The Tin Man (34 page)

“Depends on what it is,” she replied.

“If for some reason I don’t show up, hold onto that disk for me. I’ll be back for it, eventually. Unless, of course, I’m dead.”

Buchanan
left the diner, but wasn’t quite ready to return to his room. After wandering for several minutes, he found himself on the National Mall. He stopped, gazing right toward the Capitol, then left toward the Washington Monument. He stood there marveling for a moment before continuing. By and by, he came to the National Archives, which housed the Constitution and other founding documents. He considered going inside for a fleeting moment before deciding against it. What good could he do Thea inside a museum? Not that he was doing much good out here.

Spotting an empty bench, he moved toward it and sat.
He lit a cigarette and smoked it with vehemence, racked with guilt over his uselessness. He crushed it under his shoe and got up, looking around. That was when he saw the man who called himself Zeus. Just a few yards away, striding purposefully toward the museums in the same black trench over a business suit. He appeared to be alone.

Buchanan
set his hand on his Glock and limped after him. Fury smoldered in his heart as he thought about Thea. He prayed she was still alive and that she hadn’t been tortured, though he suspected, given what Jim had told him about Tartarus, that she probably had been.

“Hey,” he called out, but
Zeus didn’t turn.

He picked up his pace, shortening the distance between them.

“Hey, Zeus. Wait up.”

Zeus
stopped, turning slowly. When their eyes met, Buchanan saw a faint glimmer of recognition. Buchanan drew nearer, glancing around for the twins, relieved to find no sign of them.

“I have a few questions
.”

“Oh?
And how can I help?”

Clearly, he was pretending not to know who Buchanan was.

“Who are you? Why have you taken Thea Hamilton? Oh, and, just so you know, if you harm so much as a hair on her head, I’ll tear your lungs out with my teeth.”

Zeus
laughed dismissively as he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The man regarded him like a
two-way mirror. Clearly, he was a master of deceit. If Buchanan hadn’t known for a fact he was lying, the innocent act might actually have fooled him.

“Who are you?”
Buchanan repeated. “What’s your real name?”

“What
is it to you?”

“For starters, you’ve abducted the woman I love.” It felt strange, but also good
and true, to speak the words out loud. “And, like I said, if you hurt her, you’ll be answering to me.”

“
And, as I said before, I have not the slightest idea what you’re on about.” He began to turn. “So, if you’ll excuse me…”

“Not so fast
,” Buchanan said, grabbing his arm. “Not until I get some answers.”

“
You are either deranged or hard of hearing,” Zeus said coolly. “Now, kindly remove your hand from my person.”

Just as
Buchanan let go, a man bumped against him, grunting an apology. Zeus walked away. The journalist started to follow, but stopped, unsure it was the best strategy. What good would it do to follow him if he refused to talk? Unless he planned to shoot him—a tempting thought, but one he wasn’t quite prepared to execute in the middle of the National Mall. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled out his cigarettes, cupping his hands as he lit one.

“
Mr. Buchanan?”

The
accented voice came from behind him. He dropped his cigarette and reached for his Glock. Panic surged when he found it wasn’t there. Fucking hell. The man who bumped against him must have taken it. He spun around. One of the twins, as expected, was less than a yard away, pointing the Glock at its owner. 

Buchanan
swallowed his fear. “Who are you? What do you want?”

“I think you know.”

“Honestly, I don’t,” he lied.

“The recording, Mr.
Buchanan.” The twin aimed the gun at his crotch. “Tell me where it is or I shoot them off.”

Buchanan, though prickling with dread,
tried hard to keep cool. “Like I said before: I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“
Really, Mr. Buchanan. Playing dumb does not suit you.”

It was an English voice
this time. Zeus’. Right behind him. Before he could react, fingers closed around his arm. Fingers with an iron grip. The twin grabbed his other arm. He tried to fight them, but couldn’t break free. They jerked him toward the curb. A vintage Mercedes was there, idling. The other twin was behind the wheel.

Buchanan
started firing questions: “Who are you? Why do you call yourself Zeus? What do you want with the recording? What’s your connection to Azi Zahhak? Are you the Zorro killer? What did killing those men gain for you?”

They slammed him up against the side of the car hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

“I will ask the questions,” the Englishman hissed near his ear.

The rear door opened. Hands shoved him hard. He fell across the back seat. The twin climbed in after him while
Zeus got in the front. As Buchanan struggled to sit up, he felt something smash against his skull. The gun. It hurt like a mother. Darkness began to descend. Zeus said something to the driver. The ringing in his ears was so loud he couldn’t tell what. Tires screeched. Again, the gun slammed against his head. He heard a crack, felt warm blood flow down his face. The next instant, he was back in the interrogation room of Saddam Hussein’s secret police, smelling Iraqi sweat mixed with French perfume.

Buchanan wasn’t sure what filtered first through his fragmented awareness
—the snatches of hours he’d spent locked in this wretched chamber, the booming disco music, or the acidic odors of vomit and urine, or the relentless dull ache in his bollocks. Where was he? How had he come to be here? Why was he hurting? Memories started to take shape only to evaporate a moment later. He knew that at some point he had been in excruciating pain. He blinked hard, straining to remember. Had he told his captor about Judy? Given that he was still alive, it seemed improbable.

He struggled to clear his head. Little by little, the fog began to lift. Bits and bobs came back. The mod room with the peculiar smell
…the Bond movie posters…the hammering music…the twins in outdated suits…the noxious perfume…the same bloody question over and over: “Where is the recording?”

He cringed a
s the image of his twisted torturer took shape inside his brain. A man in a classic tuxedo and eye mask who was cooler than a vigorously shaken martini.

“Where is it?
Do not make me ask you again.”

Images from
Bagdad had flashed behind his eyes. The black box reeking of his own waste. The room with the watering can. The blinding light. Gasping for air. Liquid flooding his nose and mouth. They had not broken him back then. Would he find that strength again? He had been younger then. And stronger. Now, he was older and damaged. His chest felt tight, he could barely breathe.

“Where is it?”
he demanded, coming still closer, eyes as cold as dry ice.

“I have nothing, know nothing.”

The way Buchanan figured it, he was a dead man either way, so why admit anything? He only hoped he’d find the strength to hold his tongue. The only way to stop them was to expose their scheme—but only if Thea’s editor got off her arse and ran the fucking story.

“Hold him.”

Dee and Dum gripped his arms as Zeus circled around behind him. Buchanan jerked when he felt gloved hands on his backside.

“
Let’s see what kind of testicular fortitude you’ve got, Mr. Buchanan,” Zeus said near his ear. “Quite literally.”

Before Buchanan knew what was happening, the freak had hold of his bollocks and was rolling them around in his hand
a la
Captain Queeg. He remembered praying that he’d pass out before something ruptured. His prayer must have been answered, because the memory ended there.

In the present, h
e struggled to sit up, getting only as far as one elbow before the door groaned open. Zeus entered, accompanied by one of the twins, who carried what looked to be an old crank-style telephone.

“What’s that for?”

His voice a rasp, he cleared his throat in an effort to loosen the gravel.

“It
has many names,” Zeus answered. “In Arkansas, it’s known as the Tucker Telephone. In Russia, Radio Moscow. In Vietnam, they used to call it The Bell Telephone Hour. And here at Tartarus, we like to call it Harnessed Lightening.”

Zeus then proceeded to describe in gory detail exactly how the shock-box worked, including the fact that amputation was the only treatment for severe electrical burns
to the genitals.

“You’re one seriously fucked
up bastard, do you know that?”

“Indeed,”
Zeus said with a leer. “And you’re one very hard nut to crack. Although I’m determined to break you, one way or another.”

“
Good luck.”

Zeus
, tsking, set his hands on his hips. “Where is the tape, Mr. Buchanan?”

“It’s not a tape,” he
returned, stalling. “It’s a disk.”

“Very well
.” Zeus sighed impatiently. “Where is the bloody disk?”

Buchanan shrugged.
“Gone with the wind, Miss Scarlet.”

Zeus
began to pace in a small circle. “Indeed, Mr. Buchanan. But where? We retraced every step you took from the coffee bar until we lost you, but found nothing.”

“I,
erm, dropped it in a letter box,” Buchanan offered, still hoping to figure some way out of this.

“I already considered that possibility,”
Zeus told him. “But there were none where you’d been.”

Buchanan
released a rattling sigh, but said nothing.

“The way I
see it,” Zeus went on, “you must have given the disk to somebody you encountered at random sometime last night or early this morning, before we picked you up. Someone you ran into at the motel, perhaps. Or—”

“You’re wrong,”
Buchanan spat, afraid he might figure it out and kill Judy, too. “There was no one.”

“So you say
,” Zeus said. “And yet, the disk couldn’t just disappear into thin air, now could it?” He paused to muse, pulling on his dimpled chin. “So, the question remains: what did you do with it?”

“I flushed it down the toilet.”

Zeus shook his head in negation. “If that were true, you’d have no evidence to corroborate your story.” He met Buchanan’s eyes. “That’s right. I got your message.”

His message?
It took a moment for the pieces to snap into place. Bloody hell. This madman had to be Robert Sterling, the Black Knight.

One question sprang to the forefront:
“Why?”

“
I have my reasons.”

“
Let me guess: Money? Power?”

“Try revenge,” Zeus said bitter
ly. “For what he did to me and my mother.”

“
Who? Prince Zahhak?”

“
No,” Zeus said, eyes narrowing. “Milo Osbourne.”

“
Osbourne? I know he’s a ruthless prick, but what’s he done to you?”

“
It’s what he hasn’t done,” Zeus said, now looking equal parts wounded and vengeful.

Buchanan, perplexed, was reminded of a riddle: What gets bigger the more you take away? The answer was: a hole. And that was just how he felt right now.
Like he’d fallen into a hole that just kept getting bigger.

“I want him
ruined,” Zeus told him. “Not just fleeced and stripped of everything he’s built, but also disgraced.”

The pieces were starting to fall into place.
“And you think what’s on the disk will help you to do that?”

“
The world needs to know the truth.”

“
Which is what?”

“
That he’s a Janus, a liar, and a cold-hearted manipulator.”

“
Tell me something I don’t know,” Buchanan muttered.

“
All right,” Zeus said with a leer. “He’s also my father.”

Buchanan
just stood there blinking, not knowing what to say.

“T
here’s more.”

“Go on
, then. I’m listening.”

Zeus
, who appeared to be near tears, took a moment to collect himself before dropping the bomb: “My mother was his sister. And the abysmal way he cast her off—after taking advantage of her—is the reason she went insane. He inherited everything while we were forced to scrape by in obscurity.” He turned away, rubbing his eyes. “So you see, Mr. Buchanan, I simply must have that disk.”