Truth or Die (18 page)

All the more reason why Owen and I were on the move.

Our first stop after the five-and-half-hour drive was the part of DC you never see in the brochure. It was a used-car dealership on the Anacostia side of the city in the Southeast quadrant. The owner, who looked like a walking mug shot, didn’t have a showroom. He didn’t even have an office. It was basically a dirt lot behind an abandoned warehouse with about a dozen beat-up cars, half of which had had their VIN numbers altered or filed away altogether.

“How the hell did you know about this place?” I asked Owen.

“I overheard some Georgetown frat boys talking about it in a Dean & Deluca,” he said. “Apparently, driving Daddy’s Mercedes around campus has fallen out of vogue. Junk is the new black.”

In that case, Owen and I were now the trendiest guys around. We drove away in an old Toyota Corolla that was dinged up so much you would’ve thought it had been parked out in the middle of a golf driving range. But it ran okay and came with plates, our two requirements.

As for the paperwork, that consisted only of the money that changed hands. Seven hundred dollars, cash. Needless to say, we didn’t ask to see the CARFAX.

“What a steal,” said Owen.

“Yeah, that’s because it probably was,” I said. “Stolen.”

From Anacostia we drove into Georgetown, heading straight to Biltmore Street and the town house of Dr. Douglas Wittmer, last seen—on camera, at least—deep inside the CIA black site at Stare Kiejkuty outside Warsaw.
That was one hell of a house call, Doc. Care to tell us who hired you? Yes? No?

According to Google, Wittmer had been a thoracic surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan for eleven years, followed by a four-year stint at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Then he apparently quit the operating room, joining a medical research company, BioNext Laboratories, in Bethesda, Maryland, as its CEO. That was five years ago.

The website for BioNext looked legit, although that wasn’t really saying much. A tenth grader these days can build a believable website in less time than it takes to watch a rerun of
The Simpsons
. So, too, can the CIA.

“Do you think it’s a front?” I asked Owen.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “The guy might simply be pulling double duty. It’s more common than you’d think among certain doctors, whether it be for the FBI or the CIA.”

For a few moments, I thought about my primary care physician back in New York, who once dropped my urine sample all over his suede shoes. Great guy and a good doctor, but somehow I just couldn’t picture him doing a secret gig for the government.

Dr. Douglas Wittmer was a different story, and as Owen and I walked up the steps of his faded brick town house, we couldn’t wait to hear it.

But that was exactly what we had to do. Wait.

We rang the bell, knocked on the door, and even peeked through the windows. No one was home. Wittmer’s phone number was unlisted, and for all we knew, he could’ve been back in Poland or at any one of a number of other black sites. Seeing the day’s mail waiting for him in his mailbox, however, gave us some hope.

Now all we could do was park our shiny new Corolla a little way down the street and keep watch. If only we’d known.

We were being watched as well.

“GO AHEAD and ask,” said Owen.

“Ask what?”

He looked at me across the front seat like I was an idiot for trying to play dumb. “You want to know why I keep doing this thing with my hands, right?”

We’d been waiting for Wittmer for close to an hour, and half the time the kid was doing his dry wash routine.

“Sort of hard not to notice,” I said.

“You can blame my aunt Eleanor.” He rested both palms on his knees and explained. “My parents, both professors, weren’t terribly religious, but they thought it was important for me at a young age to experience church. So my aunt Eleanor was enlisted one Sunday to bring me to a service. I was five and doing complex algebra, but I also still believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. So the minister is giving this sermon about temptation and sin and he’s all fired up, and I’m sitting there in the pew listening and hanging on his every word. And that’s when he quotes an old proverb, only I don’t know it’s a proverb; I take it literally.
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.
”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. That’s how it started,” he said. “Problem is, I haven’t been able to stop ever since.” He laughed. “You know, I’ve never told anyone that before.”

“Trust me,” I said. “You’ve got far bigger secrets these days.”

As if on cue, a black Jaguar XK Coupe pulled into the short driveway at the base of Wittmer’s town house. It had to be him. The wait was over.

Quickly, Owen and I stepped out of our slightly less expensive Corolla and approached him as he was getting his mail. By the time he looked up and saw us, we were practically in his face. No exaggeration, he must have jumped back at least three feet. We’d scared the shit out of him. Good.

Next up, with any luck, was getting the truth out of him.

“Dr. Wittmer?” I asked.

He was still catching his breath.
Who the hell wants to know?
said his look. But no normal person outside the Bronx actually says that in real life, and Douglas Wittmer appeared as normal as they come. With his glasses and neatly trimmed dark hair that was gray around the temples, he was a doctor who looked like the stock photo of a doctor.

“Yes, that’s me,” he said finally.

I introduced myself and was about to introduce Owen when I saw Wittmer’s eyes beat me to it with a squint of recognition. His jaw then literally dropped.

“Jesus … you’re the kid, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Alive and in the flesh,” said Owen. “Of course, you probably thought I’d be dead by now.”

Wittmer nodded almost sheepishly.

“Rest assured, it hasn’t been for lack of trying.” Owen turned to me and my beat-up face, the bruises just beginning to settle into a nice shade of eggplant. “And that’s to put it mildly.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” I asked. “How does he know who you are?”

To say the kid was quick on the uptake didn’t do him justice. “Because he’s been shown a picture of me,” said Owen. “And if I were ever to pay him a visit, he was supposed to let them know.”

“I wouldn’t, though,” said Wittmer. “I mean, I won’t.”

“Of course you won’t,” said Owen facetiously. “What possible motivation could you have?”

Now I was all caught up. If these weren’t their exact words, they had to be damn close.
Help us find the kid before he brings us all down, Dr. Wittmer … including you.

“I don’t care that I’m in the recordings,” said Wittmer. “It was a mistake, and I can live with the consequences.”

“Actually, I don’t care that you’re in the recordings, either,” said Owen. “All I care about is who put you there. That’s what we need to know.”

Wittmer’s eyes shifted between Owen and me for a few moments, the latest issue of
Car and Driver
and the rest of his mail pressed hard against his chest.

It was one thing for him not to rat us out. It was another for him to rat out whomever he was working for. There would need to be a reason. A damn good one.

Wittmer looked up at the sky. We all did. The sun was beginning to set behind a mass of charcoal-colored clouds that seemed to have arrived out of nowhere. Much like Owen and me.

“I think we should go inside,” said the doctor. “It looks like rain.”

IT WAS a home for a guy who basically wasn’t home all that much. That, or he just didn’t care.

Not to say it was messy. Rather, it was sparse. In the few rooms we walked past before settling in the kitchen, the furnishings consisted of the bare minimum, or in the case of the empty dining room, even less.

I wasn’t much for metaphors, but Claire always was. For her, this would’ve been a lay-up. Dr. Douglas Wittmer clearly had money, but to see where he lived—
how
he lived—was to see a man defined by what he didn’t have. There were things missing in his life.

“You want coffee?” he asked, pointing to the Keurig machine on the counter near the stove.

Owen and I both declined. We were anxious enough as it was.

The three of us headed over to a small cherrywood table in the corner underneath a small clock, the kind you’d more likely see hanging in an office or waiting room. After we all sat down, Wittmer immediately stood up to remove his blue blazer, hanging it on the back of his chair. He wasn’t stalling, but he wasn’t exactly rushing, either.

Finally, after sitting down again, he took a deep breath and began.

“I was targeted,” he said, his tone straight as a ruler. To his credit, there wasn’t a hint of his trying to make an excuse for himself. He was stating the facts, or really just one fact. “They knew my wife was on Flight Ninety-Three.”

Owen and I both dropped our heads a bit. It spoke volumes about the events of 9/11 that a particular flight number could be so ingrained in the collective memory of a nation.

“I’m sorry,” said Owen.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“The thing is,” Wittmer continued, “grief and anger can help you rationalize almost any behavior in the name of revenge. I know that’s what he was banking on with me.”

It was so clear what we were witnessing. This was a man who needed to explain himself. Bare his soul a little, if not a lot. I was sure that Owen, even at his relatively young age, was thinking the same thing.

Perhaps it was that same youth, though, that had Owen wishing the doctor would explain things just a tad bit faster. Fittingly, the only sound in the kitchen other than us was the measured
tick … tick … tick
of the wall clock above us.

“He?”
Owen asked impatiently. In other words,
Please, for the love of Pete, start naming names.
…

“I don’t know if he’s the only ringmaster, but it’s certainly his circus,” said Wittmer. He drew another deep breath. “Frank Karcher is the one who first approached me.”

I didn’t recognize the name, nor, apparently, was I supposed to, given the way Wittmer was looking directly at Owen. And given the way Owen was nodding back at him, I guess it made sense. “The kid” absolutely recognized the name.

“Frank Karcher is the National Clandestine Service chief of the CIA,” said Owen, turning to me. “Basically, we’re talking the kind of guy who likes to kick puppies.”

“So human torture wasn’t much of a leap,” I said.

It was a quip, completely off the cuff. Still, the second the words left my mouth, I regretted them. I didn’t know Karcher, but I did know that Wittmer was sitting right in front of me. He was also on the recordings. At best, the doctor was an accomplice. At worst? That was between him and his God.

And that was the point. Owen and I were there in his kitchen to get information, not to pass judgment on him. And I just had. A bit unfairly, no less. I wasn’t the one who’d lost his wife on 9/11.

“I apologize,” I said to Wittmer. “I didn’t mean to—”

“That’s all right,” he said. He drew another deep breath. “At the beginning, I knew exactly what I was doing and why. Those recordings you have? As bad as they may look to a whole lot of people, there are just as many people these days—the Machiavellians in our so-called war on terror—who would believe the end justifies the means.”

“I’m confused, then,” I said. “What changed? Why would you be talking to us?”

Wittmer leaned in, pressing his palms down on that cherrywood table with what might as well have been the weight of the world. “Because those recordings you have don’t tell the whole story,” he said. “But mine do.”

WITTMER PUSHED back his chair and disappeared from the kitchen, returning about a half minute later with an old Dell laptop. While he was gone, Owen and I didn’t utter a single word to each other. Really, what was there to say? The doctor had basically just promised to blow our minds. The only thing to do was shut up and wait for it.

Another half minute passed while Wittmer’s laptop booted up. Given the anticipation, it felt like an eternity. Finally, he clicked on a file and pressed Play, angling the screen in front of us so we all had a good view. It was showtime.

“This is from the same black site outside of Warsaw during the same time period,” he explained.

Indeed, from the get-go everything about the recording looked familiar. The windowless room shot in black-and-white. The lone metal chair with a Middle Eastern man shackled to it, followed by the two men in suits who restrained him while he received the shot to his carotid artery.

Of course, the doctor wielding the syringe looked familiar as well. We were in his kitchen.

“What is your name?” asked the voice off camera.

Immediately, a second voice translated the question into Arabic, and as with Owen’s recordings, the Arabic was translated back into English via subtitles. Everything was the same.

Except, in this case, the prisoner’s response.

“I speak English,” he said softly.

The two voices from behind the camera could be heard conversing, but even with the volume maxed out on Wittmer’s laptop, we couldn’t understand what they were saying. I assumed it was about the way they wanted to proceed, although you wouldn’t know it given how the first voice repeated the question—“What is your name?”—as if he were some automated prompt.

“My name is Makin Pabalan,” answered the prisoner.

Hearing him speak again, it was clear that he was fluent in English. His accent notwithstanding, there was no hitch from his having to translate in his head from Arabic. If I had to guess, I’d say he’d been educated at some point in the US.

Again, there was more talking behind the camera. We still couldn’t make it out. Whatever was said, though, it resulted in a deviation from the script.

“We’ll proceed in English only,” came the voice. “Do you understand? The questions now will only be in English.”

“Yes,” said the prisoner. “I understand.”

“And you will only answer in English. Is that understood as well?”