Spook Country

63. SURVIVAL, EVASION, RESISTANCE, AND ESCAPE

T ito watched the old man fold the copy of the New York Times he’d been reading. They were sitting in an open Jeep, its hood dotted with red rust through dull-gray paint that had been applied with a brush. Tito could see the Pacific, this new ocean. The pilot had flown them here from the mainland, and gone, having said a long, private goodbye to the old man. Tito had seen them clasp hands, the grip held hard.

He’d watched the Cessna become a dot, then vanish.

“I remember seeing proofs of a CIA interrogation manual, something we’d been sent unofficially, for comment,” the old man said. “The first chapter laid out the ways in which torture is fundamentally counterproductive to intelligence. The argument had nothing to do with ethics, everything to do with quality of product, with not squandering potential assets.” He removed his steel-rimmed glasses. “If the man who keeps returning to question you avoids behaving as if he were your enemy, you begin to lose your sense of who you are. Gradually, in the crisis of self that your captivity becomes, he guides you in your discovery of who you are becoming.”

“Did you interrogate people?” asked Garreth, the black Pelican case under his feet.

“It’s an intimate process,” the old man said. “Entirely about intimacy.” He spread his hand, held it, as if above an invisible flame. “An ordinary cigarette lighter will cause a man to tell you anything, whatever he thinks you want to hear.” He lowered his hand. “And will prevent him ever trusting you again, even slightly. And will confirm him, in his sense of self, as few things will.” He tapped the folded paper. “When I first saw what they were doing, I knew that they’d turned the SERE lessons inside out. That meant we were using techniques the Koreans had specifically developed in order to prepare prisoners for show trials.” He fell silent.

Tito heard the lapping of waves.

This was still America, they said.

The Jeep, covered with a tarp and branches, had been waiting for them near the weathered concrete runway that Garreth said had once belonged to a weather station. There were push brooms in the back of the Jeep. Someone had used them to sweep the concrete, in preparation for their landing.

A boat was coming, Garreth had said, to take them to Canada. Tito wondered how large a boat it would be. He imagined a Circle Line tour boat. Icebergs. But the sun here was warm, the breeze off the sea gentle. He felt as though he had come to the edge of the world. The edge of America, the land he had seen unrolling beneath the Cessna, almost entirely empty. The small towns of America, at night, had been like lost jewels, scattered across the floor of a vast dark room. He’d watched them pass, from the Cessna’s window, imagining people sleeping there, perhaps distantly aware of the faint drone of their engines.

Garreth offered Tito an apple, and a knife to cut it with. It was a crude knife, like something you might see in Cuba, the handle covered in chipped yellow paint. Tito opened it, discovering DOUK-DOUK printed on the blade. It was very sharp. He cut the apple into quarters, wiped both sides of the blade on the leg of his jeans, passed it back to Garreth, then offered the slices of fruit. Garreth and the old man each took one.

The old man looked at his worn gold watch, then out across the water.