by Richard Fox
found unnerving. She looked at him with annoyance, like he was a door-to-door salesman and tolerating him only out of politeness. “As a military intelligence officer, you have a top secret clearance and are eligible for sensitive compartmentalized information. I’m going to read you on to…a program,” her jaw clenched at the last two words. She opened the folder and slid a piece of densely worded paper towards Ritter. A yellow and red SIGN HERE tag pointed out a signature line on what Ritter recognized as a standard non-disclosure agreement.
“We would never go to these extremes if you weren’t our last best option. Please, sign the agreement,” the woman said as she pushed a pen towards him.
Ritter didn’t move, “I don’t really understand what you’re asking me to do. What does all this mean?”
The woman pressed her temples with a single hand for a moment. “Eric, I know this isn’t fair to you. It is damn unusual for us too.” She dropped her hand; she smiled and looked at him with curiosity. “Let me ask you something, why did you join the military?”
“9/11. I was in Beirut when the towers fell, and I—“ he cut off before he could go into his rehearsed lie about wanting to use his experiences to help the Army understand Arabs and Islam and lessen suffering in case of a wider war. This woman wasn’t some left-leaning co-ed at a bar; the truth would suffice. “I wanted revenge.” She nodded.
“Sign that, and you’ll be in the fight against al-Qaida. Not some basement virgin with a death wish running around the Afghan countryside, the senior leaders. If that isn’t enough, there is a CIA agent whose life is in grave danger, and we need your help.” She rolled the pen across the table. “Just sign so we can get to work.”
Ritter scooped up the tumbling pen and looked at the NDA. He considered reading the legalese and asking about why phrases like “never acknowledge or disclose” or “Title 50 activity” were highlighted. Instead, he signed his name with a flourish. It’s not like I’m signing away my soul to the devil, he thought.
“Thank you. You are now read-on to CLB—don’t ask what it stands for. There are limits to how far I can sensitize you. Understand this, what we do is covert. We operate without the official protection of the United States government, and your actions while part of the program will never be officially recognized or acknowledged. When, not if, we withhold information it is for your protection, and ours.” She pulled out a sheet of paper with a single photo on it. A half dozen twenty-somethings on a beach, flashing idiot-grins at the camera as they crowded around each other. Ritter was dead center of the photo, his favorite picture from a college trip to Cyprus.
She pointed to a young olive skinned man with a thin, patchy beard. “Who is this?” she asked.
“Haider, he’s a good friend of mine. I haven’t heard from him since he dropped out of the university after 9/11. What does he have to do with all this?” Ritter’s eyes crept towards a woman in the photo; pale green eyes gleamed from behind wisps of dark hair. That was the night Baida told him about the engagement.
The woman snatched the photo away and slid it back into the folder.
“After 9/11, your friend Haider joined al-Qaida.” she said in a most matter of fact manner. Ritter’s jaw slackened, slowly distending towards the table.
“He didn’t make it to Afghanistan in time to be blown to hell by Operation Enduring Freedom, but he did link up with a man named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, sound familiar?”
Ritter managed to blink.
“No, I didn’t think so. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is, we believe, the man who planned the 9/11 attacks. We don’t know what else he’s planning, but we know that KSM, and his cell are behind the kidnapping of a CIA agent—“she looked at her watch “—that took place forty-nine hours ago. And Haider is part of that cell.”
Ritter clamped his mouth shut with an audible click. He stood, his fingertips seemingly stuck to the table.
“He-he had said some radical things after 9/11. But this…” Ritter’s eyes darted back and forth as he racked his brain, trying to reconcile the man he knew with the person the woman described.
The woman pulled a black knit cap from under the table and placed it on the table. A pair of crude eye holes stared at Ritter.
“What? You want me to a rob a bank?” Ritter said.
The woman spoke in measured syllables, “We have Haider, here, in this house. He refuses to identify himself. It’s a common resistance tactic among terrorists. We need you to go into his room: show your face then tell him we know who he is and tell him to cooperate. The psyches at Langley think that will break him. Can you do this?”
Ritter picked up the ski mask and traced the eye holes with his fingers. “Then what happens?”
“Then you get back on a plane and none of this ever happened.”
Ritter fiddled with the ski-mask as Shannon led him down a poorly lit hallway. The mask itched and smelled faintly of chewing tobacco. A CIA safe-house deep inside a hostile Pakistani city meant a certain degree of austerity, Ritter knew, but a second-hand and unwashed ski-mask struck him as unprofessional.
Shannon stopped at a battered door and rested her hand on a patina-scarred handle. She looked at him. “Ready? You understand what to do?”
Ritter nodded. “Yeah, no sweat,” he lied.
Shannon cocked her head towards the surveillance camera pointed over the door, and an electric buzz shook the door. She yanked the door open and Ritter stepped inside.
Chains hung from the ceiling, a man dangled from them in the center of the room. His arms were extended over his head and his feet could just barely scrape the floor. If he stood on the tips of his toes, it could relieve the pressure in his arms, but once his calves gave out he would hang from his arms. There was no way the man could rest; his body was constantly fighting pain and exhaustion by being cheated of a few inches of chain.
Ritter balked two steps into the room. What the hell have they done to Haider, he thought. Anger welled up in him as the man extended his bare feet to the ground, buying his arms and shoulders seconds of relief. Ritter was certain that this was illegal. He’d get word of this to Senator Billings, his father’s old friend, once this was finished.
Ritter moved through the bare room as the man sank lower, moaning slightly as his body weight strained his shoulders. He was shirtless and filthy. Dried piss stained his pants and assaulted Ritter’s nose as he stopped within arm’s length. The man’s face was downturned, greasy black hair obscured his face. Ritter spied a patch of blood that marred a nascent bald spot.
He stopped arms length from the man, just as Shannon had instructed. He had to get Haider’s attention and then show his face. Shannon would open the door once they were sure Haider was “shocked into compliance,” as she put it, then Ritter would leave the room. Ritter grabbed the bottom of the mask.
“Haider, look at me,” he said in Arabic.
The man jerked at the sound of Ritter’s voice. He struggled to raise his head as he pawed the ground with his feet. “I told you...That’s not my name,” he rasped. He pushed up with his toes and opened his arms wide enough to bring his head back between them..
His face was a mess of bruises and cuts. Shannon said he’d resisted capture and had to be subdued, but Haider was barely recognizable.
Ritter started to pull the mask off, but stopped before it cleared his mouth. Something wasn’t right. He let go of the mask and reached for the man. The man squealed and tried to hop away from Ritter, as though his touch were electric. Ritter caught him and shoved his head aside, his hand slipping against the sweat and bloody film clinging to his body.
Ritter rubbed his hand along the man's collar bone leaving a filthy smear as he mewled in protest. Ritter held the man's head back for a second; then let him go. He collapsed against the chains and swung like a heavy bag.
Ritter turned and walked towards the door, wiping the grime and filth off onto his shirt. The same buzzer rang and the door swung open.
Shannon was in the hallway, h
er arms crossed and a nasty scowl across her face. “What the hell? You had one job! One goddamn job that was so simple not even a lieutenant could screw it up.”
Ritter peeled off the mask and tossed it on the floor. “That’s not Haider.”
Shannon grabbed Ritter’s arm and turned him to face her.
“No, that has to be him!” She looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and hope.
Ritter pulled his arm away and shook his head. “I’m sure that guy looks like him, under all the bruises, but it ain’t Haider. We were on a ski trip in Lebanon when Haider smacked into a cedar tree. He broke his clavicle and had a plate put in.” He ran his fingertips over his collar bone. “Haider has a scar, a long and ugly scar. That guy doesn’t.”
Shannon slammed her fists against her thighs. Her face flushed as she turned and buried her face in her hands. She took in a ragged breath edged with tears and sorrow. Ritter raised a tentative hand towards her shoulder. Before he could touch her she spun around, her now-stoic face betrayed nothing. “Thank you for your help. We’ll get you back to the States as soon as we can.” She turned and walked away.
Ritter watched her go. So this is how his first contribution to the War on Terror would end; failure. “Wait!” She stopped. “You’re sure that Haider’s involved with al-Qaida? And that he’s out here?” She didn’t turn, but she nodded.
