“You mean your high school basketball career?” She smiled for the first time. “Sixteen point five points per game, along with twelve rebounds and six assists. Yes, we know. Like I said, you have good hand-eye.”
After she finished with the care and maintenance of the weapon, she told him that he’d be issued his own Glock 17 when he “touched down.”
“Where?”
“Not for me to say, Mancur.”
He looked at Candace.
“Me, neither,” she said. “But it won’t be long till you find out. You only have thirty hours of training left before we leave. You’re going to need some sleep now.”
He and Candace were fed, and he was escorted by the security detail to a private room. Small, but military neat. A new pair of guards took control of the door for the night shift. There were no windows in his room. He could tell by the guards’ respectful treatment of him that they thought he was an important asset. That scared him for reasons he couldn’t immediately put his finger on.
Though physically and emotionally depleted, he lay in bed wondering if the big cyberattack had come. After all, he was in a super-secret installation that could surely run on generators for the foreseeable future. Were planes falling from the sky? Nuclear missiles launching from underground silos, targeting the great masses of Americans?
He slept fitfully, awakening for good at dawn for a breakfast heavy on protein. Then he was whisked over to a martial arts training center. He had yet to see Candace this morning. The day began with jujitsu and Krav Maga on a thick mat, for which he was grateful.
Krav Maga was borrowed from the Israeli Special Forces. The instructor, a swarthy man who looked as tough as buffalo hide, was openly dubious of the value of trying to teach a “recruit,” as he called him, much of anything in such a short time period. After three arduous hours the man’s opinion didn’t appear to have changed much; he offered Ruhi only a “Good luck” when the session ended.
What did I learn? he wondered. Not much more than how to isolate an opponent’s most vulnerable body parts — and to expect to be beaten nearly senseless while he tried to attack eyes, gonads, fingers, or ribs. The instructor had him repeat those moves over and over.
Ruhi was brought into a large office, where Candace waited for him alongside a Middle East intelligence chief who told him that he’d be going to Riyadh. The bullet-headed man looked like he was in his late fifties. He squinted as he talked, as if he’d spent too many years in the desert sun. The lines radiating from the corners of his eyes were deep, dark, and reached almost to his temples.
“You have family in Saudi Arabia, correct?”
Ruhi answered affirmatively, though his faith in the intelligence services would have been shaken to dust if they hadn’t already confirmed that fact.
“Here’s your cover story. We want you to tell them that you’re repatriating to Saudi Arabia. That after your miserable treatment by the U.S., you knew you’d never be accepted by your adopted land again. You must not only feel free to criticize the U.S., you must let your genuine disgust over what you’ve been through be known.
“Think about it, Mr. Mancur,” the bald briefer went on. “Your fellow Muslims have been slaughtered since the cyberattack. Hung from street poles. It’s like the Jews after Kristallnacht. Does that mean anything to you?”
He nodded. The Night of Broken Glass. Beatings, burnings, murders, and the arrests of tens of thousands of German Jews — and a mere prelude to the Holocaust that followed.
“Your friends and relatives are going to want to know how you got out of the U.S. ‘Weren’t you restricted from traveling?’ That sort of thing. You’ll tell them that you were innocent, that after torture and tests — and please feel free to describe all of that to them — we believed you. Say that we cut a deal with you. That you could go back to your homeland, but only if you kept your criticisms to yourself. No public statements about what you went through. Tell them that we said we’d kill you if you spoke out. Then tell them that you’re going to talk publicly anyway about the humiliation and murder of Muslims in the U.S., that you’ll tell the whole world what happened to you. Say you don’t give a damn about any deal, that you’re ready to join the jihad. Show real anger, Ruhi. Use the rage that you had to be feeling back in the basement at Fort Meade. They must believe you. Praise the cyberattackers. Praise jihad. Talk to your cousin.”
“So you know about him, too?”
“Of course.”
“I doubt the Saudi secret service even knows about Ahmed.”
“We’re not sure they do,” the Middle East expert told him. “We never shared that with them. We’re not going to now. We want you to get to Ahmed. Not them. The only thing we’ve shared with the Saudi agents is that we understand that you are heading there and that you agreed not to speak out against the U.S.”
“They don’t know that I’m playing ball with you, do they?”
“No way. So they might try to shut you up when you start criticizing us. It depends. Our reading of the Saudis right now is that they play to strength, and the U.S. is not strong, so we’re hearing more militantly anti-U.S. voices on the street there. But they still might try to muzzle you.”
“And if they arrest and torture me?”
“Hang in there. It’ll give you a lot of credibility when you get out.”
“Thanks! If I get out.”
“If it comes to that, you’ll get out. But not right away.”
“Oh, shit.”
“We don’t think you’re going to have any problems, Ruhi. Not with them. You might have problems with Ahmed. What’s your relationship?”
“Not much. Lots of arguments for years now. I didn’t even see him the last couple of times I visited my family. He was gone once. Another time he refused to meet with me, which was fine with me. All we ever did was argue.”
“Then tell him, however you have to, that the U.S. really is the Great Satan. People love to win arguments, and the longer they’ve gone on, the sweeter the victory. So tell him everything that happened to you. Show him the dog bite.”
“What dog bite?”
“The one that we’re going to surgically implant in your thigh.”
“Nobody said anything—”
“We don’t have time for this. Trust me, Ruhi, we’re not siccing a dog on you. But we will painlessly create the bite of a German shepherd. We’ll also create burn marks on your genitals from electrodes. You’ll want them, Ruhi. I’m telling you, they could be your ticket into that world.”
“But it’s only one of many investigations. Holmes told me that himself. Why do I have to go—”
“Through all of this? So you don’t die. And, yes, we have more than a hundred major investigations going on, but this one is the hottest lead we have right now. Your cousin Ahmed is well connected.”
“I know. And I also know he’s the reason I’m here and why you”—he turned to Candace—“were put into my fourplex.”
“I cannot comment on that,” the briefer said, “and neither can she.”
Ruhi shrugged. Strangely, a growing part of him was glad to be there. It was as if he’d never really lived before. This was blood. This was real. This was life.
Until you die.
“Learn to love Ahmed, Ruhi. He’s your cousin, and now we want him to be your brother-in-arms. Everybody loves the prodigal son, especially if he comes back ready for jihad.”
“Then what?”
“Then let’s see where that takes you. You’re a great propaganda coup. We think we’ll be seeing you on YouTube very quickly.”
“With or without my head?”
His briefer laughed. “With it.”
Ruhi was hustled off to two more trainers, a man and woman about his age. The guy, so glassy-eyed that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days, reviewed basic means of avoiding detection. Because it included no training outside the tight office in which Ruhi now found himself, he felt that the briefing had questionable value.