The car ride had gone on for another forty minutes or so. Khan guessed he was in some ISI-owned house, deep in the valleys. But the dimly lit room might as well have been anywhere in Pakistan. The ISI had numerous torture centres, most of which were not in their official buildings, and didn’t show up on any government paperwork. To all but a very few people, their whereabouts were unknown. Officially, they didn’t exist, just as the black sites around the world Khan had sent over thirty Pakistani men to as a result of the information he’d given to the CIA didn’t exist. It was the way of things, the path he’d chosen; and now it was payback time.
He was naked and tied to a wooden chair, blood oozing from a large gash above his right eye where the torturer had punched him with a brass knuckleduster. He spat more blood from his mouth, and felt the jagged edges of broken front incisors with his tongue. The man was old-school, preferring scalpels and dental pliers to serums or electric shocks. He had them laid out on a wooden table in front of him; all part of the vicious game. He was jowly and heavily lined, with an obvious pot belly. He had a bad comb-over and a wispy moustache, like that of a teenage boy. He wore only khaki pants and a sweat-stained white undershirt.
Khan trembled involuntarily. But he hadn’t been asked any questions as yet.
Apart from the torturer, two ISI operatives and a man operating a recording device, Brigadier Hasni now entered the room and stood roughly four metres away. Out of range of flying blood, but close enough to study the contorted face and hear Khan moan.
Khan worried why Hasni had arrived. The man had been a torturer in his time and was good at it by all accounts. But why do it yourself when there were others to do it for you? There were myriad other things in life more pleasurable, except for a sadist. But he knew that Hasni wasn’t one; it had been his duty, he supposed. Besides, he knew that sadists made bad torturers. They lacked the empathy that was necessary to obtain a confession or information. If a victim merely thought the torturer was getting off on the experience, he or she would simply blurt out anything early on, or even before they experienced any pain. And there would be no way they’d shift from that initial position.
The man pulled off the bloodstained knuckleduster, keeping his black leather glove intact. He stretched his back, clearly tired by his physical exertions. He picked up a length of lead pipe from the table and waved it before Khan’s eyes. He could see it clearly, because the man did not like to strike the eyes and had been fastidious to avoid them. The eyes don’t lie, he thought. They betray, but they do not lie. He watched the man twiddle the pipe in his hand before looking at it with what appeared to be a degree of disdain. What could he do with it? Khan thought. Knock me out. Break my toes or kneecaps. It was crude, even for him. As if sensing this, the man placed it back down and lifted up the pliers. This was a different matter, and Khan winced at the thought of it. The teeth, the ISI operatives in the car had said, he likes the teeth.
“Wait,” Hasni said, holding up his hand.
Khan saw Hasni walk over to him, stopping by his side. He bent over and whispered, “I know it was you, Khan. You told the Americans where she was, didn’t you?”
Dear God, Khan thought. He knows. But how does he know? He’d only relayed the whereabouts of the US Secretary of State to one person. His CIA handler.
Hasni straightened up and move backwards a few steps. “You have no children.”
Khan shook his head. “No.”
“A man without children is like a car without an engine. What’s the point?”
Mahmood, Hasni’s son, Khan thought. He knows everything.
“Ah,” said Hasni. “Right there, just a flicker. You’ve got it, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Khan said, weakly.
“Oh, yes. Yes, you do. You told the American about my son.”
He felt utterly hopeless. But what he did now know was that he was being tortured for Hasni’s revenge. This wasn’t about how long he would take to break, or what needed to be reduced to raw meat, twisted, mangled, shredded or smashed beyond repair. There was no breaking point applicable, no sense of rationality to the concept of breaking in time. And he began to weep, knowing that no truth, no piece of intel or name would be an antidote for the pain that would be visited upon him.
Hasni walked over to the far corner of the room, which was a dark recess. He stopped and began to talk with someone who was hidden there. When he saw the man come out of the shadows, Khan gasped, the intake of air causing intense pain in his broken teeth as it raced over the exposed nerves. He shook his head, both in disbelief and to relieve the pain, but mostly because he could not believe it. He was dead. Of that there was no doubt now.
The man standing a little way out of the shadows, a metre from Brigadier Hasni, was his CIA handler. Dan Crane.