METHANE BREATHERS
Only those who are the true authors of their acts,
which they are free to perform or not perform,
can be praised or blamed for what they do.
—Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current
Man cannot so far know the connection
of causes and events, as that he may
venture to do wrong in order to do right.—Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, XXXIV.30
Earlier that night, Josh and I had driven out from my hotel, following directions that liaison had provided, through progressively deserted and ultimately dark and empty country roads, stopping at a nondescript, isolated gate in a chain-link fence. We turned off our car and its lights. There were no other roads, or people, just large scrub bushes fading into the night. The only light came from several buildings hundreds of yards away, inside the facility. Josh and I stood about in the darkness for ten minutes, waiting and largely silent. We checked our watches under our coat sleeves from time to time. I turned up my collar and hunched my shoulders against the cold. At the appointed hour, our contact drove up on the other side of the fence, his tires making sharp crinkling noises in the gravel.
Muhamad gestured us into an ornate but slightly dilapidated waiting room in one of the buildings, underlit by bare, wan bulbs, and unheated. It was freezing. We all kept our coats on. Its scruffy decay reminded me of an Arab version of waiting rooms in which I had spent time in Simferopol, in the Crimea, or outside of Kiev. We all sat awkwardly beside each other on a single long, hard sofa, running the length of the wall. Oriental rugs and a low tea table completed the furniture. Several of Muhamad’s colleagues arrived a few minutes later and Muhamad introduced us.
.
They were our hosts this night, and puffed themselves up to us in friendly but stilted formality.
. We shook hands all around, smiled thinly at each other, and sat back on the long sofa to drink over-sweetened tea, served from a long-stemmed burnished copper teapot. We had little to say to one another. They did not know what we were doing or who we were and we had nothing to tell them. After a polite interval of staring mutely at ornate wall motifs, all of us with our hands on our knees, I excused myself, returning to pace slowly up and down the runway, in the dark. Josh joined me a couple of minutes later, also relieved to be quit of the tea room, and we stood silent on the tarmac, looking at and feeling the night. It was impossible not to think of the final, fog-filled airport scene in
Casablanca; the resemblance was remarkable, but I did not mention this. I thought it would sound artificial and inappropriately light, given what we were doing.
Muhamad somehow found me well off from the nearest building or man, walking alone with my thoughts. He handed me a small packet, with a satisfied look.
“So now I can disappear.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
I’m already half disappeared, I thought. Muhamad returned to his car and stood there with a couple of
officers. I walked to the end of the runway, to stare at nothing. My breath steamed when I exhaled, and I put my hands in my pockets.
A small convoy of three or four vehicles emerged from the darkness at the opposite end of the airport from that which Josh and I had entered. It was CAPTUS, escorted by security from the host intelligence service. I was about one hundred yards away from where they stopped. I could see CAPTUS bundled out of the middle vehicle—
, underdressed for the cold, a little hunched over. It struck me that in all the months I had been working the case I had never seen CAPTUS walk before. The security men shuffled him into a building adjacent to the one where I had taken tea with the
officers. I stared for a moment at the door that had closed after CAPTUS. I felt badly for him.
We continued to wait. I saw Little Guy standing under the small overhanging roof of the waiting room building, smoking a cigarette. Josh went to speak to a couple of our interlocutors, then caught up with me.
“It’s coming.
. Ten, fifteen minutes.” This was our black plane. I went to our car and got my bag. The distant men on the perimeter moved off the runway. I could just glimpse that they were armed. We moved off the runway, too. Everyone in sight disappeared into the darkness, to attend to unknown tasks.
Shortly, an aircraft appeared out of the sky, very low, very close, and very
, and landed with
a
, rolling gently to a stop not more than seventy-five yards from me. I had not seen or heard anything until the very last seconds before it landed.
“Methane breathers,” I murmured.
“What fucks,” Josh said.
I glanced at him, my brows knit. “What?” He did not answer.
He walked over to the lone ninja and the local official and talked for a moment. He gestured for me to join them. He and the ninja walked toward me, leaving the local behind. We met halfway between us on the runway, about forty yards from the plane. Bright light came out of the plane’s doors.
To my surprise, the ninja was a woman. Up close, she was petite, fineboned, with long, dark hair. Incongruous. We shook hands. Josh and the woman were engaged in a testy exchange, which she interrupted to greet me.
“You’re the one going with the detainee?
“Yes.”
“We’ll leave
[soon].”
She was all business.
Josh and the woman returned to their argument.
“It’s protocol,” she said. “This is how we do it.”
“I don’t care if it’s protocol. It’s unnecessary and we’re insulting the
.
30 I would be. Why don’t you adjust to circumstances? There’s no danger here. I’ve worked all this out with the
.” Josh was controlled, but direct. The woman took offense. I was bewildered but growing alarmed. What was going on? “Can’t do it. It’s protocol. These are our orders. This is how we do it. The station has nothing to do with this.” This woman was not budging.
“Who are you?” Josh asked. “I deal with these guys every day. You don’t need to do this stuff.”
“I am running this operation. It’s protocol, designed for everyone’s safety.
. There’s no discussion about it. I don’t care where we are. I run the rendition. As soon as we’re done with the physical
, we’re gone.”
She looked at me. “Put your bag in the plane.”
She ended the conversation abruptly and walked toward the building where CAPTUS was being held, and where several of her ninjas had entered while we spoke.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Josh was contemptuous.
“She’s a Headquarters fuck. These guys are clowns. She wouldn’t know how to drop her pants and take a shit out here if she didn’t have her ‘protocol’ to follow. Her field experience is—these people aren’t field officers. They aren’t using their heads. They don’t know what they’re doing. This is supposed to be a
black operation. That’s the whole point. That’s why we arranged it as we did.
. But it’s not normal with kung fu masters hopping around
.”
A minute or two later we walked over to where CAPTUS was being held. One of the ninjas was a doctor, who greeted us just as they were finishing up and taking a hooded and shackled CAPTUS onboard the plane
. The doctor, Josh, and I followed. He was good-natured, if a bit hurried and wary of his surroundings. He explained that he had conducted a physical examination of CAPTUS, including a proctologic probe, to verify that the detainee was in good health, and posed no threat to the rendition squad.
, again so that he posed no threat to the team.
“You
my guy?!” I asked, taking on the spirit of Josh’s irritation. Josh snorted.
The doctor’s face was covered with his black knit face mask, but he seemed less intransigent or officious than the woman had been and took my incredulous flippancy in good spirit.
“Sometimes these guys hide stuff there, that’s all. Bombs, who knows what. Some of these guys are awful. We have to know before we get him on a plane where lives can be at stake if there’s a screwup.”
31
CAPTUS was onboard. We had reached the side of the plane.
. Everything had happened very fast.
. Little Guy and Big Guy approached from under the portico of the waiting room building. I thanked them for their help and shook hands. “
Choukran, choukran,” I said, placing my hand on my heart. The exchange took only seconds. Two more people I would never see again. I noticed that the nearest people and vehicles were already a couple hundred yards off.
I turned to Josh.
“Josh.”
His face looked hard and etched with fatigue. He was laboring to suppress his anger. We shook gloved hands.
“Okay.”
.
I boarded the plane, followed by the petite ninja woman, the last one in, who did not shake hands or speak with anyone. The lights in the cabin were blinding after the darkness outside. She secured the door and leaned into the cockpit. “Go,” she said. The plane’s engines immediately revved and we taxied down the runway.
I slid down the aisle and found a seat behind the wing. No one spoke—I gathered that part of the “protocol” was to maintain silence at all times. Everyone pointedly ignored me.
. I watched the few lights in the darkness below recede quickly behind us and drew the shade.
. Muhamad chatted in low tones with Little Guy and Big Guy, about thirty yards away. Josh slapped his hands together to stay warm. He and I were working together again. He had the lead this night, as I had had when we worked together on the elegant walk-in case. He 
had arranged for us to use their runway 
. He was focused, calm, and professional. It was 2 a.m. We were waiting for our “black” plane to arrive for CAPTUS’s second rendition, which would take him and me to Hotel California.
.” I slid the thin packet into the inside pocket of my jacket. 
.
. A lone black-clad ninja figure came out last. He wore a balaclava, covering his entire face except for his eyes. His jumpsuit was blousoned inside heavy boots, and he carried an M-4. He strode toward the waiting room building and was met halfway by one of the locals.
. Bureaucracy at work again—Check That Cable.
. That is not alerting. That’s why—no one here knows what we’re doing or who we are 
. Ninjas jump out, while a couple of Americans stand around waiting with some guy in chains? That’s just how not to draw attention. 
. That’s just perfect. You can bet now that all these guys here will see something pretty unusual has gone on. I wonder if someone might figure something out? 
. These clowns should have landed, 
have you and CAPTUS get on 
with no hint of what’s going on.”
. The ninjas were not welcoming. They drew a separator across the aisle. The cabin was filled with the roar of the engines. 
. I returned to my seat, pulled a blanket over my head, and slept fitfully for what seemed a long time.32