“On whose authority?” an older voice said.
“My people have spoken to the ministry. Here is a fax authorizing you to surrender him to me.”
In the dim fringes, someone shuffled a few pages of paper.
“As you can see by the summary,” the American said, “Rabat police and the pathologist confirm Corley had been deceased prior to the prisoner’s arrest at Corley’s residence. And witnesses confirm the prisoner’s whereabouts in the market and his hotel. He could not have killed Corley.”
A long tense moment passed.
“Should we obtain any further information,” the American continued, “we’ll share it with you.”
More time passed before a voice in the darkness muttered a command. Then Gannon’s interrogator grunted, the chains jangled and Gannon dropped to the floor.
He did not know how much time had passed before he was unshackled and taken to a bright, clean room. It appeared to be a medical examination room. He was left alone to take a hot shower. His body shook and he had to stop several times to lean against the wall and breathe.
He could not stop his tears.
When he finished he wrapped himself in a towel and sat on the only furniture available, a padded examination table.
What was happening?
He struggled to think.
Afterward, a doctor with white hair and a kind face under a few days of salt-and-pepper growth entered the room. Without speaking, he tended to Gannon’s wounds then returned his belongings, his passport, wallet and his clothes. While the doctor watched, Gannon was allowed to dress, as if the nightmare had never happened.
Everything was intact.
Except Gannon.
He couldn’t stop shaking. Tears filled his eyes.
“This will occur for some time,” the doctor said in accented English. “You will experience some bad nights, bad dreams. But you will be fine, I assure you. I have seen worse.” The doctor patted Gannon’s shoulder compassionately before starting to leave. “Return to America immediately, if you can. Say nothing of your experience.”
“Doctor?”
The older man stopped at the door.
“Where are we and who controls this place?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was the man who intervened-he sounded American.”
“I don’t know and I don’t wish to know.” He removed his glasses. “I don’t know anyone here. I do as I’m told since they took me from my home in Kurdistan six months ago.”
After the doctor left, Gannon stared at the white cinder block walls and battled to understand what had befallen him. His emotions swirled. He was angry at the violation but thankful someone had saved him from the horror that was coming from his captor.
Don’t dwell on what he was going to do with that scalpel.
Now, as Gannon tried to recover, he faced question after question.
Why was Corley murdered? What was the information Corley had about this story? Who was the American who’d intervened? What the hell is going on? Is any story worth my life?
Gannon gripped the edges of the examination table.
He would never give up. He would never surrender, being a reporter was all he was. He had nothing else in his life.
The door opened and a stranger entered: a man in his early fifties with short brown hair. His eyes were black ball bearings. They glared with an intensity that bordered on fury, above a grimace chiseled into a face of stone. He was just under six feet and wore khaki slacks and a blue golf shirt over his solid build. He held a slim binder with a file folder tucked inside. After assessing Gannon, he said: “Are you good to walk out of here?”
Gannon recognized the voice of the American who’d saved him.
“Walk to where?”
“My car. I’m taking you to your hotel so you can leave the country.”
“And who are you?”
“Who I am is not important. Let’s go.”
The man slid on sunglasses.
His car was a white Mercedes and neither of them spoke as it rolled soothingly along the unpaved road over a sun-scorched stretch of flatland for nearly half an hour before they came to a modern highway. Gannon noticed tiny scars on the man’s chin and an expression void of emotion behind his dark glasses.
“So, who are you and who are you with?” Gannon asked.
Robert Lancer looked straight ahead, considered the question and said, “I’m a U.S. agent.”
“Are you FBI?”
He said nothing.
“CIA? Military?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is you came close to serious harm.”
“Oh, you think? Now I know firsthand what you and your ilk really do to people.”
“It’s not pretty but it saves lives.”
“It also ruins innocent ones. I don’t see how it can do any good.”
The man’s jaw muscles pulsed.
“Tell that to the families standing at the graves of innocent people murdered in attacks.”
“What your pals did to me back there was medieval! Threaten a man with castration and he’ll confess to anything.”
“Let me give you some context, Jack. You’re a foreign national who trespassed in the apartment of a murdered man, who happened to be a source for about six different intelligence agencies. The locals had every right to suspect you. They were just getting warmed up with you.”
“By violating my human rights?”
“Look around, this is not the U.S.”
“What your friends did was confirm that I’ve got a huge story.”
“Forget your story. You have no idea how dangerous this is for you.”
“Is that a threat?”
“That’s advice, or did you forget I was the one who got you out of there. The situation is complicated, but let me make one thing clear. You get back to the States and you forget this. Tell your editor your story fell through.”
“Fuck you!”
“Are you that stupid?”
“After what I’ve been through, do you really think I’m going to curl up and forget my profession? A lot of people have died for this story. Now, I’m going to report every iota of what I know and what I went through to know it, including meeting you. It seems to me that maybe a few governments have a hand in some kind of illegal crap.”
“Is that what you think you have?”
“You heard it all when your pals were torturing me.”
Lancer said nothing.
“Was Corley your source? Did he have information for you?”
Lancer said nothing.
Both men retreated to their thoughts as the countryside evolved into the outskirts of the capital. Gannon took note of how well this guy knew his way around the streets of Rabat. Traffic slowed them up as they entered the district of Agdal.
“When do you plan to run your story?”
“As soon as I put something together.”
When they turned on to Rue Abderrahmanne El Ghafiki, Gannon began to recognize the area.
