RainStorm

the conversation."
    Now I'd opened a little door of hope for him. All he had to do
    to march right through it was to betray a few people around him.
    Fear of pain, the hope of release. Four out of five interrogators surveyed
    recommended this combination for. . .
    "Okay," he said, nodding against the pillow, "okay. If I tell you
    everything I know about this, will you promise to let me go?"
    Denial. A pathetic thing, really. But there are people who need it
    to get through the tough times. Crawley it seemed, was one of them.
    "Yes," I said. "But remember, there's a lot I know already. Otherwise
    I wouldn't be here. So I'll know if you're leaving something
    out."
    "I understand," he said, nodding, seeing that door opening wider.
    "I won't leave anything out."
    I said nothing. After a moment, he took another deep breath
    and said, "The man you were hired to ... go after. He found out
    about you. That's how this started."
    "Say his name."
    "His name?"
    "What did I just tell you about being vague? Are you trying to

see how far you can push me? Say his fucking name."
    There was a pause, during which he looked like he might be
    sick. He said, "Belghazi."
    "Good. How did Belghazi 'find out' about me?"
    "Someone was sent to Macau to kill him. At least, he thinks
    someone was. A Frenchman, guy named Nuchi, an independent
    contractor with a lot of Middle Eastern connections. Turned up
    dead in Macau less than a week ago with a broken neck, at the
    same time that the man . . . that Belghazi happened to be out there.
    Belghazi wanted to know what had happened. Did we know who
    had sent the guy, that kind of thing."
    "What did you tell him?"
    "That we didn't know anything about it. Which turned out to
    be true. Except that, when I started looking into it, I found out that
    we had sent someone, just not Nuchi. We sent you."
    "But you didn't send the other guy."
    "Who can say for sure? This shit is obviously being set up through
    outside channels, or you never would have been sent in the first
    place. But I don't think that even the idiots behind sending you
    would have been so stupid as to send two operators on the same op
    without informing them first."
    He was getting more talkative, which was good. I wanted to
    keep him going, to continue to foster his newfound loquaciousness.
    This way, he would be used to the dynamic by the time we
    got to the heart of the matter, at which point the act of betraying
    secrets would seem to be not much more than what he had already
    said and done. Contrary to popular imagination, a good interrogation
    is much more like a seduction than it is like torture.
    "Who do you think sent Nuchi, then?" I asked.
    He shook his head. "Nobody knows. Nuchi does contract work
    for various Arab governments and terrorist groups, so the most
    likely explanation is that he was working for one of his usual clients.
    Maybe someone who Belghazi cheated, maybe someone trying
    to muscle in on Belghazi's sources or on his networks. It's actually
    good that the guy is dead. If you did it, you ought to get a
    medal."
    "But instead of a medal, you warned Belghazi that I was coming
    after him."
    There was a pause, during which he grappled silently with the
    realization that I knew this, too. Where possible, you want to give
    the subject the impression that you already know everything he's
    going to tell you. This makes him afraid to hold anything back, and
    helps him rationalize full disclosure: after all, he's not divulging
    anything you don't already know.
    "Yes," he said, after a moment. "We warned him."
    We, I thought. Come back to that.
    "I'd like to hear more about why," I said.
    He closed his eyes, again looking as though he might be sick.
    "There's a ... relationship there," he said, after a moment.
    Another vague reference, I thought. But I waited to see whether he
    would find a way past the mental logjam caused by his desire to
    protect his information, on the one hand, and his desire to still be
    alive when I left his apartment, on the other.
    "He gives us information," he said finally. "So we ... protect
    him."
    "So Belghazi is a CIA asset," I said. My tone indicated that this
    was no great revelation to me, but in fact I was surprised.
    He blanched at hearing it out loud. "In a way. He's not on the
    books as an asset, he hasn't been vetted that way, as a source he's too
    sensitive and we can't take a chance on the relationship being
    known outside the division. But he gives us information."
    "NE Division?" I