Time Sensitive Target

Part 20 - A Friendly Conversation

Rob had come to find him a little while ago, asking if it would be convenient to talk once Paige had woken up. He said they'd given her something to help her sleep. She had to be drugged to close her mind from the image you exposed her to. Jase knew he needed to get a grip. As soon as this was over, and it would soon be over, they could all go home. He hoped al-Raheem could travel in a body bag. 

"Here they come," Sonny drawled in a low wearied growl. He didn't like any of this. He hated having to ask Paige to do this, he hated being stuck in the Jordanian wilderness, he hated having to co-op, and he hated that al-Raheem was still alive. The only positive to the situation was making and watching him suffer, which did give Sonny small amounts of pleasure. 

The procession of footsteps from the gravel outside stopped at the door, until a tinny knock rang through the metal. Jase clenched his jaw, and nodded to Sonny to do the honours. 

Sonny swung the door open, holding his ego back to allow the British Captain to enter first. 

Ant was point-man, he took the lead so Paige didn't have to walk in first. He assessed the room, his cool critical gaze resting on the laptop and securing itself on Jase's tired face. Jase met his eyes, knowing his British counterpart had every reason to dislike and distrust him. Paige followed Ant closely, shielding herself from view with his muscular body until Rob advanced at her rear. 

"All right," Sonny broke the suffocating silence. "We're all here. Paige why don't you take a seat  here, one of yous can sit with her," he glanced up to Ant and Rob, gesturing for Paige to sit on one side of the table, facing the wall. Ant hated that their table set up was positioned to make her feel more daunted. The door was behind her, out of sight. The glaring halogen lighting was directly overhead. The chair intended for Paige faced a blank concrete wall. If she looked to her left she would see a concrete wall. If she looked to her right she would see a concrete wall. The only respite from those surroundings would be Jase, seated directly opposite her with a laptop, sat carefully so as not to reveal its secrets but not to obscure Jase's body. He was the interrogator and he needed his full physical presence to be displayed for maximum sub-conscious intimidation. 

Paige took her seat obediently, Rob nodding to Ant as his superior sat beside her. He took his position against the wall next to the door, arms folded. 

"This is just a... friendly conversation," Sonny said casually. Paige appreciated his attempt to be light-hearted, she could tell it was genuine and he was on edge. "No need to be anxious at all," he placed the tips of his fingers on the side of the table next to Paige for a moment in comfort, the digits tracing through dust as he pulled away and retreated to a corner of the room. 

Jase was the last to take his position, feeling more conflicted than ever as he surveyed Paige. She looked a lot healthier. A certain brightness was returning, the bruises fading and the wounds healing. Her long dark hair was tucked behind her ears, framing the gentle outline of her face. Jase could see some of the woman from the file photos returning, though she would never be the same again. He realised he'd studied her for too long when Ant's crystal blue gaze turned to a glare. 

"Ok," Jase breathed. "I have a few things to touch on, but mostly I'll be going off of your responses, asking you to expand more, explain more... the more detail you can give the better. I know that's not an easy thing to do, and I know that remembering some things could be very uncomfortable for you. So to that end, you know- you're not held here," Jase waved his hands and caught Paige's weary blue eyes. "If you want to take a break, we'll take a break, okay?" 

Paige nodded. 

"Ok," Jase audibly exhaled again. "We could see al-Raheem had a laptop he was working off most of the time, he used it to communicate with us and others, we'd imagine. I believe most intel was kept on an external hard-drive, one we haven't been able to recover. Was there anything you can recall seeing on there, or things al-Raheem may have shown you?" 

Paige took a moment to conjure saliva in her mouth and swallow. 

"Um, yes, I saw some things. A lot was written in Arabic, I know that much. He did sit next to me once, on a video call. It was to another man, maybe another terrorist I don't know. They spoke in Arabic the whole time. I know some basic words and phrases. The other man was asking him- al-Raheem-" she faltered over the name slightly "-how long, or how much longer, or something. al-Raheem was replying 'not long', 'soon'. And the rest from what I could tell was him bragging about the various ways he'd tortured us." 

"Would you be able to identify the man from photographs?" Jase was quietly relieved. Information that pushed them further away from Paige was a good thing. 

"I really don't know. He wore the headscarf... wrap thing on his head. Long unruly beard... nothing immediately identifiable I don't think," Paige strained herself to picture the man's face, but there was no use. He was a pixelated blur in her memories. 

"Ok, that's great thank you. You said you saw writing, mostly in Arabic? On what sort of things would you see that?" Jase scrolled briefly on his laptop, then returned his attention to Paige. 

"The laptop, once or twice. I'm sure I saw the screen left on with writing or correspondence on there, but I was on the ground and it was some distance away from me. There's absolutely no way I could make it out from where I was. I saw some writing, a text maybe, on a phone once. It was in English, a laughing response to something he must have been sent. I couldn't see what the message he was replying to said. I mean it could literally have been a meme or something, there was nothing specific," Paige was really clutching at straws in her effort to be useful now. She knew there was very little she could say with absolute certainty. 

"Ok..."

Nearly two hours were spent going back and forth over photographs of people of interest, audio recordings to see if Paige recognised any voices, and grainy surveillance footage. Each time she answered maybe, she couldn't be sure, it was difficult to tell. And each time Jase, Sonny and sometimes even Ant would press with further questions, relating it back to a previous image they'd shown her, wondering if the answer would be any different if it was posed in a different context. After a toilet break and some food, the sun was beginning to set and everybody was growing fatigued. 

She looked at pieces of text next, some handwritten and some printed, and they asked her to translate as best she could. Paige could only fully translate the most basic of sentences, and she was growing bored of the tests. Ant knew there was an alternative motive behind the task; they hoped seeing the words in their original Arabic form would provoke some memory, suddenly help her piece together small fragments of a mental jigsaw to illuminate a bigger picture. But the evening dragged on in much the same way as the afternoon had started, and Ant, Rob and Paige were beginning to become irked by the repetitive lines of inquiry, knowing it was leading them nowhere. 

Jase glanced back at Sonny over his shoulder, who was chewing on a particularly dense protein bar with hard grinds of his jaw. The two shared a look for a fraction of a second. 

"Ok, I think we're almost done," Jase's tone suddenly became brighter, filling Paige with relief. Ant and Rob immediately readied themselves, straightening their backs and preparing to make their exit. "Just one last thing to touch on," he opened a folder and pulled out a slightly crumpled piece of paper with handwritten Arabic text front and centre at the top of the page, and a large empty box below it. Sonny tucked the half masticated protein bar into a pocket, and leant one large boot against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. Rob and Ant immediately noticed the change in the room's atmosphere.

"Does this mean anything to you?" Jase asked inquisitively, pushing the paper across the table towards Paige. 

Paige glanced at the writing, the exercise no different from what she'd spent several hours doing. She instinctively shook her head. 

"No, it doesn't-" She stopped, and hesitated. The silence hung in the air, a suffocating smog that had Rob and Ant on sudden alert. Jase watched as Paige froze, her face and body rigidly still as her eyes darted back and forth across the text. 

Sonny held his breath. She knew.