Fiction: Interrogator shares story of hard life
Fiction: Interrogator shares story of hard life

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Published: September 30, 2007

"The Contractor” (The Permanent Press, $26) by Charles Holdefer is a chilling novel that confronts the moral issues of secret prisons operated by Americans in the worldwide war on terrorism.

The story is told by George Young, an Army soldier who faces the horrors of the rout during the Revolutionary Guard's retreat from Basra, Iraq, to Baghdad. He is assigned as part of a mobile interrogation unit sent to capture and interrogate straggling survivors of the bombed-out trucks and sport utility vehicles.

After the Persian Gulf War, George meets his wife and children in England, where she has failed to obtain a work permit. When his father dies, a hardship discharge allows him to be released from the Army early, and they return to Garden City, Kan., for the funeral.

George's wife, Bethany, accepts a job at the public library, and they buy a house adequate for their lifestyle with two children. He takes over Apple, his father's cider business, but his personality does not fit the requirements, and it does not go well.

He has to accept small cash loans from his brother, Vernon, who runs a successful restaurant called Wiggles. When George becomes deeply in debt, he receives an employment offer from PostCo with a signing bonus that would allow him to wipe out his many obligations. The offer is presented by Bertie, his new boss, who remembers he had once filled out a form admitting he had attained some linguistic ability in Arabic during previous service.

George is sent to a secret location, an island named Omega, with Bethany and their children. There, he first interrogates suspects who have spent time in prisons of one of the United States' wartime partners. The prisoners often arrive with ruptured eardrums from being "boxed.” When doing his job at Omega, George feels No. 4141's last tremor. His action is because he consents to temporarily become an Omega interrogator and assume the habits and thoughts of a person who holds someone under water a little too long.

George and his family return to visit Bethany's father at a farmhouse in North Dakota for Christmas. He is a doctor and pastor, with a church where he feels a responsibility to illegally import drugs from Canada for his needy elderly patients. George is miserable during the visit, and when he receives a call from brother Vernon demanding he come immediately, he goes to Dodge City, Kan., without further information.

He arrives there alone and meets his former wife. He is enticed into spending the night making love to her at her home. The next day, he meets his brother, who admits he has lost all of his money gambling. He demands George sign over Apple to his creditors.

With his world falling apart, George secretly destroys the tickets of his wife and children and returns alone to Omega. He will file a report admitting his involvement in the death of No. 4141 to ease his conscience and then resign.

A message comes stating Bethany's father and his Canadian connections have been arrested for drug smuggling and sale. George files his damning admission, but the message is intercepted. Bernie accuses him of going over his head and traps him. George then feels the full effects of the water torture as administered by Bertie and is forced to sign an admission of guilt. Then he and Bernie go together and dump the frozen body of No. 4141 into the ocean.

Holdefer's descriptions are forceful, and his fiction deals with an important and timely subject of torture in the fight against our enemies and terrorism.

— Russ Long