SHE BLINKED INTO the glare of a brightly lit room. The walls were shiny and bare, and there were blinking fluorescent lights overhead. The ceiling had a pitch to it; sufficient to allow the can lights on the angled surfaces to shoot directly into her eyes. A 21st century version of the spotlight shining in the face, if one pleases. What with the frigid temperature in there, it felt like sunlight in the dead of winter.611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡaaDOtuDIid
There were two men standing across from Mischa. One of them was a young and wiry black man with a patch over his right eye and his afro cut in military fashion. The other, well, she assumed him to be sixty years in age; he was a bald, hawk-faced man dressed in a smart black three-piece suit.
"Comment vous appelez-vous?" asked the bald man. French. Did that mean she was in France. It seemed like a reasonable assumption to her, anyway.
"Je suis Mischa Barton," she said, calling upon all her acting skills for a calm but firm demeanor. "Je suis in citoyen americain. Une.....Hell with it----I'm an American citizen, an actress," she said in English, flustered, "and I want to speak to a lawyer or someone from the embassy."
"Who are you working for?" The younger one, the eye-patch, was talking now. He seemed like the one with the heavier hand. And he seemed to relish it.
"I'm not working for anyone," she said.
Eye Patch approached her chair and bent down, as if to get a better look at her. "You lie!" he bellowed. His English was as good as his older colleague's, but his accent was thicker and contained the inevitable negro drawl. He wasn't letting her break eye contact, moving his face to keep her eyes focused on him. "How many of there are you?"
"Fuck you!" she screamed in defiance. "The only group I'm part of is a group of actress-models on vacation. Whatever..."
Thwack!
She couldn't believe what had just happened. The bloody bastard slapped her, knocking her face to the left. She could feel blood trickling out of the right hand corner of her mouth, dribbling down her cheek. "How many?" Eye Patch repeated bending down once again to look at her.
"I'm in Monte Carlo with three friends," she said, trying to project some measure of confidence, but it wasn't easy. Cold sweat ran down her armpits and along my ribs. Her hands were shackled behind her, locking her to the chair, rendering her immobile. "Rihanna, Lindsay Lohan, and Nicole Richie."
"Who are you working for?" he asked Mischa again. "Le Groupe Islamique Arme?"611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡstHr4gkeFj
Islamique? "I'm not a Moslem," she said. "My mother is Irish Catholic!"611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKe0Heu97S9
"ETA?" he went on. "Mujahideen-e-Khalq? FLNC? Al-Qaeda?"611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqZ2z8vmne8
Al-Qaeda?611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3FRBAHHdF2
Mischa drew back, in the limited space she had before her head touched the high back of the wooden chair to which she was shackled. She looked alternately at Eye Patch and the older guy, as she were waiting for a punch line. Or for someone to pop out from behind a curtain to tell her this whole thing was a prank, like on Candid Camera or the MTV version of it Zoe watched.611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsja7nRlGUf
But there were no curtains, nor were the facial expressions of her accusers anything but deadly serious.611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPOG4XwfkqF
She laughed, but nobody joined her.611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTpsKN6JEg4
"You think I'm a bloody terrorist?" she asked.611Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLipRzQBMlJ
