His plan was simple, but it made no sense, and Kelly told him that a dozen times before he lowered himself into the huge cast-iron ball they called the isolation tank.
It contained warm, salted water, heated to 98.6 degrees. In this water the body felt nothing. Carl would wear a modified deep-sea diving mask that effectively cut off all sensory input to the ears, the eyes, the mouth, and the nose, leaving him completely sense-free.
The isolation tank provided the simplest, easiest, and quickest way for most subjects to enter stasis. They rarely used it anymore because Carl had advanced beyond the need for such an unwieldy tool, but with it he could move most quickly, and time was now an issue.
He was going deep, he said. Very deep. Deep enough so that he would remain in partial stasis for some time after he came out.
As agreed, Kelly left him in the tank for thirty minutes before pulling him out, dripping wet. Despite an almost uncontrollable urge to ask him how successful his trip had been, she worked quietly. She dried his body and dressed him in a dry pair of pants. She did all with the ring of insanity in her ears. In many ways she felt as if she were performing last rites on an animal to be sacrificed in a sick ritual.
He had no more than ten minutes to complete his mission when he followed her back into the tunnel, shirtless and shoeless.
Kelly led him toward the hospital, groping through the darkness with her free hand. She could hear his breathing, a full fifteen seconds between each breath, and she knew that he was still deep in the safety of his world.
She, on the other hand, was in a world of more peril than she could remember ever experiencing. She could no longer deny the fact that she felt deeply for him. She was meant to earn his love, and she had, but in the process, he had found a way to earn something from her. It made everything she was doing feel like a betrayal.
Leading him in silence now, she couldn’t hold back quiet tears.
He was going to die. She had tried to tell him as much, but he was adamant. Even angry. Now any attempt on her part to change his mind would only compromise his concentration.
She unlocked the door at the end of the tunnel and led him up the stairs into the hospital basement, still vacated of personnel. The door to the execution chamber was open. His breathing now came once every twelve seconds. He was normalizing!
Moving as fast as she could, Kelly strapped him in as Kalman had shown her several months earlier when he was in an especially cheerful mood. Each contact had to be coated with gel to ensure conductivity. Normally they would shave the head, but there was no time. She attached the electrodes to his forehead and to the back of his neck.
THE PLACE was as black as any Carl could remember.
He had formed his tunnel within seconds of entering the tank. He knew that he had a limited amount of time, but time ceased in here, so he didn’t think of himself as in a race against the clock.
He was here to protect the tunnel. A terrible force would come to destroy it, he knew. An enemy far greater than any he’d ever faced.
He would have to do something new. He couldn’t rely on the wall to protect him.
This time he would have to go outside the wall in a new tunnel, as he had recently, but with far more focus. His one advantage was that he knew how the attack would come. The force would come through his hands and skull.
If he could lower the heat in a room; if the pH balance of water could be altered so easily; if the faithful could walk into the fiery furnace and not be burned by flames or walk on water without drowning, then his mission wasn’t impossible.
It had been done before.
Carl swam outside the tunnel, sending wave after wave of the sea to his extremities, to the place where the enemy would attack. It was all in his mind, of course, but the mind was his greatest weapon.
He remembered being led down the underground tunnel and being strapped into the chair, but these were noises and sensations of another world.
Then voices. Urgent. Arguing, perhaps. Excited, perhaps.
He smiled. Did they know that he was outside the tunnel? Agotha would be proud!
The voices ceased, and he knew that the attack was going to come. And then it did, in a red-hot wave that took his breath away and flooded his eyes with blinding light.
“TEN, ELEVEN . . .” Agotha stared at the jerking body through the picture window. There was no way he could possibly survive!
Inside Kalman continued his count. “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.” He nodded at the operator inside. “As agreed.”
A loud clank signaled the break. The hall lights brightened, then one sputtered and winked out. Kalman stood beside the chair, wearing a look of fascination. At times like these Agotha hated him.
She pulled the door open and stopped short. The smell of burned hair was strong. He was surely dead. If not physically, then mentally. A vegetable. They’d found no record of a man surviving fifteen seconds at this voltage, the only reason Kalman had agreed to the terms. “Carl?”
He was slumped against his straps, headpiece firmly in place.
“He’s dead,” Kalman said on her left.
The hall door crashed open, and Kelly pulled up by the large window. She rushed into the room and brushed past Agotha, not caring that her face was still wet with tears.
“Carl? Carl, please tell me you can hear me.” She frantically un-buckled the leather mask and flung it from his head. She ripped the blindfold off his face. Then she went to work on the attachments on his arms and legs, practically tearing them free.
Agotha blinked. Carl’s cheeks and lips were dry, not wet from tears or saliva. Surely his eyes would be gone, she thought. Surely his—His left hand twitched. Residual current.
“Carl?” Kelly’s voice was filled with desperation. She had deeper feelings for the man than even Agotha had guessed.
“He’s not breathing!” Kelly cried. She dropped her head against his chest and listened for a heartbeat. But if he wasn’t breathing now, a full minute since they’d turned off the electricity, he was dead.
As if in response to her thought, Carl’s left hand lifted an inch from the armrest. Stopped. Then it twisted, and his forearm slowly rose.
Agotha was no longer breathing. Carl, on the other hand, had to be! Kelly had seen none of it, not yet.
Carl’s hand rose slowly and touched the back of Kelly’s head. Her whole body froze.
Carl smiled. “Hello, Kelly.”
His eyes snapped open.
Kelly began to cry.
Behind Agotha, Kalman grunted.
“I OWE you my life,” Kelly said.
“And I owe you mine.” It was true. Without his love for her, Carl didn’t think he’d have survived the last ten months, assuming that was truly how long he’d been in training.
They sat at a round table for four in his bunker kitchen, eating nuts and jerky.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” she asked.
Carl put a peanut in his mouth and bit into it around a big grin. Honestly, he couldn’t remember feeling this happy, so he let the feeling ride. “That I’ll go into the field.”
“Yes. Agotha is thrilled. If you were her pet project before, you’re her golden calf now.”
“And Kalman?”
She shrugged. “Kalman is Kalman. He lives for killing.”
“Like a good father,” Carl said. “Sets the rules and makes sure they’re kept.”
She gave him a strange look. Picked up a piece of jerky and tore off a strip. “You’re not angry at him?”
“That would be impractical. He’s only doing what he thinks is best. Can any of us argue with the results?”
She nodded. “What else can you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you can protect your body against the currents of an electric chair, shouldn’t you be able to do more?”
“Anyone can ignore heat. I just do it better than most. That doesn’t mean I can fly.”
She laughed at that, and he joined her. The pleasure in her blue eyes, the soft curve of her neck, the shine in her wavy hair—he found her stunning. And he’d saved her, hadn’t he? He had saved the one he loved.
“I have your mission, Carl,” she said, flashing a mischievous grin.
“You do?”
“I do.” But she didn’t offer it.
“When?”
“In five days.”
“Where?”
“New York City. They say it’s a wonderful place. I can hardly wait.”
“Who is it?”
“An Iranian leader named Assim Feroz.”
Carl slapped the table with his palm. “Finally,” he said and snatched up his glass for a toast. “To Assim Feroz. May he accept the bullet I send him with grace.” Even as he said it, he wondered if such eagerness was appropriate. Was he really so excited to kill?
Kelly lifted her glass and clinked it against his. “To Assim Feroz.”