The Room of White Fire

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “The walling wasn’t to hurt them, it was to make them think they were hurt,” said Clay. “The sound it made. The sound made them believe they were being seriously injured. Over and over again. And when they realized they were not, they began to doubt their own senses. To realize we could manipulate their senses. With enough repeated loss of self-control, they would reach the point of distortion and become totally helpless. This was based on Dr. Martin Seligman’s experiments with caged dogs and electric shocks. You can break the will to resist. They learn to be helpless. That was when they were most willing to talk. But not Aaban. He never learned to be helpless.”

  I watched as Clay’s co-interrogator—John Vazquez—snuck up on Aaban from behind, took the collar handles, and wrenched him around in a semicircle. Moe, the interpreter, hopped out of the way. Vazz hurled Aaban into the clattering wall again. And again the man struggled up and readied himself for the next attack.

  “Next is Aaban chained to the ceiling in a stress position. This was one of our best EITs and it left no marks or scars. Visually, there’s not much to it. I mean, you couldn’t sit here and watch Aaban stand like that for the real-time period that we made him stand. Twenty-six hours was the longest. Of course, he couldn’t sleep, either, and we didn’t feed or water him much. Sometimes we’d release him to use his bucket. Other times not. Muslims hate being naked. They hate shitting and pissing into diapers, or worse, just on themselves. So those were enhanced techniques, too.”

  I sat there for a long while, watching Aaban. He was standing near the middle of the room, his arms raised over his head, wrists bound by a shackle that was roped to a fixture in the ceiling. His calves strained and his bare feet flexed, and sweat poured down his face and torso and into his diaper. He was big and well-muscled and he looked like a tortured Argonaut in an old movie. Standing in the background and watching were four men dressed as cowboys—chaps, yoked shirts, bandanas, cowboy boots, and 9mm semiautomatic pistols strapped to their thighs. Two wore black cowboy hats. Bodart’s Wranglers, I remembered. And I recognized Bald Mountain from our early-morning encounter in downtown San Diego. In the video he wore what looked like the same leather duster. Same cowcatcher mustache. “Who’s the bald cowboy?” I asked.

  “Joe Bodart. The only CIA guy to lead an interrogation team.”

  “Why did you and Spencer allow that?”

  “Crazy monster would do anything. Think Nell will like this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s nothing compared to what comes later.”

  “Nell will wonder if the public should see this.”

  “The CIA destroyed all the White Fire torture video—twice. First was back in 2005, before my time. Dr. Spencer told me about it. The agency thought it would be devastating if the public saw the torture. Then later, just before White Fire was closed, our CIA handlers pulled the same thing on us. Confiscated all our phones and hard drives, all our flash drives and memory cards and notebooks—anything that could hold evidence. Searched our belongings, right down to wallets and dopp kits. But they missed the dolls. A lot of the guys had souvenirs. Vazz and I cut the stitching real carefully, underneath the dolls’ garments. We worked in the flash drives good and deep, and restitched with the same thread. It took a while. But we were lucky. So this video is probably the last proof there is.”

  An uneasy feeling closed over me, like a stage curtain coming down. I’d been assuming that the men who tailed me to the Waterfront Bar and Grill, and later to Fallbrook Airpark, and who were waiting for me in downtown San Diego the night I was with Paige Hulet, were deployed by Spencer. But Spencer had only been one of several players at the black sites, and some of those players answered to higher powers than he did. And therefore had more to lose. So as I sat there with Clay, I understood the much colder fact that Joe Bodart was on my tail, protecting company interests, trying to find and destroy another “last” piece of evidence of what their agency had done at a black site in Romania.

  “Clay? What motivates you? Why do you want Nell to tell your story and show these things?”

  He was silent for a long moment while he looked at me. It was unnerving being stared at from that close, and all I could think to do was stare back. I watched his eyes—hazel on the left and blue on the right—as they roamed my face. It reminded me of the way Spencer had studied me that first day, speeding through the sky in his little copper helo. “It is not my story. It is mine and Dr. Spencer’s. And Vazz’s and Don’s. All of us. You will understand when you see. So far, this is only context. Please be patient.”

  “What was Dr. Spencer’s reaction when you told him you had ‘white fire’ for him?”

  “He pretended not to understand what I was talking about,” said Clay. “After I escaped from Arcadia, he hired a private investigator to find me. He admitted this to me on a pay phone conversation. I’m sure he told the detective that I may harm myself or others. And that I need the medications, and the security of Arcadia. But what Dr. Spencer really wants is for no one to know our story.”

  On-screen, Aaban was no longer dangling painfully from the ceiling. Instead he was strapped into a squat wooden chair, his feet locked into clumsy-looking steel boots fastened to the floor, his arms crossed in straitjacket sleeves lashed behind his back. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit again. His hair had been shorn short and his beard clumsily cut back.

  “One night Aaban woke up screaming. I ran in and found him clutching the bars, breathing hard. No explanation from him, so the next day I cued up the surveillance video. They slept in the light, right? So I could see what had rattled him while he slept. It was just a cockroach inspecting his face. But it woke him and he went off. We realized how badly Aaban was afraid of bugs. Funny—strong guy like that, killed men face-to-face, probably cut their throats with a knife, but a bug totally freaked him. We used to have an approved menu technique we called Plague of Insects. We weren’t supposed to use it anymore, but that didn’t mean we’d forgotten how. That day we put Aaban back in the chair.”

  Across from Aaban sat Briggs Spencer, in a simple folding chair. Spencer held up a black cloth bag to the man standing next to him, Timothy Tritt. I hardly recognized Tritt, looking so unlike the emaciated, long-haired man living in the barn in Owens Valley. This Tritt was trimly built and well-groomed. Still, I saw the hardness in his eyes, the almost reptilian smallness of pupil. The lack of emotion. He held out a clear-glass gallon jar for Aaban to see. The camera jostled, then came in closer to capture the jarful of busy insects and Aaban’s face behind the glass. Some crawled, some beat their wings, some raised their pincers, others slid along the glass, legs working as Tritt tilted the bottle. Aaban’s eyes were wide and I could tell he was trying to hold himself together. I recognized spiders and grasshoppers and cockroaches but not much else. Some looked like scorpions without stingers. Some were beetles. Some were big, especially the roaches. Tritt unscrewed the lid and dumped the creatures into Spencer’s uplifted black bag, then smacked the bottom of the jar to make sure they all made it in.

  “Where is bin Laden?” asked Spencer. The camera pulled back. Spencer held the bag closed at the top with one hand, lightly patting the body of it with the other, as if trying to disperse the bugs.

  “Allahu Akbar.”

  “Allah cannot save you from this,” said Spencer. His voice was firm but gentle, almost condescending. “I can. I can save you, Aaban. Where is bin Laden?”

  Aaban spit at Spencer. I couldn’t tell if he hit him or not. Spencer leaned back, then stood up straight and looked down at Aaban. Spencer, back then, still looked like the slugging all-American first baseman captured in his college baseball pictures—wholesome and forthright. His expression showed pity. His eyes teared up. He held his chin high and I could see the moral quiver in it. I heard Tritt’s words: We were selling our souls; but we didn’t know it yet.

  Spencer stepped forward, opened the bag, and quickly pul
led it over Aaban’s head.

  Tritt circled a roll of duct tape around Aaban’s neck, the tape rasping off to make a tight seal.

  Aaban violently threw his head from side to side, wrenched his arms in their sleeves, strained to free his feet, which were locked by the ankles in the steel boots. Blood trickled down the steel. His screams were powerful and pitiable. The only word I recognized was “Allah.”

  I sat in the little motel room and heard the cars hissing by on Coast Highway while Spencer and Tritt and Clay and John Vazquez applied their “enhanced techniques.” Back then, I’d known that things like this were going on in secret places, far from America. I’d rolled it into the price of freedom. We all did. We had our best people on the case, didn’t we? They were calling the shots. But until now I’d never seen what we were doing. Up close. I’d never faced it. I felt a portion of Aaban’s agony, a fraction of it—what I could handle. The rest ran off me. I also felt, very clearly, the pain of doing what Spencer and Tritt and Clay and Vazz were doing. I just now began to understand what it had cost them. “Christ,” I said.

  “Nell doesn’t have to show this,” said Clay. He sounded almost forlorn. “It’s just background.”

  “He tells you nothing?”

  “He told us about his mujahideen days in the summer of 1985—listed his friends and villages and the ways they died. He named the stars and planets he could see during each season of the year from the poppy fields in the Sangin valley. He described his wives.”

  Spencer stood with a finger pressed thoughtfully to his lips, contemplating Aaban as he thrashed. Tritt’s primordial eyes seemed more drawn than repelled. Beside me, Clay regarded the monitor with what appeared to be blank resignation.

  “I’ll fast-forward.”

  Clay tapped the keyboard and the scene cut to Tritt, unwinding the duct tape and yanking the black sack from Aaban’s head. Aaban looked up at Spencer with wild eyes and blew a cockroach into his face.

  “We worked on Aaban like this for six months,” Clay said. “He gave no actionable intelligence. The opposite. He taunted and lied and offered minor truths we already knew. Just before Christmas, Dr. Spencer announced that he’d dreamed of a new EIT. It wasn’t new, really, just an escalation of things we’d tried before. We’d threaten their families. Threaten to kill their mothers and children and wives. Bullshit, of course, and most of them knew it. But Spencer wanted to take it further. He was naming it ‘white fire,’ after the idea that he’d found the one irresistible, infallible, undefeatable torture.”

  Of course, I knew. “Which was?”

  “Aaban’s son. It took six months, but Dr. Spencer brought him to Romania. Here he is, arriving at White Fire.”

  33

  A rail-thin boy stepped down from the high backseat of the vehicle. He wore baggy Western trousers and a button-down collar shirt and athletic shoes much too big for him. He clutched a sun-faded backpack against his chest with both hands. His hair was short and lank, and even in the video taken from yards away you could see the fear in his eyes. Clay, dressed in jeans and a heavy jacket, stood waiting for him to climb out, and when he did, offered his hand. The boy shook it. Moe, the same interpreter who had been in on the walling, fell into step on the other side of the boy and the three continued across the courtyard.

  “Roshaan,” said Clay. “It means ‘brightly lit’ or ‘bright-lighted.’ He was eleven years old, Aaban’s youngest child and only son. Which made him the most beloved person in Aaban’s life. You’ll see.”

  Next came video of Clay leading Roshaan to his father’s dungeon in the smokehouse cellar. The video shooter trailed along behind, camera jumping. In a sere, snow-dusted barnyard, Clay and Roshaan descended stone steps and stopped at a heavy-looking wooden door with a window of steel mesh at eye level to an adult. Roshaan looked up at the window, then back at the camera, with an expression of hope that I’ll never forget. Clay ordered Aaban away from the door, then swung it open and let the boy inside. The cameraman followed. Clay stood to the side and Roshaan ran to his father, who swept him off his feet and held him to his body. They whispered and spoke over each other, and I could see Roshaan working his head into the crook of his father’s neck, the boy’s black hair mixing with Aaban’s growing beard. They were both crying.

  “Day one of Dr. Spencer’s white fire,” said Clay. “Watch.”

  I didn’t want to watch. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be tortured in front of your young son. Or imagine what damage it would do to the boy.

  The next video was again shot in the smokehouse cellar, and again the lighting was poor and the walls were slick and black. A waterboard had been set up on the floor in the middle of the room. At one time it had apparently served as a door. Now there were ropes running through the knob hole midway down one side, and through a similar hole that had been cut out opposite. Through the holes sprouted leather straps, their buckles gawking open, ready for the arms of whichever miserable person was to be strapped in next. The original door hinges had been removed and I could see the screw holes and outlines of the hinge plates. At the opposite end of the plank were two more holes, and sets of ankle restraints, close together. The entire board rested on stone blocks at a mild slant—so the victim’s feet would be higher than the head. Five white buckets stood in a row near the head of the board.

  Aaban sat facing the camera, with his back to the contraption, wearing nothing but what looked like the same filthy nightshirt I’d seen earlier. His wrists were cuffed behind the chairback. Small clouds of condensation formed outside his nose. His head was up and his expression was proud. He looked as if he were about to offer his son a lesson in right behavior. Roshaan sat across from him with a worried expression on his face. No restraints. He wore a heavy black sweater, a watch cap, and mittens.

  Spencer came into the frame, wrapped in a peacoat and a scarf. Moe followed behind him with a doomed expression on his face. John Vazquez and Clay were last.

  “Don Tice again, shooting the video,” said Clay.

  Spencer stood over Aaban and his son and when he spoke his breath made faint cartoon bubbles that showed up clearly against the black rock walls. Spencer spoke English and Aaban spoke Dari and Moe the ’terp turned the words back and forth as nimbly as a fry cook flipping eggs.

  “Where is bin Laden?”

  “Paris.”

  “Where is Khairiah?”

  “I think London.”

  “Khairiah,” said Clay. “Bin Laden’s first wife.”

  “Where is Amal?”

  “New York. I’m certain of it.”

  “Amal,” said Clay. “Bin Laden’s last wife. His favorite. Aaban is trying to have fun with us.”

  Even with the watch cap pulled down for warmth, Roshaan’s strange look of wonder and fear was easy to see. His mouth hung slightly open as he watched his father try to outlast his tormentors. His breath condensed into a small vague cloud, then evaporated.

  “Aaban, I will have to drown you if you will not help me.”

  “Allahu Akbar.”

  “Allah’s about to drown you in cold water, my friend.”

  With this, Roshaan looked disbelievingly at Spencer, then to his father, then to the camera.

  The video jumped ahead: Aaban strapped to the waterboard, Spencer and Clay standing near the buckets, Roshaan out-of-focus in the background, still seated. Clay held Aaban’s head in a two-armed lock. Spencer drew a dripping bath towel from one of the buckets and placed it over the man’s face. Aaban exhaled, then inhaled sharply. He coughed.

  “Aaban, I have not started with the drowning yet. Your son does not need to see you suffer. Tell me something easy, Aaban. Tell me what country is bin Laden in?”

  “Afghanistan.”

  “What province?”

  “Helmand.”

  “I’m so disappointed. Let us change directions. When and where is t
he next attack planned on the United States?”

  “In the six months we’d had Aaban,” said Clay. “This was the one hundred and eighty-seventh time we’d boarded him. Every time, he said bin Laden was in Helmand. But this was the first time with his son watching, and Dr. Spencer was hoping for something better.”

  On-screen Spencer sighed. Then he took up the bucket and splashed some water around Aaban’s face, a little here and a little there, like a gardener trying to wet all his new plantings. Aaban snorted, coughed, then took a deep breath and held it. Spencer lifted the bucket and aimed a narrow stream straight into Aaban’s nose.

  It took twenty seconds or so for the man’s breath to run out. An unbelievably long twenty seconds. Then his head wrenched against Clay’s grip like something electrified. Suddenly he inhaled, his body telling him his life was down to its last thimble of air. Spencer tilted the bucket and doubled the volume. Aaban’s head spasmed and his body convulsed. His legs rose off the board as if yanked by wires and his toes spread apart and the straps dug into his ankles.

  “When and where will al-Qaeda attack the United States?”

  Gurgled nonsense. Spencer righted the bucket and the water stopped.

  “Where is bin Laden?”

  Unintelligible.

  Then a boy’s voice, quickly followed by the interpreter’s:

  “Stop! Stop! Sto—”

  Aaban’s sudden inhale was loud enough to blot out the voice of his son. Then rapid breathing, almost tuneful with relief, if not gratitude—fast and high-pitched and fluttering. Again and again and again. I’d never heard a thanks so genuine.