by James Grady
Camera mount. But no camera. No all-time unblinking eye.
A guard lifted off the prisoner’s glasses; the guard’s fist rushed closer as a blur.
Waking up. Clamped in that chair. Glasses taped on his swollen face. Tastes like dried blood and broken fillings. Thick cheek stubble. Ribs, legs, bowels—throbbing with fire. Naked. Cold. Trapped in that chair across from the empty desk. Alone.
Focus, thought Eric. Play the White Lion like you’re innocent. Hans Wolfe, not Eric Schmidt. Heidelberg University, not Youngs-town U. Engineer. Always an engineer.
A door opened. Mustache Man walked in and sat behind the desk.
Said: “What is the first question?”
“Who… Who are you?”
Mustache Man nodded. “My name is Major Aman.”
Drops of sweat rolled off Eric. Tapped the cement floor.
Major Aman said: “What is the second question?”
OH GOD DON’T KNOW, HE’S GOING TO ZAP ME, HE’S GOING TO—
“You don’t know?” Major Aman shrugged. “Huh.”
The secret policeman leaned closer. “The second question brought us here.”
Brace don’t brace yourself don’t… when…
“But the first question is key.” Major Aman scanned a file.
“Hans Wolfe. Engineer rented by us from Volksgotten construction. Is that how you pronounce it? I speak no German, so good you speak English, ya?” Major Aman permitted himself the curl of a smile. “One engineer among a firm of hundreds of engineers. No children. No wife. No family. No connections. Who are you?”
WHAMANG!
Oh God God please no, oh. Oh. Over, that one’s over.
“The answer to who you are is alone, and that’s key to you being here.”
Eric blinked: My cover, my lies plus my true life… made the key… to this?
“The second question is: What do you do?”
Everything seared to lightning crimson blackness.
He came to being dragged naked over gray cement. Risked raising one eyelid: Long corridor. Closed doors. No cameras. No desk for a sentry. No sentry.
Guards dropped him. Eric saw a guard tap a keypad mounted outside a black steel door with a tilted ‘C’ handle. Electric buzz and the door clicked loose. Out from the checa burst a swirl of color. Eric closed his eyes. They dragged him inside and he didn’t move. Didn’t flinch when the door bonged shut and the electronic lock clicked.
Count each breath. Keep a fix on time. Figure they’ll go pee, have a smoke, wipe the puddles off the floor by that chair, catch a meal. I’m here. Alone.
The beatings, electrocutions and swirling colored cell made him so dizzy he had to crawl to the door. His hands found the lock plate. Found four screw heads.
He smeared himself up the cool metal door. The lock plate shifted under his hand: loose. Life in wartime, ’specially in Iraq. What works, works. What doesn’t work is just the way things are.
When guards pushed open the door, he was still leaning against it. Their shove knocked his naked body through the air, crashed it on the jumble of bricks.
They didn’t beat him.
Or take him to Major Aman and the chair.
Instead they quick marched him to the hose-down room and a wooden barrel. Like a rain bucket was how Eric thought of it because of Grampa Claude. The guards held his head under the barrel’s water. They pulled him up to gasp the wet concrete prison air. Dunked him again. Again. Threw him back in the checa.
But heck, that was great!
Now, finally, thanks to Grampa Claude, Eric envisioned hope.
Took it with him to the chair in front of Major Aman.
“There are truths,” said the torturer. “People are people. They are who they are. Plus, the American poet Bob Dylan is right: everyone must serve somebody. Or something. Our great Saddam serves the good of Iraq. We all serve who we call God.
“You serve us,” Major Aman told the naked man clamped in the chair. “We are the reason you’re here. The rest is your ignorance—what is the second question?”
Eric jerked and blurted: “What do you do?”
“And what do you do?”
Knew it before it happened, but still the electric shock slammed Eric to white.
“What do you do? You obey orders. You work for us. You are alone.
“Yet when that secretary whispered how she and her Republican Guard husband hated their lives in Iraq… Who conspired with her? You, Hans Wolfe.”
OH PLEASE GOD, NO! THEY CAUGHT HER! CAUGHT THEM! THEY’LL BE LOCKED IN A PLACE LIKE THIS, OR IN A DITCH…!
“That’s not you,” said Aman. “That’s not our lonely engineer.”
Not my mission! Eric had told himself day after day at the secret construction site as he watched the secretary tremble. Not here to rescue! Not here to recruit. Here to play the pudgy geek people see when they look at me. Here to spy, get data, steal info.
“We know the man you sent them to. All you foreigners mixing in the bazaar come into contact with scum like that man smuggles traitorous dogs out of Iraq.”
Got Sa’ad too—or will, he always knew they were close. That poor family! If I hadn’t disobeyed Agency orders, if I’d stuck to mission and not got involved to save…
“Playing rescuer is not in your profile. Which makes you interesting beyond your isolated state. Special among guest workers we had to choose from. Means you’re changeable. Luckily, your change was to ‘rescue’ our counter-intelligence team.”
“Wha…What?”
“Our team wasn’t looking for you. They were monitoring our scientists who think too much, get ideas about fleeing to America or Marseilles. You getting hooked by them was the final sum of fate that brought you here—what do you do?”
Eric said: “The husband and wife… They were secret police? I got trapped by them for… for being… just a good guy! Only that? That’s why I’m here?”
WHAMANG!!!
Waking up on the floor of the checa, Eric remembered: I disobeyed. Broke mission. Tried to be a good guy. Got suckered. Got here.
He found a wall. Stood. Saw the iron bed.
Eric put one foot on the bed and leapt, arms above his head. He grabbed…
GOT IT! Steel wire slices hands when it’s grasped. Eric blood-slipped down the wire until his hands hit a green metal mobile—that popped free of the ceiling, and he crashed to the bricks like a bespectacled walrus.
Eric bent the book-sized sheet of thin metal until it snapped into two pieces. The biggest section had the wire melded to it, the smaller section looked like a putty knife.
Using his shit like putty, Eric adhered the small blade from the mobile to the underside of a floor brick. Smeared the rest of the cell with his bloody hands. He hid the true intent of those wounds to his hands with cosmetic slashes on his wrist.
Passed out.
Woke up head held underwater in the barrel by guards who shook the broken mobile in his gasping face before they dunked him again. For a bonus round, they beat him with their L-shaped police clubs. Next thing he knew, he was in the chair.
Major Aman wiped Eric’s face with a warm towel. “Can I tell you a secret?”
To Eric’s slurping lips he held a cup of warm coffee fortified with milk and sugar.
“You can’t kill everybody.” Major Aman sighed. “You can try, but it’s counter-productive. What the world needs now is not dead people. What we need are useful people. Who obey. Then everything works like paradise, right engineer?”
He waited until Eric finished the tin cup of sweet milked coffee, then into his other ear, whispered: “Suicide is choice and choice challenges obedience. You won’t try suicide again unless you’re obeying an order—what is the second question?”
“What do ’o do?” slurred Eric.
“And what does
everybody do?”
“Obey orders.”
But I didn’t! thought Eric. I disobeyed CIA orders ’n’ look what happened!
“Next time,” promised Major Aman, “we get to move on.”
Not one shock, thought Eric as guards dragged him back to the checa. They fed him. Clubbed him once out of politeness. Closed the door with a bong and a click.
Every cell in his body begged for unconscious oblivion. Eric crawled until he found the right brick, the shit-stuck metal blade. He slithered to the door. Took him 232 breaths to remove the four screws holding the electronic lock’s plate to the steel door.
Good thing they’d taped his glasses on. Good thing the lights kept strobing.
Eric peered into the metal jumble of the electronic lock. Spotted the two wires, but deep in the lock: Darn, no way could he use his metal strip to do the final job.
Hope we go to the bucket soon, thought Eric as he screwed the plate back over the lock. Or there won’t be enough left of me to escape.
Next time, they took him straight to the chair.
Major Aman said: “There are three questions. First question?”
“Who are you?”
“Second question?”
“What do you do?”
“You are what you do. And see? You obey. What we have here is a chance to—”
CRACKETY-ZAP!
What’s wrong? Can’t feel that electricity! Can’t—
The snake-necked lamp on Major Aman’s desk went crazy. Blue sparks and smoke swirled as jolts of escaping electricity made the lamp hop and clatter like a robot gone mad. Major Aman jumped away from the desk. A guard charged from behind Eric and hit the gone-crazy lamp with his L-shaped police baton.
Inertia bounced the lamp off the desk, sparks sputtering. The guard swung the police baton like a golf club, smacked the brass lamp clattering across the floor. Unplugged, the lamp said nothing as the guard clubbed it again and again. Panting, sweat soaked, the guard marched past the naked man clamped in the chair and couldn’t help but give the prisoner a grin of triumph.
“Sorry about that,” said Major Aman as he took his seat behind the desk. “The curse of an imprisoned country. So often our things, especially high tech… break. We have to constantly plan and prepare for such inconveniences.”
WHAMANG!
“Oh good, still works. Where were we? Ah, yes. The third question.
“Before that,” said Major Aman, “consider: who you are is one person. Everyone serves. Obedience is the heart of service. Some citizens don’t realize that they should serve the glorious leader. That ignorance is common among potentially productive citizens. Scientists. Engineers. Inventors. Executives. Lawyers. Teachers. Writers. Our challenge is to wipe out ignorance without lowering productivity.”
Major Aman gestured to the room with a slaughtered snake neck lamp and a naked man clamped in a chair. “This is an experiment to answer that challenge.”
“Brainwash.”
“What good is a washed clean brain? We need a brain that embraces the logic of obedience without losing its creative potential. We can’t risk Iraqi brains with mere experiments. But we have guest workers. We have you. You have the right kind of mind. You showed yourself to be changeable. You’re all alone. You’re just a rental.
“The third question,” said Major Aman, angling his arm to show the poise of his finger while Eric’s eyes gravitated to him. “The third question is…”
Wait no wait no wait…
“The third question is: How can you make this life of pain worth it?”
WHAMANG!
That session became one excrutiating searing shock as he heard Major Aman reveal how who we are means service is inevitable. How the heart of service was obedience. How that perfect formula builds usefulness. Usefulness means an end of pain and aloneness. Usefulness was the answer to the third question of how you make this life worth it. The first question meant who one was created the question of what had to be done, and that brought usefulness to make this thing called life worth it.
When he woke up on the floor of the chekca, Eric cried.
But not enough, he sobbed. I need a bucket of tears!
Two chair sessions later—or maybe four—guards dragged him to the barrel.
Waking up choking almost foiled him, but the third time guards dunked his head under the water, he remembered. Swallowed. Drank as he thrashed. Drank all he could. There’s a hole in my bucket, don’t let any water run out. They dunked him until they were all too worn out to do the routine beating, so fuck it, they just dragged it back to the swirling colors/blasting lights checa and dumped it on the floor.
Bong! went the slammed-shut door.
Click! went the electronic lock.
Now or never. Eric crawled on his water-swollen belly. Found the brick shit-stuck with his secret screwdriver. Found the door. Unscrewed the lock plate.
Standing. I’m me. I’m a man. I’m standing. Naked. Wearing glasses.
Wish I had galoshes. Hell, even sneakers—they’d be perfect for next!
You got what you got. You are who you are. You have to do—NO!
What the heck, it’s only one more time.
With the best aim of his life, Eric peed a bucket into the electronic lock.
WHAMANG! He discovered he’d been knocked back to the wall.
Smoke coming out of the electronic lock! Shorted it out! I took the shock, DID IT!
Like a giddy drunk, Eric toddled to the smoking door. Hooked his finger in the wet lock hole. Gone, I’m gone. He pulled with all his strength.
On the other side of the checa’s door, out there in that imprisoned country where often things, especially high tech, break, where life meant having to plan and prepare for… inconveniences, out there in the empty hall, guards had slipped an L-shaped police baton through the cell door’s steel loop handle like a Medieval bar to back up the unreliable 20th Century electronic lock.
Eric pulled. And pulled. Pulled. Collapsed sobbing into swirling color and light.
The guards and Major Aman were not pleased. Or discouraged.
Everyone worked harder.
Until Eric remembered the guard’s ludicrous smile of triumph.
Laying on his back in the checa, naked, glasses taped on, Eric’s right hand flopped and hit his face. He cupped his mouth to stop from shouting his new secret:
Sometimes triumph is beating a lamp to death.
Obey orders. That’s what Aman/Saadam/Iraq wanted him to do.
Obey orders. That’s what the CIA wanted him to do.
Questions of who to obey only brought him pain. Good Guy orders vs. Bad Guy orders: the equation null sets if all forces are equal. Obeying everyone equals obeying no one. No pain then. Who I am is the engineer, what I do is obey all orders.
The checa swirled. Bent walls and reckless colors calmed themselves into straight lines with proper angles and sane patterns. He faced the sloping iron shelf. Every time he’d tried to lay on that bed, he rolled off.
Eric stretched out on the iron slab. His left hand gripped the edge to let him lay on a sloped iron bed in defiance of mere realities like gravity.
Making it work, making it add up—with a ludicrous grin—to his own triumph.
Three days later, Major Aman yelled: “You’re worthless! You obey anybody!”
Eric stood across the room from that chair. Stood naked, on one leg, his finger poked in his nose, his beard and hair smelling burnt.
“Supposed to belong to just us! I’ll get trouble for screwing up your experiment!”
Bare naked Eric stood there on one leg, his finger poked in his nose like a random guard had told him to do. Major Aman hadn’t asked the naked man if his real name was Hans Wolfe or if he worked for the CIA. After his epiphany in the checa, Eric would have of course told Majo
r Aman those answers to obey their questions. But the torturer never asked. Even with his finger up his nose, Eric knew that smelled of victory.
“Stand on both legs,” ordered Major Aman on their last day. “Take your finger—put your hands down. You are going off the list of my problems. No more checa. Bathe. Eat, sleep, get yourself to look good for the TV cameras. Soon, Saddam will send you guest workers home, public relations gesture. Get on the plane to Germany. When you get there, what you do doesn’t matter to us, because clearly, you are crazy.”
Eric obeyed and obeying proved his thesis: the pain stopped. A CIA recovery team scooped him off the curb while he was waiting for the DON’T WALK sign to change at the Bonn airport. The recovery team gave Eric to the Castle.
Where he obeyed every order. Where we developed a flow that let him lead an OK life. After Hailey walked into the ward, Eric began again to think for himself, speak his thoughts, have desires. But he never violated his triumph of absolute slavery.
29
Cold. Wet. Dark.
Words about me as I stood on the beach listening to the waves in the black night.
Cold. Wet. Dark.
Words about spies.
Cold. As in Cold War. As in ruthless. As in the world of invisible battles preceding the public’s blasting by bombs and bullets. As in, “cold as a grave.”
Wet. As in, “wet work.” Wet as in blood. What the spy services of the crumbled Soviet Union called neutralizations, assassinations, murder.
Dark. As in “covert.” As in “black.” As in “black budget/work/world.”
Walking toward me across the packed sand came Hailey. The full moon made her smile glisten and her eyes bright. We stared at the rippling night as waves swept up to wet our feet and whirl salt spray on our faces. A jillion white dots twinkled overhead.
“How many of those stars do you think are already dead?” she said. “And us just standing here waiting for the light to catch up to being gone.”
I said nothing.
“Do you know why it’s always out there?” she asked. “The ocean?”
I gave her no answer.
After a dozen crashing waves, she said: “If it wasn’t out there, we’d drown here.”