Man in the Middle

by Brian Haig

“Yet,” Bian noted, “when you learned he was about to be apprehended, your ambassador rushed to the White House and intervened. If this . . . if Ali bin Pacha was beneath your radar, why go to such extraordinary trouble?”

  Another question he didn’t want to hear. In fact, I had not put this piece together, and Bian’s analysis caught me by surprise—not the fact that the Saudis wanted to hide bin Pacha’s secrets, per se; something else. It caught him by surprise as well, and he simply stared at her.

  Since he was no longer answering, Bian answered for him. “You were aware bin Pacha was part of a terrorist cell and you knew rich Saudis were giving him money. Until he was about to be captured, you didn’t care, or . . . you did care, and approved of his activities.”

  “This is speculation. Completely absurd.”

  She kept her eyes on his face.

  I also was studying al-Fayef’s face. He was too much the veteran professional to do something stupid, like look guilty, or even more stupidly, confess. But he did lick his lips a few times, and with a shaky hand he fumbled out a fresh cigarette and lit it.

  He turned to Phyllis and insisted, “I have nothing more to say. Now you must tell me what you intend to do.”

  Actually, he’d told us as minimal truth he could get away with: a careful mixture of what we could learn on our own, what was intuitively obvious, and what any intelligent regional expert could divine from the facts. The problem for us, and the bigger problem for him, was what he didn’t tell us, but that Bian had just surmised.

  Regarding Phyllis, as usual her eyes conveyed one emotion, her lips another, and neither betrayed what probably was in her heart, or in her head. I was sure she was angry, frustrated, and worried. But for Phyllis, emotion and logic were never at war; it just never occurred to her that reason has a peer, or that emotion should incubate action. She announced unequivocally and, I thought, predictably, “What’s done is done. We move forward.”

  Bian asked, “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “What about justice?”

  “For who?” Phyllis asked.

  “For the soldiers who are fighting. For those who are dead. For their families, for their loved ones. For America.”

  “There is no justice for dead soldiers,” Phyllis replied with typically chilling logic. “They are not murder victims—they’re casualties of war.”

  “The Saudis have been feeding money, people, and who knows what to their killers. We now have the names of two princes.” Bian looked in al-Fayef’s direction and added, “It sounds like there are more names, and possibly the Saudi government’s implicated as well. You can’t ignore or paste over that.”

  Wrong, because Phyllis turned to al-Fayef and said, “It’s not in our interest to expose the royal family to . . . embarrassment.”

  He smiled, though I saw no hint of pleasure or even contentment in his eyes; I saw relief. He said, “Good choice. It would be, you know, a disaster for both our countries.” He looked around the room, at each of our faces, then added agreeably, “A war is going on, after all. We must remain friends. Good allies.”

  After all he had just said, about America, about our arrogance, about our incompetence, I was amazed that a bolt of lightning didn’t strike. Apparently, while Bian and I missed the cues, the sheik and Phyllis had moved to a new song, this one titled “Row, row, row the boat gently down the stream.”

  And, in fact, Phyllis gave a cool nod to her sheik friend.

  He said, “I recognize, however, that we have caused you certain difficulties.” He waved his cigarette in small circles through the air. “Embarrassments. Inconveniences.”

  “Your sensitivity is greatly appreciated.”

  He leaned back into his chair and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Two names, Phyllis. This is all I have been authorized to offer.”

  Phyllis shuffled her hands and replied noncommittally, “If they’re the right names.”

  “Yes, yes . . . of course.” He watched her face. “There is a man in Syria, a man who arranges the shipment of weapons and jihadists into Iraq. A smuggler of considerable talent and cleverness.” Phyllis looked unimpressed, and he quickly emphasized, “He is big. Very big. Perhaps a third of the mujahideen entering Iraq flow through his channels.”

  Phyllis stared at him, then nodded. “We’re halfway there.”

  “And I have heard of another man, a Saudi expatriate, who recruits jihadists in Jordan. He—”

  Phyllis interrupted. “Forget about him. Recruiters are too easily replaced.”

  “Ah . . .” A pained expression came to the sheik’s face, and he hesitated before he said, “There is another man, in Iraq, who decides the targets the mujahideen strike in the city of Karbala.”

  Phyllis bent forward with intensified interest.

  “Alas, he also is Saudi, from a prominent family—his father is a dear friend of many years—and it . . . I am greatly pained to betray him.”

  This guy was a real craftsman, and probably he threw that in to make us all feel better. After a moment, Phyllis observed, “You know, of course, that names without addresses are of no use.”

  “And you know, of course, that my guards will depart with me. Also that infernal machine,” he said, pointing at the recorder, with its incriminating recording. He quickly added, “And I’ll give you the man in Jordan for free. We have no use for him.”

  “The recorder and guards are yours. I have no use for them.”

  As I said, Bian and I were not clued in to the rules here, but the flesh trading was apparently over, because the sheik rose from his seat and began casually brushing ashes off his white robes, even as he nonchalantly took a final pull from his stinky cigarette and crushed it beneath his foot. After about three seconds, he opened his valise, rummaged inside, fished out three manila folders, and slid them inelegantly across the table. He said to Phyllis, “Their names and where they can be found. Also background information that I am sure will be helpful when you interrogate them.”

  Phyllis grabbed the folders and, one by one, opened them and inspected the contents while the sheik picked up the recorder and inspected it to be sure the damning tape was still inside. They had just sold their souls to each other, and still did not trust each other.

  The sheik said to Phyllis, “My sincerest apologies to the Director.” There was an awkward pause, and then with a pained expression he confided, “I had no option, Phyllis. It was this, or my job.”

  She nodded.

  “If not me, it would have been somebody else.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He looked at Bian and said, “It was a pleasure meeting you.” He turned to me and could not help smiling. “Better luck next time, Colonel.”

  I smiled back. “Count on it.”

  I knew what Bian was going to say, and she said it. “Go to hell.” My sentiments exactly.

  The sheik shrugged his robes and left, gently closing the door behind him.

  Phyllis quietly read the files and, more to the point, quietly ignored Bian and me. She did not want to have this discussion, and seemed to be silently hoping the problem—us—would go away.

  But we did not go away, and she finally looked up at us and asked, “What did you expect?”

  “We didn’t expect anything,” I replied. “Just definitely not this.” I asked, “Was this little charade prearranged?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he walked in here with those folders, and you just allowed him to walk out of here with everything he wanted.”

  “This is how our business works. Turki is a professional, and professionals come prepared.” She looked at Bian. “You don’t have to like it, but this is how you have to play it.”

  “I don’t like it,” Bian responded.

  “No? Well . . . try thinking about what will save the most American lives, what will help win this war. Compromises are necessary evils.”

  “What else would I be thinking about?” />
  Phyllis studied her face, then said, “He told us who these two princes are. Whatever they did, they’re gold-plated, and it doesn’t matter—we weren’t getting them.” She added, “Nor is antagonizing the Saudis in our interest. For all the obvious reasons, we need them.”

  Bian said, “The calculus doesn’t confuse me. But what you just did . . . it was no different than the pact Cliff Daniels made with Charabi, and we’re doing nothing about that either. Guilty men walk, and everybody gets to avoid a scandal. That’s what I question.”

  Phyllis’s finger was tapping the table, a less than subtle warning that her patience was wearing thin. But Bian was beyond impatience; she was in a slow rage, and being scolded with cold reason not only failed to douse her inner fires it was an aphrodisiac.

  Phyllis said, “Welcome to a world where every choice is flawed and you have to pick the one that least stinks. We lost bin Pacha. Nothing will change that. But at least we now have three new names, three fresh chances to pick up key figures, to find out what they know, and who they know.”

  I heard what Phyllis was saying, and on one level it made sense. I also understood that Bian, a military cop, was taught to reason and was trained to act on another level—good guys versus bad guys; do the crime, do the time. The mind of a police officer is not simple, but the job is morally not all that complex: guilt or innocence, black or white, without any ethical vagaries. But for the lawyer, guilt and innocence are parsed into many shades, crime is subjective, and punishment is merely a commodity you negotiate with a prosecutor, a judge, or a jury. We call this justice, and we say it is evenhanded, and if you can afford a five-hundred-buck-an-hour attorney, you might even believe that. As lawyer friends of mine say, in America you get all the justice you can afford.

  So I wasn’t really shocked that this applies to espionage as well. And neither should Bian have been appalled, or even surprised. She was, though. And Phyllis, who usually exerts a more deft touch when she shoves around her subordinates, this time appeared surprisingly tone-deaf and clumsy.

  I knew it would do no good, but I advised Bian, “I don’t like it either. It is, though, the best deal we’re going to get.”

  She replied, “That man ordered an assassination to keep us from knowledge that was invaluable to us and embarrassing to him. That same man just bartered his country’s way out of a black eye it has definitely earned. That’s wrong—we all know it’s wrong. Pretend otherwise and you’re as bad as her.” She stood and left the room.

  Phyllis watched her leave and drew a long breath, then turned her eyes to me and said, “You need to get her under control.”

  I stood and moved toward the door, but then I stopped and turned around. I said, “I understand your decision. I really do, Phyllis. And, you know what? Were I in your shoes, I might’ve made the same deal.”

  “Thank you.”

  For a moment I stood quietly. I then said, “But that doesn’t make it any more morally excusable, or even right. So she’s disgusted and disillusioned. Frankly, if you and I had souls, we would be, too.”

  Phyllis started to say something, and I kept talking. “And that’s the problem. At the beginning of this case, we had lots of chances to do the right thing. The chance to find out about and expose Charabi. The chance to expose Daniels and his bosses, to expose the truth about the cooked intelligence, about a possible betrayal, and along the way, we stumble into a money scheme that implicates a government that is a titular ally. Instead, we settle for a few garden-variety terrorists. I think you can see where that might turn the stomach of a good soldier.”

  “She’s obsessed with justice and honor. We’re doing what’s best for the country.”

  “I won’t argue what’s best or not. I really don’t know anymore, and that bothers me more than anything.” I added after a long moment, “Fire me or transfer me; I really don’t care. I’m through with this job.”

  Phyllis did not look surprised but neither did she look ready to fire me. She picked up another folder. “I’ll consider this as a sentiment expressed in a moment of haste, anger, and frustration. You have nothing to feel guilty or ashamed about. Nor do I. We handled the cards we were dealt as best we could. If there are moral shortcomings, they lie with others.”

  I said nothing.

  “Sleep on it.” She stuck her nose inside the folder. “Make your decision later, with a clear head.”

  She read. I walked out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Just when you think it’s over, you get jerked through a new knothole.

  Two matters needed to be resolved before we returned home— and Phyllis made it clear that nobody was leaving until both jobs were finished. Probably, after all that happened, she needed to notch a few victories on her belt before she flew home into a shitstorm. A thousand successes do not wipe clean one screwup, but neither is it a good idea to appear empty-handed before a review board.

  Problem one was the apprehension of the smuggler of arms and jihadists into Iraq. As he was operating across the border in Syria, his capture offered what Phyllis politely referred to as “delicate diplomatic and extralegal issues.” Under the proper protocol, the American ambassador in Damascus would lodge a formal request to the Syrian government to arrest the perp, followed by a speedy and efficient extradition process. Given Syrian hostility to America, the name of this option was “pissing into the wind.”

  So when Phyllis said extralegal, she meant illegal, and when she said diplomatic, she meant violating Syria’s sovereignty with a kidnapping. Delicate, of course, meant a black bag job by Agency operatives.

  As long as it didn’t mean Sean Drummond; my fun, travel, and adventure quotient was pegged out.

  So Phyllis worked the phones, coordinating his apprehension, and I was dispatched to handle problem two: to wit, the terrorist master planner in Karbala. As this guy operated inside Iraq proper, his apprehension required neither finesse nor skullduggery, which meant the blunt power of the U.S. Army, and this meant Drummond and Tran were designated to be the mail carriers.

  Bian was in the mess hall when I found her, seated alone, and wearing a desultory expression as she picked at her food. I fell into the chair across from her, cleared my throat a few times, and noisily shifted my chair.

  She sawed off a piece of steak, put it in her mouth, and chewed.

  I smiled at her and asked, “How’s the chow, soldier?”

  Her mouth must’ve been full, because she did not get a word out.

  The famous Drummond charm obviously wasn’t doing it. I cut to the chase and said, “You have one last mission.”

  “Is this an order?”

  “No. You’re involuntarily volunteering.”

  She laughed. Not nicely.

  “The Saudi planner in Karbala is being referred to the Army for apprehension. You served on the corps intelligence staff, so I assume you know who to bring this to.”

  She continued eating.

  I informed her, “You and I will together deliver the Saudi file on this man, and then go straight to the airport for the flight home.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Bian, look at me.”

  She studied her steak.

  “You’re directing your anger at the wrong person.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t hate the players, hate the game.”

  “Oh . . . now it’s a game.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “And you know what I mean.”

  She was being unreasonable, and I guess it was no mystery why. She was furious at the powers that be in Washington, disgusted by their decisions, their machinations, their cover-ups, their bullshit— and she needed to lash out. Sean Drummond wasn’t responsible for that, of course. But the idiots in Washington weren’t seated across from her, they were five thousand miles away, and not likely to take her calls. Still, this was starting to piss me off.

  I said very sharply, “Finish your meal. We’ll go to the motor po
ol together and sign out a vehicle.”

  She pushed away her tray and focused on me for the first time. “You’re right. I still have friends in the corps intel staff. So . . . yes, I do know who to refer this to. In fact, my old office handles these matters.”

  “Good. Everything should—”

  “But if I do this, I do it alone.”

  “Wrong. We do this—”

  “Alone. Also, I’ll fly home alone,” she continued. “Actually, I’d prefer a military flight. The company of real soldiers will be refreshing.”

  That really hurt. I responded, “How you get back is your business. I don’t really care. You are not, however, driving alone to Baghdad.”

  “Why not? I know the way.”

  “The buddy system. It’s—”

  “You’re not my buddy,” she pointed out.

  “—it’s theater policy. Nobody travels through Indian country without a buddy,” I continued. “Also this is a very sensitive and important mission. It requires an armed shotgun.”

  She looked at me and said, “Suit yourself.”

  “I always do.”

  She glanced at her watch. “You know, depending on traffic, this could be your last chance to eat. Go ahead. The food was wonderful, since you asked. I need to freshen up and get my equipment together.”

  “Fine. Motor pool. One hour.” I went to the chow line, loaded my tray, and when I returned to the table, Bian was gone. The dining facility, incidentally, was managed by civilian contractors, and the servers and waiters were all Iraqi nationals, which smacks a little of colonialism—natives waiting hand and foot on their occupiers and all that. Though to be truthful, nobody looked unhappy to have jobs. Contractors might get a bad rap back in the States, but the food, however, was amazing, better than anything I’d eaten in any Army facility, which is not the faint praise it sounds like. I relaxed, savored my first decent meal in days, went back for seconds—twice—and made a pig of myself.

  For the first time in years, I even read the Stars and Stripes, which reminded me why I stopped reading it in the first place. If the New York Times’s motto is “All the news fit to print,” the motto here is “There is no bad news fit to print.” I particularly enjoyed the article headlined, “Recruiting Riots in Six States: President Orders Lottery System to Decide Which of Millions of Desperate Applicants Get Chance to Serve in Iraq.” Okay, I’m making that up.