Authors: Alan Jacobson
38
V
ail craned her neck to get a look at the stone house that was illuminated by the car’s headlights. Given the countryside’s suffocating darkness, the contrasting brightness was stark.
According to DeSantos, the structure’s low roofline and row of gables made it a prime example of Cotswold architecture.
“This is the safe house?” Vail asked. “Looks like it’s a couple hundred years old.”
“Maybe more. Its virtues are pretty obvious—it’s well isolated, it’s only got a few small windows on the main floor, and it’s made of rock. Pretty easy to defend against an incursion.”
They walked up to the front entrance and knocked. A halogen porch light came on, and a moment later Reid pulled open the arched wooden door.
“How’d you get here before us?” Vail asked.
“I know a short cut. Follow me.”
He led them to a bookcase in the living room, which featured roughhewn kiln-dried beams and a creaky wood floor. He removed a copy of Don Quixote and pressed a button. A latch released and he pulled the furniture toward them; it moved smoothly on a piano hinge mounted along its left side.
They descended two stories down a tightly-wound metal spiral staircase into a subbasement that appeared to be from another century: modern glass walls stretched the entire length of the house.
This doesn’t look like a safe house; it looks like a black site.
“Black site” was a military term more recently associated with CIA-run covert rendition locations in foreign countries where enhanced interrogation techniques were employed on high value prisoners acquired in the War on Terror. Vail did not know of any on UK soil, but this bore the hallmarks of a rendition site designed to extract information outside the traditional law enforcement environment.
Ethan Carter stood in an area directly ahead of them, rummaging through a drawer in a Craftsman tool chest.
In one of the glass rooms sat a man of about forty, disheveled black hair and day-old stubble his most distinguishing features. He was seated on a metal folding chair, his manacled wrists resting on a small table in front of him.
“That our guy?” Vail asked.
“Vince Richter,” Reid said. “Hector briefed you?”
“I did.” DeSantos stepped beside Carter and examined the items he was sorting through. “Is this what we’ve got to work with?”
“Some of it,” Carter said. “What did you have in mind?”
Vail stole a look at the spread of devices and shook her head. “No, this is not the way to go.”
DeSantos snorted. “Who labeled you the expert and put you in charge?”
“I
am
an expert in interview techniques. And
I
put me in charge.”
“This isn’t an interview, Karen. It’s an interrogation, a plain, old balls-to-the-wall interrogation. You don’t have to be PC here.”
“I can’t be here, period. If I’m a party to a coercive interrogation, I have to report it. It’s against FBI regs. I could be fired.”
“Report it?” Carter asked. He exchanged looks with Reid and DeSantos. “Do you not understand what we’re doing here? What you’re doing here? The Security Service has entrusted us with an extremely sensitive operation. Our ranks have been compromised. What we’re doing here isn’t happening. So no matter what comes out of this, no matter what’s done or what interrogation techniques are used, it’s not happening. There’s nothing to
report
.”
“That’s a nice thought, but—”
“This isn’t a negotiation, Karen.” DeSantos checked his watch. “And we don’t have a lot of time.”
Vail set her jaw, realizing that her need to follow FBI regulations probably went out the window once she agreed to work with Buck. Then again, maybe she crossed that threshold when she landed at Heathrow. She folded her arms and asked, “How aggressive do you plan to get?”
“Let’s see. There’s a notorious weapons dealer out there with a small cadre of ready and willing soldiers preparing to release a lethal toxin on the city of London. How aggressive should we get?”
Smartass
. “You know about the Senate Intelligence Committee report on enhanced interrogation?”
“It’s classified, Karen. And it’s six thousand pages long.”
“Enough of it’s been leaked. And from what I’ve read, forcing a prisoner to divulge information under duress doesn’t work.”
“It depends on the prisoner. It depends on the interrogator. And it depends on a number of other factors that we don’t have time to sit here and discuss.”
“I’m just saying there are more effective ways of getting the information that we need.” She looked at Carter and Reid, who turned to DeSantos, a look of deference penetrating their gazes.
Vail understood the dynamic: she was DeSantos’s colleague; he should be the one to deal with her—first. If they didn’t like where it was going, they would then intervene.
DeSantos pulled over a metal stool and sat down. “Okay, what’s your plan?”
“I’ll go in and talk with him. I may be able to get him to give us what we want without resorting to torture.”
“Enhanced interrogation.”
“Fine, call it what you want. Torture.”
DeSantos cocked his head. “I’m curious. Why do you think it’s okay to get…aggressive when your loved one’s life is on the line, but in this case you’re willing to back off and follow the letter of the law?”
Vail ground her molars. “If we were following the letter of the law, we wouldn’t be in a black site in the middle of the English countryside with a bunch of…
tools
in our possession, now, would we?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” Vail said, “it’s not.”
VAIL YANKED OPEN THE GLASS DOOR to the room where Richter was seated. To properly conduct the type of “rapport building” interview she was attempting, she would need at least two weeks, multiple visits, and a host of other conditions she did not have at her disposal. In fact, the imminent threat posed by the men standing behind her—in full view because of the glass walls—doomed her efforts before she would speak her first word.
Ideally, Vail’s goal would be to treat the prisoner with respect and dignity, and to make him understand that she was going to be truthful with him. She would explain that she was his advocate and would help him obtain whatever it was he wanted, short of freedom—though even that could potentially be dangled as a benefit depending on his level of cooperation and the nature of his past transgressions.
Establishing rapport, building trust had worked with captured al-Qaeda terrorists, so there was some hope that it could work with a guy like Vince Richter. Hardened though he likely was, having almost assuredly received resistance training, it might be their best approach. In this case, Vail would not even start discussing Rudenko, ricin, or his colleagues for at least a couple of interviews. She would ask him about his needs, his views on what he did for a living, his family life, the hardships he faced as a child…topics that built a relationship—not to be friends, but to be negotiating partners. You give me what I need, and I’ll give you what you need.
This approach required weeks to be effective.
But Vail did not have weeks. She had minutes.
Equally important, the threat of aggressive coercive techniques—so-called enhanced interrogation—presented an insurmountable obstacle. It was impossible to build rapport with Richter when three men stood in the adjacent room making no effort to hide their desire to get their hands around his neck.
What she really needed was a one-time dump of information from Richter—names, places, times. But he had no motivation to do this, and Vail had no basis for being in a position to help him get what he wanted. In fact, he would probably step in front of a moving train before giving up information that would endanger his comrades.
She knew all this as she entered the room, yet she felt the need to try.
“Mr. Richter, I’m Karen Vail.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Not in the least. I was just introducing myself. I like to know who I’m talking with, so I wanted to afford you the same courtesy.”
He sat up straight and tilted his head slightly, as if wondering if she was being truthful. This clearly was not what he was expecting.
“I know what you’re thinking. You were waiting for those guys to break out the pliers and start pulling out your fingernails. Or smash your testicles with the hammer they’ve got out there.”
Yeah, that got his attention
. His eyes were riveted to hers. They widened slightly at the first part of her comment and his pupils dilated when the most sensitive part of his anatomy was mentioned.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Mr. Richter. That’s what they intend to do. And I think you know that. But I was hoping we could chat a bit and avoid all that. Because I know those guys, one of them really, really well. And let’s just say you owe me big time for coming in here first. He was chomping at the bit.”
“I know all about Hector Cruz.”
Good move on his part; he’s trying to throw me off my game by showing me he has information that he should not have.
“Do you, now?”
“I do.”
She spread her hands, palms up. “Excellent. Then you know he’s like you, a trained assassin. And you know that he’s not bluffing. Neither am I. I’m your best chance at avoiding a very, very bad evening. So help me to help you. Make it easy on both of us.”
Richter looked at her a long moment, his eyes moving left to right. Assessing her, sizing her up. “What do you want to know?”
“Where can we find Hussein Rudenko?”
“No idea.”
REID LEANED BOTH HANDS on the glass. “I like Karen, but she’s out of her league.”
“This isn’t gonna work,” Carter said.
DeSantos did not remove his gaze from Richter. “I’m not so sure of that. She’s gone nose to nose with serial killers and drug cartel lieutenants. In a way, she’s in her element.”
“Sounds like you support her nice guy approach,” Carter said.
DeSantos lifted a shoulder. “I respect her abilities. But I’d rather hook up a battery to Richter’s balls, if that’s what you mean, because we don’t have time to do a dance with this guy. That’s why she’s on a short rope. Five minutes. She doesn’t produce, it’s my turn.”
VAIL NODDED SLOWLY. “You have no idea where Hussein Rudenko is. Well, that’s not a good start to our conversation, Vince. But that’s okay. There’s lots of other stuff I need to know. Like, where’s the ricin being stored?”
Richter hesitated a moment. His gaze drifted over to where DeSantos was standing, legs spread, arms folded across his chest, staring intently at him through the glass walls.
“Also no idea. But a guy like Rudenko, the way he’d work is he’d sock it away in multiple places. Makes it harder to stop the attack. Kind of like not putting all your eggs in one basket.”
“Good analogy,” Vail said. “So where are these places?”
Richter pushed the palms of his hands down along his legs. “Only Mr. Rudenko knows. He doesn’t tell us information we don’t need to know.”
You’ve gotta be kidding me
.
If I hear that one more time, I’m gonna scream.
“Is there anything you want that I can get you?”
“How about letting me walk out of here.”
Vail smiled. “What I asked was, is there anything you want
that I can get you
. I can’t let you go. You know that.”
“You mean like a beer?”
“A beer. A steak. Something like that.”
“Nope.”
He’s not making this easy. Then again, where the hell would I get a steak in the middle of nowhere?
“Any idea how we can go about finding Mr. Rudenko?”
“He’s on the move, not staying in one place more than a day.”
Figured as much.
“Do you have a way of getting in touch with him?”
Richter rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “He contacts me, not the other way around. I’m not part of his organization, I’m just a contractor. He pays me, I do my job, and I disappear like a good contract killer until the next time he needs me. And I’m not involved in the ricin deal. I know of it, because one of his guys talked.”
“Which guy—what’s his name?”
Richter narrowed his eyes as he looked at Vail. “Don’t know his name. But he wouldn’t do you no good, anyway.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because he’s dead.”
“You sure?”
“Killed him myself. A .40 round behind the ear. Yeah, he’s dead.”
That was the easiest confession I ever got. Too bad it can’t be used against him. This place doesn’t exist and this discussion isn’t really happening.
“What about Mike Hagel and Kyle Walker? Where are they?”
Richter turned his head away and stared at the floor.
“How about Ratib Morsi, Emir Dhul Fiqar, or Nikola Hačko?”
“I don’t know those names,” Richter said.
“What about Malik al-Atah and Farkhad Gogun?”
Richter shook his head. “Those either.”
Vail waited a few seconds, then stepped in front of him. “Look. Vince. I told you that if you don’t tell us what we need to know, the guys out there are gonna be your next visitors, and they’re not as nice as I am. Definitely not as attractive.” She waited. No reaction. “C’mon. Give me something.”
Richter, wearing a dour frown, said, “Hagel’s in Hackney, renting a bedsit at Graham and Mare, by the train tracks. Two-B. Walker’s got a place on Battersea Park Road, by Albert Bridge. He rents a room in the back of the old gray house. That’s all I got. Don’t know any of those other names.”
Vail took a long look at him. “You’re sure about that. Because once I walk out, I’m not coming back in, even if you scream for me. I won’t be sticking around here. Besides, I think I’d vomit if I watched them smash your balls.” She shivered—a genuine shudder.
“Like I said.”
The door opened and DeSantos gave Vail a sideways nod. He wanted her to leave.
Richter rose from his seat. “I told her what I know, DeSantos. I’m serious—that’s all I got.”
DeSantos held up a pair of rusted needle nose pliers. “These do the job on fingernails, as Karen pointed out. But I’ve found they work well on teeth, too. Both hurt. A lot.”