Disclaimer: see chapter 1
52. With a Little Help from My Friends
Even with the couple of hundreds of miles that lay between them, Amita seemed a little distracted and more than a little stressed. "What exactly is it you need?"
"We have suspects that won't talk," Colby explained as he watched her over the webcam trying to get some order on her desk (which had some striking similarities with the chaos that could usually be found on Charlie's desk), apparently without success. He chose not to comment on how stressed she seemed, primarily because he was worried that any wrong word at this point might make her burst into tears. "David said you had such a case two years ago or so and that you somehow managed to resolve that by… I don't know, some math thing."
Amita stopped her search and looked up at him, her gaze both confused and a little desperate. "Could you be a little more precise?"
"It was something with advantages and disadvantages and information and some sort of dilemma," David chimed in, still trying to bring some order to his memory.
That, however, proved to be unnecessary. "The prisoner's dilemma," Amita said as though it had apparently dawned on her and as though that one word made everything clear.
"Could you explain to us how that works?" Colby said when she made no move to go on.
Instead of doing that, she turned away from the webcam, apparently towards the door, and said to someone they couldn't see, "Could you explain the prisoner's dilemma to them? I can't seem to find my notes."
A second later, Larry appeared in front of the screen. In contrast to Amita, he looked more or less like he always did, but that was probably just because they were used to a certain degree of distraction in his case.
"What's your interest in that dilemma?" he asked, and David and Colby explained the situation once again.
Larry's expression became thoughtful. "So during the interrogation, you'd like to apply the prisoner's dilemma, I see. Quite an interesting idea, I must say, although in your model, it would be advantageous if one of the persons involved has more to lose than his companions."
"Could you maybe explain to us first how exactly this dilemma works?" David asked. He was feeling lost already.
"Oh! Of course. Let's see… Imagine you have two suspects, both of which are unwilling to cooperate with you."
"Why 'imagine'," Colby muttered, but Larry apparently hadn't heard him.
He went on, "The prisoner's dilemma describes a situation in which it would be advantageous for each of the suspects if they betrayed their partner, at least if we assume that they can't coordinate their strategy, for in that case, everything gets a little more complicated. So let's assume a game with incomplete information. The dilemma presents itself by you offering both parties a deal, separately: if they both cooperate with you, thus betraying their partner, they'll both get a four year sentence. If, on the other hand, only one of them betrays his partner while the other one keeps his ill-founded loyalty and silence, the loyal one will get a higher sentence of let's say five years, while the betrayer goes free thanks to the principal witness regulation. If however both suspects decide to stay silent, the evidence you have is only sufficient to give them a two year sentence each. Even though that last case would be the optimal solution for the pair, human nature is competitive enough so that most people would choose to betray their partner."
"But we already tried that," David said when he thought he'd understood everything. "We already offered them deals, but they are a sworn community, maybe they actually swore an oath, I don't know. But we do know that they both don't talk, deal or no deal."
"This is where you'll need to make the game one of complete information, and the best way to do that is providing them each with a risk assessment. However, that plan requires one of your suspects taking a higher risk by not cooperating with you than his co-suspects, based on a different situation regarding his family or his job. I deeply hope this is the case here?"
"I'm not sure," Colby said slowly. "You mean someone who would lose more than the others by going to prison? I mean, in contrast to the other two, Wellman doesn't have to lose a whole lot, but that doesn't seem –"
"That's perfect," Larry interrupted him. "It should work just as well if we reverse the situation. Now all you'll have to do is show Wellman his payoff matrix and make it clear to him that his co-suspects would lose much more than him if they kept their silence, so that it's quite likely that they'll cooperate with you eventually."
"That's 'all' we have to do, huh?" Colby muttered while his mind was already working at how they could make that clear to Wellman without him suspecting some sort of trick. On the other hand, if they told him that this was his last chance before they would show that matrix to his accomplices… maybe this plan would have a chance to work after all. In the end, Wellman had been imprisoned for a couple of days already, it shouldn't be too hard anymore to demoralize him.
"Alright, Larry," David said, interrupting his train of thoughts. "Thanks, I think that's gonna help us a lot."
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The first thing that Don did when he stepped outside the hospital building was taking in a deep breath. And out. Yes, he'd really needed that. He hadn't been able to bear the restricting feeling of the hospital. which was amplifying the restricting feeling in his chest, threatening to suffocate him. The fact that Charlie hadn't really reacted to his apology did nothing to make him feel better.
What did you expect? Don asked himself morosely. He almost died because of you. You let him down, big time. How could you expect him to forgive you?
A sick feeling started to spread in his stomach as he realized that there might be something broken between him and his brother, something that couldn't be fixed. Maybe, if they'd been closer before this whole thing had started last fall, they could have made it, but now it seemed as though he was paying the price for keeping his little genius brother at an arm's length. He shook his head, wondering how he could have ever let things come so far. First he'd deliberately distanced himself from Charlie and then he'd let him down when he would have needed him most. He'd messed up every possibility where he could have gone wrong, and now it very much seemed like there was no going back.
Stop it, he told himself, a desperate attempt to keep himself from stepping further down into the sucking hole of dark melancholy. He knew that there was no use in dwelling on things that couldn't be changed, he knew that, so why did he always have to dwell on them anyway?
Get a grip on yourself, he told himself, and his anger gave him back something of his old vigor. What was done was done, he couldn't change that, but he could at least avoid making any more life-altering mistakes now. Charlie still had to get back on his feet, and in the meanwhile, there were still some of the people out there who'd done this to him.
As soon as he was relatively sure that his voice wouldn't be trembling anymore, he pulled out his cell from his pocket and called Megan.
"Don! How are you? How's Charlie?"
He wouldn't have considered it possible, but her words actually made him smile. "Better. And a good morning to you, too."
Megan passed over the remark with a smile of her own that he could hear in her next words. "We were wondering when you would finally call. So it is true that he's out of the woods?"
The smile, while still muted, was still there. He should have known that his team would make their own inquiries in this matter. "Yeah, it's true," he confirmed. "He even woke up earlier." He had to be careful, his voice was prone to break again.
"So how is he?"
He swallowed, trying to keep the vivid memory of his earlier visit at an arm's length and the emotion out of his voice. "He's alert enough, though he couldn't talk yet. But the doctors said he should be getting better quickly now."
Megan answered with a relieved sigh. "Finally some good news."
Don, on his end of the line, nodded, telling himself that she was right, that the doctors were right, that things were going to get better now.
He cleared his throat, desperate to change the subject. "So how are things at your end? Any progress on finding Rosenthal? Or on making our suspects talk?"
Megan made a pause that told Don that he might not like what she had to say to him. "We're doing what we can. Amita and Larry are just trying to explain David and Colby via webcam something about a prisoner's dilemma and Blake is trying to make the CIA a little more cooperative. We still don't know where Rosenthal might be though, so it would be good if you could talk to Charlie about that as soon as possible. Maybe he knows something about their plans."
Don was silent for a second. He'd been right, he didn't like that. "There was nothing on the APB?" He just had to make sure.
"Nothing. Well, there have been two more tips since yesterday, but it turned out that the eye-witnesses were mistaken."
This time, Don was silent for a little longer. All this was far from optimal. Rosenthal wasn't stupid. If he was speculating that his accomplices would keep their silence, and their group's structure seemed to be based on such taciturnity, all he had to fear was Charlie's testimony. Anna Silversteen's fate had shown them what this organization did to people who knew too much. True, it was possible that Rosenthal didn't consider Charlie a threat right now, that he didn't assume he was back with them, but even if he thought that, he could be disabused any moment. As bad as he felt about this, he knew that he couldn't really afford to lose much time.
"Alright, I'm gonna talk to him. He's still pretty weak, though, so I don't know when I'll be able to get something useful from him. I'll tell you as soon as I do."
"Okay. And tell him to get well soon, from all of us."
"I'll do that. And… Megan?"
"Yeah?"
"Thank you guys. For everything."
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It seemed as though he was a little better every time he woke up. It also seemed as though the person sitting at his bedside changed every time, for this time, there was Don sitting in that spot next to – wait a second! No, it wasn't the usual spot he sat in, this was different…
He frowned, and as his mind slowly adjusted to the situation, he realized that he was lying in a different room now. It hadn't been a dream then. He could still remember blurry images of corridor walls and doors passing his line of sight, but until now, he hadn't realized that his mind had actually seen those images in reality while he'd been still half asleep.
So he seemed to be in a regular patient's room now. That was good. It didn't just mean that the constant beeping of the monitors was gone, but it was probably a little more comfortable for his visitors as well.
He took a closer look at his brother. Don was sitting on the chair to his left, absorbed in a file. He looked tired and exhausted, but at least those unsettling tears in his eyes were gone now.
When Charlie tried to read the letters and numbers on the folder, Don looked up at him. He smiled a little, but Charlie could see that his smile wasn't a hundred per cent genuine. Perhaps though that was just because of the lines of exhaustion on his face.
"Hey," Don said, putting the folder away and leaning forward, "how are you feeling?"
"Okay," Charlie said, or tried to say, but his throat was still refusing to work and demanding more fluids.
"You need something?" Don immediately asked. "Something to drink?"
Charlie nodded carefully, wondering if his head had been hurting like this the whole time, and gratefully accepted the ice chips that Don put in his mouth, trying to ignore the fact that his big brother was feeding him like a child. He was too much occupied with keeping himself from wincing with pain anyway, but he also noticed that his throat wasn't as sore as it had been earlier, and that it got better with each ice chip that melted there.
"How…" he started, but his voice was gone. Before he tried for a second time, he thought that maybe, the unintended interruption was a blessing, for he'd meant to ask Don how he was, still unable to get the image of his teary eyes out of his head. Now, however, he didn't think he could ask him that, so he quickly changed his question. "How's Dad?" His voice was still as hoarse as he'd never heard it before, but at least it was working again. He could communicate again, he was re-entering society.
"Dad's fine," Don said, taking up the file again. He was looking down at it, which Charlie thought strange. Don never avoided eye-contact, because he never avoided confrontation. Apparently, however, things were a little different today. "I just had to send him outside for a little while because…" This was another uncharacteristic moment for Don: he had to try a second time. "I wanted to ask you if you already felt up to answering some questions for me. We still have to find some of your kidnappers."
Charlie tried not to be disconcerted under his brother's scrutinizing gaze, and gave him another careful nod. "Okay," he said, and only when the word was out, he realized that it might not be that easy to do Don that favor. Until now, his mind had blessedly spared him memories of his imprisonment. Now, those memories would resurface with all the images he'd been trying not to think about and with all the pain, with all the gruesome feelings and sensations he hadn't been thinking about all this time, like for instance –
Suddenly, his breath was gone. "How's Larry," he then demanded to know, his throat more irritated now, his mouth dry as the desert. Yet he remembered that his dad had told him that Larry was helping the team – no, that wasn't true! His dad had said that Larry had been helping the team, that was something entirely different. True, he hadn't mentioned an accident or something of the kind, or had he? Maybe he'd told Charlie and he just couldn't remember or he hadn't been perceptive for information at that time or –
"Hey, Charlie, calm down!" As Charlie's gaze re-focused, he could see that his brother was apparently quite shocked about his agitated state. "Relax. Larry's fine, why – oh." It had dawned on him. "Did they tell you he'd been in an accident?"
Charlie nodded, unable to suppress the painful reflex to swallow. "I saw the picture of his car," he croaked, not knowing and not caring whether it was the poor state of his body or of his soul that made him choke on the words.
Don inhaled deeply. If that was what was upsetting Charlie so much, he could deal with it. On the other hand, if his brother was talking about the picture that had been printed in the local newspaper the day after the accident, Don could very well understand his brother's agitation. "Relax, buddy, Larry wasn't in the car during the accident. He jumped out before it hit the tree. Yeah, okay, he got some bruises and some smaller injuries, but he's fine, believe me."
Charlie, flooded with relief, closed his eyes, then abruptly opened them again. "Can I talk to him?"
Don hesitated. He hated to do this to Charlie, but it was in his best interest if they solved this case as quickly as possible. "You can call him, but we have to get through those questions first, alright?"
Charlie was still staring at him wide-eyed as though he was trying to decipher from the look on his face whether he was telling him the truth about Larry, but eventually, he nodded. "Alright. Let's do this." He had tried putting a smile on his lips, but the effect was destroyed by the raucous, almost wheezing sound of his voice.
Don hesitantly returned the slight smile, but had to fight hard to keep it there. "Okay, buddy, we'll do this real quick, I promise. We only need some key information, we can do the rest at a later time." He hesitated again, unsure where to start. "I don't know how much you remember…"
He didn't go on immediately, and before he figured out what to say, he was interrupted by Charlie's low, hoarse voice. "I remember, Don. Everything."
Don looked up, right into his brother's solemn eyes. "You mean…" he started, but once again didn't know how to finish the sentence.
"Everything," Charlie repeated, and as Don looked into those dark eyes, he had, for the first time since last fall, the distinct sensation that this was actually Charlie he was talking to, not that stranger who couldn't remember them. Even so, he thought he'd never seen such a serious look in his brother's eyes, and it made it hard for him to go on. "Okay. Good." It was good, wasn't it? Charlie remembered, he remembered everything, so he could finally go back to his old life.
He could, couldn't he?
"What we need most right now is information about your kidnappers," he forced himself to say, trying to get his professionalism back. "We need to know everything you remember about the people involved, about their plans and about their hiding-places."
Charlie thought for a second before he answered. The few words he'd said so far had made it clear to him that talking wasn't doing his voice much good, so he decided to ponder his words carefully before uttering them so that he wouldn't get trapped in circuitous explanations. He also uttered the words slowly hoping, that would lessen the pain a bit. "It was some kind of dugout, underground, somewhere in the Yellowstone Park. It was the Yellowstone…?"
Don nodded affirmatively while Charlie coughed. As another ice chip melted on his tongue, he decided that this wasn't working, he had to keep his answers shorter than this. He thought for a second. "Six," he said then in a low voice, though trying not to whisper, for that hurt even more, and trying to ignore the pain. "Daniel Rosenthal, some sort of boss. Dexter Johnson. Patter, Wellman, Taccone. Mike, their hacker."
"Okay," Don said. "We know about Rosenthal, and we already have Dexter Johnson, Clifford Wellman and Wayne Taccone in custody. But we still don't know anything about the other two." He paused. It hadn't slipped his attention that this wasn't easy for Charlie, both on a mental and on a physical level, and he hated to have to do this to him. "Can you tell us anything about them? Do you know where they are? Are they still in that dugout you were talking about?"
"Dunno. Escaped," Charlie said, reducing his answers to single words. Then it occurred to him what Rosenthal had told his men directly before his escape. "Knew you were looking for them. Wanted to get provisions and hide. Locked Rosenthal and Mike in."
Don nodded, trying to keep up his professional façade. By and by, he was getting some insight on what had been going on while they had started their search in the park. "So you must have locked them in right when we arrested Wellman, Taccone and Johnson. What about Patter? Was he out too to get some provisions?"
Charlie nodded, the relief on his face indicating how loathsome talking was to him at this point, and how grateful he was for any chance to renounce on words.
"He must have slipped through our fingers then. He's probably long freed Rosenthal and that Mike by now if they haven't managed to free themselves even before that. It can't have taken them too long to figure out what happened to the other three of their group, and then they probably fled the area... Still, we should take a closer look at that dugout. Can you tell us where that is?"
Charlie thought for a second, deep lines showing on his forehead. Then, he shook his head. "The пs," he then said, not sounding very hopeful.
"You mean we should trace them back?"
Charlie nodded. "No idea after that."
"Okay," Don said, trying not to let the disappointment show in his voice or on his face. "Now about that Patter and Mike – what are their full names?"
Charlie shook his head and Don suppressed a sigh. "Can you describe them?" he asked instead.
"Patter's tall, at least six feet," he whispered, but a coughing fit immediately punished that bad choice. When it was over, he was back to speaking in a low voice and had to swallow often to suppress the urge to clear his throat. "Blonde, short hair. Chiseled features. Brawny. Mid-thirties. Mike mid-twenties, small, slight. Pale. Dark hair, little longer than Patter's."
Don finished making notes before he went on. "That's good. Any abnormalities? Scars, birthmarks or anything like that?"
Charlie thought for a second, then shook his head.
"Okay… Anything else that comes to mind? Maybe the group's plan, do you know what their agenda is?"
"Terror attacks. In Saudi Arabia."
"Terror –?" Don started and paused. That was something he hadn't expected. Charlie could see that too, it was obvious that his answer wasn't to his brother's liking. The six people from the bunker had all been Americans, born and raised there. Granted, there were those cases of Americans fighting in what Islamists liked to call jihad, but six of those special cases all in one place with no typical terrorists to join them? That sounded a little absurd to be true. Plus, he'd never seen any of their suspects pray a single time.
"You're sure about that?" he therefore asked, trying not to let his incredulity show too much. "You're saying they're Islamists?"
Charlie shook his head. "Don't think so." This was getting exhausting, on every level. His strength was running out and he could feel that he wouldn't be able to answer a whole lot of further questions. Anyway, his answers seemed to him to be so inadequate, the information so useless that he couldn't see much sense in this interview.
Don, however, hadn't given up hope that. "So if they committed terror attacks, what are their motives?"
"Dunno." G-d, he was tired.
"Anything else that might help us find them? Did they talk about any specific plans or about other hideouts?"
Charlie shook his head again. He was so tired, all he wanted to do was sleep…
And here he was being egotistical again. Don and the whole team and maybe even Larry and Amita were trying their best to apprehend the people who had held him captive, and what was he doing to contribute to that? Nothing. Not only was he causing problems for everyone, no, he didn't even try to clear up the mess he'd caused. He should just pull himself together. He should be able to remember more details, he just wasn't trying hard enough because he was afraid to let his mind go back to that place full-blast. If he hadn't been such a coward, he would have surely found something in the depths of his memory that would help them, or he should have been able to think of something else, he just had to put his mind to it, he had to keep trying, he couldn't give up, not again, not after everything that had happened, after everything they'd done.
But he was just so tired…
"I'm sorry," he whispered, not caring about the pain, almost welcoming it. His eyes had closed and he could feel tears threaten behind the protective veil his lids provided. "I'm so sorry," he repeated, and the veil couldn't stop the tears from spilling.
He could feel Don's hand on his, soft, and shut his eyes harder, using more force, trying to hold the tears back. "Hey, buddy… it's okay, you don't have to be sorry about anything. You helped us out a lot there."
Oh G-d, Don just didn't understand, he couldn't understand because he didn't know what Charlie had done, that he'd given himself up, that giving up was his nature, that he was just too weak for all this.
"Hey. It's okay, buddy. We're gonna find them. Look, everyone's working on this full-time, and things are looking good that we'll be able to get somewhere even without your testimony. Larry and Amita are currently explaining something to David and Colby about how to make our suspects talk, so that'll probably get us somewhere, you'll see. We're gonna find them, I promise you that. Don't you worry about that and just get some rest, okay?"
Charlie, unable to shut his eyes tighter, turned his head, burying his head in his cushion. He withdrew his hand from Don's light grip, trying to make him go away. He couldn't have him here now, he felt he was losing it, and not only couldn't he let Don see that happen, but Charlie felt that his presence also made him crumble faster. What would Don say if he knew that Charlie had given himself up? He certainly wouldn't be sitting here trying to comfort him. And Larry and Amita were indeed engaged to help solve this case? But they were already busy enough with finals… They were doing so much, they were all doing so much, sacrificing so much time and energy, and it was his fault, and as though that wasn't bad enough, he would have almost caused all their efforts to be in vain. He'd chosen to give up, to embrace death.
"I'm sorry," he repeated, the words hardly audible through the tears and the cushion. "I'm so sorry."
