Brad stared at the Frenchmen. The air was stale, stale with the weight of a thousand silent answers. They wanted him to talk, but he wasn't much in the mood for conversation. He let his eyes do the talking. Cold, expressionless, like the only reason he was there was that he couldn't muster the effort to walk out the door.
Hours passed. The questioners took it in turns, asking the same questions in different ways, like they just had to utter the right magic combination of words, and, hey presto, he'd spill, spelling it all out for them, in report format, with appropriate citations and a word count.
One of the questioners told him they could inform one person of his captivity. Brad thought it over. If he called anyone from Terra Group, they'd have a squad of French gendarmes following them all over Paris. Not good for the mission.
Brad considered telling them to contact the Australian embassy, but decided against it. They'd leak it to the media, and he'd end up in the same esteemed company as the other Westerners who took off to Afghanistan. Being infamous would make it hard to maintain a cover.
Still, he didn't want to disappear into some French dungeon. He gave them a number.
Little did they know the voice on the other end wasn't human.
"Get up. You're being transferred."
Brad yawned. He'd been up all night. The interrogators had taken it in shifts trying to get him to say something - anything. He could tell they were getting desperate. There might be trouble if they couldn't pin a terrorism charge on him. Sure, he was packing heat, and that was a crime here, but not the sort of charge that makes a French judge think grandly of his future career prospects.
The ride they'd chosen was fairly modern. Of course, all the comforts were reserved for the officers in the cab - back in the meat rack with the thugs, it was remarkably less comfortable.
The van lurched as it was put into gear. The van began navigating the narrow, twisted European streets.
Brad's gaze judged the three other occupants of the prison van. A thin man, a young man, and a dangerous man.
The dangerous man was near the back, and he could see out of a vision slit at the scenery as the van travelled. Dangerous sniffed. "<We're heading out.>"
"<Good, I don't like the city.>" Young commented.
Thin laughed. "<Where we're going it doesn't matter.>"
"What's so funny?" Brad asked. The three looked at him.
Dangerous: "<Foreigner.>"
Thin: "Where are you from?"
Brad shrugged in his seat. The guys driving wouldn't care what he said. "Australia."
He got nothing but blank looks. "Kangaroo-land." The three smiled, comprehending.
The van shook. Dirt filled the vision slit. Dangerous coughed.
"We leaving main road. Now quiet road."
"Good," Brad said. He clenched his jaw, twice.