Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [290]
But nothing was happening. He didn’t know, he couldn’t tell, that his mind was racing at light speed, outstripping everything, even the blood in his own arteries, spreading whatever it was that the doctor had shot into him. He wished it were poison, for then he would soon see Allah’s face, and then he could report on his life, how he had done Allah’s will as best he understood it … or had he? the Emir asked himself, as the final doubts came. It was a time for ultimate truth. He’d done the Lord God’s bidding, hadn’t he? Had he not studied the Holy Koran his entire life? Did he not have the Holy Book virtually memorized? Had he not discussed its inner meaning with the foremost Islamic scholars in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Yes, he had disagreed with some of them, but the nature of his disagreement had been honorable and direct, founded on his personal view of scripture, on his interpretation of God’s word as written and distributed by the Prophet Mohammed, Blessings and Peace be upon him. A great and good man, the Prophet had been, as well he might be to have been chosen by God Himself to be His Holy Messenger, the conveyor of God’s will to the people of the earth.
Pasternak was watching the sweep-second hand of his watch. One minute gone … another thirty seconds or so, he figured. Seven milligrams ought to be plenty for this application, delivered as it was, directly into the bloodstream. It would be fully distributed by now, infusing itself in all the man’s bodily tissues … and first would be …
… the flutter nerves. Yes, they’d be first. The widely distributed nerves, the ones that worked peripheral systems, such as the eyelids, right about … now.
Pasternak moved his hand to the man’s face, striking at his eyelids, and they didn’t blink.
Yes, it was starting.
The Emir saw the hand slap at his face but stop short. He involuntarily blinked his eyes … but they didn’t blink … Huh? He tried to lift his head, and it moved a centimeter or so, then collapsed back down…. What? He commanded his right fist to close and pull against the handcuffs, and it started to but stopped, falling back down to a resting position on the wooden surface of the table, the fingers unflexing of their own accord….
His body was no longer his own …? What was this? What was this? He moved his legs, and they moved under the command of his brain, just a little, but they moved as they should, as they had since before his childhood memory had begun, following the commands of his brain, as the body always did. Command your arm, an infidel philosopher had written, and it moves—command your mind, and it resists. But his mind was working, and his body was not. What was this? He turned his head to look around the room. His head did not move, despite his commands—neither would his eyes. He could see the white drop-ceiling panels. He tried to focus his eyes more closely on them, but his eyes were not working as they should. His body was like the body of another man; he could feel it, but he could not command it. He told his legs to move, and they barely fluttered, then froze limply in place. Limp like a corpse.
What was this? Am I dying? Is this death? But it wasn’t death. Somehow he knew that and—
For the first time the Emir felt the beginnings of fear. He didn’t understand what was happening. He only knew it would be very bad.
To Clark it looked as though the man was going to sleep. His body had stopped moving. There had been a few jerks and some little spasms, like a man settling to go to sleep in bed, but they’d stopped with surprising rapidity. The face became vacant, not focused, not proclaiming strength and power and lack of fear. Now he had the face of a mannequin. The face of a corpse. He’d seen that often enough in his life. He’d never thought what it was like for the mind behind the face. When death happened, the problem with that body was