He nodded, blinking fast.
“I have to have this information. There is no other option. And if I have to, Daniel, I will hurt you until you tell me what I need to know. I will hurt you badly. I don’t necessarily want to do this, but it doesn’t bother me to do it, either. I’m telling you this so that you can decide now, before I begin. Tell me what I want to know, and I will free you. It’s that simple. I promise I will not harm you. It will save me time and yourself a lot of suffering. I know you don’t want to tell me, but please realize that you are going to tell me anyway. It may take a while, but eventually you won’t be able to stop yourself. Everyone breaks. So make the easy choice now. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. Do you understand?”
She had given this same speech to many, many subjects in her career, and it was usually quite effective. About 40 percent of the time, this was when the subject would start confessing. Not often finish confessing, of course, and there was always some exploratory work to do, but there was a decent chance the first admission of guilt and some partial information might be surrendered now. The statistic varied depending on who she was giving the speech to; roughly half the time with most military men, the first divulgence would happen before any pain was administered. Only 5 to 10 percent of the actual spies would say anything without some physical distress. Same numbers for religious zealots. For the low-level toadies, the speech worked 100 percent of the time. The man in charge had never once confessed a single detail without pain.
She really hoped Daniel was just a glorified toady.
He stared back at her while she spoke, his face frozen in fear. But then, as she was concluding, confusion narrowed his eyes and pulled his brows together. It wasn’t an expression she’d expected.
“Do you understand me, Daniel?”
His voice bewildered: “Alex? Alex, is that you?”
This was exactly why one didn’t make contact with a mark beforehand. Now she was off script.
“Of course that’s not my real name, Daniel. You know that.”
“What?”
“My name isn’t Alex.”
“But… you’re a doctor. You helped me.”
“I am not that kind of doctor, Daniel. And I didn’t help you. I drugged you and I kidnapped you.”
His face was sober. “You were kind to me.”
She had to control a sigh.
“I did what I had to do to get you here. Now, I need you to focus, Daniel. I need you to answer my question. Are you going to tell me what I want to know?”
She saw doubt in his expression again. Disbelief that she would actually hurt him, that this was really happening.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But like I said, I don’t know anything important. I don’t have any bank account numbers or, I don’t know, treasure maps or anything. Certainly not anything worth all this.”
He tried to gesture with his trussed hand. Looking at himself as he did, he seemed to realize for the first time that he was naked. His skin flushed—face, neck, and a line down the center of his chest—and he pulled automatically against the restraints as if trying to cover himself. His breathing and heart rate started spiking again.
Nudity; whether black ops agents or just low-level terrorist gofers, they all hated it.
“I don’t want a treasure map. I’m not doing this for personal gain, Daniel. I’m doing this to protect innocent lives. Let’s talk about that.”
“I don’t understand. How can I help with that? Why wouldn’t I want to?”
She didn’t like the way this was going. The ones who clung to the claim of ignorance and innocence often took longer to break than the ones who owned their guilt but were determined not to sell out their government, or their jihad, or their comrades.
She walked to the desk and picked up the first picture. It was one of the very clear surveillance shots of de la Fuentes, a close-up.
“Let’s start with this man,” she said, holding the photo at his eye level and using one of the work lights as a spot.
Perfectly blank, absolutely no reaction. A bad sign.
“Who is that?”
She allowed her sigh to be audible this time.
“You’re making the wrong choice, Daniel. Please think about what you’re doing.”
“But I don’t know who that is!”
She fixed him with a resigned stare.
“I’m being completely honest, Alex. I don’t know that man.”
She sighed again. “Then I suppose we’ll get started.”
The disbelief was there again. She’d never dealt with that in an interrogation before. All the others who’d been on her table had known what they were there for. She’d faced terror and pleading and, occasionally, stoic defiance, but never this strange, trusting, almost-challenge: You won’t hurt me.