Authors: Hector Macdonald
Talking, at least in the beginning, involved no speech as such. Instead, Yadin began by pinning Arkell’s feet under a heavy couch. He ordered Klara to sit on it, and with his prisoner thus anchored he searched him thoroughly. He checked his pockets, his ankles, the backs of his knees, his groin and the small of his back. He was careful always to keep his hands out of reach of Arkell’s teeth and fingers, even as he checked his sleeves, collar, armpits and hair. The sling and crutch were briefly examined, found to be authentic, and tossed aside. When he was satisfied that Arkell had brought nothing of any consequence into the room – no weapon or radio or device of any kind – he moved to the drinks cabinet.
It was well stocked; the Leblon Internacional was proud of its five stars, and determined to hold on to them. But Yadin was less interested in the bottles than in the equipment provided to dispense and adorn their contents. With the air of a connoisseur he selected a few items and gathered them into the empty ice bucket. Sitting beside Arkell, he laid out his haul: a Hawthorne strainer; a wooden muddler for crushing limes; a stainless-steel bar spoon with a small garnish fork on the end; five plain wooden cocktail sticks; a pair of ice tongs; a corkscrew and a small serrated knife.
‘I’m going to make you a bet,’ said Yadin. ‘We won’t need the knife.’
He was calm again, that air of weariness returned, all suggestion of uncontrolled, perhaps carnal, violence banished. Arkell did not look at the items arrayed on the carpet. He was determined to maintain eye contact with the man who was about to torture him.
‘You’re an interesting guy,’ said Yadin. ‘Did you know our lives have crossed before? Of course you did – that’s why you took this job. Mr Watchman sent me your file the first time he asked me to kill you.’
‘The time you
failed
to kill me.’
Yadin’s gloomy expression intensified. After a pause, he said, ‘A Legion
deserter
.’ When Arkell betrayed no reaction, he said, ‘But you lasted three years. This should be an interesting challenge.’
‘Are you going to ask me any questions? You never know, I might answer them. Then you can mix us both a drink instead of misusing hotel property.’
‘A former intelligence officer? How can I believe anything you tell me voluntarily?’
‘They always say torture doesn’t work.’ Arkell almost managed a smile.
Yadin contemplated him. ‘You like to read history, I think. Did you know that Montaigne wrote about torture in the sixteenth century? He understood the problem: why should we think pain will make someone tell the truth rather than force him to lie? He saw it as a test of endurance rather than truth.’
‘Wise man. You should take note.’
‘In case it helps, I’m sorry your wife died. Unfortunately now I have to hurt you again. Mr Watchman is concerned about information you may have, and which you may have passed to others. You know what information I am talking about?’
Arkell nodded.
Picking up the cocktail strainer, Yadin detached the metal spring from the rim and began to uncoil it. ‘This is going to be the subject of our discussion. Mr Watchman would like to know who you have given this information to, and whether you have written anything or made any kind of audio or video testimony concerning it. In particular, he would like to know how much you have shared with Madeleine Wraye.’
‘It’s all documented, in the safe keeping of a law firm. Updated last week to include Watchman’s role. In the event of my death it goes straight to the BBC and the
Guardian
.’
‘But you’re already dead.’ Was there a ghost of a smile there? ‘How would they know?’
‘I check in weekly. Every Tuesday morning. If I don’t call two weeks running, they push the button.’
The spring was now fully uncoiled. Yadin had wound the steel wire neatly around his left hand. ‘Every week you must make a call? For nine years? I don’t believe your spirit is so easily tied down.’
‘Sure you want to take the risk?’
‘For the moment, it would waste our time to talk more. You know how this works: it is necessary that you come to the point where you want nothing more than to tell me everything Mr Watchman needs to know. For that you must hurt. You must feel your body is splitting apart. It’s the only way. Are you ready?’
Arkell had wanted to waste time. As much time as possible. He had tried summoning help once and it had not come. The cavalry had not been ready. He needed to delay proceedings as long as possible before trying again. But Yadin was in no mood to prevaricate.
‘It’s possible you will pass out, like your friend in Strasbourg. To stop you choking on your tongue, we must take precautions.’ Picking up the ice tongs and the strainer, stripped of its spring, he rose and stepped out of Arkell’s sight. ‘How should we do that?’
‘I’ve never passed out in my –’
Before he could finish the sentence, something hard and cold was thrust into his mouth. He bit down, too late. Against the roof of his mouth, against his tongue, he felt the sharp, round edges of the cocktail strainer rim. He couldn’t close his mouth without cutting into his palate.
Yadin advised, ‘Don’t fight it. This is for your own good.’ He picked up the clawed tongs. Arkell felt his tongue seized and pulled forward, scraping against the strainer rim. When it was protruding from his mouth, Yadin unwound a length of the steel wire around his hand. ‘Don’t move now.’
The grip on his tongue was too strong even to whisper the signal. When the steel wire punctured the side of his tongue, he pushed his mind to Chad, to Pakistan, to Cyprus. He recalled the Legion beatings in Corsica and Djibouti, the gunshot wounds in the Pyrenees, and he told himself that this was not as bad. While Yadin forced the wire deeper into his tongue, penetrating right through from one side to the other, he made himself relax every muscle in his body, absorbing the shocking pain and neutralizing it. It was just one more injury.
The wire kept threading through the meat of his tongue until even lengths hung on either side. Yadin twisted the ends together to form a loop, then removed the strainer and experimented pulling on his prisoner’s tongue. The sensation was monstrous: Arkell felt as if his flesh would rip open. If he could only withdraw his tongue back inside his mouth, he could close his teeth on that wire, gain some measure of control. But there was no let up.
‘What?’ Yadin, irritated, was looking over his head. Klara. ‘Close your eyes if you have a problem with it.’
He couldn’t speak like this – couldn’t make more than rudimentary coughs and grunts. Did Yadin really mean to torture him without letting him speak? Had he left it too late to call for help? The Heckler and Koch was nowhere to be seen – lodged in a pocket, out of reach on a side table – it was the perfect moment for an intervention, and he could do nothing to make it happen.
‘What shall we start with? Corkscrew? Spoon? Baton?’
With a deft motion, Yadin twisted the loop of wire beneath Arkell’s chin, pinning his extended tongue against his lower teeth. He picked up the long spoon and ran his fingertip over the garnish fork on the end of the handle.
‘Where do you fear injury most? The eye? The ear canal? Under the fingernails?’ He let the question hang in the air. ‘We have time to experiment.’ With one knee planted on Arkell’s upper back, he ran the miniature tines of the fork over his cervical vertebrae. Pressing the fork lightly between two vertebrae, he mused, ‘Would this paralyse you, do you think?’
The fork continued up his neck to the hairline, where it veered to the underside of his ear. Those sharp little prongs lingered there, probed a little as if curious, then dropped an inch down his jawline. They hovered a moment against the bone, and then –
The first penetration was not as bad as Arkell had feared. It hurt, but no more than any other flesh wound. The overwhelming sensation was one of intrusion – having a foreign object burrow into the critical junction of jaw and neck was more disturbing than painful. Until Yadin found his target.
Simon Arkell had no idea what nerve had been hit in that hideous surgery. He could only shut down his mind and steel himself against the spasms that threatened to rip his tongue from its wire skewer and which, he felt sure, would have broken his back if Yadin had not been there to hold him down.
A few seconds to recover. Then Yadin jabbed the nerve again.
It felt like he was inserting that toy fork deep into the jawbone – into the brain cavity even. Arkell realized his mouth was full of towel. What sounds he must have been making. The shockwave of pain returned, and his entire frame shook. Raw, unsurpassable agony liquefied the bones and sinews that held him together.
He did not pass out, but neither was he completely there. The distortion in his perception of time became apparent when he realized that Klara had been whispering urgently in German for some while. He could see nothing but the carpet, out of focus, stretching into the far distance. If he rolled his eyes to the left, he could make out the serrated knife and the corkscrew, unsullied, awaiting their turn. The drip of blood from his neck was the only physical sensation. Where was Yadin? There was no pressure on his back, no voice responding to Klara’s words, which he half-understood to be pleas on his behalf.
Something like an aftershock passed through him, sending his muscles rigid, sparking new protests from his damaged arm and leg. As he settled back against the floor, he became aware that the carpet beneath his face was damp with sweat. The ache from his abused jaw grew steadily, ripped flesh and bruised bone claiming attention now that the sound and fury of the traumatized nerve were fading.
Yadin was crouched in front of him. ‘Klara believes I should allow you a chance to speak. She thinks – I am not confident she is right – that you are ready to tell me what I need to know.’
He considered Arkell’s strained, sweating face a while before leaning forward to pull the towel from his mouth. He unwound the wire clamped around Arkell’s lower jaw. Where was the semi-automatic? Not in his hand, anyway, not immediately ready to fire, and that was all that mattered right now.
‘So. Speak.’
Thank you, Klara
, were the first words that passed through his mind. There was only one word he planned to say aloud, but he took his time readying himself for it. His throat was congested; he cleared it with a short coughing fit. He tried moving his injured tongue, practised shaping the word. He fills his lungs, steadied his shaking jaw, imagined the sound of it –
‘
STOP!
’
The room had been so silent in the seconds beforehand that the word – the signal – seemed even louder than it was. A heroic roar, the stage cry of a pantomime giant, it echoed – at least in his unsteady mind – around the hotel. It sounded ridiculous, an overblown non-sequitur, a nursery objection to the most adult of ill-treatment. But it served its purpose.
Yadin knew immediately what the word meant, what it was intended to summon from beyond the confines of his improvised torture chamber. He leapt sideways, out of Arkell’s sight, lunging for the weapon he had felt confident enough to lay down. Before he could reach it, the door was kicked open, and Arkell shut his eyes.
He could do nothing, with his hands still cuffed together, to save his ears.
The M84 stun grenade detonated two metres from him, deafening him completely. All sense of balance gone, he opened his eyes and watched with elation as Yadin soundlessly crashed into a table. It had been too much to hope for: the other man had not closed his eyes. Blinded, his weapon lost, the Israeli was doing the only thing he could – blundering across the room in search of his escape exit, a connecting door to the next room.
‘Shoot him!’ Arkell yelled, unable to hear his own words, unable to see the man they were directed at.
Yadin was almost at the connecting door. Would Felipe have the guts to do it? It was one thing to toss a flashbang, another to shoot an unarmed man on the urging of a near stranger.
Yadin looked back, blinking hard. In a movement almost too fast to see, he’d crouched and pulled a thin knife from a sheath on his ankle.
‘Shoot him now!’ The words felt mangled by the wire hanging from his tongue.
Yadin threw the knife. For Arkell, it was all happening in a surreal vacuum of silence. Had a gun fired? Had the knife found its target? He’d remained flat on the ground, not wanting to add to the confusion, but now, fearing for Felipe, he kicked upwards and felt the couch shift easily – Klara was no longer on it. Leaping to his feet, he saw her stumbling after Yadin. By the door Felipe and another man, both in black body armour and riot helmets, were aiming handguns at the fleeing assassin. Yadin’s knife was buried in Felipe’s thigh.
Neither man was willing to fire, and when Arkell looked back he saw why: Klara was in the way. Flailing around, half-blinded, trying to reach Yadin. He was at the connecting door, fumbling for the handle. Arkell ran forward, with the Brazilians, all of them converging on Yadin as he got the door open and turned to grab Klara. Lifting her up, as if she were nothing more to him than a piece of furniture, he threw her with full force at his pursuers.
Hands still cuffed behind his back, Arkell could do nothing to protect her – or himself – from the impact. Her body smacked into his chest and, as the connecting door slammed shut, he collapsed beneath her.
‘Corridor!’ he gasped, breath knocked out of him. Had the Brazilians heard? They were struggling with the door, locked from the other side. Felipe’s partner tried to kick it down.
‘Go to the corridor!’
Now they heard him. They ran out of the room, footsteps still silent to Arkell. He looked to Klara, who was clutching her neck.
‘Are you all right?’ The words felt clumsy, slurred by the wire skewering his tongue. Klara didn’t hear them any better than he did. He pulled himself up and made eye contact with her. ‘OK?’ he mouthed, the wire rendering even that simple gesture grotesque.
She nodded. ‘Siren!’ he called. ‘Come out.’
Lying on his side and arching his back, he forced his cuffed hands under his buttocks and brought one foot and then the other over the speedcuffs. He stood and looked around for the Heckler and Koch. It was lying on a side table. Siren appeared from the bathroom, pale and still in shock. The noose around her neck hung loosely below the burn marks it had left.