‘I am Karim Khan.’
‘And you haven’t used any of these other names – Faisal and the rest?’
‘No. I found the identity on the man I fled with in Macedonia. ’
‘Have you ever been known as The Electrician, or The Watchmaker, or The Poet, or any other name?’ She said it lightly, as though the names had come to her randomly, but Khan raised his head and his eyes filled with recognition.
‘No,’ he said, ‘but I once knew a man who was nicknamed The Poet – a long time ago, in Bosnia. My friend Dr Loz knew of him.’ There was no doubt he understood what she was saying. They had made contact.
Franc turned to her. ‘A moment outside, Ms Herrick.’ He steered her to the door, beckoning Gibbons to go with them. In the corridor, he pushed her to the wall and leaned into her face with his arm resting beside her head. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re doing in there, but let me tell you that you’re here on my sufferance and those remarks were unacceptable. This is front line procedure, Miss Herrick, an extremely delicate interrogation, the result of coordination between us and officers of the Albanian intelligence service. I can’t allow you to butt in with any damned thought that comes into your head. You copy, Ms Herrick?’
She moved her face from the blast of his breath and remembered Nathan Lyne’s approach. ‘Mr Franc, I am here under a joint Anglo-American authority, the likes of which you cannot even dream, and I will behave in the way that I believe is appropriate to the operation. If you want to test this, why don’t you call your station in London and speak to the Deputy Director of the CIA, Jim Collins?’
Franc took his arm from the wall. ‘What was that crap in there about?’
‘I wanted to know if he recognised the code name for a Bosnian commander. You saw how he reacted to it. That means he can’t be Faisal, and that the story of the man dying in Macedonia is probably true.’
‘That proves nothing,’ said Gibbons.
‘You really believe he’s a member of Hamas?’
‘We have to explore all the possibilities, Ms Herrick,’ said Franc, ‘and if I am going to let you back inside that room, I need a guarantee you won’t interrupt again. Lives could depend on us finding out what this man was sent to do. We know from the codes he sent to his associate, Loz, that he is part of a plot to mount a major attack in the US.’
‘So why are you asking him about Faisal?’ asked Herrick innocently. ‘You know he isn’t Faisal – that’s clear to me from the early transcripts. Why waste the time?’
‘The fact that he was carrying papers belonging to a member of Hamas, the most feared terrorist group in the Middle East, means there may be a connection between al-Qaeda and Hamas. I don’t have to explain how important that is.’ Franc had become avuncular, telling the little girl from England about the realities of ‘front line procedure’. A look in his eye spurred her to wonder exactly what was going on.
‘Okay,’ she said, apparently placated. ‘Shall we go back inside? I haven’t seen enough to write anything sensible yet. By the way, who’s the man with the bag of nuts?’
‘He’s a doctor,’ Gibbons drawled. ‘He’s looking after the welfare of the suspect.’
When she went in, The Doctor was perched on the interview table offering Khan a pistachio nut. Relief spread over Khan’s face as he saw Isis and his eyes leapt in hope, but then The Doctor leaned across and said something to him. When she saw him again his expression was blank and compliant.
She took her place as the questions about Hamas resumed, most of which Khan refused to answer, at one stage saying that he might as well be questioned about Colombia. An hour passed and although the sun was sinking outside, the room remained stifling. Suddenly Isis jumped up and left the room, this time to the sniggers of the two Albanians and The Doctor. Franc followed her out looking angry.
‘You’re yanking my chain,’ she said. ‘You’re not interested in Hamas. In fact, I think this whole session has been arranged for my benefit. You’re taking the interrogation up a blind alley so I don’t get anything.’ She stopped and looked at his glistening, fleshy face. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Mr Franc. I am not here on some kind of training programme. There are literally hundreds of CIA and SIS officers engaged in a secret operation in London and all over Europe – one vast intelligence operation. I am here as part of that. Do you understand? So let’s forget this Hamas business. It’s a load of shite, and you know it. When I go back in, you steer the questions to the matter in hand.’
For a moment Franc was taken aback by her vehemence, but then he stretched and wiped his forehead. ‘You’re quite a spitfire, Miss Herrick, I’ll grant you that. But you got to understand that this is not my interrogation. The man is in Albanian custody! We are here as their guests, for chrissake.’
‘I don’t give a fuck,’ she hissed. ‘If you want me to keep you out of my report, you will go back to the line of questioning you were pursuing in the transcripts.’ With this, she turned and walked into the room again.
Evidently much of their exchange had been overheard. The Albanians were barely able to contain themselves and the other two Americans were smirking. Amidst all this brutal jollity, Khan looked even more pathetic. Suddenly he rose from his chair, but the restraints on his feet held him and he lurched onto the table. ‘They’re torturing me,’ he shouted. ‘This man, they call him The Doctor, he is the torturer. Tell him to show you the plastic bag he suffocated me with.’ One of the Albanians was now at Khan’s side, forcing him down and trying to clamp his jaw shut, but Khan ducked from his grip and continued shouting. ‘Everyone here is tortured and brutalised. Is that what you want? Is that the policy of the British and American governments? Get me out of here and I will tell you anything you want.’ He was silenced by The Doctor, who had got behind him and slipped a large forearm around his neck, locking it into the crook of his other arm. Khan coughed and slumped to the chair, staring at Herrick.
‘Stop that,’ Herrick screamed. ‘Stop that now.’ But the Americans were already leading her from the room. ‘My government does not condone this,’ she said out in the corridor.
‘Nobody gives a damn what the British government thinks,’ said Franc, physically handing her to Gibbons. ‘Get her out of here, Lance, and make sure she doesn’t come tomorrow.’ He turned and went back into the room.
As the door opened she caught a glimpse of Khan, the whites of his eyes shining in the shadow cast by The Doctor’s form.
It was dusk outside. The clouds above were mottled with the last rays of the sun and in the east the mountains were brushed with a dirty pink. The noise of the hot, swarming capital came to Herrick’s ears like a roar.
Gibbons pushed her into the Toyota and climbed into the driving seat. ‘You have some fucking balls,’ he said, starting the engine. ‘This is the way it is, you know! The way it has to be with these people.’
‘What? Torture?’
‘Hell, that’s not torture. He’s been slapped around a little. That’s all.’ His lips pouted downwards with a kind of patronising disgust.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! The man is going to be tortured because you can’t get the answers you want. Has it occurred to you that he doesn’t have anything else to tell you?’
They went a few hundred yards, swerving to avoid the worst of the potholes and the kids running into the street with iced drinks and cigarettes. Then, in a quieter spot, Gibbons pulled up and swivelled round in his seat, one arm hooked around the steering wheel. ‘I know this is tough, but it is the only way. We have a man who could be part of a plot to kill thousands of people. We have learned our lesson about these guys. We have to fight fire with fire and be every bit as ruthless and cruel as they are, because we’re here in this shitty little country, charged by the American people to protect them – at the very least, to give them warnings of terrorist attacks. How the hell do you think we’re going to do that? Huh? I mean, like we treat Khan nicely when al-Qaeda’s going to blow up this fuel tanker or drop a truckload of nuclear waste in DC, so he tells us? Get real, Isis. We’re in a different kind of war now. We got to respond with all available means and, hell, if that entails one of the murderous little bastards being hung from a beam for intensive questions, I for one don’t give a shit. What matters is that we get the result and protect our people. It’s the same with the British. You think the average Brit cares a damn what happens to some Paki terrorist thousands of miles away? Of course he doesn’t. He wants you to go out and get the answers and prevent these people from destroying his liberty and way of life. That’s your job. It’s as simple as that, and if you don’t have the stomach for it, you should find yourself another line of work. This is the way it is from here on in, Isis. A long, cruel war between civilisations.’
‘Civilisation,’ she said, without looking at him, ‘is exactly what this is about. That’s what we’re fighting for, the standard that says torture is wrong. There is nothing more absolute than the absolute wrong of what you’re doing to that man. Don’t you see that?’
