She didn’t trust herself to speak. She shook her head.
“I’d die first,” he said.
He was desperate to help her, desperate to make her happy. Instead, her misery echoed in him. He couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t unburden herself to him. And she couldn’t explain. She couldn’t talk.
She almost laughed at the irony. What she needed was a few hours with Kenneth Karp and his stun gun.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Let me get through this, okay? I promise. I’ll get through it. I’ll come back to you.”
BUT INSTEAD SHE’D SPUN further and further away. Now she was left with nothing but the base around her and the fence in front of her. Then even the fence seemed to shimmer and dissolve. She needed a moment to realize why. She was crying, not a few tears but spigots. She stood and cried until she had no tears left. Then she walked back to the barracks to do her job. To make sure that Jawaruddin bin Zari stayed alive.
AFTER FOUR DAYS LOCKED on his back with nothing but his own mind for company, bin Zari broke.
“All right,” he moaned into the silence. “All right. I will tell. Please. I will tell.”
Even then they didn’t get him. They left him another twenty-four hours. Then the Rangers brought him up to the interrogation room, dressed only in a loose diaper, stinking of his own waste. They pulled off his hood and locked him to the chair and hosed him down.
He was crying when Karp walked into the room, and Karp knew he had won. Karp uncuffed bin Zari’s hands and offered him a bottle of water. He tried to uncap it, but his hands and feet trembled uncontrollably. Karp unscrewed it, tipped it gently to bin Zari’s mouth.
“It’s too much,” bin Zari said.
Karp put a hand to bin Zari’s head, found the skin hot and clammy. They’d have to get him treated. But first—
“I know,” Karp said, soothing now. “I know.”
“I will tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Of course.”
“Things you can’t imagine. About the ISI. About Pakistan.”
Karp was wary of these grand pronouncements. “Don’t lie, Jawaruddin. If you lie—”
“It’s true. Please.”
“All right.” Bin Zari seemed serious. Karp wondered what he could be hinting at. They’d find out soon enough.
“You promise.”
“We’ve never lied to you, have we, Jawaruddin? We’ve hurt you, but we’ve never lied.”
And, in fact, Karp tried not to lie to detainees. They had to believe that once they decided to cooperate fully, they would no longer be punished.
“That’s true.”
“If you are honest, you answer our questions”—Karp carefully avoided phrases like “work with us” or even “tell us,” for fear they would force bin Zari to confront the reality of his betrayal—“then I promise, not another minute in there.”
“A regular cell.”
“A regular cell. A shower. A toilet and lights and a bed and solid food. All the things a man should have. Even a radio and a television.”
“You promise.”
Besides the bottle of water, Karp had brought a briefcase into the interrogation room. He popped the latches, handed over a file. Three copies of a two-page contract, the first in Pashto, the second in Urdu, the third in English, pledging good treatment. No explanation of what bin Zari would have to do in return. Spaces at the bottom for signatures from bin Zari and Karp and Terreri, who had already signed.
The contracts had been Karp’s own innovation, and they’d proven brilliant. They were unenforceable and meaningless. But printed on heavy stock with fine legal frippery, they gave detainees the illusion of returning to a world of laws and rules. They announced a partnership, sour but real, between jailer and detainee.
Karp slid a pen across to bin Zari.
“I promise,” he said. “Take your time. Look it over and decide.”
But bin Zari had already put his shaking hand to the page.
THAT NIGHT, KARP KNOCKED on the door to the first-floor room that Callar used as an infirmary. Bin Zari was inside, a drip carrying intravenous antibiotics into his arm, bandages and ointment on pressure sores that dotted his back and legs. His breathing was slow and labored and his eyes dull.
“He gonna be okay?”
“Should be. Fever’s coming down,” Callar said.
“When can he talk?”
“You cannot be serious. His infection’s still raging.”
“Serious as a heart attack.”
Callar was through fighting. “Tomorrow, probably. He won’t be feeling great, but that’s better, right? What we want.”
“You’re finally getting it,” Karp said. He laid a friendly hand on her shoulder.
Suddenly she wanted to kiss him, this man who repulsed her. Put her arms around him and take him back to her room and make hate with him. Compound her degradation by betraying her husband. Sink as low as she could. She fought the impulse down. He was smiling, and she wondered if he’d somehow read her mind. But his attention seemed to be focused on bin Zari.
“Getting it,” she said. “Yes. I think I am.”
20
In his rearview mirror, Wells watched the men in suits closing on the Subaru. Their hands were belt-high. Holster-high. With the Tahoe in front of him, the Caprice behind, he’d given up his chance to run. He unlocked his doors, lowered his window, put his hands on the wheel.
The guy at his window was maybe thirty-three, medium height, with a blue suit, brown skin. He flipped open his wallet, showed Wells an FBI identification badge.
“Mr. Wells? I’m Agent Joseph Nieves. You need to come with us.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then you’d best tell me why.”
“You’re a material witness in a federal investigation.”
Material witness was a meaningless term, an excuse to pick him up. If you felt like talking, you could have called, Wells didn’t say. Professional courtesy. But they wanted to prove they didn’t need to show him any courtesy at all.
“I’ll come. But I’m driving.”
“We’d prefer if you ride with us.” Nieves sounded embarrassed.
“You made your point. Don’t push it.” Though Wells almost hoped Nieves would.
Nieves stepped back, murmured into the microphone in his lapel, nodded. “Mr. Wells, will you give me your word—”
“Yes. Let’s go.”
THEY CONVOYED NORTH along the Beltway, the Caprice’s siren clearing the road as smoothly as a snowplow. At exit 46, they swung east onto Chain Bridge Road, which led to the Langley campus. But they weren’t going to the CIA. Just past the Dulles toll road, they turned left, heading for a complex that looked like a typical suburban office park, centered around a large X-shaped building.
In reality, the complex — called Liberty Crossing — was the newest center of power in the American intelligence community. Its low-key appearance was deceiving. The buildings were more concrete than glass, built to survive a truck bomb. A thick-walled guardhouse protected the main entrance, and a hairpin turn in the access road ensured that vehicles would be moving slowly as they approached it. Behind the guardhouse, waist-high steel boluses blocked the road. In block letters, a sign proclaimed: “Pre-cleared visitors only. Visitors without pre-clearance will not be admitted.” And an afterthought: “Welcome to NCTC/ODNI”—the National Counterterrorism Center and the office of the director of national intelligence.
The Caprice stopped beside the guardhouse. From the Subaru, Wells watched as Nieves handed over his badge and had a short, heated conversation with the guard inside. Another guard in a flak jacket emerged from the back of the house, leading a German shepherd. The dog trotted around the WRX, poking its nose under the bumpers. “Clear,” the handler said. And only then did the boluses behind the guardhouse retract, opening the road to the building.