Star of Egypt (16 page)

But who would?
she thought. Then she thought of the cobra, and of the night of terror, and of the unnerving discoveries that suggested clandestine
dangers for people who asked too many questions.

She wanted to know where Ben was, if only to stop fearing for his life.

The first thing Slayton was aware of was the heat. It seemed to be very warm, wherever he was.

There was also a low hissing, and sundry noises that his semiconscious mind categorized as “industrial sounds.”

Before his closed eyes, the sea of blackness spread out to an imperceptible horizon line. Inky, viscous waves ebbed and flowed
according to a rhythm linked directly with the pain. Suddenly, his brain informed him that he was coming up to consciousness,
and his pain center added, fatalistically, that he was not going to enjoy waking up very much.

Sounds became sharp and distinct, putting his teeth on edge. A throbbing, persistent ache localized into what felt like a
cue ball sutured beneath the skin of his forehead. His back, his arms, were as stiff as basalt, and pulsed with pain. It felt
as if his entire back was on fire. Hot.

Ben Slayton opened one eye. Pain seemed to flood in through the opening, eagerly filling remote crannies, causing as much
varied agony as possible. His eyes watered up, and he blinked to clear them in the dim, gray light. They ran clean, and he
saw indefinite clouds of thin white smoke billowing up to his left. The heat registered again, sharply this time, causing
him to clench his teeth and suck air. His eyebrows were brimmed up with sweat, and perspiration trickled in fat beads all
over his body. He could feel sweat dripping from his chin. The hissing and clanking became louder, more abrasive.

There was a man with a gun watching Slayton. Slayton made him out before the man was aware he had come to. Calling in his
years of endurance training to fight the pain and the burning sensations, Slayton studied the man through slitted eyes. Sweat
drops continued to blur his vision. The thin clouds of wispy smoke seemed to be live steam.

The man was an American, Slayton realized, though not one of the trio he had introduced himself to during the fracas in Shauna’s
suite. Those men, however, had apparently made their presence felt by pummelling him well after the Rameses VI figurine had
conveniently dispatched his consciousness. They were cowards; they worked best with subjects who could not fight back.

He had not yet stopped to wonder how he was maintained in such a position. His legs and knees felt numb. He was being supported—that
had something to do with the burning heat presently baking his back and arms. Gravity, however, was doing its best to drag
him down to the floor and to sleep. His feet were not touching the floor. Without looking, he angled his toes downward, and
by straining for distance, they managed brief contact with the surface below.

Slayton continued to struggle mentally, to keep his restored awareness a secret from the man with the gun as long as possible.
He was sitting some fifteen feet away, cocked back in a folding chair, his attention sporadically absorbed by a magazine which
he held folded double. Yes, even through the steam Slayton could tell the man was an American. The magazine was in English.
The gun was a military-issue Colt .45 automatic, and jutted from a brown leather holster nestled beneath the man’s left armpit.
He was stripped down to a skintight black T-shirt, and Slayton traced the brown strings of leather holding the shoulder holster
in concert with the man’s musculature. His coat was draped behind the folding chair.

The hissing was indistinct to Slayton, like the sound of distant hydraulic brakes. He kept his eyes on the man in the distance,
and, satisfied that he might get away with turning his head, did so. What he saw looked strange, but gradually assumed proportion
and significance in his still-fogged brain.

His right arm—as was his left, he assumed—was lashed straight out from the shoulder to a dull column of silver that seemed
to run off to infinity, its wide parallel lines dwindling to a meeting point somewhere in the darkness beyond his field of
vision. The lashings ran vertically around the huge pipe—yes, it had to be a big pipe—and held Slayton’s arms packed deep
within a layer of insulating material. He recognized the lashings as tightly cinched electrical wire—lamp cord. It bit harshly
into the flesh of his arms, imprisoning him in a crucifixion posture arranged so that his feet just missed the floor.

His back and shoulders ached dully. He had been hanging for some time—otherwise it would have hurt more. He guessed that he
was lashed to a live steam pipe—that explained the heat and the white clouds. And the sweat, and the burning pain. Slayton
squeezed his eyes shut, emitting a tiny grunt which the man with the gun did not hear. The ambient noise in the cellar—that’s
where they had to be, Slayton’s mind added, because it was all dingy piping and dust and bricks and noise and darkness—drowned
out his small sound of pain.

Slayton tried clenching his fists, bunching the tendons in his arms against the thin bite of the bindings. He could not hope
to work them loose, but he could try to pump some blood, and life, back into his arm muscles. Since he was not dead already,
he assumed that he would eventually be untied, for some purpose, if only to be killed elsewhere. It would do no good to have
arms and legs of stone when they took him down. He had to prepare for any opening in any way he could, and so, discreetly,
he wracked his depleted body through subtle isometrics. It would beef up the pain, true, but the pain would keep him from
passing out. He made it into an endurance test which was standard procedure for those captured and tortured by the Viet Cong.
You made it into a game of pain, and pain thresholds—it was the only way to keep from losing your mind. Some men even grew
to need it, becoming addicted to the need to assert themselves against incredible agony. Slayton worked at it, narrowing his
concentration down to a thin beam, staring covertly at the man across the room and working up a kind of hate that obliterated
much of the superficial pain. He tried to will blood, and life, back into his legs and arms.

Tense and release. Tense and release. Like lifting weights
, he thought.

There was no way to gauge passing time, so Slayton ignored it. The important thing was to stay awake.

Chalmers decided to give the man he was guarding some water, in order that he did not fry to death on the steam pipe like
a spitted pig. It would do no good to hand over a dead body, not when they needed somebody like Ben Slayton to leave behind
after they had finished up their assignment in Washington. A prime scapegoat for assorted mayhem.

He dug an Army canteen out of a canvas rucksack at his feet. It contained plain water. His approach to the bound man on the
steam pipe was luxuriously slow.

To Ben Slayton, who watched, it took the man eons just to walk across the room toward him. Perhaps it was a ploy, a subtler
form of torture. He had seen the canteen, and having seen it and been allowed to get his hopes up for a drink, the logical
thing for the man to do would be to turn and resume his seat, smiling.

“Hey,” Chalmers said, patting Slayton on the cheek. His head lolled. “Hey! You still with us, man?”

Slayton cracked his eyes open.

“Here.” He tried to tilt the canteen toward Slayton’s lips, but had to get closer to do it. There was no danger of his coming
loose. Slayton’s tongue came out. The water seemed to vanish, be absorbed directly into the tissues without being swallowed.
His lips were dry and cracked with white lines.

“Jesus, you’re getting a little well-done,” said Chalmers. “Can’t adjust the heat. Sorry.”

Slayton’s voice tried to fail him, but he forced it to work. “Who are you?” he managed, in a dry rasp.

A look of pained irritation spread across Chalmers’s face. “Come on, man,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t you guys ever
learn? Jesus. Name, rank, and serial shit. Don’t be stupid.”

“Are you with Haman?” Speaking was painful.

“Man, you’ve got a hell of an egg on your forehead. I’m surprised your brains didn’t fly out your ears. Christ.” He tilted
Slayton’s head up and pressed his thumb into the large purple bruise. Slayton’s body stiffened, galvanically. “That hurt?”
Chalmers asked, smiling.

“Deke, that pussy bastard,” he said. “Probably pounded you while somebody else held you, am I right?”

“Knocked me out,” said Slayton.

“Ho, that figures. Deke never could go one-on-one with anybody.” He looked up when he saw Slayton’s eyes glazing. “Hey man,
hey!” He slapped Slayton. “Don’t pass out on me, man!”

Slayton’s vision stabilized, and he said, “Are you that hard up for conversation?”

“Hey listen,” Chalmers said. “We got us a nice long solitary little wait ahead of us. I’ve read that damned magazine twice
and I can’t even make a phone call to get a pizza. You wanta know what pain is, buddy? Pain is boredom. Shit!”

There was a constant, background roar in the basement that gave each of Chalmers’ words a grating edge, as though his speech
blended into the noise to produce a result that could cause physical pain to Slayton’s ears. The pauses between his sentences
seemed like years.

“Damned thing is, we’re gonna turn you loose, man,” he said. “See? You’re gonna be outta here before you even know it. Just
like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Later.”

Slayton knew full well that could be another hope-and-denial tactic. He chose to ignore it. “Do you always say and do everything
in terms of cliches?” he asked, giving up hope of getting any leads in passing from Chalmers’ speech.

Chalmers shook his head, almost ruefully. “Wise-ass,” he said. “Don’t get smart, prick.” He dug his thumb savagely into the
bruise on Slayton’s forehead, the reaction apparently pleasing him. His eyes went a little crazy and unfocused. “I might blow
your goddam head off right now.”

Slayton was ready for that one. “You can’t do anything,” he said. “Without orders. You’d squat on the floor and jerk off if
Haman ordered you to. You’re nothing.”

It got the desired response, a stinging slap that rocked his head from side to side against the scorching surface of the pipe.
“You’re incredibly dumb, man, for a guy who’s tied up. You haven’t got no brains. You’re gonna die if you’re not careful!”

Slayton decided to lubricate the man’s rage a bit more. He was fairly certain Chalmers was not empowered to kill him. He had
to be sure. “I’m tied up and you still can’t kill me, you simple-minded dog turd.”

That was it. Chalmers drove a fist into Slayton’s stomach, and his breath rushed out. And as Chalmers was working on his mad,
he failed to see what Slayton could perceive as soon as his eyes refocused. Someone else had entered the basement. A man clad
in gray utility clothes, lugging janitorial gear through the door to the security stairway.

“Come on, big man,” said Slayton. “Let’s see what you’re made of besides shit.”

Chalmers’ eyes flared, and he whipped the gun from the shoulder holster, jacking the hammer back with his thumb. “You talk
too much, man,” he said, placing the bore of the big gun so it encompassed the tip of Slayton’s nose. “You’re gonna wind up
worm food because you talk too much. Better be nice.” He grinned his sickly grin again.

“Fuck you,” Slayton said, low and even, calculated for effect. The janitor had spotted them by now, and had moved quietly
closer for a better look. He was a man in his mid-thirties, looking somewhat Italian, with a rich mop of curly black hair.

“Dumb,” Chalmers said simply. Then he pulled the trigger fast, three times, the barrel of the gun mashed into Slayton’s face.
He felt the hard clank of the action snapping back, but remained with his eyes steely. To show a man like Chalmers fear was
a mistake, even if you were going to die. But Slayton’s body tensed against his will, anticipating the bullet that would spread
his head and brains all over the basement.

Three dry clicks on a empty chamber. Chalmers saw the fear fleet across Slayton’s face. It was a microsecond, but it was enough.
He laughed hysterically, high and whooping. He leaned forward, mashing his face against Slayton’s, so it appeared as if he
had one huge eye in the center of his forehead.

“Big man, big man!” he hooted into Slayton’s face. “You’re so scared of dying you’re making in your pants, big man!” He pulled
the clip to the .45 out of his back pocket and waved it in front of Slayton, cackling like a five-year-old who wouldn’t share.
“You’re scared of an empty gun!”

On the words
empty gun
, the janitor broke an industrial broom handle over Chalmers’ skull. His eyes rolled up in his head, and he went down in a
pile of unconscious arms and legs, the pistol spinning away on the flat stone surface of the floor.

“Man, what in
hell
is going on down here?” the janitor asked, picking up the gun.

“Treasury agent,” Slayton croaked, as though introducing himself. He felt the absurd urge to continue;
treasury agent, janitor; janitor, terrorist
.

The janitor said, “Don’t go away,” and rushed off for a moment, returning with a pair of wire cutters he used to free Slayton
from the pipe.

Agony flared brightly in his arms as they came free. He couldn’t help falling in a heap beside Chalmers on the floor when
he finally left the pipe. The janitor helped him up. Slayton actually thought he might swoon as blood and fresh pain raced
into his depleted extremities.

Slayton pulled himself to his knees. The sensation was at once exhilarating and almost nauseating.

“You have to help me with him,” he said, picking up the canteen from where Chalmers had placed it on the floor and drinking—carefully,
but greedily. “I’m deputizing you, or employing you, or whatever you want. You’ll make a lot of money for a few hours work.”

“I hear that,” the man said. “This janitorial crap sucks for air. What do I do with this punk?”

“Tie his hands,” Slayton said, then adding, “You have a car?”