Papal Plunder

ONE MY FACE LIGHTS UP IN pain as a big hand slaps me across the face. The thwack! echoes off the walls. It stings. My eyesight alternates between a black fuzziness and a spray of yellow and white dots swimming in space. I try to drag my mind out of the fog. Someone, a man, says something. I don’t understand the language. Where am I? I’m sitting down. On a metal chair—it feels flimsy, like a fold-up. There’s a spotlight trained on me. A lamp of some sort. My pupils still strain to see. Eyeballs pain bright red still from the light. I squint and try to turn away. Mouth feels wooly. Taste of metal, blood. Tongue tests teeth. All intact. A molar feels loose. Something crusty on my face as well. More blood. Pain in shoulder. Normal. Bare chested. I smell sweat. Old sweat from exertion. My own or another’s. Cigarette smoke. Fresh. Soft trousers. Dress shoes. Hands not tied, right little finger feels sprained. I sit up a little. Two large hands press down on my shoulders from behind, forcing me to stay put. “Okay,” I try to say. My voice a hoarse whisper. I clear my throat. My spine relaxes and the hands of the person behind me do the same. Ankles are constrained. Chains? Feels like it. I lift an arm against the light, trying to create a shadow on my face, maybe get a better idea of my surroundings. I see shapes and figures behind the lamp. People sitting at a table. How many? Not many. Two. The voice says something again. Sounds like an instruction. The tone of someone used to giving them. Arabic. “What?” I say. I try to turn to the voice, but a hand from behind forces my face to the front again. “Mr. Deeh,” comes another, different voice from in front. Mr. Deeh? Oh yes, that’s me. A foot by the table moves and steps on something. The light goes out, the bright filament dimming slowly, leaving a mark on the inside of my skull. Another source of light in the room—a long fluorescent tube, covered in some metal caging—is fixed to the wall above. The globe is on its way out, flickering lazily, bathing the room and the figures by the table in fast strobes. The room looks to be about thirty feet deep, maybe the same width. There’s no door in my field of vision. A table—one of those fold-up metal types—positioned right below the fluorescent light. At the table sits two men, one wearing a white, Arabic thobe. The other has on some kind of military uniform. Their faces are mostly bathed in shadow from the light shining over them. It feels like put-on drama. “Mr Deeh,” the voice says again. The fat guy in the thobe it seems like. I feel I recognize him from the Twitter thing we saw. When was that? Yesterday? This morning? A million years ago? I clear my throat. “Where...where am I?” I ask. I decide to play dumb civilian for the moment. Things are coming back to me now. Mouth is so dry. The military guy takes a drag from his cigarette. Slowly lowers the hand back down to an ashtray by the table. “Are you awake?” the man in white asks. I blink my eyes a couple of times and try to sit up again. Two hands, as if from nowhere, press me back down. The fat one gestures at the person behind me and the pressure lets up. I sit up completely, subtly trying to feel what the situation with my ankles is. I turn again to look back at the guy behind me, but he pokes a thumb in my cheek—right where the loose molar is—turning my face forwards again. I wince. I don’t like people touching my face. “Are you awake Mr. Deeh?” the man asks again. I look towards them, swallow. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Where am I?” “That means awake,” says the military guy, his English much more accented than the other’s. My eyes have adjusted better by now. I make eye contact with the smoker—but he keeps on staring at me like I’m a wall, takes another careful drag from the cigarette. He looks to be mid-forties, one of those career guys you find in every armed force. Sun-toughened face shaved clean, thick, metal-gray hair cut according to some regulation. His uniform looks to be the same kind of digital camo of the national guardsmen we’d seen earlier. He gingerly balances his cigarette on the side of the ashtray again, gets up. I notice the other man, the younger, softer one, look at the cigarette without hiding his disgust. More drama as the other loudly shoves the fold-up metal chair backwards on the concrete floor. He comes around and stands slightly in front of me, to the side. I see him glance at whoever’s behind me. His gaze only stops once before it comes back to meet mine. It means probably only one other guy—the face-toucher—to keep track of. “Where it is, Mr. Deeh?” he asks in my face, examining me with no discernable expression. Like a student dispassionately examining a specimen in a laboratory. “Where’s what?” The lean military guy stands up straight again and removes his sidearm—another Five-SeveN—and lays it on the table behind him. But making sure I see him do it. As if to say this is going to get difficult, better let me put the gun down else I kill the prisoner... “I have no idea what you’re talking about...” He steps back towards me and lands an expert back-handed slap across the other cheek, his knuckles just contacting the cheekbone. No time for me to counter it or try anything. I take it and pain explodes in my face again. I allow my head to turn around and try to keep my eyes open despite the reflex—taking in as much of the rest of the room behind me as I can. I see most of the face-toucher standing a few feet behind me. He’s big and broad. What surprises me is that a large rolling-door, maybe three car lengths away, makes up the entire opposite end of the bare, narrow room. So this is not a police station or something like that. Maybe some sort of storage area? I feel the cuffs around my ankles as I test the length of chain between them. About two feet. Pretty standard. I turn back. Mister bad cop removes a dirty white handkerchief from a back pocket and wipes his hand with it. He walks back to the table, picks up the cigarette. He leaves the gun on the table. The taste of fresh blood in my mouth. “Please stop playing, Mr. Deeh,” the other man at the table now says. He looks up from the phone he’s been typing on since I became aware of him. His tone is a weird combination of boredom and mild irritation. I wonder what time it is. “We know you are not what you say you are. You made a big mess this afternoon. People died by your hand. Where is the Stone you stole tonight? Is it with the woman? The man from Abu Dhabi?” I hope they got away safely.