11. Enhanced Interrogation

The Special Operations Division of the Newark Police Department on 472 Orange Street looked more like an auto body shop than a police bureau. It was a low box of a building, sitting on a small block that was concreted over like many such blocks in Newark, weeds, some of them thriving, growing up through cracks. A bunch of black trash bags bulging with who knows what contents leaned against one side of the building.

Monica Silenzio parked her 2012 Volvo wagon across the street from the PD in a lot encircled, in excellent security style, by an eight foot chain link fence, barbed wire at the top. Her Volvo looked out of place among the other Ford and Chevy SUVs and the occasional motor bike. She knew that for a single woman of her age, people disapproved of her driving such a vehicle. Only married women with the regulation two kids and a husband who drove a Toyota Camry were supposed to have one of those. “It’s no wonder you’re single when you drive a car like that,” her women friends would say. “You should get a brightly colored sports car. The guys will be buzzing around you like bees to a honey pot,” imagery she did not appreciate. She had been surprised that MacIver had not made such a comment. He didn’t seem to notice her car at all. Not that it mattered. In any case, she liked her car because it showed what she was about, safe, secure and comfortable. Given her meager beginnings, growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia, the chances of her becoming who she was today were incredibly slim. Her dad, a wizened, always exhausted coal miner, who died before he was fifty, wanted nothing more than for her to marry a coal miner and have a bunch of kids. She left home as soon as she could and worked her way first through community college then transferred to John Jay College. Occasionally she saw her mom, now in her eighties, still living in Coalwood, now pretty much a ghost town. Her mom was happy enough.

She had a few friends her age who had stayed in the small row of company town houses built for miners back in the fifties. “I probably should go see her more often,” Silenzio thought as she crossed the street to the Special Operations Division. She looked back at her Volvo and clicked the remote to lock it. It took her some time to locate the interrogation room, such as it was. In fact, she had trouble finding the front door since the whole place seemed to be composed of garage doors, behind which, she presumed, were garages. When she finally did find her way in through one of the garages that was open, she found an empty holding cell. She asked a duty officer for directions to the interrogation room. There wasn’t a permanent one, he said, they were using a makeshift section of one of the garages. Silenzio understood. So there would be no cameras, no one-way mirrors. It was through the next door to the right. Captain Buick was there with two suspects, the duty officer said.

Silenzio opened the door quietly and slipped in. The place smelled oily like a garage and there were tools and other vehicle paraphernalia pushed into one corner. The rocket launcher was lying among the tools. There were two chairs on which the suspects, Abdul One and Abdul Two sat, cuffed and chained, whimpering, looking pathetic. Buck Buick strutted around and around them. He barely noticed Silenzio enter.

“I know, I know. You want your lawyer. You already had her,” he said in a sing-song voice.

“Please officer. We know nothing. We are just ordinary guys with jobs and a family,” whimpered Abdul Two.

“Yeh, and a few extra wives to boot!”

“No, officer, no! We are just ordinary Americans, just like you!”

exclaimed Abdul One.

“Oh, no you’re not. Now, I’m going to give you a chance to get through this easily and friendly-like.”

“Our lawyer said we should not say anything,” said Abdul Two.

“Bad advice! Has your lawyer ever represented terrorists before?”

“She said say nothing. We have rights!” answered Abdul One.

“Rights? You say rights?”

Buick grabbed a large chain from the pile of tools and swung it so hard at the steel wall that the whole building shook and the noise was frightening.

“These are my rights! And you’ll feel them if you don’t cooperate!” he yelled as he held up the chain and passed it from hand to hand.

“But we have nothing to say. We know nothing!” complained Abdul One.

“You were going to hit Ground Zero on nine eleven, right?”

“No! No!”

“We meant nothing!” whimpered Abdul One.

“So you had a plan but didn’t mean it?”

“We had no plan. It was the undercover guy’s plan.”

Buick strode behind the chairs and grabbed each of them by their copious black hair. They screamed in pain. “What Al Qaeda cell are you with? Come on! Come on!”

“We don’t know any Al Qaeda!”

Buick wrenched them up and they fell backwards over their chairs.

“Stand up animals! Stand up!” They groveled and cried at his feet. He grabbed them by the hair again and was about to drag them around the garage when Silenzio intervened.

“Captain Buick, what are you doing? Are you crazy?

Buick paused, then let them go. “Oops, sorry. Just doing a bit of enhanced interrogation. Unfortunately, we don’t have any water boarding equipment. At least not yet.”

“Come on! They don’t know anything. They were set up by the FBI,” she said firmly.

“They already admitted that they planned something, but ‘they didn’t mean it.’ I tell you, with thorough interrogation we’ll find out what Al Qaeda cell is planning the attack, and whether it’s on Ground Zero on nine eleven.”

“Does anyone else know you are doing this interrogation?” asked Silenzio.

“Well, not exactly, though it was Lee who asked me to take them over.”

There was a silence, broken only by the muttering and whimpering of the suspects. Silenzio was about to speak when the door opened and MacIver entered accompanied by the suspects’ lawyer.

“You idiots!” screamed MacIver.

“Hey, I only just got here!” Silenzio complained.

The lawyer looked stern “OK. This is over. You had no right to do this. If there is anything on them, you have just ruined the case. And there’s no need, in a local jail, to keep them in cuffs and leg chains.”

Buick looked the lawyer up and down. “Just what the country needs. Another liberal lawyer.”

And the lawyer retorted, “Just what the country needs, another cop who tramples on the constitution!”

MacIver looked to Silenzio. “Apologies Monica. I expected this would happen. I told the mayor it would. Can you call Lee and get him to release these two poor guys?”

“Not going to happen. Once the FBI gets its teeth into a sting, they won’t let go.”

“Well I’m going to the mayor about this. And I’m quitting this task force. I don’t approve of torture and I’ll bet neither does she.”

“I haven’t tortured anyone and have no plans to. It was just a tough interrogation. Gees, we do this pretty much every day!” complained Buick.

“Let’s get these guys back to their cell, and then we can talk about your quitting, Larry,” said Silenzio smoothly.

Buick looked at them both, puzzled, annoyed that they were on a first name basis.

MacIver looked back at him. “Maybe it’s Buick who should quit.”

“Say or do what you like. I’m no pansy quitter,” pronounced Buick.

The lawyer stepped forward. “If you don’t mind paying attention to the pitiable condition of my clients. Please take them back to their cell, and please gently un-cuff and un-chain them,” she demanded.

All looked to Buick. He shrugged and shouted through the open door, “duty officer! Undo these cuffs and chains, and then help the darlings to their cell.”

“Can’t you get them out?” the lawyer asked Silenzio.

“Not a chance. They’re suspect terrorists.”

Buick accompanied the duty officer and suspects out the door.

“Trouble is,” said Silenzio, “if they do know something — and I admit it’s very unlikely — then we’ll never forgive ourselves if we could have stopped an attack.”

“It’s unscientific. It’s not rational,” said MacIver. “The probability is very tiny that they know something, even tinier that what they might know would be of any use to us.”

“Look, I’ll talk to some people I know in the state department. They’re very experienced with terrorism cases. And they know how to stand up to the FBI,” said Silenzio.

“You’re talking rendition?”

“It will only take a few weeks, if that. It’s mostly logistics and rule-following that takes the time.”

“Say no more. I want nothing to do with it.” MacIver turned to leave, hesitated at the door, then left.

Silenzio picked up one of the upturned chairs and sat on it, then made a phone call.

*

MacIver made his way out to Orange Street and was standing on the corner pondering the last several minutes. How could he have been so stupid to agree to this task force? Not noticing the traffic, he stepped on to the road, intending to walk back to his office. There was a slight screech of brakes and an old Dodge Caravan, dark black with black tinted windows pulled up within inches of him. It was Manish Das, driving his “Google van” as he called it. The van bristled with antennae, including a revolving camera on the roof. Das beeped the horn and lowered the window.

“Sir, hello sir, is everything all right sir?” he called.

“Das, that’s you?”

“Yes sir. Just back from NYC sir. Can I give you a lift to the school?”

“Well, OK. I was going to walk to let off steam.” MacIver climbed into the front seat, looking around the interior, amused. The van was chock full of computers, cameras and recording devices. There was a mattress on the floor at back.

“Welcome to my humble little retreat, sir.”

“Wow! Even better than the FBI!”

“It’s better than Google, sir!”

“Phew! So you’re using this for your car theft dissertation?”

“Yes, sir. So what happened sir?”

“It’s impossible, hopeless. Why can’t they make decisions based on scientific data?”

“Sir?”

“They have all assumed that the attack is going to be on Ground Zero, by Al Qaeda, and on Nine Eleven. They’re simply grasping at anything, in fact Buick will do anything to support his knee-jerk assumptions.”

“Sir?”

“Sir what?”

“Maybe it’s not a bad hunch? I mean, Ground Zero is an attractive target, especially given the spectacle of the last attack.”

“Et tu, Das?”

“Ha! Ha! Like Caesar, sir!”

“What? Speak up Das.”

“I mean, one thing we learned from nine eleven is how easy it was to hit a stationary target from the air.”

“Are you serious?”

“Specially a target that stuck right out there. I mean it was only matched by the Statue of Liberty. And now there’s the Freedom Tower, sticking out, just the same.”

“You just defeated your own argument, didn’t you? Why not the Statue of Liberty? That’s why we have to assess all the attractive targets in NYC and assign risk values to each of them, and harden the targets accordingly. You should know better, Das.”

“Very sorry sir. Very sorry. It’s just that a missile fired from somewhere outside NYC could destroy it.”

“All sorts of terrible things could happen, but it’s very unlikely that they will. How would they get the missiles? Where would they hide them? I’m beginning to wonder whether you’re really on board with forensic crime prevention.”

“You’re right sir, I am not thinking straight.”

Das stopped in front of the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice.

“I have a faculty meeting. I’ll see you tomorrow, and by the way, we need to review where you are with your dissertation.”

“Sir. That’s very threatening sir!”

“And your data collection?”

“Google Street is great sir! But my humble van is even better! I know where most cars are stolen from —”

“OK, OK. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Thanks for the ride.”

Das pulled into the car park on Washington Street and climbed into the back. He activated a number of switches, as well as laptop computers and three screens. He sat glued to his computer, watching Google Street in action on one screen and video footage that he had taken from his own patrols on another screen. And on yet another, there was live video of the car park and surrounding streets. He typed in a message to Google Street asking when the street views were last updated in Newark and all along the Hudson through Northern New Jersey.