Man in the middle sd-6

by Brian Haig

  He watched me approach and edged backward a few steps, away from me and toward his group. I stopped about two feet short of him, near enough that I could smell menthol cigarettes on his breath, and near enough that I could be on him before he squeezed the trigger. I gave him a friendly smile. He smiled back. I laid a chummy hand on his shoulder and squeezed, very gently. He sort of relaxed. I landed a hard punch in his solar plexus, a popping sound came from his throat, his weapon dropped to the floor, and he fell to this knees, gasping for breath-as a prelude to diplomacy I thought it was important to clarify that we weren't on the same side.

  I took a step back and regarded the faces of the other men, and I noted that they shared this insight, because now four pistols were directed at me. Well… so much for diplomacy. I said, "Lay down your weapons. Now."

  This is what's called a tense moment. All it took was one misjudgment, and studying their faces, I detected at least two guys who looked mistake-prone.

  But at that instant, five Americans, guns drawn, came sprinting around the corner. We must've passed a panic button on our way down here, and Tirey had apparently exercised good foresight and punched it. Sounding relieved, Tirey said to Bian, "Tell them it's over," and he ordered his people, "Take their weapons and cuff them."

  Bian said something in Arabic, the Saudi guards saw that the jig was up, and one by one they lowered their weapons and placed them on the floor. This was good, because they had all been pointed at me.

  But clearly, the hermetic seal around this operation was now blown. In the next few minutes everybody inside this facility was going to know about Ali bin Pacha, and his death would be the topic du jour for weeks. Murder-it upsets even the best-laid plans. Bian asked Tirey, "Where's bin Pacha's cell?"

  "Over here."

  We rushed to the cell, though there was no real need to hurry, and Tirey poked a button on the wall that electronically unlocked the metal door, which he threw open. We entered a room that felt immediately claustrophobic, and on the door at about head height I noted a three-inch barred opening-this would be the aperture through which bin Pacha had his brains blown out. Already, the pungent, metallic smell of fresh blood filled the air and our nostrils.

  A dark hole was in bin Pacha's temple, and as I looked around at the flesh and blood spattered on the floor, my first instinct was to get medical assistance, though obviously a janitor made more sense.

  Bian's first reaction was to bend over, check his pulse, and then verbalize what had occurred. She said, "He's dead. Those bastards assassinated him. They didn't want us to hear what he had to say."

  Tirey, now gawking at bin Pacha's corpse, observed, "This… this Saudi arrangement… this was… you know, the CIA's bright idea." He looked at me, and it dawned on him that I was part of the Agency brotherhood. "It did… it originated with your people. I… I merely followed orders and…" He drifted off to a corner of the cell.

  His first instinct was to cover his butt, and at the same time to get his beloved Bureau off the blameline. Somebody was going to be held accountable for this, either the CIA or the FBI, and the early bird was already humping the worm.

  Actually, he looked badly shaken-I didn't blame him-and I approached him, squeezed his arm, and reminded him, "This is a crime scene. Treat it as one."

  "Uh…" He looked around the cell, trying to decide his next move.

  I asked, "Was the killing recorded?"

  He stared back and did not reply.

  I repeated the question.

  "Uh… no. As I mentioned, the video feed from the cell… it was, well… disconnected from the central control room. The sessions in the interrogation room… we only intended to record those."

  He looked unhappy to confess this, and I looked even unhappier to hear it. I said, "All right. This was a close-range shooting, right? Probably there's blood splatter on the weapon, probably fingerprints on the trigger, and definitely there will be powder residue on the hand of the shooter." I squeezed his arm again. "Jim… Find the killer."

  He looked at me, and in true Bureau spirit said, "I… This is going to be really sensitive. I have no legal authority over the Saudis."

  "Do you think you're building a case for an American court? Screw the legal niceties." I pointed at bin Pacha's corpse. "They did."

  "Okay, yeah." He stepped back into the hallway and fell into the groove, ordering his people to separate the prisoners, even as he dispatched a man upstairs to retrieve a crime kit.

  Bian started to say something, but I placed a finger on her lips. I pointed up at the light fixture.

  I removed my finger from her lips. She took a deep breath and exhaled, "It was all for nothing, Sean. Everything… for nothing."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Here's a sad fact about a land where death by violence is ubiquitous: The aftermath machinery works with stunning efficiency.

  Ali bin Pacha's body was bagged, tagged, and deposited in the base morgue-a long metal shelf in a refrigeration van sequestered from the dining facility. The Saudi weapons were all collected, dusted, and tested for powder residue. Simultaneously, the five Saudi guards and the two agents planted in the bordering cells were interrogated by linguists, fingerprinted, swabbed for powder traces, and then locked, individually, into separate cells.

  All of which is SOP whenever conspiracy is a factor, and in this case it was a waste of effort, time, and cell space. We had to assume this was a coordinated conspiracy run by professionals; ergo, the Saudis had been prepped and rehearsed long before we laid eyes on them. Still, after a big screwup everybody pays painstaking attention to procedures they should've obeyed before. Human nature. I do it.

  Regarding me, for nearly forty minutes, Tirey's people forced me to recount, over and over, what I had observed. This also is SOP, having the witness repeat the story as you look for flaws, deviations, omissions-anything that indicates the witness isn't reliable, or overlooked an important detail, or isn't credible. There were no deviations-bin Pacha was dead, we had been caught with our pants down, and now everybody was scrambling to figure out how, and why. But the subtext here was who should be blamed, rather than who did the crime.

  Solving a closed-room mystery, after all-especially with abundant forensic evidence-is no more challenging than tying a hangman's knot. But putting a name to the killer would look good on paper, at least. Everybody was regretful, embarrassed, and uptight. A high-value detainee had been whacked under their noses, in their own ultra-high-security prison. This isn't supposed to happen.

  When the Feds were finally bored with taking my statement, Tirey informed me that Phyllis wanted to see me in the observation room.

  I shut the door behind me as I entered, and I found Phyllis and Bian alone, seated side by side at the conference table, sipping pale Iraqi tea and enjoying an amiable chat, the topic of which was not bin Pacha, not this case, not even Iraq. At the moment I entered, in fact, Phyllis was informing Bian, "… incredible shoe sale, twice a year at Nordstrom. The best brands. Usually about half off."

  To which Bian had replied, "I'll be sure to watch for it."

  I mean, you forget these are women, with a life outside of spying and soldiering, with feminine interests, quotidian things like shopping, cooking, knitting. Somebody get me a gun.

  I said, "Excuse me," before we were all sharing recipes and trading reviews of Danielle Steel's lastest novel.

  Phyllis shot me an annoyed look. "In a moment." She handed Bian a wallet-size photograph. "I appreciate your sharing this with me. He's a most attractive young officer."

  The picture was Magnificent Mark, of course. I watched Bian tuck it gingerly inside her wallet. She smiled at Phyllis. "He's a great guy. I'm very lucky."

  I cleared my throat. "Is this an inconvenient moment? I mean, our prisoner was just murdered, this case is completely blown, and I want to go home."

  Phyllis massaged her temples. "We're all upset, Sean. Outrage won't help."

  "What will help? New shoes?"

  "W
e were waiting for you, so Bian and I decided to use the opportunity to become better acquainted."

  Bian said to me, "Besides, it's not complicated-al-Fayef played us for idiots."

  "We are idiots."

  Phyllis awarded me a hard stare, no doubt regretting her stupid "maverick and misfit" management theory. Despite losing arguably the most valuable prisoner of the war since Saddam, she appeared cool and collected, another day at the office, another blown operation. But, after all, the Agency had suffered so many setbacks and embarrassments since September 10, 2001, that I suppose you either respond with studied indifference or you eat a bullet. She said to me very quietly, "We are not idiots. But in retrospect, yes… we should perhaps have been more vigilant when he was so agreeable about forgoing rendition."

  No perhaps about it, lady.

  She looked at me and said, "You were the only one who asked why there were no Americans on the cellblock. Why? Did you anticipate something like this?"

  She did not add, "Because we all were blind to this possibility, including a guy named Drummond." But that was understood. "No," I admitted, and added, "I was operating on my general distrust of Saudis."

  "We all let down our guard," commented Bian. "In my view, we were all fooled… and we all share responsibility."

  Right. But the board of review wasn't going to see it that way- when it's pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey time, there's only one dart, and they shove it up only one ass. But why bring that up?

  Phyllis, to her credit, did say, "It's my responsibility."

  I asked, "Are you the senior officer in the facility?"

  "Technically, that would be Tirey. But this was my operation."

  "I thought Waterbury was in charge. Speaking of which, where is the golden boy?"

  "Gone." She gave me a faint smile. "A few minutes after bin Pacha was shot, he remembered he had an urgent appointment with somebody in Baghdad."

  I smiled back. In other words, the moment the poop hit the fan, his feet hit the floor. And by now I was sure he had called his buds back in Washington and pointed the finger for this screwup at Phyllis. To err is indeed human, but to blame others is the mark of a promising political appointee.

  We all knew, though, that the parties who ultimately were responsible were the power brokers back in D.C. who ordered Phyllis to cooperate with the Saudis in the first place and, de facto, set this chain of events in motion. But if you believe any blame was going to fall in their exalted direction you've never held a job in the federal government.

  Of course, the guiltiest party was whoever tipped off the Saudis to bin Pacha's impending capture in the first place. This was the name on Ali bin Pacha's death warrant, and this was the guy I really wanted to meet.

  I asked, "What was al-Fayef keeping us from finding out?"

  Bian looked at Phyllis and suggested, "Maybe bin Pacha and/or Zarqawi have an arrangement with his intelligence service? Maybe he's protecting Zarqawi?"

  So Phyllis spent a few moments verbally hashing this idea, essentially giving it short shrift, because Zarqawi now was hooked up with Al Qaeda, and Osama had already added the Saudi royal family to his list of people to fuck with. I wasn't so sure about this, but she concluded, "The Saudis may once have entertained notions that they could accommodate bin Laden, but now they know he's a mortal enemy. And I'm sure they've figured out that after Zarqawi's work in Iraq is done, he and his people are coming after them next."

  This made sense, but who knows? There were so many players with their fingers in Iraq, I wasn't even sure all the players even knew they were players. Like some huge sex orgy in a dark room, it was impossible to know who was screwing whom, who was being screwed by whom, and who wanted to screw whom-but it doesn't matter anyway because it all changes every few minutes.

  Shifting to a topic we could get our arms around, I asked Phyllis, "Was the killer identified?"

  "Yes. A sergeant in the security service. Abu Habbibi by name. Acting alone."

  "All five of those guards were pointing weapons at us. He wasn't alone."

  "Tell me something I don't know, Sean."

  "That's the problem. I don't know what you don't know."

  She smiled, but it had a hard edge.

  I said with some understatement, "I hope you confronted al-Fayef about this."

  "We talked."

  "And…?"

  "He was shocked. He claimed ignorance. He swore he had no inkling this would happen."

  "He's lying."

  "I know he's lying. At least he had the good manners to make it a well-constructed lie."

  "Meaning what?"

  "He called his headquarters for a background check on Sergeant Habbibi. It turns out the man's parents died in an Al Qaeda streetside bombing about six months ago. This offers a compelling motive for murder-revenge."

  Bian and I exchanged amazed looks. This was the same cooked-up pretense she had contrived and tried out on Tirey only an hour earlier. It hadn't worked then, and was even less persuasive now. Bian remarked, "What a coincidence."

  This irony sailed over Phyllis's head, and she replied, "I called our station chief in Jidda. The story was in the Saudi newspapers. Habbibi's parents went out shopping, they parked in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their body parts were scattered across two city blocks."

  Bian conceded, "Even if it is true, it only explains why he was chosen as the executioner."

  Phyllis smiled. "Now you're getting it." She looked at me and said, "Tell me everything you saw. Everything."

  I was beginning to feel like a M*A*S*H rerun. But I pushed mental rewind and went through everything, from the moment bin Pacha awoke, through the mist of red spray that blew out the side of his head.

  I finished my account and Phyllis considered it a moment. She remarked, "A conversation? You're sure?"

  I nodded. "I'm sure. He may have been talking to himself, but it looked like he was conversing with somebody. The sound from the video was muted, as you know. No recording was made."

  She turned to Bian and without explanation said, "Please get Enzenauer. You'll find him in the ambulance." She added, "Tell him to bring his special equipment."

  Bian left. Phyllis and I sat and uncomfortably ignored each other for the next five minutes. I was not happy with her; she was not happy with me. Why discuss it?

  Eventually, the door opened and Bian entered, followed by Bob Enzenauer, carrying a mechanical device of some undetermined nature. He placed it in the middle of the conference table, where I examined it more closely-I thought at first that Phyllis must be experiencing a cold-blooded, slow-motion heart attack, and this was a defibrillator-before I realized the pole sticking off it wasn't a shock stem but a fat antenna.

  I had completely forgotten about the transmitter sewn into bin Pacha's stomach. So this odd device was the receiver, and maybe everything wasn't lost. Maybe.

  Phyllis gave him a welcoming smile and said, "Have a seat, Bob."

  He did, and for a moment he studied our faces, which betrayed our apprehension, because he asked, "Is something wrong?"

  "Very much so," replied Phyllis. "Ali bin Pacha's dead."

  "Oh… well…" An expression of real concern crossed his face, as he apparently assumed this was a result of his medical advice or skill.

  And characteristic of her profession, Phyllis was screwing with his head, she knew it, and she let his agony brew for about ten seconds before she clarified, "By assassination. The Saudi guards."

  "Ah…"

  Phyllis continued, "Unfortunately, our Bureau friends failed to record the events inside his cell. So my questions for you are these: Was he transmitting and was he recorded?"

  And characteristic of his profession, Enzenauer spent about thirty seconds looking profoundly thoughtful, as if Phyllis had asked him to solve the mystery of the universe. "Well…" he eventually said, "the device is noise-activated. So"-he looked at each of our faces- "yes… if he emitted noise, he transmitted. As to whether it was recorded, I frankly
don't have a clue."

  We all stared with deep fascination at the contraption on the desk. I cleared my throat and asked, "Can you make that thing work?"

  "Of course." He pushed a few buttons, and we heard the first optimistic whirring sound of a tape rewinding. For the first time that day, it looked like something was going right; we stared at one another in disbelief. The tape stopped and Enzenauer pushed start.

  As he had warned, the transmitter was noise-activated, and the first sound came through clear as a bell-Ali bin Pacha let loose a terrifically long and loud fart, which he repeated a few times, followed by satisfied grunts. Nobody laughed or even smiled. Such was the mood that even I resisted the impulse to offer a crude comment.

  Doc Enzenauer, however, feeling the need to offer a medical diagnosis, pushed pause and said, "After three days of unconsciousness, it's natural for the body to purge itself."

  Well, now it was almost irresistible. But Bian read my mind and was giving me a look.

  The doc pushed play, and next came the noise of people screaming and howling from pain.

  To Phyllis and Enzenauer, I noted, "A tape. To scare the new prisoners."

  Phyllis nodded like she already knew this.

  Next a voice, yelling, and then the bed creaking as bin Pacha got up. Then, very distinctly, voices-two different voices-and they were speaking to one another. There was some back-and-forth between bin Pacha and an unidentified party, in Arabic, and I understood nothing. The conversation was brief, lasted for perhaps a minute, and ended with a loud bang.

  Next, Bian's voice, on tape. "He's dead. Those bastards assassinated him. They didn't want us to hear what he had to say."

  Tirey. "This… this Saudi arrangement… this was… you know, the CIA's bright idea. It did… it originated with your people. I… I merely followed orders and…"