The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

  “I want to talk to your son. Interview him.”

  “Why Alaa? It must be thousands of detainees who’ve been released.”

  “Only a few from the secret prisons.”

  Neither Zumari nor the imam looked convinced.

  “You wonder why I do this. I’ll tell you about myself. I’m not a jihadi. I pray, sure, but I never hated the Kaffirs. Back in the 1990s, I lived in France. I liked it. But five years ago, a boy I know, a friend’s son, Ali, he went to Afghanistan. He wasn’t really a jihadi. Not very religious. He went with the Talibs for the adventure, I think.”

  “Adventure,” the imam said.

  “Kuwait, it’s boring. Office buildings, oil wells, desert. These boys have nothing to do but drive around all day. Not even a wife, unless they’re rich. The sheikhs take three, four women each, and there’s none for the rest of us. With the Talibs, they can fire AKs, throw a grenade. Pretend they’re soldiers.”

  “You don’t have children.”

  “I’m not a sheikh. I didn’t have the money to marry. Anyway, Ali, the Americans caught him in Afghanistan and kept him for two years. Finally, they released him. When he came back, he told me how they kept him in a little cage. I think it made him crazy. He was so angry. At the Americans, the Kuwaitis, his own family.”

  “He was like that before he went to Afghanistan?”

  “No. He was a regular boy. But once he came back to Kuwait, he wasn’t anymore. He only ever talked of martyrdom. And then he disappeared. I found out later, he went to Iraq, became a fedayeen”—a martyr.

  “A bomber.”

  “Yes. He killed himself outside a police station in Baghdad. Thirteen police died. And after that, I had the idea for these interviews. So that everyone will know what the Americans are doing. I know about computers and filming. But it isn’t easy to find the men, or get them to talk. They may be home, but they aren’t free. They know our police are working with the Americans and don’t want to be embarrassed. And lots of them are just—” Wells spread his hands out, meaning disappeared. Then winced as his shoulder caught fire again.

  “You should go to Saudi.”

  “In Saudi the mukhabarat are too good.” Wells paused. “And your son, there’s something else, another reason I want to talk to him. I heard he wasn’t a jihadi at all. Just a man who wanted to set up a cell-phone business. An innocent.”

  “You heard this? Who told you?”

  “People see the videos, the Web site, and they e-mail me. Most of the time I can’t confirm what they say. But this time I found someone who could.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Then I can’t help you.”

  Wells looked to the imam. “It is best for all of us if I’m the only one who knows. For the same reason you took these precautions to pick me up.”

  “And my son’s story—”

  “He tells whatever he likes, as much or as little. I protect him, hide his face. Show just enough of him that people know he’s real. The video takes one, two hours to make. Three at most, if your son has a lot to tell. I send it to the Web site, and you never see me again.”

  And along the way I’ll find out if he knows anything about the murders, Wells thought.

  “Even if I wanted to help, I don’t know where he is,” Zumari said.

  “But you can reach him.”

  “I can try.”

  “Then please try.”

  They were silent as the truck rumbled on. Hani dialed his phone, spoke so quietly that Wells couldn’t hear.

  “Do you have anything else to tell us? ” the imam said.

  “No.”

  The truck slowed, then stopped.

  “Kuwaiti,” the imam said. “Your shoulder is all right?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  The imam handed Wells his passport and wallet. “Then this is where we leave you. There’s a ramp ahead. Take it down, go back to your hotel. Stay away from my house”—the mosque. “If we need to see you again, we will find you.”

  “I’m sure,” Wells said. “I ask only this: whatever you decide—” Wells broke off.

  “Yes?”

  “Decide soon. It will be safer for all of us.”

  An air horn blasted through the cargo compartment. Hani pulled up the back gate of the truck. Wells saw they were on a highway, the traffic piling up behind them.

  “Ma-a-saalama,” he said to Ihab and the imam. Peace be with you. Good-bye.

  “Ma-a-saalama,” they said in turn. Wells jumped out the back of the truck. A wave of dizziness hit him and his knees buckled, but he stayed upright. Behind him, the truck rumbled off. He didn’t turn to watch it go.

  He found himself on an elevated highway, staring east, into the rising sun. To the north and south were endless zigzag blocks of misshapen concrete buildings. Many seemed unfinished, their roofs turned into dumps filled with half-melted tires and lumpy plastic bags of garbage. He must still be in Cairo, somewhere on the ring road that had once marked the outer edges of the city.

  A Mercedes sedan nearly knocked him over. He turned to look for the exit ramp — and saw, looming over the city on a plateau to the west, the three great pyramids, just beginning to reflect the glow of the morning sun. Wells understood immediately why European adventurers had thought that they’d been built by aliens. They were immense, so much larger than the buildings around them that they seemed to be governed by entirely different laws of physics. Wells stared at them until a honk brought him back to the highway. He walked slowly down the ramp until the city swallowed up him and the pyramids.

  HEADING BACK to the hotel, Wells saw the scope of the city at last. Close to twenty million people lived in Cairo, though no one, not even the Egyptian government, knew exactly how many. The shabby concrete and brick buildings went on block after block, mile after mile, unrelieved by parks or gardens or even palm trees. The place was overwhelming, ugly, primordial, Los Angeles without highways, Rio without the ocean. Year after year it had grown east and west into the desert and south along the Nile, swallowing every settlement in its path.

  Wells had seen only one other city as big and dense, as noisy and smoggy: Beijing. But in Beijing the hand of the Chinese state touched every alley and dumpling stand. Beijing was order disguised as chaos. Not Cairo. Cairo was chaos, undisguised. Cairo lacked any organizing principle. Except Islam.

  A minivan pulled in front of them, and the cabbie banged his brakes to avoid a collision. Wells stifled a groan as the seat belt grabbed his shoulder. The van, improbably enough, seemed to have a load of goats as passengers.

  Suddenly, Wells badly wanted to find his way to the Intercontinental for air-conditioning, a hot shower, and a cold beer. He reminded himself that he’d spent a decade living without any of the three. No, he would go back to the Lotus, where he belonged. And as the traffic inched forward, he smiled to himself. The mukhabarat, the jihadis — he was back in the game.

  7

  The Counterterrorist Center was the CIA’s fastest-growing unit. To make room for it, the agency had built offices in a subterranean maze carved from the foundations of the New Headquarters Building. The fight against Al Qaeda ate a disproportionate share of the agency’s budget, so the new space had bells and whistles the rest of the CIA lacked: flat-panel screens, dedicated teraflop-speed connections to the National Security Agency and Department of Defense, and videoconferencing equipment capable of projecting in three dimensions. Somewhere, Osama bin Laden was quaking in his boots.

  Or not.

  Brant Murphy met Shafer at the main entrance to CTC, a miniature version of the agency’s main lobby, two guards overseeing a bank of turnstiles. The official logic behind the secondary checkpoint was that CTC needed extra security because it so frequently hosted visitors from other federal agencies and foreign spy services. In reality, the second guard post was further proof that the unit held itself apart from the rest of the agency.

  Murphy was handsome and compact, wit
h deep blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair that had lost its grip on his temples and was fighting a rearguard action against its inevitable fate as a widow’s peak. He had a firm two-pump handshake, friendly but manly. Shafer couldn’t understand how Murphy had ended up with 673. Spending a year-plus in Poland interrogating detainees didn’t seem like his idea of a great time.

  “Ellis Shafer,” Murphy said. He had a clipped Yankee accent, a relative rarity at the agency, which recruited more from the South and Midwest.

  “Good to meet you,” Shafer said. “I appreciate this.”

  “The pleasure is mine,” Murphy said. He didn’t look pleased. “If the director asks, I’m glad to accommodate. And of course your reputation precedes you.”

  “Follows me, too.”

  Murphy led them into a high-ceilinged conference room, the walls of which were lined with expensive black-and-white photographs of Iraq and Afghanistan.

  “Nice digs.”

  Murphy looked around as if he’d never seen the photos before. “You spend as much time in here as we do, you hardly notice.”

  “Just like Poland?”

  “Not exactly, but sure.”

  Shafer set a digital tape recorder on the table. “Do you mind?”

  “And here I thought this was a social call. You don’t mind, I’d prefer we keep it informal.”

  The room itself was almost certainly wired, but Shafer didn’t argue. He slipped the recorder away, reached into his pocket for a pen and a reporter’s notebook, its pages filled with an illegible scrawl.

  “Tell me how you became part of 673.”

  “Have you seen my file?”

  Shafer grunted noncommittally.

  “So, you know a couple years back I did a tour in Iraq. Mosul. My COS”—chief of station—“there was Brad Gessen. Remember him?”

  “Yeah.” Gessen had been arrested for stealing 1.2 million dollars from a fund used to bribe Sunni tribal chiefs in Iraq. Starting in early 2006, the CIA and army had thrown cash at the tribes, hoping to turn them against the insurgency, or at least buy their neutrality. More than one billion in cash was distributed through the program, with only the barest accounting. Rumors of thefts were rampant. But only Gessen had been arrested, probably because he’d stolen so much money that some of the tribal leaders had complained to the army about the missing payments.

  “Brad and I were tight,” Murphy said. “I mean, I had no idea what he was up to—”

  “Sure about that?”

  “I don’t appreciate that question.”

  “One-point-two million, and the guy was your boss and you didn’t know?”

  Murphy controlled himself, the effort visible. “There was a full investigation. The IG cleared me. But my career took a hit. Started hearing that I might get moved to Australia”—not exactly the agency’s hottest theater. “So 673, when it came up, I figured it was a chance to turn the page. High-risk, high-reward, but we get the right intel, we’re all heroes.”

  Shafer started to like Murphy a tiny bit more. The man hadn’t sugarcoated this explanation. No talk of taking the battle to the enemy, broadening his experience. He’d made a clear-eyed analysis that going to Poland might rescue his career. He was a hopelessly ambitious careerist, but at least he wasn’t pretending otherwise.

  “And what did you do in Poland?”

  “Ran admin and logistic,” Murphy said, calm again. “Nine-person unit on a foreign base, plus the detainees, there’s a lot to do.”

  “Thought it was ten.”

  “I’ll get to that. I handled our relationships with the Poles, set up the supply chain. When there was significant intel, I summarized it and passed it to the Pentagon.”

  “With so few men, how did you watch the prisoners continuously?”

  “We had help from the Poles. They supplied food, picked up garbage, handled security around the building. At night they helped us monitor the cells.”

  “But they weren’t actively involved in the interrogations.”

  “No.”

  “How often did you visit the detainees?”

  “When necessary,” Murphy said. “Like I said, it wasn’t my role.”

  “And how were they treated?”

  “As illegal enemy combatants. If they cooperated, they received more privileges, and if they didn’t, they didn’t.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shafer said. “I didn’t hear an answer.”

  “I told you, I spent most of my time on admin.”

  “The unit was short on manpower,” Shafer said. “You were basically running a jail with a ten-man squad.”

  “Yes and no,” Murphy said.

  “How many detainees did you have?”

  “Ten.”

  “And you’d hold one or two at a time?”

  “Yes. Once we had three, but Terreri didn’t like that. Said it was too many. And he was right.”

  “Walk me through a day in the life.”

  “The interrogations ran about eight, ten hours at a stretch. Two or three men were involved: the interrogator — that was usually Karp — and a muscle guy or two.”

  “So you could run two interrogations at once.”

  “If we needed to. But we preferred to go one at a time. As you know, the squad was all men, except for the psychiatrist, Rachel, Dr. Callar. The org chart, LTC Terreri was the CO”—the commanding officer. “I was XO”—the executive officer, the number two. “Karp was the lead interrogator. Jerry Williams did swing duty; he knew Arabic, so he could handle interrogations. And also he oversaw the three Rangers, who were the muscle. And then Callar.”

  “What about Hank Poteat?”

  “He was technically part of the squad, but he was only there a couple of months, at the beginning. He helped set up our coms, and then he left. So that’s everybody.”

  “It isn’t, though,” Shafer said. He flipped back through his reporter’s notebook. “CO is Terreri. XO is you. Karp is the interrogator. Callar’s the doctor. Williams and his three Rangers make eight. Poteat counts as technically part of the squad, even though he wasn’t there long. That’s nine. You forgot Jack Fisher.”

  “Right,” Murphy said. “Fisher helped Karp with the interrogations. He would stay up late with the prisoners. If they wouldn’t talk, they needed an extra push. Sometimes Jerry Williams helped. The Midnight House, we called it sometimes. Fisher, he’d tell the detainees when they got there, ‘Welcome to the Midnight House.’ ”

  “Funny.”

  “We were trying to take the edge off. Stuck in Poland for a year and a half.”

  “How tough was Fisher?”

  “I don’t know. Specifically.”

  “Friendly persuasion. Cup of cocoa. Tell me about your mother.”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “You were the second-in-command and you didn’t know.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t operational.”

  “You strike me as the type who prefers to lead from the rear.”

  Murphy stared at Shafer as if Shafer were a misbehaving brat he wanted to spank but couldn’t. In turn, Shafer made faces at Murphy, raising his eyebrows, throwing in a wink.

  “I’m sorry,” Murphy said finally. “I didn’t hear a question.”

  “Try this. Did the unit have internal tensions?”

  “We were a small group living in close quarters in a foreign country. We couldn’t tell anyone what we were doing. Of course, we didn’t always get along. But nothing you wouldn’t expect.”

  “Did you believe that the detainees were treated fairly?”

  “From what I saw, yes.”

  “Did 673 ever uncover actionable intel?”

  For the first time, Murphy smiled. “Definitely.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “I can’t say. Vinny Duto wants to tell you, it’s his business.”

  “But it was valuable.”

  “You could say that.”

  Shafer made a note. “Fast-forward,” he said. “The squad breaks up, a
bunch of guys retire. You stay.”

  “With the intel we’d gotten, I wanted to see where I’d be in a year or two.”

  “Any idea why so many guys decided to leave?”

  “Ask them.”

  “Guilty consciences?”

  “I’m not a mind reader. Not now or then.” Murphy looked at his watch. “The FBI’s coming tomorrow, and I’m sure they’ll be asking all the same questions as you, and more besides. Can we finish up later?”

  “A few more minutes,” Shafer said.

  “A few.”

  “After you got back, did you stay in touch with the rest of the unit?”

  “Colonel Terreri and I had lunch a couple times before he got sent to Afghanistan. I saw Karp upstairs once.”

  “How about Fisher?”

  “Talked to him once or twice. No one else. It was an ad hoc deployment, and we got scattered.”

  “You didn’t know what was happening to the unit. The deaths.”

  “Of course I did. We all heard about Rachel. Not right away, but we heard. Then Terreri sent me an e-mail that Mark and Freddy”—the two Rangers—“were KIA. Then Karp. By then we were all wondering a little bit. I remember saying to Fisher, ‘What’s the story? Somebody put a curse on us?’ But we didn’t know that Jerry was missing. I know it looks obvious in retrospect.”

  “You don’t seem nervous.”

  “Should I cry for Mommy?”

  “Can you think of any reason someone might be after the squad?”

  “Beyond the fact that we put the screws to some bad actors?” Murphy drummed his fingers on the table. In contrast with his neatly tailored clothes, his nails were jagged, bitten nearly to the quick. “My ass on the line. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know.”

  “What about Alaa Zumari? ” Shafer said.

  “I can’t tell you anything that’s not in the file.”

  “Haven’t seen the file,” Shafer muttered into his teeth.

  “Say again?”

  “I said I haven’t seen it. Not yet.”

  “You’ll have to work that out with Vinny.”