Agents of Treachery – Spy Stories

THE INTERROGATOR by David Morrell

When Andrew Durand was growing up, his father never missed an opportunity to teach him tradecraft. Anything they did was a chance for the boy to learn about dead drops, brush contacts, cutouts, elicitation, and other arts of the espionage profession.

Not that Andrew’s father spent a great deal of time with him. As a senior member of the Agency’s Directorate of Operations, his father had global responsibilities that constantly called him away. But when circumstances permitted, the father’s attention to Andrew was absolute, and Andrew never forgot their conspiratorial expeditions.

In particular, Andrew recalled the July afternoon his father took him sailing on the Chesapeake to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. During a lull in the wind, his father told him about his graduate-student days at George Washington University and how his political science professor introduced him to a man who turned out to be a CIA recruiter.

“It was the Cold War years of the nineteen fifties,” his father said with a nostalgic smile as waves lapped the hull. “The nuclear arms race. Mushroom clouds. Bomb shelters. In fact, my parents installed a bomb shelter where we now have the swimming pool. The thing was deep enough that when we tore it out later, we didn’t need to do much excavating for the pool. I figured handling the Soviets was just about the most important job anybody could want, so when the recruiter finally ended the courtship and popped the question, I didn’t need long to decide. The Agency had already done its background check. A few formalities still remained, like the polygraph, but before they got to that, they decided to test my qualifications for the job they had in mind.”

The test, Andrew’s father explained, was to make him sit in a windowless room and read a novel. Written by Henry James, published in 1903, the book was called The Ambassadors. In long, complicated sentences, the first section introduced a middle-aged American with the odd name of Lambert Strether, who traveled to Paris on some kind of mission.

“James has a reputation for being difficult to read,” Andrew’s father said. “At first, I thought I was being subjected to a practical joke. After all, what was the point of just sitting in a room and reading? After about a half hour, music started playing through a speaker hidden in the ceiling, something brassy by Frank Sinatra, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’ I remember the title because I later understood how ironic it was. Another brassy Sinatra tune followed. Then another. Abruptly, the music stopped, and a male voice I’d never heard before instructed me to put the book in my lap and describe what was happening in the plot. I replied that Strether worked for a rich woman in a town in New England. She’d sent him to Paris to learn why her son hadn’t returned home after a long trip abroad. ‘Continue reading,’ the voice said. The moment I picked up the novel, another brassy Sinatra tune began playing.

“As I turned the pages, I was suddenly aware of faint voices behind the music, a man and a woman. Their tone was subdued, but I could tell they were angry. At once, the music and the voices stopped.

“’What’s happening in the book?’ the voice asked from the ceiling.

“I answered, ‘Strether’s worried that he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t persuade the son to go home to his mother.’

“‘Lose only his job?’ the voice asked.

“‘Well, the rich woman’s a widow, and there’s a hint that she and Strether might get married. But that won’t happen if Strether doesn’t bring her son home.’

“’There were people talking behind the music.’

“‘Yes. A man and a woman.’

“’What were they discussing?’

“’They were supposed to meet at a restaurant for dinner. But the man arrived late, claiming last-minute responsibilities at his office. His wife believes he was with another woman.’

“’Continue reading,’ the voice said.”

Andrew remembered listening to his father explain how the test persisted for hours. In addition to the music, two and then three conversations took place simultaneously behind the songs. Periodically, the voice asked about each of them (a woman was fearful about an impending gall-bladder surgery; a man was angry about the cost of his daughter’s wedding; a child was worried about a sick dog). The voice also wanted to know what was happening in the densely textured novel.

“Obviously, it was an exercise to determine how much I could be aware of at the same time, or whether the examiner could distract me and get under my skin,” Andrew’s father said. “It turned out that my political science teacher had recommended me to the Agency because of my ability to hold various thoughts at once without being distracted. I passed the test and was initially assigned to hotbed cities like Bonn, which in those days was the capital of West Germany. Pretending to be an attaché, I made chitchat at crowded embassy cocktail parties while monitoring the voices of foreign diplomats around me. No one expected state secrets to be revealed. Nonetheless, my superiors were surprised by the useful personal details I was able to gather at those diplomatic receptions: who was trying to seduce whom, for example, or who had money problems. Alcohol and the supposed safety of the chaos of voices in a crowded room made people careless. After that, I was promoted to junior analyst, where I rose through the ranks because I could balance the relative significance of various crises that erupted simultaneously around the globe.”

The waves lapped stronger against the hull. The boat shifted. The memories made Andrew’s father hesitate. Drawn into the past, he took a moment before glancing toward clouds moving across the sky.

“Finally, the wind’s picking up. Grab the wheel, son. Check the compass. Take us southwest toward home. By the way, that James book, The Ambassadors? After all my effort, I was determined to finish it. In the end, it turned out that Strether’s experience in Paris was so broadening that he felt he’d become smarter, aware of everything around him. But he was wrong. The rich woman’s son gained his trust, only to make a fool of him. Despite all his awareness, Strether returned to America, where he assumed he’d lose everything.”

“Four days,” Andrew promised the somber group in the high-security conference room. He was thirty-nine and spoke with the authoritative tone of his father.

“Is that a guarantee?”

“I can possibly get results sooner, but definitely no later than four days.”

“There’s a time element,” a grim official warned, “the probability of smallpox dispersal in a subway system during peak hours. Ten days from now. But we don’t know the exact time or which country, let alone which city. Our people apprehended the subject in Paris. His fellow conspirators were with him. One escaped, but the rest died in a gun battle. We have documents that indicate what they set in motion-but not the particulars. Just because they were in Paris, that doesn’t rule out another city with a major subway system as the target.”

“Four days after I start, you’ll have the details,” Andrew assured them. “Where’s the subject being rendered?”

“Uzbekistan.”

Andrew’s beefy neck crinkled when he nodded. “They know how to be discreet.”

“They ought to, given how much we pay them.”

“But I don’t want any foreign interrogator involved,” Andrew emphasized. “Thugs have unreliable methods. A subject will confess to anything if tortured sufficiently. You want reliable information, not a hysterical confession that turns out to be baseless.”

“Exactly. You’re completely in charge.”

“In fact, there’s no reason why this needs to be an extraordinary rendition.” Andrew’s use of “rendition” referred to the practice of moving a prisoner from one jurisdiction to another, a common occurrence in the legal system. But when the rendition was “extraordinary,” the prisoner was taken out of the legal system and placed where the normal rules no longer applied and accountability was no longer a factor. “The interview could just as easily take place in the United States.”

“Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates the difference between torture and your methods, Andrew. A jet’s waiting to fly you to Uzbekistan.”

Andrew’s father had been heavyset. Andrew was more so. A big man with a large chest, he resembled a heavyweight boxer, an impression that frequently made a detainee’s eyes widen at first sight of him. With his deep, raspy voice, he exuded a sense of menace and power, causing his subjects to feel increasing dread, unaware that Andrew’s true power came from numerous psychology courses taken at George Washington University, where he had earned a master’s degree under a created identity

A burly American civilian guard greeted him at a remote Uzbekistan airstrip next to a concrete-block building that was the rendering facility, the only structure in the boulder-dotted valley.

Andrew introduced himself as Mr. Baker.

The guard said he was Mr. Able. “I have the subject’s documents ready for you. We know his name and those of his relatives, where they live and work, in case you want to make him talk by threatening to kill people he loves.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll hardly ever speak to him.” A cold wind tugged at Andrew’s dark suit. When working, he always dressed formally, another way of expressing authority.

Escorted by Mr. Able, he passed through the security checkpoint, then entered the facility, which had harsh overhead lights and a row of doors with barred windows. The walls were made from unpainted cinder blocks. Everything felt damp.

“Your room’s to the right,” Mr. Able told him.

Andrew’s travel bag contained four days of clothes, the maximum he would need. He set it on the concrete floor next to a cot. He barely looked at the stainless-steel sink and toilet. Instead he focused on a metal table upon which sat a laptop computer. “The other equipment should have arrived.”

“It’s been installed. But I don’t know why we needed to bother. While we waited for you, my men and I could have put the fear of God into him.”

“I can’t imagine how that’s possible when he’s convinced God’s on his side. Is the interpreter ready?”

“Yes.”

“Reliable?”

“Very.”

“Then let’s get started.”

Andrew watched Mr. Able unlock a metal door. Holding a.45-caliber Glock pistol, the guard and two others armed with identical pistols entered the cell and aimed at the prisoner. Andrew and the interpreter stood in the open doorway. The compartment was windowless, except for the barred opening in the door. It felt damper than the corridor. The echo was sharp.

A short, gaunt Iraqi man was slumped on the concrete floor, his back against the wall, his wrists shackled to chains above his head. In his midthirties, he had a thin, dark face and short, black hair. His lips were scabbed. His cheeks were bruised. Dried blood grimed his black shirt and pants.

As if dazed, the subject stared straight ahead, not reacting to Andrew’s entrance.

Andrew turned toward Mr. Able, his stark expression making clear that he’d sent explicit instructions not to abuse the prisoner.

“That happened when the team grabbed him in Paris,” the guard explained. “He’s lucky he didn’t get killed in the gun battle.”

“He doesn’t think so. He wants to die for his cause.”

“Yeah, well, if he doesn’t talk, we can arrange for him to get his wish,” Mr. Able said. “The thing is, as much as he’d like to be a martyr, I’m sure he didn’t intend for any suffering to be involved.” The guard faced the prisoner. “Isn’t that right, chum? You figured you’d jump over the agony and get straight to the virgins in paradise. Well, you were wrong.”

The prisoner showed no reaction, continuing to look straight ahead. As an experiment, Andrew raised his arm above his head and pointed toward the ceiling, but the prisoner’s eyes didn’t follow his broad gesture. They remained so resolutely fixed on the opposite wall that Andrew became convinced the subject wasn’t as dazed as he appeared.

“Translate for me,” Andrew told the interpreter, then concentrated on the prisoner. “You have information about a soon-to-occur attack on a subway system. This attack will probably involve smallpox. You will tell me exactly when and where this attack will take place. You’ll tell me whether the attack does involve smallpox and how the smallpox was obtained. You’ll tell me how the attack will be carried out. The next time you see me, you’ll tell me all of these things and anything else I wish to know.”

The prisoner kept staring straight ahead.

When the interpreter finished, Andrew pointed toward a narrow cot bolted to the floor along one wall. He told Mr. Able, “Remove it. Leave a thin blanket. Unshackle him. Lock the room. Cover the window in the door.”

“Look, is all this really necessary?” the guard complained. “Just give me two hours with him and-”

Andrew left the cell.

The way he avoids eye contact, Andrew thought. He’s been warned about some types of interrogation.

Like most intelligence operatives, Andrew had received training in the ways humans processed information. According to one theory known as neuro-linguistic programming, most people were either sight-oriented, sound-oriented, or touch-oriented. A sight-oriented person tended to favor language that involved metaphors of sight, such as “I see what you mean.” From an observer’s point of view, that type of person tended to look up toward the left when creating a thought and to look up to the right when remembering something. In contrast, a sound-oriented person tended to use metaphors such as “I hear what you’re getting at.” When creating a thought, that type of person looked directly to the observer’s left and, when remembering something, looked directly to the right. Finally, a touch-oriented person favored metaphors such as “I feel that can work.” When that type of person looked down to the left or the right, those movements, too, were revealing.

People were seldom exclusively one type, but through careful observation, a trained interrogator could determine the sense orientation an individual favored. The interrogator might ask, “What city will be attacked?” If a sound-oriented prisoner glanced directly to the left and said, “Washington,” that statement was a created thought-an invention. But, if the prisoner glanced to the right and said the same thing, that statement was based on a memory. Of course, the prisoner might be remembering a lie he was instructed to tell. Nonetheless, through careful observation of eye movements, a skilled interrogator could reach reasonably certain conclusions about whether a prisoner was lying or telling the truth.

The trouble was, this particular prisoner obstinately refused to look Andrew in the eyes.

Hell, he knows about neuro-linguistic programming, Andrew thought. He’s been warned that his eye movements might tell me something about his mission.

The sophistication made Andrew uneasy. To consider these fanatics as ignorant was a lethal mistake. They learned exponentially and seemed dangerously more complex every day.

He couldn’t help thinking of the simplicity of an interrogation technique favored during his father’s youth in the 1950s. Back then, a prisoner was injected with Sodium Pentothal or one of the other so-called truth serums. This relaxed a detainee to such a degree that his mental discipline was compromised, in theory making him vulnerable to questioning. But the process was often like trying to get information from a drunk. Fantasy, exaggeration, and fact became indistinguishable. Needing clarity and reliability, interrogators developed other methods.

In his room, Andrew sat at his desk, activated the laptop computer, and watched an image appear. Transmitted from a hidden camera, it showed the prisoner in his cell. In keeping with Andrew’s instructions, the cot had been removed. The barred opening in the door was covered. A thin blanket lay on the concrete floor. The subject’s arms had been unshackled. He rubbed his chafed wrists. Now that he was alone, he confirmed Andrew’s suspicions by looking around warily, no longer fixing his gaze toward a spot on a wall.

Andrew pressed a button on the laptop’s keyboard and subtly increased the glare of the overhead lights in the cell. The change was so imperceptible that the subject couldn’t notice. During the next four days, the intensity would continue to increase until the glare was blinding, but no moment in the gradually agonizing change would be perceptible.

Andrew pressed another button and reduced the cell’s temperature a quarter of a degree. Again, the change was too small for the prisoner to notice, but during the next four days, the damp chill in the compartment would become extreme.

The subject sat in a corner with his back against the wall. In a moment, his eyes closed, perhaps in meditation.

Can’t allow that, Andrew thought. He pressed a third button, which activated a siren in the prisoner’s cell. On the screen, the prisoner jerked his eyes open. Startled, he looked up at the ceiling, where the siren was located. For now, the siren was at its lowest setting. It lasted only three seconds. But over the next four days, at unpredictable intervals, it would be repeated, each time louder and longer.

The prisoner would be given small amounts of bread and water to keep his strength at a sufficient level to prevent him from passing out. But the toilet in his cell would stop functioning, his wastes accumulating, their stench adding to his other sensory ordeals.

Andrew was reminded of the story his father had told him long ago on the sailboat. In his father’s case, there had been various increasing challenges to his perceptions. In the prisoner’s case, there would be increasing assaults to his perceptions. He would soon lose his sense of time. Minutes would feel like hours, and hours would feel like days. The intensifying barrage of painful stimuli would tear away his psychological defenses, leaving him so overwhelmed, disoriented, and worn down that he’d reveal any secret if only he could sleep.

The prisoner lasted three and a half days. The sporadic faint siren eventually became a prolonged wail that forced him to put his hands over his ears and scream. Of course, his scream could not be heard amid the siren. Only the O of his mouth communicated the anguished noise escaping from him. The eventual searing glare of the lights changed to a pulsing light-dark, light-dark strobe effect that made the prisoner scrunch his eyes shut, straining to protect them. The thin blanket he’d been allowed was merely an attempt to give him false hope, for as the cold intensified, seeping up from the concrete floor and into his bones, the blanket gave him no protection. He huddled uselessly under it, unable to stop shivering.

Again, Mr. Able and the other two guards entered the cell. Again, Andrew and the interpreter stood in the open doorway.

The prisoner twitched, this time definitely affected by Andrew’s size.

“When and where will the attack occur?” Andrew asked. “Does the attack involve smallpox? If so, how did your group obtain it? How will the attack be carried out? Tell me, and this is what I’ll do.” Andrew took a remote control from his suit-coat pocket and pressed a button that lowered the lights to a pleasant glow.

“I’ll also shut off the siren,” Andrew said. “I’ll make the room’s temperature comfortable. I’ll allow you to sleep. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sleep? Sleep is the greatest pleasure. Sleep will refresh you.”

Hugging himself to keep from shaking, the prisoner confessed. Because he hadn’t slept for almost four days, the information wasn’t always clear. Andrew needed to rephrase questions and prompt him numerous times, on occasion reactivating the siren and the throbbing lights to jolt his nerves. In the end, Andrew learned all that he wanted, and the prisoner no longer avoided looking at him. With a beseeching gaze, the desperate man told him what he needed, and the movement of his red, swollen, sleep-deprived eyes told Andrew that he wasn’t lying.

The target was New York City. The attack did involve smallpox. In four days, at five p.m. on numerous subway platforms, aerosol canisters that looked like hair-spray dispensers would be taken from backpacks. Their tops would be twisted, then returned to the backpacks. Their pressurized air would be vented through a tube in each backpack, dispersing the virus among the crowd. The victims wouldn’t know about the attack until days later when symptoms of the disease began to appear, but by then, the victims would have spread the virus much farther.

As Andrew hurried toward a scrambler-equipped satellite radio to report what he’d learned, he heard muffled screams coming from another cell. Water splashed. Disturbed by the significance of the sounds, Andrew ran to an open doorway through which he saw a man strapped to a board. The board was tilted so that the man’s head was lower than his feet. His head was in a brace so that he couldn’t turn it from side to side. He was naked, except for his underwear. His features were covered by a cloth, but the brown color of his skin matched that of the prisoner Andrew had interrogated, making Andrew conclude that this man, too, was an Iraqi.

Mr. Able stood over this new prisoner, pouring water onto his covered face. The prisoner made a gagging sound. He squirmed desperately, barely able to move.

“Our team in Paris caught the guy who escaped,” the guard told Andrew, then poured more water over the prisoner’s face. “He arrived while you were questioning the other prisoner.”

“Stop,” Andrew said.

“You took almost four days. At the start, I told you I could get someone to confess in two hours. But the truth is, all I really need is ten minutes.”

What Andrew watched helplessly was called waterboarding. The immobilized prisoner was subjected to a heavy stream of water over his face. The soggy cloth on his nose and mouth added to the weight of the water and made breathing even more difficult. The cloth covered his eyes and increased his terror because he couldn’t see to anticipate when more water would strike him. The incline guaranteed that the water would rush into his nostrils.

Unable to expel the water, the prisoner kept gagging, relentlessly subjected to the sensation of drowning. Andrew knew of cases in which prisoners did in fact drown. Other times, panic broke their sanity. Intelligence operatives who allowed themselves to be waterboarded in an effort to understand the experience were seldom able to bear even a minute of it. Those prisoners who were eventually set free reported that the panic they endured created lifelong traumas that made it impossible for them to look at a rain shower or even at water flowing from a tap.

In this case, the prisoner thrashed with such force that Andrew was convinced he would dislocate his limbs.

“Okay, asshole,” Mr. Able said through a translator. He yanked the drenched cloth from the victim’s face.

Andrew was appalled to see a section of plastic wrap stretched over the prisoner’s mouth. The only way the man could breathe was through his nose, from which water and snot erupted as he fought to clear his nostrils.

“Here’s your chance not to drown.” The guard yanked the plastic wrap from the prisoner’s mouth. “Which subway system’s going to be attacked?”

The prisoner spat water. He gasped for air, his chest heaving.

“Speak up, jerk-off. I haven’t got all day.”

The prisoner made a sound as if he might vomit.

“Fine.” Mr. Able stretched the plastic wrap across the prisoner’s mouth. He threw the dripping cloth over his face, picked up another container of water, and poured.

With his feet tilted above him, the prisoner squirmed and gagged insanely as water cascaded onto the smothering cloth and into his nostrils.

“One last time, pal.” Again, the guard yanked the cloth and the plastic wrap from the prisoner’s face. “Answer my question, or you’ll drown. What subway system’s going to be attacked?”

“Paris,” the prisoner managed to say.

“You won’t like it if I find out you’re lying.”

“Paris.”

“Wait right there, chum. Don’t go away.” The guard left the prisoner strapped to the board and proceeded along the corridor to the man in the other cell.

“No,” Andrew said. He hurried after the guard, and what he saw when he reached the cell filled him with dismay. Guards had stripped the first prisoner and strapped him to a board, tilting his head down. A cloth covered his face.

“Stop,” Andrew said.

When he tried to intervene, two other guards grabbed him, dragging him back. Frantic, Andrew strained to pull free, but suddenly the barrel of a pistol was rammed painfully into his back, and he stopped resisting.

“I keep getting radio calls from nervous, important people,” Mr. Able said. “They keep asking what the hell’s taking so long. A lot of people will die soon if we don’t get the right information. I tell those nervous, important people that you’ve got your special way of doing things, that you don’t think my way’s reliable, that you think a prisoner’ll tell me anything just to make me stop.”

“It’s true,” Andrew said. “Panic makes him so desperate he’ll say anything he thinks you want to hear. The information isn’t dependable. But my way strips away his defenses. He doesn’t have any resistance by the time I finish with him. He doesn’t have the strength to lie.”

“Well, Mr. Baker, waterboarding makes them too terrified to lie.” The guard began pouring water over the prisoner’s face. It took less time than with the other man, because this prisoner was already exhausted from the sensory assaults that Andrew had subjected him to. He struggled. He gagged. As water poured over his downward-tilted face, rushing into his nostrils, he made choking sounds beneath the smothering cloth.

“What subway system’s going to be attacked?” Mr. Able demanded.

“He already told me!” Andrew shouted.

“Well, let’s hear what he answers this time.” The guard ripped the cloth and a strip of plastic wrap from his mouth.

“Paris,” the prisoner moaned.

Andrew gaped. “No. That’s not the answer he gave me. He told me New York City.”

“But now he says Paris, and so does the other guy. Paris is where they got captured. Why else would they be there if they weren’t going to attack it? Enough time’s been wasted. Our bosses are waiting for my report. We don’t need you here. I’m the interrogator they should have hired.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“No, you made the mistake when you took so damned long. We can’t waste any more time.”

Andrew struggled to pull away from the guards who held his arms so tightly they made his hands numb, restricting the flow of blood. “Those people you want to impress-tell them the target’s either New York or Paris. Tell them to increase surveillance at all the major subway systems but to emphasize New York and Paris. Four days from now. Thursday. Five p.m. local time. The attackers will wear backpacks. They’ll have hair-spray canisters inside the backpacks. The canisters hold the smallpox.”

“I haven’t started questioning these maggots about the other details,” Mr. Able said. “Right now, I just want to let everybody know the target area.”

“When they confessed to you, they never looked at you!” Andrew shouted.

“How the hell could they look at me when their heads were braced?” Mr. Able demanded. “I was standing to the side.”

“Their eyes. They should have angled their eyes toward you. They should have used their eyes to beg you to believe them. Instead they kept staring at the ceiling, the same way the first prisoner stared at the wall when I got here.”

“You expect me to believe that NLP shit? If they look to the left, they’re making things up. If they look to the right, they’re remembering something. So they look at the ceiling to keep me from knowing if they’re lying or not.”

“That’s the theory”

“Well, suppose what they’re remembering is a lie they rehearsed? Left. Right. None of it means anything.”

“The point is they think it means something. That’s why they won’t look at you. After three and a half days, when the man I interrogated was ready for questioning, he couldn’t stop looking at me. His eyes wouldn’t stop pleading for me to let him sleep. And he always looked to the right. Maybe he remembered a lie, but at least, his eyes didn’t tell me he was inventing something. The men you waterboarded, though, when they confessed, they didn’t give you a chance to learn anything from their eyes.”

“But…” A sudden doubt made Mr. Able frown. “If you’re right, the only way that would work…”

“… is if they were waterboarded other times. As part of their training,” Andrew said. “Once they adjusted to it, their trainer could condition them to control their eyes.”

“But the panic’s overwhelming. No one would agree to be waterboarded repeatedly.”

“Unless they welcome death.”

The stark words made the guard cock his head, threatened by Andrew’s logic.

Apparently the other guards reacted the same way. Confused, they released him. Feeling blood flow into his arms, Andrew stepped forward. “All these prisoners want is to die for their cause and go to paradise. They’re not afraid of death. They welcome it. How can waterboarding make them panic?”

A long moment passed. Mr. Able lowered his gaze toward the water and scum on the floor. “Report whatever the hell you want.”

“I will in a moment.” Andrew turned toward the other guards. “Who stuck the pistol into my back?”

The man on the right said, “I did. No hard feelings.”

“Wrong.” Andrew rammed the palm of his hand against the man’s face and shattered his nose.

Four days later, shortly after five p.m. eastern standard time, Andrew received a radio message that five men with backpacks containing smallpox-dispersal cans had been arrested as they attempted to enter various sections of the New York City subway system. A weight seemed to fall from his chest. For the first time in a long while, he breathed freely. After the confidence with which he’d confronted Mr. Able, he’d begun to be troubled by doubts. So many lives depended on his skills. Given the sophistication of the prisoners, he’d been worried that, for once, he might have been fooled.

He was in Afghanistan now, conducting another sensory-assault interrogation. As before, the person usually in charge resented his intrusion and complained that he could get results much faster than Andrew did.

Andrew ignored him.

But on the eve of the third day of the interrogation, when Andrew was sure that his prisoner would soon lose all his psychological defenses and reveal what Andrew needed to know, he was again reminded of his father. He sat before the computer on his desk, watching the image of the prisoner, and he recalled that his father had sometimes been asked to go to the Agency’s training facility at Camp Peary, Virginia, where he taught operatives to extend the limits of their perceptions.

“It’s like most things. It involves practice,” his father had explained to Andrew. “For old times’ sake, I made my students read The Ambassadors. I tried to distract them with blaring music. I inserted conversations behind the music. A layer at a time. After a while, the students learned to be more aware, to perceive many things at once.”

As Andrew studied the computer screen and pushed buttons that flashed the blinding lights in the prisoner’s cell while at the same time causing a siren to wail, he thought about the lesson that his father had said he took from that Henry James novel.

“Lambert Strether becomes increasingly aware as the novel progresses,” Andrew’s father had told him. “Eventually, Strether notices all sorts of things that he normally would have missed. Undertones in conversations. Overtones in the way someone looks at someone else. All the details in the way people dress and what those details say about them. He becomes a master of consciousness. The sentences dramatize that point. They get longer and more complicated as the novel progresses, as if matching Strether’s growing mind. I get the sense that James hoped those complicated sentences would make the reader’s mind develop as Strether’s does. But this is the novel’s point, Andrew. Never forget this, especially if you enter the intelligence profession, as I hope you will. For all his awareness, Strether loses. In the end, he’s outwitted. His confidence in his awareness destroys him. The day you become most sure of something, that’s the day you need to start doubting it. The essence of the intelligence profession is that you can never be aware enough, never be conscious enough, because your opponent is determined to be even more aware.”

Andrew kept watching the computer screen and the agony of his prisoner as lights flashed and sirens wailed. Abruptly, he pressed buttons that turned off the lights and the siren. He wanted to create ten minutes of peace, ten minutes in which the prisoner would be unable to relax, dreading the further assault on his senses. It was a hell that the prisoner would soon do anything to end.

Except, Andrew thought.

The day you become most sure of something, that’s the day you need to start doubting it. His father’s words echoed in Andrew’s memory as he thought about his conviction that the only sure method of interrogation was his own. But was it possible that…

A threatening idea wormed into Andrew’s imagination. An operative could be trained to add one perception onto another and then another until he or she could monitor multiple conversations while reading a book and listening to brassy music.

Then why couldn’t an operative of a different sort be trained to endure deepening cold, throbbing lights, and wailing sirens for three and a half days without sleep? The first time would be agony, but the agony of the second time would perhaps be less because it was familiar. The third time would be a learning experience, testing methods of self-hypnotism to make the onslaught less painful.

Watching the prisoner’s supposed anguish, Andrew felt empty. Could an enemy become that sophisticated? If they learned NLP in order to defeat it, if they practiced being water-boarded in order to control their reactions to it, why couldn’t they educate themselves in other methods of interrogation in order to defeat those? Any group whose members blew themselves up or infected themselves with smallpox to destroy their enemies and thus attain paradise was capable of anything.

Andrew pressed buttons on his computer keyboard and caused the strobe lights and siren to resume in the prisoner’s cold cell. Imagining the blare, he watched the sleepless prisoner scream.

Or was the prisoner only pretending to have reached the limit of his endurance? Andrew had the troubling sense that the man on the screen was reacting predictably, almost on schedule, as if the prisoner had been trained to know what to anticipate and was behaving the way an interrogator would expect.

But how can I be sure? Andrew wondered. How much further do I need to push him in order to be confident he isn’t faking? Four and a half days? Five? Longer? Can anyone survive that and remain sane?

Andrew recalled his father telling him about one of the most dramatic interrogations in American espionage. During the 1960s, a Soviet defector came to Washington and told the CIA that he knew about numerous Soviet moles in the U.S. intelligence system. His accusations resulted in investigations that came close to immobilizing the Agency.

Soon afterward, a second Soviet defector came to Washington and accused the first defector of being a double agent sent by the Soviets to paralyze the Agency by making false accusations about moles within it. In turn, the first defector claimed that the second defector was the true double agent and had been sent to discredit him.

These conflicting accusations finally brought American intelligence operations to a standstill. To break the stasis, the second defector, who’d been promised money, a new identity, and a consulting position with the Agency, was taken to a secret confinement facility where he was interrogated periodically for the next five years. Most of that time was spent in solitary confinement in a small cell with a narrow cot and a single lightbulb in the ceiling. He was given nothing to read. He couldn’t speak to anyone. He was allowed to bathe only once a week. Except for the passage of the seasons, he had no idea what day or week, month or year it was. He tried making a calendar, using threads from a blanket, but each time he completed one, his guards destroyed it. His boarded window prevented him from ever breathing fresh air. In summer, his room felt like a sweatbox. For five hundred and sixty-two days of those five years, he was questioned intensely, sometimes around the clock. But despite his prolonged ordeal, he never recanted his accusation, nor did the first defector, even though their stories were mutually contradictory and one of them must have been lying. Nobody ever learned the truth.

Five years, Andrew thought. Maybe I’m being too easy. Maybe I need more time.

Suddenly wishing for the innocent era of Sodium Pentothal, he pressed another button and watched the prisoner wail.

It seemed the man would never stop.