Sword of Shiva - Страница 6

At that moment, Lu Shi had known that he had named his son correctly. Jianguo, meant ‘building the country.’ Looking into the shining eyes of his nine year old son, Lu Shi had seen his own wisdom in selecting that name. Lu Jianguo would build the country. And Lu Shi had not had any doubt that he was standing in the presence of the future leader of China.

Lu Shi blinked, and the memory of that long-past day fell away. He had been so certain that he knew the future of China… the future of his son.

Now, staring at Lu Jianguo’s sheet-draped form, Lu Shi was certain of nothing. After a lifetime spent planning and preparing for the future, Lu Shi discovered that there was no future. There were only dreams and plans that could be snatched away without a second’s warning. The future had been stolen, from Lu Shi, from Lu Jianguo, and from China. For the first time in his life, Lu Shi did not care about tomorrow.

He discovered that his eyes had drifted back down to the flat stretch of bed sheets where his son’s legs should have been.

“Where are they?” he asked quietly.

The man in the white coat seemed to follow the direction of Lu Shi’s gaze. He cleared his throat nervously. “Your son’s legs, Comrade Vice Premier? I… I’m not really sure. One of them was severed before he arrived, and the other…”

Lu Shi silenced the man with a glare. “Not my son’s legs!” he hissed. He turned his head toward the Army major.

The man stiffened visibly. “Yes, Comrade Vice Premier?”

“Where are the men who did this?” Lu Shi asked. “Where are the criminals who…” His voice trailed off in mid-sentence. He paused, and continued at a volume just above a whisper. “The terrorists who… did this thing… Where are they?”

The major swallowed before answering. “We… ah… We believe their plan is to escape through the mountains into India. Given current weather conditions, it is likely that they will travel by way of the Nathu La pass.”

“I see,” Lu Shi said softly. “Then you do not know where they are?”

The major responded with a single shake of his head. “Not yet, Comrade Vice Premier. General Zhou has men and aircraft combing the mountain passes between here and the Indian border. The General has also ordered increased satellite surveillance of the most likely escape routes. We will locate the terrorists, Comrade Vice Premier. They can’t hide from us indefinitely.”

Lu Shi nodded slowly. “What of the prisoner? The terrorist you have in custody… Has he broken?”

“Not yet, sir,” the major said. “But he will.”

Lu Shi turned his eyes back to the bed. “Inform General Zhou that the Army is to immediately surrender the prisoner to the Ministry of State Security.”

The words were spoken calmly, but the major could not entirely conceal his grimace. “Comrade Vice Premier… That won’t be necessary. I assure you that our interrogators will soon have the information we need.”

Lu Shi did not look at him. “I’m not offering you a suggestion, major. I’m giving you a direct order. I don’t want the information soon. I want it now. Do you understand?”

The major snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, Comrade Vice Premier!”

He executed an abrupt about-face, and marched briskly from the room.

Lu Shi stood without moving for several minutes after the major had gone. The only sounds in the room were the sibilant rasp and gurgle of the mechanical respirator.

At last, he looked up and made eye contact with the man in the white lab coat. “Disconnect the machines.”

The man’s face was suffused by a look of pure horror. “Comrade Vice Premier, we can’t do that! These machines provide critical life support functions. If we disconnect them, your son will die!”

Lu Shi turned back toward the bed. “Will he ever be free of these machines? Will he recover enough to leave this bed?”

The man cringed under the hard edge of Lu Shi’s voice. “That… That seems unlikely, Comrade Vice Premier. Your son has suffered massive cerebral trauma.”

The man swallowed. “I… I don’t believe he will ever be entirely free of the need for life support.”

Lu Shi’s voice was low and cold. “Then my son is already dead,” he said. “Disconnect the machines.”

CHAPTER 3

QUSHUI PRISON

SOUTHWEST OF LHASA, TIBET

WEDNESDAY; 19 NOVEMBER

7:42 PM

TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

There was a sound somewhere on the other side of the door. Strapped to a steel chair in the dimly-lighted gloom of the interrogation cell, Sonam came awake instantly.

He had been drifting in that strange half-world between consciousness and oblivion. The pain was still too constant and too insistent to let him sleep, but he could find some relief by letting himself slide down into a haze of senselessness.

His face and upper body ached from repeated beatings and frequent jolts from an electric cattle prod. At least two of his ribs were broken, and every breath brought a stab of pain. The bullet hole in his left thigh throbbed in time with his pulse. The vicious bastards had done a good job of patching up his leg; he had to give them that much. The bullet had been removed; the wound had been neatly sutured, and they kept the dressings clean. Of course, their reasons hadn’t been humanitarian. The Chinese Army was not concerned with his health. They just wanted him kept alive for questioning.

Sonam’s interrogators had been careful to keep well clear of the injury. They had limited their attentions to the parts of his body above the waist. That still left them quite a bit of territory to work with, and they had used it with appalling brutality.

The noise was repeated, and this time Sonam recognized it — the scrape of a boot heel on concrete. It was followed almost immediately by the sound of a heavy key sliding into the door lock, and the dull rasp of the bolt being withdrawn. The soldiers were coming for him again.

Sonam felt a surge of panic, coupled with a sudden urge to urinate, or vomit, or both. He forced himself to slow his breathing.

He could do this. He could withstand another round of the beatings. He could live through another session with the cattle prod. He would clamp his teeth together and summon the will to endure. He told himself again and again that he would not answer their questions. He would not betray his people, no matter what these Chinese animals did to him.

If his interrogators came close enough, he would spit in their faces. With luck, they would become enraged enough to beat him into unconsciousness.

The door swung open, and — after uncounted hours in semi-darkness — even the relatively weak florescent light from the corridor was enough to make Sonam’s eyes blink and water. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was not in for another encounter with the soldiers. This was something different.

The man standing in the open doorway was small framed, and very neat in appearance. He was Chinese, like the soldiers, but the resemblance seemed to end with that. He was dressed in civilian clothes, and he had none of the swagger of the military men. There was nothing brutish-looking about him. He looked like a clerk, or a petty bureaucrat. The man’s eyes were lifeless, like the eyes of a doll. His features were quite ordinary, and his expression appeared to signal mild indifference.

Squinting toward this unremarkable figure, Sonam wondered if the little man had wandered in by mistake.

He was still puzzling over this new development when another man entered the room, carrying a black nylon zipper bag and a small wooden folding table. Like the clerk, this man was dressed in civilian clothes. He quickly erected the table, laid the nylon bag on the tabletop, and exited the room, closing the door behind him.

The clerk did not look at the black bag, but Sonam felt his own eyes drawn to it. The nylon was scuffed, and the seams were gray with hard use. He knew suddenly that the expressionless little man was not a clerk, and — with equal suddenness — he realized that he did not want to see what was inside that bag.

The little man spoke without preamble. “I will ask you questions,” he said. His voice was low and inflectionless. He did not mangle the Tibetan language, as so many of the Chinese did. Unlike Sonam, whose speech was shaded by the Indian influence of Dharamsala, the man had almost no accent.

Sonam stared at him without speaking.

“You will answer my questions,” the little man said. “Please understand that this is not a boast, and it is not a prediction. It is a simple statement of fact. You will answer my questions.”

Still, Sonam said nothing.

The man walked to the table and unzipped the nylon bag. He looked up at Sonam, his face as impassive as ever. “You may answer my questions now, in relative comfort, or you can answer them six hours from now, when you have no fingers, no testicles, no eyes, and your throat is raw from screaming.”

Sonam knew instinctively that these were not empty threats. There was no hint of malice in the man’s voice, but there was not a trace of mercy either.

The man reached into the nylon bag, and pulled out a pair of long-handled pliers with a heavy-looking square head. “I will ask you questions,” he said again. He opened and closed the pliers several times, as though testing the movement of the metal jaws. “The first time you refuse to answer, I will clamp these upon the index finger of your right hand, and I will crush it to a bloody pulp.”