Situation Room. Jack Mars

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      “He’s just practicing though,” Ed said. “Relieving a little boredom.”

      They went inside.

      The man wore a bright yellow jumpsuit. He sat on a metal folding chair in the middle of an empty room. He was large, with broad shoulders, thick arms and legs, and a prominent stomach.

      He wore a black hood over his head. His wrists were cuffed behind his back. His legs were cuffed together at the ankles. He was slumped forward, as if sleeping. With the hood over his head, it was impossible to tell.

      Luke pulled the hood from the man’s head. The man jerked in seeming surprise, and sat up. His jet black hair was mussed – it stood up in tufts in a few places, was flattened down in others. Even with the hood removed, he still wore airplane blinders – the kind people put over their faces to sleep on long flights.

      He yawned as if waking from an afternoon nap.

      “Li Quiangguo,” Luke said. “Ni hui shuo yingyu ma?”

      In Mandarin Chinese, his words translated to Do you speak English?

      The man smiled broadly. “Call me Johnny,” he said. “Please. It’s what I use here in the West. And let’s speak English. It makes it easier for everybody, especially me.”

      The man’s English was the American version, certainly, but with no accent or regional flavor of any kind. Luke might have said he sounded like he was from the Midwest. But really, he didn’t sound like he was from anywhere. He could have been beamed down from a spaceship.

      “Why is it easier for you?” Luke said.

      “It’s easier on my ears. It means I don’t have to listen to people like you butcher the beautiful Chinese language.”

      Now Luke smiled. “Tell me, Li. Why didn’t you kill yourself when you had the chance?”

      Li made a face of exaggerated surprise, even disgust. “Why would I do that? I like America. And I’ve been treated pretty well so far.”

      It was an interesting thing to say, considering that it came from a man who had been manacled to a metal chair overnight, with a black hood and airplane blinders on his head, in a detention center that didn’t exist, and with no way to contact the outside world. He was not technically under arrest and he hadn’t seen a lawyer. A lot of people might not agree that his arrangements constituted being treated well. Some might say he had been disappeared. Yes, he hadn’t been tortured, but for most people, lack of torture was a pretty low threshold.

      Li almost seemed to read Luke’s mind. “I heard birds chirping outside this morning. That’s how I knew it was a new day.”

      Luke reached with one hand and pulled off the man’s airplane blinders. “Birds at sunrise. That’s very nice. I’m glad to hear you’ve enjoyed your stay so far. Unfortunately, things are about to change.”

      “Ah.” The man’s eyes squinted in the sudden brightness. He scanned the room, took in Swann and Ed Newsam. The eyes settled on Ed.

      Ed was leaned up against one wall. He seemed very relaxed, and at the same time, menacing. His body barely moved. There was so much potential energy stored inside of it, he was like a storm about to happen. His eyes never left the Chinese man’s eyes.

      “I see,” Li said.

      Luke nodded. “Yes. You do.”

      Li’s face hardened. “I’m a tourist. This is all a case of mistaken identity.”

      “If you’re a tourist,” Ed said, “maybe you’d like to give us the names and contact information of your family, so we can let them know where you are. You know, and tell them that you’re doing fine.”

      Li shook his head. “I would like to contact the Chinese embassy.”

      “Our superiors have already done that for you,” Luke said. It wasn’t true, as far he knew. He began to inch out on a limb, but a limb he felt would hold his weight.

      “It was a backchannel conversation, as you might imagine, given the sensitivity of the situation,” he said. “You may be disturbed to know that the Chinese government says you aren’t real. There are no school records, no job records, no hometown or family background. They’ve seen a scan of your passport, and they’ve determined that it’s a clever forgery.”

      Li stared straight ahead. He didn’t respond.

      Luke let the moment draw out. There was no reason to fill it with more talk. He had seen subjects break as soon as they realized their handlers had disavowed them. Break wasn’t even the right word. Sometimes, when they suddenly found themselves without a country, they simply switched sides.

      “Li, did you hear me? They’re not going to protect you. You’re not going to get away from this. You didn’t take your pill when you could have, and now you’re here. There is no way out. As far as your people are concerned, you don’t exist, and you never existed. The facility you’re in right now doesn’t exist. You could end up stuffed inside a fifty-five-gallon drum at the bottom of the ocean, or in a shallow ditch in the wilderness, with crows picking out your eyes… No one will care. No one will even know.”

      The man still didn’t say a word. He just stared straight ahead.

      “Li, what do you know about the Black Rock Dam, and how the floodgates opened?”

      “I don’t know anything.”

      Luke waited a few beats, then went on. “Well, let me tell you what I know. At last count, more than a thousand people have died. Do you have any idea how upset that makes me? It makes me want to take revenge for their deaths. It makes me want to find a scapegoat, and make that person pay. You’re a convenient scapegoat, aren’t you, Li? A man that nobody cares about, nobody remembers, and no one will miss. I’ll tell you something else. I know you’ve been trained to resist interrogation. That only makes me happier. It means I can take my time. We can stay here for days, or even weeks. We have people working on that dam problem. They’ll figure out what happened. We don’t need whatever pitiful information you might have. I don’t even want it, to be honest. I just want to hurt you. The more you just sit there, the more I want to do it.”

      Now Luke squatted down on his haunches near Li’s face. He was inches away, so close that his breath exhaled on Li’s cheeks. “We’re going to get to know each other pretty well in here, okay, Li? Eventually, I’m going to know everything about you.”

      Luke glanced at Swann. Swann stood in a corner by the steel-barred window. He hadn’t said a word since they walked in here. He looked out at the concrete compound and the lush green hillsides surrounding it. Swann was an analyst, a data guy. Luke imagined he might never have thought about how data was sometimes extracted. Death threats were just the beginning.

      “Li, the man’s talking to you,” Ed said.

      Li managed a smile then. It was a sickly smile, and there was no humor in it at all. “Please,” he said. “Call me Johnny.”

      An hour passed. Luke and Ed had taken turns talking to Li, but with no real effect. If anything, Li was becoming more confident. He had evidently decided that a few hard smacks from Ed were the most he was going to get.

      Now Luke was watching Swann again.

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