Cat and Mouse

exist anywhere else but where he actually was. He needed to exist in the past, or even in the future, but not in the present. He was reminded of
The English Patient
— both the book and the movie. He was Count Almasy now, wasn’t he? Only his torture was even worse than Almasy’s horribly burned flesh. He was in the grasp of Mr. Smith.
    He thought about Regina constantly now, and he realized that he loved her fiercely, and what a fool he’d been not to marry her years ago. What an arrogant bastard, and what a huge fool!
    How dearly he wanted to live now, and to see Regina again. Life seemed so damned precious to him at this moment, in this terrible place, under these monstrous conditions.
    No, this wasn’t a good way to be thinking. It brought him down — it brought him back to reality, to the present.
No, no no! Go somewhere else in your mind. Anywhere but here.
    The present line of thought brought him to this tiny compartment, this infinitesimal X on the globe where he was now a prisoner, and where no one could possibly find him. Not the flics, not Interpol, not the entire French Army, or the English, or the Americans, or the Israelis!
    Dr. Sante could easily imagine the furor and outrage, the panic continuing in Paris and throughout France. NOTED PHYSICIAN AND TEACHER ABDUCTED ! The headline in
Le Monde
would read something like that. Or, NEW MR. SMITH HORROR IN PARIS .
    He was the horror! He was certain that tens of thousands of police, as well as the army, were searching for him now. Of course, every hour he was missing, his chances for survival grew dimmer. He knew that from reading past articles about Mr. Smith’s unearthly abductions, and what happened to the victims.
    Why me? God Almighty, he couldn’t stand this infernal monologue anymore.
    He couldn’t stand this nearly upside-down position, this terribly cramped space, for one more second.
    He just couldn’t bear it. Not one more second!
    Not one more second!
    Not one more second!
    He couldn’t breathe!
    He was going to die in here.
    Right here, in a goddamn dumbwaiter. Stuck between floors, in a godforsaken house in Ile-de-France somewhere on the outskirts of Paris.
    Mr. Smith had put him in the dumbwaiter, stuffed him inside like a bundle of dirty laundry, and then left him there — for God only knew how long. It seemed like hours, at least several hours, but Abel Sante really wasn’t sure anymore.
    The excruciating pain came and went, but mostly it rushed through his body in powerful waves. His neck, his shoulders, and his chest ached so badly, beyond belief, beyond his tolerance for pain. The feeling was as if he’d been slowly crushed into a squarish heap. If he hadn’t been claustrophobic before, he was now.
    But that wasn’t the worst part of this. No, it wasn’t the worst. The most terrifying thing was that he knew what all of France wanted to know, what the whole world wanted to know.
    He knew certain things about Mr. Smith’s identity. He knew precisely how he talked. He believed that Mr. Smith might be a philosopher, perhaps a university professor or student.
    He had even
seen
Mr. Smith.
    He had looked out from the dumbwaiter — upside down, no less — and stared into Smith’s hard, cold eyes, seen his nose, his lips.
    Mr. Smith saw that.
    Now there was no hope for him.
    “Damn you, Smith. Damn you to hell. I know your shitty secret. I know everything now. You
are
a fucking alien!
You aren’t human.”

Chapter 84

    “ Y OU REALLY think we’re going to track down this son of a bitch? You think this guy is dumb?”
    John Sampson asked me point-blank, challenging me. He was dressed all in black, and he wore Ray-Ban sunglasses. He looked as if he were already in mourning. The two of us were flying in an FBI Bell Jet helicopter from Washington to Princeton, New Jersey. We were supposed to work together for a while.
    “You think Gary Soneji did this somehow? Think he’s Houdini? You think maybe he’s still alive?” Sampson went on. “What the hell do you think?”
    “I don’t know yet.” I sighed. “I’m still collecting data. It’s the only way I know how to work. No, I don’t
think
Soneji did it. He’s always worked alone before this. Always.”
    I knew that Gary Soneji had grown up in New Jersey, then gone on to become one of the most savage murderers of the times. It didn’t seem as if his run were over yet. Soneji was part of the ongoing mystery.
    Alex Cross’s notes on Soneji were extensive. I was