To the Death

His hallucinations were very bad now, and he swayed through some kind of a no-man’s-land, not comprehending the difference between reality and fantasy. He looked at the guard who asked the question. And he thought it was his father. The room kept dissolving into a café he frequented on the Vali-ye Asr. He could not even remember the question he had been asked ten seconds ago.

The American officer asked it again, and, as he did so, Aghani caved in. “Salman,” he said. “Ramon Salman. He’s my senior commander.” With his last ounce of defiance, he blurted out, “But you’ll never find him — he’s gone home.”

That’s Hamas, right? asked the interrogating officer, taking yet another wild stab in the dark, but acting on certain knowledge that the new links between al Qaeda and the Iranian/Palestinian terror group were growing stronger with each passing year.

The title al Qaeda had become almost generic, and it had ceased to mean anything, certainly not sufficient to pinpoint a terrorist operation. Al Qaeda was operational all around Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, in Iran, in both the south and northeast of Afghanistan, and in the mountains of Pakistan. It meant nothing to an intelligence agency, whereas Hamas very definitely did. It meant Tehran, or Damascus, the Syrian capital, which Salman had called on his cell phone from Boston the night of January 14. And that mattered.

Reza Aghani elected to answer. He seemed only semiconscious, and he had been deprived of sleep for a long time. He just sighed, and then mumbled, “Yes. Hamas.” Then he slumped forward, and the interrogator shouted for a stretcher to cart the unconscious Iranian terrorist to Guantánamo’s small, twenty-bed hospital.

The seventeen words Reza Aghani had uttered, under stress, bore all the signs of a man who had given up. The interrogators assessed he had been telling the truth. And they returned with new vigor to the cell occupied by Ramon Salman.

They shook him awake and turned up the music, slammed the door, and left him. When they returned an hour later, he was rocking backward and forward, in the manner of the insane, and not in time to the fifth-rate rock ’n’ roll. They ripped off his hood and turned on the arc lights, almost blinding him.

Right now, Ramon Salman did not know if he was in heaven or hell, though he suspected the latter. He could not work out whether he was in a dream or in reality. Like Aghani, he was hallucinating beyond reason, murmuring in Arabic, trying to work out why his children were in the room, why he kept drifting in and out of his favorite underground teahouse in Damascus, the one in Al-Bakry Street, near his home in the Old City.

SALMAN! YOU KNOW WHAT WE WANT. AND YOU’ALL GONNA TELL US RIGHT NOW. The words bore the drawn-out inflection of the Carolinas, and they were being yelled by a former graduate of The Citadel military academy.

GIMME THE NAME OF YOUR HAMAS COMMANDER IN CHIEF!!

Ramon Salman’s head lolled back, and his eyes rolled. He seemed to slide into sleep, and now he was still, his eyes unseeing, facing up to the ceiling.

The southern infantry colonel’s voice was softer now. And he spoke, quietly: “Come on, Ramon. You haven’t got one thing to gain by keeping quiet. Come on, tell me your commander’s name. Was it the Englishman, the SAS major who joined Hamas? Come on, boy, let’s end this shit right now. Just tell me the truth. Who is he? And where does he live?”

Ramon Salman looked up and said softly, “Damascus. He lives in Damascus. Sharia Bab Touma.”

“HE’S RAVI RASHOOD, RIGHT?” The voice from South Carolina was harsher now. “FORMERLY KNOWN AS MAJOR RAY KERMAN OF THE BRITISH SAS. That’s who you work for, RIGHT?”

The yelled final word almost made the Syrian leap out of his skin. He began to tremble as if terrified that one more word would seal his death warrant.

“ANSWER ME, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!!” The American voice was now full of venom, edged with menace, as he went in for the kill.

“WAS THAT WHO YOU CALLED FROM COMMONWEALTH AVENUE LAST WEEK?”

Salman could stand no more. And he closed his eyes against the pitiless glare of the hot arc lights. “Yes, sir,” he murmured in a barely audible whisper. “My commander in chief is General Ravi Rashood.”

CHAPTER 3

The communiqué from Guantánamo Bay came ripping through cyberspace at 2100 and landed simultaneously on the screen of Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe and that of his boss, the director of the National Security Agency, Rear Admiral George R. Morris.