Numb3rs fic: Five Colbys
1
“Yeah? How did it feel like? Spying on your own country?”
Colby looked straight ahead the whole time. Don knew that trick. Don’t make eye contact with your interrogator. Shut them out. It was the opposite of what they taught in interrogating techniques: make a connection, it’ll make it easier to read your subject. But, of course, Colby was on the wrong end of the table to do that, and what he was doing was actually right for a terrorist trying to resist interrogation. For him.
“My country? How do you figure that?” He cracked the first real expression of the entire session, a grimace that might have been an attempt at a grin.
“How ‘bought the place where you were born, where you grew up, where your family is?”
Colby gave a humorless snort, scrubbed a hand hard over his face. “My family isn’t here. Here I only have a couple of parents who’ve told the neighbors I’m dead.” He shook his head, and then mumbled, so low Don had to think about it for a moment to decipher the sounds, “my real family is elsewhere.”
“So, your family are your comrades?”
That made Colby look at him. He still looked blank, but Don was pretty good at reading people (or at least he had thought he was), and he could detect the bitterness and the disappointment.
“I have a wife. And a daughter. I haven’t seen them in two years, have been allowed only limited contact while on American soil. We named her Mary, but I couldn’t give her my last name, so she uses her mother’s. Mary Tzering. I’m not sure where they are right now, but I’ve been assured that they are alive and well. Many times over.”
Don got up and went to stand in front of Colby to give himself a moment to digest this new development, and to try and exploit it. It was still absurd, but now there were a couple of extra pieces to the puzzle that he hadn’t even known existed, and perhaps there actually was a picture to be made out of this mess.
“Do your parents know?”
“We haven’t talked in five years and Mary is four and a half. I’m sure you don’t need Charlie to do the math.”
2
“We are going to find out. You know that.”
Colby pursed his lips, then suddenly sat back and heaved a sigh. His whole demeanor changed. Up ‘till then he had sat there, coiled up as tightly as he had ever seen him, and now he was slouching and looking at him from under his lashes.
“Well, bugger that. I really liked Colby Granger’s life. And working with you, agent Eppes. You do lead a good team, you know.”
3
“You understand what you’re saying?”
“Dude, I know how it sounds, but you really need to listen to me: I didn’t attack your agent in his house last night to hurt him, I was going to exorcise him! He’s possessed by a frigging demon.”
“You really want this to be your statement?”
“No, agent Eppes, what I want is for you to listen to me! While we’re wasting time here, that demon wearing your agent’s body is out there, and the son of a bitch knows I’m on to him. It’s gonna go beserk. It might kill this Granger guy, and even if it doesn’t, it’s gonna make him do things that’ll make him wish it had.”
“Agent Henriksen did say you might tell us something about ghosts.”
“Ah. Good ‘ole Victor. Is he... er… here?”
“He’s double timing it as we speak. He’s been wanting to have a chat with you for a long time, Dean.”
4
“And how did it start?”
Colby kept hesitating, but if Don kept quiet long enough he always folded. For now.
“Two year ago… No, fuck that, I don’t care anymore. I’ll tell you how it really begin. I was in Qala-i-Panja, ‘bout three hundred miles north of Kabul. It’s… the worse place I had seen yet in my life, and I’d already been on a tour of duty ‘round Herat, when they were bombing civilians to flush out the Taliban. It’s mountains and desert, and it’s this ribbon of God-forsaken land with Tajikistan on top and Pakistan on the bottom and China right in front. Officially we were supposed to build a bridge over this mountain river, but we were there to gather intel and see if we couldn’t whip the local tribes into a frenzy against the Taliban. They’re constantly fighting each other, it didn’t seem like such a stretch to take advantage of it. This, by the way, never happened officially. You’re not going to find it on record.”
“So it’s only a pretty story.”
“Oh, it’s a story. It’s not very pretty.”
He seemed to stop, started twisting his hands in his lap. Don waited some more.
“The tribes didn’t give a shit about us or the Taliban. They had enough problems of their own. At some point someone must have decided that they’d had enough, because we got ambushed. Of my unit, only myself, Dwayne Carter and Steven Cokly made it out. That’s when Dwayne pulled me out of a burning humvee, saved my life. Always wished he hadn’t, but you can’t change the past, I guess.”
He stopped again, looking at Don, maybe to check how he was buying this. Don kept himself stonily blank, only raised his chin to prompt him to go on.
“We were taken prisoners. There were seven of us. They traded the four from Bravo Company to the Taliban, and… they were executed immediately. I figured that wasn’t the original plan, because we weren’t traded. We spent ten days in a stone cave, under constant guard, until they handed us over to some Chinese officials.” His voice broke, and he took a deep, shaking breath, but continued steadily enough. “Four months in a Chinese prison camp is… it just- Steven didn’t make it. He died in his sleep, in our cell. They took him for interrogation, and four days later they brought him back, unconscious. He never woke up. But they learned from their mistake, they were very careful with me, with both of us, even though I think Dwayne didn’t handle it very well. He became twitchy and he never stopped… afterwards.”
“They torture you?”
Colby started shaking, or maybe nodding. It wasn’t a conscious action.
“No, see… they thought we were spies… we were near the border, and we certainly weren’t building that useless bridge… it was only logical… I bet Charlie could even put it in an equation and prove it. You know, mathematically.”
“So what happened then?”
“Then… they sent us back.”
5
“You’re not a spy! You’re a traitor!”
Colby didn’t look at him, didn’t answer. There were incredible lengths the US was willing to go to to protect its interests, but his colleagues didn’t need to know about it. He knew, and that was enough.
“Yeah? How did it feel like? Spying on your own country?”
Colby looked straight ahead the whole time. Don knew that trick. Don’t make eye contact with your interrogator. Shut them out. It was the opposite of what they taught in interrogating techniques: make a connection, it’ll make it easier to read your subject. But, of course, Colby was on the wrong end of the table to do that, and what he was doing was actually right for a terrorist trying to resist interrogation. For him.
“My country? How do you figure that?” He cracked the first real expression of the entire session, a grimace that might have been an attempt at a grin.
“How ‘bought the place where you were born, where you grew up, where your family is?”
Colby gave a humorless snort, scrubbed a hand hard over his face. “My family isn’t here. Here I only have a couple of parents who’ve told the neighbors I’m dead.” He shook his head, and then mumbled, so low Don had to think about it for a moment to decipher the sounds, “my real family is elsewhere.”
“So, your family are your comrades?”
That made Colby look at him. He still looked blank, but Don was pretty good at reading people (or at least he had thought he was), and he could detect the bitterness and the disappointment.
“I have a wife. And a daughter. I haven’t seen them in two years, have been allowed only limited contact while on American soil. We named her Mary, but I couldn’t give her my last name, so she uses her mother’s. Mary Tzering. I’m not sure where they are right now, but I’ve been assured that they are alive and well. Many times over.”
Don got up and went to stand in front of Colby to give himself a moment to digest this new development, and to try and exploit it. It was still absurd, but now there were a couple of extra pieces to the puzzle that he hadn’t even known existed, and perhaps there actually was a picture to be made out of this mess.
“Do your parents know?”
“We haven’t talked in five years and Mary is four and a half. I’m sure you don’t need Charlie to do the math.”
2
“We are going to find out. You know that.”
Colby pursed his lips, then suddenly sat back and heaved a sigh. His whole demeanor changed. Up ‘till then he had sat there, coiled up as tightly as he had ever seen him, and now he was slouching and looking at him from under his lashes.
“Well, bugger that. I really liked Colby Granger’s life. And working with you, agent Eppes. You do lead a good team, you know.”
3
“You understand what you’re saying?”
“Dude, I know how it sounds, but you really need to listen to me: I didn’t attack your agent in his house last night to hurt him, I was going to exorcise him! He’s possessed by a frigging demon.”
“You really want this to be your statement?”
“No, agent Eppes, what I want is for you to listen to me! While we’re wasting time here, that demon wearing your agent’s body is out there, and the son of a bitch knows I’m on to him. It’s gonna go beserk. It might kill this Granger guy, and even if it doesn’t, it’s gonna make him do things that’ll make him wish it had.”
“Agent Henriksen did say you might tell us something about ghosts.”
“Ah. Good ‘ole Victor. Is he... er… here?”
“He’s double timing it as we speak. He’s been wanting to have a chat with you for a long time, Dean.”
4
“And how did it start?”
Colby kept hesitating, but if Don kept quiet long enough he always folded. For now.
“Two year ago… No, fuck that, I don’t care anymore. I’ll tell you how it really begin. I was in Qala-i-Panja, ‘bout three hundred miles north of Kabul. It’s… the worse place I had seen yet in my life, and I’d already been on a tour of duty ‘round Herat, when they were bombing civilians to flush out the Taliban. It’s mountains and desert, and it’s this ribbon of God-forsaken land with Tajikistan on top and Pakistan on the bottom and China right in front. Officially we were supposed to build a bridge over this mountain river, but we were there to gather intel and see if we couldn’t whip the local tribes into a frenzy against the Taliban. They’re constantly fighting each other, it didn’t seem like such a stretch to take advantage of it. This, by the way, never happened officially. You’re not going to find it on record.”
“So it’s only a pretty story.”
“Oh, it’s a story. It’s not very pretty.”
He seemed to stop, started twisting his hands in his lap. Don waited some more.
“The tribes didn’t give a shit about us or the Taliban. They had enough problems of their own. At some point someone must have decided that they’d had enough, because we got ambushed. Of my unit, only myself, Dwayne Carter and Steven Cokly made it out. That’s when Dwayne pulled me out of a burning humvee, saved my life. Always wished he hadn’t, but you can’t change the past, I guess.”
He stopped again, looking at Don, maybe to check how he was buying this. Don kept himself stonily blank, only raised his chin to prompt him to go on.
“We were taken prisoners. There were seven of us. They traded the four from Bravo Company to the Taliban, and… they were executed immediately. I figured that wasn’t the original plan, because we weren’t traded. We spent ten days in a stone cave, under constant guard, until they handed us over to some Chinese officials.” His voice broke, and he took a deep, shaking breath, but continued steadily enough. “Four months in a Chinese prison camp is… it just- Steven didn’t make it. He died in his sleep, in our cell. They took him for interrogation, and four days later they brought him back, unconscious. He never woke up. But they learned from their mistake, they were very careful with me, with both of us, even though I think Dwayne didn’t handle it very well. He became twitchy and he never stopped… afterwards.”
“They torture you?”
Colby started shaking, or maybe nodding. It wasn’t a conscious action.
“No, see… they thought we were spies… we were near the border, and we certainly weren’t building that useless bridge… it was only logical… I bet Charlie could even put it in an equation and prove it. You know, mathematically.”
“So what happened then?”
“Then… they sent us back.”
5
“You’re not a spy! You’re a traitor!”
Colby didn’t look at him, didn’t answer. There were incredible lengths the US was willing to go to to protect its interests, but his colleagues didn’t need to know about it. He knew, and that was enough.