Khatib gestured the man to a chair and offered him a cigarette. The sergeant lit up and puffed gratefully; his work was onerous and tiring, the cigarette a welcome break. The reason Khatib tolerated such familiarity from a man of such low rank was that he harbored a genuine admiration for Ali. Khatib held efficiency in high esteem, and his trusted sergeant was one who had never failed him. Calm, methodical, a good husband and father, Ali was a true professional.
“Well?” he asked.
“The navigator is close, very close, sir. The pilot ...” He shrugged. “An hour or more.”
“I remind you they must both be broken, Ali, nothing held back. And their stories must conform to each other. The Rais himself is counting on us.
“Perhaps you should come, sir. I think in ten minutes you will have your answer. The navigator first, and when the pilot learns this, he will follow.”
“Very well.”
Khatib rose, and the sergeant held the door open for him. Together they descended past the ground floor to the first basement level, where the elevator stopped. There was a passage leading to the stairs to the subbasement. Along the passage were steel doors, and behind them, squatting amid their filth, were seven American aircrew, four British, one Italian, and a Kuwaiti Sky hawk pilot.
At the next level down were more cells, two occupied. Khatib peered through the Judas-hole in the door of the first.
A single unshaded light bulb illuminated the cell, its walls encrusted with hardened excrement and other brown stains of old blood. In the center, on a plastic office chair, sat a man, quite naked, down whose chest ran slicks of vomit, blood, and saliva. His hands were cuffed behind him, and a cloth mask with no eye-slits covered his face.
Two AMAM men in coveralls similar to those of Sergeant Ali flanked the man in the chair, their hands caressing yard-long plastic tubes packed with bitumen, which adds weight without reducing flexibility.
They were standing back, taking a break. Before their interruption, they had apparently been concentrating on the shins and kneecaps, which were skinned raw and turning blue-yellow.
Khatib nodded and passed to the next door. Through the hole he could see that the second prisoner was not masked. One eye was completely closed, the pulped meat of the brow and cheek knit together by crusted blood. When he opened his mouth, there were gaps where two broken teeth had been, and a froth of blood emerged from the mashed lips.
“Tyne,” the navigator whispered, “Nicholas Tyne. Flight lieutenant. Five oh one oh nine six eight.” “The navigator,” whispered the sergeant. Khatib whispered back, “Which of our men is the English-speaker?”
Ali gestured—the one on the left. “Bring him out.”
/>
Ali entered the cell of the navigator and emerged with one of the interrogators. Khatib had a conference with the man in Arabic. The man nodded, reentered the cell, and masked the navigator. Only then would Khatib allow both cell doors to be opened.
The English-speaker bent toward Nicky Tyne’s head and spoke through the cloth. His English was heavily accented but passable.
“All right, Flight Lieutenant, that is it. For you, it is over. No more punishment.”
The young navigator heard the words. His body seemed to slump in relief.
“But your friend, he is not so lucky. He is dying now. So we can take him to the hospital—clean white sheets, doctors, everything he needs; or we can finish the job. Your choice. When you tell us, we stop and rush him to hospital.”
Khatib nodded down the corridor to Sergeant Ali, who entered the other cell. From the open door came the sounds of a plastic quirt lashing a bare chest. Then the pilot began to scream.
“All right, shells!” shouted Nicky Tyne under his cowl. “Stop it, you bastards! It was an ammunition dump, for poison gas shells. ...”
The beating ceased. Ali emerged, breathing heavily, from the pilot’s cell.
“You are a genius, Sayid Brigadier.”
Khatib shrugged modestly.
“Never underestimate the sentimentality of the British and the Americans,” he told his pupil. “Get the translators now. Get all the details, every last one. When you have the transcripts, bring them to my office.”
Back in his sanctum, Brigadier Khatib made a personal phone call to Hussein Kamil. An hour later, Kamil called him back. His father-in-law was delighted; a meeting would be summoned, probably that night. Omar Khatib should hold himself available for the summons.
That evening, Karim was teasing Edith again, gently and without malice, this time about her job.
“Don’t you ever get bored at the bank, darling?” “No, it’s an interesting job. Why do you ask?” “Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t understand how you can think it interesting. For me, it would be the most boring job in the world.”
“Well, it’s not, so there.” “All right. What’s so interesting about it?” “You know, handling accounts, placing investments, that sort of thing. It’s important work.”