“It doesn’t matter,” Costello said, “because none of this is real.”
“What’s not real, Dr. Costello?”
“This world.”
“The world isn’t real?”
“This world.” Costello tried to spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture, but, restrained by the cuffs, had to settle for flapping his hands. “This country.”
“I’m not following you, Dr. Costello.”
“The ‘United Arab States.’ It’s not real.”
“You’re saying you don’t recognize the authority of the UAS government?”
“No, I’m saying it doesn’t exist. It’s a mirage. There is no Arab superpower, no union of Arab states. In the real world, you’re just a bunch of backward third-world countries that no one would even care about except for oil . . .”
“Dr. Costello, what are you—”
“It’s a mirage! All of it: This country. This world. Everything you think you know, about what is, is just an illusion. A dream.” He paused, stymied momentarily by Mustafa’s incredulous expression, but then pushed on. “America. America is the true superpower.”
“America,” Mustafa said. “Really.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me—”
“That’s good, Dr. Costello, because I don’t. I don’t know what sort of game you think you’re playing at here, but if you want to talk about what’s real, then I’ll tell you, my superiors—the men in charge of deciding your fate—they really don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to terrorism. So if you’ve got some half-baked notion of pleading insanity—”
“I’m not crazy,” Costello said. “I’m not pleading anything. I accept my fate. I’m trapped in the mirage, as long as God sees fit to maintain it.”
“This mirage you speak of, it’s God’s doing?”
Costello nodded. “ ‘The last shall be first, and the first last . . .’ God’s turned the world upside down.”
“And why would He do that?”
“To punish us.”
“The Americans?”
“Yes.”
“For what sin?”
“Pride,” Costello said. “Failure to submit to His will. We turned away from Him, so He turned away from us. He sent the mirage, and put you people in charge.”
“The Arabs are instruments of God’s wrath?”
“Something like that.”
“And those Gaza City thugs who killed your fiancée. They work for God too?”
Costello was silent.
“And if you believe that,” Mustafa pressed him, “why fight against us? How does that make sense, to terrorize God’s own agents?”
“It’s not about you,” Costello said. “It’s about us. About demonstrating our faith.”
“Through murder?”
“I told you I was sorry.”
“Dr. Costello—”
“I’m sorry about your wife. I’m sorry you’re in pain. I mean that . . . But it doesn’t matter. You’d be in pain anyway. Your suffering isn’t part of the mirage. It’s just your lot.”
“My lot.”
“All of you,” Costello said. “You’re the losers. It’s not fair, but it’s how it is: God’s plan has winners and losers, and you’re the losers. You’re the losers. That’s reality . . . And we’ll kill as many of you as we have to, to get back there.”
Listening to this, Mustafa was once again aware of the motion of the earth beneath his feet. He felt a tingle in his hands as his nails dug into his palms, and imagined a reality, quite close, in which he leaned across the table and began battering Costello with his fists.
Just as well that Abdullah chose that moment to knock on the glass.
“He’s not lying,” Abdullah said.
“You mean this life really is just a dream?” said Samir. “Can I be rich when I wake up?”
“Obviously the story is nonsense. But according to the machine, he believes what he’s saying.”
“You pulled me out to tell me the man’s insane?” Mustafa said, still flushed with anger. “I knew that already, thanks.”
“It wasn’t me,” Abdullah said. He jerked a thumb at Amal.
“Umm Dabir just called down from Farouk’s office,” Amal explained. “She said Farouk’s on the phone with Riyadh. She said you told her to let you know the next time that happened during an interview.”
“Riyadh’s calling now? About this guy?”
“Umm Dabir didn’t say what the call was about. But if that’s what you were waiting for, I guess so.”
Seven times over the past two years, Mustafa’s interrogation of a terror suspect had been interrupted by an official call from Riyadh ordering that the questioning cease immediately; in each case, senior AHS agents had arrived soon after to transfer the prisoner to a “special location.” For a long time, he’d thought little of it.
Then about a month ago, he’d tried to do some follow-up on one of these special prisoners—a French smuggler named René Arceneau—and discovered that the files pertaining to his arrest had vanished. His name had been scrubbed from the computer databases, not just the AHS databases but all of them. ICE, the Bureau, Halal Enforcement’s Maghreb division, even the Algerian Department of Motor Vehicles, all parties to Arceneau’s capture, now claimed to have no record of him.
This was unprecedented. Even in cases of extraordinary rendition, where prisoners were shipped overseas to be questioned in a human-rights vacuum like Texas, the Arab government didn’t deny that the prisoners were in custody, it merely lied about what was done to them. Mustafa wondered what would be bad enough to make the state destroy evidence of a person’s very existence.
He also wondered why he cared so much. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already known that “special location” was a euphemism for a torture facility. And once you assent to a person being drugged, starved, beaten, hung by the wrists, burned, frozen, choked, drowned, electrocuted, and kept in sensory deprivation until his mind breaks, why should it bother you to think that he might also be murdered, and once murdered, erased?
Maybe it was the timing. The day Mustafa learned that René Arceneau had become an unperson was the same day he’d gotten Fadwa’s death certificate.
We close our eyes to sin, but God sees all.
Mustafa’s subsequent attempt to learn more about Arceneau’s fate had uncovered only one additional piece of information: The order to have him removed to special custody had come not from AHS headquarters but from Congress, from the office of the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Mustafa learned this from Farouk, who’d warned him to stop rattling the knobs of doors he had no business opening.
That the warning hadn’t taken proved beyond all doubt that Farouk was right to be worried about his sanity. Who’s more dangerous to wrestle with, a suicide bomber or a senator? Clearly the latter: A suicide bomber only has one way to destroy you.
“Mustafa?” Amal said. “What’s going on?”
“That’s a very good question,” Mustafa replied. “Who’s handling the search of Costello’s apartment?”
“Sayyid and Abu Naji.”
“Why don’t you and Samir hurry over there and help them?”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” said Samir.
“Please, just do it.” Mustafa held out his hand. “Can I borrow your cell phone while you’re gone?”
“My cell phone . . .” Samir sighed and reached into his pocket. “And what about Amal’s cell phone, eh?”
Amal, who still didn’t know what was going on here, but was smart enough to guess at a few details, said: “My battery charge is very low. I may have to leave the phone switched off to conserve power . . . What are you going to do, Mustafa?”
“Keep talking to Dr. Costello. While he’s still with us.”