A Murder of Crows by Terrence McCauley Read Free Book Online Page A

Hicks had interrogated dozens of men like Bajjah. He knew abandoning their family for the Cause was easier if they cut off all ties and buried themselves in their mission. The memory of the family they’d left behind stayed frozen in time. Rarely were they confronted by the reality of their choices.
    In only a few minutes, Hicks had shown Bajjah what his zealotry had cost him. The sudden palpability of it was all too stark and real. Even extremists had egos and Bajjah’s was taking a hell of a beating.
    Hicks made a show of ignoring the prisoner’s struggle by examining his own fingernails. “You know, that’s the first glimmer of emotion you’ve shown since we brought you here, Mehdi. I could be forgiven for congratulating myself for hitting a nerve right now.”
    The prisoner picked his towel off the floor and held it to his left cheek, still panting from the effort of sitting up straight. “You and your cheap parlor tricks. Do you believe you can make me talk by showing me pictures of my family? Do you think a few snapshots will weaken my faith and my resolve? I won’t beg you to keep your filth away from them. I won’t beg for their lives, either and I despise you for trying to make me do so.” He tried to spit at Hicks, but his sagging mouth turned it into a feeble dribble. “Allah will protect them if it pleases Him. He will allow you to harm them if He chooses. Either way, they are in His hands and beyond your feeble grasp. Sentimentality is a Western emotion.”
    “Baptism makes them Catholics, Mehdi,” Hicks reminded him. “Muddies the religious waters a bit, doesn’t it? But I already told you I’m not threatening your family. Hell, as far as they’re concerned, you’ve been dead for years. Your daughter is too young to remember you, and your son doesn’t even know you existed. Your ex-wife told them you died in a car crash on your way home from work one night. She doesn’t even have a single picture of you in the house anymore,” he lied. During a search of her home, the University’s Varsity squad had found their wedding photo in the copy of the Koran he’d given her on their wedding day.
    Hicks stood up and sat on the edge of the table. It closed the distance between him and the man on the floor. The gesture showed he didn’t view Bajjah as a threat, striking another blow to the prisoner’s already damaged ego. “Your own children know less about you than they do about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. You mean nothing to your own flesh and blood. And if you want it to stay that way, you’re going to tell me what I want to know about your network. And you’re going to do it right now.”
    “Never!” he screamed into the towel. “I will never tell you anything!”
    Hicks spoke over his muted screams. He was closer to breaking now than ever before. Hicks couldn’t let up now. “You’ve already told us a lot, and now you’re going to tell us the rest of it.” He reminded himself to speak in the past tense. “You’re going to tell us the names of the men you worked for and the men who served under you. You’re going to tell us where they lived and what they were planning.”
    “Anything I tell you will be years old!” Bajjah’s voice was hoarse from screaming. “I would not tell you even if I knew.”
    Hicks already had an answer ready. “All the more reason for you to tell me. I need to compare your information with more recent intelligence we’ve uncovered. If you don’t, or if I catch you in a lie, I’ll know. I’ll show your family your file. I’ll make sure they know about your attempt to spark a disease epidemic. I’ll show them the pictures of the bodies of all your followers who you ordered to be injected with disease. The women and the children. And I’m going to tell them you let those poor people die.”
    Hicks tapped the screen to activate a slide show. Crime scene pictures of dead women and children; bug-eyed from suffocating to death. Their corpses soaked