The Secret Soldier jw-5

by Alex Berenson

  “It’s the only way.”

  “And you expect me to abet your crime.”

  “Make sure that if the National Guard finds the ambassador, my men are notified. Immediately.”

  “Go, Saeed. Take your poison from my house.”

  EVERY BALL BARBARA HIT went over the embassy wall. Kurland watched from the baseline. He told her to relax, but she wouldn’t listen, didn’t seem to hear him at all. And then Roberto began to instruct her, in Arabic, his voice low and guttural—

  All at once Kurland realized where he was. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep. Maybe an after-effect of the sedative they’d given him. Maybe sleep was the only sensible response to this place.

  The light above clicked on. The hatch pulled back. Two men climbed down the metal rungs, both carrying bags, the second also holding a steel stepladder. The first was the one he’d seen before, the one who’d made him read the speech. The second had broad shoulders and deep-set unsmiling eyes and a nose that had been badly broken many years before. Kurland pegged him as a commander. Maybe the commander.

  The second man said something in Arabic. “The major wants me to ask how you’re feeling,” the first man said.

  “I’ve been better. Have you had any word about your demands?” Kurland figured he might as well humor these men, pretend they had a chance of getting what they’d asked for.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that it appears they’ve been rejected.”

  “Already?” You’re lying, Kurland thought. He didn’t have a good sense of time in here, but he knew he’d been asleep only four or five hours at most. He’d made the video an hour before he fell asleep. So a full day couldn’t have passed since the release of the video. And however insane the demands were, the White House wouldn’t reject them until the last moment of the deadline. Probably not even then. The president would delay as long as he could, to give the CIA and the Pentagon the most possible time to find him.

  A bilious dread rose up Kurland’s throat. These men had only one reason to lie. And that was to justify — to themselves, to him, to Allah — whatever they were about to do.

  The translator unzipped his bag, took out the tripod and camera he’d used earlier, along with another bottle of Coke. “Would you like?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You should drink. You’ll need your strength.”

  The fear crept out of Kurland’s throat and into his mouth, as real and bitter as month-old milk. He thought of Barbara sitting with him at Wrigley Field. She didn’t like baseball, but she humored him a couple of times a year, the same way he humored her at the Art Institute galas. She wouldn’t let him beg. He wouldn’t beg.

  The translator set up the tripod and camera as the commander put the stepladder beside Kurland’s chair. Now that the ladder was next to him, Kurland noticed that it had some unusual features. Its feet were welded to heavy metal plates. And two notches were cut into its top step.

  Despite, or because of, his fear, Kurland found himself semi-calmly puzzling over the ladder’s purpose. Its meaning. I’ll take Obscure Torture Devices for one thousand dollars, Mr. Trebek. Were they planning a poor man’s hanging? What was a poor man’s hanging, anyway? He felt his breathing get shallow. No. He couldn’t lose his cool. They hadn’t even touched him yet.

  THEN THE COMMANDER SPREAD the contents of his bag on the cell’s concrete floor. He turned toward Kurland and waved his hand over them like a magician unveiling his best trick. Six items lay on the ground. Five were merely frightening. The sixth was terrifying.

  A fat hypodermic needle. A thick gauze bandage. Two sturdy steel clamps. A tourniquet.

  And a circular saw, big and mean, its steel teeth shining brightly under the overhead bulb.

  “You don’t want to do this.” Kurland kept his voice even. “You don’t have to do this. Let’s talk about this.”

  The commander answered in a long stream of Arabic.

  “Would you like to know what he’s saying?”

  “Okay. Yes.” I’ll buy every second I can.

  “He says that for two generations the United States has stolen the oil that belongs to the people of the Arabian Peninsula—”

  “We haven’t stolen it, we paid for it—”

  The translator slapped Kurland’s face with five stinging fingers, ending the argument. “Again. He says that for two generations the United States has stolen the oil that belongs to the people of the Arabian Peninsula. He says that the whole world knows this crime, and that the only reason no one stopped you is your army and your air force and all your tanks and bombs. He says that America is a thief.”

  The commander pulled latex gloves from his pocket and tugged them on his strong, brown hands. When he was satisfied with their fit, he spoke again.

  “He asks if you know the penalty in sharia”—Muslim law — for theft.

  “No.” Though Kurland did.

  “It is amputation of the hand of the thief.”

  “I’m not a thief.”

  “Your country is. This is the law. This is justice.”

  Kurland nodded, as if they were in the middle of the sanest conversation he’d ever had. “Justice. So I’m to have my hand amputated. For the sins of the United States. He’s going to do it. And you’re going to videotape it. And then you’re going to upload it or FedEx it or whatever to Al Jazeera so the whole world can watch.”

  “Correct. Are you left-handed or right-?”

  “Right.”

  “Then the major will take your left.”

  “Kind of you.”

  The translator either didn’t recognize the sarcasm or ignored it. He and the commander had a rapid-fire conversation in Arabic. “We’re going to give you morphine to make you sleepy and make the operation easier.”

  “I don’t want any morphine.”

  “You do. Believe me.” He reached down, picked up the needle.

  Behind his back, Kurland squeezed his hands together, clenched and unclenched his fingers. His left hand. He’d better get as much use of it as he could. “At least wait for the deadline to pass.” He couldn’t believe he was negotiating this way, as if the end of the deadline would somehow justify what they were planning to do to him. But those extra hours sounded more than pretty good about now.

  “We both know your country won’t agree. This way, the next video will be ready as soon as the deadline passes.”

  “I applaud your understanding of the demands of the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Though I guess I won’t be applauding anything much longer.”

  If the translator understood the joke, he didn’t smile. He uncuffed Kurland’s arms and recuffed his right hand to the chair leg. The commander grabbed Kurland’s left arm with his thick gloved hands and pulled it around the chair and slapped it against the ladder’s top step, the metal cool under his forearm.

  Kurland didn’t resist. He’d wondered sometimes when he saw the brief announcements that a death-row prisoner had been executed, why didn’t the guy resist? Why didn’t he fight instead of walking to his fate like a sheep? But now he knew. His own dignity was all he had left. And his voice.

  “No religion justifies this. No law. You know that, right? You’re just a couple of psychopaths with a saw. And whatever your plan is, whatever you’re hoping to accomplish, it won’t work, it’s going to end with both of you dead, sooner, not later—”

  The translator put a hand over Kurland’s mouth, squeezed his nose shut. “Keep talking and there won’t be any morphine. You won’t like that.”

  The commander moved Kurland’s arm until his wrist was dangling just off the edge of the ladder. With the translator’s help, he slid the vises into the notches and wound them tight around Kurland’s forearm, squeezing the muscles and the bone against the ladder’s top step. And then squeezed tighter still, pinching the skin, immobilizing Kurland’s arm well and truly.

  The commander tied the tourniquet around Kurland’s biceps and tapped the crook of Kurland’s elbow until the v
ein rose. He aspirated the needle to make sure the morphine was free of air bubbles and slid it deep into Kurland’s vein and sank the plunger. After the prick of the needle, pleasure flowed into Kurland’s arm. Despite his knowledge of what was about to happen, he couldn’t help but ride away on the rush that filled his body, as if the room and the very air he breathed were warm and liquid. His head lolled forward, and he sighed, and all the pressure left him. He hoped for an overdose. Better to die this way than from a bullet.

  He didn’t die, though. And the peace didn’t last. The translator put the camera on the commander, and he spoke for a minute in Arabic. No doubt the same justifications he’d just given Kurland. Then he pulled on a surgical mask and goggles — goggles, as if he were about to prune a tree — and picked up the saw.

  Its scream filled the room, and tears streamed down Kurland’s cheeks. No, Kurland said. Don’t. It was time for the cavalry, time for men in American uniforms to burst in and end this madness. Time and past time. He wouldn’t complain at their tardiness—

  But the cavalry didn’t come. Only the commander, crossing the room in four slow steps. Kneeling beside the ladder. Lining up the protective housing around the saw’s blade with the edge of the top step. Sliding the saw forward and backward, making sure the blade was where he wanted it. All the morphine in the world couldn’t help Kurland now. His fear and adrenaline had burned through it. Even in the commander’s tight grip, the saw was vibrating madly, shaking the ladder, shaking Kurland’s poor left arm.

  Kurland clenched his tongue—Don’t beg—and closed his eyes—

  And the commander pushed the saw forward and cut.

  CHAPTER 22

  JEDDAH

  WELLS DROVE ALONG THE BLAST-PROOF WALL OF ABDULLAH’S PALACE, slabs of concrete fitted together as closely as a starlet’s capped teeth. When the wall ended, he and Gaffan found themselves on the coastal cornice, the Red Sea to their right, flat and black. They were headed for a seedy neighborhood in south Jeddah, near the port.

  The police had put Jeddah under an eleven p.m. to five a.m. curfew. But the deadline was more than three hours away. For now, traffic was heavy. They passed a half-dozen hotels before the road swung inland to accommodate another palace. Near its entrance, four police cars blocked traffic. A cop waved Wells over. Another put a flashlight in his eyes. “Identification?”

  Wells handed over their identity cards. The cop looked them over, shined a light through the Jeep. “Make sure you’re home by the curfew.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They turned left, onto a wide avenue that ran through an upscale commercial district, big-box electronic stores and BMW and Mercedes dealerships. Wells made a block-long loop, four straight right turns, the quickest way to pick up surveillance. But they seemed to be alone. “We have any friends?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Me either.” Wells drove on, to the elevated highway along Jeddah’s east side. At first glance the road could have passed for the 405 in Los Angeles or the 10 in Houston, four smoothly paved lanes in each direction, sometimes five, surrounded by brightly lit office buildings and industrial parks and oversized malls. Yet the traffic had a strangely caffeinated quality that Wells had never seen in the United States. He didn’t think it was related to the kidnapping. Nearly everyone tailgated. Everyone sped. All the drivers were men, of course, mostly in their teens and twenties. They had nothing to do and nowhere to go except drive in circles burning cheap gas, hamsters on an asphalt wheel. The House of Saud stifled their creative and political and sexual energy. Islam was their only outlet. No wonder they blew themselves up so often.

  After fifteen minutes, Wells turned right at a massive cloverleaf, passing a soccer stadium as he headed west, toward downtown. Soccer qualified as an acceptable public activity in the Kingdom, even if it did expose the players’ legs. The highway ran through miles of empty lots waiting to be developed and a sign for a “Psychic Disease Hospital,” which somehow sounded gentler to Wells than a psychiatric hospital. A mile southeast of downtown, Wells pulled off. After another roadblock, he drove under the highway into a grim warren of concrete and brick.

  IN SAUDI ARABIA, AS in the United States, the poorest urban neighborhoods lay on the fringes of downtowns. They’d left the opulence of Abdullah’s palace behind. The streets were potholed, narrow, and dark, the overhead lights burned out. The stench of sewage filled the Jeep, and some of the houses sat on concrete blocks. The Saudi government had budgeted billions of dollars to build a proper drainage system for Jeddah, but the money had mysteriously disappeared into the pockets of the men who ran the city. Not for the first time, Wells wondered about Abdullah. The king’s concern for his subjects wasn’t obvious in this part of town.

  For now, though, the Kingdom’s problems ran deeper than succession. If Kurland’s kidnappers began to torture him in public, the United States and Saudi Arabia would be hard-pressed to avoid war. Time was short. Wells pulled over, called Shafer. “We’re in.”

  “And free of unwanted baggage?”

  “Think so. What have we missed?”

  “The muk found the fake cop cars that took Kurland. The betting now is they’re hiding him in the desert. Most of the passports you gave us are from guys in the Najd. Those families are getting their doors kicked in tonight.”

  “Any word on the helicopter?”

  “I passed your theory to NSA and NGA, but they didn’t get anything. The Saudis haven’t let us put up drones. We’re stuck with satellites and AWACS”—air force radar jets. “Tough to find one helicopter in a million square miles.”

  “So it’s still in play. They could have brought him this way.”

  “Yes, but unless you get some evidence, it’s not a priority. We have eighty FBI agents in Riyadh now. They’re mainly trying to keep an eye on the muk. Theoretically, they can chase their own leads, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “What about Lebanon?”

  “We hit the camp this afternoon. Burned to the ground. Actual words of the Delta major in charge were: ‘Like a nuke hit it.’ We’re asking the Syrians to lean on Hezbollah, get them to open up, but our leverage there is limited. To put it mildly.”

  Wells understood. No doubt the attack on Kurland had thrilled Hezbollah, along with its backers in Syria and Iran. Those two countries would love nothing more than for the United States to invade Saudi Arabia.

  “Meantime, the Airborne and the Rangers are sitting tight,” Shafer said. “Treasury and the NSA are trying to follow the money, looking to connect the camp with, how do I put this nicely, government sources in Saudi Arabia. So far they haven’t found anything. Until they do that, the president has ordered that official policy is to assume that this attack is the work of independent non-state actors. His words.”

  “‘Independent non-state actors.’”

  “Think Brad Pitt.”

  “You know what I like about you, Ellis? You always make time for a joke, brighten my day. And if we do connect the princes to the kidnappers?”

  “No decision yet.”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Exactly right.”

  “So. Summing up. The FBI’s in Riyadh. The Airborne’s in Turkey. The muk are knocking heads five hundred miles from here. No useful intel since yesterday.”

  “Correct, correct, correct, and correct.”

  “And we’re still on our own in beautiful Jeddah, the jewel of the Red Sea.”

  “Just the way you like it.” Shafer clicked off.

  Wells was about to drive on when a police helicopter swung low overhead, its spotlight slicing left to right, catching a mosque’s minaret before finding the Jeep. The light held them for fifteen seconds, filling the windshield with its dead white glare before moving on. When it was gone, Wells eased the Jeep back onto the road.

  AS HE DID, THE cell phone that Wells had gotten at the palace trilled.

  “This is Miteb.” The prince’s voice was low, hard to hear. �
��My brother asked me to call. He says you must be careful. He says the muk aren’t to be trusted.”

  Tell me something I don’t know, Wells didn’t say. “He have anything specific? Do they know the names we’re using?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “The names on our ID cards. Do the muk know them?”

  A long pause, as if the prince was struggling to comprehend the concept of the national identity cards his family made its subjects carry. “I don’t think so. I think it’s more a general warning to do with Saeed. That he sees you as a problem. But I don’t think he knows you’re here, not yet. The place where you came in, that’s a good place.”

  “All right. If anything changes, let me know.”

  “Please find our friend.”

  “We’re trying.” Wells hung up.

  “What was that?” Gaffan said.

  “Nothing good,” Wells said, and explained.

  “This keeps getting messier, doesn’t it?”

  “Quickest way to solve it is to find Kurland.”

  “True dat.” Words that earned Gaffan a sidelong look from Wells.

  BUT EVEN FINDING 42 Aziz proved more difficult than Wells expected. The street grid was as sloppy as an undercooked waffle, and Gaffan had trouble with the map. They doubled back twice before Wells spotted “Aziz Street” painted crudely on a black sign screwed into a brick wall. To the left, toward downtown, a mosque sat beside three barred storefronts.

  Wells turned right, deeper into the slum. The houses were small and mean, their lights peeking through barred windows. Concrete blocks, a rough parody of the walls protecting Abdullah’s palace, hid their front yards. A stray dog trotted into the Jeep’s headlights before turning tail and disappearing between two oil drums that overflowed with trash.

  Wells didn’t see anyone on the street or in the yards, but he did spot a couple of small groups of men on rooftops, talking and smoking. Many of these houses didn’t have air-conditioning. After a day baking under the Saudi sun, they could be unbearable. The rooftops were like front porches in the nineteenth-century South, a way to escape the worst of the heat. But the curfew and the helicopters were keeping most people inside tonight.