“Mr. Morgan, does that sound like someone who has worked so hard to maintain his anonymity? Does that sound like Arnesto?”
Pete again looked at his interrogator and her lackeys. They all stared straight back, awaiting his response. Almost in a whisper, he said, “No, it doesn’t.”
“Was Arnesto working with McVeigh?”
“Oh, come on!” Pete said, jumping up and sending his chair wheeling backward a couple feet. “To what end?!”
“You said yourself, he felt the government was ignoring him. Maybe he wanted to send them a message then changed his mind at the last minute, or maybe it got out of hand, I don’t know. Did he and McVeigh ever have any contact?”
Pete walked to the window and looked outside. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t avoid the question. “Yes. They spoke briefly in Waco two years earlier, during the siege. It was a chance encounter.”
“Ah, yes, Waco,” Huntley said as she opened up a different file. “Where Arnesto forged a disturbing recording in David Koresh’s voice, which he sent to two different news stations before leaving a third for the FBI. Again, Arnesto chooses the most reckless path.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Did it? Several people still died. In the meantime, he meets McVeigh, they have a nice little chat about how much they hate the government, perhaps establish a partnership—”
Pete sighed and sat back in his chair. “At his worst, Arnesto’s actions were less reckless than your conjecture. I am cooperating with you, but I have to ask, how many more files do you have? Exactly how much more are we going to cover?”
“Mr. Morgan, I would suggest you cancel your appointments for the rest of the week and possibly the next.” As she said, this, the lackey on her right started pulling out boxes full of files from underneath the table and setting them on top. “We’ve only just begun.”
A Relaxing Conversation
Location: Unknown
Monday, April 29, 2013
Time: Unknown
The next day, Arnesto was brought back into the interrogation room where Whiteside was waiting for him.
“Good morning, Arnesto,” Whiteside said, holding up the L.A. riots flyer from the day before. “I thought we’d start at the beginning. April 29, 1992: the Los Angeles riots. I’m sure it’s not the beginning for you, but it’s the earliest we have anything on you. So far.
He read from the flyer. "'If the officers who beat Rodney King are acquitted, the people may riot.’ Why didn’t you say, ‘...the people will riot?’ It’s more accurate, but I guess it also makes you sound more threatening. Were you afraid the people would take it as a call to arms? Or were you afraid that if you were caught, you would be charged with inciting the riot that nearly burned the city to the ground? Did you think that far ahead?”
After each question, he gave Arnesto time to respond, but Arnesto remained silent.
“Am I correct in assuming you’re not going to answer any of my questions? Alright, we’ll give you something to help loosen you up a bit.”
Two agents entered the room. One stood by as the other injected something into Arnesto’s arm. Arnesto never said a word and put up no resistance.
“Amobarbital,” Whiteside said. “Similar to Sodium Pentothal, though I couldn’t tell you their exact chemical compositions. I bet you could, though.
“Anyway, let’s get back to the riots. So, the night before, you stayed at that hotel, where you paid cash, but still gave them your license plate number, only with two of the digits transposed. You posted these flyers all over Koreatown, then got the hell out of town, went home, and watched the riots on television like everyone else as fifty-three people died. Did you feel that they brought it on themselves, that they deserved to die?”
Arnesto said nothing.
“That was the prevailing theory, by the way, until I told them, ‘No, this guy loves saving lives. He was just a rookie, still learning.’ I was right, wasn’t I? Still not talking?”
Whiteside pointed at the guard to give Arnesto another dose, then waited for the chemicals to take effect. Arnesto had never felt so relaxed in his life, but he tried his best not to show it.
“Look, Arnesto. I don’t blame you for L.A. One man working alone? Why should anyone listen to you? But here’s the thing. You clearly knew it was going to happen.” He stopped pacing to lean on the back of his chair. “Why didn’t you stop the beating in the first place? You could have given King a ride the night he was pulled over. I’m sure there are a hundred ways you could have handled it. But you didn’t, why?”
He resumed pacing as Arnesto was given a third dose. It was more than he could handle, and he passed out, falling forward onto the table. Two agents caught him before he slid onto the floor.
“Sir?” one of the agents asked.
“Fine,” Whiteside said. “Give him the flumazenil, take him back to his cell, and keep a close eye on him.”
Sometime later, Arnesto woke up in his cell without the foggiest clue how he got there. He wasn’t even sure how much time had passed since they drugged him — a few minutes? Days? There was no way to tell.
Once again, they came to collect him. He stood up, felt the world around him begin to spin, and sat right back down. An agent offered him a small bottle of water from which Arnesto took a few sips before standing up again. This time, he didn’t get dizzy and started to walk, but the agent stopped him, took back the water bottle, then motioned for him to keep moving.
“I thought we could skip ahead to the al-Qaeda Nineteen,” Whiteside said as Arnesto sat down. “First of all, let me be the first to thank you for tipping us off. This was back in September of 2001. A little reminder in case you can’t remember the past as well as you can see the future. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that you saved a great number of lives that day. Our analysts conclude that one or even two of those flights could have indeed been hijacked and flown into those buildings, killing dozens, possibly hundreds of people. Kudos. I mean that.
“Still, the way you informed the authorities could have been better. You emailed more than two dozen people. I get it, you wanted to get the word out. But you’ve heard of things being on a need-to-know basis, right? Well, a lot of those people didn’t need to know. You created a small panic, causing several agencies to trip over each other before a plan of attack could be decided upon, and that wasted precious time. Speaking of, you gave them a little more than a day to stop what could have been the greatest terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history? Come on, Arnesto. Your email was not crafted last-minute. How far in advance did you know about the attack? And also, do you ever check your email?
“People had questions, Arnesto. I’m sure you felt you told them everything in the email, but maybe someone would have asked something that would have caused you to recollect one more little piece of information that could have helped. At the very least, you would have seen that they wanted to reward you. Jeez, you could have had the key to the city if you wanted. Or maybe guaranteed anonymity and a medal would have suited you better. You could have had some fun with it, but instead, you went and hid and made yourself look suspicious. Do you understand that, Arnesto?”
Whiteside leaned back in his chair, giving Arnesto plenty of time to respond, but Arnesto remained silent. “You can hear me, right?” Arnesto looked up in confirmation for a moment before returning his gaze to the floor.
“Right.” Whiteside sat up straight and put his hands on the table. “I’m going to grab a coffee. Do you want one or can I get you something else? No? Be right back.” He left and returned holding a coffee. He was also smiling.
Whiteside sat down, sipped his coffee, and resumed his questioning. “Staying on the subject of airplanes, let’s talk about flight fifteen-forty-nine. I have to hand this one to you, I don’t know how you did it. Miracle on the Hudson? You were the miracle, weren’t you. Again, it was brought up, what if you were the cause? I shut that down in a hurry, Arnesto. It didn’t fit, not at all. A guy like
you with your power doesn’t try to crash a plane while he’s on it. No, you were clearly the hero. Which leads me to two questions.
“First, why did you bring your then girlfriend? You knew what was going to happen to the plane. You must have hated her.”
Arnesto looked up, but quickly corrected himself. He couldn’t let Whiteside know he had touched a nerve.
“You know what,” Whiteside continued, I don’t even care. Let me get to question number two: how did you do it, how did you save that plane?” He took a couple sips of coffee while he waited for an answer. “Come on, give me this one, I really want to know. You answer this one question, I’ll get you out of that cell and into someplace real comfortable: all the amenities, all the video games you want. Are you going to let Sully hog all the credit?”
Not getting a response, Whiteside put down his coffee, stood up, and began pacing the room. “Damn, I was hoping you would give me that one. Here’s the issue, Arnesto. There’s not one shred of evidence you contributed to the events of that day. It was the geese, we know this. The problem is there’s also not one shred of evidence you did anything to save those people. How many of them would be mighty unhappy to find out that they didn’t need to have gone through that harrowing experience? How do you think US Airways would react if they found out you could have saved their expensive aircraft plus all those payouts after the crash? Where was the email this time?”
He sat down again. “What I don’t like is that you’re becoming reckless. Case in point, the Boston Marathon.”
Right on cue, an agent entered the room carrying a laptop which she handed to Whiteside before stepping back out. It was ajar but Whiteside opened it all the way. He tapped the touchpad and Arnesto heard a crowd sound. Whiteside tapped the touchpad a second time then dragged his finger along it before tapping it a third and final time. Arnesto surmised that Whiteside had started, paused, then restarted a video. Whiteside put the laptop in front of Arnesto. “Play it.”
Arnesto played the video. He saw and heard the crowd react to the first explosion, then saw himself pick up and throw the backpack containing the second bomb moments before it, too, exploded. There was nothing pleasurable about seeing how close he had come to death nor seeing how hard he and the rest of the crowd had been knocked to the ground. It was especially painful knowing this was how they had caught him.
“Your tip helped us apprehend the terrorists. That is, your second tip with the picture that you sent after the explosions. Your first tip, the phone call before the explosions, was ineffective.”
Arnesto found himself replaying the video over and over and stopped.
“You really cut it close that time. Not just with the bomb, but with the investigation. Without your text, they were going to start taking a very close look at you. Instead, they arrested the brothers in record time and the FBI’s investigation closed. Our investigation, however, had just caught a major break.
“Do you have any idea the resources we’ve spent trying to find you? It’s a little embarrassing, to tell you the truth. But finally, we almost have you and then you go and flee the country. Did you — did you blow up a factory in Bangladesh? That's not like you. No, I get it, the building was going to collapse and kill everyone inside. Probably within the next day or two, right? How many, hundreds? More than a thousand? Right on, Arnesto. Sadly, the powers that be, and I can’t argue with them, have a growing concern that left unchecked, you, with your newfound love of adrenaline rushes and possible addiction to explosions, may create an international incident, if you haven’t already.
“Do you see now, Arnesto? Do you see why we can’t let you run rampant?” Whiteside stood up and reached over and shut the laptop before picking it up and moving toward the door. “I want to help you, Arnesto. Let me help you save lives out there. I can get you anything you need, but I can’t help you at all until you start talking to me.”
Arnesto said nothing.
“Sleep on it,” Whiteside said. “We’ll meet again first thing tomorrow.”
They met the next day and the next and at indiscriminate times after that. Arnesto soon lost track of what day it was as the agents and guards were careful to hide that information from him. Even his meals were served at random times.
Through it all, Arnesto never said a word.
***
After what felt like a couple weeks, Arnesto noticed he had gone several days in a row without hearing from Whiteside. Were they done? Had his adversary asked his last question? It seemed unlikely, but then where was he? Time passed, and Arnesto grew more concerned that he had been abandoned.
It was with an ironic sense of relief that he was finally called back into the interrogation room.
“Hello, Arnesto, how have you been? Hanging in there okay?” Whiteside asked as Arnesto sat down. “Sorry to skip out on you like that, but your friend Pete gave us some new leads to check out. He cooperated quite a bit.” He motioned toward some boxes that Arnesto hadn’t noticed when he walked in. “Pete filled in a number of gaps in our intelligence and told us all sorts of things we didn’t have a clue about: the Oklahoma bridge collapse, for instance.” He paused to let that sink in. “You should know that we let him go in exchange for his cooperation. I hope you won’t hold a grudge against him. What he did was for the good of the country.”
Whiteside swiveled around in his chair, but then said, “Oh,” and turned back to face Arnesto, clasping his hands and resting them on the desk. “We paid a visit to your family.”
Arnesto did his best to remain stoic, but he had no idea if he was successful. He felt Whiteside probably noticed his increased heart rate. More than anything, he hated the way Whiteside paused after every couple of sentences. Was he merely gauging Arnesto’s reaction, or was he rubbing it in?
“I’m telling you this as a courtesy. All we did was inform them that we were likely going to be working together and asked them a few simple ‘background’ questions about you. Your parents, your brother, your ex-wife, they were all surprised and proud to find out you would be assisting us with important, top-secret work. See? I didn’t even have to lie to them. They didn’t even seem disappointed to find out they shouldn’t expect to hear from you for a while.”
Whiteside stood up and walked over to the boxes, pulling out several large folders before returning to his seat.
“Now, back to business, shall we?”
Schooled
Location: Unknown
Date: Unknown
Time: Unknown
“Report,” Whiteside said, not looking up from his monitor. He was drafting a reply to an email from his higher-ups who were demanding why weeks had passed without Whiteside being able to show progress. Just as Arnesto hadn’t shared one word with Whiteside, Whiteside was having trouble coming up with the words to answer his superiors.
A male agent named Crowl spoke first. “Pretty much the usual. He sleeps, exercises, eats, and stares or meditates or whatever.”
“Pretty much?” Whiteside asked. “I told you, if there’s any deviation at all, no matter how trivial, I need to know about it.”
“He’s… uh…”
“He’s playing with himself, sir. Masturbating,” said the female agent named Stanfield.
Whiteside took his hands off the keyboard and looked at the other agents. He thought for a moment, then said, “Explain.”
“He sits there playing with it,” Stanfield said.
“And stares at the camera the whole time,” Crowl added.
“How long?” Whiteside asked.
The other agents looked at each other. “A couple hours?” Crowl asked.
“Does he finish? Does he even have an erection?” Whiteside asked.
“Sir?”
Whiteside smiled and turned back to his computer. “He’s not playing with himself, he’s playing with you. Get him a magazine.” When his agents hesitated, he continued. “Get him a girlie mag. It’s okay. It’s the incentive approach, which is in the manual you two are go
ing to reread the moment your shift ends. Dismissed.”
Arnesto did appreciate the magazine, more for the articles than the pictorials. While internet porn hadn’t completely ruined airbrushed, softcore pictures for him, it was the words that gave him the most distraction from his predicament. He devoured the magazine, fearing that at any moment it would be taken away from him. When it wasn’t, he reread it at a more relaxed pace.
He made up little games for himself, like trying to subconsciously count how many of a given letter was used while reading an article. Then he would go back and carefully count. He was always wrong, but never far off.
He stopped touching himself, not because he had succeeded in obtaining a magazine, but because he had failed at irritating Whiteside. Whiteside personally gave Arnesto a second magazine a few weeks after he had received the first.
“Thought I’d give you something a little more substantial,” Whiteside said, sliding the magazine across the interrogation table. “Go ahead, look at it.”
Arnesto never looked at anything Whiteside presented to him until he was ordered to do so. Aside from never speaking, Arnesto wanted to obey orders as best he could, but always did so without the slightest change in expression. He steeled himself and looked down.
It was a news magazine. The cover focused on some celebrity about whom Arnesto couldn’t care less. Arnesto lifted his head.
“Look a little closer. Please,” Whiteside said.
Arnesto looked back down at the magazine. In the corners under the large headline describing the celebrity’s shenanigans were various cover lines in much smaller text. One of them mentioned a school shooting.
“There it is, under whatsherface’s pregnancy, another school shooting, this one in Santa Monica,” Whiteside said. “Feels like we’ve been having more of them lately. It bothers me, Arnesto, and I know it bothers you. Every time I see a headline like that, I think, ‘Could he have prevented this? Could Arnesto have saved those lives?’ Go ahead, turn to page sixty-eight, see if they got the details right.”
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