The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(73)

I opened my eyes and was satisfied to see the man jump back in alarm. “Gentlemen,” I said, “I imagine you’re under orders not to communicate with me, so let me be blunt and to the purpose. I know you all, I know your names, your ranks, your histories and your homes. I know that you, Private, still live with your mother and you, Sergeant, have a wife in Moscow who you haven’t seen for three and a half years, and a daughter whose photo you proudly carry in your pocket and show to all in the canteen every dinner break without fail. ‘She is my diamond,’ you explain. ‘She is my wealth.’ I have a question for you–just one question, and it’s this–do they know nothing? Absolutely nothing about what you do? It’s very important you think about this, very important you consider every aspect of every conversation you’ve ever had with them, for if they know anything, anything at all which could compromise this facility, then of course, gentlemen, they will be next. Your wife, your mother, your daughter–they cannot know a thing. Not even a whisper. That’s all I wished to say, and now if you wouldn’t mind applying a plaster to my hand, I’ll get on with the business of awaiting my torture and inevitable execution, thank you.”

They left in a hurry and didn’t bring me a plaster.


It may have been twenty hours later, it may have been two, and Vincent was back. The sergeant from before stood in the doorway as he talked, watching me nervously over his employer’s shoulder.

“Have you considered?” Vincent asked urgently. “Have you decided?”

“Of course I have,” I replied lightly. “You’re going to torture me, and I’m going to tell you an endless series of whatever it is I think you want to hear, to make you stop.”

“Harry,” urgency, desperate and low in his voice, “it doesn’t have to be this way. Tell me your point of origin and no harm will come to you, I swear.”

“Have you considered the point of no return? That moment when the damage you’ve done to my body is so great that I no longer care, nor consider it worth my while, to say anything at all? You must be hoping that you won’t reach that moment before you break my mind.”

He leaned back, face hardening at my words. “This is your doing, Harry. This is something you’re doing to yourself.”

So saying, he left me. The sergeant stayed in the door, and for a moment our eyes locked.

“Nothing at all?” I asked as the door swung shut.


They began only a few minutes later. To my surprise, they opened with chemicals and a twist on the usual theme of the same, a partial paralytic, locking my diaphragm in place so I choked and suffocated, the air turning to lead in my lungs, blood and head. Some movement was still possible, the dose cleverly judged, so for an hour, maybe more, maybe less, I sat gasping and gaping for air, the sweat running down my face and spine, vision on the edge of darkness but not quite going over. Vincent had hired a professional. A small man with a neat moustache, he had his tools laid out–always for my scrutiny–on a tray before him, and like an athlete in training gave some time for rest between each new application of pain. At the end of every rest he asked the question “What is your point of origin?” and waited patiently for me to reply, shaking his head sadly when I refused to do so. Next up was physical nausea, causing cries not so much of pain but of an animal trapped in its own carcass, of heat upon heat upon heat, of a twisting, a shrinking, a narrowing of the senses until all I could perceive was my own hideously sane delirium.

And there was the sergeant in the door, watching, always watching, and when the torturer took a break to get himself a glass of water, the sergeant came in and took my pulse, looked into the pupils of my eyes and whispered,

“She knows I took the train to Ploskye Prydy, the end of the line. Is that too much?”

I just smiled at him and let him answer the question for himself.

Somewhere between the sickness and the suffocation Vincent came in and held my hand. “I’m sorry, Harry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

I tried to spit at him, but my mouth was dry, and he left again.


They brought in the car battery long before, I think, they intended to use it. It was merely another object of interest, a thing to be placed on display. Sleep deprivation and extreme heat, a variation on the method I had expected, were the first order of the day. Someone with a highly creative appreciation of the use of surround sound and an ear for the unholy had created a soundtrack which oscillated between techno beats, tortured screams and graphic descriptions of violent and violating acts, carried on with Foley effects and in several different languages. If there was any danger that the noise and horror of all this was making me numb, a little too close to sleep, the guards came in and shook me awake, throwing ice water in my face, horror against the heat.

“You’re a good man,” I told the sergeant when he woke me again. “You know what’s right.”

“Drink, Harry, drink.” Vincent’s voice, a whisper in the sudden quiet. I knew he put a damp cloth to my lips and I drank greedily, until my mind crawled back to awareness and I spat the liquid out, spilling it down my chin and front, a thin concoction two parts saliva to one part water. The torturer’s moustache was especially fine the day he pulled my toenails out. I imagined him sleeping at night with a net across his face to give it such excellent buoyancy.