The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

  The police found him quickly. They grabbed him and cuffed his arms tightly and marched him out to the avenue. Hani waited for him there, leaning against a black Audi sedan with tinted windows. He stepped forward, backhanded Wells hard, his gold ring digging into Wells’s cheek.

  “What trouble you’ve caused us, Kuwaiti,” he said. “Now you’ll be our guest. See our prisons firsthand. You can make your own video when we’re done with you. Interview yourself.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Wells said in English. “But I’m not Kuwaiti.”

  “No? What are you, then?”

  “American. A CIA operative. Name’s John Wells.” His last card. His trump card. Wells would rather have avoided playing it. Not exactly pukka sahib. He wished he could have made a clean escape, avoided the nonsense certain to follow. But he had no alternative. He wasn’t sure he could have gotten past the cordon tonight even if his skull was in one piece. His embarrassment was a small price to pay for Alaa’s freedom.

  Hani must have known Wells was telling the truth, because he slumped back, his mouth half open, a fisherman who’d just reeled in the biggest catch of his life only to watch it wave and jump off the deck and back into the ocean. “John Wells. You work for the CIA,” he said finally.

  “So they tell me, habibi.”

  PART TWO

  11

  SZCZYNTO-SYMANTY AIRPORT, POLAND. JUNE 2008

  The Gulfstream jet’s itinerary had taken it at forty-one thousand feet over a half-dozen countries, all avoided by anyone with a lick of sense. Exceptions included oil workers, who made good money for their trouble, and Special Forces operatives, who knew how to take care of themselves. The natives, too. They didn’t have a choice.

  After leaving Faisalabad and climbing northwest over Pakistan, the G5 crossed into Afghanistan roughly at the Khyber Pass. For an hour it flew over the Hindu Kush, jagged snowcapped peaks glittering in the cloudless sky. Eventually the Kush gave way to the steppes of Turkmenistan, a vast expanse hardly touched by roads or cities. Even the most intrepid travelers rarely visited Turkmenistan. The country existed mainly as a bridge between more appealing destinations, nations with amenities such as oceans, reliable electricity, and the rule of law. The ultimate flyover country.

  Had the jet kept on the same route, it would have entered Russia next. But the other men in the G5 preferred to avoid Russia. Instead, the jet veered left, over the Caspian Sea, a vast blue-black expanse broken only by an occasional oil platform. Then over Azerbaijan. The less said about Azerbaijan, the better. And into Georgia, not the former heart of the Confederacy but the former (and perhaps future) Russian republic.

  After Georgia came the Black Sea, the jet chasing the setting sun at five hundred miles an hour, invisible to the trawlers and freighters dotting the water below. The Gulfstream had a range of more than six thousand miles, so fuel was no problem. Halfway across the Black Sea, the G5 doglegged northwest, a forty-five-degree right turn that took it to Ukraine.

  Aside from a few bumps over Afghanistan, the trip was smooth for five of the seven men in the cabin. Wearing black sweatshirts, jeans, and steel-toed boots, they sat in the jet’s leather chairs, keeping watch on the reason for the trip: the two prisoners who lay prone on the floor, legs and arms shackled, wearing orange T-shirts and diapers. Detainees were not allowed to take bathroom breaks during these flights.

  In Faisal, the prisoners had received sedatives: two milligrams of Ativan, five of Haldol, and fifty of Benadryl, injected intramuscularly. Emergency-room psychiatrists called the combination a B-52 and used it to restrain psychotic patients. The Haldol caused extreme sedation and reduced muscle control. Essentially, the drug produced temporary paralysis. The Benadryl acted as another sedative, as well as a counter to the nastier side effects of the Haldol. The Ativan was more pleasant, a tranquilizer that reduced anxiety.

  But the smaller prisoner didn’t seem to be getting much relief from the Ativan. As the jet crossed into the Ukraine, he began to moan through his hood and toss his head side to side like a dog with a mouse in its jaws.

  The men guarding him watched him silently and without sympathy. They didn’t know exactly what he’d done, or even his name, but they knew he was a terrorist, else he wouldn’t be on this plane.

  The guards were ex-soldiers, now employed by a private security company called Ekins Charlotte. Little Eight Enterprises, a Maryland shell company, owned the jet. Little Eight’s nominal president was Tim Race, a former CIA deputy section chief. Retired now, Race lived near Tampa and spent his days fishing in the Gulf. As a favor to his old bosses, Race had signed certain necessary documents — aircraft leases, insurance forms, and corporate records. He did not know exactly how the agency planned to use the jet, though he guessed it wouldn’t be for golf outings.

  Little Eight put a legal veil between the CIA and the Gulfstream, though a veil sheer enough to allow the agency to track the jet minute by minute. Everyone involved with these renditions agreed that official U.S. government aircraft shouldn’t be used for the transfers, though no one could fully explain why. The answer seemed to be a combination of secrecy and plausible deniability. Not to mention the faint but definite odor of brimstone attached to the process of stealing men from their homelands without the approval of even a kangaroo court.

  AS THE JET PROGRESSED over Ukraine, the smaller prisoner began to hammer his forehead against the cabin floor. A kick to the ribs stilled him, but after a few rattling breaths he started again, regular as a metronome, the flat, dull sound echoing through the jet.

  Joe Zawadzki, the former Ranger captain in charge of the transfer, grabbed the man’s hood and held his head. Despite the Haldol, the prisoner’s shoulders and neck revealed tremendous agitation. But he neither cried nor spoke. Zawadzki was holding a vibrating bowling ball. After a few seconds, Zawadzki let go. Immediately, the prisoner banged his head, harder this time. And again.

  Zawadzki had been in charge on dozens of these flights, and he’d never had a prisoner seriously injured. “All right,” he said. “Take off the hood, sit him up.”

  They pulled on latex gloves, flipped the prisoner on his back, stuck a pillow under his head so he couldn’t do any more damage. Then Zawadzki pulled off his hood and tugged him up.

  The prisoner’s lip was split and his nose was bleeding, not a gusher but a steady flow from the left nostril. Zawadzki was glad for the gloves. He grabbed the first-aid kit and a water bottle. The prisoner shook his head side to side, sending a trickle of blood on the floor. If he kept up this nonsense, they were going to have to hit him with another dose of Ativan, or more Haldol. Zawadzki kept syringes in his pack.

  He poured water onto the Paki’s face, rubbed away the remaining blood with a gauze pad, taped a cotton ball into the prisoner’s nostril. Zawadzki poured a few drops of water into the guy’s mouth and waited to see if he would spit or swallow. He swallowed. The water seemed to have calmed him a little.

  “Relax,” Zawadzki said. “No one’s gonna hurt you.”

  The prisoner seemed unconvinced. He opened his mouth wide. A shiny spit bubble stretched between his lips, popped, re-formed. He mumbled something, and then repeated it more loudly. It wasn’t Arabic. Probably Pashto. Whatever it was, Zawadzki couldn’t understand.

  “Quiet or the hood goes back on,” he said to the guy. “Come on, don’t you speak any Arabic?”

  “He only knows Pashto. I know what he’s saying,” the second prisoner, the fat one, said in Arabic through his hood. “Take this off and I will tell you.”

  Zawadzki pulled the fat guy’s hood half off so his mouth was visible.

  “He says his ribs are broken, that the Pakistani police broke them when they took us to the airport. They beat us in their van. Like the animals they are. And these drugs you gave us are very bad. Poison.”

  “Tell him he’ll get medical care when we land.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Yes.” In fact, the guys running the detention center would make t
hat decision. But Zawadzki wasn’t going to explain that right now. “Tell him to relax. He’s got to calm down.”

  “All right,” the fat prisoner said. He craned his head toward the first prisoner, and the two men had a short conversation before Zawadzki pulled the hood back over the fat prisoner’s head. But the talk seemed to have done the trick. The first guy was breathing more normally. Zawadzki lowered him to the floor of the cabin and laid him down. Probably better for his ribs that way, if they really were broken. Zawadzki didn’t believe in hurting prisoners. His job was transport, not interrogation.

  TOUCHDOWN WAS BUMPY. The runway needed to be repaved, but Szczynto-Symanty wasn’t a working airport. It opened only for these ghost flights. The Gulfstream taxied for a minute before its engines spooled down and the jet halted. The copilot opened the cabin door. “Looks like you guys had fun,” he said.

  Zawadzki lifted the prisoner, shackled him again, and pulled the hood over him. The prisoner grunted and bobbed his head a couple of times, but the fight had gone out of him. For now. Zawadzki and another guard wrapped him in a black blanket and walked him to the cabin door and down to the runway. The other guards handled the second prisoner.

  Outside, two black Jeeps and a Range Rover waited in the dark. Jack Fisher stood at the foot of the stairs. Zawadzki had run a couple of other prisoners to this squad over the last year. From what Zawadzki could see, they weren’t afraid to knock the prisoners around a little bit, maybe too much. But that wasn’t his business.

  “Any trouble?”

  “This one,” Zawadzki said. “Knocking his head against the floor, got a bloody nose. Says the Paki police broke his ribs on the way to the airport.” Zawadzki hesitated. “He needs medical treatment, maybe.”

  “Poor little angel,” Fisher said. “You know, him and his buddy shot one of our guys last night.” Fisher reached behind the prisoner and pulled up his shackled hands, dragging his arms out and back and twisting his shoulders in their sockets. The prisoner groaned. “That’s right,” Fisher said. “You weren’t a good boy.” He let go. The prisoner flopped down, nearly falling over. Zawadzki propped him up.

  “Let’s get them back to base, settle the paperwork there,” Fisher said. “Get him a deep-tissue massage.” He lifted the prisoner’s hood. “Lemme get a look.” He pushed back the prisoner’s lips, looked at his teeth and nose like he was inspecting a horse.

  “Banged himself up nice, didn’t he? Good. Less work for us.”

  12

  Wells came back to Langley spoiling for a fight.

  He’d spent a night in Cairo locked in an empty office at the mukhabarat headquarters in Abdeen, while the Egyptians verified his identity. Oddly, the room was festooned with Egyptian tourist posters, their slogans in English and French: Leave London behind, come to Cairo for Christmas! Les Pyramides d’Egypte: Une Merveille du Monde! Wells dated the posters to the late seventies: the men wore mustaches and checked short-sleeve shirts, the women blown-out hair and brightly colored miniskirts.

  He had just fallen asleep, his head on the desk, when Hani walked in and poured a bucket of freezing water over his head and down his galabiya. Wells was covered in so much dust from the cemetery that he didn’t mind.

  “I knew you were no Kuwaiti. I knew.”

  I did you a favor, Wells didn’t say. You were getting nowhere fast. Now you can blame me for this mess.

  “You knew I was muk,” Hani said.

  “I thought so.”

  “You should have told me who you were.” Hani banged a flashlight against the desk, sending vibrations oscillating into Wells’s damaged skull.

  Wells sat up. “Did Alaa get away?”

  “For now.”

  “Good.”

  This time Hani brought the flashlight down on top of Wells’s head. Not a full swing, and not in the same place as Wells had been sapped. But more than a love tap. Wells counted Mississippis in his head until the ringing stopped.

  “What did you want from him?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Mainly, we talked soccer.”

  Hani raised the flashlight over his head, turned toward Wells, measured his swing like a batter in the on-deck circle. One practice swing, another—

  Then another swing, this one for real, the flashlight whistling through the hot, dry air at Wells’s face—

  And stopping just short of his left eye. Wells didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. He burrowed into the core of himself and waited.

  A thin trickle of sweat dripped down Hani’s left temple. He stared at Wells and then sighed and sat on the side of the desk and lit a cigarette. “I’ll be glad to have you gone,” he said.

  WELLS SLEPT FITFULLY until the morning, when Hani brought in a doctor — or a man in a dirty white coat who said he was a doctor — who poured rubbing alcohol on Wells’s scalp, setting his broken skin on fire, and then taped a gauze pad to the wound. Hani was the only mukhabarat agent Wells saw. He guessed the case was so toxic that no one wanted to be near it. Day turned to evening, and finally Hani returned.

  “You leave tonight.”

  Wells didn’t argue.

  At midnight they put a hood over his head and bundled him into a van. When they pulled it off, he stood on the tarmac of Cairo International, staring at the blinking lights of a Delta 767. Delta ran a flight to New York four times a week.

  Hani took Wells’s fake passports and the digital camera and arranged them neatly on the tarmac. He pulled a red plastic canister from the back of the van, splashed gasoline over the pile. He lit a cigarette and dropped it on the pile. The flames danced sideways on the tarmac, and the acrid smell of the camera’s melting battery filled the hot night air.

  “Burn, baby, burn,” Wells said in English. “Got any marshmallows?” Hani hadn’t given him food or water since his arrest, a full day ago now. He was unsteady, feverish, his temperature spiking and diving like a Blue Angels pilot showing off for a new girlfriend.

  “Marshmallow? What is that?”

  Wells poked at the dying fire with his foot. “That wasn’t strictly necessary,” he said. “Can I go now?”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice in the matter,” Hani said. “Our American ally. But if you ever come back to Egypt. We have so many accidents in Cairo. I know how I would suffer if Mr. John Wells were hit by a truck.”

  “If I ever come back to Egypt, you’ll be the last to know,” Wells said. His voice tore his throat like ground glass. No more talking, in any language. He turned away and stumbled across the tarmac. At the jetway, he made sure to give Hani a wave.

  * * *

  FROM NEW YORK, he flew to D.C., where an army doc met him and stitched him up properly. The doctor told him he needed to spend a day at Walter Reed, but Wells turned him down. He took a cab to the apartment that Shafer had arranged as a crash pad and slept for eighteen hours straight.

  When he woke the next morning, his fever was gone. He still had a headache, a dull pounding behind the eyes, but he felt just about human for the first time since the Northern Cemetery. Two messages waited for him on his cell phone, which he’d left in Washington. The first: “John. It’s Anne. Hope you and my friend Tonka are all right. Wherever you are.” She laughed nervously. “Don’t shoot anybody I wouldn’t shoot, okay? And call me sometime.”

  The second message was nothing but a few seconds of breathing, followed by a hang-up. Wells wanted to believe he could recognize the fluttering of Exley’s breath. But the line didn’t have a trace, so he had no way to know. He listened twice to Anne’s message and three times to the hang-up and then saved them both.

  He showered and shaved and sped to Langley, his headache growing more intense as he approached the front gate. For once, he wanted to talk to Duto. But when he got to Shafer’s office, he found out he wouldn’t have the chance.

  “Duto going to see us?” Wells said. “Talk about Alaa Zumari? Tell me what an idiot I am, how I should have g
otten the Egyptians involved from the get-go?”

  “Nope.”

  “Have a full and frank exchange of views?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because I’ve got a few things to say to him.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “He had to have known the details of Alaa Zumari’s interrogation. Had to. That Zumari gave up Samir Gharib. Why didn’t he tell us? It’s like he’s deliberately inciting us.”

  Shafer cocked his head sideways and grunted.

  “Are you trying to speak, Ellis? Because that’s not English.”

  “Thinking.” He tilted his head to the other side. No other response.

  Wells lowered himself onto Shafer’s couch. “You talk too much or not enough,” he muttered. “I have no idea how she”—she being Exley—“survived all those years with you.”

  “I could say the same.”

  Shafer had only three photographs on his desk: him and his wife, his family together, and him with Exley, standing side by side in front of the polar-bear cage at the Washington zoo. Shafer held up his right hand with the fingers hidden, as if a bear had just chomped them. Exley’s mouth was open in a wide O, a mock-horrified expression. The picture had been taken at least five years before, Exley and Shafer visiting the zoo with their families. A purely platonic trip. And yet Shafer’s face betrayed a depth of emotion for Exley that ran past simple friendship. Did you love her? Wells wondered. Do you still? Do you blame me for her quitting? Or am I just projecting?

  Shafer seemed to read Wells’s mind. “You’ll never be free of her as long as you work here.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be.”