140914383X

by Raymond Khoury

  I stepped back and took in the sight of him there, tied to that tree. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in such a pathetic, vulnerable state. Normally, I’d be the guy charging in to save someone like that. Here, I was responsible for it.

  “That shivering you’re doing?” I said. “That’s stage one. Mild hypothermia. Your body’s trying to generate more heat to warm itself up. Soon, your hands and feet will start feeling numb. You’ll feel tired, and even the smallest effort will feel difficult. Another couple of degrees and you’ll be in moderate hypothermia. You’ll experience violent shivering and a loss of coordination in your muscles until that shivering stops because there’s no energy left to keep it going, which will make your temperature drop even further until you lose consciousness at around thirty degrees and slip into stage three: profound hypothermia. Which is around the time frostbite should start setting in. I’d give it half an hour, tops.” I looked around again, taking in the conditions. I figured it wasn’t far past midday, but the sun was very low this time of year, making the setting feel even bleaker.

  “I’ll leave you to think things over.”

  Then I nodded to Deutsch, and without another word, we headed down towards the cabin, Roos’s curses fading with each step.

  We left him to stew there for twenty minutes, which was pushing it. I certainly didn’t want him dead. But I knew he was a tough son of a bitch, and I wanted this over today. Before the sun set.

  We didn’t say much as we waited. I asked Deutsch about the gunfight down the mountain. She said it was no big deal. And that was it.

  She could see I’d never done anything like this before.

  I wasn’t a fan of “enhanced interrogation” or any other euphemism people came up with for torture. I wasn’t raised that way. It ran against everything I believed in, everything I thought our nation stood for. But I wanted him to talk, and I needed to scare the bejeezus out of him. I can’t say I was enjoying it, but to be perfectly honest with you, I wasn’t uneasy about it either. It had to be done, which, I know, is not a politically acceptable excuse. It’s the excuse everyone gives. But there was no way around it and all I needed to do to brush away the first semblance of a qualm, if it arose, was to picture any one of the people that I knew had died because of a few callous words that bastard and his cronies had whispered to their hired guns.

  No qualms showed up.

  We went back up there twice.

  The first time, he was still playing tough even though he looked like shit. He was going through violent shivering and had lost a lot of his muscular coordination. He’d also peed himself. Exposure to this much cold reduces the blood flow to the skin’s surface. The body can only hold so much liquid and responds by ditching whatever it can. That’s usually the first to go.

  At this stage, you’d expect him to lose the ability to make rational decisions. Mountaineers suffering from hypothermia sometimes just laid down in the snow to sleep, or failed to fasten the most basic of harnesses properly. I’m not sure whether spilling his guts to me constituted a rational or an irrational decision as far as he was concerned. I was hoping for rational: it might help him survive, even if he only thought that had a small chance of happening. When we’ve got our backs right up against the wall, our survival instincts take over. I hoped his would, before it was too late.

  But he was still fighting it. So we left him again, for fifteen minutes this time.

  When we got back, he was in really bad shape. His body had stopped shivering, having lost any energy to keep itself warm. His limbs were stiff, his heart rate and his breathing barely there. His skin was pale and icy cold to the touch. More importantly, his resolve had also frittered away. His mind was weakened, he was disorientated, and his speech was slurry. And he was in pain. Lots of pain. His body had also decided his internal organs were more important that his extremities, which were red and hurting. All of them. Frostbite was setting in, fast.

  If we left him there, he’d start dying soon. A long, painful death. Eventually, he’d start having hallucinations, then he’d lose consciousness and drift off into oblivion.

  I didn’t want that.

  He didn’t either.

  On my haunches close to him, I asked, “Are you ready to talk?”

  To the extent that he could answer, he did.

  He wanted to talk.

  It wouldn’t just be for my own ears. This would be saved for posterity.

  This time, we’d brought up a couple of blankets and a thermos of hot coffee from the cabin. We wrapped him up, let him drink, and waited until he had warmed up enough to become coherent. Then I pulled out the GoPro Kurt had bought in New York, turned it on, and aimed it at Roos. For added safety, Deutsch also took out her phone, switched its camera to video, and started filming too.

  70

  With the GoPro blinking red as it recorded his words, Roos talked.

  A lot.

  The Janitors weren’t born out of some evil master plan, he told us. They didn’t come about by design. They just grew out of necessity and took shape gradually, with each new assignment.

  It was all about getting rid of liabilities. Eliminating threats. Silencing whistleblowers. Whether they were abroad—or at home.

  “All this fuss about JSoc,” he said with a weak, wheezy chortle, his words still struggling to come out. He was referring to the Joint Special Operations Command, a present-day network of highly trained paramilitary assassins who operated outside the traditional chain of command in executing the kill lists they were handed. They’d been the subject of exposés and debates in the news lately. JSoc combined the secretive, unaccountable world of mercenaries with the intel and firepower of the military, and its officials reported directly to the president. Its budget was secret. JSoc was, for all intents and purposes, the president’s personal hit team.

  “It makes me laugh,” Roos continued slowly after a dry, pained cough. “Those pussies in the press are outraged, they think it’s a new low for us. It’s not. We’ve been doing it for decades. Only difference is—everyone’s now for it. Hell, JSoc got bin Laden, didn’t they? They ran team six.” He paused, catching his breath. “Let me tell you, back then? Things were different. The Cold War, Eastern Europe and Central America, South-East Asia, back in the day—it wasn’t as sexy. They were too far for people to really care, and there was nothing to show people for them to realize how serious the threat was. No embassies were bombed, no towers came down. It wasn’t the ‘War on Terror.’ We had to stay in the shadows.”

  “But the people you were killing weren’t terrorists who were responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians,” I said. “They were innocent civilians.”

  He wagged an angry, trembling finger at me. “We never killed anyone who didn’t pose a direct threat to the nation. And that’s a fact. We just did the dirty work no one dared to talk about. People out there—they have no idea. But they owe us. Because it’s not just about terrorists and military threats. It’s also about the bigger picture, about our place in the world. About how other countries see us. About economic power. About making sure we stay on top. I mean, look. You know the damage Woodward and Bernstein did. That whole Watergate mess—that should have never been allowed to happen.”

  “You call it damage,” I said. “I call it what makes us strong. What makes us the best.”

  “Such a God damn Boy Scout,” Roos spat. “That’s what makes us the best? To have our own president humiliated like that? To get him impeached, watch him crawl away from the White House with his tail between his legs while the rest of the world is laughing at us? How does that make us the best, exactly?”

  He shook his head with disdain. I wasn’t about to argue with him. I wasn’t here for a debate. I was here to listen.

  “It shook us, I tell you. Shook us all. I was just starting out, but for everyone around me, it was a massive failure. And I can tell you this—had my team been in place, that story would have never come out. Woodward and Bernstein wouldn’t ha
ve been around long enough to get the story out. And if we were still around today, you would have never heard of that cocksucker Edward Snowden either. Or any of those other Wikileaks faggots. That would have never been allowed to happen under our watch.”

  We were getting off track. I had to reel him back.

  I asked, “How did it start?”

  He paused, gathering more strength, catching his breath. “We were at the CIA. Me, Eddy . . . we had an op going on in London with a Dutch contact. We were arranging some cocaine shipments to him in exchange for some favors in East Germany. And this fucking reporter for the Telegraph,” he said, “he got wind of it, cornered the guy, and got the whole story. And he was going to put it out there. Well, we found out in time. We talked to him, asked him to back down, explained the bigger picture. Explained that lives and careers were at stake. He wouldn’t. We tried threatening him. That only made things worse.”

  “So you killed him?” I said.

  “You’re damn right we did,” he said. “Made it look like an accident. No one suspected a thing. The guy rode a motorcycle, one of those crappy old English models. Piece of cake. And we got all his notes, everything. It was easier back then, before email and all that. Physical, paper, you know? Photographs and negatives and audiotape. Things that, once they were gone—they were gone for good.” He shrugged. “The op went through without a hitch.”

  “Then you did it again?”

  “We got asked to take care of another problem the agency had in Istanbul. We did that. Then another in Zurich. Pretty soon, it became our sole focus. We were the go-to guys when there was a problem.”

  “And you operated outside our borders and on home soil,” I added.

  “We took care of any threat, anywhere. It didn’t make any difference to us. An enemy’s an enemy, I don’t care what passport they’re carrying. Traitors are enemies. Treason is a capital crime. What difference does it make if they’re in Santiago or Poughkeepsie?”

  “You and Tomblin—you ran it.”

  “Yes. We had a good team. Small. Covert. No leaks. Three whiz kids, each of them with his own specialty, to figure out the best way to do it without raising suspicion. We’d meet up to discuss the situation. We’d do it up here at the blind when we could—it was within easy reach for everybody. Come up with the best option. Then we had an operative to go out and execute what we came up with.”

  “The specialists. Padley, and the other two,” I said.

  “Padley, for the medical option. Siddle for anything technical. And Orford for mental breakdowns.”

  “Mental breakdowns. Like my dad,” I asked, feeling my blood boil over.

  He looked up at me with tired, desensitized eyes. I tensed up. It was now or never. He’d either talk—or he’d leave me hanging forever.

  “Yeah,” he slurred a bit. “Your dad. Stubborn man.”

  I didn’t know if that was good or bad. “What happened?”

  He studied me, the manipulative wheels of his mind still managing to spin despite his battered body. “You would like to know, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would.”

  He hummed, and nodded slowly. Then it was as if he came to some kind of realization, something that gave him some inner satisfaction. And he raised his tired eyes at me again.

  “You know about the October Surprise, don’t you?”

  I told him I did. The US embassy hostages in Tehran during the Reagan-Carter election year, their release within minutes of Reagan’s inauguration, the allegations of foul play.

  “Iran was under a weapons embargo, right?” he said. “But they needed guns. They were about to have an eight-year war with Iraq. They were already in talks with Carter’s people. They had a deal, the hostages were coming out. In October. Which would have got Carter re-elected. Then Reagan’s people stepped in behind the scenes, made them a better offer, and bullied them into accepting it. They didn’t want the hostages released until after he won the election. And in return, Reagan would give them what they really wanted: weapons. Five billion dollars worth. But it had to be done under the table. Because of the embargo.”

  “What’s that got to do with my dad?”

  “Your dad,” he said, quite matter-of-factly, “he had this friend, this old college buddy of his. A Portuguese guy.”

  “Octavio Camacho,” I offered.

  Roos looked at me, a little surprised. “Exactly. Well, it seemed Camacho had done pretty well for himself back home in Portugal. He’d turned into this hot little reporter. And he came to see your dad because he had some documents. Some information.”

  “About the October Surprise?” I asked. “It was already out there. People were talking about it already.”

  “Well, true,” Roos said. “But they didn’t know the whole story.”

  “And Camacho did,” I said.

  Roos nodded.

  “But—you said he was in Portugal? What did that have to do with Iran and us?”

  “The guns had to come from somewhere. Some of them were shipped out from Israel, like with Contra. But the rest—they came from us. And they went through Lisbon airport and a couple of others, smuggled through with the help of the Portuguese military.”

  “And Camacho found this out?”

  “No. He found out what happened after that.”

  “What?”

  “The Portuguese defense minister, Da Costa—he found out. He wasn’t happy about it. He was their first civilian defense minister and he had an idealist boy scout view of the world, much like yourself. So he dug around and he got himself all the evidence he needed.”

  I could see where this was going.

  “He was going to take it to the UN. We had to move fast. He’d chartered a small Cessna to go to an election rally. It was three days before their own presidential election. Then, at the last minute, his buddy who’s given him that post, the Prime Minister, Sá Carneiro—he decides to hop on board too. The plane crashed just after take off. The investigation decided it an accident.”

  “Siddle?” I asked.

  He nodded. “One of his first gigs. High-pressure job, though. A lot at stake.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You murdered the Portuguese prime minister and their defense minister?”

  He shrugged. “Their military weren’t unhappy to see him go. The defense minister, I mean. He wasn’t a team player. And he was going to put a lot of them in jail.”

  “But you had them killed?”

  “Hey, I would have done it again,” he said. “This would have devastated the country worse than Watergate. Reagan was a massively popular guy. A man of the people. Carter had screwed things up and we needed to get the country back on track. To hear that Reagan had fifty-two American diplomats and civilians kept in chains in some Tehran cell for three extra months just so he could win the election . . . how do you think the country would have reacted to that?”

  I was trying to keep my anger in check and stay focused. “So Camacho found out? And he came to see my dad?”

  “He was scared. The military in Portugal had eyes and ears everywhere. He thought the safer way to go about it would be to put the story out here first. So he got in touch with your dad. He told him what happened and asked him to find a way to go wide with it. Your dad had a solid reputation. He wasn’t someone you could bend.”

  “He was a threat to the nation?”

  Roos shrugged. “We knew about his affair. We tried to lean on him that way but he didn’t care. He didn’t leave us a choice.”

  An immense weight had lifted off my shoulders, but it was coupled with a profound sadness for this noble man that I never really got a chance to know. A profound sadness—and a raging anger at the bastard sitting in front of me.

  “Orford?” I asked.

  “No, actually. We staged it. But we needed a real shrink to convince the coroner and your mom that it was a real suicide. Orford did that. He was a practicing psychiatrist. The three of them had real jobs. Worked better for cov
er.”

  I asked, “Who made the decision?”

  “Me and Eddy. We made the threat assessment and decided on what action to take.”

  “Who pulled the trigger?”

  “Eddy,” he said. “Tomblin did it. We were both in there together.”

  Images of Tomblin getting shredded to bits while taped to the car seat next to me flashed through my mind. I guess it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

  I got Roos to reel off the names of their victims. Whatever he could remember. Places. Dates. A brief summary. For the record. I’m sure there were more, but the ones he gave me were already shocking enough. Murder victims that no one realized had been murdered.

  Like Nick.

  Throughout, something was gnawing at me. He was being too open, too helpful. I know he was doing it to survive, but still—he could have held a lot back and I wouldn’t have realized it. But I was getting the sense that he was telling me everything. Which worried me. I didn’t think his brain was that battered by the cold.

  No, he had something up his sleeve. And it wasn’t long before it became apparent.

  “I’m glad we had this little chat,” he said when we were done. “Because now I can fill you in on one last thing you don’t know. See, now you feel good. You think you have the truth, you’ve got it all on tape on that silly little camera. You think you’re going to go back home, be a big hero and live happily ever after with that woman of yours.”

  “That’s the plan,” I told him.

  He laughed. Weakly, barely—he was still in bad shape. “You have no idea. All this, everything that happened? It’s not us. It’s bigger than me, bigger than Eddy and the others. You really have no idea. But I can tell you one thing. You’re not even going to make it to breakfast tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, the next day. That tape of yours? No one’s going to see it. Go on, put it out on the Internet. Upload it right now. No one’s going to take it seriously. You’ll see. Well, you won’t—you won’t be around that long.” He turned to look at Deutsch. “You neither, honey.”