The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,125

he began.

"Don't speak," Demarest replied. "Just watch. Watch and learn. It's the old rule: See one, do one, teach one."

Now Demarest approached the prisoner who rested on the ground nearest him. He ran a caressing hand over the young man's cheeks, and said, "Toi men ban." He tapped himself on his heart and repeated the words: "I like you."

The two men seemed bewildered.

"Do you speak English? It doesn't matter if you do, because I speak Vietnamese."

The first one spoke, at last. "Yes." His voice was tight.

Demarest rewarded him with a smile. "I thought you did." He ran his index finger down the man's forehead, over his nose, and stopped at his lips. "I like you. You people inspire me. Because you really care. That matters to me. You have your ideals, and you're going to fight until the bitter end. How many nguoi My have you killed, do you think? How many Americans?"

The second man burst out, "We no kill!"

"No, because you're farmers, right?" Demarest's tones were honeyed.

"We farm."

"You're not VC at all, are you? Just honest, ordinary hardworking fishermen, right?"

"Dung." Right.

"Or did you say you were farmers?"

The two looked confused. "No VC," the first man said pleadingly.

"He's not your army comrade?" Demarest indicated his bound companion.

"Just friend."

"Oh, he's your friend."

"Yes."

"He likes you. You help each other."

"Help each other."

"You people have suffered a lot, haven't you?"

"Much suffering."

"Like our savior, Jesus Christ. Do you know that he died for our sins? Do you want to know how he died? Yes? Well, why didn't you say so! Let me tell you. No, better idea: let me show you."

"Please?" The word came out like plis.

Demarest turned to Bewick. "Bewick, it's downright uncivil to leave these poor young men on the ground."

Bewick nodded, allowing a grin to flicker on his wooden features. Then, rotating a wooden stick twice, he winched the rope tighter. The tension of the rope lifted the prisoners off the ground; the weight of their bodies was supported by their tightly bound wrists and ankles. Each emitted a loud, panicked gasp.

"Xin loi," Demarest said gently. Sorry about that.

They were in agony, their limbs hyperextended, their arms straining at their sockets. The torsion of the position made breathing extraordinarily difficult, requiring a tremendous exertion to arch their chests and extend their diaphragms - an exertion that only increased the torque on their extremities.

Janson flushed. "Sir," he said sharply. "May I have a word with you, alone? Sir?"

Demarest walked over to Janson. "What you're watching may take some getting used to," he said quietly. "But I will not have you interfering with the exercise of executive discretion."

"You're torturing them," Janson said, his face tight.

"You think that's torture?" Demarest shook his head disgustedly. "Lieutenant First Class Bewick, Lieutenant Second Class Janson is upset right now. For his own protection, I need you to restrain him - by any means necessary. Any problems with that?"

"None, sir," Bewick replied. He leveled his combat pistol at Janson's head.

Demarest walked over to the nearby jeep and pressed the play button on his portable tape cassette. Choral music spilled from small, tinny speakers. "Hildegard von Bingen," he said to no one in particular. "Spent most of her life in a convent she founded, in the twelfth century. One day when she was forty-two years old she had a vision of God, and with that she became the greatest composer of her age. Each time she sat down to create, it was always after she had suffered the most excruciating pain - what she called the scourge of God. For only when the pain brought her to the point of hallucination did her work pour from her - the antiphons and plainsongs and religious treatises. Pain made Saint Hildegard produce. Pain made her sing." He turned to the second man, who was starting to sweat profusely. The prisoner's breath came in strangled yelps, like a dying animal's. "I thought it might relax you," he said. He listened to a few bars of the plainsong, pensively.

Sanctus es unguendo

periculose fractos:

sanctus es tergendo

fetida vulnera.

Then he stood over the second prisoner. "Look into my eyes," Demarest said. He pulled a small knife from a waist holster and made a small slice in the man's belly. The skin and the fascia beneath immediately sheared, pulled apart by the tension of the ropes. "Pain will make you sing, too." The man screamed.

"Now, that's torture," Demarest called to Janson. "What would you like me to say? That it hurts me as much as it hurts them?" He