Chapter 4 Chapter One

It's four in the morning and Geiger is standing on the back porch watching a spider spin a web. It was raining, and the horizon was smoky gray and cloudy like an old patchwork quilt.A drop of water hangs from a freshly formed spider silk that hangs from the porch to the wooden railing a meter below.Cobwebs are pulled by the breeze like guitar strings, and raindrops tremble but stand firm.Then, shaking its bloated belly, the spider crawled down and began spinning a new thread. Earlier, Geiger was documenting his execution of Matthew.As "Sergeant Pepper" poured down from the 1.8-meter-tall Hyperion amplifiers, he felt the extraordinary sub-bass respond precisely to McCartney's strumming of the guitar strings.As usual, the cat was lying on the desk, stretched out to the right of the keyboard; every few minutes when it wasn't scratched, it raised its front paw to pat Geiger's hand.The cat purred almost thunderously as Geiger scratched at the scar above its missing left eye.Geiger didn't know the circumstances of his injury, which had been the case when the little one showed up on the back porch three years ago.He also didn't know the cat's name or where it came from—that is, they were more or less in the same boat.

Geiger always writes his notes on the night of the execution, while the forces of action and reaction are still fresh in his mind; he has found that even a few hours of sleep can obscure the vividness of the memory .The next day, his partner Harry would email a copy of the execution video, and Geiger would review it again, making comments where relevant. He works in a custom-made, ergonomic chair, but he still has to get up and walk every fifteen minutes or his left foot tingles all the way to the toes.Over the years, he had seen three specialists on the subject, one of whom called it a "dead foot," and they all agreed: The only way to go was reconstructive surgery.Geiger told them that no one should stab him for any reason.The doctor who had just examined him knew how he felt about it.

Geiger walked out the back door to ease the numbness, smoking a cigarette along the way.He does not smoke in the house, because the smell of smoke in the room will affect his concentration.When he first started using the recliner a few months ago, Dr. Curry traced the incident back to his father and his chains of Camels.To this day, this is the only image that Dr. Curley has pulled out of Geiger about his father; in the dream, Geiger saw his father's expressionless face staring down at him, with a cigarette between his full lips , Curved smoke sprayed from the nostrils.Geiger remembers thinking, this is what God looks like, only taller.

He stroked the cat, which had just come out of the open door, and it rubbed against his ankle.He picked up the cat and draped its furry body over his shoulders.This is the cat's favorite position other than lying on the desk. Geiger lit a Lucky cigarette and watched the spider perform its one and only mission with determination and perfection.Imagine a carpenter making nails in his stomach and spitting them out, using his hand as a hammer; imagine a musician using his body as a musical instrument.Geiger couldn't help thinking, besides humans, what other creature can create killing devices so diligently and artistically?

Geiger is apostle and slave of details.He is constantly breaking down, extracting the essence, and defining the parts of the whole, because in "IR", which is the industry of information retrieval, the details are the most important.His aim is to refine the whole process to an almost artistic level, so that from the moment Geiger enters the room, everything has some degree of importance and requires recognition of such subtleties: Every look, every spoken word, every silence, every twitch, glance and movement.Just let him stay in the same room with a Jones for fifteen minutes, and nine times out of ten he can know how the other person will respond to any action before the other party makes any movement: fear, provocation, despair, The bravado, the denial; there are patterns, cycles, behavioral restraints that can be learned with careful attention.He learns this by listening to music; he learns the part each note plays in the whole, how each sound interacts and complements the others.He could hum every note of a thousand tunes, all in his head.As in intelligence extraction, in music every detail matters.

Yet, despite the myriad of possible factors, Geiger's view of his work is relatively unadulterated.The tasks that come with the client and Jones almost always fall into the following three basic scenarios. Number one: steal.Jones stole something from the client and the client wants it back. Second: Betrayal.Jones committed an act of infidelity or treachery, and the client wanted to know the identity of each complicity and the magnitude of the potential fallout. Third: need.Jones had the intelligence or knowledge the client wanted. Human beings are all different, but there are only so many layers, and Geiger's copy proves it time and time again.Since he started this business, he has filled twenty-six ten-centimeter-thick black file folders, which are now neatly arranged on his desk.He can cross-compare the data in the notebook with occupation, age, net worth, and most importantly, allegations. These folders are an encyclopedia of intelligence, responses and reactions to intimidation, threats, fear, and pain.But there was no death information on the page, Geiger had never let Jones die in the execution room, not one in eleven years.As Kamini said, Geiger's record is flawless.

Geiger's clients come from private industry, the corporate world, criminal organizations and governments.Four years ago, he even did a show for the Intelligence Bureau operatives in a secret location.They believed their methods were ahead of their time, but Geiger saw right away that they were far behind, and that when it came to saving the world, they were after only the man who took off the wings of a fly.In the business of intelligence extraction, there is no substitute for expertise.Patriotism, religion, firm belief in right and wrong all have to be set aside, and in the end there are only lies and truth, which may be so close that there is no room for integrity and firmness to interfere.As he worked, the operatives in the secret location watched him from the shadows, watching him light a Dupont lighter like a caveman.

He was a student of the craft as well as a historian.Just as those black folders contained all of his work, so he was the living textbook of his profession—origins, fundamentals, methods, and evolution.He knew that humanity had been using torture unapologetically since at least 2152, when Pope Innocent IV authorized its use against heretics.Since this official sanction, countless hours and energies have been dedicated to inventing and refining methods of suffering in pursuit of information or truth that one person or group of people find indispensable.There are no cultural, geographical, or moral preconceptions in this industry, and history has proven that as long as you have the basic tools—hammer, saw, file—and basic materials—wood, iron, rope, fire—you are good enough, plus the simplest With advanced physics and an understanding of structures, you can do this job.

Geiger's education begins with studying the intuitions and basic choices of these pioneers. Certain methods and techniques are particularly effective, including: sharp objects. The success of the "Chair of Judas" in the Spanish Inquisition prompted most European countries to order their own versions.The Italians call it the "Cradle of Judas", and the Germans call it the "Judas Chair".Whatever name is used, it refers to a chair in the shape of a pyramid, above which Jones, suspended by ropes, hangs. Boxing and pressure. The "Iron Lady" is an upright sarcophagus with spikes and slots for inserting different sharp or pointed objects during interrogation; it is also, to some extent, the ancestor of sensory deprivation methods. "Platform boots", "Spanish boots", "Malay foot pressers" all use compression and manipulation to break legs. "Thumbscrews" are limited to one finger, but as long as you have a pair in your pocket, there are torture chambers for interrogators everywhere.

Bind and stretch. "Pull table" is the advancement of technology, with the addition of rollers, gears and handles, it enables people to quickly increase or decrease body pain with minimal difference. Waterboarding was another brainchild of Spanish Inquisition interrogators.They learned that submerging Jones might have worked in the long run, but waterboarding almost immediately triggered the choking reflex, heightening the fear of death. High heat has always been an important method of torture in this line of work, consider the phrase "put your feet on fire," along with tearing and skinning.Equally effective is a range of different tools, from the simplest, using a vise to pull out a nail, to the complex, such as the "anxiety pear," which is inserted into the vagina or anus with a hinged and often delicately etched iron implement, with a screw handle Expand slowly.The tool catalog includes everything: wheels, cat's claws, head presses, alligator tubes, head shackles, hangings, etc.;For expediency and for intelligence, humans have always been willing to go beyond their own laws and betray their beliefs just to legitimize the torture of dissidents.

After much research and consideration, Geiger developed a standard operating procedure.He only accepts referral cases, and companies or individuals who need his services will be transferred to his website, and after obtaining the password, his partner Harry will review the case immediately.If Harry thought there was nothing suspicious, he would ask the potential client to send in preliminary data on Jones, and Harry began to dig deeper, putting together a more detailed content in a few days.Harry is tough, but no one does it better than him. He can find out things that Jones's partner, best friend, government, and even Jones himself don't know.After Geiger had read the entire file, he would tell Harry whether he would take the case. Geiger had three rules: While Harry never took such clients, Geiger did not take cases involving children.He also doesn't take people who have had a heart attack in the past, and he doesn't take anyone over the age of seventy-two -- an age Geiger had read studies showing that the risk of heart attacks and strokes rises to unacceptable levels . There's a gray area, though: urgent mail.Geiger believes that "all the clues are important" and that "Jones is not the complete sum of the characters he or she plays".So if the customer wants as soon as possible, that is, rush, Geiger usually declines.There is so much data to absorb: body language, verbal responses, tone of voice, facial expressions, a cascade of information shaping his choices and decisions - no matter how subtle, a miscalculation or wrong conclusion can screw up execution process, even poking a hole in his private universe.That's why Geiger prefers to work from the inside out, following a strategy based on Harry's research.Some professional players like Dalton are accustomed to adopting an outside-in approach, which is a relatively simple method-directly using brutal methods.But using his approach, the client is not necessarily sure what will be the state of Jones at the end of the execution process-although in some cases, this is not a problem. Like his colleagues in intelligence extraction, Geiger had heard many stories about Dalton, the most famous one being from "Desert Storm."When the Kuwaiti police caught Hussein's cronies sneaking across the border, they spent a week working on the Iraqi, but unfortunately found nothing, so they called in Dalton and let him take care of it.This enforcement process is called "non-release", short for "unlikely release", which means that after the interrogation, it is probably not wise for the world to see Jones again.The first time Dalton asked a question, the Iraqi smiled, and Dalton used a circular knife to cut off a piece of his lip, followed by an air nailer — and Jones gave Dalton the information.The story may sound unreliable, but it made Dalton an instant hit.In the intelligence extraction business, it never hurts to have a reputation for saying you can do anything, because most clients see Jones as an enemy who actually want more than compensation or inspiration. One shot can hit the opponent hard. In Geiger's view, politics, business, and religion are the only three remaining fingers on a battle-scarred fist; truth, however, is a weapon that even a wounded fist can hold and hold.These are very diverse commodities: they can be traded, serve a purpose, or make a profit.However, this is an unstable element with only a short half-life, so it must be used quickly, before the prey collapses before the eyes of the client.Early on, Geiger learned that truth has nothing to do with sanctity, just the hottest product on the market, and that anyone in intelligence gathering who believes they are acting according to some kind of impartial law is not deluding themselves. The cat leaped from Geiger's shoulder to the porch rail and continued its nightly routine.It always came back on time at five o'clock in the morning, the biological clock was almost perfect. The spider has done its work for the night.A giant striped moth trapped in a spider's web struggles violently, unaware that the harder it struggles to escape, the deeper it sinks.The spider crawls down from the upper right corner without hesitation, without hurry, as if the purpose is secondary to the technique, and the meal is just a by-product of the trap set by the artwork. Geiger lit another Lucky cigarette, and as the spider approached the prize, Geiger placed the lighter's flame under a dangling spider's silk, and the cobwebs, moths, and spiders were all wiped out in an instant. Geiger decided not to think about his behavior just yet, and went back to the house to talk to Curley again tomorrow.