“Malik is dead.” Zafir put a finger to his lips to shush the boy’s rising whimper. “Now-” He clapped his hands in front of him. “In your university studies do they teach you of the ancient Bedouin custom of Bisha’a? ”
“No… I don’t think so…” Sadiq leaned his head back, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his nose. He sounded like he had a bad cold. “I… I don’t remember…”
“Very well, then.” Zafir nodded. “I will instruct you.” He rummaged through the small basin of dirty dishes until he found a metal spoon, still encrusted with the hardened remains of some past breakfast. He lit the burner on a gas hot plate and placed the bowl of the spoon in flame. Bits of food flared and popped as it burned off in a smoky yellow blaze. “Here’s how it works. I ask you a question… then you will give me an answer.”
The metal spoon glowed cherry red. The rag in Zafir’s hand began to smoke as the heat traveled up the handle and scorched the cloth. “After you have answered, you may prove your honesty by placing your tongue against the hot metal. If you are indeed telling me the truth, it will not burn you.”
Sadiq gulped.
Zafir leaned in with the glowing spoon, only inches from the boy’s face. “Of course, Bisha’a is voluntary. It would prove your innocence, but the choice is up to you.”
“I can’t… I don’t…”
“Very well,” Zafir said, half smiling. “I will take that to mean no.” He tapped the super-heated spoon to the tip of the boy’s nose, bringing a piercing shriek and a puff of acrid smoke as skin seared in a perfect circle.
Turning his back on the sobbing boy, Zafir began to rummage around the cluttered room. He found it better to let people he questioned stew for a time, wondering what was about to become of them. Their fevered brains did much of his work for him. Amid piles of crumpled food wrappers, paper coffee cups, and old newspaper on the yellowed Formica table, Zafir found what he was after, a cell phone. He snatched it up with a sly grin and began to scroll through the numbers.
“This one is interesting,” he muttered, peering up under his wild black eyebrows. He held the phone in front of the boy’s eyes. “It is the country code for America, is it not?”
Sadiq’s eyes twitched, searching the room like a cornered animal. His chest heaved with fear. “A friend who helps me with my English studies… Please, I do not know what you think I have done… I am a poor student, merely waiting to return to my studies.”
Zafir took the vise grips from his pocket and rolled them slowly in his disfigured hand. “So you have said.” He knelt beside the trembling boy. “It is very important that I know exactly what you have told the Americans. You will tell me all about your conversations… and I will demonstrate the agony your friend Malik suffered before his death this very morning.”
Zafir lifted Sadiq’s right ankle. Again for reasons of fear or hope or stupidity, the boy put up no struggle. Zafir bound him to the heavy wooden arm of the couch with four quick wraps of the tape. The boy’s sandal fell to the floor. Tears streamed from his eyes.
“Yes, yes, yes! I have spoken to an American Air Force agent!” Sadiq blurted. Words began to flow like water from a broken vessel. “He… he has killed many of our brothers… a very dangerous man. He would have killed me as well if I had not told him something… You must believe me. I did not wish to talk to him, but he forced me.”
“This American’s name?”
“Jericho.” The boy hardly paused at the question. It was far too easy. “His name is Jericho.”
Zafir raised an eyebrow. “An Israeli?”
“No,” the boy whimpered, chest heaving, eyes darting around the room. “He is American.”
“His full name.”
“I do not know.”
Zafir struck Sadiq across the face with the vise grips. There was a satisfying crunch as his cheekbone cracked. Teeth shattered and gave way.
Sadiq screamed, quivering, trying to make himself smaller. He’d wet his trousers. Pathetic.
“I’m telling you the truth. I… I’m not lying anymore.”
Zafir struck him again. A piece of tooth flew across the room to land in a dirty soup bowl with a tiny clink. A torrent of fresh blood gushed from his already shattered nose.
“I know you are not,” Zafir whispered, leaning in to rest his arm on the back of the couch, looming over the boy.
“S… s… stop, stop, stop,” Sadiq pleaded, shoulders wracked with sobs, spittle covering his chin. “I’m telling you what you want to know…”
“It is much too late to save yourself from all pain…” Zafir spoke slowly as he stooped to tape Sadiq’s free ankle to the center leg of the couch, leaving him spread eagle on the blood-soaked cushion. “But, if you continue your cooperation, perhaps you may enjoy a quicker death. Let me explain how these events will unfold.” He patted the boy gently on the knee. Anticipation of pain brought greater fruit than the pain itself. “First, I will pull the nails from your toes with my pliers… one by one. They come out more quickly than you might imagine so that part of it will not take overly long….”
“Please-”
Zafir raised a hand to shush him. The boy cowered back in silence. “Do not disgrace yourself with begging at this point. We are far beyond begging. Where was I? Ah, yes, after I am finished with your toes…” He used the nose of the vise grips to trace a line up the inside of the boy’s thigh. “… I will move a little higher for a more lengthy procedure. If you were to survive, you would never be able to sire children. But do not worry; your survival is out of the question.”
Sadiq bowed his head, sobbing. “I beg of you…” His head suddenly snapped up, eyes wide, hoping. “Listen. Here is something-Jericho, he is in the United States, but I believe he is coming back to the Middle East.”
Zafir cocked his head to one side. This was news. “When?”
“Very soon,” Sadiq said, batting his eyes foolishly, believing he’d bought some time. “He did not say, but I know this man. He is deadly, a cold-blooded killer. If Jericho finds the sheikh he will surely murder him.”
“What do you know of the sheikh?”
Sadiq cringed again, preparing himself for another blow. When it didn’t come he spoke haltingly. “Everyone knows of the sheikh…”
“What does he look like… this Jericho?” Zafir cradled the ball of the boy’s right foot, caressing it gently between the rough, clawlike fingers of his disfigured hand. He ran the tip of the vise grips up the tendon on top of the tremulous foot, trailing a white line against olive flesh.
“He is tall… very dark hair… and a beard. His Arabic is flawless…” The words gushed from his mouth like spilling grain. Sadiq looked on in horror as Zafir examined his toes, pulling them gently apart, one at a time, as one might pluck a grape from the bunch. “He could easily pass for one of us… Ohhhhh… I beg of you…”
Zafir showed his teeth again. “All right, then. Beg if you must. I suppose I do enjoy it after all. Please continue. While you beg, I will begin with the nail of your big toe…” He covered the boy’s mouth with a strip of tape. “I will not linger on the first one-as a favor to you for this new information. We will speak again in a moment…”
Sadiq broke into a frenzied gyration of vain struggles and muffled screams, but it did him no good. Taped as he was he could move nothing but his shoulders and neck. No one could hear his cries.
Zafir adjusted the screw on the end of the vise grips and snapped the metal teeth shut on the cracked tip of the flailing boy’s toenail. This would indeed be enjoyable, but what he really wanted was a face-to-face meeting with this American named Jericho.
CHAPTER 22
USAMRIID Fort Detrick
“Justin… sweetie…” Mahoney whispered. She’d unhooked her breathing hose and a puff of condensation formed with each breath on the bubble of her clammy rubber hood. Beads of sweat inched down the small of her back. “I need you to get the Dist.” The Dist-Inject was a long-barreled pistol capable of firing plumed syringes or preloaded metal darts of medication. “And draw me some ketamine. Hurry.”
