Page 88 of Whisper
The SAD officer’s eyes slid sideways to Ryan. Ryan nodded. Finally, the guard stepped one half step to the side. Kris had to squeeze past him to open the door.
The stench hit him first.
Human feces. Sweat. Adrenaline. The stink of pure terror, animalistic fear.
Whimpering, and then screams. Shrieks and babbled Arabic, nonsensical.
Paul’s voice, bellowing. “I want thenames,email addresses,phone numbers, andsafe housesofallyour fucking brothers who are planning on attacking the United States!Give me the information I want, Zahawi! Give it to me, or your life gets worse!”
“I don’t know!” Zahawi wailed.
Kris ran.
The interrogation bunker was long, with only one entrance. At the far side, they’d built Zahawi’s cell inside a freestanding isolation room. Outside the isolation room, banks of monitors showed the inside of his cell from every angle, in vivid Technicolor.
Dennis stood before the monitors, watching Zahawi’s tearstained face grimace and wail.
Kris ran, shouting. “What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck is going on here?” Footsteps echoed behind Kris, Ryan and Dan racing after him.
Dennis shoved a single sheet of paper right in Kris’s face. “White House authorization. The president has authorized enhanced interrogation techniques against uncooperative detainees.”
Kris’s eyes darted over the classified memo. “Slamming into walls? Beating him? Confinement? Stress positions?” He read on. “You’re using his fears against him! Putting insects in a confinement box with him?” Zahawi had told him, weeks ago, his biggest fear was bugs, especially ones that stung or bit. He’d been petrified of the desert scorpions, of the bugs in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Of the spiders.
His gaze skittered to a stop over the last two techniques. “Mock burial?” he breathed. “Waterboarding?”
Ryan appeared beside him in time to hear Kris’s last words. He snatched the paper out of Dennis’s hands.
“He’s not giving up all that he knows!Thisis how we protect the homeland, Caldera!Thisis how we get through to these people that we mean business!” Dennis snarled.
“This isn’t legal—” Dan began.
“It is now. Straight from the White House. Zahawi doesn’t fight for a nation or belong to any country. The Geneva Conventions don’t apply to Zahawi. He’s an enemy combatant. And we can do whatever we want to him.”
A piercing wail rose over the monitors, scratching out of the speakers. On the screen, Zahawi collapsed, falling almost into Paul. Paul had a towel around Zahawi’s neck, wrapped like a sideways noose, and was flinging him against the wall. Zahawi’s head, his naked shoulders, bounced, sharp cracks breaking over the speakers.
“Are you this fucking weak?” Paul roared. “I thought you were the fucking prince of al-Qaeda! You were someone big and bad, weren’t you? Not so big and bad now, huh?”Crack.Zahawi hit the wall again.
A long box was in the cell, standing against the bars. It looked like a coffin. Paul swung Zahawi around, grabbed his hair, forced him to look at the box. “Do you want to go back into your box? Your new home?”
“No…” Zahawi moaned. “No, no, no…”
“You only have a few minutes to tell me what I want to know, Zahawi! Only a few minutes before your life gets even worse!”
A puddle appeared beneath Zahawi, a trickle down his legs. He tried to double in half, tried to shrink, moaning.
“You pissed yourself again? Jesus Christ, you are a fucking mess. Fucking pussy, that’s what we say in America. You already shit yourself in your box!”
Zahawi’s foot slipped on his urine on the floor. He hit the wall headfirst.
Kris was trapped in a nightmare. This wasn’t happening. Time fractured, the words coming out of the speakers broken into consonants and vowels that he had to reassemble, had to try and parse meaning out of. It was like Paul was speaking a foreign language, something he couldn’t understand. Images collided, smeared, the world moving too slowly and too quickly all at once. Zahawi hit the wall in slow motion. His urine spread on the floor. Kris’s heart stopped beating.
“You are asking me to hurt you, Zahawi. Do you know that? You are asking me to make your life worse. You’re asking for this! Tell me what I want to know and your life will get better. What are thenames, email addresses, phone numbers, and safe housesof the brothers who are going to attack America?”
“I don’t know!” Zahawi shrieked. His bones seemed to give out, and he sagged against the wall, shivering. “I don’t know!”
“Remember, Zahawi. You asked for this.” Paul let go of the towel, his makeshift collar noose, and walked away. Zahawi slumped, sitting in his urine.
Once, Zahawi had told Kris how much he hated being dirty. He hated feeling unclean and loved his daily prayers, loved the way he made himself pure and clean before Allah. He’d fought to control his bowels, his bladder, after that first session, despairing whenever he lost control. Kris had helped him, encouraged him. Helped him relieve himself during breaks in their interrogations. Built up his strength again.
