David Ignatius - Bloodmoney

There was silence, so she repeated the question.

“Are we clear, Mr. Akbar? Otherwise, I am going to instruct Andy to take you into custody.”

He nodded. The sweat beads were rolling down his forehead now. He wiped the dampness away with his sleeve.

“And don’t call me ‘madam.’ It’s a name for someone who runs a brothel. Tonight I am your control. You can call me that. Miss Control.”

The little lines around his mouth crinkled. He had been nervous when he walked in the door. Now he was frightened.

“What is my name? Say it, please.”

“Miss Control.”

“Thank you.” It sounded strange, even to her, but she nodded approval. One of her tradecraft instructors had admonished her years ago at the Farm that an interrogator was like a jeweler working on a precious stone. You had to tap it at the right points, to make the rough bits fall away so you could see what was really there.

“Let’s get started,” she said, motioning to the technician to begin attaching his wires to Akbar’s body. The Pakistani fidgeted. He didn’t like to be touched, but there was nothing he could do about it.

“First the technician is going to ask some baseline questions, to measure your normal reactions. You do have normal, right?”

“Yes.”

Andy went through a string of simple questions: name, place and date of birth, passport number. As the Pakistani answered, he became confident again, leaning forward in his chair. Marx listened for a while, struggling to think of a way to establish primacy. When there was a pause, she broke in.

“Are you a homosexual, Mr. Akbar?”

“My goodness, no. Of course not. How can you ask that?”

She looked at Andy’s monitor.

“You’re lying. Let me ask it again. Have you ever had sex with a man?”

“No. This is a most gross insult. I am leaving now.” He began pulling at the wires, and then stopped when the big American seized his hand.

Marx looked to Andy, who studied his computer terminal and shook his ahead.

“You’re still lying, Mr. Akbar. Three strikes and you’re out. That’s what we say in America. Now tell me the truth. Have you ever had sex with a man? When you were a boy, perhaps? Women have an intuition about this, I’m warning you.”

“I do not have to answer,” he said. His eyes were becoming moist at the edges. He was humiliated to the core.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “Not a problem with me. All I care about is that you tell the truth. If you don’t, I’ll find out. Is that clear? Okay. Continue, Andy.”

She sat back, confident now in her dominance. People from shame cultures were so vulnerable if you pushed the right buttons.

The technician asked more questions, alternating soft ones and hard ones. He stood behind the Pakistani, who couldn’t see him and heard only his questions, one after another. When the machine indicated deception, Andy would ask the question again until he got an answer that registered as truthful. After forty-five minutes he nodded to Marx that he was ready for her to begin.

Her task now was to break him. This man had set Egan up. She had become convinced of that as she pursued her investigation. Now she had to prove it.

“We will begin the serious part, Mr. Akbar. I can tell you that your life depends on your giving me the right answers. Do we understand each other? This is life or death.”

The Pakistani nodded.

“Let’s go back to the night Howard Egan disappeared. In addition to your uncle, someone else knew that you were meeting with him. Is that right?”

He shook his head. He paused a moment, looked around the room, and then said quietly, “No one.”

Marx turned to Andy, who nodded. The answer had produced no sign of the anxiety associated with a lie, which meant that it had to be considered true.

“Let me ask it again, Mr. Akbar. You told someone else you were meeting with Egan, right?”

“No. No one.”

Andy nodded again.

Marx loomed over the Pakistani man. Her face showed a blush of anger.

“You are a liar! Tell the truth, or you won’t make it to the next Eid. You told someone else about your meeting with Howard Egan. True or false?”

His voice was thin and strained by fear. He was sweating. But he gave the same answer.

“I told no one.”

Andy again signaled that the machine had not registered deception. Marx stepped back from the Pakistani. She motioned for Andy to join her in the bathroom, where they talked for several minutes. Then she returned.

“Your contact in the Taliban told you to move up the meeting time for Howard Egan. Is that right?

“No. That is not true. I don’t know anyone in the Taliban.”

Andy nodded.

“Are you lying to me now?”

“No. I wanted to hide the meeting. It was dangerous for me. Why would I tell anyone?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Mr. Akbar. Who told you to move up the meeting?”

“My Uncle Azim. He said he had to go back to Waziristan the next morning for the funeral of someone in the tribe. That was why he had to do it that night.”

“Is that statement truthful?”

“Yes.”

“Have you talked with your uncle since Egan disappeared?”

“No.”

Andy’s face was suddenly animated, as he shook his head to indicate that the machine had registered deception.”

“You are a liar. I am warning you, we will not tolerate this. Now let me ask you again. Have you talked with your uncle since Egan disappeared?”

“Yes.” The man’s voice was so small, the word sounded as if it had been blown through a tube. The sweat covered his forehead.

“I talked with him the night the meeting was supposed to happen. He called me. He asked why my friend had not come to the address we had agreed. I said I did not know. He called me again and said that he was going to leave and go back to Waziristan right away. He was frightened. That is all.”

“Why did you lie before?”

“Because I was afraid that you would be angry with me. I was not supposed to talk to anyone about anything. But I talked with him.”

Marx nodded. She went over to the thermostat and turned it down, until the air conditioner was blowing full-tilt.

“It’s too damn hot in here,” she muttered.

Marx started again, probing around the edges of Akbar’s story. She asked him for details about his initial recruitment and handling, about his past meetings with Egan, about his payments from the agency. She kept looking for a route into the deception that she had been certain was there when they started. But try as she might, she couldn’t find an opening in his story.

After another hour of frustration, she decided that the only explanation was that she had been wrong: Hamid Akbar had not blown the operation. The compromise had come from somewhere else.

The Pakistani looked spent-sweated and chilled, poked and prodded until he had no reserves left. He wasn’t deceiving her, but there was still a missing piece. She nodded to Andy that she wanted to continue a little longer.

“We’re almost done, Mr. Akbar,” she said. “I have just a few more questions, okay?”

“Sure,” he said. His face was drained.

“Have you been in touch with another intelligence service?”

“When?” he asked.

“Ever. Have you ever been in touch with another intelligence service, besides ours? Or any other contact that you’ve never told us about.”

“Not that I haven’t told you about. I always told the truth.”

She looked at Andy. He nodded. The machine said he wasn’t being deceptive.

“Why do you say, ‘Not that I haven’t told you about’? There’s nothing in your file about contact with another intelligence service. Who have you talked to?”