On Hurricane Island

by Ellen Meeropol

  “Tobias here.”

  “It’s Henry. I heard from Washington last night about the new detainee. She’s high priority.

  “Great. I’ve been thinking we should give her a few hours in the cold box before the interrogation, just to warm her up for the questioning.” Tobias wouldn’t let himself laugh out loud. Henry was too stiff to enjoy a little joke.

  “Are you nuts? What part of ‘not too rough with this one’ did you not understand?”

  Tobias heard Henry’s instructions on the tarmac, but that doesn’t mean he agrees. Still, he has to keep the whine out of his voice. “Boss, you know that cold cell preparation gives the best results. Why not use what works?”

  “It’s my decision and it’s final: no cold cell. Have her ready for me at 1500. And I want the new guard there. Austin.”

  “I’d like to be involved.”

  “Not this time. Make the arrangements.”

  The disconnection click thunders in Tobias’s ear. Why did they bother to build two cold boxes, if Henry won’t use them? And why doesn’t Henry get it, after all these years of working together, that Tobias is a far more gifted interrogator than Henry will ever be. Henry is missing the pit bull gene.

  But wait. Maybe deep down, Henry does understand and he’s being devious. He really does want enhanced interrogation, but he wants it off the record. That must be why he asked Tobias to make the arrangements, without specifying which arrangements, except no cold box. That leaves Tobias free to use his discretion. He’ll follow the SLIC protocol: Strip, Lights, Isolation, Cold. He scoots his desk chair to the master console across the office and adjusts the air conditioning in Room D to Coldest. Hypothermia works best in the cold box, but used right, it can be extremely effective in a regular room.

  Tobias turns back to the monitor. The prisoner has been jogging around the exercise yard for forty-five minutes, long enough to get hot and sweaty. Good.

  He dials Austin’s cell phone and watches on the monitor as she answers.

  “This is Austin.”

  “Tobias here. Bring your prisoner to Interrogation Room D.”

  “Okay, right after her shower.”

  “No, immediately. The room code for today is 4986.”

  “4986. Got it.”

  Tobias can’t believe it. “You dolt. Don’t ever speak classified information out loud in the presence of a prisoner.”

  “She can’t hear me,” Austin says. “She’s across the yard.”

  “She’s ten feet away. Besides, it’s standard operating procedure, and that means no questions.”

  He watches Austin stand frozen for a moment, surveying the yard. The girl probably hasn’t considered before that she and the prisoner are under surveillance, that everyone is under surveillance, all the time. In her head, she’s probably replaying their sweet little heart-to-heart about hurricane history and embarrassing names. She’ll learn.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “By the way.” He keeps his voice low although there’s no one to overhear. “Those uniform pants look damn good on you.”

  Tobias disconnects the phone and watches Austin approach the prisoner and reconnect the harness apparatus. When she escorts the prisoner into the building, he switches to the interrogation corridor monitor.

  “I need to shower first,” Gandalf says.

  “There’s no time. They want you now.” Austin places her thumb against the security pad. When she enters the code, her body shifts slightly to block the keypad from the prisoner’s line of sight.

  Tobias nods. The girl’s smart. She won’t make that mistake again, won’t jeopardize the code. Too bad he’s not doing this interrogation. He’d like to mentor Austin, teach her the best approaches to information extraction.

  He switches cameras again, this time to the interrogation room interior, where Austin is clipping the prisoner’s restraint to the metal chair bolted to the floor in the center of the room. The prisoner looks stunned, hugging her bare arms. He can practically see the goose bumps rising on her skin and wonders for a moment if her nipples are erect too. Henry probably won’t acknowledge it, but the rapid-cool AC unit has been worth every penny. Of course, it’s not as effective as the cold box unit and optimally SLIC preparation begins 24-48 hours before the interrogation. But cold will be especially effective after her workout and besides, these academic types are soft. Even for Henry, this woman shouldn’t be hard to break. Tobias wonders if a lezzy will react any differently to sexual humiliation.

  SLIC: how he loves military acronyms. People ridicule the initials, but he treasures their secret power. He has memorized the instructions from the manual: Stripping consists of forceful removal of detainees’ clothing. In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee. Interrogator personnel tear clothing from detainees by firmly pulling downward against buttoned buttons and seams. Tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.

  Personally, he prefers knife-stripping to tearing. It’s a newer technique he learned at the Homeland Security course. Too bad he won’t be doing this interrogation, but there’s room for his contributions. He can understand that Henry wants first crack at this math professor. Maybe he’s reserving Tobias’s expertise for the second round, when the prisoner is worn out and ready to spill her guts. In any case, he bets that stripping will be a particularly effective preparation technique on this perp.

  On the monitor, Austin leans close to the prisoner’s ear and whispers something Tobias can’t hear. He frowns. The guard isn’t supposed to get all cozy with the bitch. He activates the overhead speaker, even though it’s against protocol. Even though it alerts the prisoner that she is under surveillance.

  “Austin,” he yells. “Get your lovely ass out of there.” He punches the Off icon and adjusts the temperature down another notch. He’ll get something to eat and take his own sweet time with it. Then he’ll finish preparing the detainee for interrogation.

  15. GANDALF, 2:15 P.M.

  She cannot stop shivering. It has been cold forever; she has been locked in this room eternally. What did Norah say about the cold, forty-eight hours? It feels like hours and days and weeks, although she knows it cannot be that long but there is no clock and no window, and they still have her watch. Not to mention her computer, her files, the page proofs for her article. She must have already missed her presentation; Sandra and Ahmed are no doubt furious and even if she gets a chance to explain, they will never believe a story like this. No one will.

  Her body is shaking uncontrollably, but her brain feels incisive and potent. These people made a huge mistake in abducting her, but they might be unwilling to admit it. So she will have to organize her own escape, or at least be ready to seize any opportunity that presents itself. In the meantime, her mind is engaged and ready to tackle the obstacles using the only weapon she possesses: her intellect.

  Like perspiration: she has never thought about it before, has never considered if sweat turns to ice on skin, although she has observed how ice forms easily on beards. If a student asked if it were possible for sweat to freeze, she would suggest they work together to determine a formula based on the salt content. She begins to develop the equation in her head, but the cold air blowing from the vent directly above her in the ceiling captures her thoughts and whisks them elsewhere, to another problem: how cold is it? Cold enough to freeze the water in her cells?

  She corrects herself; it is actually saline not water, so it requires a lower temperature to freeze her blood and interstitial fluid. Her mind skids again, to the argument she had with Jess last winter as they spread salt on the icy narrow sidewalk leading to the trash cans where the super never bothered to plow. Jess said that since adding salt to water makes it boil at a higher temperature, like with cooking pasta, it stands to reason that salt would increase the freezing point too. That would make the ice on the sidewalk worse. Gandalf tried to describe freezing point depress
ion, using the example of antifreeze. But Jess waved her explanations away, saying who cared about antifreeze, shouldn’t science be logical? Then Gandalf muttered something insulting about English teachers and walked off, leaving Jess to finish the walk herself. She ached now with the memory. She should have found a way to explain it. Jess deserved better.

  She must turn her brain back to the problem at hand, getting out of this place, and maybe Austin can be persuaded to help with that. The guard seems ingenuous and naïve, incongruous in this ugly place. She seems prickly too, as if she does not expect much from people. Gandalf understands that attitude; she was lonely as a child and adolescent, never fitting in or feeling comfortable with her peers. In a love-hate relationship with her stupid name, she read The Hobbit every year on her birthday, looking for a nugget of personal wisdom. But the book was playful and quirky, and she was neither, and still is not.

  Besides, Gandalf cannot allow herself to trust anyone in this place. Austin acts sympathetic with her “hang tough” comment, but maybe she is supposed to say that, to make Gandalf think the young woman is on her side. Maybe Austin gave her that drink of water on the plane for the same reason, so she will let down her guard and reveal some important state secret.

  Except that she has no secrets to give up, state or otherwise. Gandalf bites her lip, which feels oddly thick and numb. She has no information that could buy her freedom. Norah sounded so proud she hadn’t answered their questions, but it is different for Norah. She might really have information the government wants. Maybe she has even done something illegal. But once the people in charge understand that Gandalf just manipulates her equations, minds her own business, they will stop treating her like a criminal. Or if the people at this place are corrupt, their bosses are bound to step in and straighten things out, sending her home with an apology.

  If only she could cry. Maybe tears will dissolve the thick clog of frustration lodged in her throat, plugging her swallowing and aching, aching. Tears will at least be warm, but they will not come. Maybe that is lucky; they could freeze on her face. They are probably frozen in her tear ducts.

  Enough self-pity; she must think. Think warm. She closes her eyes and pictures the beach in Puerto Rico where she and Jess spent three days last winter. Her brain flickers a few times, transforming the fine white sand into ice, but she steers the image firmly back to beach, and then she is lost in the warmth of the memory of that last evening. Seduced by the tour guide’s description of the tiny marine animals with luminous bodies, they signed up for an excursion to a bioluminescent bay. It was already dark when they arrived at the edge of the nature preserve, climbed into a canoe, and paddled under a narrow canopy of mangroves that slowly widened into the bay. Almost imperceptibly at first, the starlight fell from the darkness behind the mangrove leaves into the water. The water shimmered each time their canoe paddles touched the black surface. The flickering grew until the water was on fire with tiny embers. She is warm.

  A man bursts into the room; the warm air and sparkling bay disappear. In the moment before he ties the blindfold headache tight around her eyes, Gandalf catches a glimpse of a narrow weasel face. Actually more like a ferret than a weasel. Ferret: she files the name in her mental folder along with Troll and Blue Eyes. And Apricot, even though Apricot now has a real name. Austin, who strapped her into this chair and abandoned her in this freezer.

  After Ferret blindfolds her, he removes the straps binding her to the chair.

  “Stand up,” he says, and she knows that voice. Ferret is Angry Man, who argued with the man in charge at the airstrip and brought her to her cell.

  Her muscles hurt and they are stiff. Standing blindfolded is harder than she expects, and she wobbles before finding her balance. For a few moments the man does not do anything or say anything. She cannot stop trembling. Then his hand is on her shoulder, another on the front of her shirt. His fingers are warm on her chest, and for an instant the warmth is welcome until the fear takes over. He grabs a handful of the cotton fabric and rips it downward towards her belly, and the cotton tears. The shirt falls to the floor with a faint fluttery sound, and she crosses her arms over her chest.

  His open hand presses against her belly; his splayed fingers linger at the waistband of her shorts. The button rips free, and it pings three times on the floor. The zipper gives way with a raspy sound. Then a rustle and a click and cold metal against her belly. A tug and a soft noise, the slicing of a knife through fabric. Her shorts fall onto her toes. She steels herself; her bra and underpants will be next.

  Instead he pushes her back into the chair and reconnects the leather strap around her waist.

  The door opens and closes. Is he gone? She is blindfolded and cannot be sure. Her nose itches, and she scratches it and realizes that her hands are free, so she could remove the blindfold herself. But she better not. He might be waiting for her to do that. He might come back and take away her underpants. Is she being unreasonable? Is paranoia a symptom of increasing hypothermia? She cannot remember what Norah said about the cold. Norah certainly did not say anything about ripping clothes off piece by piece in this calculated perversion of seduction. Maybe Norah does not know her well enough to talk about something so intimate. No, not intimate, but personal.

  Why did Ferret leave her in her underwear? Probably to let her know that he will return, that more humiliation is coming, that there is something left for him to take off. Next time.

  The shivering takes over everything, and her hands won’t work. She never knew before that shivering could be so intensely painful. She tries rubbing her half-numb hands along the deadened skin of her upper arms but it does not help. Her blood must be pooling someplace, someplace deep inside, because it is no longer circulating, cannot be enticed to the surface to warm her. She wiggles her toes, and they feel slow and fat in their cold-anesthetized stupor. Actually, some anesthesia would be welcome, because her toes hurt, her feet and legs and fingers and hands too. The shaking pain is deep and heavy, like her head.

  After a while the pain starts to fade, which does not make sense because she is getting colder, not warmer. Or perhaps it does make sense, and she just cannot find the sense, cannot catch the morsel of logical thought in this icy and slippery place. Time slows down, and her worrying slows down too. And that is good, but then maybe it is not so good, because breathing is harder. Like swimming. Like drowning. She needs clothes, blankets, a long soak in a hot bath. She imagines thick towels to dry off and warm clothes to put on. Wool socks. Maybe even Jess’s leather pants. She teased Jess about them: aren’t you scared the animal rights’ folks will tear them off, leave you running bare butt down 6th Avenue? Fleece pants would be even better. Do they make battery-operated pants, like those mittens and socks for skiers?

  She cannot answer her own questions, cannot grasp the concepts long enough to consider them seriously. Words and sentences skid along the frosty synapses of her brain. Her thoughts slip-slide and somersault away before she finishes thinking them. The cold air is a frigid cloud settling on her, seeping into her pores, freezing every thought in her head. Everything except the fierce need to stay warm.

  She curls her body into a ball, bringing her feet up onto the seat of the chair. She hugs her legs and lets her chin rest on her knees, where the scrapes are frozen into miniature plowed furrows. Maybe Austin will come back and help. It seemed that Austin liked her when they talked in the yard, when she whispered “hang tough,” before abandoning her to this frozen hell. Perhaps Austin was hiding some kindness, some humanity underneath that uniform. But she will not think about Austin now because finally, for the precious time being, nothing hurts any more. Her heavy body drags her down, plummeting her brain into ice-blue patterned sleep.

  16. HENRY, 3:02 P.M.

  Henry sticks his head into the staff lounge and looks around, but the new guard isn’t there. He takes the stairs to the basement. Damn, he hopes this girl works out because he hates wasting time interviewing staff and orienting them for nothing
. Austin seems sharp enough. Too bad he can’t remember the story Cat told him about the girl’s family, back when he was doing her background vetting. He was thinking about something else while Cat talked, something more important, but he should have been paying attention. He will have to ask Cat again tonight and confess that he forgot.

  Now he has to concentrate on the interrogation. He won’t admit it to anyone, not even under torture—well maybe under torture because he hates pain, but not otherwise—but he isn’t crazy about this part of his job. He loves the investigations, solving the puzzles and tracking down the bad guys. But since the twin towers, his job has become less detective work and more interrogation. Not only that, the traditional techniques of outsmarting suspects, of building a relationship and extracting information bit by bit, are being abandoned in favor of more aggressive methods. The rules have changed and the new techniques, if he’s honest with himself, make him want to puke. Tobias has somehow figured this out and holds it against him; he keeps suggesting that Henry leave the interrogations to him. But he can’t do that. Tobias likes doing them far too much.

  Henry thumb-presses his entry into the interrogation corridor and pushes the door behind him until the lock clicks. Austin is leaning against the wall outside Room D, looking worried and slightly green.

  “Your first interrogation,” he says.

  He can always tell. Beforehand they look anxious, terrified even, men and women both, almost as if they’re the ones facing the intense scrutiny and humiliation, the discomfort. The trick is to inspect the new recruits afterwards. Some still look sick and they usually do okay, eventually became good agents. Others are flushed and excited, as if they just screwed someone on top of the guests’ winter coats at a cocktail party, and they’re the ones to watch out for. Like Tobias.