Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) by Secret Justice (com v4.0) Read Free Book Online

or Syrian, with the appropriate minor differences in pronunciation and usage. He was from the DO, the Directorate of Operations of the CIA, and was their best Arabic-speaking interrogator. He had been waiting on the
Belleau Wood
in the hope someone of significance would be captured. He knew Rat and agreed to let him come and go during the interrogation. There were two other American interrogators and the promise of a fourth, a man from Sudan.
    Rat looked at Duar for the first time since loading him aboard the helicopter. He was sitting on the other side of a standard Navy metal table with his hands on the table. Rough hands that knew manual labor. Duar’s skin was dark from the sun and his eyes shone from the deep sockets where they were buried in his face. His eyes were set so deep they looked considerably darker than in the photograph. Rat spoke to Barone in English. “Any progress?”
    Barone looked at Rat cautiously. “You sure he doesn’t speak English?”
    “No. How long you been going?”
    “Just getting started. He’s not giving us much yet.” Barone watched Duar out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe if you give him the same treatment you gave that other guy . . .”
    Rat thought of the red-faced doctor. He knew he hadn’t heard the last about it. Rat watched Duar, who showed no recognition. “Keep going. I just want to listen.”
    Barone turned back toward Duar and spoke in a resonant Arabic. “Where do you live?”
    Duar shook his head.
    “What is your name?”
    “Mohammed el-Mahdi.”
    “You were meeting with Pierre Lahoud in Sudan. Why?”
    “I was meeting with no one.”
    “To purchase nuclear material.”
    “No.”
    “Lahoud brought nuclear material with him. We have it.”
    Duar turned away from Barone.
    “Do you deny that you were there to buy nuclear material? To see if it was of sufficiently high quality to make a nuclear weapon?”
    No answer.
    “Who were you going to get to build the bomb? Where were you going to use it? Did you have a plan?”
    Rat watched the back of Duar’s head as Barone’s questions bounced off. He was listening carefully. There was something funny about Duar’s approach. He seemed to be trying to learn, not protect information. He was alert and careful, but not afraid.
    Rat stood quietly and reached across the table. He slapped Duar in the back of the head sharply. “You’re not answering the questions.”
    Duar spun around angrily. “You cannot attack me!”
    “I can do whatever I want,” Rat said.
    “You cannot violate the Geneva Convention!”
    “Never heard of it.”
    Duar breathed heavily.
    Barone looked at Rat. “Can I talk to you outside?”
    Rat nodded. They walked to the door and knocked on it. The Marine opened the door and let them out into the passageway. He closed and locked the door behind them.
    “I don’t know about this guy,” Barone said. “He’s a strange one.”
    “Only the most wanted terrorist in the world.”
    Barone nodded. “He’s sure not going to tell us anything voluntarily.”
    “Give me a few minutes with him.”
    “We need more tools. We ask questions, they refuse to answer them. Same old story.”
    “Just wear him down. Stay on him.”
    “Oh, I will. Sleep deprivation, lights on all night, the usual stuff. But I’m not getting a good feeling about this one. I’ve done a lot of the interrogation at Gitmo: same story. Bad attitudes, not helpful, lying to us, telling us a bunch of scary stuff that they just make up, basically flipping us off, and our hands are tied.” He considered the information they had gotten from others. “Why is it they can murder us, and we can’t even
touch
them?”
    “Let me have him to myself for a while. I don’t think he responds well to getting smacked in the back of the head. Make him angry. Don’t show him the respect he’s used to getting. Tell you what, just tell him I’m a maniac and you’re going to let me do the interrogation if you can’t get anything out of