Chapter 9

The little house situated in a secluded area of Saigon was plunged into total darkness. Or so it seemed to Michael Shelby and his Oriental companion, Pei Liao, as they walked silently up the short drive. Pei Liao went to work on a low window. The curtains were drawn, and they could see nothing but blackness inside. There was a sharp click as Pei Liao's knife located the window lock, and then they were inside the house.

The two men had come there to try to find and free Brian Slattery who was being by Major Carter's men. They had already tried several places in vain, and this was the last address on the list Pei had brought. . .After that if the search proves fruitless Brian would have to be abandoned to his fate.

Silently, Pei Liao and Michael paddle across the dark empty room towards a door set in the far wall. But before they could reach it. the lights were switched on with startling suddenness.

Both Michael and Pei Liao reached for their guns, and then stopped. Two men stood in the room. They both held menacing gun barrels pointing at them. The door opened, and a third man entered. Young and obviously Oriental, he smiled amiably at Michael and Pei Liao.

"Good evening gentlemen. I take it you have called for your friend Brian Stlattery? I need hardly say that you were expected. This way please."

As they followed him into a hallway, the two armed men walked behind, revolvers held steadily in their hands. They were led into a large, well furnished room, where they were they relieved of their own weapons. Then their hands were tied behind their backs. When this was done, the young Vietnamese rubbed his hands together.

"Now, that is better. Hope the ropes aren't too tight"

He walked towards the door, leaving the two thugs standing on either side of it

"Look after our friends," he instructed them. "When we have finished with Mr. Slattery, we may need their assistance."

Then he was gone. Michael glanced at Pei Liao's face. It was contracted in an expression of sheer hatred, and he knew he wouldn't like to be in the skin of the young Vietnamese if ever Pei Liao got free.

In a room not far away, Brian lay stripped naked and tied spread-eagled across the top of a large oak table. The two men who had brought him over to this sinister house stood on either side of the table in their shirt sleeves. Brian had been so drunk when Carter's men had come for him that he only had a vague recollection of being brought to the house.

He had been left alone, locked in this room, for the first hour or so. Presumably so that he could sober up. Then they had stripped him and tied him to the table. For the last two and a half hours, they had been questioning him. If he refused to answer, out of unwillingness or sheer ignorance, they had applied lighted cigarettes to his torso. This had happened twice, and he wasn't risking it again. He kept on talking, talking, talking....

All the time, he was telling lies. No, he wasn't a close friend of Alex Knight, but just an acquaintance. No, hadn't known anything about Edwin Mc Cullough, except that he was under suspicion in Saigon. This was in reference to the Hong Kong affair. And so it went on. Question after question, answer after answer. He knew he would break up if they continued. He would forget what he was saying, what he had already told them, let escape some truth by mistake. That's what they were waiting for.

And then there had been a welcome respite. The young Vietnamese, so good looking, who had led the questioning mercilessly, had left the room. When he returned, he looked very pleased with himself.

"Now, Mr. Slattery," he said. "Where were we? Oh, yes I remember. You were just about to tell us what you intended to do to Lieutenant Mc Cullough when you discovered that he was a double agent."

Brian's head ached, and he started to perspire heavily. He didn't remember saying anything about discovering that Mc Cullough was a double agent. Or had he? His brain was utterly confused. He knew he had to answer, but somehow the words would not form on his lips. He was tired. He closed his eyes. "Fuck you!" he said in aloud, clear voice.

The young Vietnamese didn't lose his composure. "You are tired, Mr. Slattery?" he asked. Then his voice changed. It was no longer friendly, but cold and ruthless. "Perhaps we can arrange something that will wake you up."

Brian opened his yes, expecting another cigarette to be applied to his naked body. But as the young man approached the table on which he was tied, Brian started to tremble violently. It wasn't a cigarette that the Vietnamese was holding in his hand. I was a razor blade. Such a simple, mundane object, but in the circumstances Brian knew it could inflict terrible damage to his helpless body.

Bending over him, his tormentor gently applied the cold blade to his chest. For a moment, Brian couldn't understand what he was doing, until he realized that the blade was being dawn over his skin in long lines. It wasn't painful, and he doubted if it was going deep enough to even draw any blood. It was surprisingly bearable!

Eventually, the young man stood back and surveyed his handiwork. The lines he had drawn with the blade stood out on Brian's chest like long, dark pink weals. He turned to one of the guards.

"You know to do. Go and mix something nice to put on Mr. Slattery's chest."

While the man was away, Brian started to tremble again. The constant questioning had been bad enough but he couldn't stand physical pain. Not the kind that these people were contemplating. He might as well tell them the truth. Tell them that he and Alex Knight were double agents. Admit anything rather than be physically mutilated.

The man returned holding a pot in his hand which he gave to the young interrogator.

"Lemon juice and Jave pepper. A nice mixture, don't you agree, Mr. Slattery?" he said, bending over Brian's shaking body.

"No, I'll ... " Brian's voice broke off in a gasp of agonizing pain as the mixture was applied to the open weals made by the razor blade. The young Vietnamese took some more of the mixture out of the pot with his hand.

Brian was straining violently at the ropes that held his hands and feet as the excruciating pain began to gnaw at his whole body. The black eyes of his torturer held a strange expression as he deliberately rubbed the burning liquid deep into his captive's wounds. They glowed with cruel excitement, and his sensual mouth opened slightly and stayed that way. Saliva glistened on the full redness of his lips.

As the pain became unbearable and Brian began to scream in sheer agony, begging him to stop, he pressed the lower half of his body hard against the side of the table. The youth was obviously getting a sadistic sexual thrill from seeing Brian in such pain.

Brian was jabbering in agony, telling them all that they wanted to know. He confessed that Alex Knight, himself and Michael Shelby were all working for Red China. He told them that Alex had been working for the Communists for the past nine or ten years. And in between, his telling them these things he begged them to wash the fiery liquid off his tortured body. And then he started to cry, great racking sobs shaking his body violently as he twisted and tugged at the ropes which held him tight as he did so.

Very deliberately, the young sadist emptied the remains of the contests of the pot onto Brian's quivering chest. Brian gave a choking scream, which was heard by both Michael and Pei Liao, before he fainted.

The two guards stood silently by, watching their youthful boss run his hand over the captive's inert body. But Chi Lan Thu, for such was his name, wasn't bothered about his assistants. A brilliant interrogator, he was one of Major Carter's best men. If ever the Mayor had anyone difficult on his hands, then he would pass him over to Chi. Information was always forthcoming, and there were rarely very serious marks left on the bodies of those who had been interrogated....

Chi Lan Thu spent some time gloating over the unconscious man strapped onto the table. This was the moment he cherished most of all, when his interrogation was finished, and all that remained was the inert body of his victim. It didn't matter to him if at was a man or a woman. This was his moment of absolute power, when he could lose himself, if only briefly, a sadomasochistic world of his own making. When he could indulge has imagination, and excite his sexual fantasies in the twilight zone of necrophilia. A world where he was the complete master, and he could do exactly as he pleased.

The two men, who were watching, glanced briefly at each other, and then returned their eyes to the scene in front of them; following Chi Lan Thu's hand as it traced the contours of the naked inert body strapped onto the table. They remained poker faced as it moved towards the swollen, inflamed wounds on Brian's chest. Finally, he put it right onto the inflamed flesh. Brian stirred and whimpered, the pain penetrating his unconscious mind. But the young sadist didn't take his hand away. His eyes burning with excitement, he was pushing his genitals hard against the side of the table. Again, the two men glanced at each other. They knew what was happening. Chi Lan Thu was masturbating himself with the sight and touch of the tortured victim.

After what seemed a long time, Chi stood back from the table. His hand was covered with blood, and the mixture of lemon juice and Java pepper which had been applied to make Brian talk. His erect cock which he had just excited into an-orgasm, could be plainly seen outlined through the material of his military trousers and still jerking violently.

He motioned to the two men. "Get him off there and clean him up," he commanded.

He left the room. When he returned, his hands were clean, and apart from a stain on the front of his trousers-that indicated that he had had an orgasm inside his pants-he betrayed no signs of hi" recent sadistic and sexual display. He was in full control of himself again. The two men had bathed and dressed Brian's wound, were replacing his clothes. When he recovered consciousness, Brian found himself sitting in an armchair. His chest throbbed and ached, and so did his head. He started to remember all that had happened before he had fainted, end closed his eyes again.

His thoughts were not pleasant. He had, at last, given away the whole game. He was convinced he was in the hands of Major Carter, and everything he had said under the pressure of intolerable pain would have been picked up by tape recorders. Not that it made any difference. He had told them things that would be checked immediately. He thought of Alex out in Interlanken on honeymoon. Somehow, he must be warned.

He opened his eyes. Chi Lan Thu was standing in front of that chair looking down at him.

"Have you recovered, Mr. Slattery?" he asked, his tone mocking. "So you are, after all. a spy. And no doubt, a highly paid one. It should make an interesting case when we have grabbed your other two friends Knight and Shelby. Who would have thought that someone with Mr. Knight's prestige would betray his own country? And my country!"

Brian spoke with an effort. "What the hell difference does it make to you? You're just a paid hireling who enjoys seeing people suffer." When said this, he was thinking of the unmistakable expression in the young man's eyes when he had bent over him with that infernal mixture in his hands.

Chi Lan Thu's eyes were full of hatred. "You won't be so proud, or outspoken, Mr. Slattery, when you are in front of a tribunal, being tried for treason." Then he turned and left the room once more. He had to make his report to Major Frank Carter.

But he never got as far as the telephone. Chi Lan Thu had made a mistake when he left Michael and Pei Liao in the company of only two guards. He didn't in fact, know either man. All he had bean told was that it was quite likely Slattery's friends would attempt to find him after he had been caught. Consequently, he had waited patiently inside the house, and these two had arrived. If he had known that one of these men, Pei Liao, was one of the toughest agents of North Vietnam, he would have been more careful.

Now it was too late. He lay on the floor by the side of the telephone, his skull cracked by a violent blow on the back of his head from a gun butt. Pei Liano stood over him while Michael hovered in the background.

"Come on," the Oriental said in a cutting voice. "We've got to get Slattery out of this." He had enjoyed cracking the skull of this treacherous bastard. His blood was boiling. Furious at having walked into a trap he had been even more furious at the cavalier attitude dished out by this scum he had just struck down. With Michael behind, he prowled along the corridor of the silent house like a dangerous animal. Which was what Pei Liao became when provoked.

They stopped outside a door. They could hear a murmur of voices from the inside. Pei Liao didn't wait. He flung the door open and marched inside, gun blazing. When the shots had finished echoing throughout the room, Brian's guards lay on the floor.

Brian sat. staring in amazement, at this unexpected rescue. He tried to stand up, but fell back in Ms chair. He had been subjected to a lot of mental and physical strain since his capture. Also, he felt the need for the strong drink without which his body couldn't function any more.

Pei Liao stood in the middle of the room, gun still in hand. "Are there any more?" he asked.

Brian shook his head. "Not as far as I know," he said in a tired voice. "But I think you are too late. They made me talk. These men belong to Major Carter."

Pei Liao walked over to a long panel set in the wall. He pushed, and the whole thing slid back, revealing a bank of tape recorders. Rapidly, he fired shots into the machinery, smashing it beyond repair. Then he got hold of a bunch of newspapers, set them slight and stuffed them into the paneling.

"The whole place will ass down," Michael said.

"Let it," Pei Liao replied. "It's war. We'll rebuild it later. Now let's get out of here before more of Major Carter's men arrive. He's bound to send them...."

As they left the house, they could hear the telephone ringing. The fire quickly spread, and the room where Brian had so recently been tortured was soon a prey to leaping flames, as were the two bodies lying on the floor. It wasn't long before the fire spread to the sprawled body of Chi Lan Thu. He never knew the horrible way he eventually died, remaining unconscious as the fire swept over him.