“I don’t know if they’ve told you, but they’ll be sending you back to Yemen in a few days.” He resisted the urge to say “home,” because it wouldn’t have been true. He was through lying to Adnan. Or so he vowed.
“I’m told that the move is going to happen for certain.” But leaving it at that, of course, would have been a lie by omission, so Falk came clean. “You’ll be released to the authorities, not to your family, although with any luck, maybe they’ll let you go soon.”
He thought he heard a cough from behind the mirror. Was Tyndall trying to tell him he was speaking out of school? Too late now.
“But before you go, Adnan, you have to tell me who has done this to you. You have to tell me who brought you here to this room, and who has been coming to see you.”
“Betrayer!” Adnan finally spluttered, the word seeming to geyser from some deep recess where it had bubbled and stewed for ages. “You and the snakes. Betrayers!”
“The snakes?” It was the first time Falk had heard him use the word.
“All of you! All snakes.”
The outburst released enough pressure to calm him, and as the eruption subsided Falk leaned forward ever so slightly, not close enough to be threatening, but enough that he could lower his voice and still be heard.
“Listen to me, Adnan. Look at me.” A glance, almost holding it. Then Adnan looked off to the usual corner where his eyes went when he had nothing further to say. “You are right, Adnan. You are right about the snakes. They have betrayed you, but I want to punish them for it, and you can help me.”
He waited, and Adnan’s head swiveled slowly back, a pivot that stopped just short of face-to-face. But the eyes kept coming, halting briefly as they met Falk’s, then wavering and flicking back toward the corner.
“You can help me,” Falk said. “You can help us both.”
Well, there it was—deceit creeping back into his approach in spite of his best intentions. But there was no taking back the words now, especially since they seemed to be showing results. Adnan’s face had moved, and now his eyes were locked onto Falk’s.
“Good,” Falk crooned, master to dog. “Good. Now I am going to show you some pictures, Adnan. Some of the snakes. So don’t be upset, because they’re not here, and they’re not waiting outside, and they’re not going to hurt you again.” Another promise he couldn’t keep, and he knew he would keep offering them as long as they kept working.
Falk pulled from his briefcase the copy of The Wire with the article on the investigative team. He had folded back the photo so that only Fowler’s face was showing. He slid it onto the table where Adnan could see it, doing it slowly, careful not to break the spell. Snakes, indeed. He felt like a cobra, trying to stare his victim into a trance.
“This one,” he said, still holding eye contact even as he tapped the photo. “Do you recognize him? Look down at the picture, Adnan. The picture can’t hurt you.”
Adnan looked down, and for a fretful moment Falk thought he had lost him, such was the blankness of the young man’s expression as he stared at the photo. It was as if he were peering deep into a well, the focus not quite right.
“You know him?” Falk asked. “Has he been here?”
Adnan slowly shook his head, expression neutral.
“No?”
“No,” Adnan answered, mildly, as if he were declining an extra helping of dessert. “I do not know him. He is not among the snakes.”
Falk got the same result with Cartwright’s photo. Then he showed the picture of Fowler once more, just to make sure, and also as a sort of test. If Adnan reacted as if he were seeing it for the first time, then maybe his mind was blanking, repressing the memory of everyone who had done him harm.
But that’s not what happened.
“You have asked me already about him!” Adnan said, voice rising. “He is not among the snakes!” He was back to the precipice. Falk withdrew the photo.
“Very good, then. Very well. It’s all right. You won’t see that picture again.”
To Falk, this meant that maybe whoever had done the interrogations of the Yemenis at Camp X-Ray was the same person who was doing them here. If that was Van Meter, then he would have had an interpreter in tow, and Allen Lawson would have been the logical choice. Perhaps Fowler only watched from behind the mirror.
Unfortunately, he had no photos of Van Meter to show, and he doubted he could get one before either Adnan departed or General Trabert found out what Falk was up to and shut him down. Miracle enough, he supposed, that he had gotten in here at all.
“Okay, then,” he said, changing tack. “Let’s talk about these snakes.”
Adnan shook his head.
“Don’t you want them punished?”
Adnan looked down at his feet.
“Well, don’t you?”
A slow nod.
“Then describe them to me. What they wore. What color their hair was, their eyes.”
Adnan looked up at Falk as if he were a dolt. He seemed furious.
“They are snakes!” he shouted. “What else do you need to know? They look like snakes, they bite like snakes, they coil and strike like snakes. They are snakes!”
So this was where the damage showed itself, he supposed. Which might explain why none of the pictures registered. Show him a photo of a timber rattler and perhaps he would jump to his feet, pointing wildly in recognition. But Falk soldiered on, keeping his voice low and his posture neutral. He did not again lean forward and he did not stand. He folded his hands in front of him, on the table where Adnan could see them.
Adnan responded in kind, to a point. His demeanor calmed, and he did not again raise his voice. But no matter how many different ways Falk tried to elicit a description of his tormenters, or even a hint of one, Adnan always responded the same way.
“It is all I can say of them,” he said wearily, in apparent exasperation. “They are snakes.”
“Okay, then. Fine. But how many? How many snakes have come here?”
“Three,” he said. Certain of it. “Three in this place.”
“And in the other place? From before you were here?”
“Too many. Many more.”
“But some here are the same as before? Or are all the ones here new ones?”
“Two are the same as before. One is new. Here and from the last time in the jungle.”
“The jungle?”
“The place where the monkeys lived.”
He must have meant Camp X-Ray. That last session before they brought him here. All other snakes must be those he had talked to before Falk had taken over his handling. Falk wondered what Bo and Tyndall were making of all this. Neither understood Arabic, so they would only have noticed the gestures, the changes in inflection and volume. They would have seen Falk hold out the newspaper, but wouldn’t have known what it was or what he was asking. Just as well, especially in Tyndall’s case. Or was the CIA man somehow taping this? Possible, he supposed, but it was too late to worry about it.
Checking his watch, he saw that only a few minutes remained. Tyndall had promised to cut him off promptly when the time expired. For all Falk knew, the rendition was scheduled for daybreak, although air traffic was likely to be grounded at least until Clifford passed through.
He made one last stab at getting a description of the newest snake, and when that failed he sighed, feeling there was nothing left to ask, if only because it seemed there was nothing left to retrieve. Adnan was calmer now, but accompanying the calmness was an expression of such vacant resignation that Falk was oddly devastated by the sight. All that was missing to complete the effect was a straitjacket, or the stitch scars of a lobotomy. Adnan was an empty vessel, thoroughly spent.
“Okay, Adnan,” he said gently. “That’s good. You did well today. This will help you.”
Not even the lies seemed to matter anymore. Adnan’s face remained as rigidly placid as a frozen pond. Falk got up and knocked lightly on the door. The MP was inside immediately, looking excited un
til he saw that everything was in order.
“All done,” Falk said. “You can put him back.”
The words in English brought a response from Tyndall, who cracked open the door of the observation room just enough to mutter, “You’ve still got three minutes, you know. If you want it.”
“He’s running on empty,” Falk said. “Nothing left to get.”
“Empty?” Bo snorted, not bothering to whisper. “I don’t speak Arabic but, hell, you hardly tried. You looked more like his therapist than his interrogator. That what they teach you at Quantico?”
There was a sudden commotion behind him, then an agonized groan from Adnan.
“Snake!” he said in Arabic. “It hisses! I hear it!” Falk turned to see Adnan’s eyes glowing in fear.
“What the hell’s he saying now?” Bo said.
“Snake!” Adnan struggled with the MP, who was pulling a truncheon from his belt.
“Shut up!” Falk muttered to Bo over his shoulder. “And shut the door. I want those three minutes. MP! Hold him, but don’t dare hit him. Keep him there by the door, just one second more!”
Falk’s stomach turned as he pulled the newspaper back out of his bag, but he mustered enough composure to catch Adnan’s eye, beseeching the young man to calm down enough for one last question.
“Is this the snake?” he asked, keeping his voice low and even. He folded back the picture to the one face he hadn’t showed, that of Ted Bokamper, hovering to the right of the frame.
“Yes!” Adnan said, nodding quickly, then looking wildly toward the mirror on the opposite wall. “He hisses, and he is there. He lives there!”
“Easy, Adnan.”
But Adnan would no longer be calmed, and even in his leg irons and handcuffs he was a handful for the young MP, who ended up simply shoving Adnan onto his bed, still locked at his wrists and ankles, then slammed home the cell door.
“Man’s out of control,” the soldier said scornfully. “No wonder he’s in this place.”
“Yeah,” Falk said. “No wonder.”
BY THE TIME THE THREE of them had run back through the rain to the entry station, Falk had regained his composure.
“Bo, why don’t you follow us back to my place. You and I need to talk.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Falk shot him a questioning glance, but got only the usual wiseass grin in return. “But unfortunately I can’t do it right now. Previous obligation.”
“At eleven o’clock at night?”
“Hey, you know me.”
“Thought I did, anyway.”
But Bo was already out the door, sprinting for his car through the downpour. Tyndall and he followed suit, and after slamming the door of the Plymouth, Falk sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel as he sorted out the implications.
“I’m getting some weird vibes from all this,” Tyndall said.
“You should be.”
“What just happened back there?”
“I’m not sure. But thanks for getting me in.”
“Sure. I think.”
He was about to turn the key when he suddenly thought of something.
“Shit!” he said, feeling like an idiot.
“What? What is it?”
He pulled out his flashlight and bent as low as he could in the seat, peering beneath the wheel.
“Feel under the dash on your side,” he told Tyndall.
Tyndall tapped feebly beneath the glove compartment.
“What am I looking for?”
“Anything that shouldn’t be there.”
“You mean like this?”
There was a sharp clicking sound on Tyndall’s side, and when Falk turned the beam Tyndall was holding a small metal disk.
“It was hooked to a wire,” Tyndall said. “Probably goes straight to your radio. That way it broadcasts off your antenna.”
“Meaning they can hear me, what, a mile away?”
“I’m no expert, but probably something like that. Maybe more.” Tyndall was a smart fellow, so he added up the rest of the evidence pretty quickly. “I guess this explains how we ended up with an escort.”
“Yeah. My old pal.”
“Hardly a surprise.”
“What do you mean?”
“Him. And his employers. Part of our special clientele for product from down here. You didn’t hear that from me, of course.”
“Special clientele? Since when?”
“Since forever. Or the last change of administrations, anyway. You’re his friend. I’d always assumed you two were working together.”
“What, for the Bureau?”
“Not really for the Bureau. Just as part of their, well, whatever they call themselves.”
“And what might that be?”
“Nobody’s ever told me. All I know is that certain people in my shop have asked me to cooperate whenever they ask. But I am surprised you didn’t know. The way you guys pal around and everything.”
Maybe he and Bo had been working together, Falk supposed. Just not in the way he’d imagined.
“As long as everybody else knows so much, tell me this. Those three guys on the team—Bo, Fowler, Cartwright—were they assigned security numbers for signing out detainees inside Delta?”
“That would be a safe assumption.”
“I don’t want an assumption. I want an answer.”
“The answer is yes. But I’m not telling you their numbers.”
“Fair enough. All I need is a yes-no on one.”
“You’re asking too much.”
“C’mon, Mitch. It’s one fucking number. I name it and you tell me if it’s Bo’s.”
“And you think my memory’s that good?”
“For those three? Damn right I do.”
“Okay. For those three, maybe. But it’s not like I’ve got the whole of Camp Delta memorized. To hear some of you guys talk, it’s like we’re snooping on everybody. Fowler makes an arrest and we get blamed.”
“I’m not here to blame, I just need information.”
“You and the whole fucking world. What’s the number?”
Falk dug out his notes by flashlight, and then read aloud the digits that had been logged in for Adnan’s interrogation last Wednesday at Camp X-Ray.
“Bo’s, right?”
Tyndall shook his head and gave him a funny look, seeming more embarrassed than puzzled.
“Van Meter’s, then. Has to be.”
“What is this, twenty questions? Goddamn it, Falk, enough. But of all the numbers, I would have thought that would be one you’d know.”
“Well, it’s no one from my team.”
“Of course not. It’s from hers.”
“Hers?” A pause while everything clicked. “Pam’s?”
“Satisfied now? No more questions, okay? I think we’ve both had enough.”
“Okay,” Falk said weakly.
And for the second time in ten minutes, his world turned upside down.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
AFTER TYNDALL SPRINTED to his car, Falk sat for a few minutes in the driveway with the engine running. His first impulse was to head back to Pam’s—bang on her window until he awakened the entire household, roommates and all, then demand an explanation as he stood dripping on their floor. He would throw himself on the mercy of the MPs.
Maybe it would get him kicked off the base. They would put him on a flight, banish him from all this misery. He would take the evidence with him and embarrass them all. Leak it to the press, burn every bridge. Why not, since half his bridges were already ablaze.
But on whose behalf, or for what cause, were his friends betraying him? As far as he could tell, both Pam and Bo had interrogated Adnan. Yet, unless their antipathy for one another was an act—a prospect raising possibilities Falk didn’t care to consider just now—then they had been coming at Adnan from opposite agendas. Was Pam working for Fowler, meaning her arrest was some kind of cover? None of it made sense, and all of it made him feel used. They must have been l
aughing to themselves as he scurried between them, so eager to please and keep the peace.
He turned off the ignition and unlatched the door. The noise of the storm swallowed him in a sheet of rain that slanted right onto the seat. Let it. So what if he was soaked. There were four beers in the refrigerator, and there was a bottle of gin in the cabinet. The idea of a temporary oblivion had its charms just now, so he wasn’t bothered in the least as raindrops hammered him all the way up the sidewalk.
Slamming the front door behind him, he was quickly chilled to the bone by the air-conditioning, and he paused to behold the calming groan and hum of the window unit while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The only light came from a kitchen window to the right, where the orange glow of a streetlamp wavered, filtered by the sheeting rain. A palm frond brushed like fingernails against a screen. It was a nasty one, this storm, perhaps not quite a gale but still a corker for anyone unfortunate enough to be out on the sea. For the slightest moment his heart went out to them, wherever they were, tossed and alone and just trying to stay afloat.
As he stepped toward the refrigerator he was startled by the chirp of a cigarette lighter and the sudden glow of a small flame from the living room. Someone was sitting on the couch.
“Who’s there?”
No answer.
“Bo?”
“Instructive response.” Falk didn’t recognize the voice.
Then the lights came on, blinding him momentarily.
“Care to explain why you expected Ted Bokamper to be waiting for you at this hour of the day?”
It was Fowler, and he wasn’t alone. An MP stood in a far corner, gun holstered and hands behind his back.
“What’s this all about?”
“I’ve got a few questions. Have a seat.”
“How ’bout getting the hell out of here. I’m tired and need a drink, and I’m definitely not in the mood for a chat.”
“Go ahead with the drink. But I’m not leaving until we’ve talked.”
“You here to arrest me?”
“Should I be?”
Falk shook his head and turned down the hall, away from the kitchen.
“I’m going to bed. Turn out the lights on your way out.”
But there was a second MP blocking the entrance to his room, and when Falk stopped to ponder his next move a hand slapped against the wall from behind. Fowler’s. He had moved from the couch with the rapid stealth of a commando and was close enough for Falk to smell the toothpaste on his breath.
The Prisoner of Guantanamo Page 30