Escape from Baghdad!

by Saad Hossain

  “Searching out leads, captain!” Hoffman yelled at parade ground volume. The glass vibrated.

  “At ease, soldier,” Fowler glared at his companions. “What are you doing with these two I-raqis? This fat one looks like a criminal.”

  “They can speak English, sir!” Hoffman shouted.

  “Sit down, all of you,” Fowler said. “Explain yourself now, Hoffman. Colonel Bradley is most displeased with your lack of progress—and reports. Just the other day, we were discussing your court martial over a grilled squid brunch.”

  “Captain, these I-raqi citizens have helped me track down what we are looking for!” Hoffman said. “We are on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  “You mean it?” Captain Fowler leaned forward.

  “The real thing, sir!” Hoffman brought forth a small carton of laundry detergent. “I have brought a small sample for you and the colonel!”

  “What is this?” Captain Fowler took the box. “It smells like detergent.”

  “It’s a partial weapons grade anthrax, sir!” Hoffman said. “Please be careful, sir! You have some on your cuff there.”

  “What?” Captain Fowler thrust the box back. “Anthrax? In laundry detergent? They have weaponized laundry detergent?”

  “Precisely, sir!” Hoffman said. “Weaponized laundry detergent. Imagine our barracks flooded with this stuff, no shirts safe, no pants safe, not even skivvies.”

  “A devious plan,” Captain Fowler stroked his cleft chin and then abruptly began to shake his infected cuff. “Precisely what we were looking for. You’re onto something here, Hoffman. What are their production capabilities? Where are their processing plants? We’ll bomb them to hell!”

  “Sir, we are on the verge of finding this out,” Hoffman said. “We need more time. And, er…, more cash funds, sir, for intelligence gathering. Also, a gunship on call in case I, er, need to call an airstrike.”

  “Right, that sounds reasonable,” Captain Fowler said. “Weaponized detergent. I’d never have believed it. The devious cock suckers. The colonel will be apoplectic.”

  “Right, sir,” Hoffman said. “I myself was extremely excited by the discovery. There are large caches of this stuff hidden away. Al Qaeda could get to it any second. We’re on the right track. It’s an amazingly delicate time. Any stray action can wreck our chances. In fact, we were on the way to interrogating someone in the hospital compound when we were violently stopped. By Sergeant Evans. You might want to investigate him. He looked a little uppity to me…probably a traitor…might even be CIA?”

  “Hmm, yes, well don’t worry about that. We know how to deal with other agencies trying to muscle in and take credit. Evans, you said? I’ll post him to Kandahar. He won’t be spying on us anytime soon. You get back to work. I’m giving you full clearance in the green zone,” Captain Fowler said. “I need a written report, Hoffman.”

  “Reports, right, captain, Private Tommy has been making reports nonstop,” Hoffman said. “I’m surprised you haven’t gotten them yet.”

  “And give that sample to our hazmat team,” Captain Fowler said, gingerly poking the detergent with a pencil. “We need to analyze it.”

  “Right, sir,” Hoffman said, rising to leave. “I’ll be sure to remember that.”

  Outside, a very young West Point graduate handed Hoffman a wad of unmarked bills, both Iraqi and US currency. In earnest tones, he quoted to Hoffman relevant passages from the CIA guidebook to bribery: Technical Assessment of Alternative Reward Based Systems (TAARBSTM), and made him sign and fingerprint various forms in triplicate. He then provided Hoffman with a hefty sat phone, capable of connecting directly with the pilot of Col. Bradley’s personal AH64-A Apache, which apparently had gilded machine gun barrels and a bourbon bar in the rear cabin. A sealed file carried protocols and firing codes.

  “See this?” Hoffman waved the phone at Behruse. “This is your gunship right here.” He looked at the wads of cash in his hands and grinned “Get your dancing shoes on, boys and girls, we’re gonna party green zone style.”

  15: OLD MEN

  DR. NUR SAWAD WAS UNMARRIED AND NO SURPRISE SINCE SHE was extremely unpleasant. Supercilious, suspicious, and scowling, her brusqueness was the product of a defensive shell that had hardened over time. She lived in a modern apartment block so far unscarred by bombing that had previously housed prominent Ba’athist families. With the advent of the new order, the Americans had moved their own critical staff into the green zone.

  Dr. Nur had risen far under the aegis of her father, who had always wished for a son and cheated by fate had raised his only offspring in a pressure cooker of gender mixing confusion. A single parent, Dr. Sawad had forced on her both the need to succeed in the medical field and to fulfill the traditional duties of home and family.

  Their long simmering resentment for each other had finally come to a head over her refusal to marry or have children. The physical split was further reinforced by Dr. Nur’s relocation to the green zone to work for the Americans, a hideous defection in the eyes of her father. In the end, Dr. Nur had changed her surname and fully cut herself off from her only living relative.

  They got past apartment security flashing Hoffman’s varied credentials and caught Dr. Nur just as she was leaving for work.

  “What do you want?” She cracked the door open an inch. There were various chains and other security measures. She appeared to be holding a weapon of some sort as well.

  “Military intelligence,” Hoffman said. “Just a few questions, ma’am.”

  “You have no jurisdiction here,” Dr. Nur said. “Iraqi civilians are under the authority of Iraqi police. And your uniform is wrong. You look like a common infantryman to me.”

  “Er, yes, ah that is…”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Behruse shouldered himself into the narrow crack. “I am Lieutenant Behruse of the IPS, plainclothes detective. We are investigating your father’s death, and its possible connection to the Al-Rashid Mental Hospital incident.”

  “I’ve already spoken to policemen,” she said.

  “We think he was murdered.”

  “Go away.”

  “Lady, let me in or I’m kicking the door.” Behruse flashed a badge with his pudgy fist.

  Apparently, this kind of behavior was more in line with standard police ops since Dr. Nur abruptly shut the door. There was the rattle of numerous chains being pulled, the snap of a padlock, and the door finally reopened wide enough for them to squeeze through.

  “Who are you?” Dr. Nur asked, moving to block Sabeen.

  “I am an executive partner of the law firm of Ibn Sina and Associates,” Sabeen looked down her nose at the doctor. “We have an interest in the investigation of your father during his tenure at the Al-Rashid.”

  “I don’t speak to lawyers,” Dr. Nur said. “Please leave me a—”

  “Specifically, of the restricted wing of the Al-Rashid, of which we know your father was the chief administrator,” Sabeen continued.

  “Get out of my house.”

  “Even more specifically, of the experimental methods your father used,” Sabeen said. “For treatment of his patients, if you could call it treatment. What is your opinion now, doctor?”

  Dr. Nur visibly deflated. “I told him not to take that job.”

  “Really?” Sabeen moved inside, like some kind of panther on the prowl. “Good advice. I wonder why he didn’t follow it.”

  “He was too ambitious,” Dr. Nur said. “He had full government backing at the time. More power than he knew what to do with. It went to his head.”

  “Full government backing, yes,” Behruse said. “A government now extinct, unfortunately. The new regime is not so happy with him. He experimented on human lives. What of his medical ethics, doctor? What of the Hippocratic oath?”

  “Hippocratic oath?” Dr. Nur laughed, an ugly sound. “He didn’t even know what that was.”

  “We want to know more about the time your father was killed,” Sabeen said.

 
“What?” Dr. Nur said. “Your colleagues told me it was suicide. They refused to investigate anything. And they took money from me to leave me alone. Haven’t you spoken to them?”

  “They said it was suicide?” Sabeen asked. “What do you think?”

  “It couldn’t be. I told the police that,” Dr. Nur said.

  “He wasn’t depressed?” Hoffman asked.

  Dr. Nur shot him a withering look. “Of course not! He loved torturing those poor mental patients.”

  “Doctor, we have this file from your father’s papers,” Sabeen said. “It seems as if he was working on a special project, a scientific paper for publication perhaps or even a book. It would have been very important to him.”

  “He had a lot of secrets,” Dr. Nur said. “And I didn’t want anything to do with any of his work. It was one of the reasons we fell out.”

  “She’s covering her own ass,” Behruse whispered to Hoffman. “She knows something.”

  “How do you know?” Hoffman whispered back.

  “I have a gut feeling.”

  “Behruse, you do know you aren’t actually a cop, right?”

  “Doctor,” Sabeen said, glaring at them. “Your father was a Mukhabarat agent. Are you familiar with that term? That was the secret police apparatus of Saddam Hussein.”

  “I know nothing about this,” Dr. Nur said.

  “This paper he was working on, it was on a man named Afzal Taha,” Sabeen said. “Are you familiar with that name?”

  “No.”

  “Doctor, your father was killed because of this paper. We have a verbal statement from the coroner; he found burn marks on the body, like you would get if you put a lit cigar into someone’s skin. He was tortured and then thrown off the roof.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “The police file is missing,” Sabeen said. “The coroner’s report is missing. Dr. Sawad’s own papers are missing. Dr. Nur, I am quite certain your father talked before he was killed. His murderers are looking for his work, and I am sure they will find you sooner or later. You think you are safe in the green zone, but these are very resourceful people.”

  “Just go away. I told you I don’t know anything.”

  “Fine,” Sabeen said. “You know what we’re going to do? We’ll put a watch on your door, and then we’ll spread the word that you have Dr. Sawad’s personal effects. It’ll be very interesting to see what kind of men come after you then.”

  “What!? You can’t do that.”

  “Of course I can. I’m a lawyer. We don’t have any morals.”

  “You’re the police,” Dr. Nur turned to Behruse. “You’re supposed to protect me.”

  “Well, see, actually I’m going to turn a blind eye on this one.”

  Sabeen brought out the index file. “Do you have any of the documents mentioned here, doctor? Yes or no.”

  “Yes, fine,” Dr. Nur said. “Father sent me some things to look over. He wanted my medical opinion. He was very excited.”

  “Bring us everything you have.”

  “What are you going to do with the papers?”

  “Confiscate them of course,” Sabeen said. “They are part of our investigation.”

  “You can’t have them,” Dr. Nur said. “I need them for my work.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I am going to publish the case study,” Dr. Nur said. “A joint work, with both our names.”

  “What? You’d rather we didn’t find your father’s killers?”

  “Look, my father was a genius, and this case study was the culmination of his best work,” Dr. Nur said. “It’s my inheritance. I intend to cash in on it. It will make me famous. I might even get some sort of prize.”

  “You do understand, that people killed him to keep him silent?” Sabeen asked. “We need to remove these things from you for your own safety.”

  “Yes, well, I doubt these thugs read medical journals,” Dr. Nur said. “Ours is a rarified world of academics, dear. You all wouldn’t even understand half of the language being used. I’ll just make some cosmetic changes to protect names and identities; it’s done all the time in psychiatric case studies.”

  “All the same, we need the papers,” Sabeen said. “Look, I’ll write out a full receipt on my legal pad. You can reclaim them after the investigation is over.”

  Dr. Nur said. “Yes, fine, I’ll show you what I have. But I want it in writing that you will return everything undamaged. No one knows I have them, and they won’t know until I’m ready to publish. And if you find the remainder of his papers, I need your word in writing that I will have access to them first and that eventually they will be returned to me as part of his estate.”

  “Yes, fine,” Sabeen said. She wrote out a contract on her legal pad.

  “Wait here then,” Dr. Nur said. “And don’t touch anything.”

  She returned moments later struggling under the weight of a black Samsonite briefcase. She cracked it open and stroked the papers lovingly, like a miser polishing her horde. Grudgingly, she turned the case around. The briefcase was stuffed with a cacophony of papers, sealed, yellowed, typed, handwritten, some documents heavily scored with notes, many bound loosely together with yarn, and a few ancient-looking texts laminated in plastic to hold them together. Each document had been lovingly tagged with markers, numbered, and there were letters interspersed with them, handwritten in Sawad’s script, presumably the silent conversation he had been having with his daughter in the days preceding his death.

  “Like I said, dear, you probably won’t understand half of it.”

  “Yeah, we’re stupid, doctor,” Hoffman leapt to his feet, pushed up by a poisoned anxiety. “Can you kinda give us the gist of it?”

  “Gist of it?”

  “Like give us the cliff notes version. The summary,” Hoffman said. “What’s this all about?”

  Hoffman’s presence, like a pointlessly cute kitten, seemed to soothe the woman somehow. Her gaze softened and she addressed him directly: “The patient Afzal Taha was one of the special cases of the restricted ward. He had been placed in absolute isolation by my father’s predecessor. That itself was—is—unusual in a mental institute.”

  “OK,” he said gently. He glanced at Sabeen and Behruse, motioning them to be still.

  “He had attacked the security guards several times. Two of the men assaulted had actually died, although that was not common knowledge in the ward. The old administrator had been using isolation and electric shock treatments on Taha. The man had just been a stupid thug, not a scientist like my father. He didn’t study the results on Taha nor did he notice anything unusual. Because he was in isolation for almost five years, none of the staff knew much about him either.”

  “So what did your father find out?”

  “Well, first of all, that Taha had already been partially lobotomized earlier,” Dr. Nur said. “Although there was no record of it at the Al-Rashid. The scars were there, and the kind of incision made indicated a method that is now out of date.” She tittered. “I mean, dear, out of date in circles where lobotomy is still practiced, of course.”

  “Carry on.”

  “My father was the first one who had actually bothered doing a physical examination of all the patients, including the violent ones,” Dr. Nur said. “Like I said, he was a real scientist. The lobotomy greatly intrigued him. He had been doing research along those lines earlier, I know, before I had been born. Anyway, he found some other anomalies too. For example, Taha’s physical strength. He could—and had—torn through the normal shackles on several occasions. These were the times he had killed his guards, of course. The old administrator kept Taha sedated, and even then, the sedations were far too strong for a man: enough to knock out a horse, in fact. His was normally tied to a bed with heavy iron chains around arms and legs, as well as the straight jacket.”

  “A scary guy,” Hoffman said.

  “Many mental patients are prone to violence,” Dr. Nur said. “But Taha actually seemed t
o want to escape, to retain a sense of purpose, if you will, despite the long period of institutionalization and the drugs. This was unusual.”

  “What else?”

  “Taha’s resistance to electric shock was the highest my father had ever seen in any human. I remember the day that he did his final tests. He was so excited, giddy like a school boy. It apparently took a hippo-sized dose to finally put Taha down. My father thought he must have built resistance to shock therapy over time, perhaps. It was very unusual.”

  “Go on, please, doctor, this is really helpful,” Hoffman said gently, brushing at a bead of sweat he had not noticed before, dangling from his nose.

  “My father took Taha off the tranquilizers. He started interviewing Taha. He was astonished. The man was extremely lucid and intelligent at some points and then completely hallucinating later. My father thought it was auditory command hallucinations: where the patient believes some external force is commanding him to act in a certain way. These are people who see angels or demons or whatever and are compelled by these visions to act out.”

  “What did Taha see, doctor?”

  “That’s the thing I don’t know. My father did not share everything with me,” Dr. Nur said. “Taha was paranoid. He never spoke about his visions, even under stress. It is unusual. Normally in these cases it is fairly simple to get an idea of what the patient is seeing. My father thought at one point that these visions must be the key to Taha’s mystery. He started looking at old files, talking to old patients, anything to find out about the man’s past.”

  “And what did he find then?” The bead of sweat was back, and he swiped again.

  “The most unusual thing of all,” Dr. Nur said. “He found records of Taha going back, and back, before the restricted ward had even been set up. He found police records years ago of violent crimes committed by Taha, prison records, different doctors testing him, treating him.”

  “So, he’s a psycho with a long history.”

  “You don’t understand,” Dr. Nur said. “According to the oldest credible record, Afzal Taha is over a hundred years old.”