The room was average-sized and well lit, albeit with no windows I could see. The chair al-Hazim was shackled to-hands and feet-was the only furniture, at least in front of the camera. There were two male voices in the background speaking English, but I couldn"t make out the conversation.
I turned to Owen. "What are they saying?"
"I haven"t been able to make it out," he answered. "Keep watching, though."
I leaned forward for a quick peek toward the front of the tavern. I couldn"t see anyone, and no one could see us; this was truly a private screening. If I hadn"t been so intrigued, I would"ve been more aware of how surreal this all was, even by New York standards.
What the h.e.l.l am I about to see? Torture? Some sort of confession? A combination of both? Or is it D, none of the above?
I kept watching. Seconds later, three men entered the picture. Two were in suits and ties, while the third was wearing a white medical smock. That man, presumably a doctor, was holding something as he approached al-Hazim.
"Is that a syringe?" I asked.
"Yes."
"He"s not getting a flu shot, is he?"
Owen shook his head. "Nope."
CHAPTER 28.
THE TWO men restrained al-Hazim, one of them gripping him in a headlock as the doctor swabbed the side of his neck with an alcohol pad. Quickly, the doctor injected the contents of the syringe into the carotid artery. All three then stepped out of frame.
As al-Hazim simply sat there as he had before, I was about to ask Owen what was going on. That was when I heard a man clearing his throat off camera. This sound, unlike the previous conversation, I could hear perfectly.
"What is your name?" the man asked.
Immediately, another voice off camera translated the question into Arabic. I hadn"t suddenly learned the language-there were actually subt.i.tles at the bottom of the frame. It was like a foreign film, albeit not the kind Claire and I would watch at the Angelika down in SoHo.
Al-Hazim didn"t answer, and everything repeated itself. One voice asked the question again in English, the other translated it again in Arabic. And once again, al-Hazim didn"t respond.
"Are you a member of Al Qaeda?" came the next question. The translation followed, along with the subt.i.tles. Still, al-Hazim didn"t say a word.
Then something strange started to happen. It was as if his chair had been electrified, although not with a sudden jolt. Rather, a slow build. His arms and legs began to shake, his face contorting. He was clearly feeling pain.
"Are you aware of any plans by Al Qaeda to kill American citizens?" came the third question, the interrogator"s voice unchanged. It was calm, placid, even as al-Hazim began to shake uncontrollably as if he were having a violent seizure. He was in agony, and no one was laying a finger on him.
Meanwhile, the question was repeated-louder, finally, so as to be heard above the metal cuffs around his ankles and wrists, which were now clanking and rattling incessantly against the chair.
"Are you aware of any plans by Al Qaeda to kill American citizens?"
If he was, al-Hazim still wasn"t saying. I wasn"t sure he could even if he wanted to, at this point. His mouth was open as if to scream, but there was no sound coming out. His eyes rolled back. He looked possessed. There was no control, not anywhere. His jumpsuit darkened around his crotch and thighs. He was urinating on himself, if not defecating.
Suddenly, everything stopped. Like someone had pulled the plug. Al-Hazim collapsed in the chair, his body limp and lifeless.
The doctor in the white smock reappeared and placed two fingers on the neck, exactly where he"d administered the shot. He turned and shook his head to those behind the camera. His face was as expressionless as the bartender who had poured me my whiskey.
"Christ!" was all I could sputter at first. I was still staring at the opposite side of the booth and what was now just an empty white square being projected. It was all sinking in. Finally, I turned to Owen. "The syringe. Whatever was in it killed him, right?"
"Technically, no," he said.
"Technically?"
He folded his arms on the table. "What you just saw was actually a suicide."
CHAPTER 29.
BEFORE I could ask what the h.e.l.l that meant, Owen reached for his phone and began tapping the screen again. He was bringing up another video. It was a double feature.
"If this is the same thing with a different prisoner, I don"t need to see it," I said.
"Just watch," said Owen.
He hit Play and positioned the phone again, the image beaming across the booth as it had before. Same room, same chair, different Middle Eastern man chained to it. His beard was slightly longer, and he didn"t wear gla.s.ses.
The only other difference was that he filled out his jumpsuit more. He looked bloated, puffy where there might otherwise be edges.
Maybe for that reason alone, his blank stare didn"t seem as determined.
The same three men entered the frame, the one in the white smock administering the shot. As they retreated behind the camera, I was already bracing for what was to come.
It came. The man was asked his name in English, followed by Arabic, and he refused to answer, once and then twice. As with al-Hazim, the "symptoms" started.
"Are you a member of Al Qaeda?" came the next question, and again he refused to answer. But that was when things took a turn.
As his heavy body shook and convulsed, the man"s face looked as if he were in a tug-of-war. He was trying to fight the pain, not give in to it, but as his teeth gnashed and the tendons in his neck stretched so tight I thought they would snap, he opened his mouth not to scream ... but to talk.
"Yes," read the translation beneath him.
The voice of the interrogator resumed. So calmly, so eerily. "So you admit that you are a member of Al Qaeda?"
"Yes," the man repeated.
And no sooner had he done so than the shaking, the convulsing, the outright agony he was experiencing began to dissipate. Quickly, the interrogator followed up.
"Are you aware of any plans by Al Qaeda to kill American citizens?"
Seconds pa.s.sed as the man remained silent-and motionless-in the chair. He was clearly deciding what to do, how to answer. His forehead was dripping sweat. He didn"t have much time, and he knew it.
"No," he answered. "I don"t know anything."
He tried to sell it, his eyes pleading desperately with everyone behind the camera to believe him. The room was silent for another few seconds ... and then came the sound. The handcuffs, the ankle cuffs-they began to rattle against the chair. His faced seized up, his dark eyes practically popping out of his head. Everything was starting all over, only faster and more severe.
"Yes!" he screamed. In English, no less. "Yes! Yes! I know of plans ..."
And for a second time, everything stopped. No more convulsing, no more pain. No more video, either. It ended abruptly.
Owen turned to me. "Go figure, huh? Of all things, it"s the plans they didn"t want recorded."
"How the h.e.l.l did you get these?" I asked.
"It"s a long story."
"I"ve got nothing but time."
"Yeah, that"s what I used to think."
I got what he was saying. His life was never going to be the same. Maybe that was why he was eyeing my gla.s.s as I threw back the last of my whiskey.
"You want one?" I asked.
"No thanks," he said.
But it was the way he said it, like it wasn"t even a possibility. "How old are you, by the way?"
"Nineteen."
"Are you in school?"
"No," he said. "I work."
"What do you do?"
"I design artificial neurological implants."
I stared at him blankly.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "But Subway wasn"t hiring."
The kid definitely had a snarky streak. In a good way, though. Claire would"ve liked him.
He and I were all alone in the back of the Oak Tavern, everyone else out of earshot. Still, I couldn"t help lowering my voice for what I was about to ask. It was just one of those kinds of questions. "Do you work for the CIA, Owen?"
He nodded at his phone. "Not anymore, I"m guessing."
"And those injections, what we just watched. Did you have something to do with that?"
"It depends."
"On what?"
"Whether you think the Wright Brothers had something to do with nine-eleven," he said. He slid out of my side of the booth and back into his before explaining. "I was working on artificial neurotransmitters for the human brain. I"m not a sap, I knew there were possible military applications. But I also knew that they were the cure for dozens of neurological diseases. Sometimes you just have to take the good with the bad."
"Until you saw the bad with your own eyes," I said.
"I was their missing link. They had isolated all the neurological changes, everything the brain does when we lie, but they didn"t know how to manipulate it." He drew a deep breath, exhaling with regret well beyond his years. "I thought I was curing Alzheimer"s."
The irony was inescapable. "They lied to you."
"No, not exactly," he said. "Those people in the recordings-the men in suits, the doctor-I don"t even know who they are."
"But they know who you are, don"t they? They know you wanted to go public, and now they want you dead and anyone else you might have told."
I leaned back, sinking into the booth as those last words of mine hung in the air for a few seconds. I"d said them thinking entirely about Claire.
That was when it dawned on me, the morning I"d had. I was leaving someone out of the proverbial risk pool. Me.
As if on cue, Owen tilted his head and, of all things, smiled. "Welcome to the club, dude."
BOOK TWO.
STRANGER THAN FICTION.
CHAPTER 30.
BRETTON SAMUEL Morris, ten months into his first term as president of the United States, shook what remained of his bourbon and rocks, the springwater ice cubes rattling against the crystal of his favorite gla.s.s. Tink-tinkity-tink.