have a lawyer. I believe she once represented him.”
“Lawyer. .?” Justin managed to say.
“A very good woman. Shirley Greene.”
“Read. . about. . her. Terrorists.”
“She represents Arabs. And people think all Arabs are terrorists.”
“You. .?”
“I am not a terrorist. And my brothers are not terrorists. But we are being treated as such. And I believe we will be deported as such. If we live to be deported.” He hesitated and shook his head sadly. “We are not being treated as terribly as you. We are not in isolations. This is very bad.”
“Where. . am I?”
“You don’t know?”
Justin shook his head.
“Guantanamo Bay,” the man said.
Justin managed a long exhale. “You. .,” he said, “. . how long. .?”
“My brothers and I have been here for several weeks. Many weeks. I don’t know exactly. Some men have been here for two, three years.”
The slit in the cell’s door slid open and a quick, quiet whistle came from the other side.
“I would have brought you water if I had known. I’m sorry.”
Another whistle.
“I’ve got to go,” the man said. “If I can, I will come again.”
“Thank you,” Justin whispered.
“Go with God,” the man answered.
And as he left, Justin closed his eyes.
29
No one showed up in the cell after that for some time. Justin had several hours of relative peace. During that time, he made a decision. Bruno’s message had had its desired effect. All they could do was hurt him, and he could survive that. There was no way to fight back, not in these circumstances, not in the condition he was in. There was only one thing he could do that would help him survive, or at least help keep him from going crazy.
He could use his brain. He could spend every moment sifting through information and putting the pieces together. He remembered Billy DiPezio, his onetime mentor in Providence, talking about the power brokers up there, saying, “You can only take what they give you.” Well, they were only giving him one thing: time.
So Justin decided he’d take it. And use it to try to figure out the puzzle.
He began by placing his finger in the dirt he was sitting on and slowly scratching out a series of names. To the left he put the dead men: Collins, Cooke, Heffernan, Billings, and Lockhardt. Below them, he dug out the name Theresa Cooke and under that wrote “Reysa” and “Hannah.” Hannah was still alive, but she more than counted as a victim. He moved his finger slowly, somehow drawing some importance from the texture of the visual in the dirt. To the right, he began tracing the names of the people he believed were connected to the deaths. Stuller and Dandridge.
To their right he put a new column. Justin listed every name he could think of in conjunction with the case. First, he tried to remember every person he’d spoken to: Martha Peck, Colonel Zanesworth, Hubbell Schrader, the son of a bitch. He hoped that someday he’d get a chance to get his hands on Schrader. Justin forced himself to stop thinking of revenge, then he calmly drew all those last names in the dirt. Then he added one more column. He tried to visualize all the names he’d come across in Roger Mallone’s reports and lawsuits, some of which he’d read, some of which Reggie had encapsulated for him. He did better than he thought: writing down the last names of the Yale attendees: President Thomas Anderson; the head of the EPA, Stephanie Ingles; Stuller and Dandridge again. He added Elliot Brown, the New York City comptroller. And he tried to think of the name of the Saudi, the one who was so connected to EGenco, but he could only recall the first name: Mishari. He remembered that it was followed by “al” something. . but he couldn’t come up with it. He knew he had all the time in the world, let himself relax, trying to visualize the name on Mallone’s report, but it wouldn’t come. So he just scratched out “Mishari” in the dirt. He was reasonably sure that Arabs didn’t go by their last names anyway, it was the first name that mattered, so he decided that was good enough.
And then he added one more word. They seemed so concerned with Midas. It was definitely worth adding. He gave it its own separate column.
He looked at the hastily drawn names as he’d laid them out:
Collins Peck Stuller Anderson Brown MIDASCookeZanesworth Dandridge InglesMishari Heffernan Schrader Stuller Billings Dandridge Lockhardt T. Cooke Reysa Hannah
He stared at them, not trying to make sense of anything, not trying to form any patterns, just memorizing them. Putting them into groupings inside his head so he could call them up at will. In his current state, it had taken him over an hour just to put the list together. He wanted to be able to do it in seconds, without having to think. So he burned them into his memory, until he felt himself falling asleep again, and before he conked out, he ran his hands through all the names, erasing them, leaving no trace, and then he fell asleep. Immediately the door burst open, two men came rushing in, and the torture began again.
Justin thought it was three days later, but it could have been two. Or four. Or even five. But to keep himself sane, he called it as three and decided that’s what it was, no matter what. Three days later-absolutely, three days, final, done deal.
That’s when he began to figure it out.
He started going meticulously, step by step, as he’d done many times by now, and each step focused him, kept his mind off the pain and the fear. Each step, each piece, bringing him closer to the puzzle’s solution. He turned every angle over in his mind. There was no limit to the amount of time he spent on any one aspect of the puzzle. Time was what he had. The longer the better. Every minute he spent thinking about the case was every minute he wasn’t going to go crazy.
Each exhaustive thought process began with an event. Then he tried to explain to himself the reality behind the event: exactly why it had occurred. Then he listed questions raised by each event and tried to formulate a coherent and structured line of reasoning to propel himself toward the most logical answers. With each answer, he felt as if he’d reached a level plateau after having climbed one small segment of a mountain. He viewed each plateau as a rest stop at which he then catalogued and isolated each one of the answers, keeping them separate in his mind, making them part of the next process, which would take him further up the mountain to the next plateau. At some point, the goal was to reach the peak. There at the top would be all the facts, neatly laid out, and all the names he needed to put the entire puzzle together. To that end, for every question he answered to his own satisfaction-at each new plateau-he tried to link a name to it, using the list of names he’d originally drawn with his fingers on the dirt floor. Every day, while he was thinking, he would redraw the list, sometimes in the original configuration, sometimes in different columns and rows. Whenever he moved the names around, he could find new ways to connect certain people to other people, and connect the right names to the right facts.
He understood that there was a chance it was all gibberish, that his mind was not functioning properly after his weeks of imprisonment. But he also understood that his only choice was to keep going. He often thought of the words uttered by Theresa Cooke:
More than muddy, he decided quite a few times during the days and nights. Muddy, dirty, smelly, and painful.
Right. And on that note he had decided to begin.
