The Confessor Read Online Free PDF

tech punched the console and the surveillance video began to play in slo-mo. A lean figure, dressed in black, jogged into an intersection, his back to the camera.
    ‘He’s got some kind of limp,’ the tech said. ‘Works around it, sort of.’
    ‘Yes, he does.’
    They watched the runner reach the middle of the intersection when a truck bore down on him. He turned, face not quite three-quarters to the camera. The tech stopped the video, isolated Geiger’s face with a visual grid and enlarged it, bringing it up fullscreen.
    ‘Nah,’ said the tech. ‘We can do better.’ He let the event continue at quarter-speed – Geiger center-stage, stock-still. ‘So who is this guy?’
    ‘That’s why I’m here, Willie – to find that out.’
    Next month would be her four-year anniversary with Deep Red. The government had recruited her straight out of college, and she’d gone over to Deep Red sixteen months later. Like everyone else in the group, she had known of Geiger – the best interrogator in the world – but had never worked with him. Last year, after the torture videos disaster, Deep Red had classified him as ‘Missing, presumed dead’– but they all knew the label really meant ‘We have no fucking idea what happened to him . . .’
    In the surveillance video, Geiger grabbed the driver, spun him round and took control.
    The tech nodded. ‘Nice move.’
    She had been the one who debriefed Dalton post-event, she’d read the Level Eight Profile, and she’d talked to one of the team that had used Geiger in Cairo back in 2004 – but she still didn’t have a feel for the layers or depth of the
man . . .
    The driver’s body suddenly slumped, lifeless, in Geiger’s grasp.
    The tech sat up. ‘Wow! You see that?’
    ‘Play it back and enlarge.’
    The tech reversed the video, magnified the men – and they watched again.
    ‘Watch his hand, Willie. See that? Pressure point. Brachial plexus.’
    Geiger turned – and the tech stabbed the keyboard. ‘There!’ He isolated Geiger’s face again, blew it up and filled the large flat-screen with it. The slate-gray eyes above the pitch-black beard stared out at them, past them. It reminded her of a falcon’s gaze, taking in whole vistas without missing one tiny detail. It belonged up in the sky. She handed the tech a DVD. He slid it into the console and the adjacent screen lit with a freeze-frame:
    In a windowless, bunker-like room, a swarthy, bearded man lay strapped onto a gurney, dressed only in soiled boxers, shiny with sweat, his face and body spotted with welts and cuts. A man in a short-sleeved white shirt and khaki shorts stood beside him.
    ‘Hey,’ said the tech. ‘I’ve seen this. This is the secret interrogation Veritas Arcana put on the web – right? The stuff in Cairo . . .’
    ‘Run it.’
    The man in the khaki shorts came alive and stroked his clipped goatee.
    ‘Nari . . . meet your new friend – the Inquisitor,’ he said, and Geiger walked into frame in a white T-shirt and slacks. He put two fingers to the victim’s neck, as a doctor would check a pulse. The prisoner smoldered as he spoke with a thick Middle Eastern accent.
    ‘I cannot tell you any more than I already—’
    Geiger’s fingers dug into the flesh beneath the jaw. ‘You’re right, Nari, you will not tell me anything – now.’ His voice had the feel of satin and the sound of dominion. ‘Later you will, but it isn’t time yet. For now, it’s best you don’t speak at all.’
    Nari’s eyes registered surprise and confusion. ‘But peace is what I was trying to—’
    Geiger’s grip tightened, rendering the man mute. ‘Not a word, Nari.’ His fingers dug deeper, and the prisoner’s grimace stretched so wide it looked like a smile. ‘Nod if you understand me?’
    The prisoner shook his head. ‘One question,’ he rasped. ‘One.’
    Nothing moved on Geiger’s face – more a painted canvas than body and soul. Then he nodded and removed his hand. Nari cleared his