Lethal Code

CHAPTER 10

Ruhi would never be ready. Never in a million years. Not for what he saw coming. A guard, faceless through a narrow slot, ordered him to get ready to move in the next fifteen minutes, “because your vacation is over.”

Vacation? He’d just come back from a long polygraph exam. He’d barely had time to catch his breath.

“And just in case you think we’re releasing you,” the guard went on, “let me promise you that you are not leaving here. You’re not even getting lunch today.”

Just how was he supposed to “get ready”? He had nothing he could do, except gird himself for the worst — torture. What else could it be? So he began to pace, which made him feel like a caged animal.

You are a caged animal, and now you’re about to find out just what they can do to a man when they yank him out from behind bars.

He had thought they were going to bring out the long knives this morning, but they’d run him through that endless lie detector test instead. He knew he’d failed. How could he have passed? He’d been so anxious that he never stopped sweating. The needle tracking his emotions must have turned the page into scribbles worthy of a toddler. The exam had run the gamut of his life, but this morning, at least, they were interested only in prying answers out of him — not fingernails.

The polygraph had come on the heels of hours of interrogation last night. They were clearly unhappy with his denials. He’d pleaded with them, and all he got for his efforts were stony faces, the same grim expressions that greeted his every answer on this morning’s test.

Torture had to be next. Wasn’t that the drill? He thought he’d read that somewhere. Probably in an op-ed piece in the Post or Times. They start soft, then hammer hard.

They would have to get tough. He sure would, if he were in their position. With the entire country grinding its teeth over the coming collapse of the grid — for good, this time — his warders could ill afford to take a leisurely pace to his undoing.

Son of a bitch.

As much as he hated his cell — barely long enough for a bunk, and so narrow that he could reach out and flatten both hands against the walls — he didn’t want to leave it. Not now. And no lunch? Even gruel would be a diversion.

The answer came to him on a wave of dread: They don’t want me vomiting on them.

Where the hell were his friends? His colleagues at the NRDC? Nobody had been trying to help him. That’s what his inquisitors had told him.

“You’re a real popular guy,” a guard said to Ruhi yesterday.

He figured that all the guards’ words were scripted down to the last syllable to make him feel weak, alone, isolated — dependent on his jailers. But here was the rub about Ruhi’s friends: He had seen no evidence that the asshole guard was wrong. Zero. Zilch.

Why weren’t lawyers banging on the courthouse doors demanding a writ of habeas corpus? Oh, that’s right, he scolded himself, because detainees don’t have constitutional rights anymore. No opportunity to face an accuser — the U.S. government, in this case — by standing up in court to demand to see the evidence against them, until, that is, they’d been sufficiently tortured to tell any lie that would make the agony stop. Then, and only then, did they get to go to court and hear how they had, in effect, indicted themselves.

Maybe the courts weren’t even operating anymore.

It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to indict myself in this place, he vowed. Though the implications made his legs feel weak, he shook his head and promised himself that he wouldn’t turn his life into a sham for the sake of unseen interrogators — the ones who reputedly watched the torture of detainees from a distance.

In seconds, he heard a metallic click from the door. A command came next:

“Hands out.”

A waist-high slot slid open. He stuck out his hands. After they were cuffed, a slot by his feet opened, and his ankles were manacled.

“Step away.”

He withdrew his hands and took tiny steps back, making sure not to trip.

Someone looked in, although he was sure they had cameras secreted in the cell.

Now a series of clicks signaled that the steel bars in the door were retracting all the way. It happened so quickly that it made him think of man-eating creatures rearing back on their hind legs to spring at him.

Two huge guards in dark blue uniforms walked in. One ran a chain from Ruhi’s handcuffs to his ankle manacles, and then drew it tight before locking it in place.

By design, he could move only slowly. By desire, he did not want to leave his cell any faster than necessary, for what could await him but the worst?

Even so, stepping outside did provide some relief. He was chained, but no longer sealed up like an anchovy in a factory ship.

Relief proved both scant and brief.

“Where are we going?” he asked as respectfully as he could.

“The prisoner will not speak unless he is spoken to,” said the guard to Ruhi’s right. He gripped his bicep hard, with a hand so big that it wrapped all the way around his arm.

The two men led him to an elevator. The buttons on the control panel were not labeled. The doors closed. The elevator dropped so quickly that Ruhi’s empty stomach lurched.

When the doors opened, he saw nothing but metal cages lining a corridor. The passageway was scarcely wide enough to accommodate him and the guard in blue, who continued to apply hard pressure to his arm.

The other guard walked ahead, spine straight, shoulders back.

Both of the men moved too quickly for Ruhi’s comfort. His ankle manacles chafed with every step as he tried desperately to keep up.

Then he heard a growl. Deep. Throaty.

In moments they were passing a kennel on his left.

It’s empty. So whatever it was must be—

“Fuck!” he yelled as a black German shepherd lunged from the shadows and crashed into the cyclone-fence barrier. It was all that stood between Ruhi and the most vicious display of animal fury that he had ever witnessed.

The beast was on its hind legs, snarling and tearing at the kennel — mere inches from him.

The guard forced Ruhi to stop and face the crazed creature, pushing him so close to the steel mesh that Ruhi could smell the dog’s gamy breath.

“Meet your cell mate,” the guard said.

They choreograph it to make you feel scared, he tried to reassure himself as they moved on.

Farther along, they entered a well-lit corridor with cinder-block walls. But he still heard that dog howling, and then noticed reddish-brown smears on the wall. Stains. Dried blood.

“Did I say that you could look at that?” the man holding his arm asked.

Ruhi shook his head.

The guard squeezed harder. “I asked you a question.”

Ruhi’s arm was going numb. “No, you didn’t say I could look.”

“But as long as you’re so curious, do you know what we call that shit?”

“No.”

“Terrorist graffiti. We use you guys like spray cans. Certain colors explode right out. The reds, and the—”

The guard in front interrupted his colleague by opening a door. Ruhi was led into a room containing a wooden armchair with a spotlight directly above it. Otherwise the room was dark. The chair legs were bolted to the floor.

With a shove, the guard released his arm and forced him onto the seat. Another spotlight beamed a second later — on a tub in the corner of the room. A hose, long wooden board, and sheet lay next to it.

As Ruhi’s ankles were released from the manacles, they were bound to the leg of the chair with a thick, Velcro-lined material.

Both guards secured his arms and wrists. That’s when Ruhi noticed indentations in the wood for his hands.

The guards cinched each finger as tight as a racing saddle. Ruhi could not flex so much as a knuckle. Only the tips were exposed.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked. “I swear, I’ve told you everything I know.”

Deputy Director Holmes watched Ruhi Mancur on his large wall monitor. He was intensely interested in seeing the detainee’s reactions to the most miserable threats — and nobody was better at issuing them than the guard nicknamed “Tire Iron.”

“We don’t really think of these as fingers.” Tire Iron’s voice arose from the screen as he strummed a series of Ruhi’s fingernails. “We think of them as memory aids. Sometimes it’s a miracle, the shit that comes to mind once we get a firm grip on the situation.”

Mancur appeared reasonably composed to Holmes. Not remarkably so, but he wasn’t screaming or weeping inconsolably. The deputy director had seen plenty of that in recent years. Mancur also made no stupid attempt to resist or verbally stand up to the staff, which was smart. Holmes had to watch a potential operative under the most abject pressure, particularly when there was so little time to vet him for an assignment that would challenge the most hardened, experienced spy. He wanted to see for himself if Mancur was tough enough to survive, but the deputy director wasn’t alone. NSA psychiatrist Dr. Paul Williamson sat to his right, Agent Candace Anders to his left.

All three watched the screen as Tire Iron tried to raise Mancur’s stress levels even more:

“Some guys are such nail biters,” the guard said to the detainee, “especially after they’re in here awhile, that we really have to dig down in there to get a hold of them. You’re cool, though.”

Holmes watched Mancur swallow. His Adam’s apple rode high. Dr. Williamson toyed with the arm of his clear glass frames. In the light, they looked as white as his closely cropped hair. Agent Anders bit her lower lip, a nervous habit that Holmes had noted.

“Any quick thoughts?” Holmes asked Williamson.

“Not yet,” the psychiatrist replied. “Let’s see how he does in a moment. How far are you going to go with him down there?”

“Depends on how much he can take,” Holmes replied. He glanced at Agent Anders. Her eyes were on the screen, where it looked like Mancur was about to speak up.

That drew the psychiatrist’s interest. Williamson leaned forward, studying Mancur’s stark demeanor intensely. But Tire Iron reached down and cupped the man’s privates, and whatever the detainee might have said was silenced. Then the guard smirked at the camera in the ceiling and stage-whispered, “We’ve got plenty of play with this one. Enough to work with, that’s for sure.”

He turned back to Mancur, offering a quick squeeze that made him moan. “Some fat guys make it tough as shit to get in there and work around. We find a way, believe me, but we like you lean ones. But those fat guys don’t run marathons, do they? Not like you.” Tire Iron was chuckling when he added, “I’ll bet you wish you could just take off running right now. But here’s the thing, Mancur, you are about to begin the longest, hardest marathon of your life. You will never forget it, trust me. And guess what? The whole thing is going to happen right… in… this… room.”

He smacked the top of Mancur’s head with each of his last four words. Then the guard gave a thumbs-up to the camera. Rap music blasted into the room. Both guards walked out.

Holmes turned to Williamson and Anders, saying simply, “Here we go. Let’s see how he does.”

“Let’s see if he lasts,” Williamson said, “given the conventions of the trade.”

The psychiatrist was alluding not just to the rap music but to the fact that it signaled that every act they were about to witness, no matter how degrading, would conform to popular ideas of American torture. Those were the images that seethed with an arsenal of memories and misgivings for a man like Mancur, who would have seen the photos of Abu Ghraib and had read accounts of torture, according to the ongoing analyses of his computers. The “practitioners,” as the torturers were delicately called by some agents, knew that no surprise could possibly rival the deepest fears already known to a man or woman.

The conventions of the trade? Holmes marveled over the Orwellian world he inhabited. He wondered if Williamson had even noticed the irony when he said those words.

The acoustics were horrendous. Intentionally so, Ruhi figured. He could scarcely think, with the furious rap ripping apart his ears.

Above him, the spotlight began to flicker. So did the one lighting the tub, where they would no doubt waterboard him before they were done for the day. For seconds he harbored hope of a power outage—The big one, now!

The room did go black, but not silent. It stayed completely dark for more than a minute before light from a strobe exploded all around him. His eyelids could just as well have been made of tissue paper, for all the protection they provided.

He tried clenching them shut, and that helped marginally. He would have kept them in that frantic lockdown — if he hadn’t heard that growl again.

He looked around, spotting the big black German shepherd lunging at the end of his leash by the door. The beast’s eyes, pinned on Ruhi, blazed in the strobe light.

His handler stepped in a second later, locking up behind him. The man wore dark goggles and had to use both hands to restrain the crazed animal, whose carnivorous impulses might have been thrust into overdrive by the assault on its eyes and ears.

To Ruhi’s horror, the handler began to feed out the leash inch by inch.

The animal clawed the concrete floor, lunging with all its might. Twice the power of the dog’s exertions earned it a foot or more of lead before the grimacing handler regained control. He looked severely tested by the creature, whose jaws worked wildly and were lit in nightmarish, freeze-frame fashion by the unrelenting strobe.

Ruhi struggled to force down a scream. It was almost unbearable to end up in the grip of American torture, but worse to give in so easily.

He squeezed his eyes shut again; the strobe seemed to paralyze his thinking.

The dog’s paws landed on his legs like clubs. Ruhi could not avoid its rank breath. He twisted his head to the side as far as he could, only to feel moist heat and spittle on his skin.

Even over the rap blistering his ears, Ruhi heard those teeth snapping, now only an inch away.

Holmes stepped closer to the monitor, so close he might have been studying the pores in Mancur’s face. “Keep the shot tight,” he called to a small black speaker.

The screen filled with the side of Mancur’s face as he strained to keep his features away from the dog.

“Back the dog off,” Holmes ordered.

In two seconds, the creature was pulled off Ruhi.

“Keep backing up,” Holmes directed.

The camera lens widened to include the handler and canine retreating to the door.

“No. Stay tight on Mancur.” Holmes sounded exasperated.

The camera zoomed in just as the detainee looked up and yelled, “Fuck you!” to the observers he must have guessed were watching him. He could not be heard above the rap, but it was impossible not to read his lips.

Holmes turned to Dr. Williamson and Agent Anders. The deputy director’s face was lit up with a smile.

“Did you see that? That’s good news.”

“If you want defiance,” Williamson said, “you just got it, in spades.”

Holmes agreed. “I’ll let you get going on the microanalysis of his nonverbals. From the time they got off the elevator down there.”

“You’ll have it,” the psychiatrist said. “We had three teams watching him.”

“Fine. I’ll see you”—Holmes glanced at his watch—“in about three hours, then.”

After Williamson left, Holmes turned his attention to Candace Anders, whose lower lip now looked chewed. “Okay, what’s your gut check?”

“I’m surprised,” she said.

“A little shaken?” Holmes asked.

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “I am, sir.”

“Because you care for him?”

She nodded. “But I think it would have been hard to take anyway. That was, well, scary.”

“Yes, it was. What surprised you?” Holmes asked her.

“He handled it better than I thought he would.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“It almost makes me wonder if he was gaming me when we were under attack in his building. And that makes me wonder if he was tough enough to take part in the attack on the country.”

Holmes shook his head and froze Mancur’s face on screen, then pointed to it. “Maybe tough enough, but he didn’t do it. See that? That’s defiance, just like the good doctor said. But it’s more than that. It’s also rank indignation. He feels profoundly wronged, and that, in my opinion, has put some steel in the young man’s spine, probably more than he ever knew he had. That happens to some people at times like this. It’s not as common as watching them collapse, but it does happen.” Holmes bent his head side to side, relieving the tension that built up in his neck on an almost daily basis. “He’s going to need lots of spine. We all are.”

The deputy director sat back down, facing Anders. “I think it’s time we had that appointment.”

“With him?” she asked.

Holmes nodded. “And with you there.”

He watched Anders nod and curl her pretty blond hair behind her ear. She was part of the lure that Holmes would use with Mancur, along with offering the man a chance to redeem his decimated reputation — and those of his Saudi countrymen.

But if Holmes was right, nothing would drive Mancur to act more than the defiance and indignation that the deputy director had just witnessed on screen. They could be fuel for a fire that would have to burn hot and bright — if Mancur were to survive the coming days and weeks.

But the first question was whether he would even come on board. Holmes wasn’t sure about that, because he had also seen something else on the man’s face — resentment. The flip side of indignation.

Deep-seated and ready to explode.