Cody McFadyen - The Face of Death

Alan takes this amiably. Cool as a cucumber, but it's deceptive, because when it comes to interrogations, Alan is a shark. All lion, hold the lamb. He cocks his head, assessing Cabrera right back. Waiting.

"I will confess," Cabrera says. "I will tell you everything. I will gratefully tell you where the hostages can be found."

His voice is soft, lyrical, and vaguely reverent. Alan taps a finger to his lips, thinking. He stands in a sudden motion. He leans forward and points a huge finger at Cabrera. When he speaks, his voice is large and loud and accusative.

"Mr. Cabrera, we know you're not the man we're after!"

The happiness in Cabrera's eyes is replaced with alarm. His mouth opens in surprise, closes, opens again. It takes him a moment to get himself under control. His lips compress into a determined line. His eyes are sad. Still peaceful, though.

"I am sorry. I do not know what you mean."

Alan barks out a laugh. It sounds vaguely insane and definitely menacing. Scary. I'd be worried if I didn't know it was all an act. He sits back down as suddenly as he'd stood and hunches forward. Relaxed now, just two guys having a talk. He smiles and wags a finger at Cabrera in a "you old dog" kind of way. A "don't kid a kidder" kind of way. "Now, sir. I have a witness. We know it's not you. There's no question about this. The only question is: Why are you really working with this man?" Alan's voice is low and smooth, steady as syrup going onto pancakes. Then: "Hey! I'm talking to you!" Loud again, a shout. Cabrera jumps. Looks away. Alan's seesaw between extremes is unsettling him. He's developed a twitch in his cheek.

"He's been a victim of torture," Alan had told me prior to beginning Cabrera's interview. "Torture is basically about reward and punishment and establishment of intimacy. The torturer will scream at you and call you hateful things and burn you with cigarettes, then he'll personally apply the ointment to the burns and become all solicitous and soothing. The victim ends up wanting one thing more than anything else."

"The guy with the ointment and the nice voice."

"Right. We're not going to burn Cabrera with cigarettes, but moving back and forth between rage and kindness should be enough to rattle him pretty good."

Roger that, I think. Cabrera was starting to sweat.

"Mr. Cabrera. We know you were supposed to die here. What if I were to tell you that we'd be willing to fake your death? To make the rest of the world think you were shot while we were attempting to apprehend you?" Alan is continuing with his normal voice now. He's established dominance and instilled fear. Cabrera is looking back at him, a hopeful, speculative, complicated look.

"If you help us," Alan continues, "we'll carry you out of here in a body bag." He leans back. "If you don't cooperate, and let us help you, then I'll march you out of here in front of the cameras, and he'll know that you're still alive."

No reply. But I can see the conflict in him.

He stares at Alan for a moment, searching. He drops his gaze to the floor between us. His whole body slumps. The twitch in his cheek disappears.

"I don't care about myself. Can you understand that?"

His voice is humble, calm. It's difficult to reconcile the gentleness in front of me with the hardness I saw as he burst into the FBI lobby, guns blazing. Which one is his true face?

Both, perhaps.

"I understand the concept," Alan says. "I don't understand it as it applies to you. Enlighten me."

Another searching look. Longer, this time.

"I am going to die, eventually. This is my fault, no one else's. A weakness for women, an unwillingness to be safe." A shrug. "I get what I deserve with the HIV. But I tell myself, at times, perhaps it was not entirely my own fault. I was . . . harmed when I was a young boy."

"Harmed how, sir?"

"For a brief and very terrible time, I became the property of evil men. They . . ." He averts his gaze. "They had their way with me. When I was eight. These men, they had kidnapped me, while I was getting water for the home. They took me and in the first day, they raped me and they beat me. They whipped my feet until the blood ran like little rivers."

His voice is slight now, almost dreamy.

"They made a demand, when they beat me. Words to say. 'You are the God. I thank you the God.' The harder we wept, the more they beat us. Never anywhere else but on the feet.

"I was taken with other children, both boys and girls, to Mexico City. It was a long journey, and we were kept quiet with threats." His gaze comes back to me, and it looks like it should bleed. "I prayed, sometimes, for death. I hurt, not just in my body." He taps his head.

"In my mind." Taps his chest. "In my heart."

"I understand," Alan tells him.

"Perhaps. Perhaps you do. But this was a special hell." He continues. "In Mexico City we heard the guards speaking at times, and from their words we came to understand that we would go to America in the coming months. That our training would be complete and that we would be sold to bad men for great sums of money."

The trafficking ring, I think. And the circle closes.

"I was in a deep place with no light. I had been raised very religious, you understand. To believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Mother Mary. But to my eyes, I had prayed to them each, with all my might, and still the men came to hurt me." He winces. "I didn't understand then. The fullness of God's plan. In that dark place, when my despair was greatest, God was going to send me an angel."

He smiles as he says these words, and a kind of light fills his eyes. His voice finds a rhythm, like a wave that's always coming but never reaches the shore.

"He was special, the boy. He had to be. He was younger than me, smaller than me, but somehow, he did not lose his soul." His gaze on me is intent. "Let me help you understand the significance of that. The boy was only six years old, and he was beautiful. So beautiful that the men liked using him best of all. Every day, sometimes twice a day. And he angered them as well. Because he would not cry. They wanted his tears, and he refused them. They would beat him to make him weep."

He shakes his head, sad. "Of course, he always wept, eventually. But still . . . he did not lose his soul. Only an angel could have resisted them in that most important way."

Gustavo closes his eyes, opens them.

"I was not an angel. I was losing my soul, falling deeper and deeper into despair. Turning away from the face of God. In my despair I thought about killing myself. I think he sensed it. He started coming over to me at night, whispering to me in the dark while his hands touched my face. My beautiful white angel.

" 'God will save you,' he told me. 'You must believe in him. You must continue to have faith.'

"He was only six, or perhaps seven, but he spoke with older words and those words rescued me. I came to know his story, that he had been called by God when he was only four years old, that he had resolved to enter the seminary at the earliest possible age, to devote his life to the Holy Trinity. Then one night, the men came, and stole him from his family.

" 'Even so,' he would say to me, 'you cannot lose faith. We are being tested by God.' He would smile at me, and it was a smile of such pureness, of such bliss and belief, that it would pull me away from the despair that wished to drown me."

Cabrera's eyes are closed in reverential remembrance.

"He did this for a year. He suffered every day, we all did. At night, he spoke to us all and made us pray and kept us from wanting death more than life." Cabrera pauses, looking off. "One day, that fateful day, he saved my body as well as my soul.

"It was only the two of us. We were being transported by a guard to the home of a wealthy man, a man for whom just one boy was not enough. I was shaking in fear, but the boy, the angel, as always, remained calm. He touched my hand, he smiled at me, he prayed, but as we drove on, he became concerned when he saw that his prayers were not reaching my heart. I was afraid this time in spite of his words. My fear only grew as we approached, until I was trembling uncontrollably. We arrived at the house, and without warning, he reached over and took my face in his hands. He kissed my forehead, and he told me to be ready.