They were playing a power game, and she apparently was going to lose.
“When I was in the United States,” Hasan continued, “I kept hearing a phrase. It was ‘I have good news and I have bad news.’” He grinned, clearly pleased with himself, and continued, “The good news is that I am not a cruel man. I am not a terrorist. I have no interest in holding you hostage for years for ransom or sacrificing you for the glory of Allah. If it matters at all, I was raised Eastern Orthodox.”
“Obviously, you slept through Sunday School.”
“A sharp wit,” he said. “I like that. It makes my work challenging.”
He placed the satchel in his ample lap and removed an old Panasonic microcassette recorder from it. After checking to make certain it contained a tape, he switched it on and placed it on the floor.
“My employers will want to know exactly what you said to me and how you said it. I have been hired to make certain you tell the truth.”
Hasan shook out a cigarette from a hard pack and offered her one.
“I don’t smoke,” she said.
“Neither do I. It’s a nasty habit,” he replied, lighting his cigarette, and slowly exhaling.
His denial didn’t make sense, and she wondered if her exhaustion was clouding her thoughts. Suddenly Hasan leaned forward and stuck the burning tip of his cigarette into her neck. She screamed and jerked back as the smell of burned flesh reached her nostrils.
He eased back into his chair and sucked on the cigarette until its tip glowed again.
“Now for the bad news,” he said sternly. “I will hurt you much more than that.”
Showers was breathing rapidly.
“I don’t think you have ever been interrogated,” he said, “but I know you have thought about it. Everyone does. ‘Can I keep quiet? Or will I break?’ It is a fool’s question. Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
“Because everyone talks. They talk or they die. The only real uncertainly is how long it will take for you to tell me what I want to know. For me, it doesn’t matter. A minute, an hour, a day. But for you, well, it matters a great deal.” He looked at the red tip of the cigarette and leaned forward. She instinctively pulled back. He flashed a toothy grin of yellowed teeth.
He said, “Tell me, do you like to read?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “I love literature. I try to read a book every day. I have done this since I was six years old. I do it because I want to learn. I am always trying to improve my mind and reading can help you deal with problems. Have you ever read Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich? No? It is an important book, a very important book about life inside a Soviet prison camp where people were abused. And if you had read it, then perhaps you would have learned something from it that would be helpful to you now.”
She stayed silent.
“Do you know what Solzhenitsyn said about Americans after he was exiled from the Soviet Union and had lived in your country for many years? He said Americans lacked the moral fiber to defeat Communism. He said you didn’t have the stomach for it.”
She drew a deep breath and responded, “Maybe you missed it, but the Cold War ended and we’re still standing-unlike Communism.”
“Defiant. I like that. The challenge.”
By now, the cigarette was spent, and he dropped it on the floor and stepped on it. He reached into the satchel and removed a spool of heavy white cord.
She watched him intently.
He said, “There was a reason why I mentioned books. It’s because I believe a person should strive to improve themselves in their chosen profession. Consider my field, for example. I could use the same interview techniques whenever I interrogate someone, but then how could I improve? This is why I am always searching for something more efficient. This cord, for instance. Do you know how many positions a human body can be tied into that can cause extreme pain?”
She did not answer.
“The Japanese have incorporated the use of knots and ropes and pain into their sexual customs. They call it Kinbaku or Sokubaku-sexual bondage using ropes. Did you know that?”
Again, she kept silent. He was showing off.
He grinned again and said, “What’s the matter? As you Americans say, ‘Cat got your tongue?’ Or did I say that wrong, too?”
He placed the spool on the floor and took a new item from his bag. It was two strands of electrical wire. “Electric shocks, especially applied to a person’s private parts can be extremely painful, but everyone who watches television knows this. There is no imagination involved. It’s mundane torture.”
He put down the wire and said, “You see, a true professional, such as myself, attempts to tailor the various tools at his disposal to the unique personality of the individual being questioned. It’s my job to find just the right motivator to insure that you will tell me what I need to know. You should be grateful that I am not some brute, but a true professional, because I’m actually doing you a favor. It is incredible how much pain some people can tolerate, but I can save you from that by recognizing your deepest fear and tapping into it. It is quicker, more humane, really. Why, I will be doing you a favor. You should thank me, really.”
“I’ll thank you if you undo this chain and let me go,” she said.
He looked into Showers’s eyes and smiled. He said, “I have used all sorts of devices on women such as you. They scream, but then, so do men.” Hasan removed a clear plastic bag filled with soda crackers from the satchel. “This looks refreshing, doesn’t it?” he asked. “Hardly an instrument of torture. Are you hungry?” He opened the bag, took a bite of a cracker. “But in the right hands-someone knowledgeable, well, let me tell you a secret.” He shook the bag and its contents. “If I put this bag over your head and crumple up little dry crackers in it, eventually you have to breathe them into your lungs and those crumbs will scratch your insides. You will start spitting blood.” He finished the remainder of the cracker and placed the bag onto the floor. “Now, are you still hungry?”
This time, he withdrew a pair of stainless steel shears from his case. “Mutilation-cutting off toes, fingers, or a man’s sexual organ can be effective. Disfigurement terrifies people- especially women-and it is pitifully easy. The chopping off of a hand or foot. The gouging out of an eyeball. The scarring of a cheek. Have you ever smelled your own flesh burning…? Well, yes, you just did.” He smiled again and added, “All it takes is a cup of gasoline and a match.”
He placed the clippers in the row that he had created neatly on the floor. Next from the satchel came a small wooden club. “Beating people is perhaps the most pedestrian form of persuasion, and the most common.”
She realized he was showing her these articles not only to intimidate her but to observe her reaction.
“Actually, I am mistaken,” he said in a sinister voice, “just like when I said Disneyland and meant Disney World. You see, beatings may be a common form of torture, but you could argue that there is another practice that is used just as frequently in jails and prisons. Sexual violation. Rape.”
“I’ve heard enough,” Showers said. “You’re a big, brave man with your little bag of horrors, especially when you are facing a woman with a useless arm who’s chained to the floor. If you get into trouble, all you have to do is call your goons from outside. But you don’t fool me. I see right through you. You’re nothing more than a sadistic little pervert, a bug, a piece of human garbage who gets his kicks out of picking on helpless people who can’t defend themselves. Does it make you feel important? Does it make you feel potent?”
Showers watched as Hasan blushed. At the FBI academy, she’d been told that it was important for agents dealing with hostile witnesses to take command of the interview and then to both intimidate and befriend a witness. Now she was on the other side. She was the witness, and she suspected that Hasan had not read the same textbook, nor did he plan to play by the FBI’s rules.
“Torturing you,” he said, “is going to be very enjoyable for me.”
“That’s just what I would suspect a bug like you to say,” she replied.
CHAPTER NINE
