H003

He was marched to a room much like the one where he received clients at the Las Vegas ranch, except that it was larger to accommodate all that was there. Also, although there was a long window on the outer wall, it ran above standing height and was studded with thick bars.

Other than that, there was a double bed, a desk, with two straight chairs, a small sofa and upholstered chair, a chest of drawers, and a few ominous touches. There was a smaller version of the medical examination table, complete with stirrups and restraints, that he had been strapped to in the room at the Incirlik airbase. In the corner of the room a sling was hanging from the ceiling on chains. In the center of the room, other chains with restraints dangling from them hung from the ceiling, and there were hooks in the side walls, some with chains and restraints hanging from them. The room was fully carpeted, except for a circular cut-out area underneath the hanging chains in the center of the room. This was concrete and sloped into a drain from all sides. One door led to an efficient and sparkling clean bathroom, with a shower; and another door was to a closet, where the back wall was covered with all the whips, restraints, gags, and sex toys that Conner assumed would be involved in what he was doing here.

Although there were torture rooms at the Las Vegas ranch to be used at premium prices and with particular, masochistic and willing, prostitutes, there was nothing this sophisticated or merged with the other outfittings for male-on-male sex. If this was designed to impress and scare Conner, it accomplished its goal.

He was to find there were no street clothes in the bureau doors or closets—just various bits of provocative temporary-use wear—and he was made to strip and his clothes taken away by the men who had escorted him to the room and who closed and locked the door to the outer corridor when they departed. Except when he was told to dress in something provided, Conner was naked for the next eight weeks.

His next and subsequent meals were slipped in to him through a slot in the door. There was a well-appointed countertop refrigerator, he found, in one corner of the room by the bureau, though. He had all of the drinks, including liquor, and snacks he—or his guests—could want. And the meals he was served were good, the food plentiful. They obviously wanted to keep him fit. The closet contained workout equipment, and he learned to used the various sex paraphernalia dangling from the ceiling to aid improvised workouts.

And there was the other vigorous working out he got over the next eight weeks.

His first visitor was, he decided, the installation commandant. He was middle-aged, maybe even late fifties, but he was as fit as any of the younger prison guards there. And he was just as much in the need of sexual release. He was a particularly cruel man. Conner thought "former Marine" again.

Just as Lieutenant Preston had, the commandant leaned back into the desk and asked a naked Conner to pose for him and then to kneel in front of him, with only the commandant's dick exposed, and suck him off. That's where the experience with him parted from what Preston had done, though.

The commandant was more sadism inclined. He hung Conner from the chains in the middle of the room and flogged and zapped him with an electric prod and squeezed his balls and edged him in rounds of frustration in jacking him off before stripping fully—he'd already taken his shirt off, revealing a barrel chest and an abundance of salt-and-pepper chest hair—and fucking Conner from the rear.

He left the young man hanging until two guards arrived a half hour later to release him and help him hobble to the shower.

After he'd done Conner and the young prostitute was still hanging, the commandant said, "You know what you're here for, don't you? What you were contracted to do."

"Yes, sir," Conner answered through swollen lips, as the older man had been free about punching Conner while he was using him.

"You're known as a relief contractor. The men out here get cranky if they don't get enough relief. And they like fresh tail. You do well by my men, and you'll be going home in two months as contracted. Otherwise . . . well, let's just say you don't want to not do well by my men."

Conner was left for two days to recover. After that he fell into a regular routine. He averaged thirty visits a week and discerned, he thought, sixteen different men who used him, including Preston and the commandant. Since they'd brought in two women, Conner judged that more men were using them than were using him. Monday through Thursday, he serviced six or seven men each day—and it wasn't always Conner as a bottom; a good third of his visitors wanted him to fuck them. Some of them wanted to be abused as well. Fridays were for threesomes and gang bangs. Saturday morning Conner was given over to sadists, using the full range of toys in the room. Saturday afternoon was for one session of double penetration. And then he was given a day and a half to recover before Monday rolled around again.

It was a tough schedule, but it didn't prevent Conner from learning what else he needed to learn while he was there.

By standing on the desk, Conner could bring the window on the outside wall to eye level. He found he was looking down from a third story into some sort of exercise yard. Over several days, he was able to put together a schedule for the use of that yard. He also could identify some of the prisoners they were housing, and, no doubt, interrogating here. All suspected international terrorists. Some thought by the public to be dead. None of them, Conner was sure, were men those running this prison would know he had learned to identify.

There were the Yemeni terrorist organization leaders, Ali Abdullah Mansour, Abd-Rabbu al-Hiajiri, and Samir Saleh, who had been claimed to have been evaporated by a drone missile at a meeting outside Sanaa six months earlier. There was the former physicist and Russian separatist, Stefan Belur, thought to have gone effectively to ground. The Turkish separatist leader, Arif Aghan. Even an American, Jason Kowl, who had dropped out of sight after a failed attempt to bomb an airliner. All of the men were released into the courtyard separately and alone. All hobbled about, indicating that their incarceration and interrogation weren't a picnic. The Yemenis—including verification of rumors they were alive—had been Conner's principle concern.

Conner had all he needed to gather. Now it was just a matter of surviving the eight weeks and trusting that he would be let free, as agreed—a difficult and iffy proposition. But there was more than the money he'd been paid involved.

* * * *

When the fallout came, it came quickly and later than Conner thought it might. Conner was sitting with Lieutenant Preston in the Istanbul airport, where they were to part at last at the conclusion of Conner's contract, when Conner saw his handler standing off from the departure area and looking at him intently. As soon as it was obvious Conner saw him, almost doing a double take, the handler gestured toward a men's room. Conner's gaze turned to the men's room to see that another man he recognized was standing by the door to the john, dressed as a cleaner. It seemed this was a ploy all U.S. intelligence agencies like to employ. He had a mop and bucket beside him, and Conner caught on that the man would close off the rest room as soon as Conner and his handler entered it.

"I'm going to the men's room before we board," Conner said, standing.

"Good idea. I was about to suggest that. I'll go with you," Preston answered, also standing.

"It's OK, I can go alone," Conner countered. But then it was obvious that Preston wouldn't let him go alone. It was equally obvious then too that Preston and his people weren't going to let Conner simply fly away from here. He was ticketed for Frankfurt, although after they'd cleared through airport security, Preston had taken Conner's ticket back from him. He wasn't going anywhere until and unless Preston let him. They were close to calling boarding. There was no reason for Preston to stick close to him now. Preston had said he was ticketed for a later flight going someplace else. He didn't say where.

Preston reiterated that he was going to the men's room too. And, despite Conner saying he wanted to go alone, Preston was closely following him.

As they entered the men's room, Conner's handler having preceded them, Conner sensed the agent posed as a cleaner blocking off the door in their wake.

Preston didn't know what hit him. He was down on the ground, a bullet from a silencer having made a third eye for him, and the handler was dragging the body into a stall.

"You didn't have to do that. They were letting me go," Conner said, angrily when the handler came out of the stall.

"Of course I had to do that. They weren't going to let you go. Preston was going to kill you before you got on that plane. Probably was going to bring you in here and off you while everyone else was boarding."

Conner decided to let it go. "You managed to locate the site? They call it H003."

"Yes. The transmitter in your tooth filling worked a charm. The installation is in Kazakhstan, near a village called Chelor. We're already well on our way to tracing the secret agreements back to the Agency. Did you manage to find out anything else? Anything on the prisoners?"

Conner hesitated just a few seconds too long in answering and the indecision in his face showed. The handler's face set hard and he lifted the gun he'd used to kill Preston and pointed it at Conner. "You know who some of the inmates are, don't you? Tell me who you saw there."

"Shouldn't we leave first?" Conner asked. "Are you booked on the flight to Frankfurt too? I could talk to you on the flight."

"You could talk to me now," the handler said, his voice menacing. Then a surprised look shot across his face and he toppled to the floor, a knife sticking out of his back.

"Jamal," Conner exclaimed, seeing the figure of the man materializing behind the falling handler.

"Shhh, there's a back door to the restroom," Jamal hissed. "Come away with me, we can be gone from here before the others come looking for their man. This man wasn't going to let you leave here alive. They just didn't want to kill you any closer to their operations. Did you find any of our comrades where you were taken?"

"Yes," Conner answered the man from the Mideast terrorist unit Conner had been secretly working with as a sleeper in the States for years. "Some of the Yemeni leaders are still alive; the prison is near a village called Chelor in Kazakhstan. But I will tell you all when we're away from here."

He would tell them all, of course. Their cause was his as well. But he would dribble the information out slowly to maximize his chances of survival. If he'd learned anything from this operation, it was to trust no one fully.