Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [295]
“Far worse than anything I’ve ever come close to experiencing myself, worse than anything I’ve ever seen in twenty-six years of medical practice, worse than anything you can inflict on a person without killing him all the way dead. My knowledge of this is, really, theoretical, but it’s not something I’d want to go through myself for any reason.”
Clark thought back to a guy named Billy, and his time in Clark’s recompression chamber. He remembered how coldly he’d tortured that little rapist fuck, how it had not touched his conscience one little bit. But that had been personal, not business, and his conscience still didn’t care much about it. He’d left him alive in a farm field in Virginia, later to be driven to a hospital and treated futilely for a week or so before the barotrauma had stolen his worthless rapist life. Part of Clark wondered occasionally if Billy liked it in hell. But not often.
So this was worse than that? Damn.
Pasternak looked down and saw the eyelids flutter. Okay, he was coming all the way back. Good. Sort of.
Clark walked over to Hendley. “Who’s going to interview him?” John asked.
“Jerry Rounds, to start.”
“Want me to backstop him?”
“Probably a good idea if we all stand in here. I mean, it would be best if we had a psychiatrist handy—best of all, an Islamic theologian—but we don’t. We’re always shank’s mare here, aren’t we?”
“Cheer up. Langley would never have had the balls to do what we just did, not without a whole law school handy to kibitz, and a reporter from the Post to take notes and build up his moral outrage. That’s one thing I really like about this place: no leaks.”
“Part of me wants to discuss this with Jack Ryan. He’s not a shrink, but I like his instincts. But I can’t do that. You know why.”
Clark nodded; he did. Jack Ryan also had been known to experience conscience problems. Nobody was perfect.
Hendley walked to a phone and punched in a few digits. Just two minutes later, Jerry Rounds came in. “Well?” Rounds asked.
“Our guest has had a bad morning,” Hendley explained. “Now we need to talk to him. That’s your job, Jerry.”
“Looks unconscious,” Rounds observed.
“He’ll be that way for a couple of minutes,” Pasternak clarified. “But he’ll be okay,” the doctor promised.
“Jesus, do we have enough people in here?” Rounds observed next. More people than the regular board meetings. Then the TV camera came in, set up on a tripod by Dominic, and the tarpaulin curtains they’d duct-taped together the night before were erected around the workbench. At his nod, Dominic hit the camera’s record button, and Hendley took over, announcing off camera the time and date. Gavin Biery would, of course, later digitally alter Hendley’s voice. Dominic replayed the sequence and pronounced the recording clean.
“Head games?” Rounds asked, almost to himself, but Clark was standing right next to him.
“Why not?” Clark responded. “No rules on this, Jerry.”
“Right.” Clark had a way of cutting down to the bone of the issue, the intel chief noted.
Clark wondered if everyone should wear cowboy dress, jeans, gunbelts, and ten-gallon hats, to distort him all the way, really to play head games with Saif. But it was better, probably, to keep it simple. Thinking too much about anything usually obfuscated everything and ended up leading nowhere. Simple was usually better. Almost always.
Clark walked to the table and saw that Saif was moving now, moving and twisting in his sleep. About ready to wake up. Would he be surprised to be alive? Clark wondered. Would he think he was in hell? For damned sure it wasn’t paradise. He looked closely at the face. Little muscles were moving now. He was about ready to rejoin the world. Clark decided to stay