The Section Six interrogators motioned Li silently to a seat. One of them was a woman of about fifty with a round, friendly face, whom Li knew to be a formidable and aggressive interrogator. The other was an older man with a face chiselled out of granite, who had an uncanny talent for gaining the trust of the people he questioned. They were the antithesis of the stereotypical good-cop-bad-cop double act.
The woman leaned toward Li and whispered so quietly he could barely hear her. ‘He’s a smooth operator,’ she said of Hart. ‘That guy was so nervous when he came in he could hardly speak. Now he’s eating out of Hart’s hand. Can’t hardly get the guy to shut up.’
‘He’ll get to the test itself in a couple of minutes,’ Lyang said.
And they heard Hart’s voice across the monitor, soft, soothing, persuasive. His Chinese was almost perfect, his American accent lending it a nearly soporific quality. ‘Now, Jiang,’ he was saying, ‘I’m going to make you a promise right at the start. I’m not going to ask you any questions on the test that I’m not going to ask you right now. There’ll be no surprises, no trick questions. I need a yes, or a no.’
Jiang nodded, and you could see the tension in his face. He laid his forearms flat along the arms of his chair and stretched his palms wide. He swallowed a couple of times, and opened and closed his mouth as if unsticking his tongue from the roof of it. Li remembered the rice test that Hart and Lyang had talked about yesterday.
Hart went on, ‘I’ll begin with what are called known truth questions. They’re questions, the answers to which you know are true and I know are true. What they do is create a picture for me.’ He paused just for a moment. ‘Is your name Jiang?’
‘Yes,’ Jiang said.
‘Are you now in Beijing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I have the questions about why we’re here today.’ Another brief pause. ‘Have you ever put your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’
Li was startled by the bluntness of the question.
‘No,’ Jiang said.
‘He damn well did!’ the female interrogator hissed. ‘He might have been drunk at the time, but he did it alright. And he remembers he did it.’
Hart continued in the same hypnotic tone, ‘Do you remember if you did put your penis into Shimei’s vagina?’
‘No.’
‘Are you telling the truth about not putting your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’
‘Yes.’
He shuffled his papers. ‘Then I have those questions we discussed about the past. Do you ever remember doing anything about which you were ashamed?’
‘No.’
‘Do you ever remember performing an unusual sex act?’
Jiang seemed embarrassed by this question. ‘No,’ he said. Then added, ‘Only with my wife.’ And a sad smile flitted briefly across his face.
Lyang whispered, ‘She ran off with his sister’s husband and left him to bring up the kid on his own.’
Hart pressed on. ‘Do you remember ever committing a crime for which you were not caught?’
‘No.’
‘Then I have a question which just kind of covers the entire test. Do you intend to answer truthfully each question on this test?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then the last question, just for me. Are you afraid I will ask you a question we have not reviewed?’
‘No.’
Hart stood up. ‘Okay, that’s all there is.’ And he began wiring Jiang up for the test itself — two bands of sensors strapped around the chest and midriff to monitor heart rate, a cuff on the left arm to measure blood pressure, and sensors on the tips of two fingers on the right hand to detect perspiration. He talked as he worked. ‘Now, for each chart, Jiang, I need you to keep both feet on the ground. No moving. No unnecessary talking. Look straight ahead and close your eyes. Think about the questions, think about the answers and try to answer truthfully.’
When he had finished wiring Jiang to the polygraph, he rounded his desk so that he was looking at the subject in profile. ‘Now sometimes,’ he said, ‘I have people come in who just naturally think, I have to beat this sucker. When they do that, generally they have heard that when they get asked a question they should squeeze their toes or bite their tongue or press down on a tack they’ve hidden in their shoe. They make a big mistake when they do that, Jiang. The reason for that is that the equipment is so sensitive that if you have a heart murmur I’ll see that right there on your chart. And when people try doing these things, all they do is cause those pens to go crazy.’ He waved his hand at the needles poised above the chart, ready to go. ‘And when I see that, I have to ask why, when I already told them how best for me to see the truth, why are they trying to change what I’m looking at.’ He looked at Jiang. ‘And what’s the only logical reason you can think of?’
Jiang seemed taken aback that Hart was asking him. He shrugged and said awkwardly, ‘They’re trying to cover something up.’
‘They’re a liar,’ Hart said. ‘And that’s just the way I call it.’ He folded his hands in front of him on the desk and gave Jiang a moment or two to think about it. Then he said, ‘Now what I’m going to do, Jiang, is I want to see what your body looks like normally on the chart. So I want you to choose a number between one and seven.’
Jiang gave a strained chuckle. ‘Not between one and ten.’
‘No. Between one and seven.’ Pause. ‘What’s your number?’
‘Five.’
‘Okay. Now what I’ll do is I’ll go through all the numbers between one and seven. Each time I ask did you choose that number, the only answer I want is, no. Even when I ask you the number five. That way I have a number of truthful responses, and I have one deceptive response. It gives me a chance to adjust the instruments for your body.’
Lyang was smiling. ‘Believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ she whispered. But everyone else in the room was mesmerised by the proceedings on the other side of the mirror.
Hart set the polygraph going, needles scraping back and forth across the paper that scrolled by beneath them, and took Jiang through all the numbers in a random sequence. When he had finished, he switched off the polygraph and tore off the chart. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘It always amazes me. It does.’ He pushed the chart across the desk toward Jiang. ‘It don’t take no expert. See this green line?’ Jiang followed Hart’s finger and nodded. ‘See how it changes? See the highest point on the chart? See what’s below it?’ Li had to admit, Hart was a real showman. Like a magician on a stage.
Jiang craned to see what was written there. ‘It’s the number five,’ he said.
Hart smiled at him. ‘So now we know what you know. And you know why the pens reacted so strong. So if I see that when I ask the real questions, we’ll be able to get right to the bottom of it.’
Jiang slumped back in his seat, his face a mask of misery. He was beaten, even before he took the test. And he was beaten, because he believed he would be.
Hart reset the polygraph. ‘Okay, we’ll go straight to the questions one time.’
He got Jiang to sit facing forward, eyes closed, feet flat on the floor, and pumped up the air in his cuff, and then he ran through the questions, just as he had during the pretest. ‘Did you put your penis in Shimei’s vagina?’
They did it another two times, the order of the questions changing on each run-through.
When they’d finished the third set, ‘That’s us,’ Hart said. Jiang glanced at him apprehensively, but Hart was giving nothing away. He stepped out from behind the desk to unhook Jiang from the polygraph, then he collected the charts and said, ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’ He went out and left Jiang alone. Jiang sat staring into space for a long time, before dropping his face into his hands to stifle his sobs.