Midas Read online

  When Justin woke up again, the drone of the plane had disappeared. So had the stale air, replaced by the smell of dirt and humidity and sweat. His head ached, behind the eyes, from whatever drug had been used to put him out, and in his right temple, where he’d been kicked. His mouth felt dry and dusty, his tongue was coated with crust, his throat constricted. Things were quiet; he ascertained no movement around him. The sense of elation was still missing and the deep crush of resignation was overwhelming.

  It was life as usual, Justin decided.

  He slowly stood up, was overcome by dizziness, looked for someplace to sit back down and realized there was nothing to sit on. Only floor. He took a step toward the wall, leaned heavily against it, surveyed the room he was in. It was small, the size of a cell. The wall he was leaning against was made of stucco and he assumed the other three were the same. The front wall had a wooden door that he didn’t even bother trying. He knew it would be locked. The door had a small slat in it. The slat was shut now but Justin figured it could be opened from the outside. A way to peer in. When closed, no way to peer out. On the opposite wall, maybe eight or nine feet off the ground, was a small window. It let in just a sliver of air and sunlight, and as best as Justin could tell, there were bars across it. He looked down now. The floor was dirt. Nothing fancy about it, just hard-packed dirt.

  He felt a dull pain in his chest, opened his shirt and looked down to see an ugly purplish bruise immediately below his heart. It’s where they’d shot him, using some kind of tranquilizing bullet or dart. Some sort of stun gun. He hoped it’s what they had used on Reggie. He told himself that it had to have been. It was too painful to think otherwise. He had to drive the picture of her—sprawled on the bed, turned on her side, her head thrown back, twisted in fear—out of his mind. He wondered if she were alive. If she were there or if they’d only taken him.

  He turned suddenly, lurching at a noise that came in through the tiny window. A bird maybe. Or wind. Or a branch rustling against the roof. The movement made his chest hurt like hell but Justin ignored the pain. He decided that pain was the least of his worries. What bothered him the most was that he didn’t have a clue what the most of his worries was.

  All he could do was wait.

  He tried jumping up to look out the one window but his head and his chest felt like they’d explode, and it didn’t matter anyway because he couldn’t see a thing. The slit was too narrow and there was nothing to hold on to to keep him eye level with the opening for more than a moment. He could hear sounds wafting in. Nothing specific, but he took the noise to be other human voices. He wondered if there were other prisoners there. Probably not, he decided. More likely workers. Or people who had absolutely nothing to do with this and were oblivious to his circumstances. Briefly, he wondered where the hell he was, but he cut off that line of thinking when he realized it was pointless. He could be absolutely anywhere. At least anywhere warm. That was all he could ascertain: the breath of air that managed to find its way in through the sliver of a window was hot for November. So he took a guess: Florida. That was the best he could do.

  He waited for what he figured to be an hour. Maybe even two. He was still not alert yet, although the fog caused by the tranquilizer was beginning to lift. But he waited, not letting the solitude bother him, until it had been long enough that he thought, Where are they? Why hasn’t anyone come? And then maybe another hour passed and still nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Justin was hungry now. And thirsty. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d eaten. Hell, he didn’t have any idea what time it was. Or how long he’d been unconscious. He assumed it was the same day, the day he’d been taken, but he couldn’t even swear to that.

  He’d tried to keep his brain clear. Knowing that, at some point, someone was going to come in and question him, he wanted to be as loose as possible. He didn’t know how far his interrogator might go, but he didn’t want to make it easy on him. He didn’t want any names or facts right at the front of his brain, nothing that would roll quickly out of his mouth.

  Less noise was filtering in from outside, but Justin was still certain that what he did hear was human voices. No specific words were understandable, though. He had only the vague sense of a current of conversation.

  He tried counting to keep some estimated track of the time. Each time he reached sixty, he’d make a little mark in the dirt. When he reached five full counts of sixty, he’d make a larger mark and erase the smaller ones. At some point, after about ninety minutes by his clock in the dirt, exhaustion overcame him. He had done nothing but count, occasionally pacing the length and width of the room, but still he was tired. The fatigue was stronger than his hunger. He lay back down on the floor, made himself as comfortable as he possibly could, although comfort wasn’t a priority; he was so tired it didn’t matter what position he was in. His eyes closed and, within moments, he was asleep.

  The next thing he knew, he was jarred awake by a stabbing pain in his back.

  His head jerked up and his eyes opened. A man in military fatigues was standing over him, holding a rifle. The man slammed the butt of the rifle into Justin’s back, in the same spot he’d obviously just hit to jab him awake.

  Justin sat up, the pain fully registering now, hot and searing. The soldier jabbed at him again with the butt, this time clipping Justin in the chin, knocking him flat. Justin rolled onto his side, used the motion to propel himself to his feet. He took a wobbly step toward the soldier, stopped short when he saw there was a second man in the room. That man was holding a pistol, pointing it at Justin. Standing now, Justin let his arms drop to his sides. The first soldier stepped forward, expressionless. His right hand moved quickly, too fast for Justin to react, slapping him across the face. The crack resonated throughout the room and Justin could feel his cheek redden. He swayed backward but didn’t lose his balance. The room fell silent again and all movement stopped.

  “Where am I?” Justin asked.

  The man’s hand moved a second time, just as quickly. Justin felt the slap again and staggered several steps back this time.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he said. “Or is that too tough a question for you?”

  This time, when the man’s right hand flew toward his face, Justin was ready for it. His own right hand intercepted it, but he was weak, his resistance was low. The soldier was strong enough to push Justin backward, and he lost his footing. As Justin’s hands went to his side, trying to give himself some balance, the man in fatigues threw a hard right to the gut and Justin went down. He sat on the floor, gasping for air.

  When he could speak, he said, “Just tell me what the hell you want from me.”

  Neither man answered. They glanced at each other, the man with the pistol nodded, then they both spun on their heels and left the room. Justin could hear the door bolt behind them.

  Sprawled on the floor, he fought back the strong feeling of panic that was rising from his stomach like the bitter taste of bile. He sat there for perhaps another hour, but it was getting harder and harder for him to count off the minutes in his head. All he really knew was that at some point his eyes began to close again, and he was once more overcome by exhaustion.

  He could not have been asleep for more than thirty seconds before the door burst open again. Justin didn’t need to be hit, he awakened at the sound of the two men thundering through the door and instinctively curled into a protective position to help shield the blows he was certain would follow. But he felt nothing. There was just silence. When he slowly turned his head, the same two men were standing above him. One of them had a bucket, and as soon as Justin moved, the soldier dumped its contents—ice-cold water—on top of his head, drenching him.

  Both men turned with military precision and headed for the door. Not a word had been spoken. Justin hurtled himself into the air and lunged for one of them, managing to grab him around his knees. He was able to do no more damage than slow the soldier down for one moment, because the other man
was on him like a flash. The rifle butt crashed into the side of Justin’s head, then a thick, heavy boot thudded into his side, and Justin lost his hold. He slid helplessly to the dirt floor and made no further attempt to move until the two men had marched out the door.

  Justin lay on the dirt, wet and cold and aching and remembering how quickly strength can disappear. When Alicia died, so did his foundation. Faith and hope and optimism and joy all deserted him. He had thought he was not going to be able to go on, but it turned out he was left with something at his core that helped him survive. It took him years to understand that what was there was a certain toughness, a stubbornness, a meanness really, that wouldn’t let him give in to the agony that had become his life. To the unpleasant thing that, as he saw it, had become life itself. He had felt his strength fade then, and he remembered the feeling when he knew it was back. It was the moment he knew he was not going to join his wife and daughter in whatever world they’d gone to. Now, confined in the sweaty, foul-smelling cell, he felt that strength fading again, replaced by fear and uncertainty. But as he shivered, he thought, No, no, I won’t let it go that fast; this time they can’t take my life so quickly. So he shook off his exhaustion and the aches and pains and he climbed to his feet and stood at the door and, breathing heavily, just stared straight ahead, in case, somehow, they could see him, showing them that they had done their best and that he could take it.

  They were not going to take his strength away.

  Others had tried. The world had tried. No one had succeeded yet. And neither would they.

  Ten days later, Justin wasn’t so sure.

  That’s how long the torture had gone on. He’d had no sleep. It was the same routine: anytime his eyes closed, two men would jump into the cell. He’d be kicked or slapped or beaten. Ice water would be thrown on him. Sometimes there were electric shocks. Justin couldn’t tell exactly how they were being administered. There was some kind of box, he could feel clamps on his arms or on his feet, one time something clamped over his head. His body twitched and quivered when the waves swept through him. Once the shock was so bad, he could feel himself jerk and flop upwards off the ground and into the air. Once he smelled something burning and realized it was his flesh.

  Twice a day someone would come in to feed him. Never a real meal. Some bread. A piece of ham or some indeterminate piece of meat. And one small paper cup of water.

  Once, one of the men in fatigues spit in the cup before handing it to Justin. Justin drank it anyway.

  There was no toilet in the room. Justin picked out a corner closest to the door to shit and piss in. He had no way to clean himself off. At the beginning, he felt some revulsion and shame at his uncleanliness. But at some point, neither the smell nor the self-disgust nor the helplessness bothered him.

  For several days, he tried to resist. He forced himself to do sit-ups and push-ups and walk around the tiny room. But as the beatings went on and as his hunger grew and as he began to be dehydrated, he lost any desire to resist. He just wanted to tell them whatever they wanted to know. Anything they wanted to know.

  Only no one seemed to want to know anything.

  Justin was not frightened by the isolation or even, strangely enough, the beatings. What was beginning to terrify him was the lack of boundaries, the fact that there seemed to be no limit to the torture. No one had spoken to him, no one had asked him a question, no one seemed remotely interested in ending the process. It was the endlessness that was getting to him. The fact that he was beginning to think it might never end.

  It was the endlessness that was taking his strength away.

  At one point—he didn’t know if it was day or night; with no sleep, it made no difference anyway—two soldiers entered. He’d seen one of them before but not the other. One of them had a thick piece of rope. In front of Justin the soldier tied one end into a noose and, using a stepladder he’d brought into the room, attached it to a rusty metal hook that had long ago been driven into the wall.

  The second soldier looped the noose around Justin’s neck and led him up the ladder. The noose pulled taut—and then the first soldier kicked the ladder out from under Justin’s feet. He felt the rope tighten and he thought he was dead, really dead, but the rope broke and Justin tumbled to the ground, more or less unhurt, the noose still tight around his neck. Still, his captors said nothing. When the two men left the room, Justin removed the noose, felt the rope at the point where it had fallen apart, and realized it had been cut. Their intention had not been to hang him. It had been to terrify him.

  It had worked.

  Justin cared deeply about staying alive now. He didn’t know if he could but he suddenly had a deep and desperate thirst for life. He wanted—no, needed—to find out who was doing this to him. Find out who it was, find out where they were, and stay alive until he could kill them.

  Holding the rope strands, he smiled through cracked lips. Life suddenly seemed good again. He had a reason to live.

  They hadn’t taken his strength yet.

  Some time after the mock hanging—Justin had no idea when; it could have been hours, it could have been days—another man in fatigues came through the door and into Justin’s cell. It was the first time someone had come in alone. Justin waited for the backup but no one else came. Just this one guy. His light brown hair was slightly longer than the others, not a buzz cut. His skin wasn’t as tan as most of the other men who’d come in. His clothes seemed crisper, as if they were newer or had been recently starched.

  Justin was sprawled on the floor and made no attempt to stand. The man had his back to the wall with the door and he leaned casually against it. Watching him, Justin realized he was going to hear the first words he’d heard since he’d been there. This soldier wasn’t just a thug. Justin made a silent bet with himself that this was an officer. And that this was his interrogator.

  “The explosion at Harper’s Restaurant,” the soldier said. His voice was calm. Whatever anger lurked behind them wasn’t detectable. Nor was it visible in his eyes, which were slate gray and as blank as eyes could be. “Tell me what happened.”

  Justin didn’t answer. He had no response that could remotely be seen as satisfying.

  “How long have I been here?” he said instead, and was surprised to hear his own voice—harsh and dry and cracked. It hurt his throat to expel the words and he didn’t know if the man would even understand the words.

  “Not long enough,” the man answered. “You should try answering the questions that I ask.”

  Justin tried licking his lips before speaking this time. It didn’t do much good. He couldn’t conjure up any moisture.

  “How much longer?”

  “Tell me what you know about the Harper’s bombing.”

  “How much longer . . . will I be here?”

  “You’ll be here until you tell us what you know.”

  “And then?”

  “It depends on what you tell us.”

  “Where?”

  “Are you asking where you are?” And when Justin nodded, because he was almost out of energy and that was the best he could do, the man in fatigues said, “You’re in hell, pal.”

  Justin knew he’d lost the guy, that he was going to turn and leave the tiny cell, so he quickly spit out the word, “Why?” And when the officer hesitated, didn’t leave, just stared at Justin, a look of disbelief on his face, Justin said it again quickly, as loud as he could: “Why?”

  “You’re being held as an enemy combatant.”

  Justin raised his head. He hoped his eyes were registering the disbelief he felt. “You think I’m a terrorist?”

  “We know you have knowledge of terrorist activities. And that you may be aiding and abetting the enemy.”

  “Fucking crazy.”

  “I couldn’t understand that. You’re not speaking clearly.”

  Justin coughed out some of the hurt in his throat and forced the words out: “You’re fucking crazy.”

  The man didn’t answer. This time he
just turned and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” Justin said. And when the man turned back, Justin, doing his best to be understood, added, “Want to call a lawyer.”

  The man actually smiled. A thin, cruel, delighted smile. “You don’t have the right,” he said.

  “Bullshit.” It was the clearest word Justin had yet uttered.

  The man took two steps forward now, leaned down to get closer to him. Justin could see the man recoil slightly at the smell. The proximity to this kind of filth seemed to finally anger him. The grin was gone, as was the calm civility. Both were replaced only by cruelty. “Listen, you little fuck. You don’t have the right to an attorney, you don’t have the right to remain silent, you don’t have the right to shit. Not anymore. Guys like me, we can finally do our fucking jobs. I can keep you here for the rest of your natural fucking life and no one can do a fucking thing about it, do you understand that?”

  When Justin didn’t answer, the man kicked him. Hard. Justin didn’t feel any real pain but he realized he must have blacked out, because suddenly his eyes were open and he’d missed some time, and the man was standing over him.

  “What do you want to know?” Justin said.

  “Right now, all I want to know is if you understand what the fuck I just told you. ’Cause the stink in here is making me sick and I don’t want to have to spend one second more than I have to talking to scum like you.”

  “I understand what you told me.”

  “Good. Now you think about it until I come back. That might be tomorrow, it might be a few months from now, it might be never. You think about that, too.”

  Justin felt the panic rising up again. The idea of going back into the endless isolation, no conversation, no communication, more beatings, it was the feeling he imagined would come with being buried alive. The feeling he had when he dreamed about Alicia and Lili. The fear was suffocating but he refused to show it, did his best to keep his breath smooth and steady. The man turned and left.