The Parnell Affair (41 page)

“It's okay,” Hazel said.  “You told me earlier.”

“Hello?” Tobias said.

“The only thing I want right now,” Sally said, “after I finish this drink, is to be naked and on top of you.”

“Hey, that's great,” Tobias said, avoiding Hazel's eyes.  “Okay, I'm on my way.  Yes, right now,” he added, though Sally hadn't said anything more.  “I'll see you in, uh, ten minutes, tops.”

He closed his phone and stood up, hurriedly donning his coat.  “Sorry, Hazel,” he said.  “I hate to run but I have to.”

“Go on,” she said, smiling up at him.  “I know what an exciting life you must have.”

“I wish it were dull, I really do,” he said as he pulled out his wallet.

“Oh, let me,” she said, although it may have been an excuse to touch his hand.

“No, no, it's the least I can do,” he said and dropped a few bills on the table.  “Is this yours?” he asked, pointing at Hazel's ID card on the floor.

“Oh!  Don't want to lose that,” she said, picking it up.  “Couldn't get back into the office.  Well, don't be a stranger.”

“I won't let this much time pass again,” he said.  “I promise.”

He kissed her on the cheek quickly and ran out of the restaurant.  Hailing a cab, he took it three blocks and got out at a bank.  A few minutes later, Sally strolled in and up to him and into his arms with a languorous kiss.

“Does this sort of work always put you in the mood?” he asked.  He wasn't complaining but there were a bank-full of people watching.

“Always,” she said.  “Anna wasn't entirely unplanned but a rather successful operation in Algeria is at least partially responsible for her conception.  God, you smell so good.”

“I'm not even wearing cologne,” he chuckled.

“That's why,” she murmured.  “It's all—essence.”

“Damn, I hate to be the less sexy one here,” he said, “but you did get what we were after?  Not that I'm not entirely satisfied just with you not being in jail.”

“I have it,” she said.  “It's horrible.  More than I thought.”  She let her arms drop but remained close.  Her face fell into sadness as she said, “Call your man.  And bring a fresh notebook.”

Using a courtesy phone at the bank, Tobias called Sal Fanoui.  Careful not to use his name, he intimated a document had arrived.  Sal called him back from some other phone a couple minutes later and they arranged to meet at a hotel at six that evening.  Tobias, prompted by a dig in the ribs, asked if he could bring a friend, one familiar with the investigation.  Sal chuckled and said, “Bring her along.  She might be able to answer a few of my questions.”

They arrived later on to find Sal sitting in the lobby.  He'd already taken a room—paid cash—and with no more than a cursory hello, led them up to it.  No one spoke in the elevator.

As Tobias entered the small single room, he felt tired like he had never felt before when facing a revealing interview.  He should have felt exhilarated, he thought, keyed up at the prospect of finally putting down on paper the facts which explained the slow-motion tragedy of the last eight months.  Seated at a glass breakfast table, the faces looking back at him held the same tired cast.  Not the stooped shoulders of exhaustion but the weariness of resignation.  Tobias realized he would hear nothing he did not already suspect; this was not to be a revelation but the formality of taking down testimony.  And in the recounting of events, the crimes committed in their country's name enumerated.

“Ah, to hell with it,” Sal said.  He heaved to his feet and opened the mini bar.  Touching a few bottles at first, he brought out a small bottle of scotch, a bottle of club soda, and a tray of ice.  “Barely enough in this toy bottle for one good drink each,” he said, setting it down and going to the bathroom for glasses.  “And that won't hurt us any.”

He fixed three highballs and then sat holding the fizzing glass under his nose.  Tobias took the opportunity to introduce Sally.  Instead of a handshake, Sal touched glasses with her.  They tasted their drinks.

“Where to begin, where
to
begin,” Sal said.  “The character we're talking about today is Abu Zubahd.  I was assigned to the field office out of Islamabad, doing a lot of joint operations with Pakistani security.  Zubahd was a high-placed lieutenant in the organization, did a lot of giving orders, organizing, not one of these characters hiding by himself up in a cave.  Probably why he got found.  We did most of the leg work on it,” he said, tapping his chest, “but when word came down of where he and a pretty good contingent were hiding out, Pakistani security went in, guns blazing.  Don't let the TV fool you: those boys know their business—and are as quick with their guns as Mex cops.  Danny and I went scrambling to catch up—my partner—but the show was over by the time we got there.  House shot to shit, bodies everywhere.  They thought Zubahd was dead.  Hell, I did too.  It was nasty work, but I was searching his body when I saw him breathe.  Danny and I had a hell of a time getting him out of there; the locals were all for chucking him in the meat wagon, breathing or no.  We got him back to the office and called in a doctor.  Man was he in bad shape.  Doc said five to two against him living.  But Danny and I, we want him.  We take turns staying up with him—Christ, I rubbed ice chips on his lips to keep him hydrated!  We needed to talk to him fast, too, because when a character like him is captured, the organization severs connections with everyone he had contact with.  We hoped they'd think he was dead, which is what we released locally, but knew it wouldn't last.  Forty-eight hours later, he could talk a little and brother did he ever talk.  We got good info from him; plenty of other captures after that.

“But then this ex-military doctor shows up,” Sal said and killed his drink.  “With a couple of mercenaries.  Yeah!  I found out after a couple of days.  They were on the DoD payroll but belonged to some private company.  Well, this doctor and his pals have orders to join us on the interrogations—and what they want to do is rough him up, a guy who's so shot full of holes he can't stand, can't get out of bed!  Danny and I throw them out of the room—Christ, we had guns drawn all around!  I ask this fuck what he's doing and he says new procedures have been approved.”

“These?” Sally asked, withdrawing the torture memo from her purse and handing it to Sal.

Sal ran his thumb over the raised Executive seal and mumbled, “Yeah.”

“Now, you said 'rough him up,'” Tobias said.  “What exactly are we talking about?”

“You got a pretty good list right here,” Sal said, holding up the torture memo.  “I knew something wasn't kosher from the word go, from how that doctor talked to him and started smacking Zubahd around.  But that could've been him not knowing what the hell he was doing: this doctor admitted he'd never interrogated anyone before.  He said it didn't matter—he had science on his side.  He had quackery and snake oil on his side!  This crap never works.  You torture someone, what happens?  They tell you anything, just to stop the pain, to stop the fear.  It doesn't have to be true.  Hell, look at Stockholm syndrome: those people are so sick with fear of their kidnappers that they join them, in their heads, to think of themselves as part of it all and so have nothing to fear.  Are they being truthful?  Not even with themselves, brother.

“But you were asking what they were doing,” Sal said.  “Excuse me.  I knew we were in trouble when I saw them building a coffin.”

“A coffin?” Tobias said.  “I don't get it.”

“You see this here?” Sal said pointing at one of the listed Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on the torture memo.  “Stress positions, confining the subject to an immobile position.  That's what the coffin was for, but he wouldn't lie down in it: they'd have it standing up.”

“Okay,” Tobias said.

“Oh, that doesn't sound too bad to you, huh?” Sal said.

“I don't know a thing about any of this,” Tobias said.

“You ever see them old Earl Flynn movies?” Sal asked.  “Sword fights and swinging on ropes all the time?”

“Sure,” Tobias said.

“Well, they always have a dungeon scene in those movies,” Sal said.  “See, they knew back then that only the bad guys torture.  Anyway, you maybe remember a crazy contraption standing up or hanging from the ceiling, looked like, uh, a cage but tailored to fit the body.”

“Like a crazy suite of armor,” Tobias said, “except the arms and legs couldn't move and it was made of metal bands.”

“That's the thing,” Sal said.  “It's called the iron maiden.  How it works is they lock you in there and you can't move.  Now, normally you move all the time, even in your sleep.  Some people can't ever sit still, but everybody moves and shifts and all.  It's how you keep from cramping up.  You ever been to a ball game—or, looking at you two, maybe the opera or something—and you sit with the seats in front of you pressed against your knees and you can't move?  What happens?  You get a Charlie horse, sometimes.  Real painful cramping; it can be agony.  (My mother got one when I was a kid and she took me to see Freddy Kruger in the movie theater; I was too young to go alone.  She must have been scared stiff, and then I see her crying, it hurt so much.  Me and my kid brother had to half carry her out of there, she couldn't walk.  But you got to move; walk if off.)  So, imagine that happening, that pain—but it's in every muscle in your body!  And no one opens the door on your iron maiden and you're stuck in that thing for hours—days!—while your muscles tear themselves to pieces.  Why bother having the torturer strap you onto that big wheel and spread you apart until your joints pop and muscles tear, when we can just lock you up where you can't move and your own muscles will do the job for us?

“This doctor and his boys, they don't have the time to weld themselves an iron maiden; they just build it out of plywood: a wooden enclosure so tight fitting you can't even turn your head!  And as for the standing up: it's not like standing in line at the drug store.  It's being kept so still you can't shift around: the blood pools in your feet, your ankles, knees, hips, very painful and eventually fatal.  Here's a fun exercise: think about how often you move, cross your legs, shrug, roll over while you're trying to get to sleep; count up how many times in a day—and then try not to.”

“I don't think I’d want to go through that,” Tobias said.  “Sounds like torture, a lot more than it sounds like Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

“Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” Sally said, “is a Nazi term the Gestapo used to describe what they did to Jews, homosexuals, captured soldiers.  Telling, that they Administration chose that phrase.  It came up at Nuremburg.”

“Of course it's torture,” Sal said.  “How else could that be used when asking questions?  It's 'you either tell me what I want to know or I inflict that pain on you again.'  Only the poor bastard will say anything to stop the pain—and any questions you ask him will lead him toward the answer you want.

“As bad as all that is,” Sal continued, “what really turned my stomach was—after I'd been recalled to Washington for complaining to the Director—on my way out, I saw them bringing in the gear they'd use to waterboard.”

“Okay, I've heart
that
term before,” Tobias said, pointing with his pen.  “Waterboarding: what is it?”

“Waterboarding is a form of simulated execution by drowning,” Sally answered.

“That's a good way of putting it,” Sal agreed.

“There's a lot of misunderstanding about the practice,” Sally continued.  “Essentially, you strap down the victim, elevate his feet to delay drowning (keep the water from flowing too directly into his lungs), and use a device of some sort—usually a cloth—over the victim's face onto which you pour a large volume of water.  You wind up breathing it, you can't help it; and because of the cloth over your mouth
and
nose, you can't swallow the water or avoid breathing it.  The effect is a sort of slow-motion drowning, which activates your body's autonomic fear of impending death.  A firing squad, a hanging scaffold, a lethal injection: they all require the victim to intellectually understand the mechanism by which they would die, to insight fear—and so they can be intellectually resisted.  Not so with drowning: the fear response is autonomic, hard wired into your body.  The resulting fear creates massive stress on the body; people die from it all the time, particularly after continued application.”

“And the only way you could use this pretty little technique,” Sal added, “is, again, to say, 'You tell me what I want to hear or else I waterboard you again.'  And guess what they'll tell you.  If you felt they were drowning you to death, and would keep on doing it until you admit that you're the King of Spain and you got a tattoo of Sophia Lauren on your left butt cheek, what are you going to admit?  What could you
not
say?”

“Jesus,” Tobias breathed.  He stared at his notes, a mostly incoherent list of the barbarities enumerated to him, as upon him dawned the inescapable conclusion that the President of the United States of America ordered the employment of techniques incapable of extracting truth and suited only to eliciting directed confessions.  It was the purpose for which they were created.  A part of a larger, coherent plan, Tobias thought.  “All right,” he said.  “We're jumping all over the place.  Let's go through it like a timeline, we can editorialize and explain words at the end.  You arrived in Islamabad when?”

For the next hour, Tobias took down this sliver of history upon which balanced the future.  As the facts all but spoke for themselves, Tobias found the story arranging itself in his mind as his fingers worked without guidance.  The place in the narrative of the coming war with Iraq, into which the testimony of Sal Fanoui fell, suggested simplicity.  Tobias knew he would write the story in minutes.

Sal's story complete, he leaned back and eyed the mini bar.  “Hmm, I could use another,” Sal said thoughtfully.

“Here, have this one,” Tobias said, dropping his untouched glass in front of Agent Fanoui as he walked past him toward the night table.  “I need to use the phone.”

He called his ME, Howard Lieter; just after seven but still in the office.

“Stop the presses,” Tobias said deadpan.

“Christ, again?” Howard said.  “You'll have completion tonight, though.”

“What's that?” Tobias asked.

“Khalid
Sheik Katani confessed to a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq,” Howard said.

“Old news,” Tobias said.

“It just came out!” Howard cried.  “We got exclusive details, too.”

“It's also bogus,” Tobias said.  “I've got something much better. 
A scoop so big Baskin-Robbins'll need more flavors.”

“Alright, let's hear it,” Howard said.

“Not over the phone,” Tobias said.

“Oh, would you leave that paranoid shit to the Les Vonka,” Howard said.  “Come on.”

“Uh-uh,” Tobias said trochaicly.  “The Chief still in?”

“Went home,” Howard said.

“Could you call him?” Tobias asked.  “Ask him to come in?  Listen, Howard, this is really important.”

“Yeah, I can ask,” Howard sighed.  “Where should I call you?”

“I need you to call him on your cell phone right now,” Tobias pressed.

“Jesus, you're pushy tonight,” Howard said.  Tobias then heard the phone receiver clatter on the desk top.  A moment later, Howard came back.  “Does it have to do with what we're already running on page one?”

“Yes,” Tobias said, holding his breath.  “You're not going to want to run that story, Howard.”

“Hold on,” Howard said.  After another, longer moment: “Okay, he'll be here at 9:00 pm.”