“Tim. I’m Jen Exley.”

He blinked and said nothing.

“You feeling okay?”

“What does it look like?”

Unbelievable. This dumb kid still wanted to play tough. All hundred and forty pounds of him. Fortunately, the sodium pentothal and morphine running through his veins had softened him a little. Amnesty International might have objected, but they didn’t get a vote. Exley tried to arrange her face in sympathy rather than the contempt she felt. “Can I sit down?”

He shrugged, rustling his cuffs against the bed. She pulled over a chair.

“Are you a lawyer?”

“No, but I can get you one.” A little lie.

“I want a lawyer,” Keifer said, his voice slurred. He closed his eyes and shook his head, slowly, metronomically, seeming to draw comfort from the motion. “They said no lawyer. I know my rights.”

You’re gonna have to take that up with somebody a lot more senior than me, Exley thought.

“I can help you,” she said. “But you have to help me.”

Again he shook his head, sullenly this time. “What do you want?”

“Tell me about the other American over there. Not John Walker Lindh. The third guy. The older one.”

“I told you.”

She touched his face, moved his head toward her, to give him a look at her blue eyes — her best feature, she’d always been told, even if crow’s-feet had settled around them.

“Look at me, Tim. You told someone else. Not me.”

She could see the fight leave his eyes as he, or the drugs in him, decided arguing wasn’t worth the trouble. “They called him Jalal. One or two guys said his real name was John.”

“John?”

“Maybe they had him confused with John Walker Lindh. I’m not even sure he was American. I never talked to him.”