The Parnell Affair

by James, Seth

  “These?” Sally asked, withdrawing the torture memo from her purse and handing it to Sal.

  Sal ran his thumb over the raised Executive seal and mumbled, “Yeah.”

  “Now, you said 'rough him up,'” Tobias said. “What exactly are we talking about?”

  “You got a pretty good list right here,” Sal said, holding up the torture memo. “I knew something wasn't kosher from the word go, from how that doctor talked to him and started smacking Zubahd around. But that could've been him not knowing what the hell he was doing: this doctor admitted he'd never interrogated anyone before. He said it didn't matter—he had science on his side. He had quackery and snake oil on his side! This crap never works. You torture someone, what happens? They tell you anything, just to stop the pain, to stop the fear. It doesn't have to be true. Hell, look at Stockholm syndrome: those people are so sick with fear of their kidnappers that they join them, in their heads, to think of themselves as part of it all and so have nothing to fear. Are they being truthful? Not even with themselves, brother.

  “But you were asking what they were doing,” Sal said. “Excuse me. I knew we were in trouble when I saw them building a coffin.”

  “A coffin?” Tobias said. “I don't get it.”

  “You see this here?” Sal said pointing at one of the listed Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on the torture memo. “Stress positions, confining the subject to an immobile position. That's what the coffin was for, but he wouldn't lie down in it: they'd have it standing up.”

  “Okay,” Tobias said.

  “Oh, that doesn't sound too bad to you, huh?” Sal said.

  “I don't know a thing about any of this,” Tobias said.

  “You ever see them old Earl Flynn movies?” Sal asked. “Sword fights and swinging on ropes all the time?”

  “Sure,” Tobias said.

  “Well, they always have a dungeon scene in those movies,” Sal said. “See, they knew back then that only the bad guys torture. Anyway, you maybe remember a crazy contraption standing up or hanging from the ceiling, looked like, uh, a cage but tailored to fit the body.”

  “Like a crazy suite of armor,” Tobias said, “except the arms and legs couldn't move and it was made of metal bands.”

  “That's the thing,” Sal said. “It's called the iron maiden. How it works is they lock you in there and you can't move. Now, normally you move all the time, even in your sleep. Some people can't ever sit still, but everybody moves and shifts and all. It's how you keep from cramping up. You ever been to a ball game—or, looking at you two, maybe the opera or something—and you sit with the seats in front of you pressed against your knees and you can't move? What happens? You get a Charlie horse, sometimes. Real painful cramping; it can be agony. (My mother got one when I was a kid and she took me to see Freddy Kruger in the movie theater; I was too young to go alone. She must have been scared stiff, and then I see her crying, it hurt so much. Me and my kid brother had to half carry her out of there, she couldn't walk. But you got to move; walk if off.) So, imagine that happening, that pain—but it's in every muscle in your body! And no one opens the door on your iron maiden and you're stuck in that thing for hours—days!—while your muscles tear themselves to pieces. Why bother having the torturer strap you onto that big wheel and spread you apart until your joints pop and muscles tear, when we can just lock you up where you can't move and your own muscles will do the job for us?

  “This doctor and his boys, they don't have the time to weld themselves an iron maiden; they just build it out of plywood: a wooden enclosure so tight fitting you can't even turn your head! And as for the standing up: it's not like standing in line at the drug store. It's being kept so still you can't shift around: the blood pools in your feet, your ankles, knees, hips, very painful and eventually fatal. Here's a fun exercise: think about how often you move, cross your legs, shrug, roll over while you're trying to get to sleep; count up how many times in a day—and then try not to.”

  “I don't think I’d want to go through that,” Tobias said. “Sounds like torture, a lot more than it sounds like Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

  “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” Sally said, “is a Nazi term the Gestapo used to describe what they did to Jews, homosexuals, captured soldiers. Telling, that they Administration chose that phrase. It came up at Nuremburg.”

  “Of course it's torture,” Sal said. “How else could that be used when asking questions? It's 'you either tell me what I want to know or I inflict that pain on you again.' Only the poor bastard will say anything to stop the pain—and any questions you ask him will lead him toward the answer you want.

  “As bad as all that is,” Sal continued, “what really turned my stomach was—after I'd been recalled to Washington for complaining to the Director—on my way out, I saw them bringing in the gear they'd use to waterboard.”

  “Okay, I've heart that term before,” Tobias said, pointing with his pen. “Waterboarding: what is it?”

  “Waterboarding is a form of simulated execution by drowning,” Sally answered.

  “That's a good way of putting it,” Sal agreed.

  “There's a lot of misunderstanding about the practice,” Sally continued. “Essentially, you strap down the victim, elevate his feet to delay drowning (keep the water from flowing too directly into his lungs), and use a device of some sort—usually a cloth—over the victim's face onto which you pour a large volume of water. You wind up breathing it, you can't help it; and because of the cloth over your mouth and nose, you can't swallow the water or avoid breathing it. The effect is a sort of slow-motion drowning, which activates your body's autonomic fear of impending death. A firing squad, a hanging scaffold, a lethal injection: they all require the victim to intellectually understand the mechanism by which they would die, to insight fear—and so they can be intellectually resisted. Not so with drowning: the fear response is autonomic, hard wired into your body. The resulting fear creates massive stress on the body; people die from it all the time, particularly after continued application.”

  “And the only way you could use this pretty little technique,” Sal added, “is, again, to say, 'You tell me what I want to hear or else I waterboard you again.' And guess what they'll tell you. If you felt they were drowning you to death, and would keep on doing it until you admit that you're the King of Spain and you got a tattoo of Sophia Lauren on your left butt cheek, what are you going to admit? What could you not say?”

  “Jesus,” Tobias breathed. He stared at his notes, a mostly incoherent list of the barbarities enumerated to him, as upon him dawned the inescapable conclusion that the President of the United States of America ordered the employment of techniques incapable of extracting truth and suited only to eliciting directed confessions. It was the purpose for which they were created. A part of a larger, coherent plan, Tobias thought. “All right,” he said. “We're jumping all over the place. Let's go through it like a timeline, we can editorialize and explain words at the end. You arrived in Islamabad when?”

  For the next hour, Tobias took down this sliver of history upon which balanced the future. As the facts all but spoke for themselves, Tobias found the story arranging itself in his mind as his fingers worked without guidance. The place in the narrative of the coming war with Iraq, into which the testimony of Sal Fanoui fell, suggested simplicity. Tobias knew he would write the story in minutes.

  Sal's story complete, he leaned back and eyed the mini bar. “Hmm, I could use another,” Sal said thoughtfully.

  “Here, have this one,” Tobias said, dropping his untouched glass in front of Agent Fanoui as he walked past him toward the night table. “I need to use the phone.”

  He called his ME, Howard Lieter; just after seven but still in the office.

  “Stop the presses,” Tobias said deadpan.

  “Christ, again?” Howard said. “You'll have completion tonight, though.”

  “What's that?” Tobias asked.

  “Khalid Sheik Katani confessed to a con
nection between Al Qaeda and Iraq,” Howard said.

  “Old news,” Tobias said.

  “It just came out!” Howard cried. “We got exclusive details, too.”

  “It's also bogus,” Tobias said. “I've got something much better. A scoop so big Baskin-Robbins'll need more flavors.”

  “Alright, let's hear it,” Howard said.

  “Not over the phone,” Tobias said.

  “Oh, would you leave that paranoid shit to the Les Vonka,” Howard said. “Come on.”

  “Uh-uh,” Tobias said trochaicly. “The Chief still in?”

  “Went home,” Howard said.

  “Could you call him?” Tobias asked. “Ask him to come in? Listen, Howard, this is really important.”

  “Yeah, I can ask,” Howard sighed. “Where should I call you?”

  “I need you to call him on your cell phone right now,” Tobias pressed.

  “Jesus, you're pushy tonight,” Howard said. Tobias then heard the phone receiver clatter on the desk top. A moment later, Howard came back. “Does it have to do with what we're already running on page one?”

  “Yes,” Tobias said, holding his breath. “You're not going to want to run that story, Howard.”

  “Hold on,” Howard said. After another, longer moment: “Okay, he'll be here at 9:00 pm.”

  Tobias thanked him and hung up.

  “You two might want to breeze on out of here,” Sal said, hanging an arm over the back of his chair. “I'll give you a head start before I settle up downstairs.”

  “Thanks, that's a good idea,” Sally said. “Especially after that phone call, we shouldn't hang around.”

  She and Tobias thanked Sal with the simplicity that true regard inspires. On the way out, they decided they couldn't risk going to either of their places for Tobias to write his story: after discovering to what horrific depths the President and his Administration would sink, they did not consider any possibility—even kidnapping and murder—unlikely. Instead they went to a rather elegant French restaurant off Columbus Circle: given the rude things said about France by some in the Administration, they thought it less likely they'd inadvertently meet one of its insiders. The vintage jazz playing at below conversational volume was also a factor for Tobias.

  They sat at the bar, at one end where Tobias could plug his laptop's cord into a convenient wall socket. Sally sat next to him with her back to the bar, watching the front door.

  The lede to the story was simple enough: “The President of the United States has ordered the use of torture, according to a document bearing the President's signature obtained by The Washington Observer.” The enumeration of facts, the distillation of Agent Fanoui's story, and the simple mechanical difference between interrogation, coercion, and duress worked as an equally mechanical exercise in Tobias's hands—or should have. With the first sentence typed, his notes beside him and the next sentence repeating itself in his mind, his fingers hovered above the keys, shaking. No observer's calm stole over him; he tried to force himself to view his writing the story from outside—and managed to look over his own shoulder at his work—but he couldn't separate himself from the story.

  Will it even matter? he thought. The President says Iraq seeks uranium in Africa; we show his evidence is a crude forgery and that—judging by their actions—they at least knew it was faked but let it stand; and yet Senators, even those twenty-year incumbents like Snajder, have to consult their local polls and their campaign contributor's interests before they decide if they can “afford” to call a lie a lie. But they see it, Tobias thought and clenched his shaking hands above the keys.

  His eyes strayed to the topmost row, to the 2 and then the + and then back to the 2, and in an instant he'd typed: 2 + 2 = 5.

  And here we go again, he thought, thinking he had said it aloud. Will torture be too expensive with a general election next year? Will the people who answer polls—who don't mind getting up from dinner to answer the push-button questions of an automated telephone call—will they care? Will television news—with their program directors hungry to climb higher upward toward the corporate interest that owns it—will the 24-hour news catch the five crucial minutes of a voter's interest in the facts? Will they be facts or products? Can Snajder afford to vote what he knows? Or will he take forgeries and coerced confessions and vote war? 2 + 2 = 5. Lies brandished as truth, from the Administration, from the press: the rat-filled cage strapped to the face of America.

  “Will this even matter? Will they read and believe and vote war anyway? And why would they want war?” he thought and this time did say it quietly aloud. He caught Sally looking at him, the corners of their eyes meeting.

  Why would they? he thought. You create a reason to go to war when no reason exists: if no reason exists to begin with, why go to war? “A remorseless despot,” the President had said, “with great potential wealth.” Wealth. For money? What could you possibly buy that could be worth it? Money for its own sake? Madness, total madness.

  Tobias stood up, turned his back on his computer, and then faced Sally.

  “I'm going to the men's room,” he said. “Maybe step outside for a minute, see if the cold air will clear my head.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “Don't be too long, though.”

  Tobias glanced at the clock on his screen: 8:02 pm. “No, I won't be long.”

  Past the bar, around the corner, and down the hall, the restrooms were on the right, the ally door straight ahead. And coming in from the cold February evening were two large, formidable-looking men. And behind them, ahead of two similar men, was Karl Kristiansen.

  Tobias had had it. The Orwellian reality he'd endured with Sally for months and months was not a mechanism demanded by a short-sighted populous, no matter the transparent attempts by the Administration and its party allies to terrify them into accepting anything. No, the violations of the constitution, the broken laws, the rape of the country's few universal values—among them, never to torture—were the product of men, simple, despicable, men.

  “Evening, Karl,” Tobias said, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder against the wall. Karl appeared to recognize him but did not respond, following one of his bodyguards down the hall as the first stood inches from Tobias's face. “Little premature to celebrate war for oil, isn't it?” Tobias said. “How could an honest public servant even afford to eat here? I don't imagine they'd accept a personal check from you—particularly if it said 'Bank of Niger' on it.”

  Karl stopped walking, turned after a moment and said, “Weber, help Mr. Hallström outside.”

  The bodyguard in front of Tobias seized him roughly by the collar of his blazer and tossed him into the waiting arms of the two by the door. Tobias was hauled out into the bracing air; he didn't resist, he kept his eyes and phony grin locked on Karl. The alley was a sort of urban courtyard, a wide space behind the building where garbage bins were kept. The entrances at left and right were narrow and darkened to blackness once around the corner from the courtyard's only light, which hung above the door. The bodyguards stood behind and to either side of Tobias in the middle of the concrete floor as Karl casually descended the three steps, pulling on his gloves.

  “See if he's wearing a listening device,” Karl said.

  He strolled with his hands clasped behind him as Tobias felt hands pat him down. Only then did his grin slip: he still had the torture memo in his blazer pocket.

  “He's got a cell phone, Mr. Kristiansen,” the bodyguard directly behind Tobias said, holding it up.

  “Take it inside with Grubber,” Karl said. “You two: go down the alleys and make sure we're not disturbed. Yes, close the door, Weber.”

  The two remaining guards disappeared down opposite alleys, but by the sound of their boots they were not beyond call.

  Tobias regretted his foolishness; if the torture memo were discovered and taken, the story could never be written. You made yourself feel better, jackass, Tobias told himself, but if they find and take this memo it'll be at the price of wh
o knows how many torture victims and the functioning of democracy in this country.

  Karl laughed quietly and Tobias jumped out of his worries. Karl had stood and watched him.

  “Look at you,” he said. “Pissing in your pants. I am not threatening you. You gave me the impression you wanted to talk, Tobias. So I have set aside this little space, and very little of my time, for you. You certainly have no reason for fear,” he said in mock soothing tones and then affected a mirthless chuckle.

  “Someone from your party not recommending fear?” Tobias said. “Tsk, tsk: you're off message.” Before Karl could reply, Tobias plowed on. “And I've always been meaning to ask: why do you do that with your hands? The Dr. No gestures. It's as if everyone in your Administration chose a different Bond villain to imitate, when growing up.”

  “And you got Bond's girl,” Karl said. He didn't drop his hands from the fingertip-to-fingertip steepling they'd unconsciously assumed; he looked at Tobias as a grown up might a child who unwittingly asks about sex, half amused with supercilious unconcern. “We were all so happy for you, Tobias, when we saw you finally got the girl. Some people clapped.”

  “I was after a story,” Tobias said. “And I got it.”

  “Yes, you did,” Karl said. “Something about some documents? Oh, I forget. Has not had much of an effect, I fear.”

  “Just wait,” Tobias said and then cursed himself. Don't excite his curiosity; get the fuck out of here! “They haven't voted you war powers, yet.”

  “Yet,” Karl repeated. “I am afraid that is already taken care of. The vote is a formality. You are looking nervous, Tobias. Worry not, nothing will happen to you. You can go on writing whatever you want, it will not matter. You can keep your little nine-to-five job and work in your little office and gnaw on your little thoughts and enjoy your little life.”

  “Thank you, Karl,” Tobias said. “That's big of you. And we know what you'll be doing, all the while. And what you'll be doing it for. That is an awful nice coat you're wearing, pal,” Tobias said. The cold had begun to make him shiver but he tried to restrain himself, not to show discomfort. “Looks expensive.”