Banquo's Ghosts (48 page)

As the prisoners entered, they passed a free-standing partition, a rectangular-shaped room divider that enclosed a table and chairs; the room divider inset with a large rectangular two-way mirror, so that anyone sitting behind the table could look out into the room without being observed. Notepads, pencils. A video camera on a tripod pointed through the gray glass. Microphones, sound recorders, headphones, and wires ran along the floor.

Plus a new addition: Wallets had been carrying something in a smelly dark-smudged clear plastic evidence bag under his arm. He placed it on the edge of the table and pulled the ziplock to reveal a charred hunk of plastic and metal: “The remains of Farah Nasir’s computer. Enough of a hard drive here to get something off of?”

An FBI technician moved it to a table across the room. He sat, staring lovingly at the burnt ruin. He placed another diagnostic laptop side by side and started gently connecting the former to the latter.

As the prisoners were marched by, they could see into the enclosure of the room divider for a brief moment, but not when they reached the mesh holding cell. Once inside the cage, their reactions could be monitored without their knowing who was looking. Suddenly, they understood this.

But what really gave them pause was neither the mesh cell nor the room divider with the recording devices. Three large black booths were arranged in the center in the ballroom, more or less equidistant from each other—in a triad, like three square mausoleums. Big, black, silent, and daunting. These three black enclosures were four-foot-by-six-foot prefabricated soundproof isolation booths. Primarily used for sound recording, they were fitted with two-foot-by-two-foot custom windows so you could see inside. Their narrow doors yawned open for their first subjects.

Inside, the walls were lined with black foam soundproof cushioning, while a metal chair with more cuffs, wrists and ankles, waited patiently. Yellow-and-black caution tape ran along the saddle of the open doors, so God forbid, no one tripped going in. The wires from the interrogation table snaked into each booth. Once the door closed, no sound in the world would escape. The men behind the room dividers could give orders to the operator or ask questions, and all the prisoners in the cage would see was the subject’s reactions.

This was the sort of setup designed specifically to scare the piss out of anyone watching from the mesh holding cell. You wouldn’t hear a sound. Just see the pain in the subject’s face, and human imagination would do the rest. You’re next, Sport.

Think about it . . .

The last prisoner to pass the interrogation divider glanced inside. Yasmine. And for a second that hard veneer of hers seemed to shiver. What she had missed coming out of the loft, she noticed now. Peter Johnson sat at the desk in a folding chair, watching the prisoners enter. Casually, he tapped the eraser of his pencil on his yellow legal pad—
tap-tap-tap
—calmly waiting. His eyes met hers momentarily, but only for an instant. And what they showed her was simply
nothing
. No anger, no interest, no hate, no heat. She’s arrived; that was good enough.
Dayenu.
Let’s get on with it.

Though what he saw in her eyes was something a little different. The spark of doubt, shimmering for a second. But just for a second. Johnson recalled her words from his own interrogation: “Kill the mullahs; topple the regime. We’ll still be in the same place. Kill me. There are millions more.”

We’ll see—he thought to himself. Yeah, we’ll see.

Yasmine started violently when she passed the first of the isolation booths. Yossi the Turk had appeared from behind one. He’d been prep-ping a metal chair inside. And clearly she recognized him. Amazed that he still lived? Yossi too showed nothing. Simply pointed to the mesh cage, and the NYPD cops obligingly brought everyone inside. Locking them down, systematically, as they all started to talk—no,
squawk
—at once. The noise level in the ballroom rose. Even the non-Farsi speakers sensed the rhythm and intonation on the alien tongues.

Yossi’s right eye was covered with a black patch. It had, after all, only been four weeks since he’d been shot in the high mountain valley. He didn’t seem put out at his infirmity. The remaining eye managed to stare out of his skull with the same reptilian intensity. The noise from the holding cell rose to a crescendo. Half the men were banging their wrists and tugging at their cuffs. Yasmine, cool as ever, awaited her fate. Yossi spoke one word in Farsi. A soft word, and it sounded like, “Hey.”

The whole cage went dead silent.

Yossi the Turk spoke again in Farsi. A full sentence or two this time. It might have been, “Who wants to be first? Any volunteers?” And several of the Dips blanched.

He went instead to where the Frenchman stood behind the mesh with his wrist cuffed to the wire. Then stared into Anton’s eyes, and
every time Anton looked away, Yossi shifted a little to put his broad, brutal face up close. Then finally he said one word that needed no translation. Nodding.

“You.”

Looking in from behind the room divider at the interrogation table, or from the prisoners’ point of view behind the mesh wire, it wasn’t clear what Yossi the Turk was actually
doing
to Anton in the isolation booth. Both men were visible, Anton sitting and Yossi moving around, passing before and behind through the two-by-two window. No sound—just the Frenchman’s body reacting like an eviscerated, staked-out frog in a high school science experiment, twitching every time Yossi touched him, making Anton’s limbs jerk: head, shoulders, neck. The Iranian’s fluttering hand moved this way and that, and the reaction on the face of his subject seemed to jump out of the isolation booth window: first contorted, wrenched in pain; the pause of fear; then after another pause, weeping. Finally the contortion once more and the muffled sound of Anton’s cries inside the booth straining to escape. Was it all an act? If so, give the man an Academy Award, and that man would be the Turk, not the Frenchman, because he got results. Anton broke in three long minutes. And the team behind the see-through room divider could start asking questions.

Banquo had ordered two of the Iranian Diplomats into the two free isolation booths, and they watched the whole Anton Show, growing paler by the second, looking away, then looking back, finally pulling at their own chairs to get free.

The audio wires that ran between the interrogation table and the nearby isolation booths brought every sound to the table. The hastily assembled interrogation team had raided the minibars of adjacent hotel suites so the tabletop was quickly littered with half-consumed fruit drinks, bottled water, power bars, and the like. All swept off to the floor when the time came to do some Q & A and make use of the yellow legal pads.

The assembled team represented just about everyone involved: O’Hanlon and his team, Wallets and Johnson, a Captain from the NYPD, a Captain from the FDNY, the Medical Examiner—the top tier of people who needed answers. So the space behind the room divider was pretty scarce, leaving most watchers standing. Even Banquo, who stood silently through the whole proceedings, looking more at the heads of the interrogation team than the subjects in the booths.

No one had talked about what they were about to do, because they all knew it, they could all feel it in their bones: they were going to break down their subjects and save the lives of people, innocent New Yorkers. If such innocents had seen what the team saw, would they have let them keep it up? Would they be appalled or resolved? Or more repelled that deluded young men would poison perfect innocents just to enter heaven? No one could say.

During Anton’s Q & A, Banquo occasionally whispered into Wallets’ ear, who spoke softly into a microphone asking questions, his voice low and raspy. His close call with the bullet made it hard for him to breathe, and you could see his chest move slowly with each word.

The Frenchman’s answers came out to their wireless headsets, so everyone plugged in behind the divider could hear. While the only thing the Iranian Diplomats saw in their holding cage was the Frenchman’s tear-streaked face through the two-by-two window, lips moving, spilling his guts.

Answers going like this:

“I made transfers of $40 million in four installments.”

“Yes, from Kutmar Investment Group, three other Iranian investment groups, and into an account controlled by Farah Nasir and another controlled by Yasmine Farouk.”

“Accounts each woman opened several years ago, here in New York.”

“Yes, both accounts in Bank of America. They applied for credit cards, multiple credit cards, each with 500K cash limits.”

“Yes, that would be eighty separate credit card accounts.”

“The wire-tracking device we gave Johnson—no, I don’t know where Farah Nasir secured it.”

“No, I don’t know who manufactured it.”

“No, I don’t know who arranged for the parking facilities at the Valley Forge Golf Course.”

“I only know of two delivery cells operating in the New York area. The one in the Brooklyn apartment and the second in Queens near the airport.”

“There is some sort of central deposit for the material.”

“I don’t know what the material is—I’m not a chemist.”

“More cells? Yes, there are more.”

“The Iranians know.”

Banquo made another command decision:

“All right. Enough of the Frenchman. Let’s see how cooperative the Iranian Dips want to be. Start with the two sweating it out in the booths. Yossi, you know what to do.”

From their manacles in the holding cell and their ringside seats in the isolation booths, the Iranian Dips watched all this with growing dread. They knew they were next, and Yasmine knew she was being saved for last.

T
he Iranian Diplomats couldn’t have been more cooperative. As Yossi left Anton’s isolation booth, calmly closed the door behind him, and approached the other two black mausoleums, both men inside began to speak. A torrent of words streamed out their mouths as they strained against the restraints, their heads bobbing furiously in the two-by-two window. And they hadn’t even been touched yet. From her place in the holding cell, Yasmine saw their fear, and contempt dripped from her like poison.

As Yossi put his hand on the first isolation booth door handle, Banquo spoke into his Bluetooth headset, “Yossi. Get to the point. We’re looking for backpack cells.”

And the Turk did exactly that. In quick succession the remaining Iranian Dips were run through the isolation booths like fancy women at the Elizabeth Arden tanning salon. Ten minutes at a pop, in and out. No fuss, no muss. No single individual knew the names and addresses and numbers of every additional cell, but between the seven, the interrogation team learned of four more groups of men, ranging from a five-man cell to a ten-man cell for a total of forty men.

“Think we got them all?” Johnson whispered to Wallets. But Wallets only grunted in reply. And that took some effort. So Johnson answered the question for himself, glancing at Yasmine through the two-way glass. “Unless she knows of more.”

“That’s enough,” Banquo said. “Take all the men into Ballroom Two. There’s a refreshment table set up there. Let them commingle. If someone says something interesting, we’ll know, but don’t count on it. If they start making love to the Frenchman without his permission, put a stop to it.” To the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, and the Medical Examiner: “Why don’t you take a break? Keep an eye on them.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

In two minutes, the six Iranian Diplomats and Anton were led from the room, leaving Yasmine alone in the mesh holding cell. Wallets left his place at the table, clutching his chest for a moment in discomfort, then came around the room divider. Both he and Yossi stood before Yasmine, staring at her. Yossi played show and tell with a small pair of pliers.

“He twists it a little. Works pretty well.” Wallets measured her reaction.

The woman remained defiant. “Especially on cowards,” she spat. Carefully, she unbuttoned the cuff of her shirt and slid the sleeve up. From wrist to elbow the skin of her forearm was covered in old wounds, some places cut and healed over, some burned, showing a puckered texture like cellulite. Somebody had really been at her. How much of her body looked like this?

Sitting at the table, Johnson realized that all that time in Iran, in the various facilities, the long car ride across Persian mountains and deserts, even his own interrogation—he’d never seen her forearm. In fact, like all Muslim women, Yasmine had been covered from neck to ankles.

But Wallets and those behind the room divider were more arrested by the sound of the woman’s voice. It carried a primal force, so much so if you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t have been able to tell who was about to interrogate whom. “If she wants to talk, let her talk,” Banquo murmured into his Bluetooth. “But remember, we need to know whether there are any more cells and how the hell they got that material in here and where it is.”