The heaviliy armored soldier passed his prisoner into the custody of the sheriff. Then he just stood nodding to himself as he beheld Jon. He twisted his helmet to remove it, revealing a vaguely familiar face and a shaved head. He smiled and laughed hard as he grabbed Jon into a backslapping hug. “I can’t believe it! Jon Ross!”
“It’s been a long time, Pete. I’m glad you’re still alive.”
They exchanged world-weary looks. “Likewise.”
“How’s your quest going?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
He turned and shouted, “Price!”
A voice in the darkness answered. “Yes, Sergeant.”
“Make sure this prisoner gets brain-scanned. Let’s find out who sent him.”
As Fossen, the sheriff, and the others looked on, Jon and the bald-headed soldier walked off. “There’s a lot we need to talk about, Jon. . . .”
Chapter 26: // Privacy Policy
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Lots of folks on the darknet resent the random fMRI brain scans. Even though they’re administered by remote operator in a double-blind format, I frequently hear complaints about invasion of privacy. The issue is whether citizens of a democracy claim the right to lie on matters of material significance. Individual privacy must be weighed against the corrosive effect of lies in the public discourse.
It had been twenty-one years since Stanislav Ibanescu had worn the uniform of the Securitate, but he had never stopped making a living as a soldier. The world over, war was a growth business, and he knew he’d never go unemployed like his brothers. And earlier in the evening he had thought that no one back home would have believed that he was invading America. It had all been a dream come true.
But that was three hours ago and a long drive down dark roads into unknown captivity. Who these people were who held him was anyone’s guess—but they sure didn’t seem like a ragtag group of terrorists.
He considered the night’s events. The op had gone off without a hitch, and they were about to kill the target subject and leave. But a counterstrike team had assaulted them out of nowhere. The look-outs hadn’t reported a thing. In fact, Ibanescu hadn’t seen more than half a dozen of his men since they’d been captured.
Were they U.S. Army? Socom units? They were supposed to have free rein in this area. That’s what they’d been told by their contact, but it must have been a setup. Now he knew half his men were either dead or wounded, and the other half had been divided up and trundled off to god knew where. Now the tables had turned, and men who looked like science-fiction convention warriors in plastic armor and full headgear with mother-of-pearl faceplates were marching him down a white hallway glowing with light. Ibanescu was strapped to a backboard—even his head had been completely immobilized, and he knew what was coming next was torture. They were going to waterboard him, like he’d heard the Americans did. He was just hoping that this was a professional crew—one reachable by logic. One not doing this for kicks. He could then clear up this mistake. Because that was what it must be. Perhaps they were a local unit—one that hadn’t been informed. One thing was sure: this was going to cost extra. In any event, it couldn’t be worse than what he’d received at the hands of the Chechens.
The two armored soldiers brought Ibanescu into a strange chamber filled with what looked to be medical scanning equipment—like some sort of MRI or CAT scan equipment—cold and efficient. And even though he didn’t see anything around that could be used to torture him, he didn’t imagine it was far away.
Mercifully, he didn’t see any place where they could waterboard him without getting some expensive equipment wet.
The guards lifted the backboard holding their prisoner up onto a platform beneath the scanning equipment, and then lashed the board to the scanner bed.
Here we go.
He was suddenly sliding with the whir of electric motors, moving deeper into the scanning machine. Were they perhaps checking him for injuries? That seemed odd.
The backboard jerked to a stop, and Ibanescu soon heard the telltale sound of MRI magnets hammering, chirping, and pinging for one or two minutes. He’d gone through this before in Switzerland after a head injury while skiing.
As the scanning continued, a soothing female voice came to his ears, speaking English. Inbanescu knew some English, and he was able to decipher it.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
It was an oddly synthetic-sounding voice. He decided to pretend he didn’t understand and just kept staring up at the interior of the scanning machine.
“Yes. You do understand me.”
They were bluffing. He felt certain.
“Is English your primary language?” A pause. “No. It isn’t. Let’s find your primary language.”
This was strange. It definitely sounded like an artificial voice. Like something he might hear from a credit card or airline customer service line. Very strange. He wondered if this was some sort of automated interrogation system. Leave it to the Americans.
The soothing female voice spoke in a dozen different languages, waiting five or six seconds between each. Ibanescu didn’t understand any of them, although he thought he could detect French and German. Also Czech. Eventually she came to Rumanian. . . .
“Is your native language Rumanian?”
He was damned if he was going to answer. He just lay there like a statue.
Her voice responded differently this time. “Yes. You are Rumanian, aren’t you?”
He frowned. How the hell . . . ?
The rest of her words came to him in slightly stilted, synthetic-voiced Rumanian. “This machine is a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. It monitors the blood activity in your brain to identify patterns of deception, recognition, and emotion—such as fear or anger. You will be unable to evade my inquiries. So please relax and enjoy your interrogation.”
Ibanescu just frowned at the machine around him.
“Please speak your full name and place of birth.”
Were they serious? He wasn’t about to tell them anything. He just lay there silently.
“It appears you are either unable or unwilling to respond.”
Suddenly a map of the globe was projected onto the ceiling of the scanning chamber. It looked a lot like a Web mapping program, with the globe spinning slowly in space. The map zoomed in on Rumania as the globe stopped spinning.
“Where were you born?”
Asking again wasn’t going to help. It did feel comforting to see the map of his homeland, however. It was a detailed, physical map, showing the mountains and lakes. He could see a dot on the map for his hometown of Piteşti, northwest of Bucureşti.
Before he knew it, the view of the map centered on Piteşti.
Holy shit. Was this system tracking his eyes? Did it sense that he was focusing on Piteşti? What an idiot he was to fall for that! The map was zooming in now to a full-screen satellite view of Piteşti. He shut his eyes.
“You are from Piteşti, aren’t you?” There was a pause during which Ibanescu clenched his eyes tightly. “Yes, you are. This is where you were born, isn’t it? Do you still have family there?” A pause. “Yes. You do.”