‘What about Soames, Dewey?’

Dewey slowly raised his head. ‘She doesn’t know.’

‘Details, Dewey.’

Dewey’s sigh was drenched with a bitter acceptance of his status. ‘The video gets sent out. Next day, Soames calls Victor. She’s coming to Paris and wants him to help her take Dalton out – he’s crazy, he’s a threat. So Victor . . . You’re gonna like this, Geiger . . . So Victor
tells her the truth
. He says he’s on another job . . . and has to ask his employer when he’ll be done . . . and he’ll call back. Victor tells Dalton – who says to take the job, cuz it’s fucking perfect. Dalton was paranoid about the spooks trying to find him – and this way he’s gonna have Soames on a string – and just pull her in. Sweet, huh?’ His tongue came out and tried to lick away the blood dripping from his upper lip. ‘So Victor calls her back and says yes – and you know the rest.’

Geiger was picking through it all – the pile of words and sounds and pauses – but they kept turning to sand in his hands, disappearing through his fingers before he could feel whether there was truth or lies in them. The aura was finally here, flashing its shimmering calling card – the bright tiny stars coming out and floating around him. The clock wasn’t the only thing ticking. There was a ticking in his brain – from the bomb there, ready to go off. There was very little time before the migraine hit.

He moved toward Dewey – and the room moved with him. One more step brought his target into range – and Geiger’s hand wrapped around Dewey’s neck. He could feel one of their pulses raging. He wasn’t sure whose.

‘Dewey . . . Where is Dalton?’

‘I don’t even know what
town
, man.’

Geiger’s grip slowly began tightening. ‘Where is Dalton?’

‘I told you, dude . . . I don’t know! I’ve been there once – it’s like . . . an hour from Avignon, and I didn’t do the driving . . . we just delivered the two guys . . . and it was at night, too. Dark.’

‘I’m out of time, Dewey. Tell me where Dalton is.’

‘Just do me a fucking favor and bury me – cuz I’m already dead.’

Geiger’s fingertips dug into the flesh – and Dewey began gasping, clenching his eyes shut, squeezing tears from them like juice from a fruit. His mouth opened – but he could not speak – and Geiger felt the heavens starting to open up inside his skull . . .

‘Tulette . . .’ finally tripped out of Dewey’s lips.

Tulette
. It could have been so many things. A wild flower, a lover’s name . . .

‘Dalton’s in Tulette. A little road.’

. . . a sugar-dusted pastry, a lively dance . . .

‘Way up a hill, at the top.’

. . . a melancholy epitaph . . .

‘A farmhouse . . . only thing up there . . .’

Geiger’s mind turned the last ‘r’ into an unending purr, the cat sitting on his shoulder –
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
– and then lightning broke loose in his brain and set it ablaze – a tempest without the promise of rain. His hands sprung to the sides of his skull, as if their pressure might keep it from blowing apart – the knife went skittering across the floor – and his sudden wail sounded like thunder from an approaching storm – and snapped Dewey’s head up. Even in his own fog of pain, the spectacle put steel in his neck and opened his eyes.