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The US Navy was not generous with its interrogation rentals. This one was a ten-by-ten room with dingy ivory walls. Other than a single lightbulb in a wrought-iron cage, a pan-tilt-zoom camera stuck to the far-left corner like a robotic insect, a gray metal table, and four lyre-backed chairs, the room was unfurnished. Hector was stripped of his cell phone, wristwatch, keys, and wallet; was given coffee and a slice of pepperoni pizza to nibble on; was allowed one bathroom break per hour; then was left alone fretting.
He’d been sitting there for over two hours, when the electric metal door swung open and Ozgur, Fabio, then Visa Clerk walked in respectively, all dressed in black suits.
Visa Clerk targeted the farthest chair by the wall and kind of reclined on it, crossing his legs. Ozgur and Fabio sat at the broad side of the table across from Hector, avoiding eye contact with him as they lowered themselves on their chairs.
“How are you doing, Hector?” Fabio began breathily, crossing his wrists on a dogeared red folder he’d positioned squarely before him on the table.
“Fabulous! Cut the jelly, Fab. I know how ugly it looks.”
Fabio arched his eyebrows and rocked his head awhile. He opened the red folder and spoke at a higher, formal notch. He started with the time and date and purpose of the interrogation, then read Hector his Miranda rights—which Hector laughingly dismissed: He was innocent, he said, and wanted to get this done with as smoothly as possible.
Next, Fabio stated his name and designation, then introduced Ozgur as “Agent Kerry Grant”—which made Hector chuckle—followed by the mysterious visa clerk, who turned out to be “Agent Matthew Rossini from the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
“The DIA?” Hector whistled. “I never thought I was that important.”
“Don’t be modest,” Ozgur said dryly.
“What did you say your name was again?” Hector said.
Ozgur drummed his fingers on the tabletop and shook his head silently.
Now Rossini leaned forward and said, “You may begin, Mr Kane. Tell us what happened.”
Hector obeyed, and in excruciating detail he relayed the events of the past two days: from the prince’s call and the suspicion of his wife, to the MFA deal and the middle-middle man, to the bicameral creature—Lee/Li—and his guest the polkovnik, up to his apprehension out of the dragon tube a few hours ago. The DIA man kept nodding with each major turn of events; Ozgur didn’t seem to be following the narrative as much as Hector would have hoped; Fabio jotted down tons of notes on a couple of folded A4 papers—in cursive, minute handwriting which looked close to Anglophonic Arabic or Farsi to English.
“And... why didn’t you report any of this to the Agency?” Fabio asked finally.
“In fact, I did.” Hector remembered his failed text. “At least I tried to. Check my phone.”
Ozgur volunteered to fetch Hector’s phone. Two minutes passed, then he returned with a zipped evidence bag holding the iPhone. Fabio powered the phone on, then reviewed the messages. Ozgur followed, before passing it to Rossini.
“That was,” Rossini said, eyes on the phone, “really smart of you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hector said.
Fabio doodled on his folded paper, crossing out most of his extensive recent notes. “Is that the end of your story, Hector?”
Hector folded his arms. “We’re smart people, aren’t we? Show me what you got or let me go. Simple.”
Fabio glanced over at Ozgur, who nodded to him gravely.
Thereupon, Fabio reopened his red folder. The topmost paper inside was a punched timeline. Hector’s eyes scanned it, upside down, and he concluded it had to do with the start and end of Operation C.O.R.O.N.A. The first date was sometime in March 2013 and the last, at the bottom, was today’s date. Fabio now removed this paper and laid it aside. Underneath was a colored photo of a bloody, bludgeoned face. Fabio dealt this photo across the table, and Hector frowned at it for a while. The face looked familiar. It was sharp, olivy, and lightly bearded. The hem of a Yasser Arafat’s checkered keffieyh was visible under the broken jaw.
Ozgur rose and walked around the table to lean over Hector’s shoulder. “His name was Mukhtar al-Halabi,” he said, tapping the photo rather aggressively. “He was only a kid, barely twenty.”
“And he used to work for us,” added Fabio. “He reported to the Crazy Horse.”
“Where?” Hector asked.
“Syria,” answered Ozgur. “He was Mosa al-Damawy’s finest pupil.”
Hector swiveled and frowned at the ghost of Mosa al-Damawy. Then he looked back at the photo and asked, “Who did this?”
“Any theories, Professor Kane?” Rossini said.
“I’ve already told you my story.”
“Assad,” Ozgur said. “Assad’s men.”
“Actually it wasn’t al-Assad,” Fabio corrected. “Not strictly. It was one of us.”
Hector’s eyes widened. He looked at Fabio, then at Rossini, then back at Ozgur. “Us?”
Ozgur returned to his chair with a frustrated air. Fabio pulled the photo back, then handed Hector another. This photo was one of the Yakhont photos he’d seen during his trailer briefing with the Cardinal two weeks ago. It showed a TELAR vehicle painted with the red, white, and black colors of the Syrian flag.
“Us in the know.” Fabio tapped his pinkie on the edge of the photo. “Mukhtar was the one who took this.”
Hector raised his head. “Did you figure out who he, or she, is?”
Fabio only smirked. Ozgur rubbed his jaw and let out a desperate sigh.
“Tell me something,” Rossini said. “At what point did you become aware that the Cairo station had informers in Syria?”
“Is that really a question?”
“I’m afraid it is, yes.”
“Formally, never. But that’s common knowledge on the street.”
The DIA man didn’t seem to like this answer. “How about the Yakhont intel?”
“I knew about it on April twenty-eighth. Sunday. During my briefing with the CIA director.”
“And before that?”
“Never.”
Ozgur snorted and rubbed his face.
Fabio extracted a document from deeper in his folder and passed it to Hector. This document was an incident report undersigned by Lisa McConkey on April 26, 2013. It detailed her encounter with Hector’s suspicious activity in her office. In half a page, she’d succinctly documented his fake resignation, his snooping around her cabinets, his unsatisfactory answer when caught in the act. Everything.
Hector wadded the paper up and flung it behind his back. No one moved to reclaim it. Hector then bowed his head and squeezed it. He couldn’t believe the mess he’d gotten himself into.
“My advice is to open up right now,” Rossini said.
“Jesus, man!” Hector said. “You’ve made quite a theory based on one rash mistake. I was desperate for information, I confess. But—”
“Is that a confession?” Ozgur interrupted him.
“A what?”
“This session is being recorded, Hector,” Fabio said.
“But I didn’t do anything!”
A moment of silence weighed on the table. Then Rossini said, “Exactly eleven days ago, Agent Kane, we received intel from our source in the GRU. Our source said the Russians had infiltrated one of the CIA’s most important stations. Namely, Cairo.”
Hector processed this piece of information quickly. So the Defense Intelligence Agency had infiltrated their Russian counterpart, the Main Intelligence Directorate (commonly known by its dated acronym, GRU). Splendid. Why do we still have war in Syria, then? We should be in Bog’s head by now!
“‘Buratino’ is what the Russians call him,” Rossini continued. “Are you familiar with the name?”
Hector shook his head.
“It’s a character in a children’s book,” Fabio said. “Aleksey Tolstoy’s plagiarism of Collodi’s Pinocchio.”
“With a big difference,” Rossini pointed out, sticking out his forefinger. “Buratino never becomes a real boy. And his nose doesn’t grow long if he lies.”
“He’s a pretty good liar,” Ozgur growled rather condemningly.
“He acts himself on stage,” Fabio said, “defends other toys. Proletariat feel-good stuff. At any rate, whatever weird code the Russians have for their spies, we didn’t know who Buratino was, but we managed to narrow our list down.”
And the Cairo deputy patted his red folder with glee.
Ozgur said sadly, “That was my mission, Hector. To prove it wasn’t you.”
Hector stared at him, feeling his whole body stiffen.
“And I was proven wrong beyond my wildest expectations,” Ozgur added. “Really, really, you’ve managed to impress not just me, but all of us.”
Hector cried, “That isn’t me! I’m not your ‘Buratino’! I’ve no connection to the Russians whatsoever!”
Yet the next seven photographs, which Fabio passed along with relish, made Hector regret making that claim.
They were taken from the four-rotor drone, and they spotted him toasting to what looked like a victory with the polkovnik and the bicameral Chinese/Pulaui spymaster.
After a long pause, Hector pushed the incriminatory photos away. He took a deep breath, then said with defiant clarity, “I am not Buratino, and I would like to speak to my lawyer.”
Fabio declared loudly, “Session concluded at twenty-one fourteen, May seventeen, two thousand thirteen.”
The folder was closed, and the three interrogators stood up.
“What if I’m telling the truth?” Hector said. “What if I’ve been set up?”
“Then you should have come to us first,” Ozgur said.
“Heads up from a friend, Hector,” Fabio said. “Whatever ‘innocent’ is, that’s not you.”
“And Yubi? What’re you gonna tell her? She must be terribly worried right now.”
Rossini exchanged looks with the others. “For caution’s sake, we can put her in loose confinement for now.”
“What? Why? She’s not part of anything!”
“I believe you’ve lost track of your lies, professor,” Rossini said, undoing his tie. “What you mentioned to this committee was that your wife took part in the abduction of an American citizen. Think well about your next lie. You’ll have plenty of time to cook it up in solitary.”
Hector jumped from his chair with a groan, throwing the table away in frustration. Ozgur leaped back and avoided the impact. But Fabio wasn’t as lucky. He tripped on his lyre-backed chair, and the table landed on his left leg. He yelped with pain.
“Sorry, Fab!” Hector hastened. “I didn’t...”
The door buzzed open, and two broad-jawed Navy sailors in digital-blue camos raced in and dragged Hector out of the room.