Cogar's Despair (Cogar Adventure Series) Read online

  "Funny. Put it on your wrists, please."

  Biting down on the plastic and tugging, I pulled it tight; then waved my bound hands to show that I had complied. "Seems extreme, doesn't it? We're gentlemen, here. And besides, you've got a gun."

  "I'd prefer to kill you at my leisure, Mr. Cogar," he said as he stepped behind me. "That's harder to do if your faculties are uninhibited." Wrapping a black cloth around my eyes, he continued, "This will keep you from seeing more than you should."

  We exited his office, the drug lord's hand on my shoulder to guide my blind steps.

  "Why the theatrics? I'm beginning to think you actually intend to keep me alive."

  He didn't answer, but continued to push me along, down stairs, along corridors so narrow my shoulders could bump both sides, and finally to our destination. The temperature in this room was noticeably higher; the sweat that beaded on my collar tickled as it slipped down to my armpit. Pulling the blindfold from my head, my captor said quietly, "This is what I wanted to show you."

  We stood in a long room, the windows smothered in black paint, the ceiling low and discolored by the dark fumes discharged from rows of yellowed glass beakers and flasks. A few technicians—if you could call gun-toting gangsters wearing disposable dust masks and latex gloves technicians—strolled carefully among the burners like nursemaids among sleeping babies.

  "Seems like a predictably hazardous operation you're running here," I said cautiously.

  "It's hardly dangerous, at least not for me. These gentlemen before you are some of the very best my industry has to offer. Many of them previously performed their services for my competitors, and through fierce negotiations, I've convinced them to come work for me."

  "By fierce negotiations, you mean you killed their bosses, right?"

  "You're a bright boy, Mr. Cogar."

  "No need to be patronizing."

  "Hardly my intention. Yes, I killed them. Much like wild animals, in the drug-dealing business, if you're alive, it is almost invariably because you killed all those who would have killed you."

  "Must be stressful."

  "The money helps the stress a great deal. Each of these men is paid four thousand yuan a week—a sum that many would gladly kill or die for. They think they're privileged for the opportunity to cook for me, even if the fumes will have them coughing up blood within weeks."

  "You seem pretty comfortable talking about it in front of them. Seems odd that they'd be okay with that."

  "They don't speak English, Mr. Cogar. Where do you think you are? This isn't a resort destination."

  I wiped the sweat from my brow with my shirtsleeve, suddenly irritated that my hands were bound.

  "Right. Well since you're such a clever businessman, I have to think that a thousand yuan a week doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of your profit margin. Hell, that bag that Harry tossed you must have had close to a hundred thousand in it."

  "You were there for that?" he laughed. "You've been following me for some time, then. I don't know whether to be flattered or concerned. Having seen that, you must have a good sense of why I'm successful in this industry."

  "It's pretty clear. You don't take a lot of guff."

  "No, no I don't."

  We stood in silence for a few minutes, watching his workers as they mindlessly tended their poisonous crop. I couldn't be sure why this man had wanted me to see the workings of his clandestine business; I could think of no tangible benefit to him. Was this some kind of deranged show-and-tell session?

  Clearing my throat from the rancid air, I said, "So now that I've seen your operation in action, don't you think we're on a first-name basis?"

  He licked his lips contemplatively before answering.

  "William. That's more than you need to know. In return for my good faith, I'll need something from you," he leveled his revolver at my forehead. "The title of your publication and the name of your editor. I'd like to see how much he values your life."

  19

  Just a Dream

  They had moved Harold to another room. At least that was my hope. The alternative was a stark one. Fastened to the chair I had first discovered my friend in, I was left alone in the dark of the warehouse basement. At this point I had been awake for more than 24 hours, and even though I was terrified and exceedingly uncomfortable, I found myself drifting to sleep.

  As I spiraled away from consciousness, I suddenly found myself standing on the warehouse roof. Overhead, the sky swirled in a dark, coal-slurry gray that pulsed with rapid bursts of lightning. Before me, William, dressed like a catholic priest, stood with heels against the edge of the rooftop, holding Jessica at knifepoint. Wearing a black negligee and stilettos, she motioned to me to come to her, her mouth moving as though she were crying out. But I could only hear the rumble of thunder, the deluge of raindrops, and the whistle of the icy wind running across my neck.

  "I'll call my editor, just let her go."

  A cellular phone materialized from William's hand and he tossed it at my feet. But, as if it had struck ice, the device slid across the concrete, gaining speed, then floated off the edge of the building. Looking after it, the earth below disappeared—vanishing into a foggy abyss.

  "I can't call him now," I said simply, fighting the increasing volume of the weather. Jabbing his weapon closer to Jessica's throat, William scowled, motioning for me to go after it.

  The dizziness that accompanies an inevitable fall rushed over me as I dashed toward the chasm and jumped. The clouds parted as I fell, revealing a broad desert, flat and empty. Crashing into the sand like a wildly thrown horseshoe, I looked up to see Harold sitting atop a demolished, smoldering taxicab, cheerfully smoking a cigarette. Dressed as an American soldier in full battle gear, he was difficult for me to recognize at first, until he looked at me, smiled, and said, "You ain't seen a thing, yet, right?"

  From beneath the car, a small creature emerged. It was the raccoon dog Jessica and I had seen on our way into the warehouse. Skittering between us, it stood on its haunches, and, in the voice of Ambassador Chamberlain, spoke clearly, "Damn, will you miss it then." It repeated that same phrase over and over until Harold became annoyed. Flicking his cigarette into the wind, he climbed down from the taxi and tugged a grenade from his vest. Pulling the pin, he shook it threateningly at the creature.

  "Harry, get rid of it. It's going to blow up."

  But he kept shaking it as the raccoon dog, like a machine, repeated those same words. "Damn, will you miss it then."

  I started awake, trembling despite the absurdity of the nightmare. The room was empty, dark and quiet, with the exception of the scratching steps of a nearby rat. My dream still fresh in mind, I became determined to find a way out. I had to warn Jessica. I looked around for something sharp to rub my restraints against, but the room was too dark to make anything out. The plastic dug into my skin as I feebly pulled against the binding. Without having eaten anything in the last 12 hours, I was too weak to make much of an effort. But as bad as things appeared, my situation was about to worsen considerably.

  The door flew open, swiveling about its axis and cracking loudly against the concrete wall. It made me jump, and the light from the hallway hurt my eyes. Though I couldn't make out his face, Mongkut's silhouette was unmistakable, his belly hanging over his belted cargo pants, protruding from the bottom of a once-white tank top turned brown by days of soaking in sweat, suspended in cigar smoke.

  "Pig," he grunted at me as he slid what looked to be a narrow tube from behind his back. The lash surprised me at first. I didn't even jump when the bamboo switch snapped across my chest. A rose-red streak flooded out from the wound, blood racing through the fibers of my shirt.

  "That hurt," I said matter-of-factly.

  Leaning down and thrusting his ugly face within inches of mine, Mongkut raised the switch between us and tapped me on the nose.

  "This hurt more."

  He smiled; the smell of onion and decay on his breath. Withdrawing a knife from his
pocket, he retreated to a chair in the room's corner and began whittling the edge of the bamboo to a scoop-like point.

  This was going to be trouble, I could tell. I hoped it was only a means to intimidate me. If it was, well, it was working.

  "You know, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. My name's Grant Cogar, and I'd like for us to overlook our differences and be friends. Whaddya say, buddy?"

  A sinister laugh floated from the corner of the room.

  "We be friends, American. We be friends…"

  "That didn't seem especially sincere," I said.

  From the shadows, Mongkut took deliberate steps toward me, each foot landing between broken bottles, old newsprint, and fragments of fractured tile.

  "We be friends," he repeated. Reaching in from the darkness, he wrapped his grubby fingers tightly around my wrist.

  "I don't know what you're thinking, but this is no way to treat your friends," I said between clenched teeth, struggling to twist my chair and the hand strapped to it away from my attacker. Placing his shoe against the chair's base, Mongkut slowly moved the sharpened bamboo switch toward my hand.

  "Why are you doing this? What is it you want to know? Just ask me and I'll tell you, I swear!"

  "You will swear," he laughed.

  Slowly, deliberately, he aligned the point with the underside of my pointer finger's nail.

  "Don't. Don't do that."

  Oddly, even though I knew what was to come, I couldn't turn away. Some part of me believed staring hard enough at the offending weapon would make it stop moving.

  Mongkut made a final, deliberate push, and a tearing pain crawled like a biting venomous insect up my hand, my arm, into my neck and down my spine. A howl, carnal and savage, exploded from my chest and echoed against the cavernous basement walls—so unrestrained and bestial that it surprised even me.

  His mouth agape in a half-smile, tongue against his lower lip and eyes aglow with a sadistic fervor, Mongkut gave the sharpened piece a final thrust, the wedge burying itself into the bone.

  With tears streaming down my face, chin down against my chest, I said quietly, "I'll kill you…I'll kill you."

  Mongkut only laughed as he wiped my blood from his hands against his pants.

  Looking up sullenly, as coherently as possible I whispered, "I promise you this, you little bastard. You'll get yours."

  20

  Pray For Me

  Leaning against a far wall, William watched me as he smoked a cigarette. He had on a fresh shirt and tie, and his shoes were immaculately clean. I could tell because they were at my eye level. Mongkut thought it would be funny to suspend me upside-down for a few hours, the chain around my ankles hoisted over a joist in the ceiling. It felt as though every ounce of blood in my body had dripped into my skull and was now Hell-bent on pushing my eyeballs out of their sockets and escaping.

  "Mr. Cogar, how are the accommodations? I hope you find them to your liking," William said distantly, his eyes following the wisps of smoke blown from his nostrils.

  "You know those will kill you, right?" I whispered hoarsely. Like baked earth following a drought, the torturous hours without water had dried my throat to the texture of lizard's skin. It hurt to speak, and I knew it wasn't worth the energy. My captor was a cat playing with a half-dead field mouse.

  "Judging by your appearance, I'd say you should be more concerned with your own health." Snubbing the cigarette on the wall and letting the crumpled paper fall to the floor, he said, "I've been wanting to ask you something, Mr. Cogar. Why are you here?"

  "Why are any of us here, really? Where are we going? Admittedly, I’m not as current on my existentialist theory as I once was, but I'd recommend examining the works of Dostoyevsky or Nietzsche, or if you're looking for something a little more accessible, C.S. Lewis…"

  "I'm not joking. Why are you here?"

  "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  "Try me," he said, stepping closer.

  "Well I was rating hotels in downtown Seoul yesterday and, after hearing some favorable talk about your establishment here, decided to stop by. But if you keep up this treatment, even your scrumptious continental breakfast won't be enough to salvage your review."

  Crouching to look me in the eyes, he smiled and tapped my cheek.

  "I have to give you credit for your impervious sense of humor, Mr. Cogar."

  Clearing his throat, he stood and walked back into the shadows.

  "Regardless of what brought you to this place, it's still quite the coincidence that you should find yourself here, thousands of miles away from home, in my company. We probably spent time near one another back in the States, and may even have crossed paths without knowing it. Maybe stood in the same line for a show. Perhaps we passed each other on the freeway. Life is amusing that way, isn't it? The world is so large, yet, at times, so terrifyingly small."

  Bending at the waist to force some of the blood from my head, I stared at the ceiling.

  "If you were merciful you'd kill me now. I'm not sure I can take much more of your pompous bullshit. Call that fat little fucker back here and have him shove another bamboo stick through my hand—it'd be a nice reprieve from the sound of your voice."

  "You fancy yourself a very clever man, don't you, Mr. Cogar?"

  "Oh, only when the mood strikes me. You know, when I've been beaten and starved. Nothing like torture to keep me on the ball."

  "This isn't torture, Mr. Cogar. You've clearly lived a life of great luxury if this is the worst pain you've experienced. I'm only letting my men have some idle fun with you while I contact your employer. Should they find my terms unsatisfactory, I'll be forced to step in. You should spend the next few hours praying it doesn't come to that."

  Wheeling around suddenly, William kicked my head like a soccer ball—my entire body swinging like a pendulum as the chain holding me creaked against the wooden ceiling joists—then turned and walked quietly toward the door.

  Spitting a trickle of blood in his direction, I replied, "I'm not much on spirituality. Maybe you could pray on my behalf, you conceited pigfucker."

  He stopped.

  "If you're not a man of religion, Mr. Cogar, you soon will be. Mongkut," he called toward the door, "bring in Mr. Chamberlain."

  Entering in his predictably graceless fashion by kicking the door open like a temperamental mule, the short thug backed through the entryway, towing my friend—the back legs of his chair scraping against the coarse concrete. Spun around to face me, I could see that William's men hadn't scaled back on their torturous conduct during the time we had been separated. Harold's eyes were swollen completely shut, his face purple and bloated. The plastic ties that fastened his wrists to the chair had punctured the skin, and were now half-hidden by swollen tissue and congealed blood.

  "Harry?" I whispered forcefully.

  Unresponsive, I could only speculate how narrow the margin between life and death had become for my friend.

  "I'm sure he can hear you, Mr. Cogar. You'd be amazed at how robust the human body is. It's often much more resilient than the psyche. He'll survive his wounds for a few more days."

  Mongkut released my chains carelessly, dropping me the short distance to the floor on my neck and shoulder. The pressure began to empty from my skull as he dragged me into a chair across from my friend. William withdrew a cell phone from his breast pocket.

  "In fact, Mr. Chamberlain may very well outlive you. You see, he has offended me personally, and for that I intend to make him suffer as long as possible, regardless of whether or not his father meets our demands. You, on the other hand, are of no real interest to me aside from your possible monetary value. This phone call," he said, pointing at the device with his free hand, pressing a single button, and holding it to his ear, "will determine whether you live or die."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but William held his pointer finger up and began speaking politely into the receiver, "Yes, may I speak with Mr. Raahi, please? I'm afraid it's rather ur
gent. Yes, I'll hold."

  Raising his shoulder to pin the phone between his ear and collar, he casually withdrew his revolver from the holster beneath his jacket and slid the cylinder release forward—the chambers rotating out. He gently spun the wheel clockwise, then counterclockwise, examining the cartridges before flicking his wrist and snapping the cylinder back into place.

  "Mr. Raahi, I'm calling regarding one of your reporters. Mr. Cogar. Unfortunately, he's gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble here in Shanghai and is now in my custody. I'd like to begin the negotiation of his terms of release—preferably before I'm forced to sever his hands and mail them to you."

  I knew what Kailas would do. He'd deny having ever known me and hang up the phone. And from his perspective, that was the right move. The odds of successfully negotiating with a criminal, militant, or some other psychotic specimen of low-life are not only impossibly low—they have a tendency to take the ransom money and kill their captive anyway—the very process of negotiating suggests that the captive is worth their attention. Disavowing any knowledge of the person in question sometimes works to confuse or bewilder the captor, buying the captive's rescuers more time to respond while the kidnapper reassesses their value.

  The issue was, I wasn't entirely sure Kailas would follow through with that last part. He had always enforced a strict policy with freelancers: If we were captured or injured doing something stupid, we were on our own. Because we weren't staff members, he couldn't be held accountable from a legal standpoint, and, according to Kailas, knowing we were without outside support worked to instill a more cautious outlook in otherwise reckless reporters.

  The pronounced click on the other end of the line was loud enough for me to hear it.

  I was a dead man.

  William shrugged his shoulders, falsely apologetic.

  "He didn't seem to know who you were, nor care. My condolences, Mr. Cogar. As you Americans are so fond of saying, don't take this personally: It's only business."