“Look, you must have killed them, those two detainees, otherwise you wouldn’t have paid D’Angelo to zap their records. That was a big mistake, and you knew it was risky, but you did it anyway. And the only explanation is that you had to have them gone because they were dead. So, why don’t you just come clean? I swear, Brant, I’m not wearing a wire. Your guys frisked me.”
“You think that’s what happened? You think we killed our prisoners. Got what we needed from them and disposed of them. War crimes.”
“Maybe it was an accident.”
“You know what, John? I’m gonna tell you after all. Outside of Whitby and Terreri and me, you’ll be the only one who knows the truth. And then you can decide who to blame.”
27
By the time Rachel Callar walked into Terreri’s office, the rest of the squad was there. The room stank of cigar smoke. Eight men, eight cigars. Even Jerry Williams, normally a health nut, was puffing away.
“Major.”
“Colonel. I see you have a fire drill planned.”
“A pleasure as always,” Terreri said, waving his cigar at her. “Can I offer you one?” He nodded at the wooden box on his desk. “Cubans. From this store in Warsaw. I’m picking up a few dozen before we go home.”
“Congratulations. Who’s watching Jawaruddin and Mohammed? ”
“Fatty and crazy aren’t going anywhere,” Murphy said. “We figured they could use some time alone.”
Callar knew Murphy wanted to rile her. Yet she could hardly resist the bait, putting a finger in his chest and telling him to shut up, that those were human beings downstairs and she didn’t care if Jawaruddin had given them the keys to Fort Knox and Osama bin Laden, too, and—
She breathed in deep, reached for the place where she was in control. She knew it existed, though she needed a map to find it these days.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave them alone.”
“Then go keep an eye on them,” Murphy said.
“Enough,” Terreri said. He reached for a cardboard box from under his desk, pulled out cowboy hats in all shapes and sizes.
“We’ve all worked hard all these months. I know it’s been tough. But it’s paid off. This is what Jawaruddin bin Zari has been hinting at for the last couple weeks. We recovered it four days ago in Pakistan. Karp and I are the only ones who are supposed to see it, but I figure we all deserve a look. But you’ll only see it once, so watch closely. And it goes without saying, this is beyond classified.”
He clicked on his laptop. On the flat-screen television across the room, the video of bin Zari and Tafiq began to play.
TWO FLOORS DOWN, Mohammed Fariz sat on his cot, his eyes closed, his legs folded under him. He looked almost peaceful, but he wasn’t. The djinns were with him constantly now.
They didn’t yell at him anymore, and for that he was grateful. They didn’t yell because he’d agreed to do what they asked. He understood them now. They were his friends, the djinns, his only friends. They helped him see.
Every day, the Americans walked Jawaruddin down the corridor past Mohammed’s cell. And every day Mohammed saw that Jawaruddin wasn’t Jawaruddin at all. A devil had put salt in his mouth and seeped into his blood through his throat. He seemed to breathe, but he didn’t. The Jawaruddin-devil was in charge here. The Americans pretended to hold him, but really they worked for him. He could leave anytime. Every time Jawaruddin walked by Mohammed’s cell, he said hello, and the words made Mohammed’s teeth hurt so much that he wanted to pull them out. But Mohammed didn’t say anything at all. He just nodded and smiled. The djinns told him that if he nodded and smiled, his teeth wouldn’t hurt. The djinns explained everything. They came in the night and talked to him.
They showed him how to unscrew the metal leg of his cot, how to sharpen its edges against the bed frame each night while the guards slept. They showed him that if he stood on his cot he could use the leg as a screwdriver to loosen the grate that covered the air duct in the ceiling. The screws were rusted tight, and for a week Mohammed worked them, inch by inch, tearing up his fingers. He wondered if the Americans would notice, but the djinns told him not to worry, that the Americans didn’t pay attention to him anymore. Finally, the night before last, the screws came loose and he took off the grate and stood on his tiptoes and looked inside the vent.
The tube above was a dark tight metal hole, too small for an average-sized man to fit. But Mohammed wasn’t an average-sized man. He was an underfed teenage boy, 1.6 meters — five-four — and sixty kilograms — one hundred thirty pounds. He reached inside the vent. Less than a foot above the ceiling, it connected with a cross-tunnel that ran above all the rooms and cells in the basement. Mohammed screwed the grate back on and lay down and closed his eyes and waited for the djinns to tell him what to do next.
MODERN AMERICAN PRISONS DIDN’T have ventilation systems that extended directly into their cells. But this wasn’t a modern American prison, and until 673 arrived, these cells weren’t used for long-term confinement anyway. Misbehaving Polish soldiers were hauled in for a week or two and then discharged or transferred to larger bases for more serious punishment. And central heating was a necessity in Stare Kiejkuty, where the temperature regularly dropped below zero in the winter.
When 673 took over the barracks, Jack Fisher had seen the vents. He’d given the Rangers standing orders to check them once every two weeks, make sure the prisoners didn’t tamper with them. Mohammed’s cell was due for another check. In four days.
AS MOHAMMED READIED HIMSELF for his mission, bin Zari lay two cells away on his cot, hands folded behind his head. He could almost believe he’d dreamed those weeks in the torture chamber. The antibiotics had taken care of his pneumonia. The blisters on his skin had healed. He had no scars, no broken bones. His insides had nearly recovered, the woman doctor told him. Even the most sympathetic lawyer might not believe his story.
These Americans had defeated him without leaving a mark. He wanted to be angry at himself for breaking, but he couldn’t. He’d sent dozens of believers to their deaths, helped them strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves into eternity. But in truth he’d helped those men, offering them the briefest burst of earthly torment in return for the perpetual bliss that Allah granted his martyrs. What the Americans had done to him was something else, endless pain unrelieved by death. No one could beat that room.
Since he’d agreed to talk, they’d treated him decently. Then again, he hadn’t given them reason to hurt him. In the last few weeks, he had thought of going back on his word, giving them fake names, addresses, plots. But he didn’t know how much they knew. And if they put him back in the torture cell, he would shed his skin like a snake, thirsty and desperate as the blood poured off him. They would take him to the brink and bring him back, over and over, until his mind snapped.
The day before he broke in the torture room, its walls had turned into living crepe paper. He’d needed a few seconds to realize he was seeing roaches, thousands of them. They scuttled across the floor and over his skin, crawled into his mouth and nose and even his ears, scuttling along, their touch dry and quick. They weren’t real. He knew they weren’t real. They had bomb belts, tiny and perfectly formed, strapped to their shells. Bin Zari had enough sanity left to know that roaches didn’t wear suicide bombs, that the stress of being chained to the floor for days on end was making him hallucinate. But they felt real. He saw them and heard them and suffered their touch on his skin. And he knew that if he stayed much longer in the cell, he would lose what was left of his mind.