Thanks to notsing for your kind words! It's so nice to know that the story is read – and appreciated :) And don't worry, it will be continued, for it is written and nearly all of it is already translated, it just needs to be corrected. So another thanks to Starfishyeti who still hasn't lost her patience with doing the correction on this rather long story!
Hope you enjoy!

29 – CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE – 1,123^29

"What's going on here?"

Don, Larry and Amita's heads whirled around at the sound of Megan's voice.

"We're trying to do a risk analysis so that we can make at least one of the suspects talk," Larry explained to her.

Don didn't even give her an opportunity to ask further questions. "It's good you're here. Vickie and you, you investigated the guys' backgrounds, didn't you? We've got to know if they have any family."

Megan understood, not what their friends intended to do, but that right now wasn't the moment to ask questions. "They don't," she answered, shaking her head. "No close relationship with their parents even though they're still alive, nor any steady relationship. One of them has got a girlfriend, but it's very on and off again. The woman doesn't even know about his mob activities."

For Don that was no argument. "That's what they all say."

Megan shook her head sympathetically. "Still, Don. They haven't been together for very long and she couldn't tell us much about him. And now that she knows about the connection to the mafia, the relationship is probably over anyway."

Larry shook his head. "In this case things are really looking rather bad. These two men don't have much to lose, and the thing that is even more important is that neither of them seems to have more to lose than the other. At least as far as we know."

"And that means?" Megan asked with her eyebrows raised.

Larry sighed. "The prisoner's dilemma says that in such a situation both of them would have to talk. If I'm not mistaken, you've already promised the two suspects leniency if they testify against the other. That means that if no one talks, they get normal sentences. If one of them talks, they get a conditional release and the other one a worst sentence. And if both talk, they both get a lighter sentence as if neither of them had testified. So if they can't be sure if the other had decided to betray them, talking would be the best strategy. However, all that doesn't work with an organization like the mafia because there are further participants in the game. Someone who betrays his accomplice could get a conditional release, but he's going to be punished by the other mafia members for his betrayal.

"Our only opportunity would have been to show them through our risk analysis that one of them has got more to lose than the other, so that for him it would be tactically wiser to cooperate with us. However, none of them has got more to lose than the other."

"And that means?" Don asked. He had a lump in his throat and wasn't sure if he really wanted to hear the answer.

Amita, her gaze upon the ground, justified his doubts. "That means that the risk analysis doesn't help us. You've got to make them talk another way."

Don bit his lip. That's what we've been trying the whole time; we're not getting anywhere! And still he was determined not to give up.

Wordlessly, he stood, leaving the three to get back to the interrogation room. Amita stared after him and the bit of hope that still remained in her left her more with ever step he went away from them without turning around. Seeing Don so tense reminded her very clearly of how bad the situation actually was. Their only clues were the suspects – and they weren't talking. And as more time went by, the chances of getting Charlie back alive became less and less.

She knew that there was still hope as long as Don was fighting, even if everyone else had already given up. And it was the same with her. Neither Don nor she would give up Charlie as long as there was still a tiny spark of hope of finding him. Nothing was lost by now. We're far from being too late, Amita told herself. She'd simply misjudged Don's behavior, yes, certainly. She felt terribly lonely and looking at the couple before her only reinforced that feeling. That was surely the only reason why her heart contracted so painfully. Surely it was that. Not the realization that the critical time frame of forty-eight hours was already over.

"Everything will be alright, Amita."

Megan appeared in Amita's slightly blurred view. It wasn't until now that she became aware of the tears in her eyes, and it wasn't until now that she noticed the soothing hand on her shoulder. "We've still got a chance of finding Charlie. The description of his kidnappers and the car are in the media. And soon the other suspects will have led us to the mafia's main base."

Amita nodded, wondering at the same time what in heaven that was supposed to change?

0 – 0 – 0

Charlie was staring into the deep blackness that was by now nearly familiar to him. He wasn't sure if his eyes were open or closed. He didn't know if he had become blind by now, but after all it didn't matter. As long as his situation didn't change the answers to these question were irrelevant.

The fourth flood had subsided. The excitement had worn off. The mortal fear was latent again, not bubbling up as in the beginning or during the floods or the panic attacks.

He had to pull himself together in order to not waste his last water reserves just because of boredom. He had handled the water thriftily, painfully thriftily, and there was still about one ninth in the bottle. He now just had to take care that it remained like this. He couldn't think of drinking, not of the water...

His thoughts wandered to Amita: her wonderful black hair, her dark, vivid, deep eyes, her enchanting smile, the graceful way she moved, how she nearly danced when she came towards him and kissed him, her soft lips on his... He could smell her perfume, could nearly sense the touch, but not quite, he couldn't really touch her, would maybe never be able to touch her again, would maybe have to give up this desire...

He bit his lip. He had to think of something else, anything that wasn't painful that could be a distraction. Maybe he could work mentally on his cognitive emergence theory... or develop another theory, explore the world of numbers...

His mind was empty, though. He didn't have the slightest clue what to think about. A case for Don? But he didn't even know what his brother was working on. Maybe he was still busy with this mafia case. Or... or maybe with the abduction of his brother.

In spite of himself Charlie had to smile. He hadn't thought of that. Of course, he hadn't forgotten that he was trapped in here – if he should ever forget that, he told himself, he should really doubt his mind and overthrow his hitherto work on cognitive emergence – but it simply had slipped his mind that he had been abducted, that there were people out there searching for him.

Provided that they hadn't given up already.

Charlie sighed. Maybe he should see one more time if there was really no way out of here after all. Yet he had thought about it exhaustively, though as long as his search for a way out of his dungeon didn't end with a satisfying result – and an empty set was definitely no satisfying result –, as long as that he would keep looking into the matter.

The problem was that he was going round in circles – at least mentally. He had gone through every possibility a dozen times already. He had also tried to push his way upwards between the stony walls, the way Don and he had done in the doorframe when they were children. This time, however, he had a useless leg. He had failed miserably and painfully. As long as the water was gone, he lacked the necessary buoyancy that raised him up at least a bit. And both with and without the water the walls were still too slippery to rise up higher than a meter.

He had also tried to find out where the water was flowing way to and if those chinks provided him with any kind of possibility – even if it were only to make the world outside notice him. However, the chinks were too narrow to even let him push something through; even a scrap of paper. He had tried to broaden the tiny cracks with his fingernails, but the stone didn't allow it. Eventually, he had even taken off his belt and tried to carve holes in the walls with its buckle in order to have a better hold and to be able to climb up in some way after all. Of course it hadn't worked.

During the third flood he had been so desperate that he had taken off his clothes and laid them where the floor met the walls. He had known it would be of no use, but somehow he had still hoped that the material would maybe prevent the water from flowing away. That the clothes would act as a dam and that, in the water, he would maybe be able to reach the slab over his hole. In vain. Even if he thought that the water had flowed away a bit more slowly, he had still had several hours in the dry until the third flood – although he had to wait for it in wet clothing.

And gradually he ran out of ideas. He just didn't know anymore what to do. Except for waiting that help would finally come.

0 – 0 – 0

Once more Rurik Petrov looked into his rear view mirror. "I think we finally got rid of them," he then said to his colleague in the passenger seat.

Oleg Borisov twisted in his seat, looking out through the rear window. No, there was really nobody there, nobody at all. They had agreed on a test on this broad and clear country road to see if the FBI's unmarked cars that initially had been following them had finally left them alone. But now it was really time to get back to the boss.

"So let's go to the meeting," Borisov decided. "The boss will want to know the details of what has happened."

Petrov nodded and took the next turn off. He would still take a circuitous route despite everything. You could never be too careful.

Three quarters of an hour later, they knocked at a door in a multi-storied apartment block. "Al Capone?" they asked quietly through the door. They assumed that the code word hadn't been changed during the last two days.

And they were right. From inside, there came a dull voice, "Still busy counting his change."

"The interest is going to us," Petrov answered with the second part of the password. The door was opened and they were let in.

The door had hardly fallen shut and they hadn't even moved two feet when a deep bass voice penetrated from the main room of the apartment. "Did somebody follow you?"

"No," Petrov answered. "At the beginning the cops were still after us, but we got rid of them."

"And the car?"

"We changed the number plate with marker until we're able to get a new one. It's now 4 RID 484. But we should swap the plate with one of our other cars so that in the worst case they've still got to chew on it."

Bolshoyov nodded, though the expression on his face didn't change. This was a serious affair. That might be the reason that – as Petrov and Borisov had detected at their entrance – apparently all high-ranking mafia members, at least as far as they could tell, were present as mute statues.

"What about Ilya and Boris?"

Rurik Petrov shrugged. "I guess they're still being interrogated."

Borisov jumped in. "They probably want to secure their releases by using threats. After all they're the only people to know where the professor is. And they are going to make that clear to the FBI."

"But how can they detain them in the first place? What is their evidence?"

Petrov grimaced. They had really had some bad luck there. "Apparently they've got a witness who saw one of the two. Probably Ilya when he went into the university; aside from that they were always together."

"And Boris?"

"Ilya must have given him up. The cops didn't say in the interrogation that there was other evidence."

Petrov grimaced again when he became aware of what he had just said. He could tell from Bolshoyov's look that he was going to hit the roof. And he didn't have to wait long for the outburst. "Ivanov did what? Has he completely lost his mind? Why didn't you stop him?"

Borisov's calm voice seemed to have some effect even on the boss. "What were we supposed to do? Besides Ivanov has done the best thing possible for us. The cops would have been able to figure out that he couldn't have carried out the abduction on his own. They would have continued sniffing around. And this way the two of them still can use the fact that there's nobody's out anymore who knows about the hiding-place."

Bolshoyov allowed himself a moment to think about these words. It wasn't easy for him to admit that, but it seemed as if Oleg was right and Ilya had done the right thing. Well then. In this case he would hopefully also know what to do in the future.

He was just about to change the subject when a burst of sound drowned out his forceful voice. In the next instance, uncountable, darkly dressed men moved through the small room shouting orders. The boss couldn't understand what was happening to him. Also the other mobsters had difficulty comprehending the events. However, for at least two of them the riddle of the strange men wasn't hard, but much greater was their horror. Petrov and Borisov felt as if they were trapped in a terrible déjà-vu.

Handcuffs clicked around their wrists for the second time this week. Again they were taken away, still confused, though quick-witted enough to sense the boss unbelieving gaze fixed on them.

0 – 0 – 0

Wednesday afternoon the break-through had come, longed for, yet unexpected. Of course they had kept surveillance on Petrov and Borisov after their release, and of course they had installed bugs and a DF transmitter in their car, but they hadn't dared to hope to gain results that quickly. Due to their bad experiences they had even feared that the mobsters would change their vehicle and therefore had followed them, especially when the car had come to a standstill. Such as now.

O'Connagh had just been informed by his agents that the mobsters had just parked their vehicle and had gotten out, probably going to join a convention of the mafia ring. At least that was what they had talked about earlier.

That had been their opportunity. And O'Connagh hadn't taken long to come to the conclusion that a little raid was very appropriate. He just had had to inform the rest of the team. "They've parked their car again in a residential area with many apartment houses. The address is situated in one of these hot zones from Fleinhardt and Ramanujan. SWAT has already been informed. Vicky and I are going there; David, Colby – you're coming with us, Megan and Don – you stay here and go on with the interrogation." O'Connagh had noticed that Don was going to protest and had got in ahead of him, "Don, I hardly think that they hid Charlie there, and yet if they did you're the first one I'm going to tell."

He had expected that Don would resist further but he was wrong. He had been surprised regarding Don's conduct, but he didn't complain. He had had good reason for not wanting Don on the op with them. His colleague wasn't demonstrating what one would call maximum performance at the moment. And O'Connagh couldn't have been sure about how he would behave when he would meet Petrov, Borisov and an unknown number of further mobsters again.

Of course, after Charlie's abduction they had all expected that Don would have difficulty coping with it. However, none of them had expected the dimension that was developing. Don had changed – but in which way, O'Connagh couldn't tell.

While he and Vicky had taken the lift downwards to their car, Don's face had still been hovering in front of his mind's eye. Pale, worn-out from lack of sleep, tense… The stiff posture, the tense shoulders, the alertness. And then the eyes... O'Connagh had continued seeing them in front of him, hadn't been able to get them out of his mind. Don's eyes had lost their usual resolute gaze, permanently widened, directed into the distance, in the void. It was a gaze O'Connagh didn't recognize in his colleague, a gaze that didn't have anything to do with Don's usual determination anymore. His whole thought processes, his energy, his determination seemed to have given way to another, a strange feeling.

Fear.

That was it. There hadn't been any doubt anymore for O'Connagh; the gaze in Don's eyes, his tension, his way of moving – it was so obvious and still he had taken so long to work out that feeling. But why? he had asked himself and given himself the answer straightaway. After all, fear was something Don didn't feel often and he showed it even less. Worry, yes, but fear? That was something out of the ordinary. And things out of the ordinary didn't portend any good.

0 – 0 – 0

Nearly imperceptibly, the last drop fell from the opening of the bottle, falling onto Charlie's dehydrated tongue. Slowly, though much too fast, it carried out its voyage down through the gullet. Charlie continued holding the bottle vertically downwards for several minutes, but it had definitely been the last one. Charlie didn't have any water left. Not counting the floods that regularly tried to drown him.

The sixth one was due within a short while. So it had to be Wednesday evening, assuming that he had come here in the night from Sunday to Monday and not from Monday to Tuesday. And with this point, Charlie was – compared to the other ones floating around his head – relatively sure. Thus he had been here for a bit more than sixty hours. Two and a half days. And they had given him one water bottle.

For the hundredth time he wondered when he would finally get some water again. The questions, Will I ever get water again anyway? and Why did I get water in the first place? followed closely. And just like every time Charlie couldn't find a satisfying answer to even one of those questions.

On the one hand, he couldn't imagine ever getting out of there; on the other, he could just as badly imagine dying in there. And he desperately clutched at this last bastion of hope: they had given him a water bottle; they hadn't killed him at once, they had wanted to keep him alive...

But who could assure him that they hadn't changed their mind?