The Midnight House

agency to track the jet minute by minute. Everyone involved with these renditions agreed that official U.S. government aircraft shouldn’t be used for the transfers, though no one could fully explain why. The answer seemed to be a combination of secrecy and plausible deniability. Not to mention the faint but definite odor of brimstone attached to the process of stealing men from their homelands without the approval of even a kangaroo court.

AS THE JET PROGRESSED over Ukraine, the smaller prisoner began to hammer his forehead against the cabin floor. A kick to the ribs stilled him, but after a few rattling breaths he started again, regular as a metronome, the flat, dull sound echoing through the jet.

Joe Zawadzki, the former Ranger captain in charge of the transfer, grabbed the man’s hood and held his head. Despite the Haldol, the prisoner’s shoulders and neck revealed tremendous agitation. But he neither cried nor spoke. Zawadzki was holding a vibrating bowling ball. After a few seconds, Zawadzki let go. Immediately, the prisoner banged his head, harder this time. And again.

Zawadzki had been in charge on dozens of these flights, and he’d never had a prisoner seriously injured. “All right,” he said. “Take off the hood, sit him up.”

They pulled on latex gloves, flipped the prisoner on his back, stuck a pillow under his head so he couldn’t do any more damage. Then Zawadzki pulled off his hood and tugged him up.

The prisoner’s lip was split and his nose was bleeding, not a gusher but a steady flow from the left nostril. Zawadzki was glad for the gloves. He grabbed the first-aid kit and a water bottle. The prisoner shook his head side to side, sending a trickle of blood on the floor. If he kept up this nonsense, they were going to have to hit him with another dose of Ativan, or more Haldol. Zawadzki kept syringes in his pack.

He poured water onto the Paki’s face, rubbed away the remaining blood with a gauze pad, taped a cotton ball into the prisoner’s nostril. Zawadzki poured a few drops of water into the guy’s mouth and waited to see if he would spit or swallow. He swallowed. The water seemed to have calmed him a little.

“Relax,” Zawadzki said. “No one’s gonna hurt you.”

The prisoner seemed unconvinced. He opened his mouth wide. A shiny spit bubble stretched between his lips, popped, re-formed. He mumbled something, and then repeated it more loudly. It wasn’t Arabic. Probably Pashto. Whatever it was, Zawadzki couldn’t understand.

“Quiet or the hood goes back on,” he said to the guy. “Come on, don’t you speak any Arabic?”

“He only knows Pashto. I know what he’s saying,” the second prisoner, the fat one, said in Arabic through his hood. “Take this off and I will tell you.”

Zawadzki pulled the fat guy’s hood half off so his mouth was visible.

“He says his ribs are broken, that the Pakistani police broke them when they took us to the airport. They beat us in their van. Like the animals they are. And these drugs you gave us are very bad. Poison.”

“Tell him he’ll get medical care when we land.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.” In fact, the guys running the detention center would make that decision. But Zawadzki wasn’t going to explain that right now. “Tell him to relax. He’s got to calm down.”

“All right,” the fat prisoner said. He craned his head toward the first prisoner, and the two men had a short conversation before Zawadzki pulled the hood back over the fat prisoner’s head. But the talk seemed to have done the trick. The first guy was breathing more normally. Zawadzki lowered him to the floor of the cabin and laid him down. Probably better for his ribs that way, if they really were broken. Zawadzki didn’t believe in hurting prisoners. His job was transport, not interrogation.

TOUCHDOWN WAS BUMPY. The runway needed to be repaved, but Szczynto-Symanty wasn’t a working airport. It opened only for these ghost flights. The Gulfstream taxied for a minute before its engines spooled down and the jet halted. The copilot opened the cabin door. “Looks like you guys had fun,” he said.

Zawadzki lifted the prisoner, shackled him again, and pulled the hood over him. The prisoner grunted and bobbed his head a couple of times, but the fight had gone out of him. For now. Zawadzki and another guard wrapped him in a black blanket and walked him to the cabin door and down to the runway. The other guards handled the second prisoner.

Outside, two black Jeeps and a Range Rover waited in the dark. Jack Fisher stood at the foot of the stairs. Zawadzki had run a couple of other prisoners to this squad over the last year. From what Zawadzki could see, they weren’t afraid to knock the prisoners around a little bit, maybe too much. But that wasn’t his business.

“Any trouble?”

“This one,” Zawadzki said. “Knocking his head against the floor, got a bloody nose. Says the Paki police broke his ribs on the way to the airport.” Zawadzki hesitated. “He needs medical treatment, maybe.”

“Poor little angel,” Fisher said. “You know, him and his buddy shot one of our guys last night.” Fisher reached behind the prisoner and pulled up his shackled hands, dragging his arms out and back and twisting his shoulders in their sockets. The prisoner groaned. “That’s right,” Fisher said. “You weren’t a good boy.” He let go. The prisoner flopped down, nearly falling over. Zawadzki propped him up.

“Let’s get them back to base, settle the paperwork there,” Fisher said. “Get him a deep-tissue massage.” He lifted the prisoner’s hood. “Lemme get a look.” He pushed back the prisoner’s lips, looked at his teeth and nose like he was inspecting a horse.

“Banged himself up nice, didn’t he? Good. Less work for us.”

12

Wells came back to Langley spoiling for a fight.

He’d spent a night in Cairo locked in an empty office at the mukhabarat headquarters in Abdeen, while the Egyptians verified his identity. Oddly, the room was festooned with Egyptian tourist posters, their slogans in English and French: Leave London behind, come to Cairo for Christmas! Les Pyramides d’Egypte: Une Merveille du Monde! Wells dated the posters to the late seventies: the men wore mustaches and checked short-sleeve shirts, the women blown-out hair and brightly colored miniskirts.

He had just fallen asleep, his head on the desk, when Hani walked in and poured a bucket of freezing water over his head and down his galabiya. Wells was covered in so much dust from the cemetery that he didn’t mind.

“I knew you were no Kuwaiti. I knew.”

I did you a favor, Wells didn’t say. You were getting nowhere fast. Now you can blame me for this mess.

“You knew I was muk,” Hani said.

“I thought so.”

“You should have told me who you were.” Hani banged a flashlight against the desk, sending vibrations oscillating into Wells’s damaged skull.

Wells sat up. “Did Alaa get away?”

“For now.”

“Good.”

This time Hani brought the flashlight down on top of Wells’s head. Not a full swing, and not in the same place as Wells had been sapped. But more than a love tap. Wells counted Mississippis in his head until the ringing stopped.

“What did you want from him?”

“I can’t remember.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Mainly, we talked soccer.”

Hani raised the flashlight over his head, turned toward Wells, measured his swing like a batter in the on- deck circle. One practice swing, another—