‘I can’t hear you.’
‘I . . . I will talk,’ Durrani said louder.
‘Good . . . you know it makes sense . . . Let’s go back a little further, just for a moment. Not too far back. A day or so before you left Kabul for the last time there was an attack on a military helicopter, a British helicopter. It was brought down by a rocket. Everyone on board was killed. You know anything about that helicopter? You know anything about the rocket?’
Durrani’s breathing increased in anticipation of the next assault on his body, the very thought of which filled him with horror. He wanted very much to say something, to answer the question, but somehow found the strength not to. When the clunk came he tensed so fiercely that he cut the skin against the clamps holding his arms to the chair. Then suddenly another clunk announced the mechanism moving quickly into reverse.
‘You don’t ever have to hear that sound again if you don’t want to . . . You’re going to tell me what I want to know in the end. Everyone who sits where you are right now always does. Why go through all that pain, all that damage to your body? Some people have never walked again after leaving this room . . . I’m told it has something to do with bubbles expanding in their lower spine. If that damage goes higher you may lose the use of your arms as well. Is it worth it? Really? Ask yourself if it’s really worth it . . . Do you know about the helicopter that was shot down?’
Durrani lowered his head and nodded slightly.
‘I didn’t quite get that. Was that a yes?’
Durrani nodded again, this time more emphatically.
‘Was it you who shot that helicopter down?’
Durrani nodded.
‘And then you went to the wreckage, didn’t you?’
Durrani did not move.
‘What did you take from the wreckage?’
Durrani clenched his jaw. The interrogator knew something but not everything. If he did he would have already cut his abdomen open and found the little packet. Durrani had arrived at the point he could not go beyond without shaming himself, without failing.
‘I know you took something from the wreckage. What was it, Durrani? What did you find that you were taking to Peshawar?’
Durrani breathed deeply and tried to prepare himself for the pain that was about to come. He hoped that it would bring death, for that was his only escape now.
The clunk came, followed by the whirling and sucking of air.The pressure dropped, one of his eardrums burst and his eyes pushed out against his eyelids that were squeezed tightly shut. He let out a high-pitched scream as if the life was being squeezed out of every inch of his body. Then something inside him snapped and what light there was went out.
Hank Palmerston sat behind the interrogator, both men squinting through the thick glass at Durrani slumped in his chair.
‘You went too far, you assholes,’ Hank muttered.
The technician who had stuck the sensors to Durrani was seated in a corner in front of several life-monitoring devices. ‘He’s not dead,’ he said. ‘He’s just unconscious. ’
‘That machine tell you when he’s gonna come out of it and in what condition?’
‘He has normal brain and sensory nerve activity at all extremities,’ the technician confirmed. ‘We just took him beyond his pain threshold.’
Hank shook his head as he got to his feet. ‘Two fuckin’ years you’ve been doing this and you still can’t get it right . . . Now you listen to me,’ he said, leaning heavily over the back of the young Ivy League CIA interrogator who remained sitting in his chair and facing the glass. ‘We know that helicopter was a British intelligence operation carrying a VIP passenger to Bagram. We know this guy shot it down. We know he found something in the wreckage. We know he took it to his boss in Kabul who then sent him into Pakistan with it . . . What we
The interrogator remained motionless as Hank’s voice echoed in the small stone and concrete room. He was intimidated by Hank, his overbearing boss, but arrogant enough to show no reaction to Hank bawling him out.
Hank left the room.When the door closed the technician looked over at the interrogator like a sixth-former after a scolding from a teacher. ‘He’ll be OK. His signs are rising.’
‘Get him to the hospital,’ the interrogator said.‘Then, soon as he’s ready, get him back in here.’
The interrogator’s voice crackled from a speaker as Mandrick sat listening in his chair behind his desk. He stared thoughtfully up at his vaulted stone ceiling with its damp rusty scars leading from the ends of massive central bolts down to the tops of the walls where they disappeared behind ornate facades erected to hide the unsightly concrete. The CIA were unaware that a listening device had been secreted in their interrogation room. Hank would have been very upset to discover that the tiny transmitter was linked to a receiver in the warden’s office. Mandrick was surprised how easy the bug had been to fit: he’d ordered it online from a commercial spyware supplier in Los Angeles and had then taken an installation lesson from a private detective agency in Houston. It had been just as easy to keep it from being discovered since, as warden, he was informed whenever the Agency’s electronic eavesdropping detection unit was due to arrive.
Mandrick’s reason for planting the device was to help him collect personal insurance against any CIA backlash when the time came for him to pull out of Styx. His eventual departure was always going to be interesting, he realised. He knew far too much about the irregularities of their operation and being a civilian made controlling him complicated. On the other hand, it was the CIA who had originally installed him in the position and that meant they’d also have an exit strategy for him.
There was no doubt in Mandrick’s mind that the Agency had a plan in place for whenever he might leave. His fear, reality-based or otherwise, was that any such scheme would not be agreeable to him. He wanted to leave on his own terms, which could prove dangerous. He knew as well as the Agency did that if he happened to vanish one day it would go largely unnoticed. For those few who might wonder about where Mandrick might have gone his disappearance could be simply explained. Rumours of the corruption that went on in Styx could be leaked, specifically stories of tax evasion. Since Mandrick was at the helm of Felix Corp’s undersea interests, any mysterious vanishing by him would not be a huge surprise to anyone.
But his most valuable insurance so far against such an event being engineered by the CIA was the evidence he had accumulated showing the Agency’s use of decompression as a torture. It was a serious violation of the Geneva Convention, for one thing. Still, the Agency could probably get away with the explanation that it was some localised misconduct by Hank Palmerston done without Langley’s knowledge. They would suffer but not long-term. There was a war on and it was not the time to start ripping into the nation’s most important anti-terrorist information gatherers. Therefore it was not the quality of insurance Mandrick was looking for. He needed something big enough to barter for a long-lived amnesty, something he could either offer as exchange for his safe departure