Man in the Middle (40 page)

“It pissed me off, Bian. Don’t ask me to think deeper or verbalize more than that. I really don’t know.”

“I see.” She looked away and said, slightly dismissively, “At least that’s an honest answer.”

I squeezed her hand across the table. “I don’t know what you want to hear. It’s an ugly impression, an image so horrible and contemptible it’s almost surreal. It was something ugly that should never have happened, but it did.” I looked her in the eye and went on, “You’ve had time for it to congeal into something else. It takes time. When combat veterans talk about having repressed memories and flashbacks, that’s what they mean. Nobody forgets. They just aren’t expecting the instant when the carnage rushes back to the surface with full import.”

She seemed to understand and seemed disappointed. She said, “I was hoping you would see why we really can’t lose this war. Not to these people. Not after all they’ve done . . .”

Clearly something had happened here, something that had strongly affected Bian’s view of this war. I had already suspected that, of course. But now that we were closer, geographically closer, and mentally closer, I was getting a stronger sense of how utterly obsessed she was.

Also, I guess I knew what she was saying. The idea of losing any war is militarily and politically anathema—for soldiers, it is a mark of shame and dishonor; for a nation, a strategic setback; and for the nation’s citizenry, a mortifying scar on the psyche that never fully heals.

Like Vietnam. Here we are, thirty years after that last helicopter wobbled off the U.S. embassy roof, and still we haven’t come to grips with it. And in the classic military sense that wasn’t even a defeat; it was a negotiated withdrawal, a wearied and bloodied boxer refusing to fight to the finish, regardless that the other guy had been stomped almost to death.

But some enemies are worse than others, and the idea of people who are willing to unleash such nihilistic savagery, that we would let them win, that we would cede control of an entire nation to their blood-encrusted hands, clearly this was something we needed to think long and hard about.

These ruminations were interrupted by voices from the front of the plane, and after a moment Phyllis and Waterbury, accompanied by a third gent—Arab in complexion and wearing shimmering white robes with fancy gold embroidery—entered the conference room.

Phyllis was dressed in a smart blue summer dress, and Waterbury in a sort of tropical, crap brown leisure suit with white loafers and a matched belt that were in nauseating taste even two decades ago when they were in fashion.

After we exchanged a few greetings, Phyllis said to Bian and me, “You did a fine job.”

“Thank you,” said Bian, assuming it was sincere.

She then looked at me, and added pointedly, “I really wish, however, that bin Pacha hadn’t been shot. What a botch-up. We now have to wait for him to recover before we can begin an interrogation. If he knew where Zarqawi was, that knowledge might now be too stale to exploit.”

I had expected her to say that, and still I found it irritating. I made no reply.

She remembered her good manners and said, “Our guest is Sheik Turki al-Fayef, from Saudi Arabian intelligence. He is here, in an unofficial capacity, to advise us concerning Mr. bin Pacha.”

Bian and I exchanged quick looks of surprise. Wow, a lot had sure happened since we left D.C. Unofficial?

Anyway, the sheik neither stuck out his hand nor even acknowledged our existence. He assumed a bored expression with his dark eyes sort of roving around the interior of the plane as if waiting for a salesman to appear.

Waterbury decided he had let too much time pass without making his presence known and said, “Let’s all sit. Tran and Drummond, I believe you owe us an after-action report.”

Without further ado, the sheik moved immediately to the head of the table, which told you where he placed himself in the pecking order.

Waterbury moved to and then sat at the other end of the table—ditto.

Phyllis pulled out a chair from the middle and seated herself beside Bian.

You have to pay attention to these things. Apparently Phyllis no longer was in charge of this show, and Waterbury was now the man.

Of course, Waterbury couldn’t wait to confirm this, looking at me and saying in a commanding tone I found very grating, “Drummond, you lead off. Begin with a brief summary of the operation for Sheik al-Fayef’s benefit. Then I’d like to know everything you’ve learned.”

Before I could say, “Up yours,” Phyllis interjected, “And Sean, please . . . keep it brief. We’ve had a long, tiring flight.” Which was code for, “Play along with this idiot, and watch what you say in front of our berobed friend. And, yes, and since you didn’t ask—traveling five thousand miles in the company of Mark Waterbury
really
did suck.”

So I launched into a condensed, highly edited report about my trip, the operation to get bin Pacha, why a bomb maker was grazing on trail mix in one of the bedrooms, and so on. I treated it like a jury summation, which is to say the audience heard a selective, entirely self-serving version of the truth. I’m good at this. But having no idea how much our new Saudi friend knew—and not knowing how much he was
supposed
to know—I omitted all mention of Clifford Daniels, Charabi, and how we learned about bin Pacha in the first place.

Occasionally I turned to Bian to address a few points, a sort of Punch-and-Judy show about how we spent our summer vacation.

I skipped the part about Bian shooting our prisoners. She felt no need bring it up either.

Neither did I mention the shower thing. Why reinforce the sheik’s Arab stereotype that all American women are sluts? And of course, Bian was listening. I wanted to make it back from this mission alive.

Nor did I bring up that I had doubled Eric’s pay. I really wanted to savor the look on Phyllis’s face when I broke that news.

Waterbury listened; to my surprise, he was playing against type, remaining attentive and did not interrupt even once, though he did look like his hemorrhoids were acting up. He was on his best behavior, trying to make a good impression on somebody. Clearly he was not wasting this on me, or Bian, or Phyllis. This sheik, in other words, wasn’t just any old sheik. Nor, I was now sure, was he here to “advise” us. But what did unofficial mean?

Phyllis posed a few questions, all of which in one way or another concerned conditions inside Falluja. None seemed to reveal any particular bearing on the issue at hand, and presumably were related to something else on her plate. This lady always had ten balls up in the air, with three more hidden underneath her skirt.

For his part, Sheik Turki al-Fayef looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here. He occasionally yawned, or rolled his head, or drummed his fingers on the table. He chain-smoked four or five really stinky French cigarettes, polluting the entire room.

This being a U.S. government aircraft, I could only imagine the repressed anguish inside Waterbury’s manual-riddled mind. I was really tempted to ask the sheik to fire one up for me, and I don’t even smoke.

At one point, while Bian handled the talking, I examined our exotic friend more closely. A little fleshy and jowly, late-fortyish, with quick black eyes and one of those dashing, daggerish goatees. For some reason, the descriptive “devilishly handsome” popped to mind, which I found funny. I mean, he really
did
look like the devil. I had this odd thought that the ancient Christians must’ve framed Arab males as their models for Satan. So what did the Arabs’ devil look like? Probably like some chubby whitebread in preppy clothes from Connecticut. And their hell probably resembled New Jersey, which actually isn’t all that far from our idea of hell.

Also I suspected his show of diffidence was just that—an act. Beneath that veneer of cool apathy probably lurked a first-class thespian and a sophisticated intellect firing on twelve cylinders. I had known senior Army officers who employ this same technique. It’s about power, the power to appear bored, to display bad manners in the presence of underlings. It’s all illusion, of course; just like power. Anyway, I ended our spiel by recommending, “We believe Abdul Almiri should be turned over to the military as quickly as possible.” I turned to Phyllis and observed, “The Baghdad field station can handle that without exposing our fingerprints.”

Waterbury answered for her. He said, “I’ll handle it.”

“How will you handle it?” I asked.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Mark, it
is
our business,” Phyllis interjected.

“All right, I’ll . . . I’ll tell the Army one of my people is over here and arrested him.”

I exchanged looks with Phyllis. She artfully suggested to Waterbury, “Don’t you think they’ll wonder why the Pentagon special unit has people over here? You could blow this entire operation.”

“Maybe . . . Well, I’ll consider it.” We all were left with the impression that he might accept that cost as long as he got official credit for capturing a bomber. I had this mental image of Waterbury back home, seated with his pals, smoking a big stogie, rolling a snifter of cognac around his palm, and saying something like, “So let me tell you how I bagged the biggest, baddest bomber in Baghdad . . .”

If this man were any stupider he would have to be watered twice a week.

Phyllis changed topics and informed Bian and me, “Doctor Enzenauer called about an hour ago. Ali bin Pacha’s wound was cleansed and sutured. He’s recovering in the post-op.”

“So he’s going to be okay?” asked Bian.

“The risk now is an internal infection, and that will have to be watched. But in Enzenauer’s opinion, he should be ambulatory in about two days.”

Bian looked a little relieved, as well she should. Had bin Pacha expired on the operating table, she would’ve had a few difficult issues to explain.

Everybody was now smiling, and I decided to burst their bubbles, commenting, “I don’t think we’re going to crack this guy.”

“What does that mean?” asked Phyllis.

So I spent a moment regaling her and the others about what we learned from Abdul Almiri regarding Ali bin Pacha, closing with an interesting personal observation I picked up while he was pointing a gun at my head. “There was this moment,” I told them, “a millisecond . . . when we just looked into each other’s eyes. Melodramatic as this might sound . . . it was like we looked into each other’s souls. What I saw in that instant was hatred, a rage that bordered on madness.”

Bian smiled and said, “I wonder what he saw in your eyes.”

Waterbury cracked, “Were you expecting him to smile, Drummond? He had comrades who were dead or shot. He had just been captured.”

Actually, I recalled, bin Pacha had smiled. I said to Waterbury, “How would you know? I don’t recall you being there.”

He gave me a nasty look.

Phyllis intervened before this turned even nastier and asked, “What’s your point, Sean?”

“Breaking bin Pacha will require ingenuity, luck, and time. Months, maybe years. He won’t fall for the usual interrogatory tricks and gimmicks, nor will he be goaded into the sloppy mistakes you associate with common criminals.” Glancing in the sheik’s direction, I added, “In the event anybody
is
considering beating the truth out of him, pain will only fuel his indignation and rage.”

Phyllis asked, “Are you inferring bin Pacha has a martyr complex?”

“Well . . .” What was I inferring? “Think of this man like steel. He prefers heat. It tempers him, makes him stronger.”

Waterbury regarded me a moment, then said, “You claim to know a lot about this man. Yet you admitted that you never spoke with him, so that strikes me as . . . absurd.”

I smiled back. “I have a strong intuitive sense. For instance, I didn’t like you three seconds after we met.”

He thought this deserved a serious response and replied, “Yes, but we actually spoke for a while.”

Why do I waste my wit on guys like this?

So I ignored him and looked at the other faces around the table. Deciding to treat this like a courtroom summation, I said, “Let’s review what we
do
know about Ali bin Pacha. He has been a terrorist his entire adulthood, having survived over a decade in a business we’ve done our best to make risky. In fact, he was handpicked by al-Zarqawi to represent his movement to outside investors. This is noteworthy. Ali bin Pacha is the chosen face of his organization. This suggests great confidence that he will protect his group’s most precious secrets. And further, that he would be viewed by prospective investors as an inspiration, a poster boy for how terrorists look and act. Bottom line, his peers don’t underestimate him, and neither should we.”

Everybody thought about that for a moment.

Bian nodded at me, signaling her agreement with this assessment.

The sheik said nothing. He was leaning back in his chair, concentrating with great intensity on the glowing tip of his cigarette. Maybe I misjudged this guy, maybe he had a grapefruit for a brain.

Mr. Waterbury broke that silence and informed us, “In my experience, everybody talks.” When nobody picked up on that thread, he said, “You just have to find the right approach.”

What did he think we were talking about?

The sheik finally looked up and, in surprisingly good English, said, “The colonel has an excellent understanding of this man.”

He poked his cigarette at Waterbury. “Ali bin Pacha descends from many generations of Bedouin warriors. He is not like these people from Jordan or Pakistan or Syria. These men, such as your Jordanian prisoner, they are peasants playing at warriors. Ali bin Pacha was bred differently.”

“Is that right?” asked Waterbury.

“He is what we call
takfiri
. You know this term? They are worse even than Al Qaeda. Very fanatical, very destructive.”

“I suppose you would know,” Waterbury replied.

“I do know,” he confirmed, which I thought was interesting, if not revealing. “And you will be glad to know I can offer a solution.”

Everybody craned forward, anxious to hear this loaded announcement.

“Turn Ali bin Pacha over to me,” he told us. “He is of us. We understand him.”