The Faithful Spy (22 page)

“I’m telling you now.”

“And?”

“And he’s got some interesting information. I thought we should see him for ourselves.”

THEY SAT IN
the upper deck of a C-5 Galaxy at Andrews Air Force Base, a row ahead of two scowling men whose passes identified them only as Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. Below them, a company of Rangers sat in the aircraft’s giant cargo bay, along with pallets loaded high with MREs, ammunition, and even a couple of armored Humvees.

“Can this thing really fly?” Shafer said.

“Scared?”

“I just can’t believe how big it is. Did you know it can carry two M-1 tanks? It’s the biggest bird the air force has.”

“When did you start calling planes ‘birds’?”

“We’re lucky to get to ride in it. They don’t usually take civilians. I had to pull some serious strings.”

“I didn’t think you had too many strings left.”

Shafer leaned toward Exley as the C-5’s engines whined to life. “I don’t,” he said quietly, under the noise of the jets. “Remember that, Jennifer.”

Exley didn’t know what to say. Was Shafer exaggerating, or did he really have problems? The whine became a roar, and a throb of power ran through the plane’s frame. Exley felt the C-5 accelerating slowly, though without windows she couldn’t see the jet move.

Shafer handed her earphones and a little white pill. “How about some vitamin A?”

“Vitamin A?”

“Ambien. See you tomorrow.”

He popped a pill into his mouth. A moment later she followed him down the rabbit hole.

EXLEY’S PHONE RANG
and rang; she knew Wells was calling, but she couldn’t answer. An earthquake gripped her bed, lasting longer than any earthquake should, and every time she tried to pick up the phone it jumped away.

Then the phone stopped ringing, and fear gripped her. She’d lost Wells—

She woke up. For a panicked moment she couldn’t figure out where she was. Someone touched her shoulder and she yelped.

“You okay?”

The world came back into focus when she heard Shafer’s voice. “How long was I out?”

Shafer looked at his watch. “Ten hours. Still a ways to go. You missed the movie.”

She needed a few seconds to realize he was joking. She supposed the Ambien hadn’t fully worn off yet. The plane was shaking; that accounted for her dream.

Shafer cocked his head toward her. An expression she couldn’t read crossed his face.

“What?”

“You and Wells look the same when you’re having a nightmare, you know that?”

Exley blinked in her seat. How did Shafer know what Wells looked like when he was dreaming? Was he telling her that he knew about the Jeep? The call? Was he just guessing?

“You’re sleeping with him too?” she said.

Shafer laughed. “I saw him asleep once at Langley, that’s all.”

“Do we have any food on this bird?”

“I saved you dinner.” He handed her an MRE, a sealed brown plastic bag whose label informed her that it contained spaghetti and meatballs. She looked at it doubtfully.

“Not bad. Just make sure you use the heater. And you ought to stretch your legs.”

“Believe it or not I’ve flown before.”

He handed her a sheaf of papers. “Before we land you need to sign this.”

She flicked through them. “A secrecy agreement? Ellis, I have every classification there is.”

“Not for this. No one is graded for this.”

Exley felt her stomach drop again. This time it wasn’t turbulence. She had left the Jefferson a long way behind. “Just what are we doing to this guy?”

FAROUK KHAN WAS
having a very bad day. Not that day or night meant much to Farouk anymore; his concept of time had vanished in the weeks since the Special Forces put a hood over his head and took him to an underground cell at Camp Victory. Though Farouk’s passport was fake, his Geiger counter was real enough, and Task Force 121 immediately understood his importance.

Within hours word of his capture reached senior officers at both the CIA and Centcom—United States Central Command, which runs American military operations across the Middle East. By the time the sun rose the next day in Washington, the White House had been informed. Before noon the president had signed an executive order designating Farouk as a C-1 enemy combatant.

The United States had used the C-1 label only six times since 2001, when it began exempting al Qaeda detainees from the protections that the Geneva Convention offered to traditional prisoners of war. In legal terms, the designation meant that the United States government had determined that Farouk might have knowledge of imminent (Category C), large-scale (Category 1) terrorist attacks. As a result, Farouk would be excepted from both the Geneva rules and the rights that the Supreme Court had required for prisoners held in Guantánamo.

In less legal terms, the designation put Farouk neck deep in shit.

Of course, the United States government did not condone torture, even for prisoners like Farouk. Civilized nations do not torture captives. But torture had been defined rather narrowly in the manual that specified the permissible interrogation techniques for C-1 detainees like Farouk. The manual, called the White Book because of the color of its cover, noted that interrogators should weigh the harm inflicted on detainees against the potential danger from terrorist acts. Thus the White Book said interrogators could do anything that did not cause “severe
and
permanent” injury. The conjunction was italicized so that the manual’s point would be clear. Severe injuries were allowed, as long as they were not permanent. Similarly, psychotropic drugs were banned only if they produced “severe
and
permanent” brain injury or mental illness. The same rule applied to sensory deprivation, restrictive confinement, and denial of food and water.

The White Book also noted that pain was a subjective concept, differing from one person to another. Thus any amount of pain was allowed, as long as it did not produce “severe
and
permanent” injury. The White Book also noted, dryly, that “pain should not necessarily substitute for more traditional methods of interrogation. The threat of pain is often more effective than pain itself.”

FAROUK’S JOURNEY HAD
begun in Baghdad.

They locked his hands behind his back even as he was still on his knees, on the roof, with Zayd’s body a few feet away. A man in an American military uniform pulled a hood over his head and tightened it around his neck. The world went black. The hood was too tight. They surely hadn’t meant to make it so tight. He couldn’t breathe. He took one shallow breath, then another, fighting for air through the bag. Soon he was panting like a dog. His throat tightened as he began to panic. He was going to pass out. He was going to die up here. His breaths came faster and faster, until he was hyperventilating and the roof seemed to fall away under him.

Stay calm, Farouk told himself. They wouldn’t kill you this way. Relax. Breathe. He slowed down his breathing. And after a few minutes he realized he was still alive. He focused on his other senses, the shouting of the men around him, the rough fabric of the hood touching his face, the wetness where his saliva had trickled onto the inside of the hood.

Two men grabbed him and pulled him up. He stumbled. A moment later he felt a punch into his thick stomach. He grunted and fell. He rolled onto his side. The pain and surprise were enormous, and now he really couldn’t breathe. He mashed his face against the rough roof, hoping he could drag the bag off his head.

“Allah,” he said. “Allah.” He felt the stick of a needle in his leg. A silver peace spread to his brain and his fear vanished. Then the blackness overtook him. The nightmare ended.

BUT WHEN HE
woke he found that it hadn’t ended after all. He opened his eyes and saw nothing, nothing but the most profound blackness possible. He seemed to be swimming inside it, swimming in a sea of blackness. The hood. He must still be wearing the hood. He tried to pull it off…and realized his hands were locked behind his back. With that thought his shoulders began to ache. His legs too, for his ankles were manacled to the floor. And yet his flabby buttocks were exposed to the cool air. The chair he was on had no seat, and his pants had been cut off. Also, oddly, it felt as if a tiny alligator clip was attached to his right index finger, and a Velcro strap to his left ankle. He tried to rub them off but found he couldn’t.

And he was thirsty. He licked his dry lips with his dry tongue.

“Salaam alaikum,”
he said, his voice a rasp.

No answer. He tried again, more loudly this time. “
Alaikum salaam.
Hello.” And now a real shout:
“Allahu akbar.”

But no one answered, and Farouk suddenly realized he could hear nothing at all. Not a sound. Not the rush of the wind or the bark of a dog or the hum of a car’s engine. No inside sounds either, like pipes or air conditioning. His ears seemed to have been stuffed with cotton, only they weren’t.

Could the Americans have forgotten him here, wherever here was? Would he die of thirst?

Farouk pulled himself back. He needed to stay focused. I’m a scientist, he thought. I must use my mind. My name is Farouk Khan. The
kafirs
have taken me prisoner. How long ago? I don’t know. Where am I? I don’t know. They drugged me, put me to sleep, moved me somewhere. Fine. He breathed in and out, and realized that someone had cut a hole in the mask so he could breathe more easily. Good.

Why are they doing this to me? They want to know about the Geiger counter. Of course. That beast Zayd had been right. He should have left it in the storeroom, though the Americans would have found it anyway.

He tried to relax. He wasn’t an illiterate peasant. He knew the Americans had rules. They could make him wear this hood, but they couldn’t hurt him too much. They would ask him their questions, and then would put him on a plane to Guantánamo. If they asked him about the Geiger counter, he would say…he would say that he didn’t even know what it was. He should make up a name. A Shia name would be best. Hussein, then. He would call himself Hussein. As long as he didn’t tell them who he was or what he was doing in Iraq, he would be fine.

The Americans had rules. He just needed to stay calm.

BUT STAYING CALM
got harder as the seconds stretched into hours. He thought of his wife, Zeena, of his sons and daughters, of the dirty concrete floors of the lab where he had worked, of the black stone of the Kaaba, which he had never seen except in photographs. Of the glorious moment when he had met Sheikh bin Laden, of Zayd picking his nose as they waited for the peasants to arrive with their yellowcake. Of the lead box that he had bought from Dmitri, and the havoc it would wreak. He smiled at that memory. But always his thirst distracted him, pulled him back to this empty black room. And his bladder had grown uncomfortably full. And what if he needed to empty his bowels? Was that why they had cut open his pants?

“Swine,” he said aloud. “
Kafirs.
My name is Hussein. Hussein Ali.” His voice rose. “Let me go!” He repeated himself a dozen times, a hundred times, until his voice cracked and crumbled and his face flushed under his hood.

Someone had to respond. But no one did.

PERHAPS THE AMERICANS
really had forgotten him. No, that was impossible. This was a game. They wanted to scare him. But Allah would protect him.

And so he waited, fighting his fear, licking his dry lips and counting slowly to one thousand and back down again. But his dread deepened in the silence, along with his thirst.

“Please,” he said quietly. “Please.”

LATER. HE DIDN’T
know how much later, couldn’t imagine, and suddenly a torrent of water drenched him. Freezing water, painfully cold, stinging him through his hood and his clothes. So cold. Yet Farouk turned up his head to drink, thankful even for this, for any sign that they knew he was here.

“Allahu akbar,”
he mumbled. He had asked and Allah had provided. He drank and drank even after he was full, afraid that the water might not come again.

But the cold flow kept coming, and deliverance quickly turned to a new kind of misery. He squirmed left and right, but he couldn’t escape the stream. The water saturated his clothes until they couldn’t hold another drop, then soaked his skin. Water trickled along his stomach, down his legs, off his feet. He could feel it pool on the floor and rise to his ankles.

He began to shiver. He hadn’t realized how blessed he had been just a few minutes before. To be dry. How he hated these Americans and their tricks. They were laughing at him somewhere, he knew. He should be angry. But he was only afraid and cold. How long would they let him sit here, and what would they do next? “Allah,” he said, “I beg your forgiveness.” And again: “Please.”

LATER. A NEEDLE
jabbed into his back. Almost before he could register its sting the blackness had taken him again.

HE WOKE UP
on a sagging cot in a small room, a thin blanket over his body. He sat up. He was naked. He could see. His hood had been taken off, and the room was lit by a ceiling bulb. His hands were cuffed in front of him, but his legs were free.