An Excerpt from Daughter, Son, Assassin

The following is an excerpt from my first novel, Daughter, Son, Assassin, just published by Common Notions Press.  To set the scene:  Fred Baker, one of the main characters, has just been arrested in an unnamed desert kingdom for publicly criticizing its government and finds himself thinking about his wife, Lara, and daughter, Nancy.

I let them drag me out of the room, but I started walking of my own accord after they burrowed their thumbs into my armpits with such force that pain traveled up my neck and down to my fingers.  The hallway was quiet.  I was praying for other people to appear, a drunken group of frat boys, a couple on their way to a hookup, a tourist dad in socks and Tevas, anybody.  It remained quiet until they shoved me into what I figured was a service elevator.  (No carpeting, slow, rickety.)  They directed me through some hallways and what seemed to be a kitchen and then we were outside, in a spot without foot traffic.  They led me to a vehicle—an SUV, I assumed—and pushed me into the middle of the back seat, a soldier on either side.  The man in the suit sat in the front passenger seat. 

I was beginning to suffocate, my face deathly hot beneath the hood.  The soldiers took note of my wheezing. 

“I think he’s running out of air,” one of them said. 

A pause.  A shuffle.  The man in front had turned around to look at me.  Another pause.  “Let him sweat a little longer,” he said. 

I don’t think they knew I could understand them.  I wanted them to keep talking, but they returned to silence.  The left side of my face throbbed from the slaps I’d received; my head felt mushy and swollen.  Every breath increased the heat, life expediting death, the Kingdom’s sweltering atmosphere condensed into a tiny enclosure.  “What if Lara could see me now?” I wondered.  She’d call me an idiot, upbraid me for being egotistical and irresponsible.  “You have a child, Fred.”  I could hear her saying it with perfect clarity. 

And I wanted to tell her that I was suffocating in the backseat of a government vehicle in a strange country precisely because I have a child.  Lara would ask what the fuck that was supposed to mean and I’d have no answer, only an incongruous plea that I once had parents and remember how wonderful it felt to be proud of them, how we never truly escape the potency of innocence even at our most cynical.  She would be furious, of course, tell me to stop with the intellectual babbling and focus on the real world.  I still would have no answer.  It’s not that Lara couldn’t understand.  We had a tacit agreement that we’d navigate the world as it actually exists.  She would see my descent into emotion as a betrayal. 

And Nancy?  I found it too painful to consider the effect of my behavior on her.  All I know is that I was determined to leave her an inheritance.  I was in no position to second-guess my decisions while strangers carted me into the unknown. 

“Sir,” one of the soldiers said, “I think he’s sick.  He’s starting to go limp.” 

A pause.  “Take it off.” 

When they loosened the rope around my neck and pulled off the hood, it felt as if I had plunged my head into a freezing river.  I gasped and contorted.  The soldiers grabbed my forearms.  “Settle down or it goes back on,” said the man in the suit. 

We were on the outskirts of the city.  The neighborhoods weren’t well lit.  Small apartment buildings surrounded single blocks of commerce:  mobile phone stores, spice shops, food stands.  The few people I saw on the streets appeared to be foreign.  My captors knew it didn’t matter if I could see.  I wasn’t going anywhere without them.  Eventually we passed all civilization and pulled up to a gate patrolled by clones of the men next to me.  Behind it sat a massive concrete building without identifying markers.  We passed through a few security checkpoints and then down two flights of stairs. 

The man in the suit whispered to a couple of guards in a drab anteroom.  One of them unlocked a steel door and we passed through into a narrow hallway about twenty yards deep with symmetric doors on either side.  The place felt empty.  It was quiet but for our footsteps.  We stopped in front of a door.  One of the guards walked over and unlocked it. 

They pushed me into a dark room and slammed the door behind me.  No instructions, no suggestions.  I sat on the floor and numbed my mind.  After my eyes adjusted, I got a sense of my new environment.  The room was about eight feet wide by twelve feet deep.  A plastic bucket sat in one corner, a rolled-up bamboo mat in the other.  No pillow.  No sink.  No toilet.  I looked at the bucket.  It was large enough to hold plenty of fluid, but I almost wretched just thinking about the smell.  Maybe they were holding me here only for a short period.  If they had in mind a long confinement, then a proper cell, in a proper prison, would be more logical. 

I learned quickly to do away with logic. 

It was late and the day had been intense, but I couldn’t sleep.  Physical discomfort didn’t help, but it was anxiety that kept me awake.  I laid stomach-up on the bamboo mat with my hands clasped behind my head.  The cell was cold, with stagnant air and no insulation.  I had to piss, but wasn’t ready to start filling the bucket.  I also worried I’d get into trouble for using it.  Mostly I tried to keep my mind numb by repelling ominous or wistful thoughts.  I was suspended in a state of unreality and knew that any serious recognition of the surroundings would send me into panic. 

I slept eventually and woke up to the same darkness.  I had no way of knowing the time.  My hip and shoulder were sore and I could barely turn my head, but felt surprisingly well-rested.  I sat against the wall and resumed my vacant contemplation.  Sometime later—five minutes?  two hours?—I heard a key jiggling in the door.  Two soldiers walked on.  One of them smacked my arm and motioned for me to follow him.  They led me upstairs to an interrogation room.  It looked like something from a cop show:  table bolted to the floor, single lightbulb hanging from a string, metal chairs, two-way mirror.  I was unshackled but didn’t dare walk around.  Fear kept me from appreciating the irony.