he told it. In that case, Ronnie would be allowed to walk out and disappear into the world, unaware of how close he had come to the end of his life.
Or Andropov could decide that the boy needed more persuasive interrogation than Totoy could do here in the office with the staff just a wall away. In that case, Ronnie would be taken out to the compound. And that would be the end. Having seen the compound and the Russians, he would know too much. He could never be allowed to leave alive.
Totoy didn’t especially care either way, but some distant part of him was actually rooting for the kid. He was a gutsy little fucker.
Magda, in his ear, said: “Ask about the second text.”
Totoy said, “What did your mother mean, ‘Help is on the way’?”
“I don’t know,” Ronnie said. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
In his earpiece, Totoy heard a sound that he recognized as the ring tone on Magda’s cell. He heard her voice as she answered the call.
A hell of a way to conduct an interrogation, he thought.
To Ronnie he said, “Who is coming to help you?”
“Nobody is helping us. That’s why I came here.”
Magda was chattering in his earpiece. Not to him—to somebody on the cell. Loud, displeased.
Totoy said, “Why would your mother say something like that if it’s not true?”
“She probably wanted to keep me out of trouble, keep me from coming here. I don’t know.”
Now Andropov and Magda were talking back and forth in the earpiece. Totoy couldn’t make out the words, but it was loud and insistent, so distracting that he couldn’t continue. He stood and looked down at the boy and waited for the racket to die down in his earpiece.
“A call from Tacloban: two men were asking about Marivic this morning,” Magda said. She was talking directly to Totoy this time. “A Fil-Am and an American. Tough guys. What does he know about that?”
Totoy said, ”Who are the men asking about your sister in Tacloban today at the Optimo office? A Filipino-American and an americano.”
“I don’t know any Fil-Ams. And I don’t know any ’canos.”
Totoy said, “Claiming to be friends of the family, threatening our representative there.” He was repeating Magda’s words in his ear now, word for word. “A mestizo built like a tank, an American with eyes like ice.”
“I never heard of them before,” Ronnie said. “You’re making this up.”
The boy wasn’t defiant anymore. He was scared. His voice was unsteady, and his lower lip trembled.
“No,” Totoy said. “This is for real.”
The boy said nothing. The earpiece was quiet, too, for a moment. Then Andropov spoke. His voice was hard, but somewhere underneath there was a note of worry. He said, “Who the fuck are these men?”
Totoy moved around to the side of the chair, so that he was directly over Ronnie. He leaned in close, getting right in Ronnie’s face—blocking the camera, he knew, but to hell with it—and he snarled, “Who the fuck are these men?”
Then he stood aside to let Andropov watch the response.
“Sir, truly, I have no idea.”
The kid was telling the truth. Totoy was sure of it. He had been doing this for twenty-five years, putting the squeeze on assholes with something to hide, and he had learned to detect the rare golden nugget of truth buried in the endless shitpile of deception.
Now it was up to Andropov.
Totoy waited.
Andropov said, “I want him over here.”
And that was it. The question was how to get him out, past the office staff, who believed that they were working for a legitimate employment agency. It was almost midday: lunch hour. Totoy got the idea of having Magda take them all out for lunch, a special treat from Optimo. Nobody turned that down. The office cleared out in a hurry.
Two of the Filipino guards came over from the compound. Ronnie still didn’t know what was happening. He was sitting in the chair in Totoy’s office, waiting.
He tried to bolt when he saw the guards, but he couldn’t get past them. They threw him to the floor. One of them had brought a tranquilizer in a syringe. The kid fought hard when he saw the needle, but Totoy knelt on his arm, pinning it down, while he found a vein and stuck it in.
The boy started to fade right away.
They wanted to take him out while he could still walk, so they brought him to his feet and led him through the deserted office, one guard holding him