Man in the Middle

by Brian Haig

  “You can’t imagine how good that makes me feel.”

  “And your personal feelings, as you know, are entirely irrelevant.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “Also I was asked to remind you of the secrecy statements you signed—you remember what that means. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this is what Waterbury is discussing with Major Tran back at the plane.”

  I looked at her a long time, then said, “They’re rubbing it in our faces. Yours too, Phyllis. Doesn’t this bother you?”

  She surprised me and replied, with a rare display of emotion, “You’re damned right it does.”

  We walked on in silence for a few moments before another unnerving thought hit me. “Wait . . .” I asked, “How did the Saudis learn about Ali bin Pacha? Don left before we got to that part.”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  I stared at her.

  “I’m telling you the truth. Out of the blue, the Saudi ambassador called the White House yesterday. He threw quite a stink.”

  “Can’t anybody in the Agency keep a secret?”

  This apparently was funny, because she laughed.

  I said, “A very small circle were aware of this operation, Phyllis. How could the Saudis have learned about it?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. But the ambassador knew. He wouldn’t disclose how, but he knew. So, the Director and I were directed to work out an arrangement with Turki.”

  “You said yesterday? Before we had our hands on bin Pacha?”

  “That’s right. You might even say that was the decisive factor in our decision.”

  “I didn’t think you made any decisions.”

  She ignored this sarcastic insight and continued, “We were quite aware that Saudi intelligence could have tipped off bin Pacha’s organization. But in the event we didn’t figure it out on our own, Turki subtly reminded us.”

  I said nothing.

  “So it became a choice, Sean. A choice between taking bin Pacha out of circulation with the chance of learning what he knows or losing him altogether.”

  We walked for a distance in silence. A solitary runner in battle dress trousers and brown desert boots, off to our left, was jogging laps around a building on the airfield, and he drew both of our eyes. His brown Army T-shirt was soaked with dark sweat, his chest heaved with exertion, and he continued to place one foot in front of another, running in endless circles. He and I had a lot in common; but he and this war had even more in common. Phyllis dabbed her upper lip with a hankie and commented, “This is such a miserably hot and complicated place for a war, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t recall any wars in good places.”

  “I recall better wars. Less convoluted ones.” In a rare moment of philosophizing, she said a little sadly, “All wars have an ugly underbelly to them. The people who fight those clandestine battles are never invited to the ticker-tape parades, and afterward you won’t find them bellying up to the bar of VFW lodges, bragging about their battles.”

  Moving back to the topic at hand, I observed, “At least we will now know what bin Pacha tells the Saudis.”

  She smiled. “We would’ve known anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you think you’re the only smart person in the room? Before bin Pacha’s wound was closed, Enzenauer embedded an electronic device beneath his skin. Mr. bin Pacha is already on the air and broadcasting.”

  I should’ve been surprised by this revelation, yet for some reason, I wasn’t.

  I observed the sheik, off in the distance, with his robes aflutter, scurrying across the airfield, back into the hangar and up the airplane steps, without the slightest clue how completely out of his fucking league he was.

  I took Phyllis’s elbow and guided her back to the hangar. We walked up the steps to the plane and, just at the moment Phyllis stepped through the doorway, I mentioned, “By the way, I doubled the pay for Eric and his team.”

  If nothing else, I would always have the memory of her expression.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  We reconvened and the next few minutes were spent hashing out the logistics, details, and timing of Ali bin Pacha’s interrogation. This whole conversation had a rushed and surreal quality, which is usually the case when the room stinks of guilt.

  For Bian, and for me, it felt like being rotated on a barbecue spit.

  In return for this “small favor you are providing,” Turki promised to provide us “a very illuminating file” his intelligence service had on Ali bin Pacha. By inference, bin Pacha had been a target of interest to the Saudis for a long time. I already suspected this, of course, though it was nice to have it confirmed. Then again, the file we received would look like Mom’s old coupon book after a busy day at the mall; nothing but holes and ragged edges, a remnant of the mighty file it once had been. He didn’t say this; he didn’t need to.

  Phyllis suggested that since bin Pacha was to remain under joint custody, there was really no need to risk transporting him to Saudi Arabia, that in fact the CIA had a facility south of Baghdad that was perfectly suitable for this kind of legerdemain. She suggested further that “our old friend Turki”—not speaking for me— should fly in guards and interrogators, bin Pacha would be fooled, and we would jointly decide his fate afterward.

  Her friend Turki agreed to this suggestion without the slightest hesitation. In fact, I thought he looked relieved.

  Maybe the idea of CIA people wandering through a Saudi high-security prison was problematic for him. Who knows? We might bump into his countryman Osama bin Laden tucked away in a cell. With these people, you never know

  But since we seemed to be into suggestions, I suggested, “It might be a long time before bin Pacha breaks. I’m sure you’re all very busy people. Let Bian and me handle it, and we’ll get back to you.”

  Everybody was impressed by my thoughtfulness, and nobody seemed to think it was a good idea.

  But it brought to the surface what we all knew. There were serious trust issues under the table: The sheik trusted nobody, I didn’t trust Phyllis, who didn’t trust Waterbury, Waterbury couldn’t spell “trust,” and Bian was playing with an ace up her sleeve. For sure, a lot of phony smiles and false assurances were being passed around, but if this were a poker table, there would be cocked pistols on everybody’s laps, and blood would be shed before the pot was claimed.

  Also, Phyllis and Turki al-Fayef seemed a bit uneasy in Bian’s and my presence. Who could blame them? Rapists don’t enjoy hanging around for postcoital chats with their victims.

  Waterbury seemed like Waterbury—the man had not the slightest moral clue that this was wrong, nor had he ever read anything in his manuals that suggested otherwise. This didn’t make him a bad guy. But it was scary.

  At the earliest possible moment, Phyllis departed to visit the station chief at the Baghdad field station to discuss what she vaguely referred to as “important matters.”

  The sheik followed on her heels, presumably to locate a five-star hotel with air-conditioning that worked and better room service.

  Waterbury also left, without informing us where he was going. But my CIA country report had explicitly warned that kidnapping rings were rampant in Baghdad, and, well . . . I crossed my fingers and hoped.

  Bian and I were ordered to remain on the plane and guard Abdul while we waited for the military to dispatch a military police team to transport him to Abu Ghraib prison.

  She and I shifted to the galley, where we discovered a thick hoard of fresh bologna in the fridge. This struck us both as apropos for the occasion—you know, turkey at Thanksgiving, boiled potatoes for Saint Patty’s, bologna after being lied to and fucked. So we made a few sandwiches; I slathered mine with mayonnaise, she loaded hers with mustard, and we adjourned to the big conference table for dinner.

  We brought the last four beers with us. It wasn’t enough to even get a buzz on, but we already were drunk with powerlessness.

/>   So now we were alone with out first chance to compare notes. Bian kicked it off, asking, “How bad was your lecture?”

  “I’ll bet yours was worse.”

  “Waterbury doesn’t bother me.” She smiled. “He’s a big blowhard. Don’t let him get under your collar. Do what I always do. Tune him out.”

  “Seriously, when I told you not to shoot anybody, I didn’t mean him.”

  She held up a forefinger, squeezed the trigger, and laughed.

  “They pulled out the rug from under our feet, Bian.”

  “Why do you sound so surprised? Did you actually believe they’d allow us to take this to full fruition?”

  “For all the wrong reasons, yes, I did.”

  “Well . . . shame on you.”

  “What am I hearing here?”

  “I mean, I’m upset. I’m disappointed. Of course I am. I just . . . Look, once we understood what was happening here, the full import, the total scope, the possibilities . . . I hope this doesn’t sound cynical, but I didn’t think we’d be allowed to find the full truth.”

  “Aren’t we here because you insisted we had to do this?”

  “Was there a choice? You learn that the primary justification behind this war might be a big lie, that the man we sent here to be the next king could be in the pocket of the bad guys, and maybe he exposed to our enemies an invaluable secret. So you have the opportunity to find out and maybe do something about it. Do you say no?” She squeezed my hand and added, “We never had a choice. From the instant we entered Cliff Daniels’s apartment, because of who we are, we had to be here, we had to do what we’ve done, and we had to be told that’s enough.”

  “And you’re okay with this?”

  “I’m Army. I follow orders.”

  “That’s not what I asked. Are you okay with this?”

  “All right . . . I’m depressed. I’m frustrated. I’m disgusted at my own government.” After a moment, she confided, “But I’ll deal with it. You’ll have to find your own way to handle it.”

  This submissive babble was the last thing I expected from Ms. Gung-ho. Her stubbornness, after all, was what brought us here in the first place. Well, I had made lots of misjudgments during the past few days, nor, like the three billion other males on the planet, have I ever been particularly good at understanding women.

  After a long, thoughtful pause, she asked, “What were Phyllis’s instructions to you about Charabi?”

  “There is no Charabi. Just a figment of my imagination. What did Waterbury say to you?”

  “Yeah, like that. And the intelligence leak?”

  “You can’t get to one without the other. Besides, Phyllis kept all the relevant e-mail messages.”

  “Good point. Anything about closing out Cliff Daniels’s murder investigation?”

  I looked at her.

  She looked back and observed with pretended innocence, “I ask only because Waterbury mentioned nothing about it to me.”

  We both sipped from our beers, and out of nowhere we heard the sound of a loud explosion. The chandelier above our heads actually swayed and shook—a little close to home. The highway from Baghdad to the airport was aptly and horribly nicknamed Suicide Alley, and it sounded like a suicide bomber had just nailed somebody. Maybe it was Waterbury; we should be so lucky.

  Without speaking, Bian set up the speakerphone in the middle of the conference table. I dialed the Washington switch, gave the nice operator the number, and a few unanswered rings later heard Detective Barry Enders’s voice growl, “Jesus H. . . . Look what friggin’ time it is. If this isn’t about a murder, there’s about to be one.”

  I identified myself and told Enders that Bian was beside me, listening on the speakerphone, then informed him, “We’re calling for an update on the investigation.”

  There was silence for a moment. Enders then said, “What investigation?”

  “Barry, it’s me,” replied Bian. Sounding slightly annoyed, she said, “Don’t jerk us off.”

  “Who’s jerkin’ who off? A bunch of Feds came in yesterday. They took everything, jurisdiction, the crime scene log . . . my files . . . the lab specimens. They even ripped the pages out of my detective book. Don’t even tell me this is a surprise to you.”

  Bian and I exchanged troubled looks. No wonder Phyllis and Waterbury felt no need to warn us off this venue. Bastards. But smart bastards.

  Enders continued, “Now you’re calling at this hour to rub it in. What is this, some kind’ve trap play to see if I’m—”

  “Barry,” I interrupted, “this is the first we’ve heard of this.”

  “Yeah . . . right.”

  “Who signed the order?”

  “Justice Department. I was also ordered to develop a memory lapse. They were real assholes about it, too.”

  “Yet this is still an open case for you, is it not? A death in your jurisdiction—isn’t it your responsibility to file cause of death?”

  “That’s not how it works, Drummond. The Feds give the judgment, I write it down, end of story.”

  I was, of course, familiar with the proper procedures, and we both knew I was testing the waters. The answer was, screw you.

  He asked me, “Why do you care? You insisted it was suicide. And you know what? I have a feeling that’s what the Feds will conclude: suicide.” He laughed.

  Bian recognized I had a credibility problem here and said, “I changed his mind. So did you. Now he . . . actually, we both believe it was something else. Murder.”

  “Look, I think we’re done—”

  “What if I offered you insights about why Cliff Daniels was murdered?” I asked.

  “Great. I’ll give you the number to Special Agent Barney Stanowitz. Big ugly asshole with bad manners. His card’s in my office. In fact,” he confided, “he warned me that if anybody asked about this case I should call him.”

  Going on instinct about Barry Enders, I said, “Give me a minute, Barry. One minute. Then make up your own mind about what you’re going to do.”

  He hesitated. Not a good sign.

  I nodded at Bian, who is much nicer than me, and she said, “Barry, you’re a smart guy. I think you know what’s going down. A cover-up. Conspiracy. You don’t know why, and maybe you don’t care. But I suspect you do care.”

  Bian and I looked at each other. No reply.

  Bian said, “Barry, please.”

  “Okay . . . one minute. Drummond, make your case.”

  This was less than a commitment but more than the phone slamming down.

  So I confessed, “Maybe I misled you about the trouble Daniels was in.”

  “Wow, no shit. Didn’t they teach you at law school that it’s a crime to lie to the cops?”

  “Cut the crap, Barry. One minute. You promised.”

  “If you want the full minute, speak more clearly.”

  “Okay. Possibly Cliff Daniels betrayed this country. Possibly he gave enormously sensitive information to the wrong people in Iraq and compromised a very important operation. You wondered why a CIA person and a military policewoman were sent to his apartment. Now you know—espionage.”

  There was a long, contemplative pause. He said, “My oldest boy—Elton—he’s a Marine. First Marine Division. Already been to Iraq once.” After another moment he mentioned, “Did my own four years as a Jarhead before I became a cop. Semper Fi.”

  “Couldn’t get into the Army?”

  “Hey, I tried. Only the Army recruiter, he said I possessed two irreconcilable issues: My parents were married, and I don’t look sufficiently stupid.”

  “Really? You look stupid enough to me.”

  We both laughed. He said, “All right, I’ll give you more than a minute. Go ahead, blow some more smoke up my ass.”

  So I gave him part of the story, essentially that Daniels got in over his head and gave a foreign agent some information, though we didn’t yet have a clue what that information was, because it was in code, and the code was a ballbuster. Nor did I clarify how w
e learned about this.

  He was a smart guy, though. He knew that when dealing with a federal government official, he was not hearing one-third of the story, another third was sprinkled with fairy dust, and the final third was total bullshit. But I fed him enough truth and his cop brain was filling in some of the blanks. I wrapped it up, saying, “Here’s the big piece you were missing—motive—why somebody wanted to murder Cliff Daniels. In fact, the list of people who didn’t want Daniels dead would fill a matchbox. There are people in Washington, and here in Baghdad, who would benefit greatly from his death. We’re sure his killer was a woman, and possibly she was hired help, but don’t exclude the possibility she was working on her own.”

  For a moment, Barry said nothing. He needed time to process these clues and revelations, and he eventually asked the right and proper question. “What do you want me to do about this?”

  Bian had done some thinking on this topic, because she immediately responded, “Now you know there was a murder. That simplifies your problem. Focus on the killer.”

  When he made no reply, Bian added, “Colonel Drummond has a theory that all murderers make mistakes. Is that your theory as well?”

  “Yeah, most do. We also have a thick file of cold cases that dates back to 1969. See if you can talk him into examining it. We’d love to know what mistakes they made.”

  “But this killer may have left trails,” Bian insisted. “That high-priced wig. Probably hers. Wigs are no longer fashionable for women—how many stores in the D.C. area sell expensive hairpieces these days? And that triple-X video . . . we assumed it was his and maybe we assumed wrong. Likewise, how many stores in the area sell porn?” I gave Bian a look and she asked Barry, “Am I overstating the obvious?”

  “Yeah, I do this stuff for a living. And you’re overlooking that people purchase wigs and porno on the Internet these days. I’ll check around, though.”

  Bian looked at me to see if I had anything to add. I suggested, “They had to have gone out together once or twice before. Dated, slept together, whatever. Check his charge-card records. See where he socialized lately. Maybe somebody will remember her.”

  “Long shot. We already know the guy had a lot of lady friends, right? Who knows which ones people will remember.”