Mind Virus

by Charles Kowalski

  “Ibrahim,” he said, “this is your last chance. Do you really want me to use this machine? Remember how it felt when they were using it on you. Remember how you writhed. Remember how you screamed.”

  He paused for a reply, as everything in him silently entreated: Ibrahim, please! Say something! Save yourself and me! But no voice issued from under the hood.

  Fox’s face contorted, as he spat out angry words in Arabic.

  “Speak English!” Browning demanded. “What did you just say?”

  Fox glared at him. “I thought that even you could understand. I called him a worthless scumbag hajji.”

  And he threw the switch.

  Ibrahim’s body convulsed. “Allahuma, agferlehom!”

  “Where is Mehdi al-Zuhairi?” Browning demanded. When he got no reply, he jerked his head in Fox’s direction. “Dial it up.”

  Fox did as ordered. “Come on, make it easy on yourself, hajji.”

  He threw the switch.

  “Allahuma, agferlehom!” The words came out even louder, and his thrashing became more violent.

  “Where is Zuhairi?”

  The hooded figure was silent. Browning gestured to Fox.

  “Still going to play tough guy, are you, hajji?” He threw the switch.

  “Allahuma, agferlehom!” His cry chilled Fox to the bone, but what penetrated all the way to the marrow was the grin that Browning, Newcomb, and Mendes were sharing among themselves—a solidarity of sadism that cut across rank distinctions. Had they all been this way before they joined the Army? Or had Iraq done it to them?

  “Dial it up.”

  The medic was watching the dial with growing alarm. “Sir, it’s getting to the point where it could be dangerous. He’s an old man; those muscle contractions could break his bones.”

  “I said dial it up!”

  “Sir, you heard what he said!” Fox shouted. “Are you…”

  “Captain!”

  With trembling fingers, Fox turned the dial.

  “If you don’t start talking soon, you’ll see Allah face to face…hajji!”

  The sound that tore from Ibrahim’s throat went beyond words to a pure primal scream, that echoed down the hall and into the corners of Fox’s bowels.

  “That’s right, hajji,” Browning said. “Scream as loud as you can. Keep everyone in the cells awake all night wondering what we’re doing to you, and who’s going to be next.”

  Ibrahim’s pleas for divine mercy had faded away into a low moan. “Allah, Allah, Allah.”

  Fox jumped up, yanked the cables out of their jacks, and threw them to the floor. “That does it! Sir, I refuse to go along with this any longer. If you want to court martial me, or ship me off somewhere to get shot at, then you go right ahead.”

  Browning gave him a long look, with the faint hint of a self-satisfied smile on his face.

  “No need,” he finally said. “You did your best, Fox. Like a good soldier.”

  He clapped Fox on the shoulder and left. Newcomb followed behind him, and Mendes brought up the rear, pausing at the door long enough to look back with a leer.

  “Good luck learning how to walk without your wings, Mr. Fallen Angel.”

  7

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  MONDAY, MARCH 30

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s see your unforgivables.”

  Amid a few startled giggles, Fox went around the classroom to collect the slips on which the students had written their answers to his question: “What is one thing you could never forgive?” In exchange, he passed out laminated cards, blue on one side, red on the other.

  As he was sorting the papers into order, he instructed his students: “As I read these out, please hold up the blue side of your card if you think you could forgive this if it happened to you, and the red side if you think you couldn’t.”

  He read the cards out, starting with the comical ones: “Farting in an elevator.”

  Then the ones of most immediate interest to college students: “Stealing my boyfriend or girlfriend.”

  And finally, the truly serious ones: “Killing my child.” As he went through the stack, the number of blue cards decreased and red ones increased.

  “You may have heard the argument,” Fox went on, “that if religion and the concepts of heaven and hell were taken away, the world would plunge into chaos. Everyone would be killing and stealing and raping to their wicked hearts’ content. How many of you would agree with that?”

  A few hands went up.

  “All right, some. But personally, I’m glad to see that more of us have more faith in humanity than that. Don’t kill your enemies? There are a hundred good reasons not to do that, so even if you take God out of the picture, you’ll still have ninety-nine. Our list of ‘Thou shalt nots’ would probably be more or less the same, with or without God’s signature. What religion brings to the table is the ‘Thou shalts.’ Forgive your enemies? Love your enemies? That goes beyond anything that secular law or morality has any right to demand.”

  A scoff came from Arnie. Fox turned to face him. “Do you have a different opinion?”

  “It’s easy to sit here and talk,” he answered. “But if someone killed you, your friend, or your family, how forgiving would you feel?”

  Fox took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it go slowly.

  “Well, let me answer those in order. First of all, if someone killed me, I suppose I’d be too dead to feel much of anything.”

  He let the laughter subside, before going on more seriously: “About someone killing my friend, as of last Friday, that’s not an academic question for me. Thom DiDio was a good friend of mine.” He paused for effect. “If I ever met the killer, I hope I would be able to act like the woman whose testimony you’re about to hear.”

  He booted up his laptop, saying a silent prayer of thanks for the invention of video, to which he often found himself resorting these days as his side job in counterterror took more and more time away from his class preparation.

  “She actually experienced the last of the ‘unforgivables’ we just heard. Her child was kidnapped and killed. Be honest, now: if that happened to you, how many of you would want to see the killer die?”

  Nearly all the hands in the room went up.

  “Most of us would. That’s the natural human reaction, and she felt it too. But you’ll see how her faith allowed her to go beyond the natural human desire for revenge, and try to contact the killer personally and listen to his story. And in the course of talking with her, he gave away enough information for the police to identify him. When he was arrested, and she finally met him face to face, she told him that in the spirit of forgiveness, she would decline to ask the prosecutors for the death penalty. And it was only then that…”

  His voice suddenly trailed off, leaving the room full of expectant silence.

  A tentative voice broke it. “Mr. Fox?”

  Fox shook his head and tried to refocus.

  “…that he confessed to his crime, and two other murders as well.”

  He started the video, then slipped out of the room and called Adler.

  “Adler here.”

  “John, this is Robin Fox. You remember I told you yesterday that the Reverend Hill said he wanted to see Harpo. We need to let him.”

  “I thought we already decided that…”

  “We did. I know this is way outside protocol, but trust me, this is my area of expertise. And besides, what else has worked?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “All right, then. Let’s set up a time to bring him in. And how soon can you come in today?”

  “As soon as class is over.”

  “Good. There’s something you need to see.”

  ...

  When Fox arrived at the Hoover Building, he saw a bigger smile on Adler’s face than he had ever seen before. “Ah, there you are, Robin. Tell me, do you ever play the lottery?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’m thinking I might just hop o
n a train to Pennsylvania and pick up some tickets. How many would you like?”

  “Feeling lucky today, are you?”

  He presented a folder with a dramatic flourish. “The Metro Police have come through for us. Someone found a paper bag with a money belt in it, taped behind one of the newspaper vending machines at the Gallery Square Metro station. Clever hiding place. There’s enough space between them and the wall that he could reach in, but if no one saw him doing it, it’s unlikely they’d think to check there. This is what was in it.”

  He opened the folder to reveal photographs of a British passport, a credit card, and a plane ticket from Washington to London for the day of the incident. The plan had been simple: get in, plant the device, get out, recover the stash, and be halfway across the Atlantic before anyone knew what he had done.

  Fox read the name aloud. “Thaddeus James Moresby-Stokes?”

  “I know,” Adler said. “Who the hell has a name like that?”

  “So where has he been lately?”

  “Wouldn’t we like to know.” Adler pointed at the issue date, which was less than a month ago. “He must have renewed it just for this trip, so that there would be no visas in it to raise red flags. Nothing from Turkey—or Syria, Pakistan, or any other likely spot for jihadi summer camp. The only stamps in it are an exit from London, and an arrival in Montreal.”

  That explained why CBP had no record of him. The United States photographed and fingerprinted all non-citizens on arrival, but Canadian immigration was not as strict. And there were any number of places where he could have slipped across the border undetected.

  “Well,” Adler went on with a slightly malicious grin, “now we’ve officially established he’s not an American citizen. So, I get to take my turn with him. Care to join me?”

  They went into the interview room together. Harpo raised his eyes briefly to register this new arrival.

  “Thaddeus James Moresby-Stokes,” Adler said.

  Harpo started, and his eyes widened.

  “Yes, I know your name,” Adler continued. “You don’t need to know mine. All you need to know are my initials. Here’s a hint: the first one is C, and the last one is A.”

  Harpo—Fox continued to think of him by his code name, which was definitely less unwieldy than his real one—kept his silence. His eyes still stayed on the floor, but they were wide with fear. His breath began to come more quickly.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Adler went on. “I get a crack at you now. Don’t much like that idea? I don’t blame you. I know I’m not as easy on the eyes as those two ladies who’ve been working with you. And I’m nowhere near as nice and polite as this gentleman here. I’ve never been much for social pleasantries. I like to stay focused on my job. And my job is to get you to tell me what you know. By—any—means—necessary.”

  Harpo was beginning to sweat, but still he kept his silence.

  “Remember what that lovely lady told you about the right to remain silent, the right to the presence of an attorney, and all that?” Adler pressed on. “Forget it all. All you need to know about your rights is that when I ask you a question, you had better answer right. Who sent you? Who are you working for?”

  His gaze remained fixed ahead, as beads of sweat appeared on his face.

  “Where is the next target? When are you going to hit it?”

  Harpo was gasping audibly for breath, but he made no other sound.

  “Damn it!” Adler shouted, pounding his fist on the table next to Harpo and leaning over him until their faces were only a few inches apart. “You listen to me! The gloves are about to come off. You think that what you’ve been through in here is the worst that can happen to you? Think again! We’ve been going easy on you, because this is America, and we play by the rules here. But if you keep holding out on us, we can take you to a place where the rules don’t apply. Where nobody will have any idea where you are. Where there are no video cameras to monitor us, and no one to tell us what we can and can’t do. So what’s it going to be? Talk now, or scream later?”

  Fox was devoutly hoping Adler was a better analyst than he was an interrogator. In the theater of interrogation, the interrogator was often called on to play the heavy, but even under the mask of rage, it was essential to stay in control. When the interrogator lost his temper, things went bad very quickly, both for the subject and for their chances of gleaning any useful intelligence. And by jumping straight into full-on Fear Up Harsh mode, Adler had left himself no room for gradual escalation. Everything in Fox was telling him to intervene, but he had no authority here. He was only a consultant, a guest in the Agency’s house.

  Harpo looked up at Adler, making eye contact for the first time.

  “I can endure all things, through Allah who gives me strength.”

  His words, spoken in an accent that Fox placed somewhere around Bristol, electrified the air like the first click underfoot that tells a platoon they are marching through a minefield. Adler flashed Fox a triumphant smile that combined “We did it!” with “I told you so.”

  Fox stood still, barely breathing. Oh, no. Please, no.

  Adler turned back to the subject. “Who are you? Who are you working for?”

  “American Sharia State. What you have seen is only the beginning. The attacks will continue, in times and places that you least expect, until you infidels repent of your wicked ways and make Sharia the law of the land.”

  “By which you mean?” Fox managed to ask.

  “Death to unbelievers. Death to homosexuals. Death to anyone who dares insult the Prophet. All boys will be taught the Qur’an in schools, and girls will never see the inside of a classroom. They are to be the property of their fathers until they become the property of their husbands. Any woman seen outdoors without a burqa and a male escort will be stoned. Eighty lashes for drinking alcohol or listening to music. No pork on supermarket shelves. No…”

  There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for a reply, a staff member opened it and stuck his head in. “Agent Kato, you have a call from London.”

  Kato left. Fox glanced inquiringly at Adler, and after receiving an assenting nod, turned to Harpo.

  “This movement of yours,” Fox said. “Tell me more about it. Are you Sunni or Shi’a?”

  “S-unni.” There was the merest hint of an indecisive pause on the first “s.”

  “Now, this whole business of imposing your version of Sharia throughout the United States,” Fox went on. “I’m curious: How do you reconcile that with the Qur’an, Sura two, verse 256, and the precepts of Umar bin Abdulaziz?” He referred to scriptures that spoke against compulsion in religion and imposition of the laws of Islam on non-Muslims.

  Harpo kept up his defiant expression, but underneath, his face took on the look of a student caught without his homework.

  Fox let him sit in silence for a while before pressing on: “And if you believe that all music is haram, how do you interpret the hadith of the Two Festivals in al-Bukhari?”

  Harpo’s mouth worked hesitantly for a few moments before he finally spoke. “I would be wasting my breath, debating theology with an infidel like you.”

  “Somehow I thought you would say that.”

  Fox’s phone vibrated. He stole a glance at the screen. The message from Emily read, “Urgent news from Miriam.”

  “I’m sorry, John,” he said, “I’ll have to excuse myself.”

  Adler nodded. “We’ll take it from here.”

  Fox stood, then turned back to Harpo. “Oh, by the way: You left out turning the Capitol into a mosque and draping a burqa over the Statue of Liberty.”

  ...

  When Fox arrived at USPRI headquarters and rushed to Emily’s desk, a minuscule upturn of the corners of her mouth was as close as she could come to a smile.

  “You’ve heard from Miriam,” he said. “And it’s not good news.”

  Emily nodded. “She got a call from Leila’s mother, in tears—completely devastated. Leila somehow managed to get a message smu
ggled out to her. She’s been arrested, and they’re holding her at HaSharon Prison.”

  Fox wondered at the efficiency of the underground network that could convey information through channels the CIA missed. “What could they possibly be charging her with?”

  She gave him an impatient look that said, At other times, I might find your naiveté charming. “You know how it works over there. She’s in administrative detention. They can hold her for six months without needing to charge her with anything.”

  “What can we do?”

  “I’m going over there.”

  “To Israel?”

  “Yes. Miriam is sounding like she’s at the end of her resources. She and Rabbi Sternberg have been organizing protests at the prison, but they’re starting to worry that things could turn violent. If I go, at least I can flash Rick’s card, and put some pressure on the Israelis by giving them the idea that they’ve crossed the American government and touched off an international incident. It’s worth a try.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “On the first flight I could get. Wednesday morning.”

  “Hell of a time for this to happen. Friday is the first day of Passover. At sunset, the entire State of Israel will shut down.”

  “That’s why I have to leave right away. The symposium starts next week. And you have some idea what prison in Israel is like, especially for a Palestinian woman. If there’s a chance we can get her out of there even one day early, it’s worth it.”

  Fox nodded. “God go with you, Emily.”

  “Thanks.”

  She stood up, wrapped her arms around him, and squeezed. The last time she had hugged him like that was the day before he started his military service. Like Jacob’s hold on the angel, it was at once an embrace, a prayer, and an act of defiance:I won’t let go until You promise we can see each other again.

  ...

  Fox’s apartment in Arlington was a short Metro ride from campus, with a wide choice of cuisines within easy walking distance, and a rooftop patio designed especially for enjoying the view of the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome with a glass of pinot noir in hand. He liked everything except the name of the street, Army Navy Drive, and the nearest station, Pentagon City. It was as though the universe were conspiring to keep him from ever forgetting that chapter in his life.