I kept my eyes closed. My chest heaved as I fought to fill my lungs with oxygen.
Water poured from the soaking hessian as Mr Sheen lifted it from the bucket. I managed one last big breath before it was pulled over my head. The wet sacking clung to my nose and mouth.
I fought it. I couldn't help myself. I blew hard from my mouth to try to get the stuff away from me.
The tabletop tilted and my head went down. A bucket of cold water was tipped over the sacking.
I couldn't breathe.
I told myself to keep calm. You're not drowning! You're not drowning!
But water poured into my nose and mouth and my body told me otherwise.
Take it easy! You'll be able to breathe again soon!
The seconds ticked by. I needed so badly to take a big breath. My reflexes took over.
I gagged.
Another bucket…
My body went ballistic. I tried to kick and buck. My hands scrabbled frantically at the plasticuffs. I was tearing holes in my own skin.
Another bucket…
Neither body nor brain could help me now. I gave in. I tried to breathe, and the more I tried to breathe, the more water I took in. I knew I could swallow it but I didn't; I kept trying to expel it, and then I ran out of air. My body jerked like I was being tasered again.
The tabletop see-sawed the other way and my head swung up. They pulled off the sack. I vomited water and bile and struggled to fill my lungs with air. Water poured out of my nose and mouth and snot streamed down my face. I'd never felt such relief.
They know what they're doing. They won't fuck up. They won't let you die. Everything's a reflex. Control t!
I screamed at them: 'I don't know anything!'
Nobody was listening. One punched my face and the sack went back on.
The table tilted again. And so did the bucket.
I was going to die. I wanted to blow out but I couldn't. I had nothing in my lungs to blow out with.
My strength drained like someone had thrown a switch. I had nothing left to fight with. I knew that death was just seconds away.
The table tilted but the sack didn't come off this time. I coughed and spluttered, puking up water and more bile.
Then, a miracle…
The straps were released. I slid off the table on to the floor. More freezing water was thrown over me, but I didn't care. The two of them kicked me against the wall. They didn't talk; they didn't need to. When it came to this kind of performance, the Serbs were best-in-breed.
I curled up with my face to the wall, hands still locked behind me. More water cascaded over me. I screamed into the sack: 'I don't know anything!' I started shivering.
I heard voices. One of them laughed. 'More soon, asshole.'
I was treated to a few more kicks in the back and the sack was whipped away. The goggles and ear defenders went straight back on.
I was off, I was moving.
I kept my eyes closed and every muscle clenched. I'd happily take a beating, if only they didn't put me back on that fucking thing.
They lifted me to my feet and half dragged, half carried me out of the room. We turned right, back along the corridor. My toes scraped and tore along the rutted concrete.
I was pushed to the floor, and the skin on my knees opened up again. Even that pain was bearable now.
I tried to sit back, and immediately got a kick in the ribs. I had to keep my thighs absolutely vertical and my back ramrod straight. My hands were throbbing again.
I didn't know who else was in there. I didn't know if or when I'd be back in the interrogation room. Another bucket of water was tipped over my head. I shivered uncontrollably. My thighs started to shake. My whole body trembled. My back was hurting after the kicking and with the effort of trying to keep it straight. Something had to give. I bent forward a little from the waist to relieve the pain.
Hands grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me back into the stress position. A couple of seconds later, I was deluged with another bucket of water and the shivers took hold.
83
The concrete ridges dug into my raw knees. I had to relieve the pain. I leant forward, but that just changed the angle of attack. I pretended to collapse.
Kicks rained in and I got hauled back into position.
I must have been there for another ten or fifteen minutes. My hands felt the size of watermelons, and pumped so full of blood they were within seconds of bursting.
I was grabbed under each armpit. A knife blade worked its way between the plasticuffs and my skin.
I was moved immediately. I was relieved to be out of the stress position, but dreading what might come next. The worst fear is the fear of the unknown. The stress positions, the cold water, the cold rooms, the holding area with the gravel, I knew all this technical stuff was designed to disorient me, get me worried, fuck me up. I knew it all and understood it, but it was still breaking me.
I tried to gauge how far we were moving along what I presumed was a corridor. Was I being taken back to the waterboarding room? If I wasn't, would that be good or bad? Anew room might be worse. Anew room might mean Phase Two.
The hands on my left let go of me, and the ones on my right pulled me through a doorway. My face banged against the frame.
The floor the other side was slick with water. I was turned and shoved down on a hard plastic chair. My hands were plasticuffed to its front legs.
I stayed hunched for a moment, teeth gritted, every muscle clenched. Then I eased myself forward to try to relieve the pressure on my plasticuffed hands. I'd lost all feeling in them.
My world was dark and silent. I tried to kid myself I felt safer that way. That instead of fearing the unknown, it was better just not to know.
Whatever was in the room with me, I couldn't hear it and I couldn't see it.
I could no longer smell lemon, but I could smell the sulphur of a struck match, then burning tobacco, and that was very bad news. These two knuckle-draggers didn't have the skill to cause pain and keep people alive at the same time.
84
The ear defenders and ski goggles were ripped away once more. The first thing I heard, even through the prison walls, was the sound of a large aircraft landing. I kept my eyes closed and stayed exactly where I was.
When I opened them again, Sundance and Trainers were looking at me from the other side of the cell. The speaker stood on a stool between us, its red light on.
We waited.
Sundance bent closer to it, as if he thought that was how you used these things. 'He's listening.'
He and Trainers stood back and each sucked at a roll-up. They were wearing fleeces to combat the cold. The room held their smoke at chest level.
The Yes Man got down to business. 'Do you know what the American vice-president called waterboarding?'
I couldn't be arsed to answer. It wasn't as if it was going to make my situation any better.
'A "dunk in the water", he said. He doesn't believe it's torture. Rather, a very important tool in the fight against terrorism. Do you know what I find incredible about that?'
Fuck him.
'It's that the Americans gaoled a Japanese officer in 1947 for waterboarding a US civilian during the war. They sentenced him to fifteen years' hard labour.'
He didn't wait for an answer. 'The only difficulty I have with the technique is that anyone will confess eventually — even to things he or she hasn't done. But where we want information, not a confession, I consider it very effective.'
The speaker boomed. He must have leant very close to his microphone. 'Where is the film?'
I stared at the floor. The bottoms of the chair legs had probably once been rubber-tipped. The steel had long since rusted from contact with the wet.