BUTTERFLY IN HELL
He’ll go against mountains and cross rivers,
he’ll tread a pathway through heaped-up snows,
he’ll set sail, neither fearing Eurus’s raging east winds,
nor waiting for stars propitious for his voyage.
Who but a soldier or lover could endure the chill of night,
and torrents of mingled snow and rain?
—Ovid, Amores, Elegy IX: Of Love and War
Leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, his captor had yet to speak. Instead he observed through tranquil icy blue eyes that gave no signs of impatience or even anger. The man people called Auben knew better. The plastic sheeting covering every surface of the empty and windowless room spoke louder than any threat to come.
A soft patter somewhere above him caught Auben’s attention. A butterfly had managed to get trapped in hell with him, drawn by the single lamp hanging from the ceiling. It kept hitting the scalding glass desperately, eager for the light to consume it. He willed his body to relax in the ropes holding his four limbs tightly strapped to a steel chair. Bolted to the floor. Auben recognized the eye for detail of a consummate professional. He drew a steady breath. Death he did not fear. It was part of the job, both the sentence and the reward, a leap into blessed darkness. Everything in between now and death . . . was another matter.
As he had been taught, he closed his eyes and mentally let go of his body. There was only so much pain the flesh could take, and he knew—or rather trusted—that beyond that threshold would come a sense of numbness. It would help. He repeated in his head, like a mantra, that he had led a good life, all forty years of it, that whatever his executioner sliced, broke, or tore would be useless meat scraped from a body that was already dead.
After a prolonged silence, spit-shined brogues shifted on the plastic. The man came out of the shadows and walked across the room, his stride slow, predatory. He went to open a black suitcase resting on an instruments tray, a few feet from the chair.
“I heard you were dead,” Auben remarked, his tone cordial even as a drop of sweat burned its way down his temple.
His host never stopped searching the case, moving aside a compartment where two semiautomatics and their suppressors lay encased in foam. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, broer.”
Auben managed a chuckle, even as nausea lapped at the back of his throat. “You know I can’t tell you anything.”
“You won’t. But you can, and I’ll make you.”
The case snapped shut. Auben caught the menacing glint of a pair of pruners in the man’s latex-gloved hand.
Now came the moment to breathe, to let go, despite every single muscle contracting in his limbs, the stifling weight of fear crushing his chest. The sleeve of a navy jacket brushed his arm, carrying in its wake a clean, almost medical scent, like those hand sanitizers they sold everywhere these days. Seconds after, hands gripped his left thumb and forced it into the cool embrace of the pruners’ blades. Through the blood roaring in his ears, Auben had to remind himself over and over that this body was dead already. It didn’t matter that he lost the use of his hand. It was a transitional state. It meant nothing.
“My apologies,” the man said evenly. “I’d usually start with something more . . . benign, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ve heard you recently came back from a mission in Finland. Can you perhaps share some of the details with me?”
No.
Auben gritted his teeth and breathed hard, fast through his nose. He looked up at the blinding orb of the lightbulb above him to find the butterfly gone. In a single snap, agony shot through his hand, thundered all the way up to his shoulder. He bit back a howl, tasting blood in his mouth. Years of training had him able to ride the waves of pain flowing from the wound, but no amount of past fractures could have prepared him for the horrific awareness of the missing finger, the odd weight of his hand, the sudden absence.
Auben watched, in a state of shock that overrode the pain itself, as his captor dropped the bloodied thumb in a plastic bag filled with crushed ice and sealed the package in a cooler waiting under the steel tray.
With absolute detachment, the man glanced down at the box at his feet. “You have four hours to tell me where she is. We’ll be moving on to the right hand, so please be ready.”