She cried while it happened. She tried not to but she couldn’t help it. And when her limbs were forced to take the full weight of her body again, she screamed.

The man let it raise her about a foot from the ground and then said again, “Tell me about your old friend, Levi Roth.”

She said nothing, but the way he spoke, so jovially, so casually, it made her feel like it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she told him just a little of what he wanted to hear. She could lie to him. What harm would that do?

The man pushed the yellow button and again, she was slowly lowered to the ground, the weight on her feet relieving her arms, her shoulders, her elbows and wrists. She crumpled back onto the ground and the man came over to her.

“I met him once,” he said. “We were friends then.” He looked at her for a reaction. “It’s true. He poured me a very fine scotch. A bottle he’d been given by the president, if I remember correctly. You’d never believe it now of course, it’s hard for people your age to imagine, but the CIA and the GRU were the best of friends back in those days. Gorbachev and Bush were practically golfing buddies. We were all friends, all backslapping, all full of promises.”

Laurel lay on the ground, struggling to breathe, struggling with the fire of agony in her limbs, the freezing cold.

“So gullible, you Americans,” the man said. “You thought, because Communism was collapsing, because the Wall was coming down, that you’d won the war.”

He let out a chuckle, “Wars like that never end. They only move from one theater to another.”

He reached out and touched Laurel’s cheek.

“He likes the ladies, doesn’t he, your boss?”

His thumb caressed her cheek.

“I’ll admit, I’m no angel myself. But your boss.” He whistled to emphasize his point. “It really was quite shocking. I never thought America would tolerate behavior like that. What, with all your political correctness and what not. But he was as bad as any GRU direktor. I have to give him credit for that.”

Laurel summoned the strength to push the man’s hand from her cheek.

He smiled and grabbed her hair suddenly, yanking her head back.

“It always was blondes with him, too. Yes, always blondes, and always young. So very young. Too young if you ask me.”

Laurel knew what he was doing. At some level, deep in her mind, her logical brain knew the techniques he was using, and the results they were designed to elicit. She knew how it worked. She’d been trained in all of it.

But it was so hard for her logical brain to make itself heard above all that pain.