The terrorist, p.6
The Terrorist, page 6
“Lift cock,” he said. He pointed with the flashlight. He turned it on and looked. “Lift balls,” he said and shined the light again. He went around behind Zaharia. “Bend over and spread.” Zaharia did as he was told. He felt the stick circling the edge of his anus.
“Stand up,” said the doctor. “Finished. Good healthy,” he said.
After many more hours another guard came in with a metal bowl of stew. Zaharia ate everything. Then he used his finger to get the parts his spoon would not reach.
Zaharia could not tell when it was day or when it was night. There were no windows, and the light was always on. The mattress was damp and smelled strongly of disinfectant. He slept anyway. All he knew was, when he woke up, it was later than when he had gone to sleep. Some time had passed, and he was that much closer to this being over. There were noises in the corridor, people coming and going, murmured words. But that was all.
Zaharia heard a tapping on the wall. Five taps, then six taps, then seven, all the way to twenty-six. Then the taps started over with one, then two. Zaharia tapped out his name. It took a long time to tap out a Z. He was glad his name had three As. The man next door was named Ahmed. He said he was a medical student from Jordan. Don’t give up hope, he tapped. Praise Allah. One day he tapped out, Learn to hold breath. Another day he tapped, Act like drowning. Then one day his tapping went silent. Zaharia tapped, Ahmed are you there. There was no answer. He tapped again later. There was no answer.
Two guards came to Zaharia’s cell. They blindfolded him and led him down the long corridor. They took him down some stairs and into a room. They removed his blindfold. He stood in front of a table facing a seated man. There were two other men standing behind the man. They all wore camouflage pants and shirts. The seated man was reading a sheet of paper. He looked up. He smiled. “Hello, Zaharia.”
Zaharia said hello.
“Do you know why you are here?” said the man.
“No,” said Zaharia.
“How old are you, Zaharia?”
“Almost seventeen.”
“When is your birthday?”
“December 6.”
“Soon,” said the man. His face got sad. “You’re so young, Zaharia. Your whole life is ahead of you. And yet, here you are, already mixed up in such a terrible business.”
“What terrible business?”
“Oh, Zaharia, I think you know what I’m talking about. You’re much too young to feel such hate. Why do you hate America?”
“I don’t hate America. I am a student. I came to America to go to school.”
“Does the name”—he mentioned a name—“mean anything to you?”
“No,” said Zaharia.
“What about…?” He mentioned another name. Again Zaharia said no.
“What about Louis Morgon?” said the man.
“Yes. Louis Morgon is my friend,” said Zaharia.
“Louis Morgon, the terrorist, is your friend? Well, that is exactly what I mean. You can see, can’t you, son? Your so-called friend has gotten you in a lot of trouble. You maybe should have chosen your friends more carefully.”
Interrogation is an art more than it is a science. An unskilled interrogator might phrase something in a particular way, intending to soften up his subject. And yet his phrasing might have exactly the opposite effect. Zaharia’s interrogator was from Texas, where calling someone son is a sign of affection and intimacy. And that was how he meant it. He wanted to disarm the boy, to show him that he cared about him and had his best interest at heart. The effect on Zaharia, however, was like a slap in the face.
Louis would have advised Zaharia to tell the man anything he wanted to know. Tell him that Louis was a terrorist and that he knew where Louis’s bomb-making factory was. It doesn’t matter, Louis would have said. They just need some words to put in their logs. They don’t really know, or care, whether they are true or not. And they might just treat you better if you talk.
Instead, by the time the interrogator had called Zaharia son twice more, Zaharia had resolved not to answer any questions at all. When it became clear that Zaharia was not going to cooperate, he was turned over to the two guards, who forced him to his knees and pushed his head into the toilet. They held him there ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, finally pulling him up, gasping and crying. “Louis Morgon is my friend,” he cried. “Why are you doing this?”
“Do you have any other friends?”
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Jennifer, Michael, Arnold Chan, I have lots of friends.”
Before he could take a breath, his head was back in the water. After the next dunking, he was brought up vomiting. He staggered back to his cell, held up by the two guards, where he vomited some more.
Zaharia remembered the messages Ahmed had tapped on his wall. Learn to hold breath. Act like drowning. He practiced taking in air quickly and holding his breath for as long as he could. He timed himself using his heartbeat. The next time they dunked him, he fought them a reasonable length of time, went limp, and was brought up gasping. He even retched convincingly.
Later, when they brought him back for another interrogation, there was a car battery on the table. One of the guards was attaching wires to the battery. “Do you know what this is, son?” said the man from Texas, holding the loose ends of the wire in front of Zaharia’s face. “It’s electricity. My colleagues here are going to see how good you are at acting like you’re being electrocuted.” The man from Texas left the room. This time Zaharia had to be carried back to his cell when the treatment was finished. No questions had even been asked.
The abuse came and went. Like bad weather. Days would pass without Zaharia being taken from his cell. Then the guards would suddenly appear. He would be taken to the interrogation room. He would be made to stand up until his legs collapsed. He was young and strong, so this could take a very long time. He was carried back to his cell.
One day a doctor—a real doctor—came to his cell to examine him. The doctor, an American, asked Zaharia his name and where he was from. He listened to his chest through a stethoscope. He thumped on his back and tapped his knee with a little hammer. He lifted his eyelids and peered into his eyes with a bright light. He moved his finger back and forth in front of Zaharia’s face and told him to follow the motion with his eyes. Zaharia did not have any wounds. He was not sick or malnourished or suffering any other physical deficits.
“Please, Doctor,” he whispered, “help me. I am being tortured.”
“No you’re not,” said the doctor. Zaharia’s interrogation was allowed to continue.
VI
As the plane descended, Louis peered out across the great river delta. Cairo sprawled across the landscape and into the distant, shimmering haze. Buildings covered both banks of the Nile and the islands too. The city reached far into the desert. Skyscrapers poked into the sky where previously there had been only minarets.
Uniformed policemen studied Louis’s passport and riffled through his bag. He found his way through the crowded terminal to the street, where he waited in line for a taxi. Had the cabs always been black and white? Louis could not remember.
They drove along grand boulevards past government palaces and public gardens that made Louis think of Paris. The cab turned past the guardian lions onto Qasr el Nil Bridge. They passed the opera house, crossed another bridge—Louis could not remember the name—to the east bank, and stopped just past the Egyptian Museum. “Voila,” said the driver. He took Louis for French. “Toledo Hotel, mister,” he said. Louis paid him. The cab drove off. Louis carried his bag inside.
The telephone rang in Renard’s office. “Mr. Renard,” said Peter Sanchez in serviceable French, “my name is Peter Sanchez.”
Renard sat up straight in his chair. “Who?” he said, managing to sound indifferent.
“Peter Sanchez. I’m sure Louis Morgon mentioned me to you. I’m trying to reach Louis, but he isn’t answering his telephone.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Sanchez?” said Renard. He stepped to the window. There were no unfamiliar cars parked on the square.
“I don’t suppose you would know where I can find Mr. Morgon.”
“I think he’s in Paris.”
“Paris,” said Peter.
“Visiting a friend,” said Renard.
“Visiting a friend,” said Peter.
Stop repeating everything I say, Renard said to himself.
“Would that by any chance be Pauline Vasiltschenko?”
“May I ask why you’re asking all these questions, Mr.…?”
“Peter Sanchez. As I said, Mr. Renard, I’m trying to find Louis Morgon.”
“Oh, yes. He thought you might call,” Renard said. “He asked me to take a message.”
“A message.” Peter Sanchez was thinking. “No,” he said finally. “No, thank you.” Then: “If you see Louis, please ask him to call me.” He hung up before Renard could respond. Renard wondered whether he might have played it too dumb.
When Peter Sanchez called Pauline, he got a similar response. “He’s not here. He’s out right now,” said Pauline. When Peter called back later, she said, “He was here for dinner, but now he’s out again. At a concert. I don’t know which one.”
“Perfect,” said Louis when Pauline reported the conversation. “Thank you.”
“Explain your thinking,” she said.
“I want him to think I’ve gone to Cairo. And I want him to think that I don’t want him to think I’ve gone.”
Pauline thought about that for a moment. “The charade seems pretty complicated, Louis. And pretty transparent. Do you also want him to think you’re not very clever?” said Pauline.
“That would be helpful,” said Louis. “It adds one more layer to the confusion.”
“Confusion is a good thing?” She was trying to take it all in.
“We don’t have much else on our side,” said Louis. “Not yet.”
Pauline was pleased that he had said we. “And how is it there?”
“I don’t recognize the place,” said Louis. “It’s fast and modern and cosmopolitan. I haven’t found the charming and mysterious old Cairo yet.”
“I love Cairo,” said Pauline. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to wait for Sanchez to show up. Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can stir things up. Jam a stick into the hornets’ nest.”
Louis’s room was on the fifth floor of the Toledo, which was the top floor. He opened the shutters, and a soft, hot breeze enveloped him. He hung his clothes in the wooden armoire and put his bag in the closet.
Cairo had several spy hotels, but the Toledo was not one of them. The one usually frequented by Americans and Brits was the Ramses, just off Ramses Square. The Ramses was a belle époch palace of golden sandstone. There was a statue of the pharaoh Ramses out front in the center of the circular drive.
As usual in such places, the lobby of the Ramses was a sort of clandestine marketplace, with people—both men and women these days—trading stories and waiting for some useful tidbit to come their way. Intelligence work is, as it has always been, a peculiar mix of closely guarded secrets and wild gossip, and very often it is impossible to tell which is which. A few ordinary tourists came and went, giving the place an air of normalcy.
Louis walked up to four American men standing near the front desk. They had drinks in their hands. They stopped talking as Louis approached. They waited expectantly, hopefully even. After all, when someone of Louis’s disheveled mien—he wore battered walking shoes, his seersucker jacket was rumpled, his white hair drifted like a cloud about his head—approached in that determined way, you had the distinct impression that he was in possession of information he could hardly wait to share. All you had to do was coax him a bit, and something useful would come spilling out.
“I’m looking for Sanchez,” said Louis. “Peter Sanchez. Has anyone seen him?” He smiled and peered at the men through glasses that made his eyes look huge.
This was what Louis called his arrow-in-the-air strategy. He waited while it fell to earth. In fact, one of the men—the oldest of the four—looked around as though an arrow might actually have struck the floor somewhere behind him.
“Who?” said one of the others.
“I don’t see him,” said the man who had turned around to look.
“When you see him…” Louis seemed to think things over. “Oh, never mind,” he said, and wandered off.
“Who is Peter Sanchez?” said the youngest man in the group.
“You don’t know Peter Sanchez?” said the oldest man.
One of the other men caught on and echoed the oldest man’s astonishment. “You don’t know Peter Sanchez?”
“No,” said the youngest man, feeling more and more as though he had just given something away he shouldn’t have.
The oldest man took pity on him. “Peter Sanchez? How the hell should I know?” he said. The others guffawed, including the youngest, relieved that it was all a joke. “And who the hell was that? ”
The four watched Louis walk up to a man and a woman across the room and ask them whether they had seen Peter. Before the afternoon was out, Louis had confronted thirty or forty people in the lobby, in the bar, in the newsstand, inquiring about Peter Sanchez. They would all remember Louis, and they would remember the name Peter Sanchez. In fact Peter Sanchez became the punch line in the Ramses’s best joke of the week.
Louis figured that, if Peter Sanchez chased him to Cairo, and it was reasonable to assume that he would, then Peter would probably begin his search at one of the spy hotels. The Ramses was the most likely one. Peter arrived the following afternoon. He was in the lounge having a drink, when he could have sworn he heard his name spoken by someone standing at the bar. He walked up to the bar just in time to hear the words “Who the hell is Peter Sanchez?” followed by gales of laughter.
Peter went to the concierge desk and asked whether anyone had left any messages for him. The concierge checked in the small drawer in front of him and handed Peter an envelope addressed in overlarge letters:
Mr. Peter Sanchez
Central Intelligence Agency
“Jesus Christ, Louis,” he muttered. Then he had to laugh.
Dear Mister Sanchez,
Thank you for coming to Cairo. I would like to meet with you, to get as much up-to-date information as possible about the people I am going to meet. I will be in the breakfast room of the Hotel Ramses at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning.
Louis Morgon
By nine o’clock, the breakfast room was mostly empty of guests. The French doors had been opened onto the sun porch, and the service people were clearing the tables. Louis sat facing out into the gardens, which were lush with oleander and hibiscus and lilies and papyrus and date palms. A fountain sent a jet of water into the air. It splashed into the scalloped basin, its spray causing miniature rainbows to form and quickly dissipate. White lotus blossoms swayed gently. They glowed as though they were lit from within.
“Mr. Morgon,” said Peter.
“Please sit down,” said Louis without taking his eyes off the garden. He sipped from a glass of tea.
Peter sat down. He waved away the waiter. “You’re playing a dangerous game,” said Peter.
“Here’s what I need from you,” said Louis. “I need likely addresses, profiles, history, everything you’ve got for the names you’ve given me.”
“You’re out of your mind,” said Peter.
“Maybe,” said Louis. “Again: I need addresses, history on all the names. From Abu Massad on down. As soon as we’ve done that, I’ll start making contact and exploring possible channels up the line. We’ll have to wait and see where it takes me. But I’m starting right away.
“I also need something to trade with. Some outdated, but viable, secrets. Iranian missile sites. That sort of thing. And I need you to be my spotter, my backup, to keep me in sight while all this is going on. I don’t know how much you know about this part of the world, but you’re going to have to learn fast.”
“You know, ” said Peter, “there’s very little likelihood that you’ll succeed at any of this.”
“That we’ll succeed,” said Louis. “There’s little likelihood that we’ll succeed. I quite agree. But you better do everything in your power to see that we do. For your own sake, and for the sake of those you care about. You’re here on your own, aren’t you? You’re freelancing.”
Peter did not answer.
“I thought so. What’s more, you’re running an unauthorized operation with me, a thoroughly discredited operative…”
“You made sure it’s unauthorized,” said Peter.
“That’s right, I did,” said Louis. “And I also made sure half the guests in this hotel know you’re here. You’re way out of bounds, as far as the Agency is concerned. So, if you don’t go home with a big payoff, then you might as well not go home at all.
“They’ll destroy your career, you know,” said Louis. “If you’re lucky. If you’re not, they’ll go after you personally. They demand success. And the only thing that will satisfy them, if we don’t succeed, will be your eternal unhappiness. They call it discipline. Or correction. But it comes down to revenge. People who can send seventeen-year-olds to prisons in Uzbekistan will do pretty much anything. You’ve read my file. Now you’re going to see for yourself what it’s like.”
Peter and Louis looked at one another for a long minute. Finally Peter stood up. “Come with me,” he said. He led the way upstairs to his room. He turned on his computer and opened his files. Louis took out his pocket notebook and wrote.
The first link in the chain of informers was a man named Giorgio Smarth. He had tried other aliases over the years but then stayed with Giorgio Smarth. He had first turned up during Vietnam with dubious information and contacts for sale. Louis had first known him in Cairo. He had met him again in Beirut and in Washington and finally back in Cairo. Smarth said he was American, but he wasn’t. No one knew what he was.
