Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  “I’m sorry. I’m being insensitive. So: tell me what is the point. Fill me in.”

  By the time Adam had finished relating what he knew, it was dark. Gwen came out to join them, carrying a cup of herbal tea. She sat down, trying to be cheery: “There, darlings, the kids are in bed. Charlie’s had his story and Aimee says she’s still tired from the flight. We thought we might go up to Waddesdon Manor tomorrow—we can let Charlie try out the adventure playground. So what have you two been talking about?”

  Jonathan put his hand on hers. “I’m sure Waddesdon will be lovely. Meanwhile, it seems that as you’ve always suspected, our daughter-in-law is a spy, but unfortunately she’s been kidnapped by Islamic extremists. We’re not supposed to talk about it, because the CIA says they’re petrified of what might happen if her case gets any publicity. Adam brought the children here because he couldn’t conceal the truth from them, and once they knew, they wouldn’t be able to hide it from their school friends.”

  “Indeed not,” said Gwen. “I don’t suppose they would.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jonathan.

  She turned on the bench to face him. “Darling, they’ve already been here two whole days. Did you really think they weren’t going to tell me? If the CIA was worried they might blurt it out to their school friends, I can assure you that there really wasn’t much prospect they would hide it from their granny.”

  “No,” said Jonathan. “I guess not.”

  “Well, who knows, maybe I’ll be able to help you, Adam. I’ve taught a lot of interesting people over the years, and I like to stay in touch with them. At any rate, I can try.”

  Morgan was losing track of time. “Sal,” as she had named the anonymous Salafist she had met on the evening of her move to the countryside, had kept his word about allowing her to wash that first night. But ever since, she had been kept in total darkness. Someone—she was pretty sure it was Zainab—still took her to the toilet at irregular intervals. But whenever she went, she blindfolded and hooded her before they left the cell. Occasionally she would get a chink of light when someone opened the door to leave water and a tray of food. But as soon as her meal had been deposited, it would be dark again, forcing her to eat as best she could by touch. The cell itself was, if anything, larger. But no one spoke to her. She knew several days had passed. She had little idea how many. As to her whereabouts, she couldn’t help but wonder whether she was being held in the very place that Abdel Nasser had promised to bring her for a tryst on the day of their abduction. No one knew he owned it, he had said. They kidnappers obviously did, but presumably they had had him under surveillance. If she was right, that meant there was little prospect of the kidnappers being disturbed.

  She felt for a piece of flatbread and her water bottle, and reflected on the course of events that had brought her there. Since the summer of 2003, Morgan had been working with Gary Thurmond again. For a long time, it wasn’t the fieldwork she had craved. But compared to the dark period after 9/11, when the Langley corridors had seemed to surge with the force of pure, patriotic rage, and a sense of mission and collective purpose greater than anything they had known for decades, it was paradise; at least she was making a difference. Her mind went back to a Friday in June 2003, at one of the Headquarters “vespers” gatherings when she and her colleagues would gather to swap stories and drink beer. She hadn’t seen Gary for several years. He looked heavier, but cheerful, and his deep mahogany tan was evidence of the fact he hadn’t been spending too much time inside the Washington Beltway.

  “Hey, Morgan. You’re looking good,” he said. “How’s my favorite officer mom? I hear Aimee’s got a little brother. Anyhow. Your career is doing amazingly! Keep this up, and one day you’re going to be in charge of all of us.”

  “I’m okay, thanks.” She tried but failed to stifle a sigh. “The kids are great. And I know it won’t be so long before they’re more independent. But however important my work at Headquarters, it just doesn’t quite do it for me.”

  “You want to come back and work for me?”

  “You know me, Gary. I’m the gal who marched with the KLA. I’m the one who identified some of these jihadist motherfuckers’ networks for the first time. Look, I can’t take an assignment that would mean leaving home for months. But mightn’t there be something more part-time—in terms of traveling?”

  Gary looked at her carefully. “You mean it?” He gestured around the room. “You really feel you’re ready to give all this up for the chance of getting shot at and contracting diarrhea?”

  Even as she spoke, Morgan knew she would say nothing about this conversation to Adam. “Yes, Gary. I do.”

  “Right now, there’s nothing doing. But if I get the chance, I’ll bear you in mind. Like you said, you’re the gal who marched with the KLA.”

  A few weeks later, Morgan had found herself transferred to an anonymous office building in Tysons Corner, Virginia. She was still working from behind a desk and facing a murderous commute from Bethesda, but Gary had promised that if he got the chance, he would find a suitable fieldwork assignment. In the meantime, she was now playing a critical logistical role in some of the counterterrorist operations that were the war on terror’s front line. Some, involving unfamiliar terms like “enhanced interrogation techniques” and “extraordinary rendition,” she found ethically questionable. She recalled her long-ago promise to Adam: that if she ever came across evidence that the Agency was not living up to the constitutional values she had joined it to defend, she would blow the whistle and give him the “biggest fucking case of your life.” But this was wartime, the depths of a struggle against a pitiless enemy, and Morgan kept her mouth shut.

  Her job meant she knew some of the details of her section’s personnel and operations worldwide—information which, in the wrong hands, could be highly damaging. It also meant she had a certain familiarity with the unpleasant techniques her own captors were using now to soften her up: not only the darkness, but the deafening noise that filled it for many hours each day, a single album by the rapper Eminem, piped into her cell at high volume. As she munched her bread, it started again. She knew she could expect it for hour after deafening hour, the same recording played again and again on a continuous loop. Relentless and inescapable, it made sleep all but impossible. Only once had she known time to pass so slowly. Years earlier, when she and Adam had taken a skiing trip to Colorado, she had broken her leg and was forced to spend five days in the hospital, awaiting and recovering from surgery. The days were bad enough: hours of discomfort, alternately dozing and watching the trashy television that seemed to enthrall her roommate. But the nights—a few minutes of sleep punctuated by long sessions of trying new positions which put less stress on her injury—were interminable. She would look at her watch, then fight the urge to do so again, until she gave in and saw with dismay that less than twenty minutes had passed. But now she had no watch, and the only way to compute the hours was by counting the times that The Eminem Show went back to the beginning.

  Despite everything, she felt thankful for two things. The first was that after the move to her new prison, her vertigo had not returned. The second stemmed from her knowledge of a CIA facility in Afghanistan that had subjected detainees to similar audio treatment twenty-four hours a day for periods of up to three months. As far as she could tell, she never had to put up with it continuously for more than about fifteen hours, after which Sal and his comrades would switch it off for few hours. Perhaps they were short-staffed. In any event, it gave her vital respite.

  The music had just been switched off now: at last an opportunity to rest. But outside her door, she made out the sounds of a conversation between several men. She was evidently its subject, for among the words she caught were “Amriki,” “human rights,” and her own name. Palestinians often dropped English phrases into conversations held mainly in Arabic, and then came one that chilled Morgan’s blood—“CIA agent.” Had her cover been blown? Had they found the GPS chip in her purse? But even t
hat would not prove anything: a State Department official could be easily be carrying the same device. Had Abdel Nasser broken while being interrogated? All she could do was wait. A few minutes later the darkness was replaced by overwhelming light as the cell door was flung open. But the glare was short-lived, for the two men who entered placed another thick hood over Morgan’s head before they dragged her out, marching her down a corridor into the same sparsely furnished room where she had confronted Sal on arrival. There the hood was removed, and to her unaccustomed eyes, the walls and furniture looked as if they were shining from some inner fluorescence. She blinked like a newborn kitten, screwing up her eyes. Sal stood while Morgan sat before him cuffed and shackled, keenly aware of not having been able to shower or wash her hair for many days. Next to him was a video camera mounted on a tripod.

  “I told you when we last met we were going to make a DVD,” he said. “We have a script for you. Please take some time to read it.”

  It was typed neatly in double-spaced, 14-point lettering: in one sense easy to read. But speak it to a camera, and then have it broadcast around the world? After examining the first sentence, Morgan knew she never could. It said: “My name is Morgan Cooper, and I am a CIA agent.” If she made that admission, she would be endangering the lives of every officer and every agent she had ever worked with. All the bad guys would have to do was work out who had been her associates. And if they were smart, that minimal confession would only be the beginning. They would try to extract whatever she knew about Agency methods and operations in ways she preferred not to imagine.

  Somehow, she told herself, she had to feign the indignation of the truly innocent. Her reply to Sal came laden with contempt. “You must know this is completely unacceptable. I am not going to confess to something I am not, in private or in public. You know very well that I am a diplomat. I work for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and I am trying to help and protect the Palestinian people. My business is not espionage. It is freedom and human rights.”

  “Of course you have a cover. But I do not think this script is untrue at all,” Sal said. “It is not, how do you say, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But it is a start, and we are going to build on it.”

  “We are going to do no such thing. And before you threaten me, let me give you a warning. Gaza is not Afghanistan. You do not control this place. Once news of my abduction gets out, every rival faction will be trying to find me. And you will not want to be around when they do.”

  Sal motioned to one of the guards. The blindfold and hood were replaced, and she was taken back to her cell. She might have been imagining it, but Eminem seemed louder than ever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Monday, April 16,

  and Tuesday, April 17, 2007

  An Eminem lull: time to get her thoughts straight. For days and weeks Morgan had tried not to think about Abdel Nasser, because when she did, her mind filled again with the horrifying mental movie of the day of their capture. But now, facing interrogation, she forced herself to consider his likely fate. Had his wounds been treated, or had they already killed him? Perhaps, she reflected with a shudder, it would have been easier for him if they had. She didn’t know why, but for some reason, she had a sense it was the middle of the night. Some vestige of her body clock must have survived, and she felt dizzy and disoriented, as if her vertigo were about to start again. Her eyes searched the room for a chink of light she could use to orient herself, and so keep the dizziness at bay. The Eminem had gone on much longer than usual: she had counted nineteen repetitions of the album, an onslaught on her senses that she had found difficult to endure.

  She was disassociating herself from reality again, hallucinating. A perfect Maryland spring day. They had all gone to Great Falls with Ronnie Wasserman and her kids, and, after a stroll beside the surging Potomac they were having a lavish picnic beneath trees in fresh leaf. She could smell the wildflowers, and, having forgotten her sunglasses, she was squinting against the sunlight. Ronnie, so lithe and energetic in pink shorts, sneakers, and a revealing vest, was leading a game of Frisbee. All the children were enjoying it, whooping and running, and Morgan was taking special pleasure in the fact that Charlie seemed to be able to throw and catch more accurately than anyone. But she didn’t like the way Ronnie seemed to be looking at her husband, while seldom speaking to her. She might be a widow, but her behavior was frankly impertinent. Afterward she would tease Adam about it: “I mean it! That woman’s got a crush on you.” Then who was she to complain, after all that had happened with Abdel Nasser? Abruptly she was back in the darkness, a chill in her stomach.

  The music stopped and the door burst open. Again she was hooded, then marched in chains down a corridor, back into what she was coming to think of as her interrogation room. They forced her into a chair and she sat facing Sal again, her hands cuffed behind her back. A length of chain ran from her handcuffs to a bolt fixed to the floor, and her legs remained shackled. She had been given nothing to eat or drink since their last meeting, and her mouth and throat were so dry she could barely speak. As the season had advanced, the Gaza weather had been getting perceptibly hotter every day. The room was airless, and she felt the sweat pooling at the back of her neck and armpits. She was starting to stink. As usual, Sal was flanked by guards. “You get water when you talk,” he said. “That’s our new rule. So tell me. When did you join the CIA?”

  “I’ve told you I am not a CIA agent,” Morgan said, her voice an arid whisper. “I am a diplomat.”

  “You are lying. What is more, I know you are lying. And soon, I will prove you are lying. But we will start with some easier questions. Where did you study?”

  “I did a bachelor’s at the University of Texas. Then I went to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. My focus was the study of human rights.”

  “And what did you do when you graduated? What does a ‘Western woman’ do with a degree in government?”

  “I went to a place where Muslims were being abused and murdered. Former Yugoslavia. And I tried to get something done about it.”

  “Very good Mrs. Cooper. So where did you live in Yugoslavia?”

  “I lived in Sarajevo. I shared an apartment with friends and colleagues. We tried to bring the world’s attention to what was happening, and maybe we succeeded, because as you know, eventually my government stopped the murders.”

  “With that you deserve some water,” Sal said. He spoke in Arabic, and the guard stood over Morgan with a brimming tumbler from which she drank greedily. “If we continue to make this kind of progress, next time we meet I will allow you to sit with your hands cuffed in front of you, instead of behind your back, and then you will drink more easily,” Sal said. “Now who was it you worked for in Sarajevo? Amnesty International? Human Rights Watch?”

  “No, just as now, I worked for the State Department.”

  “And where did you operate? Just in Sarajevo, or throughout the region?”

  “As I said, we were based in Sarajevo, but we tried to gather data from right across the Balkans. We documented the massacre at Srebrenica, for example, and the slaughter at Gorazde.”

  “Anywhere else Mrs. Cooper? How about Kosovo?”

  What did Sal know? Morgan’s throat felt like the cracked bed of a dried-up reservoir, despite the precious gulps she had been allowed to drink. Her head was beginning to pound through dehydration, and she was battling a weeks-long deficit of sleep. Yet she had to think. If she said anything about what she had done in Kosovo, she could only expose herself. But how could Sal possibly know that she had spent time with the KLA? Not even Adam knew that, and it remained one of the most highly classified parts of her career. Once again her mind drifted back to the Farm, and the course she had taken in resisting interrogation. “Never say anything that can easily be shown to be false,” Bud had told her. “Much easier to hide part of the truth than to explain an outright lie.”

  “Yes, I did go to Kosovo,” Morgan said. “The Serbs were just begin
ning to make life really difficult there, and we wanted to see what was happening.”

  “Is that right? And you don’t think it’s a little strange that a woman who spent weeks traveling in secret with the KLA, at constant risk of betrayal or attack, pops up years later in another global trouble spot?”

  Morgan gulped for breath. “I work for the Bureau of Human Rights. Trouble and human rights abuses go together. There wouldn’t be much work for me in Paris.”

  “Not many people have heard the story of your march with the brave Kosovar guerrillas, have they?” Sal said. “I wonder, is it still classified as a compartmentalized special access program at CIA headquarters? ‘The Bureau of Human Rights.’ I love it. You didn’t get trained to do that stuff at Harvard, did you? I don’t think they teach the skills you need to embed with fighters there, do they?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Morgan said. “Yes, I spent some time with the KLA, but only in order to document Serbian abuse.”

  “Once again you are lying,” Sal said softly. “You barely spent any time inside Kosovo at all. You were taken on a march through deepest Montenegro on secret paths through the forests, by men who trusted you. Anyhow, there is someone I want you to meet.” Sal made another gesture, a door opened, and a man entered the room, dressed in khaki military trousers, a black polo shirt, and highly polished boots. “You know this man?”

  Morgan kept her face blank, but as she looked into his eyes it all came flooding back.

  “Have you forgotten me?” the man said. “You don’t know my name?”

  “Yes, I know you. I never forget a face. You are Muhammad. Muhammad Zahar al-Falestini. You and your friend, he was also Palestinian—you were the leader when we went through the forest.”

  “Good. Very good. Muhammad Zahar was my war name. My real name is Karim. Then I had big beard. It was cold, and I wear the same jacket like when I fight the Russian kufr in Afghanistan and Chechnya. I know you were CIA then. We all know. We have seen human rights people, and they are not like you. But we let you come with us because we think you help. We think America will stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And now you are here, still a CIA spy. I look at your photo and I know you.” He spat on the floor. “Here in Palestine, no one thinks you help us. You help only our enemies. The Zionists. Tell the truth. Then maybe—maybe—we let you live.”