GUANTANAMO DETENTION CENTER—THE NEXT DAY
He was smaller than she expected, stooped over in his orange jumpsuit. His arms and legs were shackled together, and his eyes blinked constantly at the light. With his unkempt hair and beard he looked like a cross between a gnome and a homeless man. He moved meekly, though Corrine had noticed from the tapes she’d reviewed that this was an act; he could inflate his upper body and hold his head erect when he wished. The effect wasn’t quite regal, but the difference was noticeable.
Corrine sat at the wooden table, waiting for him to settle into his seat. When he did, she nodded to the interpreter that she was ready to begin. Two soldiers stood near the door, large batons in their hands; two more stood directly behind the prisoner.
“Are you being treated well?” Corrine asked him.
Kiro—known here as Muhammad al Aberrchmof, the name he had been given at birth—smiled as the translator repeated the question in Arabic, but said nothing.
“Is there anything that you need?” said Corrine.
“Freedom,” said Muhammad al Aberrchmof, in English.
Corrine tried not to look surprised, though the interrogators had told her that he didn’t understand English. They had also predicted that he wouldn’t speak in her presence—as a woman, she was considered about on a par with an earthworm.
“Are there people who should be notified that you are all right?” she said. al Aberrchmof said nothing.
“Your wife, your children,” she prompted, turning to the translator and repeating the question. “You want them to know that you’re well.”
“I have only myself,” said al Aberrchmof, again in English.
The interrogation team was watching all of this through a closed-circuit television. Though the camera was hidden in the wall, the prisoner probably realized they were watching and intended his performance as a message to them.
But what did it mean?
“It’s a shame that you’re alone,” said Corrine. “Are you willing to cooperate with us?”
“I have cooperated,” said al Aberrchmof.
“You speak English very well,” she said.
al Aberrchmof didn’t respond.
Corrine resisted the impulse to start asking more meaningful questions, fearful that doing so would tip off their importance and complicate the interrogation team’s job.
“Is there anything you would like to tell me?” she asked instead.
al Aberrchmof began speaking in Chechen. The translator, who had been chosen because he could handle Chechen as well as Arabic, pushed his glasses back on his nose as he struggled to catch all of the words.
As he spoke, al Aberrchmof’s voice gradually faded to a whisper. It was impossible to tell if he was really fatigued or if it was part of his performance.
“The Iranians are working with Allah’s Fist to construct a weapon,” he translated. “They will be launching it soon.”
Corrine waited, as if she were considering this information.
“You are not part of Allah’s Fist?”
al Aberrchmof’s head had slid down toward his chest.
Now it rose slowly, a contemptuous sneer on its face. “They do not understand the struggle of the Chechen people.”
“It seems you’re only a late convert to that cause,” said Corrine.
The prisoner held her gaze for a moment, his eyes large as if he were trying to plumb her consciousness. Then he blinked, and once more his head tilted downward.
“What sort of weapon?”
al Aberrchmof didn’t answer.
“A bomb?” she prompted.
Again he said nothing.
“How will they launch it?” she asked.
No answer.
“When will they launch it?”
No answer. She waited for a few seconds, then rose and started to leave.
“A ship,” he said in English as she reached the door. “I believe they will use a ship. It is an Iranian plan. We Chechens care nothing for them. Our concerns are with Chechnya.”
Peter Wilson, the head of the interrogation team, met her in the hall.
“What’d you think?” he asked, leading the way to the base commander’s hut, where they were due for lunch.
“He told me about the Iranian ship,” she said. “Pretty much what he said in interview 12.”
“You remember the tape?”
“Of course,” she said.
“The English is new.”
“He was giving you the finger. Were you surprised he talked to a woman?”
Wilson shrugged. “Maybe we’ve broken him down far enough. Or maybe one devil is the same as another.”
“How real is the Chechen rebel stuff?”
“Hard to tell,” said Wilson. “It’s consistent, but maybe he’s just setting up some sort of political line or defense. The Russians didn’t consider him important enough to go after, and a lot of these guys set up shop in Chechnya only because
they won’t be targeted by us. His history of attacks are all against the West.”
“Is he telling the truth about the ship?” Corrine asked.
“Maybe.”
“I think he’s lying,” she said. She hadn’t made up her mind until then, but she realized she was right. “He’s too controlled—he’s giving us this information for some reason. Or for a lot of them.”
“Obviously he has a reason,” said Wilson. He held the door open for her, and they stepped out of the building. A pair of Marines nearby snapped to attention so stiffly they could have served as models for a poster. “But I think he’s telling us more or less the truth. Bits of it anyway.”
“He’s telling us what he wants us to believe, certainly,” she said. She stopped short of the waiting Hummer. “I think I’ll skip lunch, Mr. Wilson.”
“But—”
“I want to go back over the interrogation videos, then I have to get back to Washington.”
“You have to eat, too, don’t you?”
She smiled at him. “If you send over a sandwich, I’d appreciate it.”