Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  They torture her a final time. But afterward, Karim asks the guards to untie her. She is drenched, and she stinks. Shivering uncontrollably, she is allowed to sit down on a chair, for the first time unshackled.

  “There is someone else I want you to meet,” Sal says. “Well, not meet, for you already know him well. Your friend and agent, Abdel Nasser.”

  Morgan’s eyes betray her horror as they drag him in. It does at least look as if they have dressed the wounds on his knees, and as far as she can tell, he does not carry the stench of gangrene. But it is evident that he has been tortured too. He is dressed in rags. He is cadaverously thin. His face is black with bruises. He looks dazed, and at first, he seems not to recognize her. Morgan cannot stifle her cry.

  Sal speaks again. “You appear not to care about your own survival. Now the question you have to answer is whether you are prepared to be equally foolish when it comes to the life of your friend.”

  Another guard enters, carrying a huge curved knife, a scimitar not so different from the kind used to carry out public executions in Saudi Arabia. He hands it to Karim, who weighs it appreciatively.

  “It is good,” he says. “Very sharp.” He picks up a large metal bucket from the corner of the room, and Morgan realizes he will use it to collect Abdel Nasser’s blood when he draws the blade across his throat, as in a halal abattoir. They are going to slaughter him as if he were a sheep or a goat. She has heard that this is what they did to Danny Pearl. Gary once boasted he had seen the video. There is a fire in Karim’s eyes. It looks as if for him, executing Abdel Nasser will be a source of pleasure.

  Morgan does not care if she saves herself, but from somewhere within, at the core of her being, she feels an instinctive, biological urge: she must save him. She cannot stand by and watch another human being, any human being, let alone this one, decapitated. She cannot stay silent while watching him drenched and choking in his own hot blood. If she can only preserve life, maybe there will still be hope. The dazed reverie induced by the torture suddenly ends and again she is living in the moment, aware and engaged. Her voice fills the room, authoritative and commanding. “Stop! If I confess, will you spare him?”

  Sal looks at Karim, who nods. “You will read the text to the camera?” Sal asks.

  Morgan looks at her sodden, puke-slimed feet. “Yes,” she says. “I will.”

  Sal produces the camera, mounts it on its tripod, and points it at Morgan. Karim is suddenly manic, dancing around the room, and he cannot stop grinning. “One take! One take,” he says with a cackle. “You say it right or I still kill him!”

  Morgan takes the printed text from him, and looking at the lens, trying to sound as unexpressive as she can, she begins to read: “My name is Morgan Cooper and I am a CIA agent. I came to Palestine to betray its people. My mission is to defeat their resistance, and to give support to the Crusaders and Jews.”

  She shivers, a violent, involuntary shudder. She knows it will show on the video.

  “I will only be released after the government of the United States releases all Muslim fighters from Guantánamo Bay, Bagram, and the black sites run by my employer, the CIA. I call on the President to make this possible so that I may one day see my children again.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Friday, April 20, 2007

  As was his habit, Adam checked his email early. There was an overnight message from Gary. It had landed in his inbox at two thirty in the morning, British time, and its tone was brusque. “Adam, I need to speak to you. Call my cell after 5:00 a.m., eastern. I’ll be up.”

  Before he could make that call, he had things to do. Recognizing that their return to America remained out of the question, his mother had managed to get Charlie and Aimee places at the local primary school, which Adam had once attended—Phil and Jim, as it was usually known, or, more properly, Saints Philip and James. They had started earlier that week. The roll, as always, was full, but the head of its English department, the marvelously named Kelly Brain, was a member of Gwen’s book group, and she had pulled strings to get them in. Once they were settled, Adam planned to embark for the Middle East. Gary could send all the imperious emails he liked, but there was still little sign that the Agency’s search for his wife was becoming more effective.

  He knew that leaving Charlie and Aimee was going to be difficult, especially if, as he hoped, he would be making his own trip to Gaza. How could he justify his absence, and, perhaps, putting himself in harm’s way? Two nights earlier, it had been Aimee who had crystallized his decision as he sat on the edge of her bed before switching the light out.

  “Dad? Are you planning to go look for Mommy soon?”

  “Yes. Or at least I’m thinking of it.” At the time, it had seemed she was reading his mind: the subject had, at that very moment, been weighing heavily on him.

  “You remember that lady we saw in Alexandria? You said she had friends who will help you. You must make them help you, Daddy. Mom’s on her own. She needs you.”

  Already, a new family routine was emerging. Each morning, Adam got the children up, made them breakfast and a packed lunch, and they walked together through North Oxford’s affluent, Victorian streets in the fine spring weather to the school. After that, Adam sometimes had a workout at a local gym, but until the kids were ready to come home again, there wasn’t, truth to tell, very much to keep him occupied. He spent a lot of time brooding. After three-and-a-half weeks without his wife, Adam had grasped something important: that whatever the problems between them, he missed her deeply.

  Part of it was sheer physical need. He might have rejected Ronnie’s advances, but they had left him aroused, and when he did get to sleep he often woke early from intense, erotic dreams. In their wake, anxiety flooded in. It wasn’t just the fear he might not get her back. He wasn’t sure how things would be between them if he did.

  The fights that had disfigured their lives in recent months hadn’t varied much. Usually they began when Adam expressed his fears about Gaza, and rose in pitch when he said that they didn’t have access to enough reliable childcare to enable him to do his own work in her absence. Her riposte was in essence always the same: that his claims down the years that he wanted to support her career were a sham; that he had always put himself and his own needs first, and now, whether he liked it or not, it was her turn.

  Adam knew she had a point. In times past, before his move to Spinks McArthur, when he’d had to go away for weeks at a time in order to dig for fresh evidence to use in some death row prisoner’s appeal, he had simply presumed that Morgan would be able to cope; after all, she had a desk job, and worked regular hours. Right at the start, when she first fell pregnant, he had offered to become a stay-at-home father in order to let her stay in the field. But both of them had known he hadn’t really been serious. All those years, she’d felt thwarted, and was only now beginning to fulfill her potential. He, on the other hand, was doing about as well as a pro bono human rights attorney in a white-shoe DC law firm possibly could, and that description happened to represent the fulfillment of his dreams.

  But the tension between them wasn’t just a product of the usual process of work/life negotiation that seemed to afflict every family with two working parents. As his father had guessed during their discussion in the garden, underlying it was another, bigger issue that neither felt able to discuss: Adam’s belief that if Morgan were true to her principles, she should never have joined the CIA at all, and ought certainly to leave it now. Ever since the spring of 2004, when details of the dark side of America’s war on terror had begun to leak, drip by caustic drip, into the public domain, Adam had nurtured a growing suspicion: that his wife might have played a personal role in supporting operations that he considered both illegal and unspeakable. She had never been exactly forthcoming about her work, and that was to be expected. But her absolute refusal to discuss any aspect of what she did, nor to give him the least idea of the nature of her current mission, had made him fear the worst. He no longer trusted her to do
the right thing. If she had merely betrayed him with another man, that might have been more painful, but also easier to deal with. But if his fears turned out to be well-founded, and she really had betrayed the values he had always thought they shared, their marriage, he felt, was almost certainly doomed.

  Their worst row of all had taken place across their kitchen table, three nights before her departure. After the usual escalation, Morgan said she was tired, and simply wanted to sleep. But Adam charged on, insisting that they finish what they’d started, and that he couldn’t rest unless they finished having it out.

  Morgan had lost all patience. “Don’t you think I feel bad enough about leaving you and the children already?” she demanded. “Why are you trying to make it worse? Or are you simply trying to upset me so much that I won’t be able to sleep, despite the fact I’ve got a huge amount of work to do before I leave, and then a long and tiring journey? All this talk about my safety is pure bullshit. The only reason you keep going on about my going back to fieldwork is that you seem to need to exert power and control in our relationship. It’s not really about my work or even my safety; it’s about me not being permanently on hand to service your life and your career.”

  Finally she had uttered the one sentence that seemed calculated to make him stop, and so compelled his retreat into wounded silence: “Adam, you’ve changed. I don’t think I love you anymore.”

  Within ten minutes, as they got ready for bed, she was trying to reassure him that she hadn’t been serious, and had only been searching for a way to dam his torrent of words. But they hadn’t made love in the days that remained, and on her last morning, while the taxi waited to take her to the airport and they were saying their farewells with a last, quick squeeze, she had mentioned it again:

  “Adam. What I said the other night. You know I didn’t mean it. I was angry. I just wanted to wake you up from your complacency, from taking me for granted. I’ll be back in ten days and then we’ll make things different. We’ll work this out. I love you very much.”

  Back then, before she was kidnapped, Adam hadn’t been sure whether that was true. All he knew now was that he desperately wanted it to be.

  Ten o’clock. Adam had been home for half an hour. It was time to call Gary. Sitting in his parents’ kitchen, he punched out Gary’s number, and took a tiny pleasure in the fact that he took a while to answer, and when he did, sounded as if he had been asleep.

  “It’s Adam Cooper,” he said. “You asked me to call.” It didn’t take long for Gary to compose himself. “Uh, yes, I, Adam. So. Would you mind telling me what the fuck is going on?”

  “Excuse me? Like I told you, I’ve brought the kids to England. We’re all just settling in.”

  “That’s not what I meant. The reason for my email is that CIA public affairs got a call last night from a writer in San Antonio, asking whether it was true that an operative named Morgan Cooper had been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip. Do you have any idea why that might have happened?”

  Adam felt a visceral lurch. “A reporter? I don’t understand. I haven’t breathed a word of this to anyone. That’s why we came to England, remember—to make it easier to prevent the news from getting out.”

  “But you do know someone in San Antonio. Are you sure you haven’t said anything that could have somehow allowed her to make two and two make—I was going to say five, but of course it’s really four.”

  “Sherry? My mother-in-law? She’s the last person on earth I’d confide in—not unless I wanted it broadcast everywhere.”

  “Yes. I get that part. So how do you think she could have found out?”

  Adam had no idea. “Is it possible that Morgan told her something? But Sherry doesn’t even know she works for the Agency, let alone the details of her assignments. I did send her an email saying Morgan was away on a business trip, but that’s all. And believe me, I don’t know any writers in Texas. But you must be able to keep a lid on this. I mean, can’t your public affairs guys tell this reporter it’s bullshit?”

  “We have. It’s never been our policy to confirm or deny the names of field officers, and unless he’s got some incredible inside source, he won’t be able to run a story. But it would be kind of helpful if you could get Sherelle Ashfield to keep her mouth shut.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Adam said. “In the meantime, now that you’ve finished accusing me of spilling the beans to someone I haven’t spoken to for months, maybe you can tell me whether you’re getting any closer to finding my wife.”

  There was a long silence. Adam heard Gary yawn.

  “I could give you crap,” Gary said finally. “I could spin you a line which would let you nurture false hopes. But as of now, I don’t have anything. All I can say is what I’ve told you before. We are doing our best.”

  If there was anyone in the world Adam might have expected not to get along with, it would have been Morgan’s father, Robert E. Lee Ashfield. There was, to begin with, the fact of his long career in the US Marine Corps, which he had left with the rank of colonel, having served with distinction in every major combat operation from Vietnam to Desert Storm. There was his chairmanship of the National Rifle Association chapter for the state of New Mexico, where these days he ran a highly successful agricultural seed business. Finally, there were his staunch conservative beliefs.

  Yet from the moment Morgan had introduced them fifteen years earlier, they had simply hit it off, bonding over beers and a mutual love of outdoor sports. They had gone on long hikes together in the mountains around Rob’s home in Taos. Adam had taken his future father-in-law rock-climbing, and Rob had taught him to shoot handguns and rifles at the range he had at his ranch—an activity for which Adam had displayed a surprising aptitude. Adam had been yearning to speak to Rob and confide in him, but before his conversation with Gary, he had held back. Now he suspected he might be the only person capable of persuading Sherry to keep quiet.

  It had always seemed a marvel that Rob and Sherry had ever got together at all, much less managed to stick out life together for more than fifteen years. They would never have met if Rob had not lost a chunk of his right leg amid the carnage of Khe Sanh: spending some time at the University of Texas in Austin had been supposed to help him recuperate. When their eyes first met across the human debris of a Kappa Kappa Gamma party, Sherelle was already a senior, a yearning, dissatisfied soul who had been swept up in the sexual, political, and psychedelic upheavals buffeting America while First Lieutenant Ashfield was serving his country in Asia. He liked churches, guns, and Johnny Cash. Sherelle preferred the tarot, The Velvet Underground, and pot. Yet somehow they had fallen into bed together, and when it turned out she had forgotten to take her pill and fallen pregnant with Morgan, he had had no hesitation in getting down on one knee and offering her the life of a military wife and mother.

  Of that, reflected Adam, the best that could be said was that from what he heard, the living hell which ensued was equally unpleasant for both of them. But once soothed by the balm of divorce, they had managed to build a kind of friendship, founded on their mutual devotion to their daughter.

  As soon as he felt he decently could, Adam called Rob in Taos—by local time there, six o’clock in the morning. A sleepy woman’s voice answered: Rob’s girlfriend, Cathy.

  “He’s not here, sugar. He left last night to drive to see Sherry in San Antonio. She called and said she had something to tell him about Morgan. It sounded serious. You mind telling me what it is?”

  “I can’t. Not just now. What time do you think he might get there?”

  “Shit, what time is it now?” There was a pause, presumably the result of Cathy checking her bedside clock. “He left at six. Depends if he stopped for the night. He took the pickup. If he didn’t stop, and you know what he’s like, he probably didn’t, then he should have got there an hour ago.”

  Damn. That meant Rob wasn’t going to hear it all first from Adam. “Thanks, Cathy. Sorry to disturb you. Take care.”

  He pictured Rob
’s arrival at Sherry’s house in Alamo Heights: her gushing torrent of words while he sat among the Indian silk throws and drapes as she doubtless cast Adam as the villain. God knows what she’d heard, or how, but this was a situation he needed to get ahead of.

  He was too late. His own cell phone rang. He looked at the display. A 575 number: the Taos, New Mexico, area code. However, the voice on the line belonged not to Rob, but Sherelle. She must be borrowing her ex-husband’s phone.

  To begin with, she sounded relatively calm. “Adam,” she began, “I had to wait until Rob got here because I didn’t have your cell number. And obviously, I couldn’t call you at home. You want to know how I know that?”

  “How’s that, Sherry? Listen, I’m really sorry I haven’t kept you in the loop, but just let me explain—”

  She appeared not to have heard him. “It’s like this, Adam. I found it very obvious that you were avoiding me. More than avoiding me; there was something seriously wrong and you wouldn’t tell me what it was. I have a right to know these things; in case you’ve forgotten, I am Morgan’s mother. Well, I got your email and I thought about it. Finally I just got on a plane and I flew to DC. I got the early flight yesterday morning, and I was back last night. I took the plane and a Metro and a cab to your house and there was nobody there, and somehow it seemed that you weren’t just gone for the afternoon, but for weeks. I sat on the porch and wondered what the hell I was going to do, and then I remembered your friend, that nice young widow, Ronnie. I remembered how to get to her house and the taxi driver had given me a business card, so I called him back and he took me there. Well. Can you imagine what she said?”