The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Blokhin had put on a full-length leather slaughterhouse apron and tied it tightly around his waist. He pulled on heavy black rubber gloves, then wheeled the battery from the corner of the room and uncoiled the cables. A red star was embossed on the side of the battery. The cable ends were clamped to the battery terminals. The opposite ends terminated in dull copper alligator jaws that were wrapped in red felt, which Blokhin dipped into a bucket of water, soaking the felt wraps thoroughly. He touched the felts together, but no Hollywood sparks dramatically arced and snapped. Instead, the felts started smoking from the current, quenched by Blokhin’s dipping them into the bucket again. There was a sour, metallic, burned toast smell in the room. Nate heard a chair scrape behind him and willed Dominika to stay still. How long could he last? How long would Domi stay in her seat? Come on, baby, hang tough.

Blokhin casually leaned against the arm of Nate’s chair. “I require one thing from you, Amerikanskiy,” he said softly. “The name of your agent in Moscow.”

Nate smiled at him. “The name’s a secret malys, you small prick; that’s why we use the word ‘agent.’ ”

Blokhin’s eyes narrowed, and his face flushed. He touched a felt pad to each side of Nate’s left ankle and looked as Nate’s back arched and his left leg involuntarily shot out straight. The electric shock was excruciating, half hammer blows and half pulsing muscle spasm that engulfed his whole leg. Shit, this could go on for days. Blokhin removed the felts, and the sudden cessation of pain and spasm was a heavenly relief. But anticipating the next one was enough to drive one mad, which was the point of using shock—the prisoner’s dreading the next jolt.

Blokhin dipped the felts in the water again. “The name of the mole? We have all day and all night, until the battery goes dead or you lose your mind, whichever will come first.”

Nate remembered how good Blokhin’s English was. Nate shook his head to clear it. “You’re an ass-picking gorilla, mandjuk, dickhead.”

With a snarl, Blokhin pressed the felts on the insides of Nate’s thighs, an inch from his scrotum. Nate’s torso curled forward in a rigid bow against the chest strap, and his lower body started shaking spasmodically, the current running through his skeletal muscle fibers triggering synchronous contraction. The pain between his legs was all-encompassing, radiating through his penis, which immediately stood straight up, followed by a loss of bladder control. Blokhin removed the felts and stood back, avoiding the trickle of urine under Nate’s chair. The American raised his head, straightened, and looked at Blokhin through wet hair, which had fallen over his eyes.

“I require the name, Yankee,” said Blokhin.

Nate shook his head. He couldn’t take much more of the felts. And he was terrified that Dominika would soon react to save him. Only one hope: piss Blokhin off so much that the Spetsnaz sergeant would either kill him or so seriously damage Nate that the interrogation would cease, at least temporarily, thus distancing Dominika from a catastrophic reaction. The button would be Blokhin’s honor. Give it a try, hurry. Save her. His crotch burned and his thighs twitched uncontrollably. During the last spasm it felt as if he had pulled a muscle in his back.

“This is why we pitched you in Istanbul,” said Nate hoarsely in Russian, to give the insult more edge. “You are no man of honor, certainly not worthy of belonging to the Spetsnaz brotherhood. Ty zhenshchina

, you are a woman.” If he ever got out of this, Domi would be sure to give him grief over that.

Blokhin’s eyes goggled at the insult, and he cast aside the battery cables, kicked over the battery cart, spilling the water bucket, walked over to a cupboard, and drew out a meter-length of rebar. His eyes were unblinking, like a lizard’s eyes, and his scarred forehead was a livid purple.

For what we are about to receive, thought Nate, looking at Blokhin’s face.

Blokhin hit him with the length of the steel bar across his left shin, causing a comminuted fracture of the tibia, shattering the bone into several pieces inside the leg and tearing the interosseous membrane that stabilizes the tibia and fibula, essentially rendering Nate’s left leg below the knee the approximate consistency of cooked pasta. Nate roared in pain, but it was a throaty roar of defiance, not the keening wail of a terrified prisoner. Nate looked at Blokhin as he roared, as if he would tear his throat out with his teeth, but the blocky trooper was unfazed—he handled the ribbed length of the rebar in both hands, lovingly, like Benny Goodman held his clarinet.