Whisper

by Tal Bauer

“I promised you I would be. How are you? Are you in pain?”

  Zahawi shrugged. He looked away.

  “We are not here to hurt you. What do you need?”

  “There is some pain,” Zahawi whispered. His chin wavered, but he held it high.

  “Let me get that seen to.”

  An entire team was listening to the interrogation through the mic Kris wore, piping their conversation into a dozen different recorders. Cameras watched them from every angle, hung in Zahawi’s secured medical hut. Kris waved to one.

  A moment later, David walked in, carrying his medical kit. The Johns Hopkins surgeon had flown home and the CIA medical officer wasn’t allowed to interact with Zahawi while he was awake. David was Zahawi’s medic.

  “As-salaam-alaikum,” David said, offering Zahawi a small smile. Zahawi tried to smile back. A tear spilled down his cheek. David prepped a syringe of morphine and slid it into Zahawi’s IV bag. “This should take the edge off. I’ll come back to check on you in a little bit.”

  “Shukran,” Zahawi whispered. His fingers played with the edge of his sheet.

  David gave Kris a long look before he strode out of the room.

  “Is that better?”

  “Why are you doing this? Why did you keep me alive? Why…” He waved to his IV bag, the door David had walked out of.

  “I told you. I want to talk to you, Abu Zahawi. I want to know what’s in your mind. Understand you.”

  “But you are American.”

  “Yes.” Kris crossed his legs. “I’m not what you expected?”

  “Not at all.”

  Kris let the moment stretch long, let silence fill the room. “I have questions, Asim.” He used Zahawi’s birth name, his given name. “Help me understand you. Help me understand the pain you’re in. Not the physical. Help me understand your Muslim pain.”

  A trail of tears ran down Zahawi’s cheek and fell from his chin. “I will never be free, will I?”

  “That really depends on how much you help us, Asim. Help us understand.”

  Zahawi nodded. “I will answer your questions,” he whispered.

  Jesus fucking Christ. Kris could only imagine the faces in the control room, the expressions on the other officers’ and interrogators’ faces. For days, he’d had to fight off demands to go in hard, treat Zahawi brutally from the moment his eyes opened. He’d pushed back, insisted over and over on sticking with his methods.

  Everyone had waited for him to fail.

  “You were born in Riyadh. Your father is a teacher.” Kris walked through Zahawi’s childhood, his early years. Zahawi seemed shocked at some of the things Kris knew, lifted from his diaries. Good. Kris needed Zahawi to think he knew everything, that lying to him about anything was pointless. “You were married, once, after your studies. But you divorced her. Tell me about that.”

  Zahawi cringed. “She was obsessed with sex. But I did not want her that way.” He looked away, his eyes skittering to the corner.

  “Abdullah Azzam’s sermons lit a fire in you, after that. Made you want to travel to Afghanistan?”

  Zahawi nodded. He took over, detailing how he’d joined the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. How he’d been filled with fury over the attacks against his fellow Muslims, the occupation of the Soviets in Muslim lands.

  “Tell me. How did you feel?”

  Zahawi squirmed. “What do we have left of ourselves? Everything in the world is touched by the West. Corrupted by you. From cars to clothes, washing machines to food. Everything in our life is corrupted by you. You’ve taken it all. We have nothing left. We are totally dependent on you. It is shameful. Humiliating. Once it was exactly the opposite. You Westerners once looked to the Arabs and saw the best of humanity. Now you look at us like we are dogs. Filth.”

  “I understand. You may not think I do, but I do. I know what it’s like to be hated by the West.”

  Zahawi squinted.

  “I know what it’s like to be hated for who you are. To have your life dictated by others, your choices made for you. To have that rage in your chest, all the time. That scream, that says you are more than this. The desire to prove everyone wrong.”

  “That is Muslim pain,” Zahawi breathed.

  They stared at one another, silent for a moment.

  “Tell me about your injury, years ago,” Kris finally said.

  “I don’t remember it. They say a mortar came into our position. That I was hit in the head. My brothers took me to the hospital. When I woke, I did not remember anything. Not even who I was.”

  Kris held up one of Zahawi’s journals. Zahawi’s heart monitor beeped, pulsing faster. “You started keeping journals after your injury.” Zahawi nodded. He never took his eyes off his diary. “These are very important to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are safe. They will be returned to you after questioning. And we’ll arrange for a fresh notebook and pen to be provided to you.”

  More tears spilled from Zahawi’s eyes. “Shukran.”

  They kept talking. After Zahawi had recovered from his head wound, and had pieced together most of his memories, he’d gone to work as an instructor at an al-Qaeda-run training camp. He’d worked on the firing range, and he had cooked and maintained guesthouses for the recruits. He was back in the arms of a community again, embraced by his brothers. He had felt at home.

  But he’d wanted more.

  Finally, he was given the chance. He was ordered to a new training camp to join with Tajikistani rebels fighting against the Russians. When Zahawi mentioned the name of the rebel group he’d joined, Kris silently cross-checked his own notes. Zahawi’s rebels had been one of the groups the CIA had directly funneled money to, back when fighting the Soviets using mujahedeen had been the most popular game in town. Had Zahawi been considered an ally then?

  When did history shatter into hatred?

  “It was that operation that showed me what al-Qaeda had become. That they were the future of Afghanistan, of the jihad. I wanted to join. Be a part of their community.”

  “And did you?”

  Zahawi had been given the position of external emir of the Khaldan training camp. He’d managed the recruits, the trainees, and the guesthouses, as well as the recruits’ travel arrangements. Forgeries had been required, as attendees wanted to evade any attempts to track their whereabouts. Zahawi became al-Qaeda’s best forger. After the attendees graduated, he’d sent them back out to the world, to Europe, to America, sometimes with missions, sometime to lie in wait for an opportunity to strike.

  “Who came through the Khaldan training camp?”

  “Many people. But… what you are asking is, did the martyrs who did the planes operation go through the camp?”

  “Yes, Asim, I am asking that.”

  Zahawi nodded. “They were chosen by Mokhtar for the operation, and then sent to Khaldan. For advanced training.”

  Mokhtar. They’d heard that name before. In videos taken from captured al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, the name Mokhtar kept coming up. Bin Laden himself, in one video, praised Mokhtar for his part in the “planes operation”, al-Qaeda’s name for September 11. He was everywhere, in the inner circles of al-Qaeda.

  But no one in the CIA knew who he was.

  Did Zahawi?

  “You said ‘chosen by Mokhtar’. Why was Mokhtar choosing the operatives for the planes operation?”

  “The planes operation was his idea. He brought it to Bin Laden and asked for his support. His blessing. And his money. He needed five hundred thousand dollars, he said, to pull it off.”

  “So the idea for the attacks was Mokhtar's?”

  “Nam.”

  “But Bin Laden supported it? Financed it? Trained the operatives at his camps?”

  Zahawi nodded. “Some did not want Bin Laden to support Mokhtar's plan. They said he was crazy. That the attacks were not allowed by Allah. That we shouldn’t attack the US. The US helped Muslims in Serbia and Bosnia. They said we needed to focus
on jihad close to home, where Muslims were being killed every day. In Chechnya. Israel. Russia.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I hate America. I wanted Mokhtar's plan to go ahead, and to succeed. I dreamed about it with him, for months. We dreamed of the day of the attacks.” Zahawi exhaled, his voice shaking. “I hate America. Because of America, my life was shredded. I am an exile from this planet, a man without a home. I wasn’t a person to the world until I was a brother with my mujahedeen! Because of America, and Israel. My life, my history, has been taken from me.”

  Kris was quiet. “Tell me about after the attacks.”

  Zahawi spoke softly, almost reverently. After September 11, after the celebrations, the parties, and the dancing in the streets, the gunshots into the air in celebration, the giddy, almost drunk feeling of exultation, Zahawi, in Afghanistan, had joined together with the rest of the foreign fighters and had begun making preparations for defending their camps and cities form the coming American invasion. “Bin Laden, he had told us that the Americans would only launch missiles, like they did after the embassy bombings in Africa and the attack in Yemen. We did not think the Americans would invade. When we realized they were coming, we tried to buy weapons. Build defensive lines.”

  “What happened then?”

  Zahawi’s fists clenched the sheet. His heart monitor beeped faster. “The Americans dropped their bombs. The brothers… So many were killed. Death was everywhere we looked, everywhere we turned. We couldn’t bury all of our bodies. We couldn’t find all of our brothers. And we couldn’t survive against the bombs. We had to run.”

  How many of those bombs had been guided by Kris and David’s own hands? They’d spent weeks around Afghanistan, painting Taliban and al-Qaeda targets with lasers for the bombers and jets above, had walked the entire front line of the Northern Alliance, meticulously mapping coordinates of enemy positions after staring through their binoculars.

  And here they were, from opposite sides of a battlefield at the end of the earth to sitting together in a makeshift hospital in the jungle of Thailand.

  It was almost dizzying.

  In shaking words, Zahawi detailed the collapse of the Taliban, the collapse of al-Qaeda, and the scattering of their forces. Bin Laden’s exodus to Tora Bora. How Zahawi and so many others had stayed behind, trying to save Kandahar. Kandahar fell, and they escaped over the bodies of their dead, fleeing into Pakistan through the tribal regions. From there, he made his way into the underground al-Qaeda safe house network he had built.

  “I hid from everyone. I did everything I could to hide. The American bastards wanted me. I had to stay free.”

  “Why do you think the Americans were looking for you?” Kris picked up on Zahawi’s splitting of the Americans from him. In Zahawi’s mind, the Americans were still bad. But Kris, sitting in front of him, offering him water and medicine, listening to his story, seemed to be different.

  Zahawi shook his head. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Have the Americans invaded Iraq yet?”

  Kris frowned. “Iraq? Why would America invade Iraq?”

  “It’s next, in the prophecies. To fall. The armies of Khorasan will come through Iraq. The final battle with the West will be there. America is going to invade.”

  “I don’t think—”

  Zahawi shuddered, and shame filled his gaze. He looked down as a smell wafted from him. He groaned. “I am broken,” he whispered. “I am shamed. I cannot—”

  Kris grasped his hand. “You are healing.” Zahawi had soiled himself. A dark stain of urine spread on the sheets. “It is not shameful. We will help you.” He waved to the cameras.

  David walked in again, with towels, a bucket of water, and clean sheets. Together, Kris and David lifted Zahawi from the bed, wiped him down, and changed the sheets. Zahawi curled against David’s chest, hiding his face. “Shukran, brother,” he whispered. “You are Muslim?”

  “Nam,” David said, gently settling Zahawi down on the clean, remade bed.

  Confusion tangled in Zahawi’s eyes. “And American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rest, Asim.” Kris gathered his notes and Zahawi’s diaries. “We will talk again soon.”

  CIA Black Site

  Detention Site Green

  Thailand

  May 2002

  “He’s expecting brutal treatment! They all are! They live on the worst fears and conspiracy theories about the US, and they expect to be proven right. If you want to rock their world, then you give them what they’re not expecting. Humanity. Compassion!”

  It was an endless argument, the endless argument, at Site Green. Every day, Kris had to defend his approach to questioning Zahawi.

  Kris, David, and Naveen stood on one side of their messy command center’s worktable, completely covered with the detritus of the interrogation so far. Stacks of folders, Zahawi’s bagged and tagged possessions, his diaries, transcripts and tapes of the interrogations, follow-up intel, leads chased from Zahawi’s information. Names of his former recruits. Graduates of the training camps sent to America and Europe. Targets al-Qaeda were surveilling. Plans that were still in the dreaming stage, but had to be checked.

  Photos and charts hung on the walls, a cornucopia of intelligence and information, all gifted from Zahawi.

  Paul, a senior officer fresh from Langley, snorted at Kris. “There’s no compassion for these animals. They’re murderers. Every last one of them. And here you are, becoming best friends with him. Caring for him!” He sneered.

  “I am getting information out of him. He is cooperating!” Kris waved to the stacks and stacks of intelligence piling around their command center. “He’s giving us actionable intelligence.”

  “He’s playing you,” Paul snapped. “He’s giving you what he wants to give, to keep you happy. To keep sucking on the American tit.”

  “Paul—”

  “Why is he even on pain medication? Who authorized that?”

  “You would withhold medical treatment?” David pushed off the wall, where he’d been standing in the background, half in shadow. Arms crossed, he stormed to Kris’s side. “That’s torture. Keeping someone purposely in pain. Interfering with their medical treatment. You know that, right?”

  “What constitutes torture is an open question. The definition is up for debate,” Paul said smoothly.

  “No, it’s not!” Kris cried. He shot a glance across the table to Agent Naveen, his FBI partner for the ongoing interrogations.

  Naveen had a scowl on his face, his lips pressed firmly together, eyes narrowed as he stared at Paul.

  Kris glared. “The US has signed treaties against torture. We don’t torture people.”

  “You won’t be making that call.”

  “What the fuck did you say?” David, again, stepped closer. He started making his way around the table. Kris stopped him, one hand on his arm.

  “Things are changing in Washington. This ‘buddy-buddy-with-the-terrorist’ bullshit isn’t flying. The president is not amused. Get ready. Your little Muslim friend is in for a world of hurt.”

  Days later, an unmarked private jet landed on the runway outside Site Green. One passenger clambered off, adjusting his glasses. Paul strode up to a middle-aged man, professorial and lean in a tweed sport coat and holding a briefcase. They shook hands warmly.

  Kris and David watched from an overhang, out of the way of the steadily falling rain. Monsoon season had come, and with it, torrents of water, like the world had turned upside down and the oceans were drenching the land. Puddles the size of buses covered the pavement. Leaks had sprung across the compound. The air they breathed was soaked.

  They met the newcomer in the command center. Paul escorted the new arrival in like he was a guest of honor. “This is Dennis. He’s a psychologist who’s worked on the SERE program. He’s studied how to break recalcitrant detainees in interrogations. Washington has sent him to fix this situation.”

  “Fix what? The interrogation is going great. Zahawi has g
iven us years’ worth of information. Yesterday, he confirmed Mokhtar's identity,” Kris snapped.

  Dennis peered at Kris. “He gave up Mokhtar? The guy who planned nine-eleven? I haven’t heard about this.”

  “You’ve been flying. It’s brand new. We spent all day talking about his and Mokhtar's years-long friendship. They were both on the periphery of Bin Laden’s network. Associated with him, close to him, but not sworn to him.”

  “Allies, you mean.”

  “Of a sort. Mokhtar wouldn’t swear allegiance because he didn’t want to have to obey if Bin Laden called off the attacks.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Dennis swore under his breath, shaking his head. “How does Zahawi fit into this?”

  “He prayed every day for the attacks to succeed. He and Mokhtar dreamed about them together.”

  “They’re close? Very close? Zahawi and the architect of nine-eleven.”

  “Yes,” Kris said simply.

  “Who is he?”

  “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”

  “The same guy who wanted to blow up flights from the Philippines five years ago? We’ve got an open case on Khalid. Jesus…” Dennis cursed again. “All the puzzle pieces were there to see this coming, weren’t they?”

  Kris stayed silent, even as his soul shredded.

  Paul, quiet through the exchange, finally spoke up. “All this time you’ve been best buddies with your little terrorist pal, and he hasn’t given up Mokhtar until now. Why the delay? Why was he holding back? What did you give him for this?”

  “Nothing,” Kris hissed.

  “If he held this back, what else is he holding back? This is just proof that he’s playing you.”

  “We were going after critical plots against the homeland first,” Naveen said, jumping in. “We wanted to stop anything in the works before playing who’s who in al-Qaeda.”

  “He’s giving you just enough to keep the sweet treatment going,” Paul sneered.

  “Which is why I am here.” Dennis spoke before Kris could. “Like Paul said, Washington wants to change the nature of this interrogation.”

  “Change it how?” David, at Kris’s elbow, frowned.