Counterfeit Lies

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“Gabe,” said Candy softly into his ear. “Please, Gabe, wake up,” as she gently stroked his face and continued her pleas.

Gabe began to stir. Through blurred vision, he focused on a comforting Candy standing in front of him.

“Gabe, I so glad you awake. I worry about you. I care for you.”

“What’s going on?” mumbled Gabe as he slowly realized he was restrained to a metal chair bolted to the greasy concrete floor of a run-down garage. He had no way of knowing he was less than eight blocks from the restaurant where he’d been bludgeoned unconscious.

“You must whisper. I no want Kareem to know I here.”

“Where are we? What’s going on?” asked Gabe as he struggled to loosen the duct tape securing his arms.

“Kareem think you bad. I no want to see you hurt. Please tell him everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Please, Gabe, you must tell Kareem the truth. Only then will he let you live. Kareem bad person. I no want to see you hurt. We could be friends.”

“Where am I?”

“Kareem is in the other room. He would hurt me if he know I try to help you. Gabe, please tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“Tell him who you work for. I no want to see you hurt.” Her eyes were begging and she rewarded him with a tender smile. “I know I can help you if you tell truth. Kareem listen to me. He know I like you. He would not hurt my friend but you must tell truth.”

“Help me get these off,” said Gabe, continuing to fight at the restraints.

“I cannot. He hurt me if he catch me helping you. You must tell him who you work for, then he let us both go.”

“I work for Yeong. You know that,” said Gabe, confused by the inquiry.

“He think you work for Cho and he know Cho work for police,” whispered Candy, looking over Gabe’s shoulder trying to determine if her presence at the auto repair facility in the aging industrial complex had been detected.

“What?”

“Cho tell me one night he work for police.”

“He did what? Why would he tell you that?”

“He think it make him important in my eyes. He always trying to impress me by who he know. He say he can help my brother in prison because he work for police.”

Gabe fought against the duct tape wrapped around his arms and legs but was unable to free himself. “Get a knife and cut me loose.”

“I afraid Kareem catch me. Only way for you to go free is to tell Kareem who you work for. He only want truth. Once you tell him he let you go.”

“I work for Yeong. Tell Kareem that’s the truth.”

“Cho tell me you work with him and you both could help me if I told about Supernotes.”

Gabe hesitated with a response. He’d been betrayed by the Secret Service informant and his fate seemed settled unless he could escape.

“I see you talk much in corner. If you tell Kareem truth he forgive you. He very forgiving man. His religion require he forgive if you tell truth. Please tell him, then Kareem let you go and we could be friends. I always like you. You good person, not like Cho.”

“Help me get out of here and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Please tell truth. I want us to be happy. I want us to be together but it not happen if Kareem mad. He would chase us down until you tell truth. Tell him and we can go away unhurt,” begged the young female with a beautiful smile.

“Get me a knife and we can both get out of here. I’ll protect you. I promise.”

The silence hung between them. Then the long moment was broken by Mohammed’s shout. “Enough! It’s not working.”

Mohammed and Kareem entered from the shadows as Candy stepped back, failing in her attempt to deceive the undercover operative.

From his back pocket, Mohammed grabbed a thick black glove, the fingers lined with lead. He slipped it on to his right hand and backhanded Gabe, the loud crack of lead on bone being drowned out by Gabe’s wail.

Kareem, no stranger to blood and pain, looked around the garage as if questioning whether others heard the cry, but calmed remembering the industrial complex was empty at this hour.

“Who do you work for?” asked Mohammed.

Gabe looked at him with pained incredulity, then toward Kareem. “You know who I work for.”

This time a backhand from the left side. “Who do you work for?”

“I work for Mr. Yeong.”

“Liar,” said Mohammed, repeating the backhand.

“I work for Mr. Yeong.”

“Who did Cho work for?” bellowed Mohammed.

Gabe was now struggling to simply survive the attack. “He worked with Mr. Yeong,” he mumbled through the blood gushing from a broken nose and smashed lips.

Mohammed threw a powerful right hand to the base of the rib cage. “Who else?”

It took Gabe a few moments to catch his breath. “I didn’t know he worked for anybody else until she just told me. I sure as hell didn’t know he worked for the cops. I would have killed him if I knew he was ratting us out,” said Gabe.

“Why is your English so good?” said Mohammed.

Through the bruising, the blood, and the pain, Gabe offered a limp smile. “Good teachers.”

Mohammed slapped him hard and repeated the question.

“I grew up here. I went to school in Northern California,” said Gabe, spitting blood as he turned his head from left to right.

“But you came here with Yeong when he returned from a trip to Hong Kong and North Korea,” said Kareem.

“Yeah, so what? My father was from North Korea. He came here just before I was born, working for a unified Korean trade delegation. I still have family in North Korea. Even though I’m a U.S. citizen I got a Korean visa through them.” Gabe wasn’t sure they would buy the legend the CIA created, but if they stopped beating him long enough to do an Internet search of immigration regulations and a government records check, it would back up his story.

Kareem, Candy, and Mohammed looked at each other, not sure whether to accept the explanation of the tortured man.

“Why did you return to North Korea?” asked Mohammed.

“After my father died I was allowed to return. I visited our family and found work there.”

“What kind of work?” asked Kareem.

“I worked for the government.”

“The North Korean government?” asked Mohammed.

“Yeah, what other government operates in North Korea?” said Gabe with an attitude that cost him another sharp backhand across the face.

“How do you know Cho?” barked Mohammed.

Gabe returned to his cover story. “I know Cho’s brother. He lives outside of Pyongyang but he does a lot of business in Hong Kong. He was in Hong Kong when some of Mr. Yeong’s security men were arrested by the Hong Kong police. He called me up in Pyongyang and asked if I wanted the job. I flew to Hong Kong and joined Mr. Yeong’s security team.”

“I didn’t think anyone could leave North Korea?” asked Kareem in an almost civil tone.

“Sure you can, as long as the right people in the government approve.”

“Why would the North Korean government allow you to leave?” asked Mohammed with genuine curiosity, standing in front of Gabe, poised to strike again.

“Why do you think?”

Mohammed backhanded Gabe. An evil smile crossed Candy’s face.

“Okay, okay. The North Korean government wanted me here. They wanted me to watch Yeong, to protect him. They sent me.”

Kareem looked at Mohammed. “What do you think?”

“I’m not buying it,” said the cell leader.

Gabe protested. “It’s the truth. You didn’t have to beat me to learn this. You only had to ask. Check it out.”

Candy cocked her head. “He’s lying.”

Mohammed threw a backhanded slap, snapping Gabe’s head to the left, then grabbed him by the hair and whipped Gabe’s head back. “Cho never told you he was working for the police?”

Blood from his battered nose and mouth was filling his throat faster than he could swallow it, but Gabe managed to gurgle, “Never. I would have killed him. I was sent here by the North Korean government.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe Cho made up the story,” said Kareem.

“He know. He working with Cho,” said Candy.

“You’re crazy,” said Gabe defiantly, earning him another backhanded strike to his face, which was now swelling and bleeding profusely.

“Maybe he’s telling the truth,” said Kareem, questioning whether they might have misread Gabe’s role.

“He’s lying,” said Mohammed.

“How can you be sure?” asked Kareem.

“It no matter. We can’t take chances,” said Candy, excited by the blood.

“Doesn’t matter?” said Gabe, spitting blood. “You are beating me for no reason.”

Mohammed had psychopathic skills and prepared to exercise them again. He grabbed the little finger on Gabe’s right hand and twisted it back, wrenching it out of the socket, ripping muscle and tendons.

Gabe screamed, gasping for relief before shouting, “I’m telling the truth.”

The jihadist repeated the performance with the ring finger.

Again more screams and denials.

Mohammed grabbed the lug nut wrench and stood next to Gabe, waiting for answers. When no response was forthcoming the terrorist wiggled the wrench as if waiting for a waist-high fastball. With a powerful two-handed swing he crushed the undercover operative’s right kneecap, the bones splintering.

Gabe cried out, fighting the pain surging through his body.

Candy, wired by the carnage, said, “Make him talk.”

“You’ll tell us the truth,” whispered Mohammed. The Iranian-trained jihadi picked up a single-edge razor blade from the workbench. He then sliced away at Gabe’s pants, exposing his left thigh.

“What do you want?” screamed Gabe as Mohammed held the razor in front of the captive’s face.

Gabe knew in that instant he was straddling death at the hands of a jihadist — just as Navy diver Robert Stethem had been in Beirut, aboard TWA 847. Even in his agony, Gabe remembered the hidden micro-recorder was documenting this terrible ordeal and he resolved in that instant to get the maximum information from the man who was killing him. “What do you want from me?” he managed to say through a mouthful of blood, broken teeth, and a fractured jaw.

“I want the truth about what you know of the nuclear weapons arrangement between Iran and North Korea,” said Mohammed, his face pressed near to Gabe’s ear.

“Nothing. I don’t know what you are talking about,” gurgled Gabe.

“Then die, infidel,” said Mohammed as he used the razor to slice deep into Gabe’s exposed thigh. There was a gush of blood as the femoral artery was severed.

“Tell me what you know and you live,” breathed Mohammed in Gabe’s left ear, waving a tourniquet and bandages in the CIA operative’s face.

Though Gabe’s resolve remained strong, his body was rapidly failing as the hemorrhage from the gash in his thigh compounded the effects of the wounds he had already endured. He sucked in a breath and said a quiet prayer, the bruises, cuts, and broken bones bearing testimony to the savagery.

In his last moment he looked up into the muzzle of Candy’s .45-caliber M1911A1 just as she pulled the trigger. His lifeless body slumped in the chair, only the duct tape preventing him from collapsing to the floor.

The three conspirators who had watched the young American die never bothered to question the success or failure of their mission. Two potential obstacles — real or imagined — Cho and Gabe, had been removed from their calculus.

There was little left to do. Kareem picked up the spent shell casing and, after a quick cleanup of the garage, Candy headed home. In their haste to prepare for Isha, the last of the daily prayers, the two jihadists dumped Gabe’s body in a nearby alley in hopes it would look like another random street crime, a common occurrence in Los Angeles.

When the beat cop found the body, he assumed it was that of a foreign tourist, murdered for a wallet. The pockets were empty. There was no ID, passport, or driver’s license.

The subsequent electronic report from the L.A. County medical examiner’s office included a dental imprint and morgue photos of the “unidentified male victim” and close-up images of an “Eagle, Globe, and Anchor” tattoo above the words “Semper Fi” on the right bicep of the deceased. Only later would the CIA’s Office of Personnel Management realize Gabe had answered “no” on question 143 of the hiring application: “Do you have any identifying marks, scars, or tattoos?”

There was also a notation about the victim’s personal effects and clothing being held for next of kin:

“One pair, New Balance athletic shoes, size 10C [blood spattered]; one pair, white cotton sport socks w/o label [blood spattered]; one Jockey label boxer underwear, size 28; one North Face label, size 28 x 33, dark green trousers [damaged and blood spattered]; one Kirkland label, size large, dark blue polo shirt [bloodstained]; one Casio label wristwatch w/ dark green, nylon wristband [bloodstained]; one hand-stitched leather belt w/o label, w/ faux-brass buckle, size 28–32.”