“Feel around.”
“Nothing,” said the katsa .
“That’s because there isn’t anything,” said Levy. “Not in this one. But there might be a knob, a catch, or a button. A smooth button, you press it; a knob, you turn it; a catch, move it from side to side, and see what happens.”
“What should happen?”
“A low click, and a small piece of marquetry pops out, spring-loaded. Behind that is the cachette .”
Even the ingenuity of the cabinetmakers of the eighteenth century had its limits. Within an hour, Monsieur Levy had taught the katsa the basic ten places to look for the hidden catch that would release the spring to open the compartment.
“Never try to use force to find one,” Levy insisted. “You won’t anyway, with force, and besides, it leaves traces on the woodwork.”
He nudged Barzilai and grinned. Barzilai gave the old man a good lunch at the Coupole, then took a taxi back to the airport to return to Vienna.
Early that morning, February 16, Major Zayeed and his team presented themselves at the first of the three villas that were to be searched. The other two were sealed, with men posted at all the entrances and the bewildered occupants confined inside.
The major was perfectly polite, but his authority brooked no objection. Unlike the AMAM team a mile and a half away in Qadisiyah, Zayeed’s men were experts, caused very little permanent damage, and were the more efficient for it.
Beginning at the ground level, searching for access to a hiding place beneath the floor tiles, they worked their way steadily through the house, room by room, cupboard by cupboard, and cavity by cavity.
The garden was also searched, but not a trace was found. Before midday, the major was satisfied at last, made his apologies to the occupants, and left. Next door, he began to work through the second house.
In the basement beneath the AMAM headquarters in Saadun, the old man was on his back, strapped at his wrists and waist to a stout wooden table and surrounded by the four experts who would extract his confession. Apart from these, there was a doctor present, and Brigadier Omar Khatib consulting in a corner with Sergeant Ali.
It was the head of the AMAM who decided on the menu of afflictions to be undertaken. Sergeant Ali raised an eyebrow; he would, he realized, certainly need his coveralls this day. Omar Khatib nodded curtly and left. He had paperwork to attend to in his upstairs office.
The old man continued to plead that he knew nothing of any transmitter, that he had not been in the garden for days due to the inclement weather. ... The interrogators were not interested. They bound both ankles to a broom handle running across the insteps. Two of the four raised the feet to the required position with the soles facing the room, while Ali and his remaining colleague took down from the walls the heavy quirts of electrical flex.
When the bastinado began, the old man screamed, as they all did, until the voice broke, then fainted. A bucket of icy water from the corner, where a row of them were stacked, brought him around.
Occasionally, through the morning, the men rested, easing the muscles of their arms, which had become tired with their endeavors. While they rested, cups of brine were dashed against the pulpy feet. Then, refreshed, they resumed.
Between bouts of fainting, the old man continued to protest that he could not even operate a radio transmitter and there must have been some mistake.
By midmorning, the skin and meat of the soles of both feet had been whipped away and the white bones glinted through the blood. Sergeant Ali sighed and nodded that this process should cease. He lit a cigarette and savored the smoke while his assistant used a short iron bar to crack the leg bones from ankle to knees.
The old man pleaded with the doctor, as one medical practitioner to another, but the AMAM physician stared at the ceiling. He had his orders, which were to keep the prisoner alive and conscious.
Across the city, Major Zayeed finished his search of the second villa at four o’clock, just as Gidi Barzilai and Michel Levy were rising from their table in Paris. Again, he had found nothing. Making his courteous apologies to the terrified couple who had watched their home being systematically stripped, he left and with his rummage crew moved on to the third and last villa.
* * *
In Saadun, the old man was fainting more frequently, and the doctor protested to the interrogators that he needed time to recover. An injection was prepared and pumped into the prisoner’s bloodstream. It had an almost immediate effect, bringing him back from his near-coma to wakefulness and rousing the nerves to fresh sensitivity.
When the nee
dles in the brazier glowed red-white, they were driven slowly through the shriveled scrotum and the desiccated testicles within.
Just after six the old man went into a coma again, and this time the doctor was too late. He worked furiously, the sweat of fear pouring down his face, but all his stimulants, injected directly into the heart, failed to suffice.
Ali left the room and returned after five minutes with Omar Khatib. The brigadier looked at the body, and years of experience told him something for which he needed no medical degree. He turned, and his open palm caught the cringing doctor a fearsome crack across the side of the face.
The force of the blow as much as the reputation of the man who administered it sent the doctor crashing to the floor among his syringes and vials.
“Cretin,” hissed Khatib. “Get out of here.”
The doctor gathered his bits into his bag and left on hands and knees. The Tormentor looked at Ali’s handiwork. There was the sweet smell in the air both men knew of old, an admixture of sweat, terror, urine, excrement, blood, vomit, and a faint aroma of burnt meat.