Exile Hunter (11 page)

The system was similar
in most aspects to that used by the CIA and nearly all other modern
security services around the world, particularly those of the major
police states. Based on classic Soviet interrogation methods, the
model relied upon social isolation, sleep deprivation, temperature
manipulation, sensory deprivation and overload, omission of certain
key nutrients from the diet, and gradual intensification of the
prisoner’s general discomfort aimed at weakening, disorienting, and
demoralizing him without resort to beatings or other physical
torture.

Throughout Linder’s
first morning in his new cell, a torrent of seemingly random thoughts
and emotions swept through his mind. Among his recollections were a
series of training lectures on how to resist interrogation he had
attended while still in the CIA. The lecturer, who had been a Special
Forces interrogator in Iraq and Afghanistan, had emphasized that
Washington assumed most American prisoners would spill their guts
within 48 hours. Thus, heroic resistance was usually pointless unless
the prisoner had a reasonable expectation of being rescued in a day
or two.

The key to resisting
modern interrogation methods, the lecturer noted, was for the
prisoner to study his surroundings in minute detail, record the
passage of time and all changes in his environment, keep his mind
occupied and maintain physical and mental discipline as far as
humanly possible. Although the captors could bring enormous resources
to bear against each prisoner, their time and attention were finite.
Accordingly, an exceptionally determined prisoner could resist
interrogation for long periods by superior force of will and
readiness to sacrifice everything, including one’s life, liberty,
and happiness, rather than capitulate. Faith in a higher power was an
asset but not necessarily a requisite for success. Regardless of the
methods applied, history showed that some prisoners simply would not
break.

Linder’s first
interrogation session took place some four to six hours after he
emerged from his drugged stupor. A guard with a Tidewater Virginia
accent ordered him to stand facing the far wall while the door slid
open. The guard then shackled Linder’s wrists and ankles and linked
the shackles to a waist chain while another guard slipped a loose
hood over his head and shoulders. The Virginian then ordered Linder
to keep silent while each guard grabbed one of Linder’s arms and
marched him through a maze of damp, chill corridors that stank of
mildew. A few minutes later, they entered a well-heated room where
they removed Linder’s blindfold and instructed him to sit upright
with his buttocks at the front edge of a straight-backed metal chair.
The room was dimly lit except for a bank of four spotlights shining
directly into his face from behind a three-by-five-foot stainless
steel table that bore a stack of files and notebooks.

At first the
interrogator stood behind the lights, observing Linder but saying
nothing. When he emerged from the glare, Linder could see that the
interrogator was a short, barrel-chested man dressed in khaki shirt
and trousers without military insignia. Coarse blond hair grew
profusely on his head, chest, and the backs of his stubby hands. His
diminutive height, together with his trimmed blond beard, pink
cheeks, and bright blue eyes gave him the look of an exceedingly
fierce troll. The expression on his face was that of utter contempt.

“Who are you and why
are you detaining me?” Linder challenged without waiting for the
interrogator to speak.

“Why do you think
you’re here?” the troll replied with an ironic smile.

“I think it's because
certain people have been lining their pockets with other people’s
money and now they're trying to cover their tracks by putting me
away.”

“What does that have
to do with the fact that you’ve been aiding the insurgents?”

“Because the thieves
are the ones who cooked up the charges against me,” Linder
answered. “I’ve never helped the rebels and they know it. If
you’ve read my file, you’ll know that I’ve spent the past six
years tracking down rebel exiles and putting them away.”

“While tipping off
their bosses so that they could stay one step ahead of us, the way
you did with Eaton...” the troll accused, stepping out from behind
the table.

“I never tipped off
Philip Eaton.”

“You virtually
admitted to him that you were a government agent,” the troll
pressed.

“Only because he
volunteered to turn himself in, which was our objective.”

“And you believed a
lying son of a bitch like Eaton? If your Chief of Base hadn’t
pulled him in, the whole gang would have vanished right out from
under your nose!” The troll brought his face so close to Linder’s
that he could feel flecks of spittle as the interrogator spat out the
words.

“Not so,” Linder
answered, staring back at the troll and taking perverse pleasure in
the fact that the man’s bulk shaded the spotlights’ glare from
his eyes. “The main reason why Bednarski didn’t want to let Eaton
return to the States to surrender was that he’d lose the chance to
fleece him.”

“Fleece him of what?”
the troll challenged. “Eaton claimed he was broke, remember? And
we've confirmed it. So you can forget the phony countercharges. We
checked out your accusation that Bednarski was shaking down the
rebels he caught in Beirut. There’s nothing to it. Bednarski came
up clean.”

The troll retreated a
few steps to sit atop the steel table, prompting Linder to close his
eyes against the bright lamps. Of course Bednarski came up clean, he
thought. His backers cleaned up the mess after him. The Department
looks after its own.

“But as for you,
Linder, the closer we look, the more dirt we seem to find,” the
troll continued. “Does the name Phipps Chase mean anything to you?”

“It’s Chase
Phipps,” Linder corrected, remembering Kendall’s quip about Yale
men having reversible names. “Yes, I’ve met him a few times. I
used him to get an introduction to Kendall and Eaton. It’s all in
my reports.”

“All of it? Including
the fifty thousand German Marks Phipps gave you in Rome?”

The troll slid off the
table and approached Linder again.

“He donated it to the
Mormon Return Movement, not to me personally,” Linder replied. “He
knew me as Joe Tanner, a rebel from Utah. I was going to write up a
receipt and turn it into Beirut Base for safekeeping but there wasn’t
time.”

“Nice try, Linder,
but we’ve seen your stateside bank records. For the past three
years, deposits have been made that exceed what we can account for
from your government salary. The deposits correspond to your return
from trips overseas.”

“Oh, I can explain
that,” Linder replied easily. “I used to stretch my salary and
expenses sometimes by trading currency in the black market. Sure,
currency speculation was illegal in the countries where I was posted.
But it didn’t break any U.S. law and I was far from the only
government employee who resorted to it. Besides, it had absolutely
nothing to do with Eaton or the rebels.”

The troll seemed to
ignore Linder’s defense. He opened a bound notebook that lay atop
the stack on the table and made an entry at the head of the page.

“Prisoner admits
violating Treasury Regulations and U.S. income tax laws over period
of three to six years,” he read aloud. “Care to add anything else
to your confession? It’ll go easier for you if you tell us the
whole truth up front…”

“Oh, go to hell,”
Linder told his interrogator. “You don’t give a damn about the
truth. All you want is my scalp.”

The troll smiled and
withdrew a thick manila file from his reference pile. He opened it
and began to read aloud the charges arrayed against Linder: treason,
seditious conspiracy, sabotage of government operations, advocating
the overthrow of government, espionage, terrorism and, finally, tax
evasion.

Each day the routine
was the same. Every eight to fourteen hours, by Linder’s estimate,
the guards marched him blindfolded through the silent corridors to an
interrogation room where one, and sometimes two, interrogators
matched wits with him for hours at a time. Often the material covered
was trivial or redundant or both. An exhaustive dossier on his
background and activities appeared to inform their questions.

Each session dealt with
events from Linder’s DSS career, generally in reverse chronological
order, starting with his refusal to sign a confession in the Beirut
Embassy’s cellar and working back to his alleged tip-off to Eaton
and his offer on Eaton's balcony to “go to bat” for him with
Headquarters. From there, the questions reached further back to his
alleged conspiracy with Chase Phipps and other insurgent leaders to
subvert and overthrow the Unionist State. With each session, Linder’s
interrogators delved more deeply into his past, including his early
days in the DSS, his prior service in the CIA and even his education.
They also hinted darkly that Linder’s father and sister might have
participated in the alleged conspiracy.

The interrogators
presented daily interrogation summaries to Linder for his signature
but each day he refused to sign. They scolded, insulted, threatened,
and cajoled, all to no avail. They even read aloud from Linder’s
DSS psychological profile, which was based on psychometric testing
conducted during the lengthy application process for joining the
Department. The profile allegedly described Linder as having a
borderline narcissistic personality, characterized by exaggerating
his sense of self-importance, lacking empathy, resenting criticism
and authority, demanding constant attention and reinforcement,
clinging to unrealistic fantasies of success or power, and exploiting
others to pursue selfish goals.

It was the classic
profile of a traitor, the interrogators claimed, and represented
further proof of his guilt. Everyone except Linder knew what a
shitheel he was and that he was due for a comeuppance. Small wonder
that his family and friends hadn’t bothered to write or visit, they
said; everyone he knew had gladly written him off. But to Linder, it
seemed ironic that this same psychological profile had seen him hired
by both the CIA and the DSS. The most plausible explanation, he
thought, was that the same breed of borderline sociopath that the
government favored to do its dirty work might also have a nasty
tendency to bite the hand that fed him.

Day by day, Linder’s
interrogations grew longer, his cell colder and the noisy
interruptions to his sleep more frequent. His twice-daily meals
shrank to one, consisting of a brick of stale bread and a ration bar,
served with a reduced ration of foul-tasting water. His weekly change
of uniform stopped. And now, whenever Linder asserted his innocence
or charged Bednarski with trying to frame him, the interrogators
struck him on the shoulders from behind with a rubber truncheon and
restarted the interrogation script from the beginning.

After weeks without
extracting a confession from him, the interrogators transferred
Linder to a chimney-like punishment cell where the walls pressed in
like a concrete coffin and he could stand but not sit or lie down.
Linder tried to rest his knees against its sides but before long the
pressure grew intolerable. He had to defecate where he stood and was
given only two minutes in a shower stall to douse his body and rinse
his soiled coveralls with cold water before the next interrogation.
He reeked so badly that the interrogators would not come near him.
Still he would not sign.

After a dozen or more
interrogation sessions while relegated to the punishment cell, the
guards woke Linder one evening and led him to a nearby guard’s
lavatory. There they tossed him a tiny bar of soap and allowed him
enough time to clean up thoroughly before handing him a fresh pair of
orange prison coveralls. Standing naked before the guards, Linder
examined his own emaciated body: the atrophied limbs, with muscles
now reduced to sinew, the pallid leathery skin, the sagging cheeks
and dark bags under his eyes, the dark hair turning a dull gray and
falling out in clumps.

Linder’s mind
recoiled at the signs of his premature physical decline and the
threat it posed to his chances of survival. Yet, at some deeper
level, he knew that, if this were to be his only punishment, he was
getting off lightly. If his interrogation ended in death, the victims
whose faces had haunted him in his nightmares would be cruelly
cheated. To even the score for all the suffering he had inflicted
upon enemies of the state while serving his government, ten such
interrogations would not be enough.

After he had washed,
the guards led Linder to a large and brightly lit interrogation room
he had never seen before. Behind the steel table stood the troll,
glaring at Linder with a contempt bordering on hatred.

“You have a visitor,”
the troll scowled. “You may sit opposite each other at the table.
If either of you stands or leaves your seat, the visit will be
terminated. You have ten minutes.”

The troll left the room
and two guards arrived a moment later with a woman following close
behind. The guards took up positions a few paces behind each seat at
the steel table and moved aside for the woman to sit. Linder’s
heart sank. It was his sister, April.

Linder had seen April
last nearly a year before. He had gone to Cleveland to visit his
father in the hospital and April had joined him in the crowded
cardiac ward, keeping their father company until the time came for
his bypass surgery. Linder recalled that April had looked older than
her thirty-three years. She had been a strikingly attractive girl in
her youth, with alluring dark eyes, an eye-catching figure and a
capable, confident manner. But time had not been kind to her since
moving in with her father upon their mother’s death two years ago.