the pain will not stop, because I know that you have not done so. Janson sought
you out. He sought you out because he knew that you were a friend. That you were
loyal. How can I make you understand that it is me you owe your loyalty to? You
feel pain, do you not? And that means you are alive, yes? Is that not a gift?
Oh, your entire existence will be a sensorium of pain. I believe that if I can
make you understand that, we might begin to make progress.”
“Oh dear God no!” the scholar shouted as another course of electricity
penetrated his body.
“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Demarest said. “Every C fiber in your body—every
pain-transmitting nerve—feeds into this main trunk of nerve bundles that I’m
stimulating right now. I could attach electrodes to every inch of your body and
it wouldn’t yield the same intensity of pain.”
Another scream reverberated through the room—another scream that ended only
because breath itself did.
“To be sure, pain is not the same as torture,” Demarest went on. “As an
academic, you’ll appreciate the importance of such distinctions. Torture
requires an element of human intention. It has to be interwoven with meaning.
Simply to be eaten by a shark, let us say, is not to experience torture—whereas
if someone intentionally dangles you over a shark tank, that is torture. You
might dismiss this as a nicety, but I’d beg to differ. The experience of
torture, you see, requires not only the intention to inflict pain. It also
requires that the subject of torture recognize that intention. You must
recognize my intention to cause pain. More precisely, you must recognize that I
intend you to recognize that I intend to cause pain. One has to satisfy that
structure of regressive recognition. Would you say that you and I have done so?”
“Yes!” the old man screamed. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” His neck thrashed this way and
that as a bolt of electricity blasted into him once more. He was being raped by
pain, felt that the very fiber of his existence had been violated.
“Or would you offer another analysis?”
“No!” Fielding shrieked with pain once more. The agony was simply beyond
imagining.
“You know what Emerson says of the great man: ‘When he is pushed, tormented,
defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits on his
manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of
conceit.’ Would you concur?”
“Yes!” the scholar shrieked. “Yes! No! Yes!” The muscular convulsions that
rippled his spine only magnified the already unendurable pain.
“Are you surprised how much pain you’re capable of surviving? Are you wondering
how your consciousness can even contain suffering of this magnitude? It’s OK to
be curious. The thing to remember is, the human body today is really no
different than it was twenty thousand years ago. The circuits of pleasure and
pain are as they were. So you might think that there is no difference between
the experience of being tortured to death during, let us say, the Spanish
Inquisition and the experience that I can offer you. You might think that,
wouldn’t you? But, speaking as something of an aficionado, I’d have to say you’d
be wrong. Our evolving understanding of neurochemistry is really quite valuable.
Ordinarily, the human body has the equivalent of a safety valve: when C-fiber
stimulation reaches a certain level, endorphins kick in, blunting and assuaging
the pain. Or else unconsciousness results. God, it used to piss me off when that
happened. Either way, the phenomenology of pain is limited. It’s like
brightness: you can experience only a certain level of brightness. You maximally
stimulate the cones and rods of the retina, and after that point, there’s no
change in the perception of brightness. But when it comes to pain, contemporary
neuroscience changes the whole game. What’s in your IV drip is absolutely
crucial to the effect, my dear Angus. You knew that, didn’t you? We’ve been
administering a substance known as naltrexone. It’s an opiate antagonist—it
blocks the natural painkillers in your brain, those legendary endorphins. So the
ordinary limits of pain can be pushed past. Not exactly a natural high.”
Another wail of agony—almost a keening—interrupted his disquisition, but
Demarest was undeterred. “Just think: because of the naltrexone drip, you can
experience a level of pain that the human body was never meant to know. A level
of pain that none of your ancestors would ever have known, even if they’d had
the misfortune to be eaten alive by a saber-toothed tiger. And it can increase
nearly without limit. The main limit, I would say, is the patience of the
torturer. Do I strike you as a patient man? I can be, Angus. You’ll discover
that. I can be very patient when I need to be.”
Angus Fielding, distinguished master of Trinity College, began to do something
he had not done since he was eight: he broke down and sobbed.
“Oh, you’ll yearn for unconsciousness—but the drip also contains potent
psychostimulants—a carefully titrated combination of dexmethyl-phenidate,
atomoxetine, and adrafinil—which will keep you maximally alert, indefinitely.
You won’t miss anything. It will be quite exquisite, the ultimate in-body
experience. I know you think you’ve experienced agony beyond endurance, beyond
comprehension. But I can increase it tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold.
What you have experienced so far is nothing at all, compared to what lies ahead.
Assuming, of course, that you continue to stonewall.” Demarest’s hand hovered
near the dial. “It’s really most important to me that I receive satisfactory
answers to my questions.” “Anything,” Fielding breathed, his cheeks wet with
tears. “Anything.” Demarest smiled as the black pools of his gaze bore down on
the aging don. “Look into my eyes, Angus. Look into my eyes. And now you must
confide in me utterly. What did you tell Paul Janson?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Lookit, I’ve got one person watching the entrance,” Jessica Kincaid told Janson
as they rode together in the back of the commandeered yellow cab. “He thinks
it’s a training exercise. But if she goes out, decides to head for one of their
private planes in Teeterboro, we might lose her forever.” She wore a cotton-knit
shirt adorned with the logo of the phone company Verizon.
“Did you do the tenant search?”
“Did the whole enchilada,” she said.
In fact, with a number of discreet telephone calls, she confirmed what
observation had suggested, learning more than she needed to know. The
inhabitants of the building included masters of finance capitalism, foundation
directors, and old New York types who were better known for their philanthropy
than for the origins of the wealth that made it possible. Flashier souls, eager
to flaunt their newfound money, might opt for a penthouse in one of Donald
Trump’s palaces, where every surface gleamed or glittered. At 1060 Fifth Avenue,
the elevators still retained the brass accordion doors originally installed in
the 1910s, as well as the darkened fir-wood paneling. The building’s co-op board
rivaled the Myanmar junta in its inflexibility and authoritarianism; it could be
counted upon to reject the applications of prospective residents who might turn
out to be “flamboyant”—its favorite term of derogation. Ten sixty Fifth Avenue
welcomed benefactors of the arts, but not artists. It welcomed patrons of the
opera, but would never countenance an opera singer. Those who, in a civic-minded
spirit, supported culture were honored; those who created culture were shunned.
“We’ve got one Agnes Cameron on the floor above her,” Kincaid said. “Serves on
the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, socially impeccable. I called the
office of the director, pretending to be a journalist writing a profile of her.
Said I was told she was in a meeting there, and I needed to double-check some of
the quotes. A very snotty woman said, ‘Well, that’s impossible, Mrs. Cameron is
in Paris at the moment.’ ”
“That the best candidate?”
“Seems to be, yeah. According to the phone company records, she had a high-speed
DSL Internet connection installed last year.”
She handed Janson a cotton-knit shirt emblazoned with the black and red Verizon
logo, matching hers. “Turns out your friend Cornelius has a brother at Verizon,”
she explained. “Gets ’em wholesale. His-and-hers.” Next came a leather
instrument belt to cinch around his waist. A bright orange test phone was the
bulkiest item. Rounding out the costume was a gray metal toolbox.
As they approached the doorman at the awning, Jessie Kincaid did the talking.
“We’ve got a customer, I guess she’s out of the country now, but her DSL line is
on the fritz and she asked us to service it while she’s gone.” She flipped a
laminated ID at him. “Customer name is Cameron.”
“Agnes Cameron, on the eighth floor,” the doorman told them, in what Janson
recognized as an Albanian accent. His cheeks were lightly flecked with acne, and
his visored hat sat high on his wavy brown hair. He went inside and consulted