“Do you speak English?” she asked. The man looked at her with a blank expression. He was indeterminately middle-aged, with a puffy, doughy, expressionless face.

“If you’re a doctor, whatever happened to ‘Do no harm’? Tell me that.”

The doctor looked down, and Pia imagined she was about to be injected again with whatever they had been using to knock her out. He grasped her arm.

“No, you don’t!” she screamed. “I don’t want to be drugged again. Leave me alone, you asshole.” Pia squirmed out of the man’s grasp and screamed and shouted at him. He didn’t try to restrain her nor say anything, he simply rapped on the door and stood aside as two Chinese guards came into the room.

“Leave me alone! I demand that you tell me where I am. Where’s Berman? I want to talk to him.”

Pia cried out in pain and one of the guards grabbed her roughly by her bad arm. In the confined quarters of her small room, it took only seconds for Pia to be thoroughly restrained.

The doctor held his hands out to show he wasn’t carrying a needle, and examined Pia’s arm.

“You’re another Nazi experimenter, like Berman. I know you can understand me. You are not going to get away with this. They’re going to get you, too.” The doctor gazed at Pia without a single facial muscle contracting. She couldn’t even tell if he blinked. Without a word, he left, along with the guards.

Chapter 54

54.

LIVINGSTON CIRCLE, NIWOT, COLORADO

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 2013, 12:34 P.M. MST

Paul Caldwell used a friendly 411 dispatcher to find Mariel Spallek’s address on the city system when it turned out she wasn’t listed in any of the public records. She lived in an affluent town adjacent to Boulder, in a single-story rental building that was one of four attached units. The dispatcher had told Paul there were no other occupants listed at that specific address, a revelation that didn’t surprise Paul in the slightest.

“So now we’re here, what are we going to do?” said Paul, who parked fifty yards down the road, just in case. “Are you going to walk up to the front door and ring the bell?”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you say you’ve met her? What are you going to do, say you just moved in next door and want a cup of sugar? Say you’ve joined the police department?”

“I don’t think I’m dressed for that.” George had gone to the store, but only added a pair of cheap sneakers to his frat-boy outfit of sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“I don’t know, I’ll think of something,” said George.

“According to Pia, she’s a pistol, George. You’re going to have to think of something good.”