Sole Survivor

apart.
        Putting his pistol aside on the rumpled sheets, he took a knife from a jacket pocket. A switchblade. He flicked it open.
        Her fear soaring again, Barbara could manage to draw only quick shallow breaths. The resultant whistling in her nose amused the man sitting with her.
        From another jacket pocket, he withdrew a snack-size round of Gouda cheese. Using the knife, he removed the cellophane wrapper and then peeled off the red wax skin that prevented the Gouda from developing mould.
        Carefully eating thin slivers of cheese off the wickedly sharp blade, he told Barbara that he knew where her son, Denny, lived and worked. He recited the addresses.
        He also knew that Denny had been married to Rebekah for thirteen months, nine days, and-he consulted his watch, calculated-fifteen hours. He knew that Rebekah was six months pregnant with their first child, a girl, whom they were going to name Felicia.
        To prevent harm from befalling Denny and his bride, Barbara was expected to accept the official story about what had happened to the tape from the cockpit-voice recorder on Flight 353-a story that she had rejected in discussions with her colleagues and that she had set out to disprove. She was also expected to forget what she had heard on the enhanced version of that tape.
        If she continued to seek the truth of the situation or attempted to express her concerns to either the press or the public, Denny and Rebekah would disappear. In the deep basement of a private redoubt soundproofed and equipped for prolonged and difficult interrogations, the sensualist and his associates would shackle Denny, tape open his eyes, and force him to watch while they killed Rebekah and the unborn child.
        Then they would surgically remove one of his fingers every day for ten days-taking elaborate measures to control bleeding, shock, and infection. They would keep him alive and alert, though steadily less whole. On the eleventh and twelfth days, they would remove his ears.
        They had a full month of imaginative surgery planned.
        Every day, as they took another piece of him, they would tell Denny that they would release him to his mother without further harm if she would only agree to cooperate with them in a conspiracy of silence that was, after all, in the national interest. Vitally important defence matters were involved here.
        This would not be entirely true. The part about the national interest was true, from their point of view, at least, even though they could not, of course, explain to Barbara how the knowledge she possessed was a threat to her country. The part about her being able to earn Denny's release by cooperation would not be true, however, because once she failed to honour a pledge of silence, she would not be given a second chance, and her son would be forever lost to her.
        They would deceive Denny solely to ensure that he would spend the last month of his life desperately wondering why his mother had so stubbornly condemned him to such excruciating pain and horrible disfigurement. By the end, half mad or worse, in deep spiritual misery, he would curse her vehemently and beg God to let her rot in Hell.
        As he continued to carve the tiny wheel of Gouda and serve himself off the dangerous point of the blade, the sensualist assured Barbara that no one-not the police, not the admittedly clever FBI, not the mighty United States Army-could keep Denny and Rebekah safe forever. He claimed to be employed by an organization with such bottomless resources and extensive connections that it was capable of compromising and subverting any institution or agency of the federal or state governments.
        He asked her to nod if she believed him.
        She did believe him. Implicitly. Without reservation. His seductive voice, which seemed to lick each of his hideous threats to savour the texture and astringency of it, was filled with the quiet confidence and smug superiority of a megalomaniac who carries the badge of a secret authority, receives a comfortable salary with numerous fringe benefits, and knows that in his old age he will be able to rely upon the cushion of a generous civil-service pension.
        He then asked her if she intended to cooperate.
        With guilt and humiliation but also with utter sincerity, she nodded again. Yes. She would cooperate. Yes.
        Studying a pale oval of cheese like a tiny filleted fish