“He’s through here, Comrade General.”
The adjutant led Santos through the Ministry of State Security annex toward the interrogation rooms. The demanding affairs of state precluded the general’s direct participation in most security affairs, of course, but he enjoyed keeping his hand in the game. After all, he’d made his bones working state security for the late President Barranca before transferring to a combat command, and during his tenure he’d maintained some of the best numbers of the MSS interrogators.
The gentleman–Santos refused to be told the prisoner’s name until it was voluntarily given up–was in Annex C, designated for the most severe offenders. Unlike his predecessor, who had favored mossy ex-monastic cells in the Punto de los Delfines, Santos insisted on a clean, almost clinical atmosphere; the air of civilization such a place projected helped undermine foreigners’ perception of the general’s beloved country as a place of savages.
“Let me tell you something,” Santos said, walking a slow circle around the prisoner, who was bound to a chair and visibly bruised. “Every man is the hero of his own story. Every man, when he is met with adversity, expects a fairytale ending as in the movies.”
The man made no reply, staring at the floor.
“But this is real life, my friend, and there is no last-minute reprieve. There is no cavalry. One way or another, your story ends here, with me. It is up to you to write this ending.”
Santos gestured to his adjutant, who handed the general his pistol–a Beretta he’d received upon commissioning, now loaded with blanks. “Will the ending relate that you were killed, unloved and unmourned, in Annex C of the Ministry for State Security? Or, perhaps, will it record that you aided a noble cause in your final moments?”
The general held the pistol a foot from the prisoner’s head–not close enough to kill, but enough to cause severe pain and burning from the force of the blank. “The time is now.”
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