Chapter 50
The HRT and NYPD SWAT teams were swarming around the building. All the doors had been blown off their hinges, and several windows were shattered. So much for "knock and announce" protocol, but the plan seemed to have worked well from what I could see so far. Except for finding Shafer. Where was that son of a bitch? I'd missed him like this a couple of times before.
The woman who'd gone out the top-floor window was dead, which is what happens when you plunge headfirst three stories down onto a sidewalk. I congratulated a few HRT guys as I made my way through the top floor; they did the same for me.
I met Michael Ainslie on the stairs. " Washington wants you involved with the interrogations," he told me, not seeming too pleased. "There are six of them. How do you want to handle it?"
"Shafer?" I asked Ainslie. "Anything on him?"
"They say he isn't here. We don't know for sure. We're still looking for him."
I couldn't help feeling a letdown about the Weasel, but I sucked it up. I walked inside a workspace that had been turned into a quasi-apartment. Sleeping bags and a few stained mattresses were strewn across the bare wooden floor. Five males and a woman sat together handcuffed like prisoners of war, which I suppose they were.
I stared at them without saying a word at first.
Then I pointed to the youngest-looking male: small, thin, wire-rimmed glasses, scruffy beard, of course. "Him," I said, and started to walk out of the room. "I want that one. Bring him now!"
After the young male was taken from the main living area to a smaller adjoining bedroom, I looked around the main room again.
I pointed to another youngish male with long curly black hair and a full beard. "That one," I said, and he was also escorted out. No explanation.
Next I was introduced to an FBI interpreter, a man named Wasid who spoke Arabic, Farsi, Pashto. We entered the bedroom next door together.
"He's probably Saudi, possibly all of them are," the interpreter told me on the way in. Wherever he was from, the small, thin young man seemed extremely nervous. Sometimes Islamic terrorists are more comfortable with the idea of dying than with being captured and questioned by the Devil. That was my leverage here: I was the Devil.
I encouraged the translator to engage the terrorist suspect in small talk about his hometown and then his difficult transition to life in New York, the Devil's den. I asked that he slip in that I was a fairly good man and one of the few FBI agents who wasn't inherently evil. "Tell him I read the Koran. Beautiful book."
In the meantime, I sat and tried to model the terrorist's behavior, to mimic it, without being too obvious. He sat forward in his chair. So did I. If I could become the first American he would learn to trust, even a little, he might let something slip.
It didn't work too well at first, but he did answer a few questions about his city of origin; he maintained that he came to America on a student visa, but I knew he didn't have a passport. He also didn't know the location of any universities in New York, not even NYU.
Finally, I got up and stomped angrily out of the room. I went to see the second suspect and repeated the same process with him.
Then I returned to the skinny youth. I carried in a stack of reports and threw them on the floor. There was a loud whack, and he actually jumped.
"Tell him he lied to me!" I yelled at the translator. "Tell him I trusted him. Tell him the FBI and CIA aren't filled with fools, whatever he's been told in his country. Just keep talking to him. Yelling is even better. Don't let him talk until he has something to tell us. Then yell over whatever he has to say. Tell him he's going to die and then we'll track down his entire family in Saudi Arabia!"
For the next couple of hours, I kept going back and forth between the two rooms. My years as a therapist made me fairly good at reading people, especially in a disturbed state. I picked out a third terrorist, the remaining woman, and added her to the mix. CIA officers were questioning the subjects every time I left a room. No torture, but it was a constant barrage.
In the FBI training sessions at Quantico, they talk about their principles of interrogation as the RPMs: rationalization, projection, and minimization. I rationalized like crazy: "You're a good person, Ahmed. Your beliefs are true ones. I wish I had your strong faith." I projected blame: "It isn't your fault. You're just a young guy. The United States government can be evil at times. Sometimes I think we need to be punished myself." I minimized consequences: "So far, you've committed no actual crimes here in America. Our weak laws and judicial system can protect you." And I got down to business: "Tell me about the Englishman. We know that his name is Geoffrey Shafer. He's called the Weasel. He was here yesterday. We have videotapes, photographs, audiotapes. We know he was here. Where is he now? He's the one we really want."
I kept at it, repeating my pitch again and again. "What did the Englishman want you to do? He's the guilty one, not you or your friends. We already know this. Just fill in a few blanks for us. You'll be able to go home."
Then I repeated the same questions about the Wolf.
Nothing worked with any of the terrorists, though, not even the young ones. They were tough; more disciplined and more experienced than they looked; smart and clearly very motivated.
Why not? They believed in something. Maybe there's something to be learned from that, too.
Chapter 51
The next terrorist I chose was older, ruddily good-looking, with a thick mustache and white, nearly perfect teeth. He spoke English and told me, with some pride, that he had studied at Berkeley and Oxford.
"Biochemistry and electrical engineering. Does that surprise you?" His name was Ahmed el-Masry, and he was number eight on Homeland Security's hit list.
He was very willing to talk about Geoffrey Shafer.
"Yes, the Englishman came here. You are right about this, of course. Video- and audiotapes don't usually lie. He claimed to have something important he wanted to talk to us about."
"And did he?"
El-Masry frowned deeply. "No, not really. We thought he might be one of your agents."
"So why did he come here?" I asked. "Why did you consent to see him?"
El-Masry shrugged off my question. "Curiosity. He said that he had access to tactical nuclear explosive devices."
I winced, and my heart started to beat a whole lot faster. Nuclear devices in the metropolitan New York area? "Did he have the weapons?"
"We agreed to talk with him. We believed he meant suitcase nuclear bombs. Suitcase nukes. Difficult to obtain, but not impossible. As you may know, the Soviet Union built them during the Cold War. No one knows how many, or what happened to them. The Russian Mafiya has tried to sell them in recent years, or so it's rumored. I wouldn't actually know. I came here to be a professor, you see. To look for employment."
A shudder passed through me. Unlike conventional warheads, suitcase nukes were designed to go off at ground level. They were about the size of a large valise and could easily be operated by an infantryman.
They could also be concealed just about anywhere, even carried on foot around New York, Washington, London, Frankfurt.
"So, did he have access to suitcase nukes?" I asked el-Masry.
He shrugged. "We are just students and teachers. In truth, why should we care about nuclear weapons?"
I thought that I understood what he was doing now-bargaining for himself and his people.