“I should have you brought in right now,” Murphy said.
“Good news. Shafer and I, we know who’s after you.”
“Prove it.”
“Give me five minutes.”
“Come on, then.” Murphy stepped back up the driveway.
“It’s better if we do this outside.”
They walked side by side down the empty street, the van trailing, in what was without doubt the strangest meeting ever held in Kings Park West.
“What happened to your face?” Murphy said.
“The guy, the killer, he’s in custody. Not far from here.”
“You’re full of shit, John.”
“I’m completely serious.”
“How come I haven’t heard, then? When was he arrested?” Murphy stopped, put a hand on Wells’s arm. “Who has him in custody?”
“At the moment, Ellis Shafer.”
“You personally found the killer.”
“Ellis and I, tonight, yes.”
“And have him.”
“Ellis does. The guy was casing your house. You were next on the list.”
“You are going to be very sorry you woke me up at two thirty in the morning for this.”
“Look at me.” Wells waited until he had Murphy’s attention. “It’s no joke. So, the good news, we have him. There’s bad news, too. The bad news is this is very personal for him, and he’s willing to die. And you, Poland was as close as you ever got to the front lines, so you don’t know what it’s like, that mind-set. But I’m telling you that a man who’s willing to die is unstoppable. Especially if he’s patient. I mean, if you’re the President and you have an unlimited budget and a thousand Secret Service officers and you never go anywhere that hasn’t been vetted first, maybe you have a chance. But you’re not the President, Brant. This is all the protection you’re going to get. In a year or two, you’ll have less. The agency’ll take it away bit by bit. It’s expensive. People forget. But this guy, he won’t forget. He’ll wait and wait. Then he’ll hit you. I wouldn’t bet against him.”
“I’m calling Whitby right now. Have you brought in.”
“Sure. Only one problem.” They were at the crux. “You do that, Shafer’s gonna let him go.”
“You wouldn’t.” Murphy grabbed Wells’s arm, leaned in close. He looked around, side to side, his eyes darting, as if the killer might even now be lurking behind a tree or under a car.
Behind them, the van stopped. The Jesuit guard opened his door. “There a problem, Mr. Murphy?”
“No problem,” Murphy said. He hissed at Wells, “You’d let him go? Knowing that he’s killed Americans? Soldiers? Our operatives? You’ll be an accessory to murder, spend the rest of your life in jail. You’ll—”
“Shafer can’t help it if this guy overpowers him.”
“I’ll tell everyone what you said.”
“And I’ll deny it.”
Murphy stopped. The only sound was the low grumble of the Ford’s engine.
“So let him go. We’ll find him. The FBI—”
“Hasn’t had much luck so far.”
“This is gutless,” Murphy said. “You’re gutless. Hiding behind this man. You want to threaten me, threaten me yourself. Not this.”
The words stung. Wells had never been called gutless before. And he’d never had cause to think of himself that way. But tonight he did. Because Murphy was right. Wells should never have let Shafer use Callar this way.
But Wells had come too far to back off now.
“I guess I must not like you much,” Wells said.
Murphy rubbed his face and squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them, as if he hoped to find himself back in his bed, this nightmare over. But Wells stood in front of him. “Just tell me what you want,” he said.
“The truth. About the missing detainees. About what happened at the Midnight House. Ten days ago, Whitby showed us this incredible intel. The location of every nuclear weapon in Pakistan. That’s a coup. He said it came from you, from your squad. So, how come no one will give us a straight answer about what happened over there? How come the IG’s investigation got zapped? How come Jerry Williams’s wife says he wasn’t the same after he got back?”
“That’s all.”
“That is all. No notes, no tapes. Just the truth. Then we hand this guy over for whatever justice the people of the United States of America see fit to dispense.”
“Even if I tell you, it won’t do you any good.”
“Maybe it’ll do you some good, Brant. Maybe it’ll set you free.”
“You’re quoting me the lobby?” When the original CIA headquarters was completed in 1961, the chief at the time, Allen Dulles, had inscribed a proverb on a wall in the lobby, John 8:23. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
“Look, you must have killed them, those two detainees, otherwise you wouldn’t have paid D’Angelo to zap their records. That was a big mistake, and you knew it was risky, but you did it anyway. And the only explanation is that you had to have them gone because they were dead. So, why don’t you just come clean? I swear, Brant, I’m not wearing a wire. Your guys frisked me.”
“You think that’s what happened? You think we killed our prisoners. Got what we needed from them and disposed of them. War crimes.”
“Maybe it was an accident.”
“You know what, John? I’m gonna tell you after all. Outside of Whitby and Terreri and me, you’ll be the only one who knows the truth. And then you can decide who to blame.”
27
STARE KIEJKUTY. SEPTEMBER 2008
By the time Rachel Callar walked into Terreri’s office, the rest of the squad was there. The room stank of cigar smoke. Eight men, eight cigars. Even Jerry Williams, normally a health nut, was puffing away.
“Major.”
“Colonel. I see you have a fire drill planned.”
“A pleasure as always,” Terreri said, waving his cigar at her. “Can I offer you one?” He nodded at the wooden box on his desk. “Cubans. From this store in Warsaw. I’m picking up a few dozen before we go home.”
“Congratulations. Who’s watching Jawaruddin and Mohammed? ”
“Fatty and crazy aren’t going anywhere,” Murphy said. “We figured they could use some time alone.”
Callar knew Murphy wanted to rile her. Yet she could hardly resist the bait, putting a finger in his chest and telling him to shut up, that those were human beings downstairs and she didn’t care if Jawaruddin had given them the keys to Fort Knox and Osama bin Laden, too, and—
She breathed in deep, reached for the place where she was in control. She knew it existed, though she needed a map to find it these days.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave them alone.”
“Then go keep an eye on them,” Murphy said.
“Enough,” Terreri said. He reached for a cardboard box from under his desk, pulled out cowboy hats in all shapes and sizes.
“We’ve all worked hard all these months. I know it’s been tough. But it’s paid off. This is what Jawaruddin bin Zari has been hinting at for the last couple weeks. We recovered it four days ago in Pakistan. Karp and I are the only ones who are supposed to see it, but I figure we all deserve a look. But you’ll only see it once, so watch closely. And it goes without saying, this is beyond classified.”
He clicked on his laptop. On the flat-screen television across the room, the video of bin Zari and Tafiq began to play.
TWO FLOORS DOWN, Mohammed Fariz sat on his cot, his eyes closed, his legs folded under him. He looked almost peaceful, but he wasn’t. The djinns were with him constantly now.
They didn’t yell at him anymore, and for that he was grateful. They didn’t yell because he’d agreed to do what they asked. He understood them now. They were his friends, the djinns, his only friends. They helped him see.
Every day, the Americans walked Jawaruddin down the corridor past Mohammed’s cell. And every day Mohammed saw that Jawaruddin wasn’t Jawarudd
in at all. A devil had put salt in his mouth and seeped into his blood through his throat. He seemed to breathe, but he didn’t. The Jawaruddin-devil was in charge here. The Americans pretended to hold him, but really they worked for him. He could leave anytime. Every time Jawaruddin walked by Mohammed’s cell, he said hello, and the words made Mohammed’s teeth hurt so much that he wanted to pull them out. But Mohammed didn’t say anything at all. He just nodded and smiled. The djinns told him that if he nodded and smiled, his teeth wouldn’t hurt. The djinns explained everything. They came in the night and talked to him.
They showed him how to unscrew the metal leg of his cot, how to sharpen its edges against the bed frame each night while the guards slept. They showed him that if he stood on his cot he could use the leg as a screwdriver to loosen the grate that covered the air duct in the ceiling. The screws were rusted tight, and for a week Mohammed worked them, inch by inch, tearing up his fingers. He wondered if the Americans would notice, but the djinns told him not to worry, that the Americans didn’t pay attention to him anymore. Finally, the night before last, the screws came loose and he took off the grate and stood on his tiptoes and looked inside the vent.
The tube above was a dark tight metal hole, too small for an average-sized man to fit. But Mohammed wasn’t an average-sized man. He was an underfed teenage boy, 1.6 meters—five-four—and sixty kilograms—one hundred thirty pounds. He reached inside the vent. Less than a foot above the ceiling, it connected with a cross-tunnel that ran above all the rooms and cells in the basement. Mohammed screwed the grate back on and lay down and closed his eyes and waited for the djinns to tell him what to do next.
MODERN AMERICAN PRISONS DIDN’Thave ventilation systems that extended directly into their cells. But this wasn’t a modern American prison, and until 673 arrived, these cells weren’t used for long-term confinement anyway. Misbehaving Polish soldiers were hauled in for a week or two and then discharged or transferred to larger bases for more serious punishment. And central heating was a necessity in Stare Kiejkuty, where the temperature regularly dropped below zero in the winter.
When 673 took over the barracks, Jack Fisher had seen the vents. He’d given the Rangers standing orders to check them once every two weeks, make sure the prisoners didn’t tamper with them. Mohammed’s cell was due for another check. In four days.
AS MOHAMMED READIED HIMSELF for his mission, bin Zari lay two cells away on his cot, hands folded behind his head. He could almost believe he’d dreamed those weeks in the torture chamber. The antibiotics had taken care of his pneumonia. The blisters on his skin had healed. He had no scars, no broken bones. His insides had nearly recovered, the woman doctor told him. Even the most sympathetic lawyer might not believe his story.
These Americans had defeated him without leaving a mark. He wanted to be angry at himself for breaking, but he couldn’t. He’d sent dozens of believers to their deaths, helped them strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves into eternity. But in truth he’d helped those men, offering them the briefest burst of earthly torment in return for the perpetual bliss that Allah granted his martyrs. What the Americans had done to him was something else, endless pain unrelieved by death. No one could beat that room.
Since he’d agreed to talk, they’d treated him decently. Then again, he hadn’t given them reason to hurt him. In the last few weeks, he had thought of going back on his word, giving them fake names, addresses, plots. But he didn’t know how much they knew. And if they put him back in the torture cell, he would shed his skin like a snake, thirsty and desperate as the blood poured off him. They would take him to the brink and bring him back, over and over, until his mind snapped.
The day before he broke in the torture room, its walls had turned into living crepe paper. He’d needed a few seconds to realize he was seeing roaches, thousands of them. They scuttled across the floor and over his skin, crawled into his mouth and nose and even his ears, scuttling along, their touch dry and quick. They weren’t real. He knew they weren’t real. They had bomb belts, tiny and perfectly formed, strapped to their shells. Bin Zari had enough sanity left to know that roaches didn’t wear suicide bombs, that the stress of being chained to the floor for days on end was making him hallucinate. But they felt real. He saw them and heard them and suffered their touch on his skin. And he knew that if he stayed much longer in the cell, he would lose what was left of his mind.
Whenever he thought about lying to the Americans, he remembered the roaches. Maybe he was a fool. Maybe the Americans would go back to torturing him after he’d given up his secrets. But he didn’t think so. They’d offered a clear bargain all along. Give us what you know, and we won’t hurt you.
He’d realized something else, too, something he should have figured out months before. He could turn his weakness into strength. The most important piece of information he had might be more dangerous for them than for him. Let them find the videotape with him and Tafiq. Let them play it at a tribunal at Guantánamo. Let the world see it. The Americans would know once and for all that their supposed allies in Pakistan could not be trusted. The ISI would be forced to declare its allegiance openly.
But he couldn’t tell them about the tape right away, or they might not believe him. He gave up other information first to prove his reliability. Each day they debriefed him. They were pleasant to him now. They gave him bottled water whenever he wanted, and he ate what they ate now, no more gruel.
In turn, he gave up safe houses in Peshawar and the North-West Frontier. He even gave up the cell that Ansar had put together in Delhi to work on an attack against the Indian parliament. In truth, bin Zari had always doubted the ability of the men they’d assigned to that job, so the information was less valuable than it appeared. He let them think he was broken, an act that wasn’t hard to pull off, since he was, more or less. Then, when the interrogator who called himself Jim asked about the ISI, bin Zari sprang the trap.
“Of course we were close to the ISI.”
“Senior officers.”
“In some cases.”
“Did you communicate regularly?”
“Yes. In fact—” Bin Zari broke off. “I’ve answered all your questions. But this I can’t speak about.”
At first Jim smiled, joked, cajoled bin Zari to talk. But after an hour of questions, Jim grew irritated. Finally, he ordered the Rangers to take bin Zari back to his cell. “No supper,” he said. “Take tonight, sleep, and wake up ready to talk.”
The next morning, Jim appeared outside bin Zari’s cell carrying a tray. He tilted it so bin Zari could see what it held: three biscuits and a bowl of honey. The sweet, hot smell of the biscuits filled bin Zari’s nostrils, made his mouth drip. Bin Zari wondered where they’d come from. He’d not seen food like this since they’d captured him.
“You must be hungry after missing supper,” Jim said. He dipped a biscuit into the bowl of honey, ate it carefully, one small bite after another. “Remember, in the other cell? How hungry you were?”
Jim dipped the second biscuit into the bowl. “So, you’ll tell me what you meant, about the ISI?”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t get to decide. You answer my questions, or I’ll put you back in that place. Just as soon as I’ve eaten this breakfast.”
“You promised.”
“And you promised to be honest with us, Jawaruddin.”
“Please.”
Jim seemed to lose interest in the conversation. He kept eating. And when the third biscuit was gone, he turned away.
“That’s it, then,” he said. He didn’t even seem angry. “I’ll send the soldiers for you. Please don’t fight.”
“Don’t.”
Jim began to walk away.
“All right,” bin Zari said.
Jim stopped.
“I’ll tell.” Bin Zari explained that he’d once taped a meeting that showed him talking over a terrorist plot with a senior member of the ISI. He refused to disclose the details of the meeting, saying that Jim w
ouldn’t believe him. “You’ll think I’m lying, and I fear what you’ll do,” he said. “You must see it yourself.”
He’d stored the video on a laptop, and hidden it at a farmhouse that belonged to distant cousins of his in the Swat Valley. They didn’t even know it existed, he said.
“Why make this tape?” Jim said.
“In case the ISI ever decided to betray me. Or Ansar Muhammad.”
“If you’re lying—”
“I’m not.”
“And you can show us where to find it?”
“Yes.”
That evening, Jim came to his cell holding a Quran. “For you.”
Bin Zari didn’t thank Jim. He hadn’t fallen that far yet. But he took the beautiful book, with its gray cover and intricate silver filigree, gratefully.
That night, as he read, he wondered what the Americans planned to do with him. Would they find the laptop? And if they did, would they send him to Guantánamo? Or simply kill him? He no longer cared.
But he knew that in the next world, Allah would see fit to torture these Americans, just as they’d tortured him. For eternity. No matter how much they begged for forgiveness, how loudly they screamed their mistakes. For this vengeance Jawaruddin bin Zari prayed as he read his holy book.
MOHAMMED PEEKED THROUGH the bars of his cell. The corridor ran forty feet, past four side-by-side cells. Mohammed was housed in the second cell, Jawaruddin in the fourth. Past Jawaruddin’s cell the corridor ended in a concrete wall. On the far end of the corridor, two gates controlled the entrance to the cell block. A pair of chairs were positioned outside the gates. Usually a guard or two was stationed there to watch the corridor, an American during the day, one or two of the others at night.
But for the first time in Mohammed’s memory, the chairs were empty. Now, the djinns told him. Now.
Mohammed squatted low and flipped the cot up against the wall under the vent. He unscrewed its sharpened leg, careful not to slice his palm open on its edges. When it was loose, he touched its blade with the tip of his thumb and was pleased to see blood rise from his brown skin.
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