The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,240

to inflict pain. It also requires that the subject of torture recognize that intention. You must recognize my intention to cause pain. More precisely, you must recognize that I intend you to recognize that I intend to cause pain. One has to satisfy that structure of regressive recognition. Would you say that you and I have done so?"

"Yes!" the old man screamed. "Yes! Yes! Yes!" His neck thrashed this way and that as a bolt of electricity blasted into him once more. He was being raped by pain, felt that the very fiber of his existence had been violated.

"Or would you offer another analysis?"

"No!" Fielding shrieked with pain once more. The agony was simply beyond imagining.

"You know what Emerson says of the great man: 'When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit.' Would you concur?"

"Yes!" the scholar shrieked. "Yes! No! Yes!" The muscular convulsions that rippled his spine only magnified the already unendurable pain.

"Are you surprised how much pain you're capable of surviving? Are you wondering how your consciousness can even contain suffering of this magnitude? It's OK to be curious. The thing to remember is, the human body today is really no different than it was twenty thousand years ago. The circuits of pleasure and pain are as they were. So you might think that there is no difference between the experience of being tortured to death during, let us say, the Spanish Inquisition and the experience that I can offer you. You might think that, wouldn't you? But, speaking as something of an aficionado, I'd have to say you'd be wrong. Our evolving understanding of neurochemistry is really quite valuable. Ordinarily, the human body has the equivalent of a safety valve: when C-fiber stimulation reaches a certain level, endorphins kick in, blunting and assuaging the pain. Or else unconsciousness results. God, it used to piss me off when that happened. Either way, the phenomenology of pain is limited. It's like brightness: you can experience only a certain level of brightness. You maximally stimulate the cones and rods of the retina, and after that point, there's no change in the perception of brightness. But when it comes to pain, contemporary neuroscience changes the whole game. What's in your IV drip is absolutely crucial to the effect, my dear Angus. You knew that, didn't you? We've been administering a substance known as naltrexone. It's an opiate antagonist - it blocks the natural painkillers in your brain, those legendary endorphins. So the ordinary limits of pain can be pushed past. Not exactly a natural high."

Another wail of agony - almost a keening - interrupted his disquisition, but Demarest was undeterred. "Just think: because of the naltrexone drip, you can experience a level of pain that the human body was never meant to know. A level of pain that none of your ancestors would ever have known, even if they'd had the misfortune to be eaten alive by a saber-toothed tiger. And it can increase nearly without limit. The main limit, I would say, is the patience of the torturer. Do I strike you as a patient man? I can be, Angus. You'll discover that. I can be very patient when I need to be."

Angus Fielding, distinguished master of Trinity College, began to do something he had not done since he was eight: he broke down and sobbed.

"Oh, you'll yearn for unconsciousness - but the drip also contains potent psychostimulants - a carefully titrated combination of dexmethyl-phenidate, atomoxetine, and adrafinil - which will keep you maximally alert, indefinitely. You won't miss anything. It will be quite exquisite, the ultimate in-body experience. I know you think you've experienced agony beyond endurance, beyond comprehension. But I can increase it tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold. What you have experienced so far is nothing at all, compared to what lies ahead. Assuming, of course, that you continue to stonewall." Demarest's hand hovered near the dial. "It's really most important to me that I receive satisfactory answers to my questions." "Anything," Fielding breathed, his cheeks wet with tears. "Anything." Demarest smiled as the black pools of his gaze bore down on the aging don. "Look into my eyes, Angus. Look into my eyes. And now you must confide in me utterly. What did you tell Paul Janson?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
"Lookit, I've got one person watching the entrance," Jessica Kincaid told