Khadri. I’ll tell you about the box I got from Dmitri. I’ll even tell you the biggest secret of all, where that box is now. Just leave me alone. Then Farouk reminded himself that he must not fear. But maybe he could give this man a little. Anything to make that smile disappear.
“Farouk, are you listening?”
Farouk nodded. He hated himself for answering the man but his will seemed to have melted away.
“I’m not supposed to kill you. But I am allowed to make you wish you were dead.”
The American walked out. Even before he closed the door, Farouk felt the hood coming down over his head.
“No,” Farouk said. “Please. Ask me something. I’ll tell you.” His voice became a shout. “I’ll tell you! Please!”
But the room went dark, and Farouk knew that the hole awaited.
THE NEXT FEW weeks were much the same. As the interrogations continued, Farouk’s experiences in confinement became even more terrifying; he was shot up with adrenaline until his heart raced so fast that he believed it would explode. He was slipped LSD and left to chase his mind around the silent room. When he tried to sleep he was hit and kicked by men he could not see.
Meanwhile, Saul lengthened the stretches that Farouk spent outside of solitary confinement, in order to make the contrast between the hole and the world even sharper. Saul wanted Farouk to learn that Saul could save or destroy him, could turn day to night, white to black.
The lessons were effective, and Farouk divulged new secrets at each session. He told them how he had met bin Laden. How he had recruited three employees in Pakistan’s nuclear program. How he had met an American agent for al Qaeda who was being sent back to the United States to help carry out a major attack. Saul hadn’t expected Farouk to give up so much so soon; he simply wasn’t as tough as Khalid Mohammed or other senior al Qaeda lieutenants, who had taken months to break. Still, Saul believed that Farouk was holding something back.
AS THE C-5 made its way over the Indian Ocean, Exley worked her way through the transcriptions of Farouk’s interrogations and his reactions in solitary. The report’s descriptions were cool and clinical: “The subject screamed ‘Allah!’ for several minutes before losing consciousness. When he was revived…” Exley felt herself growing cold, and part of her wished that the jet could turn around and take her home.
“What do you think?” Shafer said.
“I see why I had to sign that security clearance,” she said. “Are we keeping a video?”
“Nope.”
She wasn’t surprised. The Pentagon had learned something from Abu Ghraib, though maybe not the lesson that rights groups had hoped. “I’m not exactly naive, Ellis,” she said. “I knew this stuff was happening.” She shivered. “But I guess it’s different when you read it firsthand. That’s all.”
Shafer merely grunted, and they sat the rest of the flight in silence. They touched down at Diego Garcia so smoothly that Exley hardly realized they had landed. As the plane’s huge rear doors opened and sunlight filled the C-5, the Rangers ran out with a cheer. Exley had never missed being twenty-five so much, though she was consoled by the fact that Shafer looked even worse than she felt, with a scrim of stubble on his cheeks and his eyes bloodshot.
“What day is it?”
Shafer looked at his watch. “Saturday. Saturday morning.”
“We left Thursday night.”
Shafer yawned gigantically. “Nineteen-hour flight, and we’re eleven hours ahead of D.C.”
They walked gingerly onto the tarmac. The equatorial sun shone hard on the Humvees parked around them, glaring off mirrors and windows. Exley was glad she’d brought her sunglasses. Coconut palms and ironwood trees were scattered around the runway, a strange juxtaposition with the military hardware. The warm moist air reminded her of Washington, though a light ocean breeze made the humidity here easier to take. Around them the Rangers were unloading their bags and bitching good-naturedly about the flight. For them Diego was just another base. Yet Exley had an overwhelming urge to be somewhere else.
A soldier walked toward them. “Sir? Ma’am? You must be Mr. Shafer and Ms. Exley. Please come with me.”
FAROUK SAT IN the evil dark, the evil all-seeing dark. The blackest darkness there ever was. So dark that he could almost convince himself the darkness was light. Only it wasn’t.
He knew now that Allah had forsaken him, left him to rot in the claws of the
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t do this. Please.” Allah you have forsaken me. You have forsaken me.
Tears rolled down his cheeks. In the diminishing rational corner of his mind he knew that the Americans had somehow built this room to hold him. It was just a cell, a specially designed cell that was silent and dark. Sometimes he tried to envision how they had put it together. But he couldn’t keep his thoughts straight for long. Soon enough the darkness took over. The darkness, and the…tricks. He didn’t know what else to call them. The tricks. They
Farouk had told Saul a lot, more than he’d ever meant to say. But Saul wanted more. “I know that’s not everything, Farouk,” he would say quietly. And the hood would go back on. Farouk couldn’t convince him otherwise, no matter how hard he tried. Because of course he hadn’t told Saul the biggest secret of all, about the package from Dmitri. And he needed to keep that secret with him. In the dark.
SAUL WANTED TO break Farouk today, give the folks from Langley a show. He didn’t feel any need to hide his methods from them. They weren’t from the Red Cross or snot-nosed reporters. They were on the team. They were cleared to see. So let them see.
THE LIEUTENANT ESCORTED Exley and Shafer to a thick concrete building at the northern edge of the compound. BUILDING12. RESTRICTED ACCESS: LEVEL1 TF 121CLEARANCE REQUIRED said a small sign in red letters. A tall, unfriendly man in a floppy hat stood guard by the building’s steel doors, trying to find shadow from the afternoon sun.
“Mr. Shafer, Ms. Exley, this is as far as I go,” the lieutenant said. “But I’ll wait for you there when you leave.” He pointed to a building they had passed.
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“You’re welcome, ma’am.” He turned and strode away. He couldn’t wait to get away from this building, Exley saw.
THE MAN ON the infrared monitors hardly moved. They couldn’t see his face, which was covered by a hood. But they could hear his sobbing. “Does he always cry like this?” Exley said.
“He started to cry late in his third session,” Saul said. “Now he cries almost constantly after a couple hours.”
“And how many sessions has he had?”
“Eight. He’s progressing nicely,” Saul said.
“When did he mention Wells?”
“About a week ago. I can go back over it with him if you like. He’s very cooperative about things we’ve already discussed.”
Saul had shown them the building before bringing them in here. The hole was in its own wing on the first floor, specially proofed against sound and light, he said. Normally such rooms were built underground, but the coral on Diego didn’t permit deep construction.
“Please,” the man on the screen said. “Please.” His sobs thickened. If any of the interrogators noticed, they didn’t comment.
“How long has he been in there?” Exley asked as neutrally as she could.
