Mr. Rahman remained silent.

I re-phrased my question in the form of a suggestion to Mr. Rahman and said, "I think you should tell me who sent you, and where he is." I should mention that I had my Glock out now and, for some reason, Mr. Rahman had put the muzzle in his mouth.

Mr. Rahman was properly terrified.

By this time, the Federal agents in the room, including Kate, had stepped away and were actually looking the other way, literally.

I informed Mr. Rahman, "I'm going to blow your fucking brains out, unless you answer my questions."

Mr. Rahman's eyes got very wide, and he was starting to comprehend that there was a difference between me and the others. He wasn't sure what the difference was, but to help him toward a complete understanding, I gave him a knee in the nuts.

He let out a groan.

The thing is, when you start this course of action, you better be real sure that the guy whose rights you may be infringing upon knows the answers to the questions he's being asked, and that he will give you those answers. Otherwise, contract agent or not, my ass was hanging out.

But nothing succeeds like success, so I kneed him again to encourage him to share his knowledge with me.

A few of my colleagues left the room, leaving only Edie, Tom, and Kate to witness that Mr. Rahman was a voluntary witness whose cooperation was not coerced, and so forth.

I said to Mr. Rahman, "Look, asshole, you can go to jail for the rest of your fucking life, or maybe get the gas chamber as an accessory to murder. You understand that?"

He wasn't sucking on my automatic any longer, but still he refused to say anything.

I hate to leave marks, so I shoved my handkerchief down Mr. Rahman's throat and pinched his nostrils shut. He didn't seem able to breathe through his ears, and he began thrashing around, trying to get my two hundred pounds off his chest.

I heard Tom clear his throat.

I let Mr. Rahman turn a little blue, then took my fingers off his nose. He caught his breath in time to get another knee in his nuts.

I really wished that Gabe were there to instruct me on what worked, but he wasn't, and I didn't have much more time to mess around with this guy, so I held his nostrils again.

Without going into details, Mr. Azim Rahman saw the advantage of cooperating and indicated his willingness to do so. I pulled the handkerchief out of his mouth, and jerked him up into a sitting position. I asked him again, "Who sent you here?"

He sobbed a little, and I could see that he was very conflicted about all of this. I reminded him, "We can help you. We can save your life. Talk to me, or I'll put you back in that fucking van, and you can go meet your friend and explain things to him. You want to do that? You want to go? I'll let you go."

He didn't seem to want to go, so I asked him again, "Who sent you?" I added, "I'm tired of asking you the same fucking question. Answer me!"

He sobbed a little more, caught his breath, cleared his throat, and replied in a barely audible voice, "I do not know his name… he… I only knew him as Mr. Perleman, but-"

"Perleman? Like in Jewish?"

"Yes… but he was not Jewish… he spoke my language…"

Kate already had a photo in her hand, and she shoved it in his face.

Mr. Rahman stared at the photo a long time, then nodded.

Voild! I wasn't going to jail.

I asked, "Does he look like this now?"

He shook his head. "He has now glasses… a mustache… his hair is now gray…"

"Where is he?"

"I don't know. I don't know…"

"Okay, Azim, when was the last time you saw him, and where?"

"I… I met him at the airport-"

"Which airport?"

"The airport in Santa Monica."

"He flew in?"

"I don't know…"

"What time did you meet him?"

"Early… six in the morning…"

By now, with the rough stuff out of the way, and the witness cooperating, all six FBI folks were back in the living room, standing behind Mr. Rahman so as not to make him too nervous. I, having secured the witness's cooperation and trust, was the person who would ask most of the questions now. I asked Mr. Rahman, "Where did you take this man?"

"I… took him… he wanted to drive… so we drove…"

"Where?"

"We drive up the coast road…"

"Why?"

"I do not know-"

"How long did you drive? Where did you go?"

"We drove to nowhere… we drive… perhaps an hour, or more, then we return here, and we find a shopping mall that was now open-"

"A shopping mall? What shopping mall?"

Mr. Rahman said he didn't know the mall because he was not from around here. But Kim, who was from the Ventura office, knew it by Rahman's description, and she quickly left the room to call the troops. But I had no doubt that Asad Khalil had not stuck around the mall all day.

I backtracked to the airport and asked Rahman, "You met him with your van?"

"Yes."

"At the main terminal?"

"No… at the other side. In a coffee shop…"

Further questioning revealed that Mr. Rahman met Mr. Khalil at the General Aviation side of Santa Monica Airport, leading me to believe that Khalil had arrived by private plane. Made sense.

Then, with time to kill until dark, the two Libyan gents took a nice scenic drive up the coast, then got back to Ventura where Mr. Khalil expressed a desire to do a little shopping, maybe get a bite to eat, and maybe buy a few souvenirs. I asked Rahman, "What was he wearing?" "A suit and a tie." "Color?"

"A gray… a dark gray suit."

"And what was he carrying? Luggage?"

"Only a bag, sir, which he disposed of as we drove. I drove him into a canyon."

I looked around. "What's a canyon?"

Tom explained. Sounded silly to me.

Back to Azim Rahman. I asked him, "Could you find this canyon again?"

"I… I don't know… perhaps… in the daytime… I will try…"

"You bet you will." I then asked him, "Did you give him anything? Did you have a package for him?"

"Yes, sir. Two packages. But I do not know what they contained."

Well, everyone there probably took the same course I did in something called Crateology, so I asked Mr. Rahman, "Describe the packages, the weight, size, all of that."

Mr. Rahman described a generic box, about the size of a microwave oven, except it was light, leading us all to believe it may have contained a change of clothes, and perhaps some documents. Crateology.

The second package was more interesting and scary. It was long. It was narrow. It was heavy. It did not contain a tie.

We all looked at one another. Even Azim Rahman knew what was in that package.

I turned my attention back to our star witness and asked him, "Did he also dispose of the packages, or does he still have them?"

"He has the packages." „

I thought a moment and concluded that Asad Khalil was now decked out in new duds, had new identity papers, and had a sniper rifle broken down in some sort of innocuous-looking bag, like a backpack.

I inquired of Mr. Rahman, "This man sent you here to see if Mr. Wiggins was home?"

"Yes."

"You understand that this man is Asad Khalil, who killed everyone on board that aircraft that landed in New York."

Mr. Rahman claimed that he didn't make the connection, so I made it for him, and explained, "If you are helping this man, you will be shot, or hanged, or fried in the electric chair, or put to death by lethal injection, or put into the gas chamber. Or maybe we'll chop your head off. You understand?"

I thought he was going to faint.

I continued, "But if you help us capture Asad Khalil, you get a million-dollar reward." Not likely. "You saw that on television, didn't you?"

He nodded enthusiastically, giving away the fact that he knew who his passenger had been.

"So, Mr. Rahman, stop dragging your ass. I want your full cooperation."