The Ascendant: A Thriller (34 page)

T
hey kept Garrett’s head covered in a black canvas hood for the entire car ride, which took, as far as Garrett could tell, about thirty minutes. His hands were handcuffed behind his back. No one read him his rights or told him where he was going, no matter how many times he asked.

No one said anything.

The car stopped and two men hustled him out of the backseat, up some steps, and inside. Whether it was into a house or an office, Garrett couldn’t tell. He could tell that wherever they were, it was quiet, definitely not the heart of the city. They walked him down a hallway, into a room, then shoved him onto a chair. Someone slapped another pair of handcuffs onto his right ankle, chaining him to the leg of the chair. Then they left the room. Or at least Garrett thought they did: a door had slammed, and no one replied to his questions.

“Hello? Anyone there? Anyone want to talk to me? I’m feeling kind of neglected.”

Garrett waited like that for another thirty minutes or so, tugging at his handcuffs, tapping his foot restlessly, but it was very hard for him to keep track of time; the black hood let no light in, and there was not a sound to be heard. Finally, a door opened, there were footsteps, and the hood was yanked off his head. Garrett squinted in the sterile fluorescent light. The room was empty except for a small table and chair, and a digital video camera set on a tripod by the far wall. The camera was pointed at Garrett.

Two men stood between Garrett and the only door to the room. They were
both white males, midthirties, both wearing gray suits, their hair closely cut. Garrett thought he recognized them.

“Remember us?” the larger of the two men said.

Garrett stared at him, and then he recognized the speaker and his sidekick: “Agents Stoddard and Cannel. Homeland Security. You asked me about my mother.”

“That’s right. I’m Agent Stoddard,” the big man said. “And you were an asshole to me. So guess what? Now it’s my turn to be an asshole back.”

A shiver of fear ran down Garrett’s spine. He tried to force an easy smile to his lips. “How about I apologize for that and we just call it even?”

Neither of the two agents laughed. The shorter of the two—Cannel—pulled the empty chair close to the desk and sat. Stoddard stood motionless.

“Who was he?” Stoddard asked.

“Can you be more specific?” Garrett said, trying to keep things light.

“The conductor saw you talking to a man. There was a woman with him. You had a conversation for five minutes. Who was he?”

“I have no idea,” Garrett said.

Agent Stoddard made a show of sighing loudly. “Here’s the deal, Garrett,” he said. “Every time you lie to me, your situation will get incrementally worse. We will show less leniency. You will be stuck here longer. And then you will face lengthier and lengthier jail time.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Garrett said. “Jail time? For what? I didn’t do anything.”

“You ran away from your military police drivers.”

“How is that illegal?”

“It was highly suspicious.”

“I was bored. Needed to shake it up a little.”

“By riding Metro trains all morning?”

“I was people watching. It calms me down.”

Agent Cannel dropped a manila folder onto the table and pulled a stack of papers from it. “We employ computer experts as well,” he said.

He read aloud from the top sheet: “Tuesday, 4:38 a.m., Reilly, Garrett, sent encrypted e-mail from an unsecured wireless router on perimeter of Bolling Air Force Base to recipient at [email protected]. Subject e-mail states: I am in DC, am ready to talk. Reply received 10:42 p.m., instructing Reilly, Garrett, to ride the Metro Orange Line, today, Wednesday the 15th. Reilly,
Garrett, reported to police by train conductor on Metro Orange Line, 9:30 to 10:00, a.m. Reilly, Garrett, met unknown subject—white male, forties—on the train, 10:09 a.m., and had discussion for approximately five minutes, after which unknown subject departed Metro and Reilly, Garrett, was apprehended by federal agents.”

Agent Cannel closed the file and said nothing more. Agent Stoddard looked down at Garrett. “Please. Don’t insult us. At least come up with a lie that’s creative.”

Garrett sighed. The handcuffs were digging into his wrists. “Okay, fine, how about I get a turn?” Garrett said. “Who tried to blow me up on John Street in front of the Jenkins & Altshuler offices in New York City?”

“I have no idea. That’s not our jurisdiction. The NYPD are investigating that.”

Garrett smiled. “Well, now we’re both lying. So we’re even.”

Agent Cannel scribbled a note down on a legal pad.

“Is that what he told you? That he knew who planted the car bomb?” Stoddard asked. “Did he say it was the U.S. government? Standard American imperialist conspiracy rumor?”

Garrett stared at Stoddard and said flatly, “I want a lawyer.”

“A lawyer? Where exactly do you think you are? We can throw you in jail and have you rot there and you will never see a lawyer again for the rest of your life.”

“On what charges?”

Stoddard smiled. The smile had changed from bland to menacing. Garrett could see the veins on the agent’s neck pulse.

“You were given top-level security clearance and access to military secrets. Now we have reason to believe you met with an agent of a foreign government. That classifies you as a threat to national security, and because of that you belong to me, and only me, and I will do whatever the hell I want with you. I can have you burned at the stake if I so choose. No charges, no trial, no judge, no nothing. And nobody will give a rat’s ass what happened to you. Not your deadbeat mom, not Avery Bernstein, not any of your loser friends, and certainly not Alexis Truffant. Yes, Garrett, we know all about you and Captain Truffant.”

Garrett fought hard to keep an emotionless smile plastered on his lips, but it was not easy—a wave of despair was rising in his chest. He felt suddenly very, very alone, and Agent Stoddard seemed to know it.

“That’s right, Garrett. She works for us too. She’s on our side, not yours. She debriefed us on your little fuck session. She told us all the details that only a lover would know.”

“Bullshit,” Garrett blurted out.

Agent Stoddard laughed. “You are nowhere, Reilly. And you are nothing. With nobody looking out for you. I control your fate, utterly and completely. Welcome to the Patriot Act, asshole, because it is your new home.”

There was silence in the small room. Garrett tried to collect himself. He was a jumble of competing emotions, sudden, desolate loneliness being the strongest of them. He grimaced, looked at the two Homeland Security agents, and said, “Fuck you.”

Agent Stoddard pulled the black hood from behind his back and slammed it over Garrett’s head. The room went black. Garrett could feel the agent’s hot breath at his ear.

“No, Garrett, fuck
you
,” he said.

There were footsteps. A door slammed. Then silence.

Garrett said nothing, and was glad the hood was covering his face. Tears rolled down his cheeks. Hot, salty, painful tears. His throat was choked with silent sobs. Could it really be true? Had he been wrong about Alexis? Utterly and completely wrong?
Again?
Was she nothing more than a spy, working for the government, leading him to this place without a shred of real feeling on her part? Or was the Homeland Security agent just saying that to throw Garrett off balance?

He no longer knew. He no longer had any sense of what was real, unreal, faked, or heartfelt. Avery? Kline? Metternich? The Chinese? What the fuck was going on in his life?
In the world?
Even his own emotions seemed upside down. The love he had been so sure of a few days ago now seemed juvenile and embarrassingly misguided.

Alone with his thoughts, time passed slowly. Seconds, minutes, hours maybe? It was silent in the small room, disorienting. He found his mind going blank. A Coldplay song—“Clocks”—played over and over again in his head. He hated Coldplay, but the song wouldn’t go away.

The door opened. There were footsteps and then Garrett’s chair was tilted backwards about forty-five degrees. Fingers probed at his face through the canvas hood, and suddenly, without warning, cold water was sprayed into his
mouth and up his nose. It flooded his throat. Garrett gasped, caught by surprise. He tried to breathe, but the torrent of water was too much, and unending. He tried to turn his head, but a pair of hands clamped onto his ears and kept his face tilted upright. The sensation was terrifying—no air, and no chance of getting any. A pure animal fear gripped him. He thrashed, desperate for air, desperate for the water to stop. But it didn’t—it just kept coming, a steady deluge directed straight into his mouth and nose. His throat began to seize up, raw with water and choking. And just when he was about to lose consciousness . . . it stopped.

Garrett gasped, his lungs heaving, sucking in every last bit of oxygen they could get. But the respite lasted only a few seconds. The hands grabbed his ears again and another blast of cold water shot against his face. This time he held his breath, but the water kept coming, and he was still oxygen-deprived from the last bout. In seconds he was gasping again, and a moment after that, choking. He tried desperately to free his hands and legs to strike out at his torturers, but the handcuffs were tight around his wrists, and he could do nothing. His body was rigid with fear, his esophagus swollen and shutting down. He felt, instinctively, that he would die. And soon.

And then it stopped again. He sucked down air.

And then it started again. Water. More water.

Three more times they doused him. Three more times they gave him five seconds to recover. Then they stopped. Garrett coughed the water out of his throat and nose. He threw up briefly into the black hood, the smell of vomit trapped now at his nose. He felt Agent Stoddard’s breath at his ear again.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Garrett,” the agent whispered. “We just want to know who the man on the train was.”

“I don’t know,” Garrett grunted. He could barely speak.

“How’d you get his e-mail address?”

Garrett froze. They wanted him to betray Avery Bernstein. He wanted to cry again. If he told them that Avery had given him the e-mail address, he would be utterly and completely alone in the world. Without friend or family.

He said nothing. The room was silent for a minute, maybe two. The hands let go of his head, his chair was placed upright, and the footsteps left the room. Garrett breathed deeply. Never had oxygen seemed so exotically wonderful. His heart was pounding.

After thirty minutes, Garrett regained some of his calm, but he was physically
and mentally exhausted. He must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew his head was drooping down onto his chest, but that lasted only a moment, because the room was instantly engulfed in sound—a throbbing, pulsing electronic blast of white noise, seemingly directed right into his ears.

Garrett woke with a start. He understood right away that they were not going to let him sleep, and another wave of despair washed over him. They were going to try to break him. Garrett had no sense of whether he could withstand that, or if he even wanted to. He didn’t try to sleep again.

Twenty minutes later they came back into the room and continued his water torture. After the fourth torrent Garrett was sure he was going to die. He could feel his consciousness spiraling away into a black void. And then they stopped. But they didn’t let him sleep. The pulsing, pounding noise assaulted him every time he was on the verge of slumber. How did they know his eyes were closed under the black canvas hood?

By the end of the fifth water-boarding session, Garrett had lost all sense of reality. He was a mind detached completely from its body. He could not hold a single coherent thought in his head. The worst part wasn’t the actual torture—it was the brief moments in between the torture sessions, when he was waiting for the pain and terror to start again. The hope that they were finished was corrosive to his willpower. He understood that this was all part of the plan. Part of the torture.

Again and again Agent Stoddard’s voice whispered at his ear. “Tell us what we want to know, Garrett, and it all stops. No more water. No more noise. Food, some sleep. What do you say, Garrett? Huh? Tell me now and I’ll make it stop.”

Garrett cleared his throat and managed to gasp: “Kline. I’ll tell Kline.”

“G
ood Lord,” General Kline said as he stared at Garrett’s pale face. “What did they do to you?”

Garrett tried to keep his head up, his eyes open, but it wasn’t easy. His entire body was racked with pain. Every muscle felt like it was on fire. He had been stressed to his limits, and his body was paying the price. His hair was still wet; droplets ran down his face. The line of his skull fracture felt like caustic acid seeping into his brain.

“Tortured me,” Garrett whispered, his throat raw. “They tortured me. They can’t do that, can they?”

Kline pursed his lips. “They did. So I guess they can.”

“This is America,” Garrett said. “I’m a fucking citizen.”

Kline nodded slightly, as if to say, True, but not much that can be done about it now.

Garrett craned his head, looking around the small room. The floor was covered with water. There was a drain in the corner. He hadn’t seen that before. The camera and tripod were gone. Garrett supposed they had been smart enough not to film what they’d done. Garrett hated the two Homeland Security agents with an intensity he hadn’t even known he was capable of.

“Motherfuckers,” Garrett hissed. “I’ll fucking kill them.”

“Garrett,” Kline said, leaning close, “just tell me whatever you know and I’ll try to get you out of here. I’m on your side, but you gotta help me.”

Garrett stared at the general. It was clear that Kline was playing the good cop,
Homeland Security the bad. But at least Garrett had gotten the good cop in the room with him. At least he could breathe. Now he had to make the most of it.