Free The Mirage: A Novel by Matt Ruff Page B

unprecedented. Even in cases of extraordinary rendition, where prisoners were shipped overseas to be questioned in a human-rights vacuum like Texas, the Arab government didn’t deny that the prisoners were in custody, it merely lied about what was done to them. Mustafa wondered what would be bad enough to make the state destroy evidence of a person’s very existence.
    He also wondered why he cared so much. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already known that “special location” was a euphemism for a torture facility. And once you assent to a person being drugged, starved, beaten, hung by the wrists, burned, frozen, choked, drowned, electrocuted, and kept in sensory deprivation until his mind breaks, why should it bother you to think that he might also be murdered, and once murdered, erased?
    Maybe it was the timing. The day Mustafa learned that René Arceneau had become an unperson was the same day he’d gotten Fadwa’s death certificate.
    We close our eyes to sin, but God sees all.
    Mustafa’s subsequent attempt to learn more about Arceneau’s fate had uncovered only one additional piece of information: The order to have him removed to special custody had come not from AHS headquarters but from Congress, from the office of the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Mustafa learned this from Farouk, who’d warned him to stop rattling the knobs of doors he had no business opening.
    That the warning hadn’t taken proved beyond all doubt that Farouk was right to be worried about his sanity. Who’s more dangerous to wrestle with, a suicide bomber or a senator? Clearly the latter: A suicide bomber only has one way to destroy you.
    “Mustafa?” Amal said. “What’s going on?”
    “That’s a very good question,” Mustafa replied. “Who’s handling the search of Costello’s apartment?”
    “Sayyid and Abu Naji.”
    “Why don’t you and Samir hurry over there and help them?”
    “Do you think that’s a good idea?” said Samir.
    “Please, just do it.” Mustafa held out his hand. “Can I borrow your cell phone while you’re gone?”
    “My cell phone . . .” Samir sighed and reached into his pocket. “And what about Amal’s cell phone, eh?”
    Amal, who still didn’t know what was going on here, but was smart enough to guess at a few details, said: “My battery charge is very low. I may have to leave the phone switched off to conserve power . . . What are you going to do, Mustafa?”
    “Keep talking to Dr. Costello. While he’s still with us.”
    Mustafa stared through the glass at the man in the interrogation room. Something about you scares the men in power, he thought. It can’t be this crazy story you’re telling, so what is it? What secret are you hiding? What does Osama bin Laden not want me to know?

T HE L IBRARY OF A LEXANDRIA
    A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE
    Osama bin Laden
    Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (born March 10, 1957), a Sunni Muslim , is a senator from the state of Arabia . He is a member of the National Party of God . Since the year 2001 he has been the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee .
    EARLY LIFE
    Osama bin Laden is one of 25 sons of Mohammed bin Laden , whose Bin Laden Construction Company (now part of the Saud/Bin Laden Group ) is responsible for such projects as the expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina , and the restoration of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem .
    Osama was born in a suburb of the federal district of Riyadh and grew up in Jeddah , Arabia. He attended Jeddah’s elite Al Thagr School and studied economics and business administration at Jeddah University .
    HOLY WARRIOR AND STATESMAN
    In 1980, displeased with the Arab government’s “tepid” response to the Russian Orthodox invasion of Afghanistan , Osama left school and traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan . There along with Abdullah Azzam he founded the Afghan Services Bureau , an organization that helped deliver money, weapons, and recruits to