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  He squeezed his pulsing eyes shut and sucked in breath after labored breath.

  Okay. All right. Let's try it again. But slower

  He rolled his head to relax the aching tendons of his neck, lifted it an inch or two — slow, slow — and opened his eyes again.

  Better.

  Blinking, he looked himself over.

  His shirt was bloody and torn. Had he been shot? No, no, he didn't think so. There had been a bad tumble in the hotel stairway. Then that iron claw, or whatever it was, sinking into his arm. He'd been trying to get it out, and then somebody or something had hit him. And afterward…?

  What had happened afterward?

  Max gulped down another mouthful of air. Come on, come on, what happened? He got little besides brief, elusive flashes, and wondered if he'd sustained a concussion from the blow to his head, or maybe the fall down the stairs. There had been long periods of oblivion alternating with moments when he half awakened and took in confused snatches of reality.

  At one point he'd been in a truck… the delivery truck outside the hotel. That was where he'd first been handcuffed, in the vehicle's rear compartment. There had been a body back there next to him. A dead man, probably the original driver. He had been stripped of his clothing, and a mixture of blood and some other, viscous fluid was oozing from his ear. Max remembered lying there beside the naked corpse on sheets wet with gore… and that was all. He didn't know how long he'd been kept in the truck or where he'd been taken afterward. Just had a vague sense of time slipping away. Then being lifted, carried a short distance, and dropped flat on his back.

  More time passed. He'd been in a close space, registered monotonous rolling, pitching movements. It had been like that for a while. Then a strong, freshening wind gusted over him. There had been a salt breeze. An abrupt realization that he was on a boat, they were transporting him somewhere on a boat…

  He'd slipped back into unconsciousness, awakened once somewhere else. Another truck? Another boat? It was no good, that part was almost entirely a blank. He could recall nothing about it except for having been moved yet again to what he supposed was his present location, a barn of some sort. It was wide and dim and stewingly hot with a thatch roof and steps rising to a loft. Both his wrists had been cuffed to the arms of the chair. The restraints were standard police-issue metal bracelets.

  His watchdogs were anything but cops, though. He'd recognized a few from the bunch that had pursued him at the hotel, including the big one, the one he'd first seen waiting in the truck, and who had come at him through the service door….

  Blackburn felt his head clearing. With each interval of consciousness more of what had happened came back to him, his scattered bits and pieces of memory weaving into a coherent thread and drawing him toward a full recognition of his predicament.

  Here in the barn he'd been asked questions, mostly by the one who seemed to be in charge — Luan, that was his name. Asked questions and beaten hard when he refused to answer. But that hadn't been the worst of it. Not by far. He had been through brutal ordeals before, and believed he could have withstood their interrogation for quite some time.

  Oh, shit. These goddamned bastards came to the same conclusion, didn't they?

  The hairs at the back of his neck prickling, he remembered the needle. How could he have forgotten it even for a second?

  Maybe, though, that was why his mind had switched itself off for a while. To provide a cessation from what was otherwise unavoidable. To spare him from thinking about the needle.

  The first time had been the roughest. They'd held him down, torn off his shirt sleeve, and jabbed the needle into the bend of his arm. Because he'd been struggling, the one with the syringe had botched several attempts at piercing a blood vessel. But eventually he'd succeeded, pressing the needle flat against his skin, inserting it down the length of the vein, drawing a little blood to make sure he'd gotten a good hit. And then depressing the plunger.

  Blackburn had made a small sound, a kind of moan, and slid back in the chair, his head nodding, his eyes rolling back under their lids. Wildcat tingles had rushed up his arm in what seemed to be a direct line to his brain, dien widened out into ripples of numbing warmth that spread through his flesh and bones and viscera until he went slack. And the horror, the really overpowering horror of it, was that a part of him had welcomed the nullity it brought. He'd trained his mind and body to endure the severest punishments, but to have his pain drawn out of him in a great merciful whoosh like heaven taking a deep breath….

  Baifen, Luan called it.

  Chinese slang for heroin.

  She was a seductive bitch, and that was what they were counting on.

  His memories rushing back on him now, Max glanced at the inside of his left arm and saw the black and blue where he'd been injected… how many times? Five, maybe six. There were blisters under his elbow where the spike had slipped and some of the drug was inadvertently pumped between his skin and muscle. The first couple of times they'd shot him up, a ferocious rash had spread from his elbows to his shoulders and neck, but his system had adjusted, and the redness and terrible itch were slowly fading.

  Blackburn was still taking stock when he heard movement to his right. He looked up and saw one of his guards — he'd counted four of them in the dimness — step over to a door on the opposite wall, open it, then lean out to speak with somebody on the other side… the big guy from the delivery truck, who was also apparently his superior. When he came striding into the barn a moment later, Luan was right behind him.

  Here we go again, Max thought, steeling himself.

  He watched in silence as Luan moved to a table about six feet away, where his captors kept the heroin and works, as well as a water pitcher and small gas burner for cooking the drug. He saw orange flame spurt from the burner, saw Luan drop a chunk of the heroin into a spoon, then saw him mix it with some water and then hold the spoon over the heat.

  After perhaps a minute of boiling he dropped a cotton swab into the spoon, let it swell up with liquid, pushed the needle into it, and raised the plunger to filter the narcotic solution up through the cotton.

  "My friend, you have kept your secrets against much persuasion, but sooner or later you must tell me what I need to know," Luan said, approaching with the hypo. He spoke English well enough, though his tongue kept bumping against the wrong syllables.

  Max sat there without response.

  "You will not compromise your honor by breaking your silence," Luan said. Coming closer. "Your employers would be pleased with you. A man cannot be expected to tolerate more than you already have on their behalf."

  Max said nothing.

  Luan shook his head. It had become something of a perverse, repetitive drill — the unanswered questions, the beating, and, once that failed, the junk. They were simply exploring their options, Max thought. Reasoning that sooner or later he'd either succumb to the pain or the desire for release. Insidious cocksuckers. Given intravenously, heroin rushed into the brain's pleasure centers within seconds. Addiction would take a while, but the craving for it…

  That was the worst part, wasn't it? The part his mind had cringed away from acknowledging, and the reason it had shut itself down.

  The craving had already wormed its fine but perceptible roots into him.

  Luan came another step forward.

  "I already know who you are, and who you work for, leaving only one thing unknown," he said. "What were you after, Max Blackburn?"

  Silence.

  "One last thing," Luan said. "Tell me."

  It occurred to Max that he would have been interested in hearing Luan answer that very same question… and that his ignorance on that score was a good indication Kirsten had managed to stay outside his tracking range. You dealt with the uglies of the world long enough, you came to understand they could rationalize the vilest actions imaginable… his present circumstances unfortunately being a clear case in point. Had they gotten her in their talons, they would have used any means
available to squeeze her for what they wanted.

  No, they didn't have her. Or at least it helped a little to think so.

  He kept staring at Luan in silence.

  The Thai's face had grown sorrowful. "It shouldn't matter to me, but I want to give you fair warning. While you may not remember how to use your tongue at the moment, it is certain that you will before I leave here. You understand?"

  Max swallowed dryly. No, maybe he didn't understand, not altogether. But he had an awful feeling that he soon would. He'd kept an eye on the big guard, watched him sidle over to the table, reach for a knife sheathed against his leg, then stand there near the burner with the weapon in his hand. It was a kris, its blade about six inches long and shaped like a sine wave….

  Something new and different, he thought Luan was standing right in front of him now, regarding him with careful appraisal, his false sympathy only serving to counterpoint the menace in his gaze.

  Finally he pursed his lips and discharged a sighing breath.

  "No," he said resignedly. "I don't think you're going to take my advice after all."

  He turned partially toward the big watchdog.

  Nodded.

  Max glanced over at the table and felt his stomach tighten.

  The watchdog had raised his knife to the flame, was holding it over the flame, its blade rapidly heating up, becoming radiant in the dimness of the barn.

  "Xiang," the Thai said.

  The big man turned and advanced on Max, the knife flashing red-hot, almost seeming to pulse in his grip. Out of the corners of his eyes, Max saw two other guards suddenly appear from the shadows, one on either side of him. Each clasped a shoulder and pressed it hard to the chair, pinning him against the backrest. He strained against them, but their hands were as unyielding as the steel cuffs on his wrists.

  He tensed throughout his body, his heart striking mallet blows in his chest.

  In no hurry, Xiang hung over him a moment like a living, breathing mountain. Then he lowered the kris to his arm and sliced into his skin about an inch above the wrist, making a shallow, razor-thin incision that almost instantly withered around its edges from the heat of the blade. Max was seized with pain as Xiang carved into him, gliding the knife upward beneath his skin, stripping it away little by little, pushing the blade higher… higher… higher…

  Squeezing the chair's armrests, Max fought not to scream, clenched his teeth so he wouldn't scream, a raspy, wounded-animal sound tearing out of him instead. Veins bulged in his temples. His head whipped back and forth. He smelled the sickly-sweet odor of his own cauterized flesh and nerve tissue as it peeled away from the rising blade. He thrashed convulsively, heard the legs of the chair pounding the floor, banging on the floor, the loud thump of wood against wood matching the jerky violence of his spasms. He could see nothing beyond the insane, brilliant pain, think of nothing but the scream locked away in his throat, trying to tear free of his throat like a trapped thing with claws and teeth flinging itself against the sides of its cage.

  Max only realized the cutting had stopped some thirty seconds after the Thai ordered it done. He thought it must have taken longer than that for Xiang to actually slide the knife out of his arm, flicking a long… six inches long, at least… shaving of skin to the floor.

  Finally, the guards who had been holding him down backed off and he sagged into the chair, gulping down huge lungfuls of air, the muscles of his ravaged arm twitching and jumping.

  He felt his consciousness draining and willed himself back to clarity.

  Luan's face hovered in front of him.

  "Your employer, Roger Gordian," he said. "Tell me what he wants."

  Max sat there, motionless. Rivulets of sweat poured down his brow and stung his eyes. His arm felt coated with scalding oil.

  Luan showed him the syringe.

  "Tell me," he said. "I can make things better for you."

  Blackburn met his gaze. Inhaled. Exhaled. And then gave him a slow nod.

  Luan grinned and leaned in expectantly.

  "My boss is… P. T. Barnum.. and I'm looking for freaks for his tent show," Blackburn said in a weak voice. "Got them all here," he said. "A fat man" — he nodded toward the Thai—"a giant" — he nodded toward Xiang— "and more geeks… than you can count," he said, and rotated his head to indicate the guards standing to either side of him.

  Luan's grin turned downward and mutated into something horrible and forbidding. He straightened, allowed the full weight of his gaze to press on Blackburn for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

  "Stupid," he said, and then gave Xiang a command in Bahasa, pointing at Max.

  Pointing at his face.

  Blackburn saw the giant take a step toward him with the kris, the two watchdogs who'd restrained him once more appearing at the fringes of his vision.

  He thought about how to prevent them from carving him up alive, decided there was probably nothing he could do, and figured he would try anyway.

  Summoning what strength he had left, Max threw his weight forward as hard as he could, and managed to rock to his feet while still cuffed to the chair — his wrists chained to the armrests, the back of the chair a rigid plank against his spine, forcing him to bend at the waist so he was almost doubled over.

  The two guards' surprise at his sudden move made them hesitate for only an instant, but that was all the time Blackburn needed to launch himself at the Thai, slamming him backwards into the table where he kept the works. As the heroin packets and still-flaming burner crashed to the floor in a welter, the fire hurling a wavery mesh of shadows about the room, he saw the watchdog on his left come charging straight at him, waited for him to get close enough, and wheeled in a semicircle, catching him across his middle with the upturned chair legs. The watchdog yelped in pain and dropped to his knees.

  Max took a breath and steadied himself. Heard footsteps now, from his opposite side. The shadow pushing toward him might have been startling in its immensity had he not been braced for Xiang's attack. Still, his limitations of movement and balance made it impossible to avoid.

  Gonna get hurt no matter what I do, he thought. Might as well dish some hurt of my own.

  Whirling toward the giant, he lunged forward in a bullish rush, Xiang's torso looming up like a marble pillar as he drove in and butted him with his head.

  Xiang snorted in anger and surprise, the kris dropping from his fingers. Max kept his head lowered and again slammed himself into his columnar chest. The gigantic islander staggered back but did not fall. His knife forgotten in his rage, he lurched forward like a wounded bear, his colossal arms spread wide, biceps expanding and rippling under his flesh. Snarling, he clamped his hands over Blackburn's shoulders and hefted upward.

  Max felt a wrenching pain as his feet left the floor. Though he weighed a solid hundred-eighty pounds, Xiang lifted him seemingly without effort.

  Blackburn saw an atavistic savagery in his features that instantly made him cold inside. The giant wasn't thinking about the information they were trying to get out of him. Wasn't thinking about what his boss wanted him to do. Wasn't thinking, period. His fury was a cyclone that had pulled him into its maw as it gained destructive energy and momentum. He was just along for the ride.

  In a sense, they both were.

  Xiang shook Max furiously, holding him suspended above the floor so they were almost eye-to-eye. He rattled out a groan, the strength he'd mustered through sheer willpower draining away, his body too hammered from abuse to comply with the demands he was making of it. Suddenly he knew what was coming, knew with such a sure sense of inevitability that he could almost hear a door shutting in his head. There would be no last-minute escape of the sort that might occur in a novel or film, no orchestral swells as the larger-than-life hero fought his way to safety. It stank, yes, but real life was like that sometimes, you never knew when the smell would come wafting up out of the kitty litter, and the best he figured he could do was express his feelings about it in a manner that would translate
across any language barrier.

  Filling his mouth with moisture, he spat in Xiang's face.

  Xiang growled, actually growled, his cheek glistening with bloody saliva. He took a broad step forward, another, pushing Max up against the wall. Then, with a tremendous heave that bulged the muscles of his upper back and shoulders into a corded mass, he slammed Max backward with stunning force, pulled him in toward his chest again, slammed, pulled, slammed. Max tugged unavailingly at his cuffs, his upper body writhing, a mire of blood flooding his mouth, the chair splintering between his back and the wall, cracking into jagged pieces of wood that spilled to the floor underneath him as Xiang slammed and pulled and slammed….

  Lost in a roseate haze, Blackburn felt a snap somewhere in his neck, followed by a bright sparkle of pain. The haze darkened and solidified. From what seemed a great distance, he heard the Thai shout something in an agitated voice and a language he didn't understand. He had a sensation of disconnected free fall, as if he were a small stone plummeting into a bottomless chasm.

  Then he ceased to feel anything at all.

  "Stop!" The Thai clambered across the barn toward Xiang and grabbed his arm. "That's enough lunacyV'

  The giant glanced over at him. An instant later, his face changed — the furious, wildly unreasoning look clearing from it. He turned toward the limp form he was pressing to the wall, stared at it a moment as if seeing it for the first time, and let it drop.

  Luan knelt over Blackburn and hurried to check his pulse. He didn't like the way his head was leaning, the rubbery tilt of his neck.

  When his eyes jumped up to Xiang, they were glacial. "He's dead," he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA/SOUTHEAST ASIA

  SEPTEMBER 22/23, 2000

  Every weekday morning at 5:30 Roger Gordian left his home outside San Jose, got into his raven-black 1984 Mercedes SE, then headed east along El Camino Real to the San Carlos Street exit and through the downtown area to UpLink's corporate headquarters on Bonita Avenue. Like Gordian, the Benz was in generally fine condition despite showing a few signs of age: a cranky starter here, a clogged line and worn part there, nothing that, in his estimate, couldn't be remedied with regular maintenance and an occasional highway workout.