He wondered whether he’d been foolish to have trusted Amato.
78
After a while, Mark was brought to a larger room, the old cafeteria he guessed. In it were four soldiers, an older-looking Iranian, and Amato. Everyone stood in knee-deep water.
Amato looked crazy.
His jaw was closed, his chin was jutting out, his nostrils were flared like a bull’s, and he seemed to have grown a few inches taller. This wasn’t a man feigning anger, thought Mark. This was a man on the verge of exploding.
A second later, he saw why.
Mark had been prepared to see Daria in a bad way. And he’d thought that his own brushes over the years with intense brutality had dulled his ability to be deeply affected by such depths of depravity.
But he’d been wrong.
Seeing her there, tucked away in a corner, drug-addled and shivering, stripped and beaten and broken, abandoned like a piece of garbage that had floated in with the sea, cut him more that he had thought he was capable of being cut.
He forced himself to stare at her for a moment. Her eyes were glassy and fixed on the motion of the water below her. She gave no acknowledgment that she’d seen him.
“Daria!” he said.
Someone hit him and he fell to his knees. She still didn’t look up. “Daria!” he called again.
This time one of the Iranians jammed his head under the water until he began to choke. When he was released, he heard Amato talking to the older Iranian, the interrogator, a man of average height with an angular face, a bony nose, and a trim black beard. They were arguing in Farsi about how to conduct the interrogation. It was just Amato stalling for time, Mark knew.
After a little more back-and-forth the Iranian interrogator shrugged and ordered that Mark be tied flat on his back to a bench, the top of which rested an inch below the surface of the water. He ordered that Daria be similarly restrained on an identical bench.
“Hold on, Daria. You’re going to be OK,” Mark called out as they strapped him down. He had no idea whether this was true, or whether, given the state she was in, it would be possible for her to ever be OK again.
After his outburst, one of the Iranians kicked Mark in the side. A few of his ribs cracked. If Daria had heard his words of encouragement, she gave no indication.
Amato appeared above him and demanded to know who he’d told about the stolen uranium.
Mark detected a note of hesitation in Amato’s voice. And asking about the uranium straight away pegged him as someone unfamiliar with interrogation techniques.
“What you tell me will be matched against what she’s already—” Amato turned away from Mark. “What the hell are you doing!”
Mark raised his head. The bench to which Daria had been strapped had been turned on its side by one of the soldiers. Daria’s legs were kicking underwater.
“Answer the question.” The Iranian interrogator spoke to Mark in clear, calm British-accented English. “When you do, we’ll let her breathe.”
“One person,” said Mark. “John Decker is his name. For Christ’s sake, let her up.”
“Tell me about this John Decker.”
“He’s a former SEAL, I worked with him in Baku.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s dead, killed in France.”
“I’ll need to know more than that.”
“He’s an independent contractor, I hired him to help me. Let her up! I’m not telling you anything else until you let her breathe.”
“She’s no good to us if you kill her!” bellowed Amato.
The interrogator gave Amato a questioning look. “Very well,” he said.
The bench to which Daria was strapped was righted. She coughed up water and gasped for air. Mark listened to her desperately trying to breathe. At least she was still trying, he thought.
Directly above him, Mark saw Amato’s face and was afraid the man might do something rash. Four armed soldiers stood in the room. There was no way Amato could take them all on at once. But he clearly wasn’t capable of completely concealing his concern for Daria.
Next it was Daria’s turn to be questioned and Mark’s turn to be held underwater. He couldn’t hear what she said, which was the point. It was a violent twist on the classic interrogation tactic of going back and forth between two people in separate rooms, playing one off the other and comparing information. He was under for a long time, but instead of struggling he tried to distance himself from the pain by envisioning his raging need for oxygen as something that was a removable part of himself, a desire that he could calmly exhale out and let float away on the water.
After a couple of minutes he pissed himself, and then he passed out. He woke up to one of the Iranian soldiers punching his stomach.
Amato said, “You shared information about the uranium with people you trusted in Dubai, as a backup in case one of you was ever captured. What are their names?”
Mark tried to think the way Daria was thinking, but it was hard for him to think at all given the intense, mind-numbing pain he felt in his gut and chest. He wondered whether one of his broken ribs had punctured a lung.
Had she given them Bowlan’s name? Or had she just made up names? Mark didn’t want to mention Bowlan.
He made up two names.
“Wrong answer,” said the Iranian interrogator.
Daria was held under for a long, long time. And then, after Mark gave them Bowlan’s name, it was his turn again. And then Daria’s…
Mark was beginning to lose hope when he heard the sound of gunshots coming from outside the building.
79
One of the soldiers in the interrogation room received a call on his radio. As he held the handset to his ear the staccato bursts of gunfire outside grew louder. After a moment he clipped the radio back to his belt and ran out with two other soldiers following on his heels. One soldier stayed behind with the Iranian interrogator. Daria and Mark were left strapped to the benches.
Amato faced the interrogator. “What’s happening?”
The dispassionate calm the interrogator had projected during the interrogation was gone. Now he looked a little frightened. “I don’t know.”
Amato pulled out his pistol and turned to face the hallway, as though preparing to fend off an armed assault. The interrogator had drawn a pistol as well. “How many men do we have in the building?” Amato asked.
The interrogator looked unsure of whether to answer. “Eight, I think, maybe ten more nearby.”
Amato gestured to the remaining Iranian soldier, who was pointing his assault rifle at Daria and Mark. “Tell him to cover the back hall. You guard the prisoners. I’ll cover the front exit.”
The interrogator hesitated but then issued the order. As soon as the soldier with the assault rifle turned his back, Amato raised his gun and shot him in the head. A half second later, he shot the interrogator in the face.
Amato bound over to the interrogator and fired one more shot, at close range, directly into the man’s forehead. He did the same to the downed Iranian soldier and then holstered his pistol and raced over to Daria. Without saying a word he worked frantically to release her restraints.
Some of the buckles were under the bench and hard to release. Amato briefly ducked his head beneath the water.
Mark heard more shots from outside, and screams. He kept one eye on the two exits leading out from the room and one eye on Daria.
Amato finally got her free. His suit was sagging on his bulky frame and the fat around his gut was visible where his dress shirt was plastered to his skin. “Follow me,” he said to her.