I read Sam the names on the list. “Nawaf Alhazmi... Mohammed Atta...Ayman al-Zawahiri...”
“Wait, Ayman al-Zawahiri is Bin Laden’s number two. He was not one of the hijackers.”
“Yes, correct,” Akram says. “Six were hijackers, but the seventh was Zawahiri. He was also trained here in Iraq, but he was not a hijacker. They trained for one year in Iraq in 2000. See the signature here,” Akram says, pointing vehemently to the scribble on one of the pages.
“Hmm. It’s a lot of money,” Sam says. “But also a very compelling story.”
Compelling? Should I say that? She’s behaving as if she, too, might be interested in buying documents. Was that what she’d planned?
“The money you collect for these documents,” Sam continues, “to whom does it go?”
“Our group, as I told you. We’re about thirty people. Many have been through desperate times. Their families didn’t even get food-ration cards during the sanctions because they were enemies of Saddam. Imagine, people from educated families who have had their lives ruined, people who believe in freedom and democracy.” Akram shakes his head to convey his dismay, and then smoothes his jacket.
Sam turns to a new page, and draws two lines across the top. “If you’ll forgive me,” she says, “I want to go over this again. Harris didn’t take documents from you on Congressman Billy Jackson?”
Akram shakes his head. “He only wrote down the information. You know, the money is secondary. I want people in America to know what Jackson did.”
“Why does that matter to you?”
Akram frowns at Sam. “He gave Saddam legitimacy. You see, the aim is not the money, but to expose all the world politicians who kept trying to prop up Saddam. And as we punish them for this, we will aid our suffering people in the process.”
“Right, I can understand that,” Sam says. “But you know,” she taps the pen against the notebook, then grasps it tightly. “What I don’t understand is, I think that my editors told me that Harris e-mailed copies of these documents to my newspaper headquarters, and then sent them the originals you gave him. Now, how can that be?”
“It’s impossible,” he says. “Harris is lying. Or, he’s confused.”
“But that’s what my editors have, copies that look just like these.”
Akram’s eyes narrow, drawing out rivulets of wrinkles around them. He waits. Waves a finger back and forth. “Oh, now I remember. We put the documents on the table and Harris photographed them. I didn’t know that in this way he could try to avoid having to buy them.” He begins to laugh. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have let him do that.”
“And he didn’t pay anything to do that?”
“Well, Harris gave $1,000 the first time he met the men in the unit. I took him to one of their houses and he couldn’t believe how poor these former generals were, so Harris asked if he could give them money to help them.”
“He volunteered to give it?”
“He considered the information they gave to him a great benefit, so he gave the money as a compensation for the information.”
“Wait, I’m a little confused. You’re saying that Harris paid you $10,000 or $12,000 for documents on the weapons sites, and another $1,000 to compensate the men in the unit?”
General Akram pauses. “No, the $1,000 was part of the $12,000. That’s why I said ten or twelve. It was $10,000, plus the $1,000 that he paid separately, and then some extra money, around $1,000, to get all the documents translated. So that’s $12,000 in total.”
Sam is running out of room in her notebook. I can see that she only has a page or two left, and that her handwriting is getting smaller than normal.
“My job is to publicize the truth about all those people who made Saddam into an angel. And I’m already succeeding because our stories are in the newspapers.”
A muezzin releases his sombre voice into the air, inviting the faithful to midday prayers.
“Sam? It’s my prayer time,” I say. “I think we should go soon.” I turn to Akram. “I hope you’ll excuse me, but I must pray dhuhr.”
“Of course,” he says. “You can come back later after you decide.”
Sam sets her notebook on the sofa between the two of us. She interlaces her fingers like a net and rests them on her knees. “You know, I’ve really appreciated the time to talk to you. But in terms of anything more, moving forwards, I will have to speak to my editors. I don’t know what they’ll want.”
She is being purposefully vague. And the only way I can think to say this is to say that she is speaking an il mustaqbal il qaribe, regarding the near future. From this, I fear he’ll think we’re coming back to buy something from him.
Akram nods. “Which of the documents are you most interested in?”
“Oh, I’m really not sure,” she says. “They’re all very interesting. But paying for documents is a complicated matter. It’s usually not allowed.”
“I understand,” he says.
“You know what?” Sam sits up, looking happy again, her scarf slipping off her head. She reaches to put it back on.
“It’s okay,” Akram says, patting the air. “We are not fundamentalists here. This isn’t Iran, despite Tehran’s efforts.”
Sam laughs before I can translate. She runs her fingertips through her hair playfully, like she’s out joking with friends. I find myself wishing she would put the scarf back on immediately, but what does it matter now? Once it’s on, I should have told her, you can’t suddenly take it off, right in the middle of things.
“I like to take pictures of everyone I meet, everywhere in the world,” Sam says coquettishly. “It’s just what I like to do. Can I photograph you?”
Akram stiffens, and I can see the muscles in his throat at work. He shrugs. He coughs again, reaching for another tissue. Sam is already reaching into her bag for her camera. “Just one or two?” he inquires.
“Yes, just a few,” she says, and she is already twisting herself beyond the coffee table, fingers manipulating buttons and dials, closing in on Akram’s face. He folds his arms. His mien is stern.
Sam is snapping away, her finger pumping on the button, the fake shutter-sound of her digital camera fluttering against the silence. “Keep ‘im talking,” Sam mutters to me. I wish she would tell me what to keep talking about. Continue the interview, perhaps the most intense we’ve ever done, or try to get him talking about something else?
“It must have been amazing to be in Uday’s house the night the Americans arrived in Baghdad,” I say. “What did his house look like?”
Akram turns away from Sam and towards me with a deliberate and controlled stare that conveys he’s taking me in fully, watching me.
“He lived like a king. Pure opulence,” he answered, drawing his hands out in a circle to suggest how big. Sam clicks furiously while he’s in mid swing, the rattle of picture-taking popping like a distant spray of gunfire. His gaze shifts back towards hers, the left side of his mouth twitching, making his moustache dance.
The beefy man who had led us in enters the room, followed by one wearing an eager smile. Akram stands, holding his hands out in greeting. The man embraces Akram and then puts his lips close to his right cheek, kissing it sideways three, four, five times. He exchanges warm words and then turns to Sam and me. I stand up, and Sam follows, putting her camera on the sofa.
“I’m Suleiman,” he says, holding out his hand to me. Sam extends hers as well and he takes it, smiling at her with what seems like too many teeth. His eyes are an unusual pale blue. I offer my name and introduce “Miss Samara.” He turns back to Akram.
“Oh General Akram! If only a man like myself could have such distinguished guests as you always do.”
Akram laughs with an air of self-deprecation, and this Suleiman laughs with him. Something about his accent is different. Something of the Levant, either Syrian or Lebanese.
“I am glad for your gracious visit,” Akram says. I can see his attention f
litting from Suleiman to us.
“And I’m honoured to be in the presence of such great beauty,” he says, indicating Sam but bowing his head slightly towards me, as if asking my permission to say so. It has to be. It has to be Suleiman es-Surie, or al Mutanabi, or whatever his name is, the man Adeeb mentioned among the web of fixers Harris worked with.
Sam turns to me and raises her eyebrows gently. “I think we’d better be going,” she says. “I don’t want to be responsible for you missing prayers. Please offer our deepest thanks for all his time.”
I translate this and I see Akram’s jaw tense. His eyes shift to Sam and then come back to mine.
“What about the documents?” Akram asks. “Which of the documents did you say you were interested in?”
“He wants to know which ones we want.”
Sam puts her camera back into her bag. Closes her notebook and wears her enigmatic smile, her lips tight against one another. A little bit kind, a little bit condescending. “I really need to check with my editor first to see what they want. I won’t know until I speak to them.” Her wording is ambiguous and it probably feels quite comfortable to her — walking the thin line between hiding the truth and telling outright lies. Could Akram be so daft that he hasn’t figured out by now that he is the story?
“How much would they pay for documents on the biological and chemical weapons production facility?” Akram asks. “We can give you information on the ones in Al-Kut and Al-Diwaniyah. That is a very important story that hasn’t been reported yet.”
What else can I do but just feed it to her straight? Like she said — a two-way radio, no static blocking the airwaves.
“Well,” Sam says. “That is very interesting. I will have to think about that and see what my editors say. I don’t know if — how much they would pay for that.”
We stand there uncomfortably, everyone waiting for the next move. “He’s very reliable,” says Suleiman, raising a tiny tut from Akram, a diplomatic signal to shut his mouth. Akram follows Sam’s motions, the bag over her shoulder, the hand held out to say goodbye to the two of them, and he escorts us to the door. He is still asking questions.
“He wants to know how he can be in touch with you about this,” I tell her.
“Just, uh,” her upturned hand suggests a shrug, “just tell him now that we know where to find him, we can come back when we have some kind of answer.”
“He wants to know where you stay.”
“Oh. Well, the Sheraton.”
Akram is trying to smile, but the twitching side of his mouth pulls his face into more of a scowl. “Come in here with me,” he signals to us to step through the hallway and into an inner room, the one that visitors are usually not invited to enter. “Come and let me show you something.” I tell this to Sam and she says fine. My heart speeds up as I consider the possibilities.
He shows us in, indicating that I should go first, with Sam following, and he comes in after us. It is dimly lit and mustier than the big room with the fancy furniture. I can see a corridor leading to the kitchen, a dining table. A glimpse of the back of a woman retreating as we enter the room.
“Come here,” he says, leading us towards the right, where the sofa faces a television set with wavy lines moving across it. “Here,” he says, and flicks on the lightswitch near the wall.
I hear Sam suck in a quick breath: on the carpet is a mound of weapons, piled on top of each other like worms: bazookas, RPG launchers, ammunition belts, Kalashnikovs and, I think, AK-47s. Maybe mortars too? Many of the guns are old, and one has a knife attached to the end of it.
“What the — is he running a militia too?”
Akram crosses his arms. “They’re the weapons we used to raid Uday Hussein’s house. The night I told you about, when we killed Uday’s men and took these boxes of documents.” He leans against the wall, seemingly pleased with himself. “Do you want a picture of these, too?”
“No,” I answer for Sam without consulting her. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Whose weapons are these?” Sam is drinking in the cache. Her eyes are skipping over every inch of it and back to Akram. Now he’s at ease and she seems nervous.
“Our men. We’re a very reliable group of friends, very loyal men.” He begins to move towards the door now, and I can see his guard brooding in the corridor. “I only wanted to show you some of what we used that night to break into Uday’s house. So you... “ he says, pauses. “So the good lady will see how we helped the Americans when they came to Baghdad. And so she will understand, and so she can tell her boss in America how we were able to obtain such important documents.”
I thank Akram several times and promise that we will be in touch. Sam says a short shukran and puts her hand across her chest and nods, an appropriate gesture when men and women don’t want to touch. But even at that moment, and as we walk out of the door, I can see that the same trigger finger that kept pumping shots from the camera is still shuddering.
~ * ~
In the car, I feel out of breath, as if I’ve been running, my lungs heaving, my feet pulsing. Sam is simply shaking her head back and forth. When we’re safely down the block, she begins to shout. “Oh my God!” She lets out a squeal and begins to laugh. “Can you believe this guy? What a piece of work!”
Rizgar looks curious to know what happened.
I roll my eyes at him and hold up a finger, telling him that I will explain later. “Yes, he was lying a lot, wasn’t he?”
“Lying a lot?” Sam turns her back to the dashboard to face me. “Uh, ya think? For a guy who deals in forgery, he’s a pretty shitty liar. It’s too bad his story isn’t as seamless as his documents.”
“You think he makes the documents himself?”
“Who knows? I’m not even up to that yet. First we need to figure out what the hell this guy’s really up to.” Sam looks excited, her eyes lit and jumpy. “I mean, if he’s stupid enough to try to sell me the same set of documents he sold to Harris and claim that they’re originals, and he’s trotting out this whole round of other bogus stuff like it’s a friggin’ flea market, how was it not obvious to Harris that something was up?”
Rizgar says that the neighbourhood feels creepy and he wants out, quick. Does he have our permission to speed up?
“Problem? No problem,” Sam says lightly but Rizgar is serious. He steps hard on the accelerator and we are sucked backwards in our seats. I didn’t realize an old Impala could go so fast.
“He must know that we have him figured out, though, no? He is not that stupid,” I say. “You kind of trapped him in his own lies. Don’t you think he realized that?”
“Look, he’s not regular stupid. I mean that special kind of stupid,” Sam says, “when someone is smart enough to think of a really clever crime, but stupid enough to get greedy about it and want more. He tries to mass produce to expand his profit margin and ends messing up. That’s often a criminal’s downfall. They never get enough.”
“So all these people, Sam. Chirac, Kofi Annan. You don’t think they could have been receiving money from Saddam to support him, like Akram said?”
Sam rolls her eyes at me. “I really doubt it, Nabil.”
My stomach feels queasy from Rizgar’s sudden speed and fast turns. Sam picks up his packet of cigarettes, and shakes it, listening to the rattle. Then she flips open the box, runs it under her nose and inhales. “Why do you have to have these lying around?”
He laughs. “Sorry, Miss Samara.”
“Look, if he knows we’ve already got his game, then why was he telling me about all the other news organizations he’s servicing? We could end up derailing his big deals to come.”
“Maybe he’s trying to establish his reputation — to show us all the important clients he has.”
“Ah-ha,” Sam says, “that he’s in demand. But you don’t think he’s worried that we’ll put him out of business?”
“Actually, I do think...maybe. I think you
have to be careful. Did you see all the guns he had?”
“Yeah, that was quite a collection.”
“I think it’s a subtle way of threatening you. Us.”
“The thought crossed my mind.” She picks up the cigarette packet again and takes one out. Rizgar smiles at her. She holds the cigarette between her fingers like a person who is smoking, but makes no attempt to light up. “You’re not going to start giving me guilt about it, are you?” she asks me sheepishly.
“Me? I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me.” I do and it does, but what business is it of mine?
“It’s this country of yours that’s driving me to it,” she says, putting the cigarette in her mouth for a minute, then taking it out. “Okay, here’s my theory. He wants to be the it-boy for documents. So when we walk in, he readily admits they’re for sale, and gives me a sample. Thinks I’m the next customer in line, right? It just happens to be a sampling that the Tribune has already tasted. But when he begins to realize that he’s shopping me a story that the paper’s already run — and how could he have known that — he goes and denies that Harris got the Jackson documents from him. And he says instead he sold Harris stuff on weapons, because he knows that’s definitely a hot commodity. Whether you want to uncover weapons facilities or smear unsavoury politicians — come one, come all! There’s lots to go around, and everyone wants a story.”
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