Mad Dogs (15 page)

I smiled: “Some guys got nothing but luck.”

28

Oh-oh
, thought Eric on that long ago and far away day when the wreck of his life began as they slammed him down in a chair and steel bracelets clamped his wrists with an electronic
click
! Bad enough when police goons stepped out of the blowing sand at the construction site and pulled him away from the other foreigners being loaded into a truck. Bad enough when they put him in a black hood. Whisked him away in a car. Rode him for hours. Bad enough when they hustled him black-hooded through a fortress that smelled of gun oil and concrete, rust and urine. Bad enough he stumbled in the black hood, heard shouts. Screams. Pistol shot. Bad enough when they pushed him down those stairs. But
then
they plopped him in a metal chair and clamped him to it with
prepared
high tech manacles. That,
that
was real bad.

“You are in the White Lion.” A man's voice. English. Accent: Iraqi.

The black hood flew off Eric's head. Searing light made him squint.

Glasses!
thought Eric
. Does he have my glasses?

He saw blurs. A prison room. No windows. Clamps trapped him in a metal chair facing a wooden desk that held a snake-necked lamp. Behind the desk perched the blur of a man in an olive uniform.

Eric shouted in Berlin-accented English: “I want to see my German consulate!”

WHAMANG!

Oh God oh God oh!
Eric shuddered from the
fire blast
vibration that he knew had to be shock treatment through the chair, a jolt of electricity.

“August 17, 1990,” said the man behind the desk. “Yesterday, our glorious Saddam extended his protection to you guest workers from Kuwait and Britain, France and Germany. He provided your detention for our mutual safety from the crazy war mongering Americans. You were brought here. To Basra. To the White Lion. To me.”

“My name is—”

WHAMANG!

Drooling, Eric knew he was drooling. Didn' get to tell him m' cover name. Engineer, no wife, no kids—
that's
true 'n' truth is the heart of a good lie.

Guards dragged Eric down a corridor to a black steel door they swung open. They put Eric's glasses on him. The walk-in closet he faced was a box of dizzy. Random bricks rose from the box floor that rose and fell like a wave. A man-sized metal shelf sloped out from one wall. Giant teardrops of red and blue and green smeared the walls.

“
Checa
,” said the desk man in a state security uniform. He had a mustache. “Our
checa
. Named for the Tsar's secret police. The Soviets who advised rebels in Spain loved your modern art. Kandinsky and Klee. Miro. Pavlov. Our glorious leader admires Stalin, so certain research from the West's past has been provided for us.”

“I'm Hans Wolfe. I'm a German citizen here on a privileged work visa.”

Guards shoved Eric into the
checa
cell. Slammed the door which jerked shut with a hollow metal
bong.
Eric heard the
clack
of an electronic lock.

Standing didn't work. He saw nothing plumb. No horizon. Walls, ceiling and floor winged at him as skreeing planes. Eric tripped over a brick, fell onto the iron bed that sloped down from the wall. Eric rolled off it. The bent planes, wavy ground, explosions of color, strobing lights: he was trapped in a surrealist painting.

Later. Guards pulled him from his cell. Beat him with L-shaped police batons from the previous decade's U.S. foreign aid program. They threw him in the
checa
. He soiled himself. They dragged him out. Knifed off his clothes. Fire hosed him. Dragged him naked to that chair.

Mustache Man sat behind the desk.
“What are the three questions?”

“I don't know!”

Electricity jolted Eric so hard his glasses flew off his face.

Behind the desk, the blurred man waved his hand in the glow of the snake-necked lamp. “Passport. Visa. Streams of computer code. Data means nothing. What matters is what works. A machine must obey. Or,
engineer
, it is a failure. Failure is unacceptable.

“Three questions. First question.
Who are you?
”

A rolling blast of electricity battered Eric into unconsciousness.

He woke writhing. In the
checa
. Guards jabbed eyeglasses on his face and pushed it towards two wooden bowls. The first bowl held gruel Eric fingered into his mouth. He slurped the second bowl of scum water.

Torture shouldn't have started right away, he knew. They should have waited until I argued my cover story so they could tear it—and me—apart.

Do the math, he told himself. Allied forces massing along the border of Kuwait and Iraq. Langley will know I got yanked from the group of Western engineers at the construction site for the enriched uranium plant. They know I'm missing. They'll find out I'm here. Tanks will roll over the Iraqi border to rescue me.

But not soon enough.

The White Lion will chew me to death.

Three choices:

Blow cover—Heck, spill my guts to convince them I'm most valuable alive.

Die without breaking.

Or escape.

Not going to die. Not going to break. Not going to traitor.

A guard yelled in Iraqi. Swung his L-shaped truncheon down on Eric's leg. The guard's buddy slammed the naked prisoner with a wooden bucket.
Grampa Claude back in Ohio liked Hank Williams song 'bout a hole in his bucket.

Guards took turns clubbing and kicking the prisoner. He pleaded in German, in English. The guards were careful not to break his glasses. They want me to see, he thought, then realized
no
: they
need
me to see this swirling box of colors and strobes. They want me locked in here, unable to lock
here
out of me.

They didn't notice his eyes searching beyond their clubs and boots. Dangling on wires from the cantilevered ceiling were metal shapes, some smaller than his hand, others bigger than a basketball. Amidst the wires on the ceiling, Eric spotted a metal box.

Camera mount. But no camera. No all-time unblinking eye.

A guard lifted off the prisoner's glasses; the guard's fist rushed closer as a blur.

Waking up. Clamped in that chair. Glasses taped on his swollen face. Tastes like dried blood and broken fillings. Thick cheek stubble. Ribs, legs, bowels—throbbing with fire. Naked. Cold. Trapped in that chair across from the empty desk. Alone.

Focus,
thought Eric. Play the White Lion like you're innocent. Hans Wolfe, not Eric Schmidt. Heidelberg University, not Youngs-town U. Engineer. Always an engineer.

A door opened. Mustache Man walked in and sat behind the desk.

Said: “What is the first question?”

“Who… Who are you?”

Mustache Man nodded. “My name is Major Aman.”

Drops of sweat rolled off Eric. Tapped the cement floor.

Major Aman said: “What is the second question?”

OH GOD DON'T KNOW, HE'S GOING TO ZAP ME, HE'S GOING TO—

“You don't know?” Major Aman shrugged. “
Huh
.”

The secret policeman leaned closer. “The second question brought us here.”

Brace don't brace yourself don't… when…

“But the first question is key.” Major Aman scanned a file.

“Hans Wolfe. Engineer rented by us from Volksgotten construction. Is that how you pronounce it? I speak no German, so good you speak English,
ya
?” Major Aman permitted himself the curl of a smile. “One engineer among a firm of hundreds of engineers. No children. No wife. No family. No connections.
Who are you?
”

WHAMANG!

Oh God God please no, oh
. Oh. Over, that one's over.

“The answer to
who you are
is
alone
, and that's key to you being here.”

Eric blinked: My cover, my lies plus my true life… made the key… to this?

“The second question is:
What do you do?
”

Everything seared to lightning crimson blackness.

He came to being dragged naked over gray cement. Risked raising one eyelid: Long corridor. Closed doors. No cameras. No desk for a sentry. No sentry.

Guards dropped him. Eric saw a guard tap a keypad mounted outside a black steel door with a tilted ‘C' handle.
Electric buzz
and the door clicked loose. Out from the
checa
burst a swirl of color. Eric closed his eyes. They dragged him inside and he didn't move. Didn't flinch when the door
bonged
shut and the electronic lock
clicked
.

Count each breath.
Keep a fix on time
. Figure they'll go pee, have a smoke, wipe the puddles off the floor by that chair, catch a meal. I'm here. Alone.

The beatings, electrocutions and swirling colored cell made him so dizzy he had to crawl to the door. His hands found the lock plate. Found four screw heads.

He smeared himself up the cool metal door. The lock plate shifted under his hand: loose. Life in wartime, 'specially in Iraq. What works, works. What doesn't work is just the way things are.

When guards pushed open the door, he was still leaning against it. Their shove knocked his naked body through the air, crashed it on the jumble of bricks.

They didn't beat him.

Or take him to Major Aman and the chair.

Instead they quick marched him to the hose-down room and a wooden barrel.
Like a rain bucket
was how Eric thought of it because of Grampa Claude. The guards held his head under the barrel's water. They pulled him up to gasp the wet concrete prison air. Dunked him again. Again. Threw him back in the
checa
.

But
heck
, that was
great
!

Now,
finally
, thanks to Grampa Claude, Eric envisioned hope.

Took it with him to the chair in front of Major Aman.

“There are truths,” said the torturer. “People are people. They are who they are. Plus, the American poet Bob Dylan is right: everyone must serve somebody. Or something. Our great Saddam serves the good of Iraq. We all serve who we call God.

“You serve us,” Major Aman told the naked man clamped in the chair. “We are the reason you're here. The rest is your ignorance—
what is the second question?
”

Eric jerked and blurted: “What do you do?”

“And what do
you
do?”

Knew it before it happened
, but still the electric shock slammed Eric to white.

“What do you do? You obey orders. You work for us. You are alone.

“Yet when that secretary whispered how she and her Republican Guard husband hated their lives in Iraq… Who conspired with her? You, Hans Wolfe.”

OH PLEASE GOD, NO! THEY CAUGHT HER! CAUGHT THEM! THEY'LL BE LOCKED IN A PLACE LIKE THIS, OR IN A DITCH…!

“That's not you,” said Aman. “That's not our lonely engineer.”

Not my mission! Eric had told himself day after day at the secret construction site as he watched the secretary tremble. Not here to rescue! Not here to recruit. Here to play the pudgy geek people see when they look at me. Here to spy, get data, steal info.

“We know the man you sent them to. All you foreigners mixing in the bazaar come into contact with scum like that man smuggles traitorous dogs out of Iraq.”

Got Sa'ad too—or will, he always knew they were close. That poor family! If I hadn't disobeyed Agency orders, if I'd stuck to mission and not got involved to save…

“Playing rescuer is not in your profile. Which makes you interesting beyond your isolated state. Special among guest workers we had to choose from. Means you're changeable. Luckily, your change was to ‘rescue' our counter-intelligence team.”

“Wha…What?”

“Our team wasn't looking for you. They were monitoring our scientists who think too much, get ideas about fleeing to America or Marseilles. You getting hooked by them was the final sum of fate that brought you here—
what do you do?
”

Eric said: “The husband and wife… They were secret police? I got trapped by them for… for being…
just a good guy!
Only
that
? That's why I'm here?”