LITMIR.BIZ

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who had lost their homes. Nothing, no negative life experience, could justify doing that.

      “Yeah, Li’s a mess,” he said. “He’s a trauma case. Looks like this isn’t his first time around with waterboarding.”

      Ed nodded. “Good. So he knows the drill already.” He looked down at Li. “We’re gonna do it anyway, you hear me, girly boy? We don’t care about the smell, so if that’s your game, it didn’t work.” Ed glanced at Luke. “I’ve seen this before. People try it because they think that the smell is so rank we won’t want to go forward. Or maybe we’ll take pity on them. Or whatever.” He shook his head. “The smell is nasty, but I’ve never seen it work. We wouldn’t be here if we were the sensitive type, Li. I’ve smelled men after they’ve been disemboweled. Believe me, it’s worse than anything you can push out the regular way.”

      “Please,” Li said again. He said it quietly now, almost a whisper. His body was shaking out of control. He hung his head and stared at the floor. “Please don’t do it. I can’t take it.”

      “Give me something,” Luke said. “Give me something good, and then we’ll see. Look at me, Li.”

      Li’s head hung even lower. He shook it. “I cannot look at you now.” His face made a grimace, a mask of humiliation. Then he started crying.

      “Help me. Please help me.”

      “You better give me something,” Luke said. “Or we’re going to get started.”

      Luke stood ten feet away and watched him. Li was slumped over in the chair, his head low, his arms tight behind his broad back, his entire body trembling. There was no organization to it – every part seemed to be doing something different and unrelated to every other part. Luke noticed now that the crotch of Li’s jumpsuit was wet. He had also pissed himself.

      Luke took a deep breath. They’d have to get somebody in here to clean this guy up.

      “Li?” he said.

      Li was still facing the ground. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. “There is a warehouse. It’s a small warehouse, with an office. An importer of Chinese goods. In the office, everything is explained.”

      “Whose office is it?” Luke said.

      “Mine.”

      “It’s a front?” Ed said.

      Li tried to shrug. His body jittered and jived. His teeth chattered as he talked. “Mostly. It had to be somewhat functional, or else there is no cover story.”

      “Where is it?”

      Li mumbled something.

      “What?” Luke said. “I don’t hear you. If you play with me, we’re going to do this the hard way. You think Ed wants you off the hook? Think again.”

      “It’s in Atlanta,” Li said, clear and firm now, as if telling it was a relief. “The warehouse is in Atlanta. That’s where I was based.”

      Luke smiled.

      “Well, you can give us the address, and we can fly down to Atlanta. We’ll be right back in a few hours.” He put his hand on Li’s shoulder. “God help you if we find out you’re lying.”

*

      “Nice job, Swann,” Luke said. “I couldn’t have asked for better if I had written the script myself.”

      “Did I ever mention I was in the theater club in high school? I played Mack the Knife one year.”

      “You missed your calling,” Luke said. “You could’ve gone to Hollywood based on what I saw in there.”

      They moved down the concrete walkway toward the waiting black SUV. Two men in FEMA jumpsuits had just exited the SUV and gone into the cabin. Luke glanced at the surroundings. All around them were fences and razor wire. Behind the closest guard tower, a steep green hillside rose up toward the northern mountains of Georgia.

      Swann smiled. “I tried to put just the right note of moral indignation into it.”

      “You had me fooled,” Ed said.

      “Well, it was real. I didn’t have to act. I’m really not for torturing people.”

      “Neither are we,” Ed said. “At least, not all the time.”

      “Did you do it?” Swann said.

      Luke smiled. “What do you think?”

      Swann shook his head. “I was gone only ten minutes before you came out, so I’m guessing that you didn’t.”

      Ed clapped him on the back. “Keep guessing, data analyst.”

      “Well, did you or didn’t you?” Swann said. “Guys?”

      Within minutes, the three of them were back on the helicopter, rising over the dense forest and headed south to Atlanta.

      CHAPTER SIX

      10:05 a.m.

      United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC

      “Congressman, thank you for coming.”

      Susan Hopkins reached out to shake the hand of the tall man in the sharp blue suit. He was United States Representative from Ohio, Michael Parowski. He had prematurely white hair and squinty pale blue eyes. Fifty-five years old, he was handsome in a rugged, Marlboro man sort of way. Blue-collar born and bred, he had the big stone hands and the broad shoulders of a man who started his career as an iron worker.

      Susan knew his story. H was a lifelong bachelor. He grew up in Akron, the son of immigrants from Poland. As a teenager, he was a Golden Gloves fighter. The industrial cities of the north, Youngstown, Akron, Cleveland, were his stronghold. His support up there was unshakeable. More than that, it was mythic, the stuff of legend. He was on his ninth term in the House, and his reelections were a breeze, an afterthought.

      Would Michael Parowski get reelected in northern Ohio? Would the sun come up again tomorrow? Would the Earth continue to spin on its axis? If you dropped an egg, would it fall to the kitchen floor? He was as inevitable as the laws of physics. He wasn’t going anywhere.

      Susan had seen the videos of him wading into the crowds at union rallies, holidays, and ethnic festivals (where he did not discriminate – Polish, Greek, Puerto Rican, Italian, African-American, Irish, Mexican, Vietnamese – if you had an ethnicity, he was your man). He was a hand-shaker, a back-slapper, a high-fiver, and a hugger. His signature move was the whisper.

      In the midst of mayhem and chaos, dozens or even hundreds of people pressing close to him, he would invariably take some older woman one step aside and whisper something in her ear. Sometimes the women would laugh, sometimes they would blush, sometimes they would wag a finger at him. The crowds adored it, and none of the women ever repeated what he said. It was political theatre of the highest order, the kind that Susan, frankly, loved.

      Here in DC, he was a union man all the way – the AFL-CIO gave him a 100 percent rating. He was one of labor’s best friends on Capitol Hill. He was more wobbly on some of Susan’s other issues: women’s rights, gay rights, the environment. But not so much that it was a deal breaker, and in a sense, his strengths complemented hers. She could speak with passion about clean water and clean air, and about women’s health, and he could equal her passion when he talked about the plight of the American worker.

      Even so, Susan wasn’t sure he was the perfect fit, but the Party elders assured her he was. They wanted him on board more than anything. Truth be told, they had practically made the decision for her. And what they really wanted from him, besides his popularity, was his toughness. He was the baddest man in the room. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and it at least appeared that he didn’t sleep. He lived on airplanes, bouncing back and forth to his district like a ping-pong ball. He would be on the Hill for committee meetings and votes at all hours, at a cemetery in Youngstown in the morning six hours later, fresh and alert, tears in his eyes, wrapping his big strong arms around the mother of a dead serviceman as she melted against his chest.

      If

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