“Shit!” I said. “It’s not working!”
“Don’t curse,” said Redbeard.
“Try again,” said Chubs.
I did, but got nothing. Chubs told me to reset the password and have it sent to an email address he typed in. I did as I was told and was prompted to answer my security questions. The first question was my mother’s middle name.
“My mother doesn’t have a middle name,” I told them, which was true.
“Then put in her maiden name,” said Redbeard.
“Her maiden name?” I asked, filling with dread.
This was a big problem, both because I knew it was the answer I’d used, and for another reason.
“Yes,” said Redbeard. “What is her maiden name?”
“I’ll just type it in,” I said, and did it quickly.
It worked—we were in.
“What’s the maiden name?” said Chubs. “I need to write it down.”
They were all looking at me, waiting for the answer.
“. . . Grossberg,” I said, as if waiting to hear the gunshot a second later, but all I got in return was a thank-you. Apparently they didn’t know it was a Jewish name. A few minutes later we were back to discussing politics, and then I was escorted back to my room.
I’d noticed the round silver-dollar-sized impression in the center of the bottom half of the door early on, but never asked about it. For some reason, I didn’t think Theo was stupid enough to dig a hole that big right there in the open. I was wrong.
“What’s that hole in the door?” I finally asked one day when the lights were on, pointing at it.
“I made it with a spoon,” he answered. “The wood is really soft.”
“Yeah, but what was the point? What, were you trying to dig your way outta here?”
“I don’t know. I was bored.”
Later he admitted that he was trying to make a peephole . . . in the middle of the door. I guess he figured, much like the Star of David he made, they wouldn’t recognize a hole when they saw one. I told him there was absolutely no point in taking that kind of risk, considering what the repercussions would be, and that there was no benefit from it—I mean, what the fuck would we do with a peephole? Theo disagreed with me. He thought he’d proved it was possible to burrow through the wood and turn the key on the other side before anyone would notice. I disagreed with him right back on that one.
Sometimes I looked at Theo and saw a forty-four-year-old boy. He hated to share—and sharing was crucial in our situation. He chewed with his mouth open, making a squishing sound every time he opened and closed his hole, like a dirty mop being wrung out. One time he walked up to a flat piece of concrete about the size of a candy bar that had fallen from the wall behind the door. Without hesitation he stomped on it, breaking it into dozens of pieces and making a mess—all so he could kick a chunk around the room like a soccer ball. I don’t like living in filth, and I told him to clean it up about a hundred times, but he shrugged it off like every other suggestion I ever gave him—as if he was doing such a great job of taking care of himself thus far. Sometimes I really did feel like George Milton.
It was around this time that I started talking seriously about an escape. I wasn’t planning to burrow through the center of the door, Theo-style: The door was made of solid wood, but it was paneled, and along the edges of these indentations the wood was only about a centimeter or two thick. My plan was to perforate the edges where the wood was very thin and then kick the panel out one night when the area was getting shelled or some other, better opportunity presented itself. I figured that if we got lucky and the building took a direct hit, we might be able to execute the plan without being heard. It was a one-in-a-million chance, but the building did get hit several times while we were there, so it wasn’t impossible. On our trips to the bathroom I had been accumulating anything and everything that I thought might be of use. One of the most valuable items was a three-inch brass flathead screw that I took from a light switch casing that had been ripped out. But the screw was obviously not enough; we needed something to turn it with, and one day I found that something, resting on the sink. It came in the form of a flat little iron bracket, about four inches long.
“Put it back!” said Theo as I stuck it in my sock.
“Shut up!”
“They put it there as a trap! If they find that they’re going to torture us!”
“Then let’s hope they don’t find it. Now shut up. They’re coming.”
A few seconds later Yassine unlocked the bathroom door and we were past the point of no return.
“Come,” he said.
Theo and I stood there for a moment, waiting to see if he’d notice the missing piece of iron, but he didn’t, and a minute later we were back in our cell. Theo was furious, flipping out about what was going to happen when whoever put it there found the bracket missing.
“Dude, would you calm down?” I said. “Now boost me up so I can stash it in the window.”
“No, no, you shouldn’t have done that! You shouldn’t have done that!” he kept saying.
Within a few minutes we heard the guards taking the men in the cell next to ours on a bathroom run. This calmed Theo down a little, because now if someone realized it was missing we wouldn’t be the only suspects. It didn’t stop his bitching entirely, however, so it was obvious that I would need a better stash spot than the window if I were ever to have a moment’s rest again.
On the ceiling were three fixtures containing long fluorescent tube lights.
