But Wahid wasn’t listening. His eyes were blinking fast, tears forming. “Please take me back to my cell. My home cell. Not the one here. I miss him. I miss him so much.”
“Miss who?” Johnston asked, but it was like a pebble thrown into a waterfall of words.
“The Jell-O. The lime Jell-O. They must stop serving it. It is disgusting. Not fit for a man or even a beast. I do like the pizza. They serve it every Thursday and that is how I know a week has passed. I should not eat it as it is food for capitalists, but I like it. Not the mushrooms though. I think that is part of the torture. But I eat them to show that you cannot break me. But I am speaking now. Why am I speaking now?” Wahid’s entire body shook as if it were fighting the words pouring out of his mouth.
He shifted into Arabic, the words flowing, the tape recorders capturing every one. Johnston gave up for the moment, stepping farther back, letting the man who had never spoken, speak, with the recorders catching it all. The moment went to minutes. Three times Rhodes had to come forward and give Wahid some water, a dark twist considering the waterboarding. Minutes passed into an hour and then a second hour.
There was no doubt somewhere in that flow was information that was going to lead to a Predator drone or two, letting loose Hellfire somewhere in the world.
By now, even the ones in the interrogation room could sense the impatience of those in the viewing room. Wahid might be giving up every element of Al Qaeda, but they had places to be and things to do. Cherry Tree worked. That was obvious.
Then Wahid shifted into English once more. “He watches me.”
Johnston jumped into the slight pause. “Who does?”
“The man in the next cell.” Tears began to stream down Wahid’s face. “He watches me all the time. I cannot stop him. I cannot stop myself. He watches me in the shower. He watches me when I please myself, late at night, between the guards coming through. I cannot stop myself.”
The watching-room audience, which had first listened with rapt attention, then some impatience during the Arabic, shifted with unease.
“But I do not really mind,” Wahid continued. “I watch him too. He is beautiful.”
Johnston looked at Upton. The truth was good, but perhaps too much was too much? Everyone fears unadulterated truth, the cutting edge of it ripping into a man’s soul, his darkness and his despair, and worse, his longings.
Wahid slipped back into Arabic, his voice rattling to a rough whisper.
Johnston definitely knew enough was enough. He turned to the glass, stepping between the muttering prisoner and the observers. Upton stood by his side.
“Gentlemen, do you have any questions for Doctor Upton?”
A disembodied voice came out of the speaker. “How long does the effect last?”
“Four hours,” Upton said. “Give or take a deviance of two percent, which is very precise overall.”
“Aftereffects?” a different voice asked.
Upton shrugged. “None that we’ve seen but we’ll be monitoring the subject at a max security facility.”
“Outstanding,” a third voice echoed out of the speaker, startling even Johnston with its easily recognizable Boston accent. General George “Lightning Bolt” Riggs, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was the number-two ranking military officer in the country and the man who did the dirty work for the chairman. He had not been noted on the attendance list in the memorandum for the experiment.
That’s the way Riggs worked. Be where no one expected him to be, keep his finger on the pulse of the darkest of secrets, looking for opportunity and also for danger.
The door next to the glass opened and Riggs stepped into the room with a man in civilian clothes next to him — the Joint Chiefs of Staff scientific adviser, Brennan. No one else who’d been behind the glass mattered now.
Colonel Johnston took an involuntary step back, perhaps some genetic memory of his ancestors facing Riggs’s “damn Yankee” ancestors on battlefields during the War of Northern Aggression. Perhaps just a normal reaction to Riggs’s imposing presence. Angry with himself, Johnston reclaimed the lost step.
“Good morning, General.”
Riggs walked over to Wahid, who was muttering in Arabic. “Broke the son of a bitch and didn’t have to touch a hair on his head. Outstanding,” he repeated. “The bleeding-heart cowards who wail about rights won’t have dick to say about this. A little prick of the skin to get the prick talking.” His coarse language betrayed his Beacon Hill accent, a strange combination. The result was something Riggs had practiced since his upper-class years at West Point upon realizing it kept others off balance, not sure who or what they were dealing with.
Riggs snapped his attention from Wahid to Upton. “I assume you have more of this… what did you call it?”
“Cherry Tree, sir.”
Riggs smiled. “Cute, very cute. We have more trees to chop down. Do you have to inject it?”
Upton blinked. “Well, we’ve, uh, always injected, but it could probably pass through the stomach lining and have an effect. Perhaps even be absorbed through the skin. It doesn’t take much in the bloodstream, as long as it gets to the mind.”
“Can you put it in a drink?” Riggs asked. “Drop some in a glass of water?”
Upton’s eyes shifted to Rhodes and Riggs didn’t miss it, turning his imperious gaze to the younger scientist. “You were the grunt on this, weren’t you, son? You did all the dirty work?” He didn’t wait for an answer, indicating he believed his suspicion was correct, and whether it was or not in reality, it now was in this room.
“I did the lab work, sir,” Rhodes managed to get out.
“So can we?” Riggs pressed.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Riggs frowned. “Okay, listen to me.” He glared at Upton and then Rhodes. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. You’ve used this on a human before. You had to, because as you pointed out with your dipshit, not-funny joke, rats can’t tell the truth. All you could tell by injecting them was whether they’d fucking die or grow a second head, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “How many times have you tested it on humans before this and how?”
Upton swallowed. “Three times under tight lab protocol.”
“On who?”
“Subjects supplied by the Agency.”
“Subjects supplied by the Agency’s merks from Deep Six you mean,” Riggs corrected. “Which means people that were snatched somewhere and are never going to see the light of day again and we don’t think hold any useful information.”
“I guess, sir,” Upton said.
“You didn’t ask?”
“No, sir.”
“Did that right at least,” Riggs said. “I don’t do dog and pony shows. So if you know it fucking works coming in, tell me it fucking works, then show me it fucking working, but don’t fucking lie to me, understand?”
Upton nodded, but a small flicker of defiance still flared up. “We weren’t ready, sir. We anticipated more trials and at least six months of analysis before field deployment.”
“Then maybe you should have waited,” Brennan said in a calm voice, trying to smooth the storm-tossed waters in the room.
“I was ordered by directive to do this,” Upton argued. He belatedly added: “Sir.”
“By who?” Brennan asked.
Upton spread his hands in surrender. “A directive from the head of DORKA. I tried getting clarification. I sent a memo telling him we weren’t ready. I was told to do this anyway.”
Riggs had already moved on, ignoring Upton’s excuses. “We need to take this to the next level ASAP. Slip it to the Russian ambassador. If it doesn’t go through the stomach, then we jab him with a fucking umbrella like the Russkies used to do to assassinate people.
“We need to find out if they’re as full of shit as I suspect they are about the nuke treaty. Pulling a fast one on us to make up for their crappy-ass military. Couldn’t beat us fair, so no doubt the sons of bitches will cheat like they’ve been doing ever since Truman wouldn’t let George S. loose on them.” He used Patton’s first name, as if they had an intimate relationship, which he actually believed, given Patton had also felt he’d served in other armies at other times.