Read The Oracle for Free Online Page B

I owe you for the fine . . . See, if my professor gets here and he doesn’t see me I’ll be in a lot of trouble . . .’
    ‘Please. Get out.’
    Michel got out of the car and stood in the middle of the street, wallet in hand.
    One of the policemen took out a flashlight and started to search the car interior. He directed the beam of light at the back seat. A large bloodstain. Heleni’s blood. Then he opened the pharmacy bag: bandages, a transfusion needle, xylocain, catgut, antibiotics.
    ‘I’m afraid your professor will have to get a taxi,’ he said with a sneer. ‘You’ll have to explain a few things to us, Mr Charrier.’
    They took him to a large grey building nearby and led him down into the basement, locking him into an empty room. He waited, trying to make sense of what was going on, the muffled shouts, moaning, footsteps, doors slamming, comings and goings. When a man came to interrogate him, he told him that he would not say a word unless a representative of the French consulate were present.
    But he did speak, almost immediately. Very few withstand the falanga . When the first blows hit the bare soles of his feet, he gritted his teeth, drawing on all the courage he had and all his affection for his friends, but the pain penetrated cruelly all the way to his brain, severing his will.
    He shouted, he cried and he swore, and then wept disconsolately. The cramps that tore through every fibre of his being and every centimetre of his skin did not prevent him from realizing what he had done. He was conscious that he had already broken down, had already betrayed. And this knowledge was even more painful than the torture.
    His persecutor struck calmly and precisely, as if he heard nothing. It seemed a job like any other, and he continued for a while, even after Michel had told everything he knew . . . everything. He seemed to want to punish him for allowing him to finish up so quickly.
    The interrogator wiped his forehead, and then his hairy, sweaty chest, with a handkerchief. He said something into an intercom hanging from the ceiling and a plain-clothes policeman came to accompany Michel to an adjacent room. He stood at the threshold for a moment while they brought another young boy in, handcuffed, his face bruised, mouth full of blood and eyes terrified.
    Michel tried to get up, but as soon as his feet touched the floor he collapsed, screaming with pain. Two policemen tied the other boy to the torture bed and removed his shoes and socks. They then picked Michel up bodily and took him out.
    The door closed behind them with a sharp click. As Michel was dragged down the hall behind an officer, he could hear prolonged, suffocated moans, almost animal-like, coming from behind the closed door. He lowered his eyes as he stumbled and tripped to his destiny. They threw him on to an iron chair.
    ‘Well,’ said the officer, whose name tag identified him as ‘Capt. Karamanlis’. ‘Suppose you tell me all over again: who were you transporting in your car and where were you taking the medical supplies you had?’
    ‘A friend of mine who was wounded at the Polytechnic last night. We were trying to help her.’
    The man shook his head: ‘How stupid of you. You should have brought her to a hospital. Or were you trying to hide something?’
    ‘We had nothing to hide. We didn’t want her to have to suffer what you just did to me. Or to that poor boy back there.’
    ‘They are subversives; they deserve no compassion. They are the ruin of our country. You’re a foreigner. You shouldn’t have got mixed up in this. Now. You tell me everything you know, and we’ll pretend we never saw you. No one will ever know who was here tonight. No report will be made. What was that girl’s name?’
    ‘Her name’s . . . Heleni Kaloudis.’
    ‘Kaloudis, you said? All right. And now tell me where she is. Come on, I give you my word as an officer that no harm will be done to her. We’ll take care of her. Then we’ll see. When she’s