“Oh, excuse me. I can see I hit a nerve with you.” Daly smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He stopped the recorder and flipped the tape over.
“Listen, Mark Taylor and I had only been seeing each for a short while, but I knew him for several years before. Yeah, he drove me nuts with his premonitions, but even so, I couldn’t help liking the man. He’s a good guy.” She raised her chin in defiance when he snorted. Jessie rolled her chair up tight against her desk. “And now, he’s just disappeared.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. And nobody has any clue where he is. Even his lawyer is in the dark.”
Daly’s face closed down and she got the impression he knew something and it didn’t bode well for Mark. “I’m not at liberty to tell you where he is, but I can tell you that he’s been transferred to a more secure location.”
“Secure?” Wasn’t a federal prison secure enough? “Why?” Jessie glared at the man until he began to squirm. As satisfying as that was, she knew it was pointless. This man was low-level CIA, he probably didn’t have a clue where Mark was being held. She sighed and dropped the tough act. Her voice softened, “He has family and friends that are worried about him. No matter what you think he might have done, his parents, at least, deserve to know where their son is.” The anguish in his mother’s voice the time she had called looking for information was something she never wanted to hear again.
Daly sighed. “I’m not sure about the location myself, and even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you. You realize the President has declared him an enemy combatant?”
She’d been right. The guy had been bluffing before, but it didn’t matter. Since seeing Mark in custody, she had done some research on enemy combatant status. The designation was reserved for those deemed significant threats to the country. “I didn’t know it was official.” When she had mentioned it to Mark in the holding cell, she had been trying to scare him into talking. Never had it entered her mind it would actually happen.
Eggs. Again. At least they were better than the oatmeal. Mark poked the spork into the yellow, rubbery mass. He ate every morsel and used his finger to wipe up the tiny pieces left on the plate. As unappetizing as the meals were, they were the highlight of his day. The only problem was, he never knew when they would arrive. He had already been awake for hours.
Some mornings, breakfast would be waiting for him as soon as he opened his eyes, others, he would work out for almost two hours before a clink at the slot would announce its arrival. The length of time between the meals varied too. On occasion he had barely shoved out his lunch tray when dinner arrived, but often he became light-headed before the next meal slid through the flap. It was hard to stay calm when that happened. He couldn’t help wondering if he had been forgotten.
Once, in an effort to stem the panic, he’d tried to save some of the food by stashing a piece of bread under his blanket. They immediately demanded that he send the bread out. The loss of the food had bothered him almost as much as finding out they were constantly monitoring him. Sure, he knew the dark bubble on the ceiling concealed a camera, but knowing for certain that he never had a moment of privacy made it more intimidating. His next meal hadn’t come for a very long time. He never tried to hoard food again, and he ate every bite of whatever came in on the plate, even if it tasted terrible.
It didn’t take long for him to realize he would go mad confined to his cell with nothing to do but stare at the walls. He set himself a routine, a margin of control. When he awoke, he considered it ‘morning’ and did as much of a normal bathroom routine as he could manage under the circumstances. Then he began his exercise program. Despite the cell’s tiny dimensions, he was able to do crunches, push-ups, lunges and squats. He made sure every movement was precise, the intense focus kept his mind sharp. Counting out each exercise and holding the positions for a set amount of seconds, gave him a rough estimate of the passage of time.
He worked especially hard on his stretching. His sessions with Jim and his team had taken a nasty turn. Not satisfied with the endlessly same answers to the endlessly same questions they had decided he would think of more interesting things to say if they chained him to the floor or the walls of the interrogation room and made him bend his body into ‘positions’. Muscles stretched or cramped, joints twisted, bearing weight they were never designed for and if he broke the position they would make him ‘start over’, but he never knew what measure of time they were using. More than once he’d had to lean on a guard to steady himself for the walk back to his cell. The stretches helped. A little.
Mark downed the milk and sent the tray out. It had been a late one today and he had already completed his workout. He sat on the floor, legs crossed. If nobody came to take him away for questioning, he spent the time between breakfast and the next meal doing imaginary photo shoots. Today, his model was a top cover girl. Her picture graced the pages of swimsuit issues, high fashion magazines and she had her own line of clothing. Every detail of the photo-shoot played in his head. The lighting, the camera angles, and the location. Sometimes, he even allowed some bad frames to tarnish the proof-sheet. On a good day, those mistakes made him smile.
He had just tested the light meter in the imaginary shoot, when the tinny voice came over the speaker commanding him to put his hands through the slot. The photo-shoot dissolved in his mind, and his heart thumped against his ribs. Even with all of his exercises and stretches, the positions caused him agony. It just took longer for the pain to hit.
There was a tiny part of him that welcomed the excursions. As horrible as they were, at least he had someone to talk to. Pain was the price he paid for company. Pain he could deal with because it wasn’t permanent. There was an end to it, and then it was gone with nothing to show for it. No scars or disabilities. It could be worse. He could be in a pit with rats and fed maggot infested rice. Compared to that, this was nothing. Mark took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. He winced as the left one grated in its socket. Maybe just a little bit of disability.
Five minutes later, he stood in the familiar room. The three usual spectators sat at their table, quietly chatting as he entered. He listened as hard as he could. Sometimes, he caught bits of sports scores or traffic reports. As mundane as it was, he relished every scrap of it. He felt less isolated when he knew the Knicks beat the Lakers or that there was a ten car pile up on the freeway. There was still a world going on outside his walls and he clung to that fact like a tick to a dog.
Jim strode into the room and Bill tagged along behind him blowing on a cup of coffee. Mark’s mouth watered at the scent. They ignored him while Jim sorted through some papers and Bill told an off-color joke to the other three. Mark filed the joke away for later, when he could smile in private.
Finally selecting a sheet of paper, Jim closed the file. It was Mark’s. He knew it. Every time he was brought here, it was a little thicker.
Jim approached him, his face grim and not in sync with his greeting. “Good afternoon.”
Mark filed that information away too. So, it wasn’t even morning although he had eaten breakfast less than an hour ago. He would try to go to sleep earlier today and see if he could get his nights and days back on track.
“Good afternoon.” He didn’t mean to emphasize the afternoon part, but Jim caught it, and gave him a sharp look. Mark knew somehow he had blundered.
“I have some questions to ask you, but you probably already knew that.”
“Yes, sir.” There, he had spoken. It felt good, even if it was to Jim.
“You’re looking rather smug today.” Jim quirked his mouth, as though trying to figure out what Mark was up to. “What’s going on?”