Mahoganys Dream | Page 7

which Dr. Stitz
had confirmed with a call to Washington, sufficiently explained his
consultations with the station officer and their need to temporarily close
the Data Room.
As he walked down the hall leading to the overflow supply room where
he had left Tsang, he saw Brian opening a box of bottled water with the
tip of his car key. Three empty plastic bags from Albertsons littered the
floor. He chuckled. He liked the kid.

"Morning, Sport."
Brian grunted a reply, but didn't look up from the box of water.
"How's Bruce this morning?"
The question made Brian pause. He had indeed called his boss again.
He wanted his orders in writing.
Dunleavy held out a curled sheet of thermal fax paper. "This came for
you this morning."
Brian snatched the paper. It was a memo from Bruce instructing him to
assist Dunleavy with his "project". "How did you get this?" Brian
asked.
"Bruce faxed it to my hotel and asked me to deliver it to you. You
realize he couldn't fax it to the lab where any one of these pencil-
necked geeks could just pick it up off the fax machine."
Brian understood that, but he still scrutinized the fax closely. "The
header says there were four pages. Where're the rest?"
"The rest of the fax was for me," Dunleavy said.
Brian couldn't think of any reason why Bruce would send Dunleavy
private correspondence in the same transmission as his memo. But then,
just a day earlier, he hadn't even known that operatives like Dunleavy
existed. And if it were really true that Tsang was stealing classified data
and Dunleavy had caught on to it, then in a sense Dunleavy had saved
his ass. Nonetheless, he was looking forward to getting the
interrogation over with. He wasn't trained for it and this Dunleavy
character made him uncomfortable.
Rummaging through the trove of groceries scattered around Brian's feet,
Dunleavy said, "Jeez, did you get enough food?"
"Uh, I wasn't sure how long this thing would go on, so I got enough
for- "

"Six debriefings," Dunleavy said. He bent down and picked up a box of
frosted strawberry Pop Tarts. "You think this will make a man tell you
his secrets?"
Brian blinked at the box. "I tried to get stuff we could store at room
temperature."
Dunleavy gave him the same look from the bar. "The best and the
brightest," he said. Then he unlocked the door and became a different
person again.
__________
Tsang was huddled on the floor in a corner of the room. He was
completely naked. The room was freezing cold. He shivered
uncontrollably. The air stank of rotting food and sweat.
The lights suddenly came on.
Tsang peed on the floor when he saw that the Red Dragon had returned.
Dunleavy sat at the table and methodically unpacked his case.
When he was done, he said, "So, Dr. Tsang, do you have my answers
yet?"
Tsang swallowed hard.
__________
Torture. That was simply the only word Brian knew to describe the
things that were done to Tsang in that room. Dunleavy could hide
behind all the semantics he wanted to, but this was plain, unadulterated
torture. And it turned his stomach.
At one point, after Tsang had protested his innocence for perhaps the
hundredth time, Dunleavy abruptly announced, "It's time for the
Clarifier." After that he went to his case and retrieved a long black tool
of some kind. The object was about a foot in length, with a tapered

cylindrical shaft resting on top of a thick, rectangular Base. The shaft
vaguely reminded Brian of the accessory nozzle tip that attached to the
hose of his vacuum cleaner. Dunleavy unfurled a long AC cord and
plugged one end into the base of the object and the other end into the
wall socket.
"See this, Dr. Tsang?" He held the device in the air. "This is the
Clarifier. We call it that because it has a remarkable tendency to
produce sudden bouts of clarity in those unlucky enough to experience
its persuasiveness." He walked over to Tsang, who was slouched in a
chair, and got face-to-face with his emaciated subject. "I'm going to
stick this in your ear because YOU'RE NOT FUCKING HEARING
ME!" He turned to Brian and said, "Hold him still."
"What?" Brian said, surprised. "I thought I was just here to observe."
"You're here to do what I tell you to do. Now hold him still or call your
wife for bail money."
Brian decided that Dunleavy's interrogation persona was an asshole. He
reluctantly walked across the room and bear hugged Tsang from behind,
pressing him to the chair. Tsang was so eviscerated he offered no
resistance. It was like hugging a rag doll.
Dunleavy came over, grabbed a fist full of Tsang's