“I’m confused, then,” I said. “What changed? Why would you be talking to us?”
Wittmer leaned in, pressing his palms down on that cherrywood table with what might as well have been the weight of the world. “Because those recordings you have don’t tell the whole story,” he said. “But mine do.”
CHAPTER 65
WITTMER PUSHED back his chair and disappeared from the kitchen, returning about a half minute later with an old Dell laptop. While he was gone, Owen and I didn’t utter a single word to each other. Really, what was there to say? The doctor had basically just promised to blow our minds. The only thing to do was shut up and wait for it.
Another half minute passed while Wittmer’s laptop booted up. Given the anticipation, it felt like an eternity. Finally, he clicked on a file and pressed Play, angling the screen in front of us so we all had a good view. It was showtime.
“This is from the same black site outside of Warsaw during the same time period,” he explained.
Indeed, from the get-go everything about the recording looked familiar. The windowless room shot in black-and-white. The lone metal chair with a Middle Eastern man shackled to it, followed by the two men in suits who restrained him while he received the shot to his carotid artery.
Of course, the doctor wielding the syringe looked familiar as well. We were in his kitchen.
“What is your name?” asked the voice off camera.
Immediately, a second voice translated the question into Arabic, and as with Owen’s recordings, the Arabic was translated back into English via subtitles. Everything was the same.
Except, in this case, the prisoner’s response.
“I speak English,” he said softly.
The two voices from behind the camera could be heard conversing, but even with the volume maxed out on Wittmer’s laptop, we couldn’t understand what they were saying. I assumed it was about the way they wanted to proceed, although you wouldn’t know it given how the first voice repeated the question—“What is your name?”—as if he were some automated prompt.
“My name is Makin Pabalan,” answered the prisoner.
Hearing him speak again, it was clear that he was fluent in English. His accent notwithstanding, there was no hitch from his having to translate in his head from Arabic. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d been educated at some point in the US.
Again, there was more talking behind the camera. We still couldn’t make it out. Whatever was said, though, it resulted in a deviation from the script.
“We’ll proceed in English only,” came the voice. “Do you understand? The questions now will only be in English.”
“Yes,” said the prisoner. “I understand.”
“And you will only answer in English. Is that understood as well?”
“Yes.”
“Please state your name again.”
“My name is Makin Pabalan.”
“Are you a member of Al Qaeda?”
“No,” said the prisoner.
“Are you aware of any plans by Al Qaeda to kill American citizens?”
“No.”
“Are you a member of any organization that considers the United States of America an enemy?”
“No.”
“Are you aware of any organization that is planning to bring harm to any American citizens anywhere in the world?”
“No.”
There wasn’t the slightest hesitation from the man in the chair as he answered each question. He looked nervous, but not to the point of fear. Nor was there any anger in his eyes. If I had been cross-examining him in a courtroom, he would’ve qualified as a cooperating witness.
More importantly, there wasn’t the slightest physical change in him. His jaw didn’t clench, the chair didn’t begin to rattle. There was no downward spiral of pain followed by even more pain. No sign of lie and you die.
He was telling the truth.
Owen and I exchanged glances, the thought being that the doctor had it wrong. This wasn’t the whole story, it was the same story.
In unison, we turned to Wittmer. What gives?
But he was still staring at the screen, a subtle but unmistakable cue that we should be doing the same.
The doctor knew exactly what he was talking about.
CHAPTER 66
IT HAPPENED so damn and scary fast.
One second, the prisoner was fine. The next, he wasn’t. Only this was different from Owen’s recordings. So very, very different. This began in an instant and barely lasted much longer. It was a flash. No, it was a detonation.
It was as if the man’s brain had actually exploded inside his head.
I watched as his eyes rolled back, his face convulsing like it was lodged in a paint mixer at Home Depot. The force was so strong it literally lifted the man off the ground, chair included. By the time gravity fought back, he and the chair were tipped over on the floor, motionless.
“Christ …” Owen muttered, his voice trailing off.
Wittmer reached out and hit the space bar on the keyboard, pausing the recording. It was right then that the thought occurred to me. As quickly as all hell broke loose in that interrogation room, it wasn’t as if the doctor couldn’t have tried to intervene.
But he was nowhere in the frame. Why not?
“That might have been the sickest part of all,” Wittmer said as if reading my mind. “The second I tried to help, I was literally held back. They didn’t want the guy saved. They wanted him documented. Like a lab rat.”
He hit the space bar again to resume the recording. True to his word, Wittmer finally sprang into the frame as if he’d just broken free from the two other guys behind the camera. Within seconds of his kneeling down and placing two fingers on the prisoner’s neck, he shook his head slowly. The man was dead.
“Was there an autopsy performed?” asked Owen.
“Yes. It was an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage,” said Wittmer. “Each and every time.”
Boom.
“Wait … what?” I asked. But I’d heard him perfectly. So had Owen.
“It happened seven other times out of twenty trials,” said Wittmer. “At least, the twenty trials I was overseeing.”
Owen shook his head in disbelief. “A forty percent fail rate,” he said. “Was the prisoner cooperating each time?”
The doctor nodded, his gaze retreating. It was as if he had nowhere to look. “Karcher just calls it collateral damage,” he said, disgusted. “I call it murder.”
There was no pushing that last line aside, no ignoring its implications. The words simply hung there at the table, filling the silence. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve sworn the clock above us had stopped as well. I couldn’t hear it tick.
Eventually, Owen spoke up. “Does Karcher know you have this recording?” he asked.
“If he did, I’d probably be dead right now,” said Wittmer.
It was hard to argue with that. Owen and I were living proof.
Immediately, all I could picture in my head was this guy, Karcher, arranging for Claire’s death. Then Owen’s. Then mine.
Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose is a man with everything to lose.
Frank Karcher was every bit that man.
“What we need now is the link,” said Owen. “Proof that the serum exists, that it was used, and that Karcher’s fingerprints are all over it.”
Am I missing something? “Don’t we already have an entire film festival that proves the first two?” I asked.
“The recordings prove a lot of things,” said Owen. “Without the person responsible, though, it’s just an embarrassing home movie for the entire country.”
“Fine. So commence with the congressional hearings,” I said.
Owen turned to Wittmer with an air of certitude that people only grant you when you can back it up. “Excuse the assumption,” he said, “but you didn’t actually develop the serum, did you? Nor do you know the name of the person who did, using my rese
arch, right?”
“I was never told,” said the doctor.
Owen turned back to me, continuing. “And the two henchmen in the recording, the ones restraining the prisoner and ultimately restraining Dr. Wittmer? They’re undercover agents. So making the recording, any of the recordings, public would expose their identities. That’s never going to happen.”
“In other words,” I said, “what we need is proof that can go public.”
“Exactly,” said Owen.
Without a word, Wittmer pushed back his chair once more and left the kitchen. To quote Yogi Berra, it was déjà vu all over again. Owen and I simply looked at each other with nothing to say.
Until the doctor returned.
He placed what was in his hand on the table. “This might be your answer,” he said.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Owen.
“Yes,” said Wittmer. He folded his arms. “But let’s be very clear about one thing. You didn’t get it from me.”
CHAPTER 67
THE SMALL white stucco building with only a number next to the door and no other signage wasn’t quite hiding in plain sight in the heart of Georgetown. But it wasn’t exactly off the beaten path, either. From where Owen and I parked, we could look over our shoulders and see the back entrance to a Starbucks out on M Street.
That just made this whole thing feel even weirder. Is that even the right word? Bizarre … surreal … unnerving? Break out the thesaurus….
Behind us were cappuccinos, Frappuccinos, and chai mocha lattes with pumps of gooey, sweet syrup. In front of us? A top secret CIA lab producing a lethal truth serum that skirts the US Constitution and the right of due process to the extent that the state of Kansas skirts the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
“What are the odds someone’s inside?” I asked, turning off the engine. We were an hour past sunset, a lone floodlight overhead providing what little view we had of the one-story building. There were no windows in front.
Owen shrugged his broad shoulders. Wittmer hadn’t been able to guarantee the place would be empty. “No clue,” he said.
It was the way he said it, though, as if those words were a bit new to him. I couldn’t help a slight smile. “That doesn’t happen to you a lot, does it?”
“What’s that?”
“Being clueless about something.”
He returned the smile, all modesty aside. “Nope.”
I reached into the backseat, grabbing my duffel, which was sitting next to his backpack. The kid had his bag of tricks; I had mine. “What about guns?” I asked. “Ever fire one?”
The look he gave me was the polar opposite of clueless. “I grew up in New Hampshire,” he answered.
Enough said.
I pulled out the semiautomatic SIG Sauer P210, checked the magazine, and handed it over. Live free or die….
“You ready?” I asked.
Owen unbuckled his seat belt, flipped the safety alongside the trigger, and with a blind hand hooked an arm through one of the straps of his backpack. “Ready.”
The walk from the car to the building’s entrance was no more than ten yards, albeit a zigzag given all the potholes filled with water from the earlier downpour.
I led the way with my Glock, never more thankful for its xenon light and red laser sight. With every measured step I took toward the entrance, that former weapons instructor of mine back at Valley Forge, the one with the sandpaper voice, was all but echoing between my ears. A prick and a prophet all at once.
Sometimes shit happens in the dark….
CHAPTER 68
“ONE MORE for luck,” I whispered to Owen, reaching out with my arm. I was making a fist so tight every fingernail was digging deep into my palm.
We’d stationed ourselves on either side of the windowless door, bags at our feet and our backs pressed hard against the stucco. I’d already knocked once. The second knock got the same result. Either the place was empty or whoever was inside wasn’t answering.
“My turn,” Owen whispered back.
In the age of retinal scanners, digital thumbprint readers, and whatever other paranoid-inspired gizmos exist that make sure only certain people get into certain places, Wittmer had given us a little piece of irony. A simple key.
Actually, it made complete sense. Banks need vaults and guards and security cameras because people know that’s where they keep the money. This, on the other hand, was four walls and a roof barely bigger than a shack tucked behind an alley with all the foot traffic of a Vineyard Vines store in Newark. In other words …
Just make sure you lock the door behind you, Doc.
Still, Owen and I couldn’t help wondering the same thing. Hoping, really. That we could trust Wittmer.
In a way, he was merely a middleman. The crucial part of his job was picking up the serum and transporting it overseas, an MD as human mule. Possessing all the requisite paperwork for an international humanitarian mission, he was above suspicion. Barely an eyebrow raised through international customs.
So much better than swallowing two dozen little balloons and a postflight meal of Ex-Lax.
“Okay,” I whispered to Owen.
He was holding up the key, his answer to the question that it would’ve been redundant of me to ask aloud. What now?
Slowly, Owen reached out, slid in the key, and gave it a twist.
We braced for everything. An alarm. An attack dog. The night cleaning crew. Everything.
Instead, pushing the door open, we got exactly what we desperately wanted. Nothing.
Just silence. And darkness.
I motioned for Owen to stay put, peering around the hinges like some guy who’d seen too many cop shows. Before turning on any lights, I wanted to shine my gun around a bit, as it were. The good news about that xenon light attachment was that being on the other side of it was like looking into the high beams of an oncoming car. The flashlight app on Owen’s phone times ten.
Basically, I was a walking one-way mirror.
The first surprise was that there was no reception area, just a short hallway. After a small kitchen to the left and an even smaller bathroom directly opposite on the right, everything was right there in front of me, and it was pretty much as advertised by Wittmer. “The facility,” he called it.
I stared through the blast of white light funneling out from my Glock, the red streak from the laser sight moving with my hands from one corner of the room to the next. Only the far wall had windows, three across with horizontal slat blinds that were drawn and closed tight.
What I was looking at was somewhere between a high school chemistry classroom and a meth lab, not that I’d personally seen a lot of meth labs. Truth be told, everything I knew about them—as well as pedophiles, runaway brides, high school teachers who sleep with their students, and people who try to hire hit men to kill their spouses—I owed to a guilty-pleasure habit of watching Dateline NBC.
Even in the moment, the thought was all but inescapable. This would make one hell of an episode….
The room was messy. Almost chaotic, even in its stillness. There were things everywhere on the large island in the center. Vials and beakers. A couple of Bunsen burners. A centrifuge, as well as a few other bulky machines that were a combination of glass and stainless steel, including one that was connected to a large ventilating air duct that shot up straight through the ceiling. There was also a red binder stuffed thick with papers.
What there wasn’t, though, was another surprise. We were alone.
I looked back over my shoulder, Owen’s silhouette peeking out from behind the doorway.
“No one home,” I said.
And technically, that was the truth.
CHAPTER 69
THE SMARTEST thing I could do was get out of his way.
Owen stepped into the room, flipped on the lights, and closed the door behind him so fast I was out of breath just watching him. The kid was on a mission.
At first, I didn’t quite understand the rush. Sure, we didn�
��t want to loiter, but it wasn’t like there was a shot clock ticking away in the corner. We had time.
Then I saw him reach for it. The way he reached for it.
Sidling up to the island in the middle of the room, he had over a dozen things to choose from, including what appeared to be the serum itself, contained in a rack of vials. He barely even noticed them, though. It was as if there was only one item he cared about, and that was when I understood.
With both hands, he pulled the red binder toward him.
Of all the base emotions that must have been kicking around in his head over the past few days—anger, fear, guilt, to name a few—they were still no match for what makes a genius a genius. Curiosity.
Someone had piggybacked on his brain and taken his work into uncharted territory. It might have been seriously misguided and ultimately doomed, but it was also something else, the one thing in common with anything that pushes the boundaries of innovation. It was bold.
And damn if Owen didn’t want to see the blueprint.
Silently, I watched him make his way through the pages in the binder, one after another after another, his index finger tracing the words and formulas like he was in one of those old Evelyn Wood speed-reading commercials.
I kept waiting for him to take some sort of mental breather, at the very least a simple pause. Scratch his chin. Shift his weight from one leg to the other. Instead, he kept plowing his way through, barely even taking the time to blink.
Then, suddenly, he froze. I took that as my cue, if there was ever going to be one.
“What is it?” I asked.
Silly me, thinking I was about to get an answer. I was pretty sure Owen didn’t even hear me. He was too busy now looking around the rest of the room, his eyes pinballing from one item to the next. Whatever he was searching for, though, he couldn’t find it.
That was when his head snapped back with an idea.
He spun on his heels, disappearing into the small kitchen by the door. I could hear the refrigerator open, followed by the shifting and rattling of metal and glassware. Again, it was like someone had a stopwatch on him.
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