facilities, are they acceptable to you?”
“In my culture, Judith Cochrane, it is not proper for a man to discuss this with a woman.”
She nodded. “I understand. This is not comfortable for you. It is awkward for me. But I assure you, Mr. Yasin, I am working in your interests.”
“There is no reason for you to be interested in my toilet habits. I want to know what you will do about my trial.”
Cochrane smiled. “As I said, it is a slow process. Immediately we will petition for a writ of habeas corpus. This is a demand that you be taken before the judge, who will then determine if the prison system has the authority to hold you. The writ will be denied, it won’t go anywhere, it never does, but it puts the system on notice that we will vigorously attend to your case.”
“Miss Cochrane, if you were vigorous about defending me, you would listen to my explanation of how I was captured. It was wholly illegal.”
“I told you. That is off-limits by agreement with the Justice Department.”
“Why would they do that? Because they have something to hide?”
“Of course they have something to hide. There is no legal justification for the United States’ kidnapping of you. I know that and you know that. But that is what happened.” She sighed. “If I am going to represent you, you are going to have to trust me. Can you please do that for me?”
The Emir looked at her face. It was imploring, sincere, earnest. Ridiculous. He would play along for now. “I would like a paper and pencil. I would like to make some sketches.”
“Sketches? Why?”
“Just to pass the time.”
She nodded, looked around the room. “I think I can persuade DOJ that that is a reasonable request. I will get to work on that as soon as I get back to my hotel.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome. Now… recreation. I would like to hear about what your recreation consists of. Would you care to talk about that?”
“I would prefer we talk about the torture I endured at the hands of American spies.”
Cochrane folded her notebook with another long sigh. “I will be back in three days. Hopefully by then you will have something to sketch with and some paper; I should be able to manage that with a letter to the attorney general. In the meantime, think about what I’ve told you today. Think about our ground rules, but also please think about ways you can benefit from a trial. You need to consider this as an opportunity for you and your… your cause. You can, with my help, stick a finger in the eye of the American government. Wouldn’t you like that?”
“And you have helped others stick their fingers in the eye of America?”
Cochrane smiled proudly. “Many times, Mr. Yasin. I told you I have a lot of experience in this.”
“You told me you have a lot of clients in prison. That is not experience that I find particularly impressive in an attorney.”
Now she spoke defensively. “Those clients are in prison, but they are not on death row. And they are not in a military stockade, unlike a lot of others. The supermax prison is not the worst fate.”
“Martyrdom is preferred.”
“Well, I won’t help you with that. If you wantt. be a to be dragged into a dark corner of this place and given a lethal injection, you manage that on your own. But I know men like you, Mr. Yasin. That’s not what you want.”
The Emir kept a faint smile on his lips, but it was just for show. In his head he was thinking,
But when he spoke he said, “I am sorry I have not been more pleasant. I have forgotten my manners in the many months since my last conversation with a kind soul.”
The sixty-one-year-old American woman melted in front of him. She even leaned forward toward the glass partition, closing the distance between the two of them. “I will make things better for you, Saif Rahman Yasin. Just trust me. Let me get to work on the paper and pencil; perhaps I can arrange a little privacy for you, or a little more space. As I tell my clients, this will always be a prison, not paradise, but I will make it better.”
“I understand that. Paradise awaits me; this is merely the waiting room. I would choose it to be more luxurious, but the suffering I endure now will only serve me in paradise.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” Judith Cochrane smiled.
“I’ll see you in three days.”
“Thank you, Ms. Cochrane.” The Emir cocked his head and smiled. “I am sorry. How rude. Is it Mrs. or Miss?”
“I am unmarried,” replied Judith, warmth filling her fleshy cheeks and jowls.
Yasin smiled. “I see.”
24
Jack Ryan Jr. arrived at Liberty Crossing, the name given the campus of the National Counterterrorism Center, just after eleven a.m. He had a lunch date with Mary Pat Foley, but Mary Pat asked him to come early for a personal tour of the building.
At first Mary Pat had suggested she and Jack dine at the restaurant there at NCTC after the tour. But Junior had made clear that there would be a business component to the lunch, and for that reason he preferred they went someplace off-site and quiet where they could talk shop. Mary Pat Foley was the only person at Liberty Crossing who knew of the existence of The Campus, and Jack wanted to keep it that way.
Jack pulled to the front gate in his yellow H3; he showed his ID to a tough-looking guard who checked his name off a list of approved visitors on his computer. The guard waved the Hummer through, and Jack continued on to his meeting with the number-two NCTC executive.
She met him in the lobby, helped him get his credentials, and together they shot up an elevator to the operations center. This was Mary Pat’s realm, and she made certain to spend a portion of each day walking among the analysts working here, making herself available to anyone who needed a moment of the deputy director’s time.
The room was impressive; there were dozens of workstations facing several large wall displays. The huge open space amazed Ryan; he couldn’t help but compare it to his own shop, which, although possessing state-of- the-art technology, did not look nearly as cool as the NCTC’s setup. Still, Jack realized, he and his fellow analysts were privy to virtually every bit of intelligence that flashed across the monitors around him.
Mary Pat enjoyed the role of tour guide for young Ryan, as she explained that more than sixteen agencies worked together here at the National Counterdth=''3'terrorism Center, compiling, prioritizing, and analyzing data that came to it from intelligence sources across the U.S. intelligence community as well as directly from foreign partners.
This op center, she explained, was up and running twenty-four/seven, and she was proud of its impressive feat of coordination in a bureaucracy such as the U.S. federal government.
Mary Pat did not bother any of the analysts working at their desks as she and Jack wove through the busy operations center — if each person in the room had to stop what they were doing each time a VIP was ushered by, little important work would get done — but she did direct Jack to a workstation near the hallway that led to her office. Here Jack noticed a gorgeous girl about his age with mid-length dark hair in a ponytail.
Mrs. Foley finished her spiel on the virtues of interagency cooperation with a shrug. “That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. We do pretty well, most of the time, but like anything else, we are only as good as the data we analyze. Better product means better conclusions.”
Jack nodded. It was the same with him. He was looking forward to getting out of the building so he could share with Mary Pat the excellent product he had brought with him.
“Thanks for the tour.”
“You bet. Let’s go eat. But first, I’d like you to meet someone.”
