Wells wished he understood himself. Twentyonetwothree . . .
Or maybe he was glad he didn’t.
After an even thirty strikes, the beating stopped. The van rolled away. Then—surprise!—a hand pulled off his hood. Wells found himself looking at a tall, fleshy man in a dark blue uniform. The guard was in his thirties, but his cheeks and nose were covered in the angry red pimples of an unlucky teenager. Mother Teresa would have hated the world if she’d had to live in that skin.
“Samir.” He was the one who stank of brandy. “Speak English?”
“Yes.” The guard probably knew. Wells saw no reason to lie. Irritating these men would only increase his misery and might interfere with Kirkov’s efforts to keep him close to Hani.
“You’ll find out sooner or later, so I may as well tell you. This is Bulgaria. Europe. Even if the Germans and French don’t think so. We hold you for the Americans. Lucky you.”
“I don’t talk to Americans.”
“Your business. I don’t care if you’re Osama bin Laden or some farmer they caught by accident. Take it up with them. But you don’t complain to me or my men. This prison, we call it the Castle. But no kings here. Only fools. Understand?”
Wells nodded.
“When I ask you a question, you answer.”
“I understand.”
“Not nice, the Castle. Not nice for our own people, so why should it be nice for jihadi scum? Some of you think you’re Allah’s warriors. Make trouble. Like it’s our fault you’re here. Don’t do that, Samir. The reason I come on these rides, to give all of you this warning. Make trouble, this place will be hell on earth. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“You do what we say. Otherwise, we throw you in a hole that’s dark twenty-three hours a day, feed you rice that even the worms spit out. Understand?”
Wells nodded. The guard clouted him across the cheek hard enough to send a crescent moon streaking across his eyes.
“Answer.”
“I’m sorry. Yes. I understand.”
—
THEY DROVE for an hour at highway speed before turning onto a rougher road that rose and twisted into what Wells assumed were the mountains east of Sofia. The guards, who sat on a rear-facing bench attached to the partition, laughed as Wells bounced around the cargo compartment. The road finally straightened and smoothed out.
Minutes later, the van halted. Wells heard a gate creak up. The van rolled ahead, turned right. The strangely suburban sound of a garage door opening followed. The van inched inside, stopped. The pimply guard popped open the door, led Wells into a loading bay. Through the open garage door, Wells glimpsed the prison’s outer walls, ten meters of old-school brick topped with coils of razor wire that spotlights painted silver and mean. A corner guard tower was embedded with long, narrow windows, archers’ slits.
At least Wells knew why they called it the Castle.
The guards led him to a low-ceilinged intake room where four uniformed men played cards. The stink of stale smoke suffused the room to its very pores. Hell’s perfume. Pictograms warned against bringing in weapons and contraband. A dust-covered desktop computer from the 1980s sat on a desk.
The guards fingerprinted Wells with an old-style ink pad. They stood him against a wall and photographed him as he held a slate pad chalked with Samir Khalili’s name and a six-digit identification number. Then the humiliations began. Two guards held him in a chair as a third sheared his hair and chopped his beard with a dull single-blade razor. With his hair gone, they photographed him again. They stripped him naked, made him stand with his legs spread wide and his hands flat against a wall as they tugged and poked him. Every procedure was rougher than necessary. Wells knew the indecency was not accidental but the point. They wanted him to feel his helplessness.
When they were done amusing themselves, they walked him to a shower that had the filthiest graffiti Wells had ever seen. After a minute, the water cut off abruptly, and Wells shivered in the locked stall for half an hour before the guards brought him to a counter where a tiny man sat in front of shelves of uniforms. Without a word, the man reached under his desk and handed Wells grayish underwear, a powder-blue uniform smeared with grease stains, and leather sandals that miraculously fit perfectly.
Samir Khalili had to stand up for himself, even after the guard’s warning.
“Dirty.” Wells pushed the uniform back. The clerk shooed him away. Wells tried again. This time, the guards grabbed him, wrenched his arms behind his shoulders. After a minute, the commander with the pimples arrived.
“Making trouble?”
“It’s dirty—”
The commander popped his baton and took a vicious short swing at Wells like a batter fighting off a two-strike fastball. The blow caught Wells in the ribs, doubled him over.
“Hands against the wall.”
Wells complied. And felt the cool steel of the baton against his groin.
“You’ve been good so far. The only reason I’m not hitting you there. Understand?”
Wells started to nod, stopped himself. “Yes.”
“Turn around. Let me see that uniform.” The commander pretended to examine it. “You’re right. It does need a cleaning.” He cleared his throat, spat a gob of tar-colored phlegm at the uniform’s chest. He stuck his hand down the back of his pants, rubbed with the exaggerated vigor of a kid who’d just learned how to wipe himself, and massaged the spittle into the fabric with his dirty hand. “That should do it.” He let the uniform slip from his fingers like the world’s worst seductress. “Shall I clean your underwear, too?”
“No, thank you.” He’d find a way to clean it before he put it on.
“Very good. Get dressed, then. Now.”
So Wells pulled on the spit-stained uniform, trying to keep the fabric from touching his head. When he was done, the commander gave him a mock salute. “Your palace awaits.”
—
THE COMMANDER led Wells and the other guards down a corridor to a steel gate, electrically controlled and watched by cameras.
“Most important rule, Samir. This side, guards only. Always. You never come through here unless we bring you. Understand?”
“I understand.”
The commander waved at a camera, and the gate squeaked back on its metal rollers. He pushed Wells through. The other guards followed, but the commander stayed on the guards-only side and gave Wells a mock salute as the gate slid shut.
Thirty feet down, the corridor intersected another. Wells sensed they’d reached the prison’s central axis. Arrows pointed ahead to BLOCK A/B, right to FOOD/YARD, left to SPECIAL BLOCK. All in English, for whatever reason.
No surprise, they turned left. This hallway led to an old-fashioned mantrap, twin sets of gates separated by ten feet of corridor. The lead guard fished on his belt for an oversized key ring. He unlocked the first gate, ushered Wells inside, locked it behind them. A guard appeared at the second gate, pulled it open, waggled his fingers—Come on down.
Wells found himself in a brick shed the size of a small warehouse, twenty-five feet wide, a hundred feet long. Narrow barred windows were set near the ceiling. The cellblock itself was a single concrete tier set five feet back from the walls. The individual cells were not even four feet wide, maybe seven feet deep. Wells guessed there were about twenty-five. Their lights were out, but they all seemed occupied. He saw only three guards, the one who’d let him in and two others sitting in a booth beside the entrance. Elevated sentry platforms had been built at the building’s four corners, but they all seemed to be empty.
So the Castle was . . . an ordinary prison. Nothing high-tech about it. Or even medium-tech. Aside from that single remotely operated lock separating the cellblocks from the guard quarters, the place belonged to another century. Wells supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Not after the crudity of the intake. Still,
he’d somehow figured they would keep the jihadis in a purpose-built cellblock.
This place was the opposite. The air stank of sewage. The only illumination came from dim bulbs that hung from ceiling rafters. As his eyes adjusted, Wells saw rats popping in and out of holes in the concrete floor. Suddenly his open-toe sandals didn’t seem so great.
But hadn’t Kirkov told him that the annex for the jihadis was new? No. He’d said only that the Bulgarians had built a new prayer room. Ever since, Wells had deliberately avoided learning more, wanting Samir Khalili to come in cold.
As the guards walked him along the block, men stirred and muttered in Arabic.
“What’s your name?”
“Where you from, brother?”
“Who got you?”
They walked him around the side of the block. Wells saw what he should have already realized. It actually consisted of two rows of cells that backed against each other. The back side was a crude high-security area. Some cells had steel plates welded to their bars, leaving only a couple of inches at the top and bottom for air. But only one cell appeared to be occupied. It was at the far end, with a plate attached.
A cadaverously thin guard slept in a folding chair in the corner. The men with Wells kicked at him and he startled awake with an exaggerated jump. He led Wells to a cell in the middle and slid open the gate. No steel plate on this one.
“Go on.” Wells stepped in. The belly of the beast. The guard clanged the gate shut and locked it. “Have fun, Osama.” They walked off, leaving him to his new home.
As Kirkov had warned, no one would confuse the Castle for the airport Hilton. This cell was worse than the ones Wells had glimpsed on the other side. It had no cot at all, only an inch-thick mattress covered with a thin gray blanket. He would have to hope the heat stayed strong. The concrete walls were flaking; and a rusty piece of rebar stuck out of the ceiling. Worst of all, the cell had neither a toilet nor a faucet, just a bucket that didn’t have a top or even a handle. If he went through another bout of intestinal misery . . . The thought was too filthy to contemplate. He had been in more dangerous places. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever found himself anywhere so gross.
Yet as he lay on his mattress and listened to the rats skitter, his spirits rose.
Samir Khalili’s trip had paid off. Kirkov had come through. Hani was almost surely in the cell at the end of the block. The sound-deadening plates on his bars might make talking difficult, but Wells would find a way.
As he drifted off to sleep, he felt the mission taking shape.
—
HE WOKE TO metal banging metal, a guard shouting in Bulgarian. The block was dark. Wells wondered if a prisoner had escaped. But the clanging had a regular rhythm and the guard’s steps were unhurried. Wells realized it was a late-night bed check, timed to ensure that the prisoners never fell fully asleep.
The guard, the thin one, reached Wells’s cell, hit him with a flashlight so bright that it must have been surplus American military—and shouted, “Up, up—”
As Wells jumped to his feet, the guard unzipped his fly and sprayed the cell like a dog marking territory—
“Faster next time.”
These guards had an unhealthy fascination with bodily fluids. At least the guy didn’t have much of a stream. He walked off, and Wells turned over the mattress and tried to breathe through his mouth and ignore the smell. Thanks for the warning, buddy.
He was nearly asleep when he heard a prisoner sobbing on the other side, no words, just a low, crazy-making moan. Men yelled in Arabic—Fakr, enough! Wake up!—but the moaning continued for another few minutes, until it stopped as abruptly and creepily as it had begun.
Still later, Wells woke to a dog panting outside his cell. A dream, he thought, but when he opened his eyes, the animal was real enough, a muscled Doberman, staring at him. The Dobie’s teeth were bared, his breathing fast and excited. Wells was glad for the steel between them.
“Likes you,” a new guard said in English. “Wants to be your friend.” Wells wondered why all the guards assumed that he spoke English. Or maybe they just knew that he didn’t speak Bulgarian. The dog turned away, dragged the handler down the corridor, lunging for a rat. “Maybe later.”
The next time Wells woke, dawn rays were fighting their way through the grime in the windows, and the Fajr, the morning Muslim prayer, was beginning. The first of the day’s five devotions. Wells waited for the guards to clang their batons and overwhelm the Arabic. They didn’t. Apparently, the prisoners were allowed this much. Wells joined. He didn’t think anyone would hear him, but the words made this place a mosque, and Samir Khalili wanted to be part of it.
—
FOR FOUR DAYS, nothing happened. Nothing useful anyway. Two guards brought him to the bathroom twice a day, morning and evening. They watched as he dumped his blue bucket and washed his hands. No shower, though. Most disappointingly, they brought him by himself. Wells heard the guards come to Hani’s cell. But Wells never saw him.
Wells heard the prisoners on the other side coming and going for meals, but the guards delivered his food. It was the same every day, and it was terrible. Moldy white bread slathered with a brown peanut butter paste for breakfast. A grayish stew with potatoes and half-black carrots for lunch. A gristly brown lump of meat for dinner. Everything tasted of the same sour chemicals. Wells devoured it all. He needed every calorie they saw fit to give him. He made himself exercise until his muscles burned, push-ups and sit-ups and crunches and reverse lifts against the bars. He waited for the guards to stop him, but they didn’t seem to care.
Along with the morning prayer, the prisoners could pray, just after lights-out, the evening prayer, or Isha. But not during the day, when a dozen or so guards roamed the unit.
Wells catalogued everything he saw. He wasn’t bored. If living in the Kush all those years had taught him anything, it was how to keep his mind alive without books or television or even much conversation.
On the fifth day, his first chance at Hani arrived. After the dawn prayer, the guards pushed a threadbare towel and a beige-brown bar of soap into his hand. “Prayer day.”
Shower day, too, apparently. The water was warm, the pressure surprisingly decent. Wells let himself relax and scrubbed himself with the soap until he decided that it smelled worse than he did. When he was done, the guards led him out. Waiting in the hallway was a handsome fortyish man with deep-brown eyes and beige skin. He had the relaxed, magisterial air of a Gulf Arab.
Hani. At last.
“Akhi,” Wells said. Brother.
Hani looked at Wells with bored, superior eyes. “You’re the new one. What’s your name?”
“Samir. Yours?”
“What did you do to get put on my side?”
A guard shoved Wells ahead.
“See you in prayers,” Hani said.
Back in his cell, Wells wondered why Hani had been so cold, if he had spotted something wrong. But he wasn’t a comic-book supervillain who could recognize Khalili as an impostor with a single look. Probably he considered himself the ward boss and wanted to put this new arrival in his place.
The morning dragged. Wells felt like a quarterback on Super Bowl Sunday, waiting for the stadium to fill and the coaches to finish their speeches. No. Samir Khalili couldn’t have cared less about the Super Bowl. He simply wanted to meet this man, to speak in the Prophet’s tongue with another believer.
The guards came a few minutes after noon. The prayer area was tucked at the end of the cellblock. Twenty feet square, with white plaster walls, newer and cleaner than the rest of the prison. It felt like a real mosque. It even had a mihrab, the semicircular notch in the wall that indicated the direction of Mecca, which Muslims faced for their prayers. Wells understood better why Hani and Latif had spoken so openly here. Kirkov and the Bulgarians had created a perfect trap, a room that unconsciously made the jihadis believe
they were safe.
A dozen men, including Hani, stood in a loose circle. “Brothers,” Wells said. The word itself brought him back to Afghanistan, to men praying on dusty ground with the mountains on every side.
“Do you pray, Samir?”
He remembers my name. Like a good boss. “Of course.”
“Stand with me.” Hani led Wells to the room’s back wall and they prayed. Hani was judging him, his accent and his fluency. Samir Khalili didn’t care, because he knew every prayer and had fought the Americans far longer than this man next to him.
After the second verse, Hani touched his arm and leaned in.
“You asked my name, Samir.” His voice was low, confident. “It’s Hani. Do you know where you are?”
“In the van that brought me here, the guard with the face said Bulgaria.”
“The guard with the face.” Hani nodded. “He’s trouble. Don’t ever say anything about”—he touched his cheeks. “One of the Iraqis did, Fakr, and they took him for a week. He won’t say what happened, but now he screams in his sleep. Where did they catch you, Samir?”
“Afghanistan.”
Hani tapped his chest. “Syria.”
“With the Islamic State? Or Nusra?”
“Of course the Islamic State. Are you with us, brother?”
The question that Wells had hoped his own question would provoke. He wanted Hani to think of him as a Qaeda jihadi—a potential opponent, at least for now. “I fight for the sheikh and I always will.”
“Always? Until Allah raises him from the ocean where the Americans dumped him?”
“Don’t joke about this.”
Hani’s smile said You’ll see the truth soon enough. “How did the Americans catch you?”
“In a town called Nangalam.” He didn’t want to give too much too soon.
“Not where. How?”
“Why would I tell you?”
“I already know. Someone betrayed you. The Pakistanis, yes?”
They locked eyes. Wells blinked first. “How—”
The Prisoner Page 22
