Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office

by Khalid Muhammad

  The General paused for a moment, taking a deep drag from his cigarette. “You were part of the jihad?” he asked, quickly doing the math on his age. He must have been in his late 40s then.

  The Maulana smirked at the question, knowing that the General didn’t believe what he had just said. “Please follow me,” he said moving to a closed door a few meters down from where they had finished eating. Pulling a set of keys from a pocket under his kameez, he slipped it into the doorknob. El-Yahad heard the lock click and the Maulana pushed the door open. “This is my private study,” he said switching on the lights, stepping aside to allow the General to enter. The Maulana closed the door behind him.

  The room was an amazing homage, a historical record of the Maulana’s activities during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Photographs covered the walls, some black and white, others in color, each chronicling who he had met, spent time with and the depth of his involvement. On another wall were neatly organized, framed photographs of young boys, each with a gold nameplate below them. They were engraved with the names and date of martyrdom in memory of those who had gone from his madrassah. He had never seen a wall of honor like this. As he stood taking in the names and faces, the Maulana stepped alongside him, saying, “They were like sons to me. I will never forget what they did for Islam.”

  “It is beautiful,” the General replied. “Allah-hum-do-lillah, you shall be rewarded for their sacrifices. You have sent warriors in Allah’s name.”

  He moved away from the wall, looking at the many photographs along the others. It was a who’s who of the Taliban and its supporters. El-Yahad recognized many faces from not only the conflict, but also his own personal interactions. Mullah Omar, Khalid Haqqani, Osama bin Laden, and the good doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, all in the photographs with a younger version of the Maulana. He was also in photographs with Americans, Brits and many Pakistani military officials. The Maulana was well connected, he thought to himself, it’s a good thing that my identity is backstopped otherwise he could have problems with the man. El-Yahad stopped at one photograph, taking a longer look than he had the others. I know these people.

  “Maulana sahib,” the General called. “Who are these Americans?”

  The Maulana walked over to him, pulling his bifocals from his chest pocket. “Ah, our friends from the CIA,” he said, pointing to the individuals. He pulled off his bifocals, taking a moment to clean them on his shirt before putting them back on. “This is Chris… Andrews, I think his name was. He taught our boys explosives. This is David Northwright, the weapons trainer. And this last gentleman is Tom Davidson, a great man. He taught close quarter combat,” he explained pointing at each man as he spoke. “I have lost touch with David since he was stationed in Columbia. Andrews was killed in Nuristan by a mortar shell. No one knows what happened to Davidson. He just disappeared one day.”

  El-Yahad looked hard at the photo of Davidson, recognizing facial features. Davidson hadn’t disappeared. No one knew his new identity.

  * * *

  The car whipped around the corner, flashing its lights at two men standing outside a gate before turning them off. The men rushed in through the walk-through and pulled the gate open from both sides. The car passed through and the men slammed the gate shut just as quickly as they had opened it, returning to their positions outside. The facility, a disused warehouse, was located in Islamabad’s industrial estate. The six-acre warehouse was purchased nearly a decade ago through a shell company and converted into one of the intelligence service’s largest off-book detention and interrogation centers. This was where high-value targets were brought and housed until they could no longer provide usable intelligence. The lucky ones were either released or turned over to the courts for prosecution. The center was highly secure and its location was need-to-know only. Most visitors that came to the facility were transported in official vehicles that went to great lengths to avoid direct routes in case someone might be following or the passenger might be trying to track their path.

  As the vehicle entered the compound, another gate was opened to the interior of the facility where the car was ushered in. There were already three other vehicles parked there, including an emergency vehicle for medical services. The Premier stepped out of the vehicle and noticed that there was no military markings anywhere in his eye line, even the men were dressed in nondescript black clothing rather than their standard issue military fatigues. As they walked in, he took note that not one of the men they passed in the parking area or the corridors stopped to salute the General or show any recognition of who he was. Where were they?

  “General,” Chaudhry said. “Where are…”

  The General stopped dead in his tracks and turned on a dime, right into the face of the oncoming Prime Minister, causing him to jerk backwards to avoid impact. “It’s not General here,” he said in a muted voice. “This is a black site for high value targets. No one has a military rank within these walls. They can’t know who each individual is for security reasons,” he said, pointing to an area beyond the Premier’s vision.

  “Who can’t know?” Chaudhry asked, confused by the General’s coded statement. “And what am I supposed to call you?”

  “Ahsan,” he said. “You can call me Misbah.” He turned around again and resumed his stride down the corridor until he reached a door approximately two hundred yards into the facility. The General opened the door, waiting for the Premier to join him and step inside, entering quickly behind him and closing the door.

  The room was a large, air-conditioned area with television screens of various sizes covering the walls. A team of four operators controlled each of the screens that intermittently changed the video feeds to monitor all the activities within the facility. The Premier took in the various pictures of the exterior of the facility, interrogation rooms, the holding cells and the corridors as they flashed across the screens, wondering why there was no sound coming from anywhere. The Prime Minister moved from screen to screen looking for volume controls to be able to hear what was going on in each of the videos that he was seeing, but could find none. He found his way to one of the operators and leaned over the console asking, “Why are things so quiet?” The operator looked up at him, wondering who he was and why he was bothering him, then looked over to the General for instruction on what to do with the question that he was asked. The General gave an imperceptible nod and the operator returned to monitoring the screens without answering the Premier’s question. The Premier turned to the General even more confused. He jerked around with the quiet of the room erupted with screams of pain coming from one of the screens. He pushed his hands to his ears to try to block out the bloodcurdling screams, only to have it change as the operator turned the dial to another video feed that was blasting American music into a holding cell. As the operator continued rotating the knob, the sounds in the room continued to change giving the Premier an understanding of why the room was kept so quiet. The General called to the operator, “I think that’s enough.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Chaudhry asked, looking to the General for answers.

  “Ahsan, this is the one and only time that you will be here,” he said. “Our…guests… are subjected to hours of loud annoying music, wild variations of temperature and behavior modification controlled by trained personnel and interrogators with one single goal – break the detainee mentally and physically. That is how we got that file of information that you read on the way here.”

  “Isn’t this illegal? Against some Geneva convention or other?” Chaudhry asked. “We can’t do this.”

  “We don’t do this,” the General replied with steel in his voice. “The military does this to protect the nation of internal and external threats. We can’t be concerned about conventions that apply to nations when dealing with those who have none.”

  “But Ge…Misbah,” the Prime Minister said. “These are our citizens.”

  “Our citizens?!?” the General said laughing. “These people are not citizens of my
country. They know a singular purpose… to create mayhem and destruction in Pakistan. And we will do whatever needs to be done to stop them,” he continued. “Now, please sit down so I can show you why we brought you here.”

  The Premier wanted to argue his position with the General, but the look in his eyes said that would be the worst thing to do at this point. The General turned to one of operators saying, “Bring suspect zero to the interrogation rooms.” The operator picked up the wireless set that sat on the table next to him, giving orders to someone in the holding area. The Prime Minister watched the screens, looking for any sign of who suspect zero was. “Put it up on the main screen for our guest to watch,” the General said. The operator quickly flipped the dial and transferred the video feed to the main screen in front of the two men, turning his attention to finding the right button for the microphone in the room.

  As they watched the detainee being dragged out of one of the cells, the door to the room buzzed open and a young bearded man entered. The General rose to greet him and had a quick conversation before bringing him over to the meet the Premier.

  “Ahsan Chaudhry,” the General said. “This is Afzal Saleem, one of our interrogators and deep cover assets. Afzal, you know Ahsan.”

  “Only from certain tape recordings,” Afzal said smiling. The General was amused by the subordinate’s thinly veiled joke, knowing that there was more truth to the statement than either would like to let on to the Premier. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  The Prime Minister shook his hand as Afzal took a seat behind the two men. Afzal was there to confirm or refute any information that was gleaned from suspect zero, a.k.a. Faheem. Afzal Saleem was a cover identity for any ISI asset in a room with a civilian. The asset identities were never compromised. In this case, Afzal Saleem was Kamal Khan.

  Faheem was led into the interrogation room by two men and chained to the hook in the concrete floor. His hands were left shackled but not chained to the floor. He tried to resist, but one of the men slammed a forearm into his jaw forcing him into compliance. He had been regularly beaten over the past three weeks causing swelling around the eyes, jaw and nose. His face was unrecognizable compared to the photograph in his file. As the operator adjusted the focus and sound levels of the microphone, another man dressed in black entered the room, sitting down on a chair near Faheem. The Premier assumed that was the interrogator, but wondered why Afzal was there if that was the interrogator.

  “Good morning, Faheem,” the man said. “Did you sleep?”

  Faheem looked over at the man, shaking from fear of being abused again and the untended wounds on his body. “I… can’t… sleep,” he responded. “Too… much… pain.”

  “Pain?” the interrogator asked. “You know that you’re the one that controls the amount of pain you feel or don’t feel?”

  Faheem’s body shook as he struggled against the chains. “I… have… told you… everything…”

  “Now, we both know that isn’t true,” the man said, rising from his chair and moving around to behind Faheem. “There are so many things that you aren’t telling me.”

  “No… I have… told you… everything,” Faheem sputtered.

  The man came around him and hit him with a hard right cross, causing his head to jerk to the left, spitting blood and drool out on the floor. “You have not told me everything Faheem,” the man said, drawing himself close to his face. “If you had told me what I want to know, I wouldn’t need to continue interrogating you. Would I?”

  “What else… can… do… you want… to know” Faheem said, blood drooling out of his mouth. “I… don’t know… anything else…”

  The man stopped to the left of him, pausing to consider whether to hit him again. He went back to his chair and picked up the file, sitting down. “Faheem, tell me about The Sanctuary. How many rooms does it have?”

  “What Sanctuary?” Faheem replied, fighting the pain that was shooting through his jaw, already dislocated once, now it seemed to be broken. “I… have never… been to… a sanctuary.”

  “Faheem, we have an asset on ground in Bajaur that told us that you are a frequent visitor to The Sanctuary,” the man said, reading the notes that had been provided from Kamal’s intelligence. “Let’s start with something easier. Who lives at The Sanctuary?”

  “I don’t know!” Faheem yelled at the interrogator. “I don’t know about this place at all.”

  Back in the room, Afzal leaned forward and asked the General, “How long do we wait before I go in and start properly interrogating him?”

  “If you think you can get better results,” the General said looking back at him with a smile. “Please go ahead. We have not been able to get more from him.”

  Afzal didn’t need a second invitation, getting out of his chair and going into a room. He emerged minutes later in the standard black attire of the facility staff and exited the room.

  “Where is he going?” Chaudhry asked the General. “Is he an interrogator?”

  “He is a…specialist,” the General replied. “He has been on-ground in the area that suspect zero is being questioned about and inside The Sanctuary.”

  “Why wasn’t he used before?” Chaudhry asked.

  “Because he thinks that Afzal is dead…” the General replied with a smirk. “This should be interesting.”

  There was a knock at the door that stopped the interrogation questions. The interrogator looked at the door for a moment before resuming his questioning. The first knock was followed by a much harder knock turning to a pounding, causing the interrogator to stop his questioning again.

  “What is it!” he yelled opening the door, but his attitude quickly changed when he saw who was standing on the other side. Faheem couldn’t see anything, his vision hampered by both the swelling of his eyes and the wall.

  “Good morning sir,” Faheem heard the interrogator say, only able to make out this side of the conversation.

  “No, sir. He has not.”

  “But sir, just a little more time and I can get the information we need.” Faheem quietly smirked listening to the dressing down that the interrogator was getting for not getting whatever information the man outside wanted. “Yes, sir.”

  Faheem watched as the interrogator returned to the room, looking extremely dejected by what had just happened outside. Collecting his pad and files, he looked at Faheem and shook his head. “You had a chance with me,” he said, as two men entered pushing metal carts with various instruments on them. “Now, you don’t have a chance. The next interrogator… he has a reputation for…” He walked slowly to the door, turning around once again. “If you want to get out of here alive, just tell him what he wants to know,” he said, voice laced with concern for Faheem for the first time. “Just tell him, otherwise…” He walked around the corner, footsteps fading away into the distance

  Faheem sat alone in the room, feeling slightly confident that he had caused whoever was holding him to change interrogators because they were unable to extract the required information. He had held his will through the abuse and torture, not revealing anything about The Sanctuary, the Sheikh or Mullah Fazal. His fear of what they could do to him far outweighed anything the interrogator could do. But as he looked at the instruments on the carts, his mind began to visualize how each could be used and a new fear filled him. They are not interested in just information anymore, they are going to punish me until I talk. He began to shake as the fear spread through his brain, occupying all his thoughts.

  A man came around the corner and stood in the doorway. The light was behind him, causing Faheem to strain his eyes trying to make out his features. Rather than rushing in, the man called orders to the guards who were already inside the room. “Inject him,” he said calmly. One man reached for a syringe on the cart, another grabbed hold of him so that he could not move. Faheem fought, writhing from one side to side to avoid the injection, but was unable as the man finally penetrated his skin with the needle. He felt his body begin to seize up, una
ble to move his torso or legs. What is this drug, he thought as it slowly moved through his body stopping movement completely. He yelled as the paralytic took over his body, but there was something else in that syringe, something that made the visions in his mind came to life as if they were real.

  “I didn’t think that I would see you again after Peshawar,” the man said from the shadows in the back of the room, out of Faheem’s sight. “But here we are.” Faheem recognized the voice from the warehouse, but how…

  “Show yourself!” Faheem yelled, trying to turn his head but the paralytic had frozen his muscles. “I killed you! I shot you myself, how can you be here?” Faheem shouted, his voice echoing in the room.

  “Well, that clarifies that you are as bad a shot,” the man said laughing menacingly, “…as you are a liar,” he said coming out of the shadows to reveal himself. He walked slowly towards him, speaking in careful measured bursts, making sure to register each word in Faheem’s mind. “I am not as kind as the last man who questioned you. I am going to ask questions and you are going to answer them. If you lie to me or try to hide something from me…” Kamal swung his elbow around and landed it hard against Faheem’s windpipe. Faheem gasped trying to catch his breath as the pain of the impact shot through his neck. “Do we understand each other?” Faheem tried to reach out to grab him but his arms wouldn’t respond to his demands. Kamal landed another punch to his face, further closing his already swollen eye. “Do… we… understand… each other?” Kamal asked again, hovering over Faheem.

  “I have… told… them everything,” Faheem stammered out.

  Kamal laughed again. “You have told them what they know. I have been to The Sanctuary, you can’t lie to me.”

  Faheem now understood why the interrogator showed so much concern for him before leaving the room. He was blind to the details that Faheem shared, taking everything to be verified by this man. Obviously, they had figured out that most of what he had told them was lies. Dawood was someone who intimately knew The Sanctuary and would be able to decipher his lies as he told them.