By Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley
(Copyright 2015) Published by Center Street/ Hachette Book Group
Prologue
The city of Dera Ismail Khan
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan
“You’re here, I assume, to tell us everything we do wrong?”
Prison Superintendent Shaukat Abbas’s words were posed as a question, but the irritated tone of his voice turned them into an accusation. Abbas leaned back in a shabby office chair behind a worn, gunmetal-gray desk inside the drab, institutional walls of the warden’s office at the provincial prison and lit a Morven Gold cigarette. He did not offer one to the guest seated before him.
Christopher King was not offended. An avid jogger, King didn’t smoke. He considered it a nasty, dangerous habit and tended to worry about damage from secondhand smoke. Abbas noticed King fidget and began amusing himself by blowing a series of perfectly formed smoke rings toward his visitor. King already wasn’t feeling well, having recently contracted a bout of bacterial diarrhea while touring the prison in Bannu, a town northwest of Dera Ismail Khan that bordered the so-called lawless area of Pakistan. The strong smell of tobacco mixed with the stench of human sweat and unrecognizable odors that seemed to ooze from the walls of the ancient prison did little to calm his churning stomach or improve his darkening mood.
“Tell me again about this organization of yours,” Abbas said.
King had already gone through his spiel, but he robotically repeated the description that he had given every superintendent whose jail or prison he had visited in Pakistan during the past two weeks.
“The International Equal Justice Project,” he said, “is a nongovernmental, nonpolitical, nonprofit, international organization that monitors living conditions in jails and prisons worldwide. We were invited to Pakistan by your nation’s new internal security director.”
“I’m correct, then,” Abbas hissed, flashing a smug half grin that revealed crooked and cigarette-stained teeth. “You’ve come here to tell me everything I’m doing wrong.”
