The Prisoner of Guantanamo

by Dan Fesperman

  —From “OPSEC Corner,” a regular feature

  of JTF-GTMO’s weekly newspaper, The Wire

  BY THE TIME Falk got to breakfast, everyone knew. Not just about Sergeant Ludwig’s disappearance, but everything—the general’s arrival on the predawn beach, the special charter due in from Washington, and the overall discomfiture of the powers that be. Even Falk’s little crack about Ludwig’s possibly being “shacked up” had made the rounds, already producing a few jokes over the scrambled eggs.

  For a place so devoted to secrecy, Gitmo’s inner workings leaked like a cracked engine block, dripping a dark slick of rumor onto the rank and file. And in case anyone needed a reminder that something extraordinary was afoot, a Coast Guard helicopter had buzzed the shoreline all morning, wheeling noisily across the bay and out over the Atlantic, daintily tightening its arc whenever it approached Cuban airspace. Falk’s new assignment was, as they say, the talk of the town.

  Camp America’s seaside galley looked like a glorified Quonset hut—two bubble-topped chambers of stretched white plastic with only the tiniest of windows, making it seem as if you were eating inside a giant lightbulb. Falk filled a Styrofoam cup with the worst coffee in the Caribbean and headed for his usual table, a collection of civilian and military interrogators, translators, analysts, and clerks.

  Like any society, Gitmo’s was stratified. The MP proletariat of J-DOG, or the Joint Detention Operations Group, tended to keep to itself, nurturing its mistrust of Falk’s would-be elite in the JIG, or Joint Intelligence Group.

  The hirelings of private contractors were also part of the mix, mostly to help make up for the shortage of Arabic speakers and other linguists in the military and U.S. law enforcement. The two biggest players, United Security Corp. and Global Networks, Inc., were also fierce competitors, and lately they had been at each other’s throats. Lawyers were involved. Official complaints had been lodged. So now their foot soldiers tended to sit at their own tables. The rivalry was either hilarious or dismaying, depending on how closely you had to work with them. Falk, in no need of their services, enjoyed promoting the theory that someday two contractors would go to war with each other on some far-flung shore of U.S. occupation, with the winner declaring its own republic.

  Tyndall, one of the few Agency regulars at Falk’s table, beckoned from one end as Falk approached. His face betrayed no sign of their blowup the night before. But Falk wasn’t in the mood. Besides, Pam was waving from the other end, where she’d saved him a seat.

  His relationship with Pam Cobb was another of Gitmo’s open secrets. It offered a reading on the local sexual climate, which was both repressed and abundant, a Peyton Place painted alternately in Army drab and the sensual colors of the tropics.

  Falk would wager that there were more pent-up libidos per square mile on this scuffed little heel of Cuba than in any town in America. And why wouldn’t there be? Cook up a steam-bath climate in confined isolation, add soldiers, then more soldiers, and presto. Ratcheting the tension higher, males vastly outnumbered females. The long odds turned some men into slavering hunter-gatherers, knuckles dragging the ground. Marital status seemed to have little to do with it. It was like those ads for Vegas. What happened at Gitmo stayed at Gitmo. Or so you hoped.

  Even Falk found himself returning to some of his Marine tactics of old, equipping himself with the customary tools of Gitmo courtship on his first shopping trip to the Naval Exchange—a blender for margaritas, a shaker for martinis, a hibachi for the patio, and a packet of condoms for emergencies.

  It was the one forbidden act for which the authorities had tacitly agreed to look the other way. As if they had a choice. Try keeping a lid on it and the whole place might blow, leaving 640 inmates running the asylum.

  Gitmo’s living arrangements only added to the intrigue. The few MPs who hadn’t yet moved into the new barracks were stuffed into vacant apartments in base housing, up to eight to a unit in a five-room place. Interrogators and linguists had also been farmed out to empty quarters, which were numerous now that the local Navy population was near its all-time low.

  The most popular neighborhoods were Villa Mar and Windward Loop, where the billeting was often four to a unit, and two to every bedroom. It was like going back to college, with all the same challenges to romantic privacy—sneak a girl up to the dorm, hold the roommates at bay, and keep your friends guessing, with everyone making it back to their separate bunks by dawn, undetected by the campus police.

  Falk and Whitaker got lucky with their arrangements. At first they had shared a bedroom in Villa Mar, with two men from the Defense Intelligence Agency in a room down the hall. But when the roof leaked during the one and only downpour since their posting, the two of them were reassigned to a two-bedroom detached house that had just come open on Iguana Terrace, well off the beaten path. Their neighbors to either side were Navy families stationed at the base, with a pleasure boat in one driveway and a trampoline in the other.

  Pam came to Gitmo the week after Falk. She arrived on a Thursday, and by Sunday night she had already been invited to a pool party, a beach bonfire, a movie at the outdoor theater, and an afternoon of sailing.

  Professionally the reception was cooler. She was fluent in Arabic, but had only recently completed interrogation training. The resident males were skeptical. A female interrogating Muslim men? And not just any Muslims, but ones stitched from Islam’s toughest fabric—acid-washed in vats of fifteenth-century thinking, then wrung dry by combat and the rigid isolation of Camp Delta. They’d laugh this gal from Oklahoma out of the room. Or worse, spit a great gob of pious anger onto her unholy and uncovered face.

  It had already happened to other women, and when Pam’s first subjects immediately lived up to this billing the knowing crowd from Langley, the Bureau, and the Pentagon nodded smugly. The accepted theory was that she was yet another ham-handed Washington stab at “social engineering.”

  Then a funny thing happened. One or two of the Arabs, then three or four, then a dozen—a veritable groundswell—began to open up to Pam’s questions in ways they hadn’t for the men’s. In a calm and patient manner that endured and then asserted, she gradually morphed into their mothers, their sisters, their daughters, or even—from a respectful distance, and only in the minds of the subjects—their lovers. Out spilled thoughts and articulations that the grizzled old fighters had given up for dead. One of them fell so head over heels for her that he began spinning grandiose yarns that even the most gullible analysts were not prepared to believe. He had to be pried from her custody, sulking and lovelorn.

  Not only was Pam accepted into the intelligence tribe, but her success enabled her to avoid recruitment into one of General Trabert’s more infamous experiments—an attempt to get information from the detainees by sexually humiliating them. One of Pam’s shapelier but less fortunate roommates ended up stripping to her bra and panties in one such attempt. The vamping backfired, of course. The subjects only retreated deeper into anger and silence. The interrogator didn’t fare so well, either. She locked herself into a restroom for an hour, sobbing in shame.

  Falk and Pam first met one morning inside the wire. He had already noticed her the night before at the Tiki Bar, but she had been accompanied by at least five surrounding males, and from his vantage point a few tables away she had seemed more than able to meet their challenge, parrying advances with wit and poise, so he had kept his distance. Besides, he didn’t like taking a number to wait his turn.

  They came face-to-face the next morning at the holding cage. Falk had an 11 a.m. appointment to interrogate a young Arab of indeterminate citizenship, possibly Saudi. Pam also wanted a session with the fellow but wasn’t scheduled on his dance card until the following day. The pecking order on these conflicts was well established. Civilian interrogators such as Falk almost always got priority over their military counterparts. More to the point, Falk had reserved the slot. But instead of getting territorial he calmly let Pam state her case, which turned out to be pretty c
ompelling: Another detainee had just offered her team a lead on this one’s likely identity and role, and she wanted to nail it down ASAP. Falk gallantly stepped aside, feeling a bit like Sir Walter Raleigh letting the queen cross the mud on his cape. He knew better than to make a big deal out of it. She’d know where to find him later.

  That night at the Tiki Bar she detached herself from her circle of admirers long enough to say thanks and buy him a beer. He saw right away why she would be effective at her job. Engaging enough to draw you forward, and open enough to respond in kind. Falk found himself talking easily about things that he hadn’t mentioned to anyone in years. He nearly even slipped up and told an old story about his father. The next morning he woke up thinking it must have been the beer, or the lure of her blue eyes, or the way she kept flipping a drooping curl off her left eyebrow, with an endearing grace that showed off the fine line of her neck, a seeming invitation to plant a tender kiss on the smooth skin beneath her ear. Right next to where she’d dabbed that spot of perfume he could still smell the next morning, even though his room was redolent of sweat and grime and old newspapers.

  He sometimes wondered if he would have even noticed her in another setting—amid the rich pickings of Washington, for example. At times she could be a little rough around the edges, an affliction Falk had often observed in military women. It was a survival skill in their environment, particularly for the officers, the tough front that signaled they wouldn’t easily be pushed around. Well and good, he supposed, although at unguarded moments he found himself testing this facade, as if to measure its hardness. When Pam burst out with a stream of profanities while discussing the subject of Nebraska football—as a Sooner, she hated Nebraska—Falk was curious enough to ask, “Did your dad teach you that language, or your drill sergeant?”

  He could have sworn she blushed slightly, but then she forged ahead.

  “My dad was my drill sergeant. My first one, anyway. Or might as well have been.”

  “He’d be proud.”

  “Oh, he would be, as long as he knew I was defending the Sooners.”

  Far more disconcerting to Falk was the idea of dating someone who actually gave a damn about the chain of command’s approval.

  Considering Gitmo’s male competition, he sometimes wondered what she saw in him. He wasn’t remarkable to look at. Plenty of people who met Falk were convinced they’d seen him before—at the office cafeteria, in the back pew at church, or on the sidelines at their kid’s soccer game. He had that kind of face—pleasant enough, someone you didn’t mind having around, yet well suited to hiding in plain sight. His eyes, a stonewashed blue, invited trust even as they politely requested distance, with webbed lines at the corners that could have come from either laughter or worry. Around thirty, most people guessed, falling short by only a few years. But by the time they thought to probe beyond his Everyman qualities he had usually moved on, leaving them to wonder whether he was a not-so-young man in a hurry or just a man who preferred not to be pinned down.

  Whatever the case, the reality now was that he was hooked, and apparently she was, too, no matter how events might have transpired elsewhere. If context was the magic ingredient in their romance, he supposed they would both find out soon enough after returning to the mainland. But lately he found himself hoping that wouldn’t be the case.

  “Heard you took a little walk on the beach with the general,” she said as he sat down.

  “You and everyone else.”

  “Solve it yet?”

  He shrugged.

  “I still say he’s drunk in some young lady’s bunk, passed out with her panties around his head.”

  She smiled with a hint of a blush, which had been his objective.

  “You’re assuming he’s like you.”

  “Or every other man at this table.”

  Which made her look up, self-conscious for a moment. Women could never go for long here without being reminded of the way they stood out, and when Falk saw the look in her eye he regretted the remark and changed the subject.

  “It sure screws up my schedule, though. I was making some real progress last night with Adnan. Until Tyndall walked in on us.”

  “Tyndall interrupted your session?”

  “Didn’t even knock. Said he’d forgotten something.”

  “And with Adnan, no less. Like throwing a rattlesnake at a nervous colt.”

  Pam was one of the few who had always encouraged him to keep trying with Adnan. She, too, dealt with her share of lost souls.

  “He was right on the verge of a breakthrough, too. Even gave me a name. Not a whole one, of course, or he wouldn’t be Adnan. But he sure seemed to think it was worth something. He was pretty pissed off once he figured Mitch had been listening behind the glass.”

  “I had kind of a strange session, too, that way.” She looked at him funny, as if he might have already heard.

  “Yeah?”

  She seemed reluctant to continue, so he waited, staring. It was her eyes that you wanted to win over the most, he decided. Deep blue and searching, almost yearning. You wanted to be what they yearned for. Maybe that was her secret with the Arabs.

  “Yeah,” she finally answered, glancing down at a bruised wedge of cantaloupe, then looking back up. Those eyes again. “Your name came up. It was weird.”

  “My name?” Just what you wanted to hear, that someone inside the wire had pierced your veil of anonymity. Maybe a pissed-off MP had cursed his name within earshot of a cell.

  “Not your actual name. But a description that sounded an awful lot like you. Ex-Marine, formerly posted to Gitmo, now a government interrogator.”

  “That is weird. Who was the subject?”

  “Niswar al-Halaby. Syrian nutcase. Says he heard it from the Yemenis. Camp Three grapevine. Have you told Adnan all that?”

  “Adnan thinks I’m a cop from California. And I’ve never said word one about the Corps.” They routinely lied about themselves to even the most cooperative subjects. No sense offering any tools for leverage. “But you know how it goes. Talk to them long enough and hints of the real you come out anyway. Adnan’s a smart kid. Maybe he pieced some of it together, or he might have just made it all up and gotten lucky.”

  “Did you have any connection with him or any of the other Yemenis from before? From the Cole investigation, maybe?”

  “I’d never laid eyes on him until two months ago. Same with the other Yemenis.”

  “I didn’t ask if you’d met them. I asked if you were connected. Maybe through a file, or a witness. Through any of your previous work.”

  “What is this, Pam? Should we go to a booth?”

  “You tell me.”

  They had lowered their heads and their voices. To the rest of the table it probably looked like an intimate argument, or the arranging of a tryst. Falk glanced toward the end of the table and saw Tyndall watching with the air of a connoisseur. Then Pam leaned forward, her hands nearly touching Falk’s between their trays as she dropped her voice to a whisper.

  “I just want to know what I should do with this, that’s all. If the Bureau made any previous inquiries about any of the Yemenis, or put them on some kind of watch list even before they got here, whether through your work or not, then it would help to know. But you seem to be saying that didn’t happen.”

  “Not to my knowledge.” She gave him a sharp look. “That’s not a dodge. I really don’t know. But I’m told there’s no file on him or any of the others I deal with. Not from the Cole, anyway. If anybody else has designated him as some kind of figure of interest, then it’s above my security clearance. Maybe you should ask Tyndall.”

  “Not even from a Cuban angle?”

  “Cuban? As in Gitmo?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, this gets weirder all the time.” Now it was his cheeks turning hot. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.

  “Yeah. I thought so, too.”

  “So what the hell did he say, exactly?”

  “If I’m lea
ving it out of my report, then I probably shouldn’t tell anyone else. Even you. Not until I can go over it with Niswar again.”

  Falk wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Was she omitting the detail to spare him or to avoid heat from above? Both, perhaps. With the military interrogators, there were always extra considerations involving your superior officers, and how they might react.

  But Falk was even more puzzled by where the information must have come from. In the course of his give-and-take with Adnan, he would have sworn he hadn’t let slip any specifics about his past.

  “So who else was in there?” he asked.

  “No one, fortunately. Just the MP, who doesn’t know a word of Arabic. Don’t worry, if it ever goes into a report you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  She smiled, a bit grimly perhaps, but before she could say another word Tyndall interrupted, settling into a seat that had just opened up to Falk’s left.

  “Life gets sweeter by the day down here, doesn’t it?” He gestured to a swirled mound of chocolate soft-serve ice cream. It was the mess hall’s newest attraction, although Mitch was the only one among them who ate it for breakfast. “Next week they’ll probably be throwing steaks on the grill.”

  When neither Falk nor Pam answered right away, Tyndall awakened to the possibility he was intruding.

  “Sorry. Bad timing?”

  “No more than usual,” Falk said.

  “Like I said last night, I’m really sorry about that. It’s just that I only had two hours to try and get a whole network out of my man Muhammad.”

  “Whatever,” Falk replied.

  “Hey. Blame our team leader. Demanding son of a bitch, especially where trivia’s concerned.”

  “Trivia?” A new voice approached from the service line. It was Falk’s roomie, Whitaker, looking for a seat. “You’re not questioning the value of the product again, are you, Mitch?”

  “Take mine,” Falk said, standing. The long hours without sleep seemed to catch up to him all at once as he rose. What he needed most was a shower and a nap. There would doubtless be paperwork to file, colleagues of Ludwig’s to interview, plus other leads to pursue, and the general would want it all done by yesterday. But without some shut-eye he’d never get any of it done.