30
TORAH PRISON, EGYPT: 4:19 P.M., TUESDAY
The Scorpion: Hell on earth, thought Wazir al-Zayyat. One hundred squalid cells containing the most dangerous Islamic radicals and jihadists in Egypt, a dozen interrogation chambers where even the most hardened of Allah’s holy warriors vomited their secrets after just a few hours of “questioning” at the hands of Egypt’s secret police. Few who entered the Scorpion emerged with their souls or their body intact. Those who encountered Wazir al-Zayyat face-to-face rarely lived to talk about it.
The Scorpion was more crowded that afternoon than it had been in many years. Al-Zayyat did not find this particularly remarkable, since he was the man most responsible for the sudden surge of new arrivals. The prisoner now under interrogation in Room 4 was among the most promising: Hussein Mandali, a middle school teacher from the Sword of Allah stronghold of Imbaba. He had been captured twelve hours earlier on suspicion of distributing a recorded sermon by Sheikh Tayyib Abdul Razzaq. That in itself was hardly a novel offense—the sheikh’s scorching sermons were the hip-hop of Egypt’s downtrodden masses—but the content of the sermon found on Mandali was highly significant. In it the sheikh had made reference to the abduction of the American woman in London and had called for a popular uprising against the regime, a set of circumstances that suggested the sermon had been recorded very recently. Al-Zayyat knew that tapes did not appear by magic or by the divine will of Allah. He was convinced that Hussein Mandali was the break he had been looking for.
Al-Zayyat pushed open the door and went inside. Three interrogators were leaning against the gray walls, sleeves rolled up, faces glistening with sweat. Hussein Mandali was seated at the metal table, his face bloodied and swollen, his body covered with welts and burns. A good start, thought al-Zayyat, but not enough to break a boy from the slums of Imbaba.
Al-Zayyat sat down opposite Mandali and pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder resting in the center of the table. A moment later, the thin, reedy voice of Sheikh Tayyib was reverberating off the walls of the interrogation room. Al-Zayyat allowed the sermon to go on for several minutes before finally reaching down and jabbing the STOP button with his thick forefinger.
“Where did you get this tape?” he asked calmly.
“It was given to me by a man in a coffeehouse in Imbaba.”
Al-Zayyat sighed heavily and glanced at the three interrogators. The beating they administered was twenty minutes in duration and, even by Egyptian standards, savage in its intensity. Mandali, when he was returned to his seat at the interrogation table, was barely conscious and weeping like a child. Al-Zayyat pressed the PLAY button for a second time.
“Where did you get this tape?”
“From a man in—”
Al-Zayyat quickly cut in. “Yes, I remember, Hussein—you got it from a man in a coffeehouse in Imbaba. But what was this man’s name?”
“He didn’t…tell me.”
“Which coffeehouse?”
“I can’t…remember.”
“You’re sure, Hussein?”
“I’m…sure.”
Al-Zayyat stood without another word and nodded to the interrogators. As he stepped into the corridor he could hear Mandali begging for mercy. “Do not fear the henchmen of Pharaoh,” the sheikh was telling him. “Place your faith in Allah, and Allah will protect you.”