The Prisoner of Guantanamo

by Dan Fesperman

  After signing up to see Adnan, Falk glanced over his notes while waiting at the interrogation booth. His place of business wasn’t much to look at—twelve feet by twelve feet, with a white linoleum floor, pale gray paneling, and fluorescent lighting, just like the other seven booths in the trailer. No windows, just a two-way mirror along one wall for whoever was watching from the observation room, which was usually nobody. There were no adornments, and no knickknacks, although lately the Army had taped up posters depicting a grieving Arab mom with a caption saying how much she wanted her son to come home. Those were displayed on the wall facing the detainee, with the implicit message being, “If you talk, maybe Mom will get her wish.” Falk had already earned a reprimand for taking one down before his last session with Adnan. He did the same thing now, rolling it into a tube and placing it by the door.

  The subject always sat in a steel folding chair behind a folding table with a wood grain Formica top, just like the ones you saw at church suppers and youth soccer sign-ups. The interrogator got a cushy office chair that rolled and swiveled, making him the room’s CEO. If not for the eyebolt in the floor—for attaching the detainee’s leg irons—the room would have looked like a place where you filled out loan applications or insurance forms.

  None of this blandness had stopped Falk from cooking up a more dashing vision of the place the first time he laid eyes on it. Like virtually every other interrogator who arrived at Gitmo, he had come ashore certain that he would make a difference. He vowed that this booth would become The Room Where Secrets Came To Die, with him, of course, as the model executioner, lopping the heads off troves of vital information while armed only with patience and guile, cunning and wit.

  One of his FBI instructors had compared it to cutting gemstones. You didn’t set out to “break” a subject; that was mere brutality, an act of force that rendered everything the subject said as unreliable. Instead it was all about preparation—studying the angles, then searching for the point of cleavage where a firm but precise tap would turn the rough stone into a thing of beauty, revealing its secrets. You established rapport, built trust, and sprinkled your questions like crumbs upon the path to revelation.

  His confidence in these methods was based more on pragmatism than altruism. His techniques were not just cleaner, they were better. But by the time Falk had arrived, most of the prisoners had been there for months, many for more than a year. The most precious gems had been set aside for others, and the remaining few of value had been subjected to the same questions so many times, and via so many different approaches—including some that were downright bizarre—that they had turned silent, uncooperative or, worse, said virtually anything they thought you’d want to hear.

  Adnan arrived sleepy, hair tousled, which only added to his aura of boyishness.

  “Want me in or out, sir?” the MP asked, in a tone that said he couldn’t care less.

  The MPs weren’t always surly, even this late in the day, but they reserved a special scorn for those who spoke Arabic, as if it was a mild form of betrayal. If you spoke the language of the terrorists, then maybe you’d imbibed in other ways from their cups of poison.

  “Out. And, soldier, unlock his handcuffs, please.”

  “Your funeral,” he said, complying sullenly. Falk wondered if he talked like that to interrogators in uniform. Doubtful.

  “So why did you get me up so early?” Adnan began, more annoyed than angry.

  “I thought it might do us both some good. We’ve been in sort of a rut lately, don’t you think?”

  Adnan shrugged, then yawned. Falk almost wished that he had brought along some food. A glass of milk for bedtime. Maybe this was a stupid idea.

  But he had already noticed at least one promising sign. In their many conversations Falk had noted that Adnan displayed some fairly simple tics and tendencies, habits that at times made him an open book.

  Whenever the young man looked upward and to his right, he was almost always lying, as if that was where he looked for inspiration while searching his brain for a cover story. Glancing up and to the left meant he was stalling, waiting for the subject to change. When he stared down at the table he was usually lost in thought, having drifted to some other part of his life. At those moments you could rely on his every word. It was when Adnan was at his best. During those interludes Falk could almost pretend that neither of them heard the leg irons sliding on the floor when he moved in his chair. They were just shooting the breeze in a bar, perhaps, or at least that was the preferred location for Falk’s imagination. He wondered where Adnan would have placed them. Maybe in a market stall off the souk, sipping a cool yogurt on a warm day, with the mud-wall architecture of Sana all around, casting him in shadow. A strong Arab coffee at hand with its dark sludge and its bite of cardamom. They would be seated before a backgammon board, or a folded copy of the daily paper, while the lottery sellers and tea vendors shouted their prices as they passed.

  Relaxed moments like those had led to the few times Adnan had offered genuine revelations. And as those moments progressed Adnan tended to gaze up from his reverie straight into Falk’s eyes.

  Yet, for whatever reason, Adnan had clung to the one piece of information Falk wanted most: the name of his sponsor from Sana’s local al-Qaeda cell. Not the propagandist or imam who had sold him on the idea of jihad in Afghanistan, but his sugar daddy and bankroller. Because somewhere higher up in Falk’s chain of command, either in Langley or Foggy Bottom or at the Pentagon, the high priests had concluded that Adnan’s paymaster was someone important, a face card without a face in their well-thumbed deck. So they wanted the name, of course, and the sooner the better. Which meant that Adnan, despite the scoffing among Falk’s peers, was still a regular customer, even if lately all they seemed to discuss was home, or growing up, or the special way that his mother cooked lamb for the holidays.

  This morning, Falk saw to his pleasure, Adnan was already adrift, looking neither right nor left, but totally relaxed. Now if Falk could just get the young man to take the next step and look him in the eye. For a while he tried small talk, gradually working his way around to the question that always stumped them. It was shortly before 3:10 a.m. when Falk made his play.

  “So who was your sponsor, Adnan?” he asked coolly during a pause. “Who was Mister Moneybags with the air tickets and the big talk? The man with the plan?”

  Adnan, caught off guard, briefly looked up from the table, eyes expressing mild betrayal. Then he shrugged, looking down again. At least it was better than his usual reaction, which was to look upward to his right and say, “I don’t remember.”

  On previous occasions Falk had tried coaxing him further with treats, but treats had only made him babble more about home. Perhaps Falk had become a pushover. Even when dealing with a sensitive case like Adnan, putting a little steel in your voice never hurt from time to time.

  “Maybe we should ask your sisters, then. What do you think, Adnan? Shall we send someone to Sana to say hello? They’d probably know, wouldn’t they?”

  Adnan looked up at Falk, glaring. It wasn’t as if Falk would actually go that route—security goons of the home government bashing down a door, grabbing the first young women they found. But Adnan didn’t know that, and now he was glancing at the two-way mirror as if someone else might be the source of this new approach.

  “No one back there tonight, Adnan. Just you and me and the bedbugs. But the time for snacks and laughs is over. You know me and I know you, and you know what I need to help get you safely out of here. So level with me. ’Cause you know what? I won’t be here forever, and the moment you get a new boss then they really will start thinking about asking your family a few questions. And you know as well as I do that the Yemeni Interior Ministry won’t be handing out any baklava. So what do you say, Adnan? Who’s the man?”

  Adnan stared back angrily, yet he also seemed on the verge of some other emotion. It was an expression unlike any Falk had yet seen. Adnan looked down at the table for a few seconds,
as if marshaling his thoughts, and when he looked up he was calmer.

  “All right, then. I will tell you.” He paused, looking directly at Falk, who didn’t dare reach for pen or notebook. “It is Hussein. His name is Hussein.”

  “Hussein?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what else? Hussein what? His full name, Adnan.”

  “That is all you need.”

  “Which narrows it down to a few thousand Husseins.”

  Christ, he’d been had.

  “Not Hus-sein. Hus-SAY.”

  Hussay? Now what the hell kind of name was that? Some Yemeni variant? If so, it was none Falk had ever come across, although he had already learned repeatedly how little he really knew about the country’s various cultural tics. Perhaps the name was unusual enough that it would really help, so he’d better make sure he had it cold.

  “Hu-say? Is that it? Or Hu-sie? Say it again, slower.”

  “Hussay!” Adnan shouted it, slapping a hand on the table. Then he scowled and shook his head, annoyed and upset. His leg irons clanked. “I have given you a great gift, and you are too stupid to see it,” he said, his voice rising on every word. “A great gift! Because my secrets, they are just like yours!”

  “Like mine?” It made no sense, yet it was oddly disconcerting.

  “Do you not see it? Are you so stupid?”

  Falk had never seen the like of it. Adnan was fairly spluttering with rage, a liveliness he had always hoped for but never expected.

  It was at this point that Mitch Tyndall had waltzed through the door, smelling of a shower, a shave, and the humidity of the night, brisk as a game show host as he smiled and pointed to his watch, tapping the face of an oversized Rolex.

  “Sorry to interrupt, buddy, but I left a notebook in here earlier. And I’ve got a big fish coming in from solitary in about five minutes. So if you don’t mind …”

  Obviously he hadn’t been watching from next door, much less monitoring their conversation with an interpreter. He’d simply barged in, assuming as everyone always did that any conversation with Adnan was expendable.

  Falk would have leaped to his feet cursing had he not been so desperate to salvage the moment. As it was, he clung tightly to his seat with both hands. But one glance at Adnan told him the cause was lost. The young man was staring at him, dumbfounded, with a crestfallen look of betrayal. Hadn’t Falk just told him that only the two of them were here? That no one else would know? So Adnan had presented his “great gift,” no matter how cryptic, only to be greeted by this smiling lout in a suit.

  Falk snapped.

  “Goddamn it, Mitch! Just five minutes, okay? Five fucking minutes and I’m out of your hair.”

  Tyndall backpedaled, the smile fading but not gone. No one was ever supposed to lose face in front of the detainees. This type of dressing-down was strictly verboten.

  “Easy, fella.” He glanced again at his watch. “It’s right there in the back. I’ll just pick it up and go. I’m outta here.”

  Falk didn’t answer, didn’t even nod. And when the door shut he looked imploringly back at Adnan, trying to convey outrage and apology in a single expression.

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I really didn’t know. And I’m sure he didn’t hear a word, or he never would have interrupted. He’s an asshole in a hurry, that’s all. A walking joke.”

  Adnan didn’t see the humor, of course. And some of Falk’s hasty vernacular probably hadn’t translated into Arabic as smoothly as he would have liked. What, indeed, would the concept of a “walking joke” mean to a Yemeni?

  Adnan wouldn’t say another word, and when the MP returned to escort him back he placed his arms around himself in an unwitting imitation of a straitjacket, refusing to meet Falk’s glance as he glared toward the open door.

  Fabulous, Falk thought. Just great. Nothing like wasting weeks of work. He was sure that was what had just transpired. Adnan’s “great gift” now lay in ruins upon the table, still a mystery beyond the single name of “Hussay.”

  He left the booth before Tyndall returned, not wanting to risk a confrontation if he saw the man’s face again. His footsteps crunched angrily across the gravel, emotions sizzling as he waited for the MP to unlock each and every gate. And now, back at the house, having just hung up the phone on Tyndall’s “peace offering,” he grabbed a second beer and strode back onto the lawn, still trying to cool the heat of his anger.

  But what was this now, coming toward him in the dark? Headlights were approaching from the direction of the camp. It was a Humvee, judging from the wide spacing of the lights, rolling past the golf course, then pausing before turning up his street, Iguana Terrace. It moved slowly, deliberately. A business call for sure.

  The beams crossed him in a blinding flash as the vehicle swerved into the small driveway. Falk considered his appearance—khakis and black polo, hair damp from perspiration. A soldier stepped from the driver’s seat and headed for the front door. Somehow he hadn’t spotted Falk on the lawn, and now he was knocking briskly, big knuckles rattling the screen.

  “Out here, soldier.”

  A gasp of surprise, the soldier turning quickly. Falk wondered if he was reaching for a sidearm, but couldn’t tell in the darkness.

  “Mr. Falk, sir?”

  “That’s me. At ease, soldier. And you don’t have to call me sir.”

  “Yes, sir.” Flat accent. Yet another Midwesterner.

  Falk strolled closer, feet tingling on the grass. He pulled open the creaking screen and motioned the man to follow him indoors, where the air was thick enough to choke on. When Falk flipped on the ceiling fan it was like stirring a kettle of warm soup. He turned toward the door, but the soldier was still out on the porch.

  “Well, come on in.”

  “Actually, sir, I’m here to pick you up.”

  “Trouble inside the wire?”

  The soldier hesitated.

  “Well?” Falk asked. Then a thought occurred to him that made him panic. “It’s not Adnan, is it?”

  “The Pakistani Adnan or the Saudi Adnan?”

  “The Yemeni Adnan. He didn’t try to … ?”

  “No, sir. Not this time.”

  Suicide was the subject they were skirting. There had been five attempts inside the wire in the last two weeks, none successful, and more than thirty since the prisoners had first arrived. And those were just the official numbers, a total that had dropped dramatically once the Pentagon started classifying many of them as “SIBs,” or “manipulative self-injurious behavior.” By now more than a fifth of the detainees were on Prozac or other antidepressants.

  Adnan had never tried suicide, and he had refused all pills. But after what had happened in the past hour nothing would have surprised Falk.

  “So everything’s fine, then. Nobody to hose down or sedate?”

  “Yes, sir. The problem’s on our side.”

  Falk was thankful he hadn’t yet turned on a light, because for a fleeting moment he almost wobbled, as a tremor out of his past shot through him from head to toe. It reminded him of the way the surface of the water jolts and wavers when a stingray suddenly beats its wings to flee across the shallows. Would a second MP now emerge from the Humvee to arrest him?

  “Our side?”

  “There’s a Sergeant Earl Ludwig missing. No one’s seen him since dinner.”

  Falk sighed, half in relief and half in weariness.

  “Go on.”

  “The men in his outfit thought he must have switched to another shift. When they found out he hadn’t, they got worried. About an hour ago somebody found his stuff on Windmill Beach.”

  “His stuff?”

  “His wallet and his hat.”

  “No uniform?”

  “No, sir. And no boots.”

  “They tell the MPs?”

  “Yes, sir. But they figured …”

  “That I could help. Being from the Bureau.”

  “Yes, sir. Given all of the, well, sensitivity down here, sir.” />
  A tactful way of saying paranoia. This one had a future.

  “Sure. I understand.” Falk’s pulse began to calm. “Where to, then?”

  “The beach, sir. They’ve left his things where they found ’em. Treating it like a crime scene, just in case.”

  “Good thinking.” Especially for the Army. Or so the Marine in him thought.

  But it was the idea of this Sergeant Ludwig that piqued his interest. Going missing at Guantánamo was a major accomplishment, practically unprecedented. He didn’t know whether to applaud or worry. He did know that if the sergeant didn’t turn up soon it would create a major stir, which would be worth watching, if only for the novelty value.

  Life on the Rock was about to get interesting.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THEY FOLLOWED THE BEACH ROAD until reaching the switch-back maze of barricades at the checkpoint for Camp Delta, where they flashed IDs to a bored MP while another watched them down the sights of a .50-caliber machine gun. As usual, the prison was lit up like the Super Bowl. From this distance the glare of the vapor lamps made it seem as if a pale orange steam was rising from the fences and guard towers. The long white rooftops and ventilator hoods of the cellblocks made the place look more like a chicken farm than a penitentiary.

  The Humvee rolled by the front gate, then turned the corner toward Camp America, motoring slowly past the bunkhouses, trailers, and sea huts where more than two thousand troops were sleeping. Windmill Beach was nearly a mile farther along. The pavement ended in a thicket of cactus and bramble at the base of a small coral bluff, and the beach itself was a broad crescent of sand about a hundred yards across. Next to it was a grassy picnic area with tables and a small open-air pavilion with a sheltered concrete slab. Before Camp Delta was built the beach had been secluded and rarely used. Falk remembered a few passionate liaisons here from his Marine days. He’d shared one with an ensign’s wife, playing out the beach scene from the movie From Here to Eternity, enjoying himself so much in the entwining tide that he had never considered how stupid it was to be screwing the spouse of a Navy officer.