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Back The Janson Directive
Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

A thin copper wire, insulated except for the tip, was then inserted through the trocar to the spinal root itself, the trunk through which nerve impulses from the entire body made their way. Demarest adjusted a dial until a small amount of electrical current began to pulse through the copper wire. The reaction was immediate.

The scholar screamed—a loud, bloodcurdling scream—until there was no air left in his lungs.

“Now that,” Demarest said, cutting off the current, “is a very singular sensation, is it not?”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” the scholar gasped.

Demarest adjusted the dial.

“I’ve told you,” the scholar repeated as pain mounted upon pain, penetrating his body in convulsions of purest agony. “I’ve told you!” Shimmering and otherworldly, the choral threnodies of joy floated far above the agony that consumed him.

Sanctus es unguendo
periculose fractos:
sanctus es tergendo
fetida vulnera.

No, there was no pity in the black pools of the man’s eyes. Instead, there was paranoia: a conviction that his enemies were anywhere and everywhere.

“So you maintain,” Alan Demarest said. “You maintain this because you believe the pain will stop if I am persuaded that you have told me the whole truth. But the pain will not stop, because I know that you have not done so. Janson sought you out. He sought you out because he knew that you were a friend. That you were loyal. How can I make you understand that it is me you owe your loyalty to? You feel pain, do you not? And that means you are alive, yes? Is that not a gift? Oh, your entire existence will be a sensorium of pain. I believe that if I can make you understand that, we might begin to make progress.”

“Oh dear God no!” the scholar shouted as another course of electricity penetrated his body.

“Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Demarest said. “Every C fiber in your body—every pain-transmitting nerve—feeds into this main trunk of nerve bundles that I’m stimulating right now. I could attach electrodes to every inch of your body and it wouldn’t yield the same intensity of pain.”

Another scream reverberated through the room—another scream that ended only because breath itself did.