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Mahoney followed me.
“Are those children going to be tortured?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” my old friend said. “It’s out of my hands.”
“You asked for this!” I shouted. “You said you were going to wake somebody up, for God’s sake!”
“Turns out, most of them were already up,” Mahoney shot back. “They were contacted by the Saudi government right about the time the good doctor was entering Union Station. The Saudis intercepted an encrypted e-mail from two high-ranking members of the Family earlier today. So far they’ve been able to decipher only three words in the whole thing: Dossari, train, and gas.”
CHAPTER
93
“GAS LIKE ‘CAR GAS’ OR GAS LIKE ‘NERVE GAS’?”
“That’s exactly what I’m about to find out, Alex,” Mahoney said coldly. “It’s why the Saudis offered to create the little telecast in there.”
“Ned, you still can’t condone the torture—”
“If the Family is plotting some kind of gas attack in the United States, I will do everything in my power to prevent it,” Mahoney said sharply. “Does that include accepting help from a regime that does not give its citizens the same rights we have? Yes. I’ll live with that if I can save even one American life. Now, you can come back in and help me so this goes only so far, or you can walk away and risk being partly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of people.”
“That’s bullshit and unfair,” I said.
“In situations like these, life is bullshit and unfair!” Mahoney shouted, and then he lowered his voice. “I need you, Alex. I need you to help me crack her so we can stop whatever she’s got planned.”
I shook my head. There was no right answer here; neither position was nobler than the other. Was I going to side with torture or with mass murder on the day after my dear Savior’s birth?
Before I could decide, we heard a scream from the interrogation room. Mahoney spun from me and went back in. I hesitated as I heard Hala scream, “No, please!”
I entered the room feeling like a zombie, tired beyond reason and fearing that my soul might be permanently tarnished before the night was over. That sense was intensified when I saw what was happening on the screen.
The hooded men had left Hala’s mother where she was, gagged and tied to the chair against the wall. But they had brought the children’s chairs close to the table, where they were looking wild-eyed at the camera.
The secret policemen stood behind the children. One carried what looked like a heavy-duty marine battery hitched to jumper cables. The end of the black negative clamp was already attached to the metal chair Hala’s son was sitting in. The second guy held the red clamp above it.
Hala looked at me, enraged. “You cannot do this! He’s a boy!”
“There were plenty of boys here in DC when you tried to poison the water supply,” I said. “But this doesn’t have to happen, Doctor. You tell us about the gas attack, and we let your kids and mom go on with their life without you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking—”
The hooded man barely grazed the back of her son’s metal chair with the clamp. The boy’s entire body jerked hard and he began to scream and cry.
“Fahd!” Hala cried. “Be brave!”
The boy seemed to hear her, but that only upset him more. He began to squirm and make noises like an animal with a broken leg. One of the men released the boy’s gag, and he began to scream in Arabic.
The translator said: “‘Mama! Mama, why are they doing this to me?’”
CHAPTER
94
MY STOMACH SOURED AND TURNED. ALL SENSE OF ORDER IN MY BRAIN HAD become disrupted. I thought of my son Ali in that situation and wanted to puke.
I waited for Hala to break. A sob. A tear. Anything. She turned away and looked at the wall, her jaw set.
Mahoney reached over, hit the mute button on the computer, and said, “This can end right now if you tell us about the gas.”
