by Tal Bauer
“It is now. Straight from the White House. Zahawi doesn’t fight for a nation or belong to any country. The Geneva Conventions don’t apply to Zahawi. He’s an enemy combatant. And we can do whatever we want to him.”
A piercing wail rose over the monitors, scratching out of the speakers. On the screen, Zahawi collapsed, falling almost into Paul. Paul had a towel around Zahawi’s neck, wrapped like a sideways noose, and was flinging him against the wall. Zahawi’s head, his naked shoulders, bounced, sharp cracks breaking over the speakers.
“Are you this fucking weak?” Paul roared. “I thought you were the fucking prince of al-Qaeda! You were someone big and bad, weren’t you? Not so big and bad now, huh?” Crack. Zahawi hit the wall again.
A long box was in the cell, standing against the bars. It looked like a coffin. Paul swung Zahawi around, grabbed his hair, forced him to look at the box. “Do you want to go back into your box? Your new home?”
“No…” Zahawi moaned. “No, no, no…”
“You only have a few minutes to tell me what I want to know, Zahawi! Only a few minutes before your life gets even worse!”
A puddle appeared beneath Zahawi, a trickle down his legs. He tried to double in half, tried to shrink, moaning.
“You pissed yourself again? Jesus Christ, you are a fucking mess. Fucking pussy, that’s what we say in America. You already shit yourself in your box!”
Zahawi’s foot slipped on his urine on the floor. He hit the wall headfirst.
Kris was trapped in a nightmare. This wasn’t happening. Time fractured, the words coming out of the speakers broken into consonants and vowels that he had to reassemble, had to try and parse meaning out of. It was like Paul was speaking a foreign language, something he couldn’t understand. Images collided, smeared, the world moving too slowly and too quickly all at once. Zahawi hit the wall in slow motion. His urine spread on the floor. Kris’s heart stopped beating.
“You are asking me to hurt you, Zahawi. Do you know that? You are asking me to make your life worse. You’re asking for this! Tell me what I want to know and your life will get better. What are the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and safe houses of the brothers who are going to attack America?”
“I don’t know!” Zahawi shrieked. His bones seemed to give out, and he sagged against the wall, shivering. “I don’t know!”
“Remember, Zahawi. You asked for this.” Paul let go of the towel, his makeshift collar noose, and walked away. Zahawi slumped, sitting in his urine.
Once, Zahawi had told Kris how much he hated being dirty. He hated feeling unclean and loved his daily prayers, loved the way he made himself pure and clean before Allah. He’d fought to control his bowels, his bladder, after that first session, despairing whenever he lost control. Kris had helped him, encouraged him. Helped him relieve himself during breaks in their interrogations. Built up his strength again.
Zahawi pitched sideways, lying in his piss. Blood seeped from one of his reopened leg wounds, trickling down, mixing with the urine. Zahawi pressed his face into the dirt. His lips moved, scraping over the dust.
Paul reappeared, wheeling in a thin platform. Thick straps went across, obviously to restrain someone. A bucket of water and a black hood lay on the surface.
“No,” Kris breathed. “You can’t.”
“We absolutely can,” Dennis said. “The president authorized it. You just are too weak to do what the United States needs.”
“I gave you the opportunity,” Paul told Zahawi. “I gave you the opportunity to save yourself. All you had to do was tell me what I want to know.” Paul grabbed Zahawi and hauled him to his feet. Zahawi wilted, almost collapsed. Paul dragged him to the platform.
Someone else watched Paul strap Zahawi down. Someone else who inhabited Kris’s body, his mind. Someone else who could comprehend what was happening. Kris felt Dan and Ryan beside him, bracketing him. Dan was frozen, staring. Ryan had gone bone white. His hands had fisted, crumpling the memo Dennis had shown them. Only the top line was visible. Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Authorized.
“You can stop this, Zahawi. Tell me what I want to know. Tell me how the United States is going to be attacked.” He held Zahawi down with one hand as he tightened the straps around Zahawi’s wrists, his ankles.
“I told Kris. I told him, I told him everything. Ask Kris. Please, ask Kris,” Zahawi whimpered.
“No, I know you didn’t tell Kris everything. You are lying to me, Zahawi. And you know what happens when you lie?” Paul yanked on the strap over Zahawi’s thighs. It cut into his open wound again. Blood poured down Zahawi’s leg. He screamed. The speakers cut out, warbled, not able to process the intensity of the sound.
“I’m telling the truth,” Zahawi sobbed. “I don’t know anything… I don’t know anything!”
Paul pulled the black hood over Zahawi’s face. Zahawi screamed, shrieked. “Please! Please!”
Paul grabbed the water bucket.
“Holy fuck…” Ryan breathed. His voice shook.
Kris wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to run. He wanted to disappear and reappear on the far side of the moon. He wanted to time travel, go back to when he was nineteen and walking out of his classroom at George Washington, and tell his younger self to ignore the man with two cell phones who said his country could make use of his talents. He wanted to stop breathing, stop seeing, stop feeling anything at all. Stop his heart from beating. Stop time, and stop the pour of water as it fell from the lip of the bucket. He watched, every moment a lifetime, as the stream fell onto Zahawi’s hood-covered face.
Zahawi thrashed, wailing. Paul kept up a constant litany, telling Zahawi he could stop this anytime he wanted, that all he needed to do was tell Paul the truth. “What is your secret, Zahawi?” Paul called out, almost mocking. “What is the one thing you are holding back? What is it that you don’t want me to know? Just tell me, and this will stop!”
Water poured. Blood seeped down Zahawi’s leg. He thrashed. The sounds he made weren’t human. They were primal, animal. Something beyond terrified.
Paul let up the water. Zahawi sputtered, for a moment. Until Paul started pouring again.
Kris forced his eyes open, forced himself to watch, the seconds turning to years, until his eyes watered and he couldn’t see, until he couldn’t breathe, until he felt like he was under the stream of water, the endless, ceaseless stream pouring from Paul’s hands. Paul’s voice was a monotonous call, a chant, a promise of salvation if Zahawi just told the truth.
Zahawi jerked. Went wild as a scream slithered from beneath the hood and his legs and arms went rigid.
And then he went limp.
Water poured, overly loud in the sudden silence.
Dan leaned forward, peering at the monitor.
“Is he—” Ryan’s voice choked.
“Get David!” Kris bellowed. “Get David now!” He shoved Ryan, pushing him back toward the entrance. “Get him! Get David!” Ryan took off, racing for the door.
Kris shoved Dennis out of the way and barged into the interrogation cell. Paul was still pouring, still talking to Zahawi, still trying to get him to tell the truth. Kris felt like he was running upside down, like he was trapped in a carnival of horrors. Paul was pouring water on a dying man, trying to interrogate a soul that was disappearing.
He swung, his fist slamming into Paul’s cheek and jaw, decking him from the side. The bucket clattered to the ground as Paul went sprawling across the dirt on his face.
Kris worked the restraints, yanking on the ties and freeing Zahawi. He pulled the naked, filthy, bleeding man to the ground, kneeling next to him as he ripped off his hood.
Zahawi’s eyes and mouth were open. A bubble rose from his throat and hit the back of his teeth. It grew, ballooning out of his lips.
Kris laced his hands together, one on top of the other, and pushed his palms down into Zahawi’s unmoving chest.
Paul stared, frozen on the ground, as Kris pushed on Zahawi’s chest, over and over.
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Shouts rose outside the cell, boots running through the bunker. He heard Ryan’s voice, and then David’s voice. He screamed, “In here, David!”
David flew into the cell, Ryan and Naveen on his heels. Both Naveen and David came up short, their heads swiveling from left to right. The last time they’d seen Zahawi had been with Kris, when Zahawi was resting, healing in his hospital bed with a view of the jungle, listening to monkey calls. But David had been banned from interrogations and Naveen had been disinvited, pending CIA review, Dennis had said.
Now, Zahawi was naked, covered in his own urine, stinking of the shit from his confinement in the coffin box earlier, and not breathing. Water and urine and blood soaked the dirt floor of the cell, and Zahawi.
Naveen froze at the door.
“Hold his head,” David growled at Ryan. He kneeled across from Kris taking Zahawi in, from head to toe. Shock, sheer disbelief, bled from him. Kris had never seen him so raw, so open. Not ever.
“Halt compressions,” David choked out. He tilted Zahawi’s head back and dropped his chin. Leaned forward and closed his mouth over Zahawi’s. Pinched his nose. Breathed into Zahawi, twice.
“Resume compressions.”
Kris kept going, counting under his breath. Ryan stared at Zahawi’s wet hair as he held his head, stared at the way his ribs puffed out, his body shook, limp and unresponsive. Had they killed him? Had the CIA killed their first detainee?
Sputtering, Zahawi coughed, hacking up water mixed with vomit, bits of rice and beans and bile falling from his lips and across his face. He gasped, struggling to inhale, to exhale, and coughed up more water. David rolled him on his side, facing Kris.
Zahawi’s eyes were glazed, unfocused, but slowly, they tracked up Kris’s hands, up his arms, until Zahawi’s gaze landed on Kris’s face. He started to shake, to tremble, and he curled toward Kris, wrapping himself up into a ball as close as he could get to Kris’s knee.
Kris leaned his forehead against the metal door of his and David’s hut. Rainwater soaked his skin, spilled down his hair, his face. He closed his eyes. What would he find on the other side of the door?
After Zahawi had started breathing again, time had seemed to snap forward, every moment Kris had spent frozen in horror watching suddenly zipping ahead, fast-forwarding reality. David had started shouting, hollering at the top of his lungs, shouting at Paul, at Dennis, at everyone in the room. Ryan had manhandled David out of the cell before David could get his hands on Paul and rip him in half. David had bellowed, calling Paul a fucking murderer, a torturer, a disgusting human being.
Kris had helped Zahawi up, cleaned him, dried him off, and got him a blanket and his clothes. Zahawi slumped against the wall, huddled in his blanket, and tried to cling to Kris.
Naveen had disappeared. Dan and Ryan huddled off to one side, talking amongst themselves softly. Paul and Dennis locked themselves in the command center.
Now, there was no sense prolonging the inevitable. If David wanted to throw Paul in jail, what must he think of Kris, who had stood by and watched it happen, frozen, unable to stop the torture that went too far? Taking a breath, Kris pushed open the door.
David sat on the floor, leaning against their bed, his head in both hands. His legs were spread before him, as if he’d collapsed, fallen to the ground when they gave out. He didn’t look up.
“David,” Kris whispered. “I—”
David’s red-rimmed eyes lifted, found Kris’s. Dried tear tracks stained his rage-ruby cheeks, twisted over his clenched jaw. The air burst from Kris’s lungs, punched out by the depth of anguish in David’s gaze, the bottomless abyss of agony he saw in the black of David’s eyes.
He didn’t know what to say. What to do. He stood immobile, stunned, as frozen as he’d been before, watching Paul slowly kill Zahawi.
“When I was a kid,” David said slowly. His words ground out of him, halting, as if physically ripped from the center of his soul, or deeper, from a place where he’d buried them forever. He stopped, and started again. “When I was a kid… in Libya…”
Kris felt like he was on the edge of the abyss inside of David, about to tip forward and fall into something he wasn’t ready for. He wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready for the secrets David kept buried.
“Qaddafi’s men arrested my father. They said his faith was turning him against Qaddafi. Against the state. Because he believed in Allah too strongly.”
The more David spoke, the more his voice seemed to fall from his body, to come from somewhere else. As if he wasn’t speaking any longer, but something else was. Something that lived inside him, and he’d tried to bury. To forget.
“My father was taken. To Qaddafi’s secret prison.” David shuddered, his whole body spasming, like Zahawi’s had spasmed. Kris felt rain falling on his skin, felt it splash on his face. No, not rain. Tears.
“My father… was tortured…” David tried to breathe. His mouth was open, and Kris saw his throat work, saw him gape like a fish out of water. “He was tortured, and then executed,” he whispered. “We fled.” He gasped, as if he’d been given permission to breathe, as if he was coming up from being held underwater. As if he was taking his first breath after drowning.
Finally, Kris moved, breaking free from the force that held him immobile. He couldn’t save Zahawi, not in time, but he’d go to David. He wouldn’t leave him to drown in the memories, the horror, the torrents of hate and fear and water that flooded them all, united them. He crouched beside David, curled into him. Wrapped his arms and legs around David, as close as he could get. David folded into him, like a child would, like a ten-year-old boy would in his father’s lap.
“I try never to think about what happened to him,” David whispered. Tears poured from his eyes, landed on Kris’s skin. He could drown in David’s tears. “If I imagine it, if I think about what he went through—”
“Don’t. Don’t do that to yourself.”
“We tortured him. I don’t even fucking like him. Zahawi. He ruined his Islam, made his faith ugly. He destroyed the best of what he had. A life. A family. A father.”
Kris tried to swallow. He couldn’t, not past the shame, the bile.
David’s words were bullets, fired on breathless gasps as he clung to Kris, like Kris was his anchor to the world. “I. Saw. My. Father. In. There. I saw my father on the ground. In the dirt. Covered in his own piss and shit, drowned, beaten. I saw him. I didn’t see Zahawi.”
“David—”
“We came to America, and my mother said we’d never have to worry again. America was free. America was safe.” He pressed his soaked face into Kris’s chest. His hot breath burned through Kris’s clothes, scorched his skin. David’s confession was burning him alive, turning him to ash and dust. “But today, I saw my father.”
Kris curled over David, wrapping his arms around him, holding him as tight as he could. “It will never happen again,” he choked out, each vowel, each consonant struggling to escape through Kris’s own tears. “Never, David. I swear.”
“Enhanced interrogation techniques will resume in thirty-six hours.”
Dennis and Paul squared off against Kris and Naveen in the command center. A single memo rested on the table between them. The rest of the intelligence, everything Kris and Naveen had built between them and with Zahawi’s help, was gone.
The memo from CIA Director Thatcher’s office started:
Resume EIT on subject after sufficient recovery period from incident reported in previous memo. All previous EIT techniques authorized.
“You’re not fucking torturing him again,” Kris growled. “You almost killed him.”
Dennis tapped the memo, the third paragraph. “Read on.”
Regarding subject’s disposition. All contingencies must be planned and prepared for, including the subject’s potential death while in custody. Regardless of future disposition, subject will be held incommunicado for the rest of his natural life.
“We will resume in thirty-six hours,” Dennis
repeated. “He has information. And we’re going to get it. He will break. You’ll see. Especially after the last session. He’ll break when he sees the waterboarding table again. We’ll use what happened against him. He’ll break out of fear. I guarantee it.”
Naveen stepped back, away from the table, until he turned and walked out of the bunker.
“I am calling Langley,” Kris hissed. “I’m calling the president. I’m calling fucking everyone. You are not torturing him!”
Paul, quiet throughout the confrontation, finally spoke up. “Who do you think authorized us to continue? Why do you think anyone at all will care about this terrorist? When he dreamed about nine-eleven? When he was best friends with the architect of the plot? When he rejoiced and danced in the streets when he heard the towers had collapsed? Do you think anyone at all will give a fuck?” Paul peered at Kris. “Why do you? Maybe you should think about that.”
The only answer he could give Paul, after that, was a slap to the face. He restrained himself, just.
Following Naveen, Kris strode out of the command center, his mind whirling. He was going to call George, then Clint Williams. Work his way up the chain of command until he got to the director, then the White House. He’d make everyone see reason.
Naveen waited for him outside, leaning against one of the half walls and watching the rain. His face was twisted, like he’d seen something he’d wished he’d never, ever had. A duffel was by his feet.
“Caldera.” Naveen’s gaze flicked to him, then back to the rain. “I’m leaving.”
“No, we’ve got to stop this. I need your help. We can go together, to Langley and the FBI—”
“I already called FBI headquarters. Spoke to my director, right after… it… happened. My director called your director…” He trailed off. Squeezed his hands together. “The CIA isn’t changing their mind. They told Director Mueller to go fuck himself.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a choice. I either arrest them in there—” He jerked his head back, toward Dennis and Paul. “Or I leave. The FBI… It’s like Mueller said. We don’t do that. Ever. And we won’t be associated with anyone who does.”
