When Thornton’s ankle restraints caused him to lag behind, the captain hit him in the small of the back and he lost a stripe of skin from his forearm to the coarse cinder-block wall.
The corridor took a sharp right, then another, and, improbably, another. The place was a maze. Probably by design, Thornton thought. Emanating from somewhere nearby, a man’s savage screams resounded throughout the metal structure. Thornton might have been rattled if not for his educated guess that the screaming was a recording they’d tripped, like the ghostly wail heard upon entering an amusement park haunted house.
After the tenth turn, Flattop stopped abruptly and told Thornton, “Turn around.” When he did, Thornton’s restraints were unlocked and whisked away by Flattop, who added, “Now, arms apart, hands on the wall.”
Using his flashlight beam, Captain South indicated a cinder-block wall streaked with muck. At least Thornton hoped it was muck. Palms pressed against it, he waited as they patted him down.
“Turn around a hundred and eighty degrees, slowly take off everything you’re wearing, and let it drop to the floor,” Flattop said.
Thornton complied, suppressing natural humiliation — or trying to — by telling himself that it was these goons who ought to be embarrassed.
“Now, mouth wide open, say, ‘Ah.’ ” Flattop stuck out his slab of a tongue by way of demonstration.
He probed Thornton’s mouth and every other part of his body that might conceivably conceal contraband. Presumably passing the exam, Thornton received a canvas jumpsuit that looked gray in the low light but might have been red. It was a size too small and stunk of sweat.
“You look beautiful,” Flattop said. “Time for your interview.”
26
Rounding the corner, Thornton had the sensation of plunging into a black void. A moment later, Captain South caught up to him, the guard’s flashlight revealing yet another filthy corridor. After about fifty feet, the captain’s beam showed another numeric keypad and Flattop again entering a code. Bolts released with a hydraulic hiss. Flattop pulled open a door, took Thornton by the collar, and jerked him into the fifteen-by-ten-foot “interview room,” in which an overhead fluorescent panel illuminated a traditional gritty concrete that was as devoid of color as it was of hope. Thornton suspected that the long mirror on the opposite wall was not a decorative element.
“Sit,” Flattop said, pointing him to the nearer of two chairs at the center of the room.
“Thanks.” Thornton lowered himself into the wobbly desk chair — wobbly by design, he suspected. The ideal was a swivel rocking chair, on wheels, with movable armrests. “Behavioral amplifier,” such a piece of equipment was known as in interrogation circles, because it magnified movements of the parts anchoring the subject, for example, his feet to the floor or his elbows to the arms of the chair. Since people dissipate anxiety through this type of movement, interrogators are given an indicator of nonverbal deceptive behavior. Thornton had learned of a few such behaviors when interviewing with a CIA polygraph examiner. People unconsciously put their hands in front of their mouths and eyes, literally covering lies, the woman had told him. They also involuntarily shifted into fight-or-flight mode, rerouting blood from regions that can temporarily do without it — especially the face — to the major muscle groups. The resulting sensation of cold causes subjects to rub their faces.
Unfortunately, what knowledge Thornton had of detecting deception would be of little use in deceiving an interrogator. Even veterans at questioning admitted to being as susceptible to being caught in a lie as their subjects. In fact they were often more susceptible since there were so many involuntary cues they needed to take into consideration. “It would be like a golfer trying to keep in mind eighty different improvements to his swing while hitting the ball,” the polygraph examiner had told him.
Captain South brought in a big Styrofoam container labeled SOUPER MEAL. He peeled off its lid to reveal noodles and vegetables in a broth. Steam rising from the top carried an aroma of chicken and spices, making Thornton’s mouth water. The captain set the container on the floor beside his chair along with a two-liter bottle of water, ice-cold if the condensation were any indication. Thornton was parched to the point that speaking required first unsticking his tongue from the sides of his mouth, and after at least thirty hours without food, it felt as if gastric acid were dissolving his stomach lining. He hesitated to touch the Souper Meal or the water, however, for fear that they’d been spiked with “truth juice,” a mixture of narcotics such as sodium amytal, thiopental, or seco-barbital and methadrine. As a result of their training, most covert intelligence officers could withstand enemy interrogation while under narcosis. But a few spilled unadulterated truth, no matter what. Some told the truth, but their speech was so garbled — a side effect of narcosis — that their responses were unintelligible. Others retained their diction but lost their wits. A truth serum with better than a 34 percent success rate had yet to be invented despite a decade-long effort by Russian SVR scientists at prisons packed with Chechens used as guinea pigs. If Thornton’s physiology placed him in the ungarbled-truth-spilling minority, however, he would become expendable.
He would have to eat and drink sooner or later, but abstaining now might make the difference in whether there was a later. The longer he held out, he reckoned, the longer he lived.
“Thanks,” he said, “but I’m good.”
Captain South looked to Flattop, who shrugged. Then the captain scooped up the items and silently trailed the other guard out of the room.
Their place was taken by a tall man in a white lab coat, gray flannel slacks, and shiny black lace-up shoes. Pulling the door shut with more force than necessary, he proceeded to the chair six feet from Thornton’s. He sat, folding one lean leg over the other, then turned to face Thornton. Fiftyish, he had a long face with wavy blond-going-white hair and close-set, clear blue eyes. At first glance, he was the sort who might be found selling real estate or giving tennis lessons at a country club. Finer details suggested a different story. His excessive pallor, particularly in light of a Nordic complexion, told of a predilection for the indoors. Perhaps for places like this. Black site personnel typically didn’t bother to bring razors from home. This guy had not only shaved this morning; he’d dressed up. His lab coat was freshly starched and spotless. The creases down the front of his slacks were perfectly straight. He sported a sunny yellow bow tie and gleaming black leather shoes laced in perfectly symmetrical loops. An Army Intelligence officer had once told Thornton that, often, good men were assigned to black sites, and the blackness coated their souls; others assigned to black sites found their element.
“Before we commence today’s questioning, Russell,” the man with the bow tie said in a midwestern baritone, “I want you to know the reason that we plucked you off 79th Street and out of your life: We want information. To get that information, we can do anything we want. I can do anything I want. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” The gravity of the man’s tone infused Thornton’s tone with deference. He felt to his marrow that this guy meant what he’d said.
“No one knows what has happened to you, Russell. You have simply disappeared.” Bow Tie snapped his fingers, as if performing a magic trick. “These two tiny islands are known only to a handful of cartography fanatics who believe them to be uninhabited and uninhabitable. This is your entire world now. If you are ever to leave here, you will answer all of my questions. If you are not entirely forthcoming, if you tell half-truths, or if you tell anything other than the full truth, I’ll know it as surely as I would know if the lights were switched off. And I’ll become angry, and my superiors will become extremely angry, and then things will get far worse for you. Do you understand me, Russell?”