The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel (14 page)

W
hile walking with Chay from the FBI to the Metropolitan Correctional Center on Park Row, Fisk wondered if they were witnessing the early stages of a public panic.

The two-block walk would have ordinarily taken them four or five minutes, but this afternoon, it would be half that time: The Wall Street rush-hour crowd was noticeably thinner than usual. He guessed that many people had left work early. And those out now were literally in a rush, all oddly quiet too—as if no one wanted to be slowed down by chatting. The air seemed to buzz with their tension.

Foley Square, typically a hive at this hour on summer days with government agency staffers celebrating the end of the workday, was deserted save for stragglers hurrying across it. The hot-dog vendor and Italian-ice vendor huddled in conversation; no customers waited at either of their carts—whatever the hot-dog man said prompted the other man to hurriedly collapse his cart’s sun umbrella.

As Fisk and Chay rounded the corner onto Park Row, they heard a screech of tires and a deep and resounding metal-on-metal crash. At the far end of Park Row was a taxi, the hood of which had practically become one with the side of a parked UPS delivery truck. Standing on the street with the UPS man, the cabdriver pointed to the sky, as if in explanation. An NYPD patrolman tried to reach
them on foot but was besieged by passersby asking questions, looking over their shoulders and up, or both.

Chay asked Fisk, “What can we do to keep people from panicking?”

“One thing.” He pointed to the Metropolitan Correctional Center at the far end of the block and said, “Let them know when we’ve put the killer in there.”

At first glance, the federal administrative detention facility looked like a modern high-rise. A closer look said something was amiss, or even sinister. Most of the windows were slits, like the rectangular peepholes on the doors to the cells themselves. Other windows were entirely blacked out. The facility’s reputation as a squalid hellhole explained the wide berth it was given by pedestrians. New Yorkers all knew it contained the worst of the worst among its population of eight hundred, crammed into a space for half that many. They’d seen the news clips of Junior Gotti, Bernie Madoff, Ramzi Yousef, and Magnus Jenssen hop-marched through its dark subterranean tunnels, shackled at the ankles, chained at the waist, wrists cuffed.

Inside, Fisk saw on Chay’s face the same surprise he always saw on first-time visitors: the facility was far from the dungeon they imagined. The common area Fisk and Chay were led past, by a Metropolitan Correctional Center’s escorting officer, resembled those at a modern university student center: airy, done in cheery colors, contemporary IKEA-type tables and chairs, arcade-quality Foosball and air-hockey tables, and a stunning amount of elbow room by Manhattan standards.

The cells weren’t much larger than the bunk beds inside them, but rather than cramped or constricting, they appeared cozy, like sleeping berths on European trains, everything white, the mattresses surprisingly thick and inviting. Other than security-risk cases, who were limited to tele-visits, inmates here met friends and family members in a common institutional visiting area that accommodated a hundred people at a time. Inmates working with lawyers could qualify for small private meeting spaces within the institutional visiting area.

A guard took Fisk and Chay to the sixth floor in Private Visitation Room E, “private visitation” serving as a euphemism for interrogation; these rooms essentially belonged to law enforcement officers and prosecutors. Like all of the facility’s private visitation rooms, this one had a two-way mirror fronting an adjacent observation room, and it was wired with concealed video cameras and microphones. Otherwise it was forgettable, a drab twelve-by-twelve-foot space.

Fisk and Chay took chairs on one side of a sturdy metal table that was bolted to the floor. Soon thereafter, the guard returned with Verlyn, who lit up at the sight of them.

“Ms. Maryland, Detective Fisk, I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” he said breathlessly. His lilting voice was at odds with his sturdy, angular Teutonic features. As was so often the case, the dossier, even with its plethora of videotaped interviews, hadn’t captured the subject’s character.

Fisk had learned that Verlyn was a bright guy from New Canaan, Connecticut, who’d compensated for a lack of social skills with raw intelligence, earning a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Despite completing just two semesters at the school, he went on to work in a series of high-profile government systems positions. Now he reminded Fisk of an overly busy party host trying his damnedest to please everyone.

Striding up to the table, Verlyn extended his right hand until his escorting officer, a big man with tired eyes, cleared his throat. Verlyn’s hand dropped to his side almost immediately. Fisk guessed Verlyn had been excessively sociable more than once before. Physical contact in these rooms was prohibited.

“Hi, Merritt,” Chay said, but without the familiarity Fisk had expected, or the congeniality he’d hoped for.

“We’re good,” Fisk told the escorting officer.

With a nod, the man withdrew, the door thudding shut behind him.

“Thank you,” Verlyn said.

“You’re welcome,” said Fisk, although his request for the escorting
officer to wait outside hadn’t been made out of consideration for Verlyn, but to allow the inmate to talk more freely. For that same reason, Fisk had also requested an interrogation room without the metal mesh divider between interrogator and inmate. In general, however, Fisk wanted his interrogation subjects to be uncomfortable. For that reason, by design, the chair reserved for Verlyn wobbled, the metal tip on one of the front legs clattering against the tile floor.

Earlier, per Fisk’s request, a U.S. marshal had removed the leg’s rubber tip. The ideal seating for the subject of an interrogation was a wobbly swivel rocking chair on wheels, with loose armrests, because it amplified the movements of the parts of his body that anchored him, his feet and his elbow and his ass, known as “anchor parts.” People discharge anxiety through their anchor parts, which gives the interrogator an indicator of nonverbal deceptive behavior.

Verlyn might talk a blue streak. More than anything, Fisk needed to know what was true.

“So, how are we doing today?” Verlyn asked as he dropped into the chair, his air of enthusiasm unaffected by the wobble. Like this was happy hour at his favorite tavern.

“Can’t complain,” Fisk said, before starting the interview with a textbook rapport builder: “How are the accommodations here?” He might have instead let fly with
Merritt, who the hell is Yodeler?
But casual conversation created a nonthreatening atmosphere. Get Verlyn going on neutral topics about which he had no reason to lie, like the weather or what they served here for breakfast, and it would be easier to tell when and if he began to lie.

“How do I like it here?” Verlyn said, essentially repeating Fisk’s question, which was troublesome. To buy time to think, a person bent on deception often repeats a question or takes an inordinate amount of time before answering. Verlyn had no reason to lie about the accommodations, but he might be attempting to throw a wrench into Fisk’s efforts at establishing a baseline for honesty so that later
on, when the small talk was in the rearview, he could pause to buy time with impunity.

“It’s funny that you should ask that, Detective,” Verlyn went on, his big gray eyes sparkling. “When I first started at the NSA in 2004, I was typically at work by eight thirty in the morning and stayed until after midnight, then spent another forty-five minutes to an hour driving to and from Georgetown, where I’d managed to buy low on a condo. Because that was my routine six days a week, sometimes all seven, there was little time for anything else, on top of which the job itself was quite stressful. Consequently I began to have a recurring dream, the only one that I’ve ever had, in which I was arrested on some odd technicality—like the character Josef K. in Kafka’s
The Trial
—and then taken to a Spartan penal facility where my cell resembled the room I’d had in the dorms my freshman year at MIT: a single bed, a tiny desk, whitewashed cinder blocks, and that was it. And in the dream, I loved being imprisoned, because I was able to catch up on sleep and reading and thinking; in a way, it was the ultimate intellectual’s vacation. And this place”—he indicated the surroundings with a wave—“has actually been better than the one in my dream, by a fair margin. They have e-book readers, and the food is pretty good . . .”

This overly specific answer—the question had been simply how were his accommodations, and “fine” would have sufficed in response—put Fisk on guard. He’d seen this before, with subjects bent on deception: they inundate you with unrelated facts intended to enhance your perception of them. In maybe half a minute, Verlyn had dropped MIT (never mind that he’d been expelled after his freshman year for poor grades), his work ethic, a knowledge of modern European literature, that he was an intellectual, and the Georgetown condo he managed to buy at the bottom of the market—what a modest guy. When the interview shifted gears, he could now get away with obscuring what he knew of Yodeler by piling superfluous detail upon superfluous detail. Alternately, he was simply insecure
and hungry for attention, hence his self-aggrandizing essay-length response, not to mention his star turn as a whistle-blower.

As Verlyn detailed the Metropolitan Correctional Center food and its surprisingly creative ambience, Fisk looked for other signs of deception. At the Farm, he’d learned to detect dozens. Contrary to popular belief, liars had no difficulty looking you in the eyes. Fisk searched for relative subtleties. For instance, newly incarcerated prisoners typically cleared their throats when lying because they didn’t adequately hydrate behind bars, and anxiety manifests itself as dryness in the throat. Verlyn wasn’t doing that, nor was he shifting uncomfortably in his seat, or grooming himself—smoothing hair, flicking away dust particles, and scratching were also classic means of shedding the anxiety that accompanies lies.

Of course, Verlyn could know most or all of this. The same CIA polygraph examiner who’d taught Fisk’s three-week interrogation course at the Farm had lectured at Verlyn’s NSA orientation. Then again, professionals with knowledge of lie-spotting techniques often make the worst liars because they have too much to think about while lying.

“Glad to hear you’re having a good time here,” Fisk said.

Chay added, “Yes, that’s nice,” but only after Fisk had looked her way, wondering why she was being so quiet. She’d said that journalistic principle precluded her from engaging in police work. But her overriding journalistic objective in this instance coincided with that of the police: find out what the hell Verlyn knows.

Also odd, Fisk thought, was that Verlyn continued to focus on him rather than on her. It wasn’t as simple as shyness or intimidation. Could they be engaged in some form of subterfuge?

“I should note that the unexpectedly pleasant accommodations are considerably offset by the knowledge that high-ranking members of the United States government would like to murder me,” said Verlyn. He gripped either side of his seat to precisely push himself into an upright position, at the same time centering himself. Fisk knew
such tidying to be another classic means of discharging anxiety.

“Have you received threats?” Chay asked.

“Hundreds if you include anonymous Internet trolls.” Verlyn sighed. “Of greater concern to me is the member of the National Security Council who said, according to your newspaper, that he would like to take me out into the desert and put a bullet in my head. Incidentally, there is a drill sergeant at Fort Hood who is already doing that, almost literally. He posted my photograph on targets at the pistol range there. Also one of the Marines who guarded me after I was apprehended, while jabbing me in the kidney, so as not to leave a mark, told me, ‘I’m gonna volunteer’”—here Verlyn pantomimed punching someone, speaking a word with each punch—“‘to be on the firing squad after they convict you of treason.’ There was no heed to due process, from any of these individuals, not even an iota of consideration that I’d done the right thing.”

Petulance often went hand in hand with deception. Fisk judged Verlyn’s indignation to be genuine, though. His naïveté too. He reminded Fisk of the kid who snuck into the zoo after-hours to free the animals, opened the lion’s cage, then was surprised when the lion attacked him.

Time for the change of pace, Fisk thought. “Maybe there’s something we can do about that,” he said. “First, I need to ask you one question: How much do you know about Yodeler?”

The question presumed Verlyn knew something about Yodeler, although the pseudonym had been made public in the past hour, while Verlyn was alone in his cell without access to media. If Verlyn knew nothing, he would say as much—I don’t know him. When lying, people take pains to avoid direct answers.

Verlyn hesitated before answering, “Is Yodeler a website?”

Fisk couldn’t tell whether the man’s confusion was genuine. “No, I’m talking about the person responsible for the drone killings at the Museum of Natural History, Chelsea, and Central Park and Battery Park.”

“Of course that’s all anyone here was talking about today,” Verlyn said. “I hadn’t heard anything other than conjecture about the killer. The person’s name is Yodeler?”

Truthful, Fisk thought. Or demonstrative of a talent for deception. Or a sociopath—Verlyn had offered plenty of substantiation for that diagnosis this evening.

“Is there any reason that you would have been in communication with this person recently?” Fisk asked him. This was an interrogation technique known as “baiting”—you tried to hit the subject with new concerns, in this case that there existed, somewhere, some record of his being in contact with Yodeler. If he hadn’t been in contact, he wouldn’t take the bait; he would simply say no or shake his head.

Verlyn pivoted in his chair, angling away from Fisk, then uncrossed his legs. “Are you asking me this because he’s rumored to be seeking my release?” He looked to Chay, as if in search of a clue. She remained oddly silent.