He shuffled to the water bucket and stopped to take a drink, trying to avoid the larvae, when footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. It hadn’t been long enough for soup or rice. He strained his ears, soaking up what few details he could over the constant gurgle of sewage pipes and whimpering prisoners. The footsteps grew louder, then stopped in front of his cell door, followed by the jingle of keys. This was something different, and
West braced himself for what he assumed would come next. Questions. A river of questions. He wondered if they would start soft or resort directly to the physical stuff. He had to find some way to get a message out, to let someone know where he was. Even that was no guarantee that he wouldn’t disappear, but without it, the authorities had little incentive to keep him alive. As it stood now, the other Hashers knew he’d gone with some men in suits, but they’d been too far away to hear why. For all anyone else knew, he could have been kidnapped by a gang or Muslim extremists looking for a Christian. The church had surely filed some kind of report, but with nothing to go on, and the police themselves involved, that would accomplish little.
West hid a nervous shudder as the heavy metal door creaked open and one of the Indonesian policemen who’d arrested him beckoned forward with a flick of his wrist. He felt naked in his running shorts and filthy T-shirt.
“Turn around,” the policeman said, snapping on the handcuffs when West complied. The words were at once welcome and jarring. The other guards never spoke or even looked him in the eye. Direct communication after this long was sandpaper on his nerves. And still, he needed it so very badly. He looked over his shoulder at the officer and tried to keep from sobbing under the weight of the stress. He’d heard the others call this one Jojo shortly after the arrest.
“Can you please tell me where I am?”
Jojo ignored the question and gave him a none-too-gentle shove between the shoulder blades to get him moving.
“Walk.”
Curly fungus grew on the peeling stone of the narrow corridor, making it appear that the walls truly did have ears. What little light there was seemed pressed back into the feeble bulbs. The cells along the way had no windows, but he could hear shuffling inside most of them. He pictured filthy men, dressed in rags and hunched over with their ears pressed against the metal doors, clamoring for any form of human contact, even if it was only the sound of someone walking by.
West made two right turns before being ushered onto an elevator with polished wood paneling, surprisingly pristine, considering the state of the dungeon. The lemony furniture-polish odor of the elevator made the priest suddenly aware of his own stench. His stomach lurched as the car took them up two floors. He cowered at the bright lights of the hallway when the doors slid. The escort prodded him down a hallway of polished tile floors and blindingly white sidewalls, making another right turn before entering a ten-by-ten room with a large mirror along the wall opposite the door.
West’s heart raced when he saw his cell phone on the desk next to the second cop, a man the others had called Ajij on the day of West’s arrest. The phone’s screen displayed the passcode prompt, as if he’d been looking at it the moment before they walked in. A microphone, like the kind used in broadcast radio studios, occupied the center of the metal desk. Father West had no doubt there were cameras on the other side of the glass, recording everything that occurred.
“Easy way,” Ajij, the one with the phone, said. “Or hard way.”
“I don’t follow,” West said.
Jojo helped explain by sinking a fist into the priest’s right kidney. The sudden blow sickened him and sent him staggering forward. With his hands behind his back, he fell against the edge of the desk and slid down to his knees with a low groan.
Ajij shrugged. “Hard way it is.”
Spittle hung from West’s cracked lips. He swallowed, trying to catch his breath. “You haven’t… asked me any questions.”
The smarmy cop held up the phone, letting it swing between his pinched thumb and forefinger. “You must eventually tell us the code.”
West fought the urge to smile.
“My friend.” Ajij nodded to the guy with the big fists. “He is happy to keep showing you the hard way. But everyone breaks, one way or another. You are no diff—”
“Seven angels,” West said. “Seven spirits, seven trumpets, seven seals…”
Jojo hit him again, just as hard, but higher this time, mercifully deflecting off his ribs instead of a kidney. “Speak straight!”
West groaned, biting back the urge to curse. He hadn’t been hit like this in a very long time. He spoke through clenched teeth on ragged breaths. “The code… The code is seven, seven, seven, seven. I have nothing to hide. If you have questions, please just ask me.”
