Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist (11 page)

“And you beat me?”

“We were just trying to get you to cooperate. You know the routine, it goes in stages. It’s useless to resist, because with every stage we’ll get closer. At the end we’ll cut a hole in the back of your head like a coconut and wire you up like one of those God Damn monkeys. So save us all a lot of trouble and just tell us what we want to know.”

“I don’t know anything about any emails, except what Burton told me.”

Harry snapped his fingers toward the mirror and 4 agents immediately rushed in, grabbed Jonathan and carried him over to the medical chair. They took off his hand and leg cuffs and pinned him down while Harry fastened him to the chair with white canvas straps. He pulled the straps so tight that they bit into his flesh and he couldn’t move his arms or legs. When he was secure they forced his head into a metal restraint that looked like a medieval helmet of war. When Jonathan was secure the agents left, leaving him alone with Harry.

Harry was now in complete control and Jonathan braced himself for the next phase of torture.

Harry pulled a 6 inch vile from his lab coat pocket.

“Jonathan, do you know what this is? This is liquid nitrogen, funny stuff because it’s so cold that it burns the skin and tissue like a hot knife through butter. It’s the kind of stuff they use to take off warts. Have you ever had a wart removed?”

Jonathan didn’t answer.

He unscrewed the top from the vile and a puff of steam shot out as the freezing cold liquid tried to neutralize itself with the temperature of the room. “In case you don’t know, let me show you how this works.” He took out an eyedropper, filled it with the nitrogen and squeezed a line of drops up Jonathan’s arm. The nitrogen bubbled as it blistered and the burnt skin turned white.

Jonathan winced but didn’t scream.

Harry continued, “Now the nerves in the arms and hands can handle this stuff pretty well in small doses like you just did, but we have found that no one can handle this very well on the lips, or eyelids or on the genitals, especially in larger doses. “Do you know what I’m going to do with you, Jonathan?”

Jonathan didn’t answer.

“I’m going to put this stuff in your eyes. Now tell me about
Eye2Eye
and how long this charade of yours has been going on.”

Jonathan answered, “I’m telling you the truth, I don’t know anything about this. He squeezed his eyes closed.”

Harry hovered over him. “That’s it, close your eyes tightly, because if even a drop of this gets on your eyeball you’ll be blind!” Harry squeezed 3 drops directly onto his right eyelid. The nitrogen smoked as it seared the delicate tissue of his eyelid and tried to seep its way into his eye. The air filled with the stench of burnt flesh and hair. Some of the nitrogen leaked into the slit in his eye. The pain was like putting a red hot skewer directly through the center of his pupil.

Jonathan thrashed in the chair and screamed like a wounded, dying animal.

“Oh, did some leak through? Oops that’s irreparable,” snickered Harry. “Funny how that always happens. Now, tell me who you’re working with and you won’t need a German Shepherd to pull you around for the rest of your life.

Tears streamed down Jonathan’s face. “I told you I didn’t do anything and I don’t know anything! Do you want me to lie?”

Harry held the eyedropper over Jonathan’s left eye. “It’s a pity that you won’t cooperate. You’re going to be a fucking vegetable by the time we’re through with you and the funny thing is we’ll get just what we want. You of all people should know that”

Jonathan squeezed his left eyelid closed as hard as he could and waited for the burning drop to fall onto his eye. This time he counted 5 drops that filled the entire well of his eye. Once again some had seeped through. He let out a series of screams.

“Is your memory any clearer? Tell me why you erased those emails. Who are you trying to protect?”

“I’m not protecting anyone,” yelled Jonathan.

Jonathan lay there with his eyes clenched shut, with his eyeballs on fire, tears streaming down both cheeks. He heard the door open and close and didn’t know if Harry had left or others had entered. He lay there for what seemed like an hour, unable to open either eye. The nitrogen had seared them both shut. He was deafened by the silence, except for the noises that came from within him. He drifted into a short sleep and awoke still strapped to the medical chair, blinded by a bright white xenon light that someone had rolled directly over him so that it penetrated right through his closed eyelids. He couldn’t open either eye and felt nauseous. The words, “Take off his shirt,” from a new presence startled him. He squinted and saw several agents all dressed in white surgical smocks surrounding him, like busy beavers all knowing their precise function in building a dam.

They attached small circular pads to his chest, back and stomach and then connected wires to the pads which were connected to a high tech machine that was on the cart. They also put a blood pressure cuff around his left forearm and stuck a needle into his arm that was attached to a light green IV solution. Immediately his mind became frighteningly clear. His life began to move before him in picture frames, each event like an act in a screen play. His heart began to race and his abused body snapped to attention.

“Blood pressure is 190/110,” said one of the agents.

“It should stabilize, this is highly volatile so we’ll need to watch him closely. Any blistering around the entry point?”

“Negative.”

The lead agent lowered his mask and looked at him with an evil smile; Jonathan squinted to see that it was James Burton as he began to speak.

“Now Jonathan, if you would just cooperate with us you wouldn’t have to go through all of this.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Jonathan answered.

“So be it. We’re going to ask you a series of questions and you’ll have no choice but to answer them. This isn’t some 1940’s Sodium Pentothal that we’re giving you; it’s a new serum that has been developed by some very smart people in our laboratories to help us trace information processing through your brain, similarly to the way you track files through a computer. Is he stable?”

The assistants nodded.

The door opened and another agent wearing a doctor’s smock and a surgical mask entered the room and began working on him. Using his finger and thumb, he forced apart the seared flesh in his right eye as Jonathan struggled against his restraints to turn away.

“Calm down,” he said. “I’m going to take away the pain. I have something that will neutralize the burn.”

Reluctantly, Jonathan yielded to a few soothing drops that instantly quenched the pain. The doctor looked at the eye with a bright optomical light and lens. He muttered to the others, “He has damage to the cornea, hopefully it’s not permanent.” He then repeated the procedure with the other eye. “This one is worse.”

Burton shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Who the hell cares.”

The doctor talked to Jonathan methodically, telling him what they were doing. Jonathan detected a bit of a German accent, which made the moment even more surreal.

“We’ve introduced an experimental substance into your bloodstream through this IV, which will help you to remember more clearly all of those people and events that you’ve conveniently forgotten. And now this is going to be a little uncomfortable. I’m going to dilate your pupils so that we can look into your brain. We’re now able to determine exactly when you’re telling the truth and when you’re lying based on how the capillaries in the back of your eyes react. You will feel a little discomfort and your eyes will become much more sensitive to the light. The doctor taped his eyelids open and put 2 different types of drops in each eye.

Burton sat opposite Jonathan on a conference room chair and through a remote control in his hand raised the intensity of the light until it burned through Jonathan’s dilated pupils and filled his cheeks with tears of pain. Jonathan’s right eye felt so dry that he thought it might fall right out of the socket. The doctor gave Burton a sharp look and he lowered the intensity. The doctor’s head disappeared behind the large pair of black spectacles as he reached his hand around with a device that looked like a laser pointer, flashing a beam of red light directly into Jonathan’s wide open pupil. The beam felt like a knife cutting a channel through his brain. Just as Jonathan began to scream from the intensity of the red light, the doctor pulled it away.

Burton asked, “Are we all set?”

The doctor nodded.

“Okay, Mr. Anderson I’m going to start with a few basic questions, answer them as simply as possible. State your full name.”

Jonathan lost all the ability to resist. His memory became crystal clear, “Jonathan Taylor Anderson.”

A third agent sat in a chair and scribbled down notes.

“Your home address?”

“Apartment or residence?”

“Legal residence.”

224 Occaquan Drive, Occaquan, Virginia.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And what is your wife’s name.”

“Mary Elizabeth Anderson.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Two, Carly and Matthew.”

“Now, do you see how easy this is Jonathan? I’m going to ask you a few more personal questions.”

“What is your political affiliation?”

“I am a registered Republican.”

“Are you a member of any other political groups?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been?”

“No.”

“Who did you vote for in the last election?”

“The presiding President.”

“Republican all the way?”

“All the way.”

“What is your religion?”

“I’m a Methodist.”

“Do you believe that there is one God, Allah?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been affiliated with the Muslim religion?”

“Only through my wife.”

“And how long has she been a Muslim?”

“As long as I’ve known her.”

“Have you gone to any religious functions with her?”

“No.”

“Does she belong to any Muslim sects?”

“She goes to a Mosque.”

“And you have had nothing to do with her religion?”

“No, except I’ve studied the religion.”

“Where?”

“The agency sent me to a class at Georgetown.”

“Are you a Muslim?”

“No, I’m a Methodist.”

“Why did you meet with your wife’s friends?”

“I don’t know what friends you are talking about.”

“I’m going to ask you again and I want you to think very deeply. Have you given information to any Muslim groups?”

“No.”

“Have you ever had contact with Al Qaeda?”

Jonathan shuddered as the window of his captivity opened in a way that he had never seen before. He was there again, in the cave, heckled, tortured, cold and afraid. He shivered as he remembered the dank cold of the cave in which they had imprisoned him. And then one by one the frames of the horror show began to run.

“Mr. Anderson I asked whether you have ever had contact with Al Qaeda?”

He muttered, “Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, yes God Damn it! Yes I was with those sons of bitches.”

“Where?”

“In Afghanistan.”

“Did you train with them at their facility?”

“No, I was a prisoner of war.”

“Did you become one of them?”

“God no! Why would I ever become part of that? They murdered the other agents. They cut off their heads because they were Jews. The only reason they didn’t kill me was because I wasn’t one of them.” He clenched his teeth. “They cut off their heads and then they put their decapitated bodies in the cave with me. And then they tossed their heads in like bowling balls. These guys were my friends. Fucking animals! They are nothing but fucking animals!”

The doctor looked over at Burton, “Blood pressure 230/110; you better lay off him or he’s going to have a stroke.”

Burton ignored the Doctor, “Then why did you join their cause?”

“Are you fucking deaf? I would never join them.”

“Then why did you tell them about us, about our operation, about other agents, why did you compromise top secret information?”

Jonathan stopped and then started to cry, “I didn’t mean to. I held out as long as I could. They broke me and I had no choice.”

“Do you know that people died because of what you told them?” Burton held up a picture, “Jonathan, do you know this man?”

“Yes, that’s Rick Rosenjack.”

“Do you know what happened to Rick?”

“He was killed in Iran by a car bomb.”

“You killed him Jonathan. They used the information you gave them to kill Rick Rosenjack. What else did you tell them Jonathan, how many other people died because of you? You got them into the Federal Building didn’t you? You showed the way in and innocent people are dead because of you.”

“No!” Jonathan screamed.

“Jonathan, have you ever heard of the term Manchurian?”

Jonathan was still sobbing and didn’t answer.

“Jonathan, I’m talking to you. Have you ever heard of the term Manchurian?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain it to me?”

Jonathan was still dazed.

“Explain it to me!” screamed Burton.

Jonathan mumbled, “A Manchurian is an agent who has been reprogrammed to do things against his will.”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s how one enemy infiltrates another. Jonathan, are you a Manchurian?”

Jonathan’s mind struggled as the scenes of torture and interrogation in the Afghan cave flooded his mind.

“Jonathan, when you were a prisoner of war, did they reprogram you? Did they train you to destroy that building on July 15th?”

“No.”

“Are you sure….think Jonathan are you sure? They fucked with you, didn’t they?”

“I don’t know,” screamed Jonathan. “I don’t know what they did to me.”

“So, they could have reprogrammed you. The alarm could have gone off on July 15th.”

Jonathan started to hyperventilate.

“Back off,” said the doctor. “He’s going to pass out.”

Jonathan blacked out. He was awakened by cold water thrown directly on his face.

“Jonathan, you can’t hide from me. Did you provide them with information that would assist them in destroying that building?”