ALLER PLACED a sticky patch connected to a long thin cable against the side of Abdul-Majeed’s neck. Then he connected the line to a small battery-powered monitor that he turned on.

“What is that?” asked Abdul-Majeed nervously.

“It is nothing to worry about. It just measures your pulse. I do not have enough electrical power here to shock the truth out of you, my Muslim friend. But there are other ways.” Waller placed a cuff around the man’s arm and then plugged the cord running from the cuff into the same device as he had for the pulse reading. “And that of course measures your blood pressure.”

“Why do you need that?”

“Because I want to make sure I stop the pain before I kill you, of course.”

Abdul-Majeed tensed and began to chant under his breath.

“So your god is great, Abdul-Majeed?” said Waller, translating the words. “We will see how great he is to you.”

Abdul-Majeed did not answer, but kept up his chanting. Waller checked the readout of his vitals on the screen. “Your pulse is already at ninety-eight and your blood pressure is elevated, and I have not even started. You must relax your breathing; calm your nerves, my friend.”

“You will not break me!” the captive said defiantly.

Waller took duct tape out of his box and wound it around the man’s forehead, chin, and shoulders and around the table several times. The result was that Abdul-Majeed could not move his head or upper torso even an inch away from the wood.

“Do you know why I do this?” Waller asked. “It is so you will not be able to render yourself unconscious when the pain becomes too great. I have known men to crack their own skulls in order to escape it. I made that mistake once, but never again. Torture does not work if one cannot feel the pain.”

Waller pulled more items from his box, placed one in his pocket, and came back over to the table. “They say that the agony of a single kidney stone passing through one’s body is even greater than that experienced giving birth. I have never given birth, of course, but I have passed kidney stones and the pain is indeed severe.” He slipped on latex gloves, looked down at Abdul’s private parts, and then held up a thin glass tube twenty centimeters in length.

“This will have to serve as my kidney stone. Now take a deep breath. And then relax.”

Instead the man’s breathing accelerated and his cheeks bulged out as though he were tensing before the killing blow fell. “You will not break me!” he screamed over and over.

Waller methodically worked the glass tube up the man’s penis, using a rubber hammer to finish tapping it in. Abdul shrieked in pain with every millimeter it was thrust inside him.

“It is no more than a catheter, really. Now, this, this is the painful part.”

He slipped the vise grips from his pocket and looked at him. “All I require are names.”

“Go to hell!” screamed Abdul.

“Of course, very original of you.” Waller set the tension on the grips, lowered them into position, and snapped them into place, crushing the glass tube inside the man.

This time the scream was far louder than before. Waller’s men, who were waiting outside but near the door, looked at each other and then nervously moved away from the sounds. Only Pascal stayed close to the doorway, ever alert.

“You are bleeding in a place you would not like, Abdul,” said Waller, peering down at his work.

The response was a string of shouts in the man’s native tongue.

“Yes, yes, my mother and father are already quite dead, thank you,” said Waller.

The tears rolled down Abdul’s strained face, his jaw muscles bulged and shook. His tethered neck was stretched tight in his agony, every vein and artery visible. So great was his misery that if Waller had not bound it to the table, he would have indeed smashed his skull against the wood.

Waller continued on calmly. “I learned Pashto and a little Dari during the Soviets’ disastrous intrusion into your country. They are hard languages to learn, but not as difficult as English, which has so many exceptions there are no rules left.” He checked the monitor. “Pulse one-thirty-nine. I’ve seen far higher. When I run, in fact, I can get it up to over one-forty and I’m sixty-three. You are a young man, this is nothing. Now your blood pressure is one-fifty over ninety. A bit precarious. Well, let’s see.”

He snapped the grips on a new location and the man’s pelvis jerked upward, pulling against his bindings as he roared in pain again.

“Pulse one-fifty-seven. Okay, now I believe that I have your attention. We were discussing names.”

In gasps, Abdul said, “You will just kill me if I tell.”

“Now that is progress. That is good. We are closer to negotiation. And yet if you tell me, do you want me to just let you go? But if I do then you could go and warn those who betrayed me. Hardly a worthy proposition.”

“So I die then?”

“I did not say that.”

Waller undid the grips and then locked them higher up, crushing a particularly sensitive part of the Muslim’s anatomy.

Again, Abdul’s shrieks slammed into every corner of the small room. He threatened to kill Waller, behead him, disembowel him, come back and haunt him, slaughter everyone he ever cared about.

“I understand your anger, my friend, but it gets us nowhere,” said the Ukrainian. He looked down. “You are bleeding more heavily, Abdul, but it is not life-threatening so have no worries.”

Waller went back to his box and pulled out a small scalpel. He held it up for the Muslim to see. “A surgeon’s knife; it is very delicate, very effective. I make one incision here and here.” He placed the blade against two spots on Abdul’s neck. “And you bleed out in minutes. But I don’t want that, so instead I do this.”

Seconds later Abdul’s right pupil had been slashed open. The Muslim writhed in agony, his screams again filling the small space.

Waller studied the monitor. “One-ninety-five on the pulse rate. That is unsustainable, my friend. And your blood pressure, yes, it too gives me trouble. You will assuredly suffer a stroke if you don’t calm down. I truly fear for your health.”

He looked down at the sobbing and now partially blinded man. “Would you like me to now employ sleep deprivation or play what they call the rap music?” He bent lower. “What do you say? You are begging me? What, to kill you, my friend? No, no. I am not a violent man. I am a fair man. And I do not kill. But instead I do the work piecemeal.” The knife struck again and part of the captive’s left ear fell to the dirty floor.

He checked the monitor readout. “Over two hundred is the pulse and the blood pressure is not good, not good at all. I tell you to calm and yet you do not. You are too stubborn.” He turned back to the Muslim. “I will let you rest a bit. And then the real interrogation will begin. If you thought this was painful, Abdul, you will be disappointed, I think. This, this was merely the foreplay.”

Waller withdrew from his case an instrument that looked somewhat like a large cheese grater, only its cutting edges were longer and looked lethal and were also on pivots, so they could turn at different angles. “I know you can see what I’m holding, but you may not realize what it is. So I will ask you a question. What is the largest organ in the body?” Waller pretended to wait for a response. “You say you do not know? Then I will tell you. It is the skin. Yes, the skin is the largest organ in the body. Many people do not realize this. Adults average two square yards of skin on their bodies, weighing up to nine pounds. Yes, nine pounds. Now, with this tool that I am holding I can shave all the skin off your body in less than one hour. I do not make empty boasts. I have done it before. It takes a firm hand and an efficient method. I start with the face and work my way down. It comes off in long strips, you see. Not counting the face and the arms, which are slightly problematic and require extra time, I once almost did a continuous roll of skin from the torso to the feet. Sadly, the procedure broke down near the knees. You see, the woman had very bony knees. I was disappointed of course, but still, I was proud of my accomplishment.

“Now, because I of course cannot have you thrashing around while I perform this task, I will inject you with this.” He reached in his metal case and held up a small bottle of liquid and a syringe. “The Soviets came up with it back in the seventies. It paralyzes the body but allows the person to be fully conscious and aware of everything. You understand me? You will feel nothing when I peel off your skin, but you will be able to see it all. That is why I left you with one eye. So you would not miss a second of the procedure. The effects wear off in a few hours. And then, well, then you will feel a lot.”

“Please, please,” sobbed Abdul-Majeed.

Waller smiled down at him. “So you do not prefer the taking of the skin? Well, then did you know that if cut out of the body properly a man can hold his own intestines for hours? You would think that one would bleed out, but it’s not true. You will surely die of something else, but not because of blood loss, because I know what I’m doing. Now, I will tell you that my practice is to stuff the intestines inside the mouth, at least as much as will fit. Perhaps I am too soft but I find it wicked to expect a dying man to hold his own bowels. You have twenty seconds to decide which you prefer, or I will make the decision for you. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am very partial to the skin.”

Finally, in gasps interrupted only by sobs, Abdul- Majeed said, “I will tell you what you want to know.”

Waller smiled. “Now that is ironic. Because I will tell you something first. I know who ordered my killing. They are already dead, in fact. I saved you for last.”

“Then why did you do this to me?” the captive screamed.

“Because I could. And it is good for one to practice. Otherwise one’s skills diminish. You said I could not break you. But I did.” Waller’s voice lost its casual tone. “And if someone hits you, my friend, you have to hit them back or else they will think you are weak. And I am many things, but weak is not one of them.”

“Then kill me,” roared the disfigured man. “Finish it.”

Waller took his time pulling off the cuff and pulse monitor and vise grips and packing them away in the box. “You are not important enough for me to waste any more of my time. Tell Allah I said hello. And that I wondered what kept him from coming to your aid. Perhaps, like me, he also had better things to do.” He raised the scalpel once more. “What I am about to do now is an act of mercy, Abdul-Majeed. You will understand why very shortly.” He slashed the Muslim’s good eye, fully blinding the man. “It would be the height of cruelty to allow you to see what is coming next.”

The man’s screams of terror followed Waller out the door. His men stiffened to attention when they saw him emerge from the cottage. Waller nodded. “I’m done.”

Pascal along with another man hustled to an SUV that had pulled up within the last few minutes. They opened the back gate and hauled out two animals. They were burly pit bulls tethered to metal control poles. Leather muzzles were securely fastened over their snouts. Using the poles, the men, with difficulty, maneuvered the lunging beasts to the front door. Then they released the wire nooses connected to the poles, whipped off the muzzles, and pushed the animals through the opening, slamming the door behind them.

As Waller nimbly stepped into his ride, the snarls of the attacking dogs and the screams of Abdul-Majeed could be heard over the sound of the vehicle’s engine. Waller slipped in his earbuds and selected a joyful song on his iPod even as his thoughts turned back to the beautiful young woman he’d had dinner with tonight. He looked forward to seeing her again.

Soon.