There are now tracker transmitters so tiny they can be injected under the skin without cutting the epidermis at all. They are pinhead-sized. Warmed by the blood, they need no power source. But their range is limited. Worse, there are ultra-sensitive detectors that can spot them.
‘These people are absolutely not stupid,’ Phillips had stressed. His colleague from CIA Counter-Terrorism agreed.
‘Among the best educated of them,’ said McDonald, ‘their mastery of very high technology, and especially the computer sciences, is awesome.’
No one at Forbes doubted that if Martin was subjected to a hyper-tech body search and something was discovered he would be dead within minutes.
Eventually the decision was: no planted bleeper. No signal-sender. The kidnappers came for him an hour later. They were hooded again.
The body search was lengthy and thorough. The clothes went first until he was naked, and they were taken away for searching in another room.
They did not even employ invasive throat and anal search. The scanner did it all. Inch by inch it was run over his body in case it gave the bleep that would mean it had discovered a non-body-tissue substance. Only at the mouth did it do that. They forced his mouth open and examined every filling. Otherwise – nothing.
They returned his clothing and prepared to leave.
‘I left my Koran at the guest house,’ said the prisoner. ‘I have no watch or mat, but it must be the hour of pray
er.’
The leader stared at him through the eyeholes. He said nothing, but two minutes later he returned with mat and Koran. Martin thanked him gravely.
Food and water was brought regularly. Each time he was waved back with the handgun as the tray was deposited where he could reach it when they had done. The chemical lavatory was replaced in the same way.
It was three days before his interrogation began, and for this he was masked, lest he look out of the windows, and led down two corridors. When his mask was removed he was astonished. The man in front of him, sitting calmly behind a carved refectory table, for all the world like a potential employer interviewing an applicant, was youthful, elegant, civilized, urbane and uncovered. He spoke in perfect Gulf Arabic.
‘I see no point in masks,’ he said, ‘nor silly names. Mine, by the way, is Dr Al-Khattab. There is no mystery here. If I am satisfied you are who you say you are, you will be welcome to join us. In which case, you will not betray us. If not, then I am afraid you will be killed at once. So let us not pretend, Mr Izmat Khan. Are you really the one they call the Afghan?’
‘They will be concerned about two things,’ Gordon Phillips warned him during one of their interminable briefings at Forbes Castle. ‘Are you truly Izmat Khan and are you the same Izmat Khan who fought at Qala-i-Jangi? Or have five years in Guantanamo turned you into something else?’
Martin stared back at the smiling Arab. He recalled the warnings of Tamian Godfrey. Never mind the wild-bearded screamers; watch out for the one who will be smooth-shaven, who will smoke, drink, consort with girls, pass for one of us. Wholly westernized. A human chameleon, hiding the hatred. Totally deadly. There was a word . . . takfir.
‘There are many Afghans,’ he said. ‘Who calls me the Afghan?’
‘Ah, you have been incommunicado for five years. After Qala-i-Jangi word spread about you. You do not know about me, but I know much about you. Some of our people have been released from Camp Delta. They spoke highly of you. They claim you never broke. True?’
‘They asked me about myself. I told them that.’
‘But you never denounced others? You mentioned no names? That is what the others say of you.’
‘They wiped out my family. Most of me died then. How do you punish a man who is dead?’
‘A good answer, my friend. So, let us talk about Guantanamo. Tell me about Gitmo.’
Martin had been briefed hour after hour about what had happened to him on the Cuban peninsula. The arrival on 14 January 2002, hungry, thirsty, soiled with urine, blindfolded, shackled so tightly the hands were numb for weeks. Beards and heads shaved, clothed in orange coveralls, stumbling and tripping in the darkness of the hoods . . .
Dr Al-Khattab took copious notes, writing on yellow legal notepaper with an old-fashioned fountain pen. When a passage was reached where he knew all the answers, he ceased and contemplated his prisoner with a gentle smile.
In the late afternoon he offered a photograph.
‘Do you know this man?’ he asked. ‘Did you ever see him?’
Martin shook his head. The face looking up from the photo was General Geoffrey D. Miller, successor as camp commandant to General Rick Baccus. The latter had sat in on interrogations but General Miller left it to the CIA teams.
‘Quite right,’ said Al-Khattab. ‘He saw you, according to one of our released friends, but you were always hooded as a punishment for non-cooperation. And when did the conditions start to improve?’
They talked until sundown, then the Arab rose.
‘I have much to check on,’ he said. ‘If you are telling the truth, we will continue in a few days. If not, I’m afraid I shall have to issue Suleiman with the appropriate instructions.’