Titus Ray Thriller Box Set, page 74
part #1 of Titus Ray Series
He looked surprised at my statement. At the same time, he started rubbing the palms of his hands against his thighs, as if they were covered in sweat. “You don’t believe I already told you everything I know?”
“I believe you may not know what you know.”
He leaned across the desk and picked up a Bub’s Subs business card. “Is that why Mr. Vasco arranged for me to meet the franchise people? Was it all just a hoax so you could question me again?”
He glanced over at Mitchell. “Was Mr. Vasco manipulating me?”
Mitchell nodded, “Yes he was.” He extended his hand toward Roberto. “I’m Ignacio Rubio, and this is our senior manager, Geraldo Lucia. We’re your Bub’s Subs franchise team, and we’re very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Montilla.”
Roberto ignored Mitchell’s outstretched hand. “There wasn’t any need for you to go to all this trouble. Why didn’t you just kidnap me again?”
He replaced the business card in the desk holder. “Or instead, you could have asked me to come over to the American embassy for a conversation. I would have been happy to do that. Why bother with this circus?”
I focused on his body language when I answered him.
“Well, Roberto, after reading the written statement you prepared for me in Caracas, I wasn’t exactly sure where your loyalties were. I was afraid if I called you up and invited you down to the embassy for a little chat, you might be on the next flight to Damascus. On the other hand, since you told Ken Vasco you were interested in owning a Bub’s Subs’ franchise, I was sure you wouldn’t refuse to meet with some of their executives.”
He looked genuinely perplexed at my answer. “Why would you think I’d be on the next flight to Syria? Didn’t I give you a detailed account of Hezbollah’s plans to attack your country? After what Hezbollah did to Ernesto, why would I want anything to do with them?”
Mitchell said, “You told us they were planning to use chemical weapons on some of our cities. When you put that in writing, you changed your statement to say they were only interested in attacking Washington. Why would you lie about that if you weren’t trying to protect them?”
Roberto sighed. “Yes, I did say the chemical weapons were destined for several cities, but when I told you that, I was afraid I might need some leverage later on. You hadn’t agreed to help me relocate my family here to Buenos Aires, so I told you Hezbollah had targeted several cities. If you hadn’t approved my request, I would have negotiated with you to reveal which city it was. Once you signed the agreement, though, I decided to reveal the truth in my written account.”
As I sat there listening to Mitchell argue with Roberto over several other discrepancies in his statement, I realized what Roberto had said made sense. As a trade minister, he was used to negotiating deals, and that’s what he’d done to keep his family safe from Ahmed.
At the same time, his answer didn’t account for the verbal stress points the analysts had heard when he was talking about the conversations he’d had with Zaidi, nor did it explain the gaps in his own written record of those conversations.
I decided getting Roberto to fill in those gaps might require I tell him something I seldom told detainees—the truth.
As a method of extracting intel from a subject, being truthful was considered too risky. Also, the DDO explicitly discouraged it.
Now, I considered giving it a try.
Chapter 20
I knew it didn’t matter to anyone in the Ops Center which method of interrogation I used in order to get Roberto to talk. All they really cared about—other than having the intel he possessed—was acquiring a recording of his answers for the official record.
Nevertheless, if I opted to use the truth to get some answers from Roberto, I didn’t want what I revealed to him to be on the official record—not when there was a good possibility someone on the seventh floor might use it against me later.
I thought about how I could prevent that from happening, and I finally decided I needed some time alone with Roberto before Vasco started recording the session. I figured having Mitchell distracted when I sent him back to Suite 301-B might do the trick.
I felt sure Juliana would be the perfect person to do the distracting.
When Mitchell started goading Roberto again, I said, “Give Roberto a break and go grab us some water. While you’re at it, ask Juliana to give you a description of the black van she saw cruising around Roberto’s neighborhood yesterday. Roberto might be able to give her some more information about it.”
As soon as Mitchell heard our prearranged signal about the water, he nodded and said. “I’ll be right back.”
I resisted the temptation to tell him he didn’t need to hurry.
Once he was gone, Roberto said, “Someone’s been following me?”
I lowered my voice, “Look, Roberto, forget about the black van. It doesn’t exist. I just made that up so I could have a few minutes alone with you.”
He looked intrigued—maybe a little frightened—by my admission.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to tell you some things my superiors wouldn’t want me to tell you, and I wanted to do it before they started recording our conversation.”
He laughed. “Your superiors? Look, Mr. Lucia, or whatever you name is, if you’re about to tell me you work for the CIA, don’t bother. I figured that out a long time ago.”
“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t concern my employer. It concerns you.”
He shook his head. “You’d have to be pretty convincing before I’d ever believe anything you had to say.”
“And that’s my point, Roberto. You’ve been honest with me, and now it’s time for me to be honest with you.”
He stared at me for a second or two. “Honest about what?”
“Honest about what was going on behind the scenes in Caracas when we were questioning you.”
“Okay, so tell me what was going on.”
“To begin with, everything you said to us in the safe house was being recorded. After you left, those recordings were thoroughly analyzed and compared with what you wrote down in your written statement.”
He shrugged. “I’m not surprised.”
I went on. “When I say those recordings were thoroughly analyzed, I don’t just mean someone compared the tape of what you said with what you wrote down. Someone did that, of course, but what I’m talking about is the use of highly sophisticated software with the capacity to measure how much tension you were feeling and to gauge your anxiety level when you were saying it.”
He shrugged again. “It probably showed I was under a lot of stress when you were questioning me.”
“Your physical circumstances were factored into those final results.”
Now, he looked concerned.
“Those results showed you weren’t being truthful about your conversations with Rehman Zaidi. They indicated you were concealing something about him, maybe even concealing the true nature of your relationship with him.”
Roberto shifted his gaze over to one of the abstract paintings on the wall and didn’t say anything.
I waited a second to see if he would respond. When he didn’t, I said, “This time, Roberto, if you decide you’re not going to answer my questions about Zaidi, you won’t be returning home to your wife and daughter.”
He finally looked me in the eye.
I continued. “Despite the fact Marwan tried to kill you today, my government will assume you’re working with the terrorists and treat you accordingly. That means you and Marwan will be shipped off to a detention facility, and the two of you could end up at Camp Justice together. And, just in case you didn’t know it, that’s the Jihadi prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”
“No, that can’t happen.” He shook his head back and forth. “You’ve got things all wrong.”
“Then you need to tell me exactly what I’ve got wrong.”
Before Roberto had a chance to reply, Mitchell walked in the room carrying several bottles of water.
Juliana walked in right behind him.
* * * *
Seeing Mitchell enter the room with Juliana was definitely a surprise. On the other hand, since I’d deliberately used her to delay Mitchell’s return, perhaps I should have expected her to show up.
As a rule, women rarely appreciate being used, and I had the feeling Juliana was the rule and not the exception.
Mitchell handed Roberto and me each a bottle of water. “When I told Juliana what you said about the black van, she offered to come back and tell Roberto about it herself.”
I immediately got up and offered Juliana my chair.
It was hard to decipher the look she gave me. “What I have to say won’t take that long. I don’t need to sit down.”
Juliana looked over at Roberto. “The black van I saw in your neighborhood yesterday turned out to be a delivery truck. We checked it out, and, apparently, the driver just couldn’t find the address he was looking for. That’s why he kept circling around.”
I waited to see how Roberto would respond to her story because I felt certain what he said next would indicate whether he’d decided to cooperate with me or not.
Since I’d just told him I’d invented the story of the black van in order to get rid of Mitchell, he might decide to call Juliana a liar and create all kinds of havoc for me.
Or, he could play along, accept her story, and work with me.
Roberto pointed his finger at me. “When you said I might be able to identify the black van, I knew that couldn’t be true.” He looked over at Juliana. “Since I only moved in the neighborhood a few weeks ago, I have no idea who belongs there and who doesn’t.”
Although this was the kind of answer I’d hoped for, I tried not to show it.
I looked over at Juliana, “Thanks for clearing up any confusion about that vehicle.”
She gave me a half-hearted smile. “I hate it when things get confusing.”
* * * *
After Juliana had left, I began my official interrogation of Roberto. Even though I had a pretty good idea he’d decided to be forthcoming with me, I still spent several minutes warning him about the consequences of refusing to answer my questions.
Now that I knew I was being recorded, I was vague about what those consequences would be, and I definitely didn’t mention shipping him off to Gitmo. Still, the picture I painted for him was pretty dire.
When I finished, Roberto said, “There’s no need to threaten me. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“We want to know more about your conversations with Rehman Zaidi,” I said. “In your written statement, you said he talked about his meetings with the security council in Damascus, but you never gave us any details about who attended those meetings. Was there some reason you didn’t tell us who was in attendance?”
He nodded. “I knew you’d want me to give you some specific names, but I was afraid if I identified them, they might know I was the person providing you with that information, and they’d come after me.”
Mitchell asked, “How would they be able to know who’d given us that information?”
Roberto uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, jabbing the air with his finger as he tried to make his point.
“Because I knew Rehman Zaidi couldn’t keep quiet. He talked to me about things he shouldn’t have. That made me afraid he might talk to someone about me. If your military targeted anyone in that group with a drone strike, then the others might be able to figure out I was the one giving out that information.”
I assured Roberto once he told us what we wanted to know, I’d make sure he was protected. I emphasized those assurances by pointing out I’d just saved his life in the cemetery.
Finally, he relented and identified four people Zaidi had told him were responsible for planning the attack against the U.S., including Marwan Farage.
I asked, “How well do you know Marwan?”
He shook his head. “Not well at all. I met him when I was sent to Syria to negotiate a trade agreement between our two countries. Since Marwan was fluent in both Arabic and Spanish, he acted as my translator during the negotiations.”
I urged Roberto to try and remember any personal details about Marwan, especially something I could use as leverage against him. He mentioned Marwan loved Turkish coffee and talked a lot about soccer, but he couldn’t remember anything of significance about the man.
When I quizzed him about Marwan’s family, he said, “I met a few of his family members the summer I brought Ernesto to Syria with me. That was when he introduced me to Ahmed.”
“Did you meet his immediate family?”
Roberto described meeting Marwan’s wife, a daughter named Samira, and a son who was serving in the Syrian army. He thought the son’s name was Arshad, but he wasn’t sure.
After I’d exhausted his knowledge of Marwan’s family, I grilled him about Hezbollah’s timetable for the attack on Washington.
Once again, he insisted Zaidi had never given him an exact date. “Zaidi didn’t know what the timetable was. He told me it was up to the Iranian general.”
Although Wilson had identified the Iranian general during my briefing, I asked Roberto, “What’s the general’s name?”
“Suleiman. General Alizadeh Suleiman.”
“When Zaidi told you about the attack on Washington, did he say how they planned to disperse the chemicals? Did he give you any details about the delivery system they were planning to use?”
“Like I told you before, I remember Zaidi saying he couldn’t wait to see the video of the gas canisters being dropped on Washington, so I just assumed they’d be using an airplane.”
Mitchell asked, “He didn’t mention firing off some kind of rocket?”
Roberto shook his head. “No, Zaidi said nothing like that.” He put his empty water bottle on the desk and said, “Look, I’ve told you everything I know. Why don’t you ask Marwan these questions?”
“Trust me,” I said, as I got to my feet, “Marwan will get his share of questions in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, you’ll need to be patient and remain here a little longer.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really.”
I went out to the reception area and returned with the two guys in charge of babysitting Roberto. Then, Mitchell and I headed back down to 301-B.
The moment we walked in the door, Vasco winked at me and said, “I can’t say much for your style, but you certainly got the guy to talk.”
“I was absent the day they taught style at The Farm.”
Juliana laughed.
* * * *
I asked Vasco if he’d heard back from the Ops Center, and he handed over the reply he’d received. Although I’d been given permission to interrogate Marwan, it was only a PIA, a Preliminary Interrogation Authorization.
The PIA was temporary and would only remain in effect until Carlton had finished making arrangements for Marwan to be transferred to Gitmo, where his interrogation would begin in earnest.
Before that happened, I wanted to pull enough intel out of Marwan to convince Carlton he needed to send me over to Syria to see what I could turn up on Hezbollah’s plans to use the chemical weapons.
I’d just finished digesting the reply from the Ops Center when my sat phone started vibrating. I excused myself and went out in the hallway to answer it.
“Are you clear?” Carlton asked.
I opened the door to 301-A and went inside. The prison-like room made me feel claustrophobic, but I tried ignoring it.
“Clear,” I said.
“I was in the Ops Center when the feed came in and their initial assessment was that Roberto was finally telling you the truth. Do you agree?”
I was surprised to hear Carlton say the Ops Center had been receiving a real-time feed of Roberto’s interrogation. Usually, an interrogation was recorded first, and then, after being reviewed by the primary, was uploaded to the Ops Center.
Of course, should events warrant, the primary could always request a real-time feedback to headquarters, but, in this case, I hadn’t done so.
“I agree with your assessment. I don’t believe Roberto knows any details about the attack, but Marwan may be a different story.”
There was a note of warning in Carlton’s voice. “The DDO only issued a PIA on Marwan. Nothing more. He wants you to leave the heavy lifting to our people at Gitmo.”
I ignored his cautionary tone and asked, “Did you request the real-time feed of my session with Roberto?”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
After a few seconds, Carlton said, “No, I didn’t request the feed. Since you’re asking me that question, I have to assume you didn’t request it either. Did you and Ken have a misunderstanding?”
“Maybe.”
“Don’t get distracted by Ken Vasco. I’ve heard he’s into the political side of this business a little too much. You need to be careful. Don’t let his agenda get in the way of your main objective.”
“That won’t happen.”
Carlton briefed me on the latest signals intelligence from the Middle East and gave me a situational report on Salazar’s investigation of the shooting at the Navy Yard, which the DDO had labeled Component Two of Operation Citadel Protection. Carlton said Salazar had traced the heroin in Felipe’s backpack to Los Zetas, one of several Mexican drug cartels with known ties to Hezbollah in Syria.
Once Carlton had finished updating me, I asked him if the names Roberto had spouted off were known to the Ops Center. He told me Katherine was still probing the databases on one of the men, but our operatives in Syria already knew about the other two, as well as the Iranian general, Alizadeh Suleiman.
“Has she uncovered anything about Marwan’s family yet? Did she find anything I could use as leverage when I question him?”
“She said the preliminary data showed Marwan shipped his wife and daughter off to Beirut when the Syrian rebels first started taking over some of the outlying neighborhoods in Damascus. When Katherine accessed Syria’s military records, she discovered his son, Arshad Farage, had been killed in Al-Hadar when his unit tried to take out a rebel stronghold there.”
