Man in the middle sd-6

by Brian Haig

  "So he speaks English?"

  "Yes, this is so. Better even than Abdul."

  "What kind of books?"

  "He has many of your American military manuals. He is very smart and he studies these books with great diligence. And he reads thick books about finance."

  "The Koran?" Bian asked.

  "Ah… no. But Ali is, I think, not like me, very devout. But he… I believe for him the jihad is political." He reconsidered his words, then corrected himself. "Maybe it is a personal jihad of hate."

  I turned to Bian and said, "He wants to talk to you about bombs. Get me when you're finished." I paused, then added, "It would be nice if he was still alive and in one piece."

  "No promises."

  Ali looked very chagrined by the prospect of being left alone with a homicidal Israeli maniac, but I was hungry. I went to the galley, where I found jars of crunchy peanut butter and strawberry jam, a loaf of Wonder Bread, and a cold Coke. I made four sandwiches, heavy on the jam, and I sat and ate.

  From my experience, once a witness steps over the line and becomes a squeal, usually they go from telling you nothing to reciting the entire Yellow Pages, trying to impress you with their newfound good citizenship. Anyway, I heard no howls or slaps and assumed Abdul was behaving and letting it all hang out. Neither did I hear any shots, so Bian also was behaving.

  As I ate, I thought about what we were doing, and where this was going.

  I had been involved in legal cases that became more and more complicated, one thing leading to another, some related, some not. It is an article of faith in law enforcement that those who commit one serious crime usually exercise a disdain for all laws. So as you investigate deeper, you frequently stumble into a briar patch of criminal behavior, additional crimes, and coconspirators. In those instances you keep plodding forward, putting one foot in front of another, and-if you keep your head screwed on straight-eventually it all makes sense, or it makes absolutely no sense, which can be a revelation in itself.

  But this case had turned into one of those Russian Matryoshka dolls, where one thing always leads to another, and you become trapped by never-ending disclosures. So were all these things connected? Were they even related?

  What we had here were Abdul Almiri and Ali bin Pacha, tangents, if you will-in Phyllis's words, low-hanging fruit-that, for good and obvious reasons, had to be plucked and squeezed. But they were also a diversion from our original investigation and it was worth pondering whether that was by happenstance or design. I mean, you had to consider the possibility that Phyllis hadn't been totally up-front about her motives for sending us here.

  Security and confidentiality, she had stressed. And, okay, yes, certainly I could understand and appreciate how Bian and I fit that bill; good soldiers, discreet, obedient, plus we offered the additional quality of plausible deniability, which people in Washington value a lot. We were also plausibly expendable, since nobody would question two more dead soldiers in Iraq.

  And then there was this: Were Phyllis and her boss the lone keepers of the Secret, they would have their own bedrooms at Kennebunkport and bandstand seats at the inaugural parade. Actually, they would pick who was being sworn in. Sounded about right. Were I in Phyllis's shoes, Sean Drummond and Bian Tran would be my first choice.

  But considered from another angle, maybe Phyllis was jerking us off. And if so, why? Well, one reason would be to buy time. But time for what?

  Or was I being unfairly suspicious? When you work for people who are paid to be underhanded, sneaky, and devious, it does tend to make you paranoid. Suddenly, behind every door lurks a hungry tiger, every order disguises a lie, and the mission that appears perfectly innocent ends with a bullet through the back of your skull. Then again, maybe my imagination was overworking this. But Phyllis does think like that.

  After ten minutes, Bian joined me in the galley. She informed me, "His job was just logistics-no involvement in planning or execution of the hits. He just built bombs and provided them to others."

  "It's a relief to know he's not such a bad guy."

  "That was his argument, too. He insisted that he never personally killed or harmed anybody. You know?"

  "I know. Did he have anything useful?"

  "Not really. Turns out that the man Eric's men shot, he was Abdul's controller. He knew who got the bombs, the chain of supply, and so on." She picked a sandwich off my plate and began eating. "We should turn Abdul over to the military, ASAP. He probably possesses knowledge the Army will find relevant. Technical details about his bombs, for instance. That knowledge is always useful to the disposal units. The sooner the better."

  She had been here, and she would know, so I nodded. I put aside the plate, and she accompanied me back to the suite. When we entered, I noted that Bian had positioned Abdul's sandwich about five inches beyond his reach. The man was contorted like a pretzel as he strained to reach it. He looked very annoyed.

  I said to Mr. Almiri, "The Central Intelligence Agency thanks you for your cooperation."

  He ignored the stupid sandwich for a moment, looked up, and offered me a broad, ingratiating smile.

  I informed Mr. Almiri, "About that witness protection offer, after a lot of thought, I've decided on your final destination."

  "Ah… well, sir, I am certain you will choose well. Abdul can be happy in even a cold place."

  "I promised it will be warm. That promise I'll keep." He looked at me expectantly, and I let the shoe drop. "You're going to Abu Ghraib, Mr. Almiri. We're turning you over to the American military. You'll cooperate with them, or we'll tell the entire prison yard that you ratted out your fellow jihadis. Do you understand?"

  Abdul looked like a guy on the verge of an orgasm being told to pull it out. "But, sir… you were promising Abdul-"

  "I lied."

  I thought he was going to cry.

  I looked him in the eyes. "An hour ago, Mr. Almiri, I was at the American medical facility. Dozens of horribly wounded women and children were being rushed in, the result of a bombing. This might've been from one of your devices, or the handiwork of one of your students. Fry in hell."

  I walked out.

  Bian followed, and quietly closed the door behind her.

  I headed straight to the lounge, removed my boots, stretched out on the comfortable sofa, and within three seconds was deeply asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The alarm went off at 2:30 p.m. and I awoke from my nap. I walked to the rear of the plane, back to the master suite, where Bian was asleep on the big bed, and I awoke her as well.

  We both used the bathrooms to dash cold water on our faces and brush our teeth, and then we reconvened in the galley. We brewed a large pot of coffee, poured peanuts and trail mix into a large bowl, and then moved to the conference room, where we settled in to await the arrival of Phyllis and Adolf Waterbury.

  The few hours of sleep seemed to agree with Bian, and her mood had brightened-albeit still a little coolish toward moi. We chewed the fat awhile, the kind of shallow, aimless conversation people have who are just becoming acquainted-or who are working on becoming less acquainted-before she changed the subject and mentioned, "I liked the way you handled Abdul Almiri."

  I nodded.

  She said, "So you saw the consequences of a street bombing at the field hospital?"

  "I did."

  "What was your impression?"

  "What would anybody think?"

  "I don't care about anybody. What do you think?"

  I put down my coffee and answered her. "These people are savages. They're not making war, they're mass-murdering innocents under the guise of a cause."

  "That's it? Nothing deeper?"

  "Tell me what I'm supposed to think."

  She sipped from her coffee and stared at me a moment. She said, "You can't imagine how many of those things I witnessed during my tour. As an MP, we were often the first responders. I have dreams about it still."

  "Dreams or memories?"

  "They mix tog
ether."

  "Tell me about one."

  "It… it was my first. They all leave an impression, of course. But that first one…" She took a long sip from her coffee. "This was before bombings became the tactic du jour. I was in my humvee going to visit one of our roadblocks, and the ops center called on the radio and told me to divert immediately to a neighborhood in Sadr City, the big Shiite slum in the northeastern part of Baghdad. So I directed my driver to the street."

  I nodded.

  "It was only ten minutes away… and we came around the corner, and we turned onto the street, and I… Understand, Sean, the ops center had given me no warning-and a blown-up car was there, burning, smoke billowing up… and in the street I saw this huge hole and a blackened blast scar. But all around, there were… well, body parts… scattered like confetti… like garbage. Hunks of human flesh and limbs, arms, heads… and a lot of them were really tiny, and I realized… they were… they were pieces of children." She went silent for a moment. "About fifty people were just sitting there, wounded and mangled, waiting to be helped. The dead are dead… aren't they? They feel no pain, no misery, but the wounded… their wounds are so… so horrible." After a moment, she said, "You must've seen that this morning."

  "I did see that."

  "So… okay. How did it affect your view of this war?"

  "It pissed me off, Bian. Don't ask me to think deeper or verbalize more than that. I really don't know."

  "I see." She looked away and said, slightly dismissively, "At least that's an honest answer."

  I squeezed her hand across the table. "I don't know what you want to hear. It's an ugly impression, an image so horrible and contemptible it's almost surreal. It was something ugly that should never have happened, but it did." I looked her in the eye and went on, "You've had time for it to congeal into something else. It takes time. When combat veterans talk about having repressed memories and flashbacks, that's what they mean. Nobody forgets. They just aren't expecting the instant when the carnage rushes back to the surface with full import."

  She seemed to understand and seemed disappointed. She said, "I was hoping you would see why we really can't lose this war. Not to these people. Not after all they've done…"

  Clearly something had happened here, something that had strongly affected Bian's view of this war. I had already suspected that, of course. But now that we were closer, geographically closer, and mentally closer, I was getting a stronger sense of how utterly obsessed she was.

  Also, I guess I knew what she was saying. The idea of losing any war is militarily and politically anathema-for soldiers, it is a mark of shame and dishonor; for a nation, a strategic setback; and for the nation's citizenry, a mortifying scar on the psyche that never fully heals.

  Like Vietnam. Here we are, thirty years after that last helicopter wobbled off the U.S. embassy roof, and still we haven't come to grips with it. And in the classic military sense that wasn't even a defeat; it was a negotiated withdrawal, a wearied and bloodied boxer refusing to fight to the finish, regardless that the other guy had been stomped almost to death.

  But some enemies are worse than others, and the idea of people who are willing to unleash such nihilistic savagery, that we would let them win, that we would cede control of an entire nation to their blood-encrusted hands, clearly this was something we needed to think long and hard about.

  These ruminations were interrupted by voices from the front of the plane, and after a moment Phyllis and Waterbury, accompanied by a third gent-Arab in complexion and wearing shimmering white robes with fancy gold embroidery-entered the conference room.

  Phyllis was dressed in a smart blue summer dress, and Waterbury in a sort of tropical, crap brown leisure suit with white loafers and a matched belt that were in nauseating taste even two decades ago when they were in fashion.

  After we exchanged a few greetings, Phyllis said to Bian and me, "You did a fine job."

  "Thank you," said Bian, assuming it was sincere.

  She then looked at me, and added pointedly, "I really wish, however, that bin Pacha hadn't been shot. What a botch-up. We now have to wait for him to recover before we can begin an interrogation. If he knew where Zarqawi was, that knowledge might now be too stale to exploit."

  I had expected her to say that, and still I found it irritating. I made no reply.

  She remembered her good manners and said, "Our guest is Sheik Turki al-Fayef, from Saudi Arabian intelligence. He is here, in an unofficial capacity, to advise us concerning Mr. bin Pacha."

  Bian and I exchanged quick looks of surprise. Wow, a lot had sure happened since we left D.C. Unofficial?

  Anyway, the sheik neither stuck out his hand nor even acknowledged our existence. He assumed a bored expression with his dark eyes sort of roving around the interior of the plane as if waiting for a salesman to appear.

  Waterbury decided he had let too much time pass without making his presence known and said, "Let's all sit. Tran and Drummond, I believe you owe us an after-action report."

  Without further ado, the sheik moved immediately to the head of the table, which told you where he placed himself in the pecking order.

  Waterbury moved to and then sat at the other end of the table-ditto.

  Phyllis pulled out a chair from the middle and seated herself beside Bian.

  You have to pay attention to these things. Apparently Phyllis no longer was in charge of this show, and Waterbury was now the man.

  Of course, Waterbury couldn't wait to confirm this, looking at me and saying in a commanding tone I found very grating, "Drummond, you lead off. Begin with a brief summary of the operation for Sheik al-Fayef's benefit. Then I'd like to know everything you've learned."

  Before I could say, "Up yours," Phyllis interjected, "And Sean, please… keep it brief. We've had a long, tiring flight." Which was code for, "Play along with this idiot, and watch what you say in front of our berobed friend. And, yes, and since you didn't ask-traveling five thousand miles in the company of Mark Waterbury really did suck."

  So I launched into a condensed, highly edited report about my trip, the operation to get bin Pacha, why a bomb maker was grazing on trail mix in one of the bedrooms, and so on. I treated it like a jury summation, which is to say the audience heard a selective, entirely self-serving version of the truth. I'm good at this. But having no idea how much our new Saudi friend knew-and not knowing how much he was supposed to know-I omitted all mention of Clifford Daniels, Charabi, and how we learned about bin Pacha in the first place.

  Occasionally I turned to Bian to address a few points, a sort of Punch-and-Judy show about how we spent our summer vacation.

  I skipped the part about Bian shooting our prisoners. She felt no need bring it up either.

  Neither did I mention the shower thing. Why reinforce the sheik's Arab stereotype that all American women are sluts? And of course, Bian was listening. I wanted to make it back from this mission alive.

  Nor did I bring up that I had doubled Eric's pay. I really wanted to savor the look on Phyllis's face when I broke that news.

  Waterbury listened; to my surprise, he was playing against type, remaining attentive and did not interrupt even once, though he did look like his hemorrhoids were acting up. He was on his best behavior, trying to make a good impression on somebody. Clearly he was not wasting this on me, or Bian, or Phyllis. This sheik, in other words, wasn't just any old sheik. Nor, I was now sure, was he here to "advise" us. But what did unofficial mean?

  Phyllis posed a few questions, all of which in one way or another concerned conditions inside Falluja. None seemed to reveal any particular bearing on the issue at hand, and presumably were related to something else on her plate. This lady always had ten balls up in the air, with three more hidden underneath her skirt.

  For his part, Sheik Turki al-Fayef looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. He occasionally yawned, or rolled his head, or drummed his fingers on the table. He chain-smoked four or five really stinky French cigarettes, polluting th
e entire room.

  This being a U.S. government aircraft, I could only imagine the repressed anguish inside Waterbury's manual-riddled mind. I was really tempted to ask the sheik to fire one up for me, and I don't even smoke.

  At one point, while Bian handled the talking, I examined our exotic friend more closely. A little fleshy and jowly, late-fortyish, with quick black eyes and one of those dashing, daggerish goatees. For some reason, the descriptive "devilishly handsome" popped to mind, which I found funny. I mean, he really did look like the devil. I had this odd thought that the ancient Christians must've framed Arab males as their models for Satan. So what did the Arabs' devil look like? Probably like some chubby whitebread in preppy clothes from Connecticut. And their hell probably resembled New Jersey, which actually isn't all that far from our idea of hell.

  Also I suspected his show of diffidence was just that-an act. Beneath that veneer of cool apathy probably lurked a first-class thespian and a sophisticated intellect firing on twelve cylinders. I had known senior Army officers who employ this same technique. It's about power, the power to appear bored, to display bad manners in the presence of underlings. It's all illusion, of course; just like power. Anyway, I ended our spiel by recommending, "We believe Abdul Almiri should be turned over to the military as quickly as possible." I turned to Phyllis and observed, "The Baghdad field station can handle that without exposing our fingerprints."

  Waterbury answered for her. He said, "I'll handle it."

  "How will you handle it?" I asked.

  "That's none of your business."

  "Mark, it is our business," Phyllis interjected.

  "All right, I'll… I'll tell the Army one of my people is over here and arrested him."

  I exchanged looks with Phyllis. She artfully suggested to Waterbury, "Don't you think they'll wonder why the Pentagon special unit has people over here? You could blow this entire operation."

  "Maybe… Well, I'll consider it." We all were left with the impression that he might accept that cost as long as he got official credit for capturing a bomber. I had this mental image of Waterbury back home, seated with his pals, smoking a big stogie, rolling a snifter of cognac around his palm, and saying something like, "So let me tell you how I bagged the biggest, baddest bomber in Baghdad…"