Mr. Able stood over this new prisoner, pouring water onto his covered face. The prisoner made a gagging sound. He squirmed desperately, barely able to move.
“Our team in Paris caught the guy who escaped,” the guard told Andrew, then poured more water over the prisoner’s face. “He arrived while you were questioning the other prisoner.”
“Stop,” Andrew said.
“You took almost four days. At the start, I told you I could get someone to confess in two hours. But the truth is, all I really need is ten minutes.”
What Andrew watched helplessly was called waterboarding. The immobilized prisoner was subjected to a heavy stream of water over his face. The soggy cloth on his nose and mouth added to the weight of the water and made breathing even more difficult. The cloth covered his eyes and increased his terror because he couldn’t see to anticipate when more water would strike him. The incline guaranteed that the water would rush into his nostrils.
Unable to expel the water, the prisoner kept gagging, relentlessly subjected to the sensation of drowning. Andrew knew of cases in which prisoners did in fact drown. Other times, panic broke their sanity. Intelligence operatives who allowed themselves to be waterboarded in an effort to understand the experience were seldom able to bear even a minute of it. Those prisoners who were eventually set free reported that the panic they endured created lifelong traumas that made it impossible for them to look at a rain shower or even at water flowing from a tap.
In this case, the prisoner thrashed with such force that Andrew was convinced he would dislocate his limbs.
“Okay, asshole,” Mr. Able said through a translator. He yanked the drenched cloth from the victim’s face.
Andrew was appalled to see a section of plastic wrap stretched over the prisoner’s mouth. The only way the man could breathe was through his nose, from which water and snot erupted as he fought to clear his nostrils.
“Here’s your chance not to drown.” The guard yanked the plastic wrap from the prisoner’s mouth. “Which subway system’s going to be attacked?”
The prisoner spat water. He gasped for air, his chest heaving.
“Speak up, jerk-off. I haven’t got all day.”
The prisoner made a sound as if he might vomit.
“Fine.” Mr. Able stretched the plastic wrap across the prisoner’s mouth. He threw the dripping cloth over his face, picked up another container of water, and poured.
With his feet tilted above him, the prisoner squirmed and gagged insanely as water cascaded onto the smothering cloth and into his nostrils.
“One last time, pal.” Again, the guard yanked the cloth and the plastic wrap from the prisoner’s face. “Answer my question, or you’ll drown. What subway system’s going to be attacked?”
“Paris,” the prisoner managed to say.
“You won’t like it if I find out you’re lying.”
“Paris.”
“Wait right there, chum. Don’t go away.” The guard left the prisoner strapped to the board and proceeded along the corridor to the man in the other cell.
“No,” Andrew said. He hurried after the guard, and what he saw when he reached the cell filled him with dismay. Guards had stripped the first prisoner and strapped him to a board, tilting his head down. A cloth covered his face.
“Stop,” Andrew said.
When he tried to intervene, two other guards grabbed him, dragging him back. Frantic, Andrew strained to pull free, but suddenly the barrel of a pistol was rammed painfully into his back, and he stopped resisting.
“I keep getting radio calls from nervous, important people,” Mr. Able said. “They keep asking what the hell’s taking so long. A lot of people will die soon if we don’t get the right information. I tell those nervous, important people that you’ve got your special way of doing things, that you don’t think my way’s reliable, that you think a prisoner’ll tell me anything just to make me stop.”
“It’s true,” Andrew said. “Panic makes him so desperate he’ll say anything he thinks you want to hear. The information isn’t dependable. But my way strips away his defenses. He doesn’t have any resistance by the time I finish with him. He doesn’t have the strength to lie.”
“Well, Mr. Baker, waterboarding makes them too terrified to lie.” The guard began pouring water over the prisoner’s face. It took less time than with the other man, because this prisoner was already exhausted from the sensory assaults that Andrew had subjected him to. He struggled. He gagged. As water poured over his downward-tilted face, rushing into his nostrils, he made choking sounds beneath the smothering cloth.
“What subway system’s going to be attacked?” Mr. Able demanded.
“He already told me!” Andrew shouted.
“Well, let’s hear what he answers this time.” The guard ripped the cloth and a strip of plastic wrap from his mouth.
“Paris,” the prisoner moaned.
Andrew gaped. “No. That’s not the answer he gave me. He told me New York City.”
“But now he says Paris, and so does the other guy. Paris is where they got captured. Why else would they be there if they weren’t going to attack it? Enough time’s been wasted. Our bosses are waiting for my report. We don’t need you here. I’m the interrogator they should have hired.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“No, you made the mistake when you took so damned long. We can’t waste any more time.”
Andrew struggled to pull away from the guards who held his arms so tightly they made his hands numb, restricting the flow of blood. “Those people you want to impress-tell them the target’s either New York or Paris. Tell them to increase surveillance at all the major subway systems but to emphasize New York and Paris. Four days from now. Thursday. Five p.m. local time. The attackers will wear backpacks. They’ll have hair-spray canisters inside the backpacks. The canisters hold the smallpox.”
“I haven’t started questioning these maggots about the other details,” Mr. Able said. “Right now, I just want to let everybody know the target area.”
“When they confessed to you, they never looked at you!” Andrew shouted.
“How the hell could they look at me when their heads were braced?” Mr. Able demanded. “I was standing to the side.”
“Their eyes. They should have angled their eyes toward you. They should have used their eyes to beg you to believe them. Instead they kept staring at the ceiling, the same way the first prisoner stared at the wall when I got here.”
“You expect me to believe that NLP shit? If they look to the left, they’re making things up. If they look to the right, they’re remembering something. So they look at the ceiling to keep me from knowing if they’re lying or not.”
“That’s the theory”
“Well, suppose what they’re remembering is a lie they rehearsed? Left. Right. None of it means anything.”
“The point is they think it means something. That’s why they won’t look at you. After three and a half days, when the man I interrogated was ready for questioning, he couldn’t stop looking at me. His eyes wouldn’t stop pleading for me to let him sleep. And he always looked to the right. Maybe he remembered a lie, but at least, his eyes didn’t tell me he was inventing something. The men you waterboarded, though, when they confessed, they didn’t give you a chance to learn anything from their eyes.”
“But…” A sudden doubt made Mr. Able frown. “If you’re right, the only way that would work…”