The Captive.

May of 1992.

Somewhere in the USA.

Spies always have one scary thought in the back of our minds. One day a mission could go south, and we could be taken, imprisoned, or killed. We could be deemed unrecoverable, with no search teams out to find us, no task forces organizing our escape. We are the assets that get swept under the rug, and our families and friends are left in the dark, and they bury empty caskets.

I was thinking about it the whole time the bag was on my head. I was moved from place to place, a car to a truck, a truck to a plane, a tarmac to the trunk of a car, my hands bound, clasped together at the palm, my legs tied at the thighs and the ankles – and the whole time I was wondering what they would say to my mother and Nathan. Would they pretend I had gone AWOL, or that I was gravely injured, or that I was on deep cover missions that allowed no contact? Would they bother to keep up a ruse until people stopped asking? I pictured a jeep riding up to her house, parking on the curb, and two men getting out to present her with a folded flag. I pretended there would be bagpipes and soldiers saluting, a coffin with the flag draped across it.

But spies did not get military funerals.

I was on the edge of that dream when the bag finally came off.

I was in a basement with cinderblock walls and dirty concrete floors. It had one window, covered in thick curtains, and the whole place smelled of curing meats. One man stood in front of me, holding the bag, staring at me intently. He had a squarish head and dark eyes, and he was not dressed for the cold. He wore a cotton shirt, showing off gang tattoos on his arms.

He said, in a strong Russian accent, "I am Sonny. What am I calling you?"

"Billy," I responded, my voice breaking around it.

Sonny winced. "Ooh. Long days with no water. I can get you some. But I want to talk first." He approached, popping the blade out on a knife and motioning for me to turn. "We have chairs, so we can sit like civilized people."

I turned, holding my breath while he cut the bindings on my wrists. Someone dragged a chair up and I sat down, rubbing the bright red line where the zip ties had been eating into my skin.

"I know someone who was promised some information, and he is very impatient, this man." Sonny dragged a chair up and sat facing me, folding up his knife and tucking it into his suit pocket. "I have agreed to get this information for my acquaintance by any means necessary. You must understand that you have the information he needs, and I need to take it from you."

His boss was probably some billionaire CEO, looking to cut corners and increase profits. He probably wanted the information to jump ahead on foreign deals, to circumvent the competition and get the inside scoop. People would do crazy things for money, like trying to buy government secrets on the internet and then sending mercenaries when the deal fell through. It was not the ten thousand dollars wasted that this guy was mad about, it was the information.

But which pieces of it were important to him?

"If your acquaintance wants information, you have the right guy," I admitted, "But I'm just a middleman. I connect my boss with new clients. I dangle information out there like a worm on a hook and wait for somebody with big enough balls to bite."

Sonny smiled pleasantly and beckoned behind him. One of his faceless soldiers wheeled a cart up to him, equipped with all kinds of unsettling tools.

"No, no, my friend, I am told you have the information I need. Where are the documents?"

I kept my eyes on him while he ran his finger over the tools, making his selection. "I have a lot of documents. Do you want to be more specific, friend?"

"I am searching for a trade deal, C6-78S."

I was right, then. His boss was looking to invest big time using insider information. He wanted to know ahead of time what the new trade deal entailed. It was not the slimiest of moves and it would mean little to me or to the government if he got the information, but his tactics had already pissed me off. He sent goons all the way to Poland to attack that family, to hospitalize Elena Belcher, and now he had ordered me dragged to some basement, to be tortured. His cruelty was astounding.

"Sounds familiar," I responded, practicing my best mask as he pulled a copper rod off of the table, "But I have so much more to offer your acquaintance than a few million on insider trading. I have access to information that could triple his wealth, easily, and run his competition out of town."

Sonny stood up, motioning, and suddenly there were two guys on me. One held me up, the other had my leg. I knew what was coming right away.

He hit me on the foot with the copper rod.

It was like an electric shock running up my spine. I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth as the bar came again, and again, lighting up the nerves from my toes to my hip.

"You are a very stubborn man," Sonny commented between swings. He repeated his question after each hit, "Where is the document C6-78S?"

Spies are not immune to torture. We feel pain just like everyone else. But we train specifically to keep secrets, to misdirect. Larry always said the best spies know how to keep their enemies running around in circles all day, trying to verify all the bogus information they spit out during torture sessions. He also said a good spy would kill himself long before he let himself be broken.

But I had no intention of dying today.

We were an hour in when my pleading finally got through to him.

"I can get you what you want! I can get you the information! Call your boss! Just call him!"

Sonny set the metal rod down and the goons dropped me in the chair. I held my tender foot up, trying to focus through the pain. It would stop in a few hours, leaving behind no marks, no scars, but until then it was going to feel like it was on fire.

"I can see that this is getting us nowhere," he said, sighing. "You are so insistent that you can broker this deal. Why would you put yourself in danger this way?"

"I have a job to do, and my boss is like yours – any means necessary."

Sonny nodded to himself. "I will call him and make your offer."

"I want to meet stateside," I said. "I'm so tired of this European crap."

"Well, lucky for you we are already there." Sonny left the room.

I sat quietly, waiting, wondering. I knew now that we were in the United States, a relief, because this basement could have been anywhere. I had allies here, not so much in Russia.

Sonny returned ten minutes later.

"You are in luck, my friend. He wants to meet with you in New York – maybe to kill you himself, but we can only hope that is not the case."

"I need to put in a call to my boss, then, so he can get ready to head north."

Sonny watched me, waiting, thinking, and then he nodded. "I will be listening."

I limped out of the room, into another, smaller room with a phone on the wall. I called Sam.

He picked up on the second ring, in a calm monotone.

"Hello."

I admired his caution. "Hey, boss, sorry I stepped outta the loop there for a bit."

He paused, and then, "Did you do what I asked?"

"I set up the meet, all is well. I think we're headed there now. I'll see you soon stateside."

Sonny stepped beside me and hung the phone up. "Good, now we go."

I was tied up again, despite my request to sit in the front of the vehicle instead of the trunk. We took several bumpy roads, and then slid onto smooth highway. I lay in the darkness, looking into the bag on my head, awake for hours before the darkness lulled me into sleep again.