Page 97 of Rising Tiger

Harvath nodded.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should go back and ask the manager of the Laid Back. How about you? Are you going to be okay with it?”

He nodded again.

“Just ask Sayed’s bodyguards,” Asha replied. “Right?”

Harvath smiled. “You’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 55

Out of a canvas bag, Vijay produced a pair of long metal tongs—the kind you might see in a foundry or a glassworks. It didn’t take much time to understand why the tongs were present.

One by one, he picked up each of the red-hot pieces of metal from the pile of glowing coals in the hubcap and examined them. As he did, Aga Sayed continued to watch.

Harvath walked over to him and loosened the gag. There were cuts at the corners of his mouth and along the sides of his face. The ex-cop hadn’t been lying. He really had sewn razor blades into the gag. Harvath was impressed.

“Okay, Sayed,” he said. “Collectively, we built a pile of dead bodies getting to you. If you think that somehow you’re leaving this place without telling us what we want to know, you are sorely mistaken. So, question number one: Who killed Eli Ritter in Jaipur?”

Sayed looked up at him and replied, “I don’t know.”

“Not a good answer. Who killed Ritter?”

“Fuck you. That’s who.”

Harvath nodded to Vijay that it was time to begin.

The ex-cop used the tongs to retrieve a blistering-hot bolt from the coals, walked over, and paused as he decided where he was going to brand the son of a bitch who had gutted his partner.

“This is just the start, Sayed,” said Harvath. “You know why he asked me to get the soda bottle, right?”

“Fuck you,” the man spat, looking to his left, trying to anticipate what Vijay was going to do.

“Don’t look at him,” Harvath admonished. “Look at me. I’m the one you need to talk to. I’m the one you need to convince you’re telling the truth.”

“Fuck you,” the gangster repeated.

Harvath looked at Vijay. “I love when they do that. It’s so brave. So macho. And,” he said, grabbing Sayed’s jaw with his hand, “so fucking pointless because they have absolutely no power. Do you understand that, Aga? You have zero power here. No one is coming to save you. I decide what happens to you. I decide how much pain you experience. I decide whether you live or whether you die. So, last chance. Who killed Ritter?”

“Fuck you. Fuck him. And fuck her,” Sayed said, singling out each of them.

“Okay,” Harvath replied. “Just remember, you asked for this.”

Stepping back, he nodded once again to Vijay and watched as the ex-cop moved in and pressed the red-hot bolt against the monster’s left nipple.

The man screamed like a stuck pig.

Actually, he screamed worse than a stuck pig. It was some of the worst wailing Harvath had ever heard.

He let the man wallow in his pain for a few more moments and then leaned in and asked, “When you had your men rape the wife, mother, and baby daughter of Vijay’s informant, do you think they cried louder or softer than you?”

Sayed didn’t reply. He sat there, strapped to the chair, hyperventilating, while tears streamed down his face. The bolt had burned right through his shirt and had seared his sensitive flesh like a branding iron.

“That piece of pain,” said Harvath, “was just the beginning. We needed to make sure that everything was hot enough. And judging by the results, it’s looking pretty good.

“Now, because I’m not a monster like you, I’m going to give you a choice. We brought a small amount of burn cream with us. You can use it over the next half hour of things we’re going to do, or you can save it for the grand finale.

“And by grand finale, I mean when we put the remaining pieces of hot metal into the bottle and shove it up your ass. That’s the G-Company signature, right? The people who survive it are said to shit razor blades for the rest of their life, right?