Vince Flynn: Memorial Day

Rapp didn't like torture, not only because of its effect on the person being brutalized, but for what it did to the person who sanctioned and carried it out. He had no desire to sink to those depths unless it was a last resort, but unfortunately they were quickly approaching that point. Lives were at stake. Two CIA operatives were already dead, thanks to the duplicitous scum in the other room, and many more lives were in the balance. Something was in the works, and if Rapp didn't find out what it was hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent people would die.

The door to the observation room opened and a man approximately the same age as Rapp entered. He walked up to the window and with his deep-set brown eyes looked at the handcuffed man. There was a certain clinical detachment in the way the man carried himself. His hair was elegantly cut and his beard trimmed to perfection. He was dressed in a dark, well-tailored suit, white dress shirt with French cuffs, and an expensive red silk tie. He owned two identical sets of the outfit, and in an effort to keep his subject off balance, it was the only thing he had worn in front of the man since his arrival three days ago. The outfit was carefully chosen to convey a sense of superiority and importance.

Bobby Akram was one of the CIA's best interrogators. He was a Pakistani immigrant and a Muslim, who was fluent in Urdu, Pashto, Arabic, Farsi, and, of course, English. Akram had controlled every detail of every second of his prisoner's incarceration. Every noise, variation in temperature, morsel of food and drop of liquid had been carefully choreographed.

The goal with this specific subject, as with any subject, was to get him to talk. The first step had been to isolate him and strip him of all sense of time and place by immersing him in a world of sensory deprivation until he craved stimuli. Akram would then throw the man a life-line; he would begin a dialogue. He would get the man to talk, not even necessarily to divulge secrets, at least not at first. The secrets would come later. To do the job thoroughly and properly took a great deal of time and patience, but those were luxuries they did not possess. Intelligence was time sensitive and that meant things had to be expedited.

Turning to Rapp he said, "It shouldn't be much longer."

"I sure as hell hope not," grumbled Rapp. Mitch Rapp was many things, but patient was not one of them.

Akram smiled. He had great respect for the legendary CIA operative. The two of them were on the front line of this war against terrorism, allies with a mutual enemy. For Rapp it was about protecting innocent people against the aggressions of a growing threat. For Akram it was about saving the religion he loved from a group of fanatics who had twisted the words of the great prophet so they could perpetuate hatred and fear.

Akram checked his watch and asked, "Are you ready?"

Rapp nodded and looked again at the exhausted, bound man. He mumbled a few curses to himself. If word got out about this, all of his accomplishments and connections wouldn't be able to save him. He was way off the reservation with this little hunt, but he needed answers and running things through the proper channels was sure to get him bogged down in a quagmire of politics and diplomacy.

There were too many varying interests at play, without even getting into the issue of leaks. The man bound and drugged in the other room was Colonel Masood Haq of the dreaded Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI. Without telling anyone at Langley, Rapp had hired a team of freelancers to snatch the man and bring him here. The brutal murders of two CIA operatives, and a growing fear that al-Qaeda had reconstituted itself, had given Rapp the impetus to take action without authorization.

Akram pointed at their prisoner as he began to nod off. "He's going to fall over any second. Are you sure you want to go forward with your plan right now?" Akram crossed his arms. "If we wait another day or two I'm very confident I can get him to talk."

Rapp shook his head and answered firmly. "My patience has run out. If you don't get him to talk, I will."

Akram nodded thoughtfully. He was not opposed to using the good cop/bad cop technique of interrogation. On the right person the results could be quite satisfactory. Akram himself, however, never resorted to violence, he was careful to leave that to others.

"All right. When I get up and leave that's your cue."

Rapp acknowledged the plan, and kept his eyes on the bound man as Akram left the room. The prisoner had no idea how long he had been here, how long he had been in the hands of his captors, or who his captors even were. He had no idea where he was, what country, let alone what continent. He had heard only one man speak, and that was Akram, a fellow Pakistani by birth.

He would, of course, assume that he was being held in his own country, probably by the ISI's chief competitor, the IB, and because of that he would hold out as long as he could in the belief that the ISI would come to his rescue. He had been drugged and deprived of all sense of time and routine. He was an exhausted man awash in a sea of sensory deprivation. He was ready to break, and when he saw Rapp enter the room, his hopes would crumble.

As Akram had predicted, the man had finally dozed off long enough to lose his balance and topple over. He hit the floor fairly hard, but didn't bother attempting to get up. Having been in this hopeless position countless times during his incarceration, he knew it was impossible.

Akram entered the room with two assistants. While they righted the prisoner, Akram pulled up a chair and told his assistants to remove the man's restraints. When the prisoner was free to move his arms and legs, Akram handed him a glass of water. The two assistants went and stood in the shadows by the door in case they were needed.

"Now, Masood," Akram said in the man's native language, "would you like to start telling me the truth?"

The man glared at his interrogator with bloodshot eyes, "I have been telling you the truth. I am not a supporter of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. I deal with them only because it is my job to keep tabs on them."

"You know that General Musharraf has made it very clear that we are to stop supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda." Akram had maintained the fiction that he was a fellow Pakistani from the moment he'd met Haq.

"I keep telling you," the man replied firmly, "the only reason I still meet with my contacts is to keep tabs on them."

"And you're still sympathetic to their cause, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm...I mean no! I'm not sympathetic to their cause."

Akram smiled. "I am a devout Muslim, and I am sympathetic to their cause." He tilted his head to the side. "Are you not a devout Muslim?"

The question was a slap in the intelligence officer's face. "Of course I am a devout Muslim," he blurted indignantly, "but I am...I am an officer in the ISI. I know where my allegiance lies."

"I'm sure you do," said a skeptical Akram. "The problem is that I do not know where your allegiance lies, and I'm running out of patience." There was no malice in his voice as he said this, merely regret.

The man buried his face in his hands and shook his head. "I don't know what to say. I am not the man you say I am." He lifted his head and stared past the bright light at his interrogator. His eyes were glassy and pleading. "Ask my superiors. Ask General Sharif. He will tell you I was following orders."

Akram shook his head. "Your superiors have forsaken you. You are nothing but a plague to them. They claim to know very little about what you've been up to."

"You are a liar," spat Haq.

This was exactly what Akram was after. Uncontrollable mood swings. Desperate and pleading one second and then angry and antagonistic the next. Raising his hands in surrender, Akram's expression spoke of a sad resolve that he could do no more. "I have been very patient with you, and all you do is reward me with more lies and insults."