39
The note appeared beneath her door. She swung her shackled feet to the floor and shuffled slowly across her cell. It was Cain who stood on the other side awaiting her reply. She could smell him. The note said: Do you want food? “Yes,” she replied in a low, evenly modulated voice. Then, like a model prisoner, she laid down on her cot again and waited for him to come inside.
She heard the sound of a key being shoved into a padlock, followed by the groaning of hinges. This door was louder than the door of her last cell and the sound of it opening always set her teeth on edge. Cain placed the food at the foot of her cot and quickly withdrew. Elizabeth sat up again and scrutinized the meal: a few inches of baguette, a lump of cheese of indeterminate origin, a bottle of Evian water, chocolate because she had been good.
She devoured the food and gulped the water. Then, when she was certain no one was watching through the spy hole, she shoved her fingers down her throat and vomited her fourth meal onto the floor of her cell. Cain burst in two minutes later and glared at her angrily. Her blanket was now wrapped around her shoulders and she appeared to be shivering uncontrollably. “The ketamine,” she whispered. “You’re killing me with the ketamine.”
Abel brought a bucket of water and a rag and made her clean her own vomit. Only when her cell was cleansed of impure female excretions did Cain reappear. He stood as far from her as possible, as though he feared catching whatever was ailing her, and with a terse movement of his hand invited her to explain her affliction.
“Idiopathic paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia.” She paused for a moment and drew a series of rapid heavy breaths. “It is a fancy way of saying that I suffer from sporadic arrhythmia in the lower chambers of my heart: the ventricles. This sporadic arrhythmia has been exacerbated by too many injections of ketamine. My heartbeat is now dangerously rapid and arrhythmic and my blood pressure is extremely low, which is causing the nausea and the chills. If you give me another shot of ketamine, you could very well kill me.”
He stood silently for a moment, gazing at her though the eye slits of his hood, then withdrew. Several minutes later—about twenty, she guessed, but she couldn’t be sure—he returned and handed her a typewritten note:
FOR REASONS WE CANNOT EXPLAIN TO YOU, IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO BE MOVED THIS EVENING. IF YOU ARE CONSCIOUS DURING THIS MOVEMENT, YOU WILL BE EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. DO YOU WANT THE KETAMINE OR DO YOU WANT TO BE MOVED WHILE YOU ARE AWAKE?
“No more ketamine,” she said. “I’ll do it conscious.”
Cain looked at her as though she had made the wrong choice, then handed her a second note.
IF YOU SCREAM OR MAKE ANY NOISE WHATSOEVER, WE WILL KILL YOU AND LEAVE YOU BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.
“I understand,” she said.
Cain collected the two notes and slipped out of her cell. Elizabeth stretched out on her cot and stared into the blinding white light. Her rebellion was only a few minutes old, but already she had managed to gather two small pieces of information. She was to be moved by road and at night.
When next they entered her cell, they did so without first alerting her with a note. They bound her quickly in her own woolen blanket and secured it to her body cocoonlike with heavy packing tape. Foam rubber plugs were inserted into her ears, a gag placed over her mouth, and a blindfold tied tightly over her eyes. Now robbed of all senses but touch and smell, she felt them take hold of her body, one at each end, and carry her a short distance. The container into which she was placed was so narrow that the sides pressed hard against her hips and shoulders. It smelled of plywood and glue and vaguely of old fish. A lid was placed over the top, so close that it nearly touched the end of her nose, and several nails were hurriedly hammered into place. She wanted to scream. She did not. She wanted to cry out for her mother. She prayed silently instead and thought of the slender man with gray temples who had tried to save her life in Hyde Park. I will not submit, she thought. I will not submit.