by Tom Saric
He heard a door open, and he was led through it.
It was only few degrees cooler through the door but it was enough to cause gooseflesh to rise on his skin. He heard several men talking to each other a fair distance ahead of him, but he could not make out what they were saying. He only heard male voices, not one female, definitely not one that was Ellen’s. He heard the chairs, or tables, being moved around and the occasional squeak of the legs scratching the floor. Footsteps filled the room.
He heard a loud clang that caused his whole body to tense up before he realized that it was the door slamming behind him. He knew that deprivation of one sense (like sight) could heighten others (like sound). But expecting the next bang to signal lights-out tended to make one hyper-vigilant, too.
The man beside him pushed Paul down onto a cold metal chair. A thick rope was tied around his midsection, fastening him to the frame. He tried to take a deep breath, but the rope limited the expansion of his chest. His legs were bound to one another. The relief of his sore hands being untied was short-lived, as they were bound again on his lap.
He recognized the next sound he heard and it created a chill that crept up his spine. The high-pitched ring of metal instruments being unwrapped on top of a metal tray. Surgical instruments.
Paul’s toes curled as footsteps approached. The hood over his head was untied and slipped off.
Light.
Paul squinted as bright sunlight came through a small window near the ceiling, reflecting off the bare, grey, concrete walls,. He scanned the room, taking in his surroundings, giving his eyes time to adjust. He was in a dingy cellar, tied to a chair a few feet from the wall, on the opposite side of the only door. Water dripped from a ceiling pipe in the far corner into a puddle.
The other men he had heard must have left because only two men remained. Both wore green fatigues. The one with a red and white checkered scarf was preoccupied mounting a small video camera on top of a tripod in the far corner of the room, beside the door. Wires ran from the camera to a laptop placed on a long folding table. Beside the laptop, covered in a layer of sawdust, sat a high-powered circular saw.
The other man, who was shorter and slighter, wore a black and white checkered scarf and paced back and forth, holding his arms crossed behind his back just a few feet in front of Paul. Beside him, just out of reach, the surgical instruments were lined up on a metal tray. The red record light on the camera began flashing and the man in the black and white scarf abruptly turned and dragged a chair from against the wall and sat down, six inches from Paul.
“Welcome,” he began. “Your medical work has helped our poor nation very much, Dr. Alban, and we thank you for that.”
The man’s English was near perfect, tainted by only the slightest hint of an accent. Sitting above the scarf, the man’s dark brown eyes looked steady, like bricks in an unwavering wall. Paul lowered his head.
“We need to work with you. We want what you want.” The man paused and let his words hang in the air.
“I doubt that,” Paul muttered.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Alban, I could not hear you.” The man leaned forward and turned his head to the side, trying to meet Paul’s downward stare. “What can we do for you?”
“You can let me out of here, for one.”
“Then we have a common objective.” The corner of the man’s eyes puckered a bit. “You have my word that if you cooperate with us today, you will leave this basement unharmed. That is the agreement.”
Paul’s gaze drifted upwards, without moving his head, to the surgical instruments on the metal tray. The blade of the scalpel reflected the sunlight coming in through the window. Paul thought about the layers of body tissue a single, swift swipe of the blade could penetrate. Outside the cellar window, cars honked intermittently, and Paul wondered whether people would hear his screams.
The man waved his hands over the instruments like a magician performing a trick. “These should not be necessary. I will only use them should the cooperation part of our agreement become difficult.”
A hopeful wave of relief caused Paul to let out a sigh and then a nod.
“Please state your full name.” The man motioned for Paul to speak towards the camera.
“What’s with the camera?”
“It is for documentation purposes. Now state your full name.”
“Paul Marcus Alban.”
“And what are you doing here in Somalia?”
“I am a physician at the Bosaso Medical.”
“And when did you come to Somalia?”
“I don’t know, ten years—”
“The date please.”
Paul shook his head. “Who are you guys? Immigration?” As the words left, Paul thought he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Then again, he reminded himself, these men completed an orchestrated abduction to have the opportunity to interrogate him. Dissent was expected. His interrogator was calm, but maybe he was calm because they had stuck to his agenda, because Paul hadn’t veered off the path, yet. Ellen was nowhere to be seen. If they had her, she surely would have been dragged into the room by now, centered in front of the camera, tied up.
“You can consider us,” the man leaned back and thought for a moment, “a police organization.”
“Not the ethics police, I assume.”
“Should you be commenting on other people’s ethics, Dr. Alban?”
“Should you be calling yourself police?”
“Enough.” The man raised his hand. “We are interested in who you are.”
“You know me. We’ve established who I am. I’m Dr. Paul Alban, a French physician, working for a humanitarian organization in a fucked up country where masked men can kidnap and interrogate innocent people for no reason.”
The interrogator nodded, stepped away from the chair, and crouched in front of Paul. He leaned in so that his face was only a few inches from Paul’s. He grabbed a fistful of Paul’s hair and looked directly at Paul. “What confuses me, Dr. Alban is why you, an innocent foreign worker, would provide a group of pirates detailed information about a Ukrainian cargo ship.” He uncoiled and struck Paul open palm in the face with his free hand. “Now why would an innocent doctor do that?”
The pain of being hit in the face did not stun Paul the way his interrogator’s words did. His eyes darted around, and the room started to feel small, very small. But his mind reacted differently, trying to push away what he had just heard. “I, I don’t… know what you’re…”
“Do not lie to us.” The man motioned to the camera. “Tell us where you obtained the information about the Stebelsky.”
Somehow, these men had information connecting him to a vessel hijack. The interrogator stood over Paul, taking in huffing breaths. Paul’s mind was spinning. He had been careful. They wanted confirmation from him, that’s what the camera was for. They needed him alive.
The interrogator leaned in again and put his hand on Paul’s shoulder. “Say who you work for. Then we can all go home.”
“Frontier Doctors --”
“No. That is not true.” The interrogator turned abruptly and sat in the chair. He glanced towards the man in the red scarf behind the camera and made a gesture. Red scarf took several determined steps towards Paul.
“Your turn now?” Paul said. “You’re the bad cop?”
Red scarf did not speak, and instead clenched his fist, took three swift steps, and landed a punch directly in Paul’s solar plexus, pushing the wind out of his lungs. The force was enough to send Paul and the chair skidding backwards several feet along the ground. Paul sat hunched forward, wheezing, straining for air.
He caught his breath enough to raise his head. Red scarf towered over him with his hand raised. Before Paul could even flinch, the back of the man’s hand came down against the right side of Paul’s face.
“You’re definitely the bad cop,” Paul said, rocking a molar with his tongue.
Red scarf raised his leg and kicked Paul in the chest, tipping him over in the chair. Paul
lay sideways on the floor, still bound to the chair. The side of his face rested on the cool concrete floor. Blood dripped out of his mouth and into a small puddle. The interrogator crouched in front of him.
“Are you ready to speak now, Dr Alban?”
Paul nodded, his face rubbing against the floor. The interrogator sat Paul back up. “The pirates docked and unloaded the ship.” He walked towards the window. “No ransom. To me that means there is something of value aboard.”
Paul nodded slightly.
“What was aboard?” he asked.
Paul looked down, avoiding eye contact. The interrogator knelt down. “Weapons?”
Paul licked the blood dripping down his lips. He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Yeah, it was weapons.”
“Good, Dr. Alban. Very good. You’re doing well.” He seemed to be smiling. “Do you see how we can work together?”
“Are we done yet?” It hurt to speak, Paul wondered if jaw was broken.
“Soon,” the interrogator said. “Now tell us how it happened. How did you get this manifest? Why did you give it to these hijackers?”
“No,” Paul shook his head. “If I tell you that you’ll kill me. You’ll have no use for me.”
“We just want the information, Doctor Alban. That is all.”
“You first,” Paul said. “Why do you care about hijackers?”
“We are men who are bringing peace to this country,” he began. “Somalia has been in turmoil for almost two decades, and we are here to stabilize it, to bring order and hope. These hijackers are pawns of the corrupt governments and warlords who are ruining this country. The hijackers sell them weapons to fight us, and then the government keeps draining the country of all its resources.”
“Asabiyyah?” Paul nodded.
“Yes, we are. The warlords have become the de facto government and corruption is everywhere. We fight them for what is right: peace and prosperity,” he said. “But Paul, the United States supports them, gives them weapons, even though they were the people who started these wars. The United States fought against those same warlords who they now support. But now, instead, they fight us, and call it a war on terror. Why?” The man shrugged. “Maybe so U.S. companies can drill for oil in our deserts.”
“The U.S. got out in ninety-three and that’s it.”
“But they have secret agents in Somalia, providing the warlords and pirates with intelligence, don’t they?”
Paul glanced at the metal tray one more time. “We know everything,” the interrogator said.
“I can see that,” Paul conceded.
“Tell us, who provides you with the information?”
Paul’s breathing became shallow and quick. These men knew about him already. Somehow. It was clear they would go as far as they needed to get him to confess to everything.
The interrogator stood over him. “Do you work for the United States government?”
“Fuck you,” Paul said under his breath.
“Do you work for the National Clandestine Service?”
“Fuck you.”
“Are you an undercover operative working in Somalia?”
“Fuck,” Paul’s voice was louder now, more confident. “You.”
The interrogator turned and lifted a scalpel off the tray. He held it up, examining it.
“I asked for one thing Dr. Alban—cooperation.”
He rolled the scalpel between his fingers.
“That was our agreement. I trust you don’t want to break it.”
The interrogator lunged forward and grabbed Paul’s hair. He touched the scalpel to Paul’s cheek. Paul could feel the man’s breath on his face.
“Was the passage of information about the Stebelsky part of your work as an undercover operative?”
The scalpel broke through his skin and Paul let out a scream. It went deeper. “Yes!” Paul said. The pressure on the scalpel released. “Yes.”
Paul exhaled deeply and the tension left his body. He had spent ten years in Somalia, constantly looking over his shoulder, watching people for suspicious activity, part of him always waiting for someone to put a bullet in the back of his head. He had to lie about who he was and what he was doing. He had to lie to Ellen, keep her at a distance because of this. For it to be over was somewhat of a relief. But was this it? He had confirmed their suspicions about him, and now they really had no use for him.
“Thank you, Dr. Alban.” The interrogator bowed slightly.
“Can you untie my hands?” Paul said.
“Goodbye, Doctor Alban.”
Paul watched as the two men walked out of the room, the door clanging shut behind them. The red record light on the camera continued to flash.
“Hey!” Paul yelled. “Come back! Untie me!” He tried to wiggle fitfully out of the ropes that tied him to the chair. No one came. The room felt silent, too silent, despite the occasional sounds of cars passing by outside.
He relaxed and began to chuckle nervously, but tears flowed out as well, so that he wasn’t certain whether he was experiencing massive relief or shock at what had just happened. He was alive, and he hadn’t heard any footsteps, or talking, or even a throat clearing.
As Paul started formulating a plan to untie himself from the chair and leave the cellar, the clang of the door latch opening echoed off of the walls. A tall man wearing a balaclava entered the room. He stood, arms crossed, examining Paul from a distance, without saying a word.
The man removed his balaclava.
Paul stared. He told himself it wasn’t possible. The familiar long face. The hypertrophied scar that ran through the man’s eye. Paul’s throat closed over.
The man spoke.
“You seem surprised to see me.”
Paul didn’t say anything.
“It’s nice to see you again, Dr. Ramsey.”
8
Bailey Clarke was in the elevator between the fourth and fifth floors of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, glancing through the morning’s summary, when the text from Jim Crilley, Executive Officer of Operations, came in.
Need to discuss yesterdays brief. My Office. Now.
Every morning Bailey gathered the previous day’s intelligence into a concise one-pager, so that her boss was up to date when his bosses summoned him to their offices. Judging from his message, his boss must have learned something that Crilley didn’t know. Which meant Bailey didn’t tell him. Which meant Crilley was pissed. That’s how things worked in the National Clandestine Service: Information flowed upstream and shit rolled downhill.
The elevator door slid open, and Bailey moved through the rows of cubicles, carrying her laptop and stack of dossiers, careful not to twist an ankle in her heels. The NCS occupied the top three floors of the Langley complex and coordinated undercover overseas operations. Unlike her, most of the agents in the cubicles had worked here when it was known by its pre-9/11 name: The Directorate of Operations.
Bailey stopped in front of her boss’s office door and took a deep breath. Jim Crilley was referred to as “The Bull” among the low-level NCS analysts. Four years ago he fired eleven collection management officers on the spot when they failed to recognize a systematic error in reports about trade across the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border. He even sent the officer who found the problem packing because he hadn’t noticed it soon enough. What had she missed?
She adjusted her collar, swept some lint off her sleeve, gave a courtesy knock, and opened.
“Sit down.”
Bailey looked past the paper stacks on the oak desk. Crilley leaned back in his leather chair, shirt cuffs rolled up, reading the sports section. It looked like he was totally uninterested in her presence, which put her on alert. He was ramping up to something. She lowered herself into the chair, waiting for his next move.
Crilley was one of the oldest, longest serving operations officers in clandestine ops. He was well past his pension date. Bailey heard a rumor that he had been sucked into a sophisticated Ponzi scheme in the m
id-1990s, losing his kids’ college funds in the process. He became an office joke. He was in charge of stopping terrorism but couldn’t sniff out a grifter.
“Good morning, sir,” she offered.
He didn’t respond immediately. He finished reading his sentence and tossed the paper down.
“How long have you worked here, Clarke?”
“Four years, sir.”
“No, not for the agency, I mean here with NCS.”
“Two months.”
“Well then, I think it’s time, Officer,” he looked over his glasses at her, “that I give you a bit of an orientation as to how things work here.”
Bailey nodded. She was waiting for the punchline, when Crilley would tear a strip off her.
He lifted the previous day’s briefing and waved it in the air.
“First, when a ship full of cargo gets hijacked by pirates,” he nodded. “I need to know.”
She nodded along, even though she hadn’t heard anything about the ship. Bailey was about to open her mouth to ask where the ship was hijacked when he continued.
“When, fourteen hours later, no ransom is requested for said ship floating off the coast of Somalia,” he said. “I need to know.”
Bailey nodded again, her mind reeling. This would be the twelfth hijacking this year, but all previous ones were followed by an immediate demand for cash.
“When that ship is taken to a hostile port and unloaded, I especially need to know.”
Crilley unfolded a black and white photo and tossed it across the desk. Bailey sat up straight and stared at the picture. A blurry aerial view of a cargo ship docked at a port.
“Russian ship?” She asked.
“Ukrainian.” Crilley took a loud sip of coffee.
“Destination?”
“Kenya, supposedly.”
She sighed. Fourteen hours was more than enough time to unload half of a cargo ship, load up trucks, and disperse the cargo across the Horn of Africa.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I get information on ships through the Gulf of Aden from the Maritime Police.”
Crilley laughed. “I think we need police to police the Maritime Police.”
