Dead or Alive

really a bigger question than that. He’s a political figure, and his removal will be a political act also. That always screws things up,” Clark concluded. He had little in the way of political instincts, and didn’t really want any. His world was a simpler one: If you did murder, then you died for it. It wasn’t elegant or very “sensitive,” but it had, actually, worked once. As the legal system had worked a lot better before his country had been overrun with lawyers. But there was no going back, and he could not make it so. Clark had no illusions about ruling the world. His brain just didn’t stretch that far. “Doc, what you just put him through, was it really that bad?”

“Far worse than anything I’ve ever come close to experiencing myself, worse than anything I’ve ever seen in twenty-six years of medical practice, worse than anything you can inflict on a person without killing him all the way dead. My knowledge of this is, really, theoretical, but it’s not something I’d want to go through myself for any reason.”

Clark thought back to a guy named Billy, and his time in Clark’s recompression chamber. He remembered how coldly he’d tortured that little rapist fuck, how it had not touched his conscience one little bit. But that had been personal, not business, and his conscience still didn’t care much about it. He’d left him alive in a farm field in Virginia, later to be driven to a hospital and treated futilely for a week or so before the barotrauma had stolen his worthless rapist life. Part of Clark wondered occasionally if Billy liked it in hell. But not often.

So this was worse than that? Damn.

Pasternak looked down and saw the eyelids flutter. Okay, he was coming all the way back. Good. Sort of.

Clark walked over to Hendley. “Who’s going to interview him?” John asked.

“Jerry Rounds, to start.”

“Want me to backstop him?”

“Probably a good idea if we all stand in here. I mean, it would be best if we had a psychiatrist handy-best of all, an Islamic theologian-but we don’t. We’re always shank’s mare here, aren’t we?”

“Cheer up. Langley would never have had the balls to do what we just did, not without a whole law school handy to kibitz, and a reporter from the Post to take notes and build up his moral outrage. That’s one thing I really like about this place: no leaks.”

“Part of me wants to discuss this with Jack Ryan. He’s not a shrink, but I like his instincts. But I can’t do that. You know why.”

Clark nodded; he did. Jack Ryan also had been known to experience conscience problems. Nobody was perfect.

Hendley walked to a phone and punched in a few digits. Just two minutes later, Jerry Rounds came in. “Well?” Rounds asked.

“Our guest has had a bad morning,” Hendley explained. “Now we need to talk to him. That’s your job, Jerry.”

“Looks unconscious,” Rounds observed.

“He’ll be that way for a couple of minutes,” Pasternak clarified. “But he’ll be okay,” the doctor promised.

“Jesus, do we have enough people in here?” Rounds observed next. More people than the regular board meetings. Then the TV camera came in, set up on a tripod by Dominic, and the tarpaulin curtains they’d duct-taped together the night before were erected around the workbench. At his nod, Dominic hit the camera’s record button, and Hendley took over, announcing off camera the time and date. Gavin Biery would, of course, later digitally alter Hendley’s voice. Dominic replayed the sequence and pronounced the recording clean.

“Head games?” Rounds asked, almost to himself, but Clark was standing right next to him.

“Why not?” Clark responded. “No rules on this, Jerry.”

“Right.” Clark had a way of cutting down to the bone of the issue, the intel chief noted.

Clark wondered if everyone should wear cowboy dress, jeans, gunbelts, and ten-gallon hats, to distort him all the way, really to play head games with Saif. But it was better, probably, to keep it simple. Thinking too much about anything usually obfuscated everything and ended up leading nowhere. Simple was usually better. Almost always.

Clark walked to the table and saw that Saif was moving now, moving and twisting in his sleep. About ready to wake up. Would he be surprised to be alive? Clark wondered. Would he think he was in hell? For damned sure it wasn’t paradise. He looked closely at the face. Little muscles were moving now. He was about ready to rejoin the world. Clark decided to stay where he was.

“John?” It was Chavez.

“Yeah, Ding?”

“It’s really been that bad, eh?”

“That’s what the doc says. He’s the expert.”

“Jesus.”

“Wrong deity, man,” Clark observed. “He’s probably expecting to see Allah-or maybe the devil.” I guess maybe I can stand in for him, John thought on reflection. He looked around. Jerry Rounds looked uneasy. Hendley had sent him up to bat in the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded and a full count. Well, he’d be inhuman not to be a little tight, John thought.

He felt himself being drawn into this. It was coming his way, and he suddenly knew it.

Oh, shit, Clark thought. What was he supposed to say to this bastard? This was a job for a psychiatrist. Maybe a serious Islamic churchman, or theologian-what did they call them? Mufti? Something like that. Somebody who knew Islam a hell of a lot better than he did.

But was this guy really a Muslim? Or was he a would-be politician? Did he himself even know what he was? At what point did a man become what he proclaimed himself to be? Those were deep questions for Clark. Too damned deep. But the man’s eyelids were fluttering. Then they opened, and Clark was looking into them.

“Feels good to breathe, doesn’t it?” Clark asked. There was no answer, but there was confusion on the man’s face. “Hello, Saif. Welcome back.”

“Who are you?” the man asked, somewhat drunkenly.

“I work for the United States government.”

“What have you done to me? What happened?”

“We induced a heart attack, then brought you back. They tell me it’s an agonizing procedure.”

To this Clark got no response, but he could see the flicker of terror in the Emir’s eyes.

“You should know this: What you just went through can be replicated-indefinitely and without long-term damage. Fail to cooperate and your days will consist of nothing more than one heart attack after another.”

“You cannot do that. You have-”

“Laws? Not here we don’t. It’s just me, you, and a syringe, for as long as it takes. If you don’t believe me, I can have the doctor back here in two minutes. Make your choice.”

The Emir’s decision took less than three seconds. “Ask your questions.”

Clark and Rounds quickly discovered that their interaction of the man known as the Emir wasn’t going to be an interrogation but rather a cordial debriefing. Yasin had clearly taken Clark’s warning to heart.

The first session lasted two hours and covered the mundane to the significant, questions to which they already had the answers, and mysteries they’d yet to unravel: How long had he been in America? Where and when had he undergone plastic surgery? His route after leaving Pakistan. How was the house in Las Vegas purchased? How big was the URC’s operational budget? The locations of bank accounts; the URC’s organizational structure, cell headquarters, sleeper agents, strategic goals…

And so it went, into the early evening, until Hendley called a halt. The next morning the group gathered in the kitchen of the main house to do a postmortem and to plan the day’s questioning. Their time was limited, Hendley explained. Whatever their personal inclinations, the Emir didn’t belong to The Campus, and justice was not theirs to dispense. The man belonged to the American people; justice to be dispensed according to their laws. Besides, once Yasin was in the hands of the FBI, months and years could be spent wringing from him every last drop of information. In the meantime, The Campus would make hay with what the Emir had so far disclosed. They had plenty of leads to run down, and enough intel to keep them busy for eight months to a year.

“I’d say there’s just one last thing we need to get out of him,” Jack Ryan Jr. said.

“What’s that?” Rounds replied.