Man in the Middle (44 page)

He laughed. “My boy, Elton, he said it sucks over there.”

“Your boy has a good head on his shoulders.”

“Let me tell you, he used to be a little asshole. Not all cops’ kids are angels. The Corps straightened him out.” He chuckled. “The first time he made his bed, his mama wanted to know who manufactured the robot that looks like her kid.”

“Barry, listen. If you don’t want Elton to spend the rest of his career over here, find something.”

“Stay in contact.” He hung up.

Bian lifted her beer can and we performed a quiet aerial toast. She said, “They failed to close the back door.”

“But they didn’t forget. These people aren’t stupid, Bian. They won’t ignore it.”

“I know. What happens if he’s caught?”

“He’ll be okay. He’s a big boy. He understands the risks.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“He’s not a federal employee so they can’t screw up his paycheck, or . . . say, reassign him here. You and I, on the other hand, might have a big problem.”

“Screw them.”

“Why are you doing this, Bian?” I popped that question out of the blue and watched her closely to see how she responded.

She did not bat an eye. “Duty, honor, country. It’s that simple.”

“Obeying orders is part of duty, and country can be interpreted many ways. You’re not telling me something, Bian. I’d like to know what it is.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“With you, nothing is obvious.”

“Is that a criticism?”

I took her hand and said, “No, it’s not. You’re a very exciting, unpredictable, and fun woman to be around. These past three days, despite everything, I’ve had a great time. I mean that. But from the moment I met you, I’ve sensed that you have your own agenda.”

“This is the second time you’ve brought this up. It’s getting old. What is it you think I’m doing?”

“Something more than truth, justice, and the American way. This is personal for you. I’m just not sure why.”

She took a sip of her beer and examined me curiously. “That’s hypocritical. You’ve been with me every step of the way. Has someone put a gun to your head?”

“Well . . . Ali bin Pacha, for one.”

“Oh, screw off. Why are you bucking the system? Obviously not to get in my pants.”

“Hey, that’s below the belt.”

To be polite, she smiled at my bad pun. She said, “I told you, I lost friends and soldiers here. I’d blow the whistle on these people in a heartbeat, but the scandal would destroy everything a lot of good soldiers have accomplished through blood and tears. That’s something I’m not willing to do. I hope you’re not either. But I’m more than willing to trade my career if I can force these people to make it right. Other people are giving their lives and limbs.”

“Okay. I believe you.”

“You better. And stop trying to psychoanalyze me. It makes me uncomfortable.”

I sipped from my beer.

She said, “I know you’re the cynical tough-guy type, and I know you’d never confess to doing anything altruistic. And I also know that it’s a veneer, and that, underneath, you’re maybe even a bigger sucker than I am, and maybe you’re as compelled to find the truth here as I am.”

Then, out of the blue, she added, “I’m going to take another shower. When I was here, we’d go weeks without them. I hated that almost more than I hated being shot at. It’s so nice to feel clean in Iraq for a change.”

Women are really into personal cleanliness. Men, on the other hand, think a month without showers and a shave is a cool vacation. But also, that sounded like an invitation. I wasn’t sure if it was or not; it sounded like one, though. She stared at me a moment too long, then stood and walked out.

I popped the second can of beer and stared out the plane window. “To feel clean in Iraq for a change”—those words kept gnawing at me. She had meant for it to be taken at face value, and maybe it went no deeper than that. But from cross-examining thousands of criminals and witnesses, I also knew that through skill, luck, or chance, sometimes a Freudian slip lands in your lap, and you need to be receptive. Sometimes it’s exactly as it sounded, and you end up spinning your wheels. Other times it’s the switch that ends the darkness, or at least lights up a corner of a room.

So. “Clean in Iraq for a change”—what did that mean? Something had happened to her here, something traumatic she didn’t want to talk about, but clearly something she felt remorse for, and maybe a deep sadness.

I didn’t think Bian was dishonest; to the contrary, I was sure she was highly principled. But as I knew from personal experience, when two or more principles clash, something has to go.

It struck me, further, that she certainly wasn’t the naive or overly gung-ho waif she occasionally came across as. With hindsight, what I had taken for gullibility, pliability, and excessive volunteering might have been something more.

Everybody involved in this thing had an agenda—nationalistic or institutional—and for each agenda there was a corresponding motive: passion, folly, obsession, anguish, intrigue, adventure, or, in a few cases, a less complicated matter of personal ambition and CYA. But for Bian—for whatever reason—this was personal. And when you mix personal with professional, you get big problems.

I heard the shower door open, and I heard it close.

This had not been my war, but it had been Bian’s from long before we met. As all old soldiers know, what makes it personal for you isn’t some galvanizing platitude or geostrategic imperative, or even being shot at. One attends a war because one is ordered to; one puts his heart and soul into it for a different reason. A bond to somebody, a comrade in arms, somebody with whom you share the risk of death, somebody you care about, and hopefully they care about you.

Joining Bian in the shower remained a bad idea, and I was sure she knew this as well; her quest, though, whatever it was, had become mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

B
ian and I were seated in stiff-backed hospital chairs observing our Arab patient, who remained unconcious. Three days had passed since Doc Enzenauer recommended that we allow bin Pacha a period of recovery before we squeezed his brain like a blackhead. According to the doc, this had more to do with the drugs and anesthetics than the trauma of the operation, and he gave us a long, detailed tutorial explaining why. Don’t ask.

Anyway, when Abdul Almiri was picked up by a squad of MPs for delivery to Abu Ghraib, Bian hitched a ride into Baghdad, where she stayed for two days.

She didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask.

I assumed, however, that she went to see her fiancé, Marvelous Mark, which perhaps accounted for why she didn’t invite me. I recalled Bian once telling me that Mark and I had a lot in common, the inference being that we’d end up buds, but I wasn’t so sure. I mean, we had both seen Bian naked; among guys, that doesn’t make for a pleasant bonding experience.

My own two days, if you’re interested, were spent in the airplane, monitoring communications and observing the election coverage on cable news; i.e., becoming bored out of my wits.

As before, the polls indicated a dead heat, and an electorate experiencing its usual quadrennial meltdown into terrified indifference. As one pundit put it, the race boiled down to one guy too stupid to spell “principle,” yet insisting he had plenty of it, against a guy who spoke a little too much French—if you know what I mean—who had never earned a private-sector buck and now was married to a billionaire with a strange accent, yet was offering himself as the champion of average Joes, underdogs, endangered species, and other people who weren’t lucky enough to marry rich. Democracy is great. Iraq should have one, too. Seriously.

If you’re still interested, I saw no coverage, or even mention, about the death of Clifford Daniels. A biographer friend of mine likes to say, “When a man dies, the story of his life is no longer his.” Apparently the story of this sad little man belonged to people who were working overtime with a big eraser. Ironic, if you think about it. All his life, Cliff had wanted to touch the flame of power and fame; he finally got his wish, and even his ashes were disappearing.

On the second day, the aircrew showed up to turn over the engines. To relieve the monotony, I challenged them to a chess tournament; fortunately, they declined. I had better luck suggesting poker, but they had better luck with the cards, drubbing me for two hundred big ones. The bastards cheated. I cheated, too; they just cheated better.

Anyway, Bian returned early on the third morning without a word about where, or about how, she had spent her days in Baghdad. However, I sensed a new mood of calm contentment with an attitude of cordial reserve toward moi. I assumed this meant she had resolved her internal conflict between Mark or Sean. I won’t say I was overly thrilled by this.

Anyway, Bian elbowed my arm and said, “Sean, I think he’s waking up.”

I looked up and noted that Ali bin Pacha’s eyes were blinking repeatedly. Having personally experienced this—twice—I understood what thoughts were passing through his brain.

For starters, you remember your last conscious moments, the images and thoughts playing back like a videotape—you have a bullet inside you, it hurts like hell, you know you might die, you feel a tide of weakness enveloping you, sucking you down into the darkness, and you’re thinking . . . This is it. The End.

Now his nerve endings and synapses were crackling with unexpected sensations. He reached with his hands and touched his face, then rubbed his three-day stubble, his nose, and his eyes, confirming that Ali bin Pacha still was encased in a corporeal body, still breathing, still alive.

His one good eye shifted to the IV tube in his arm, and he noticed his surroundings, that he was resting in a bed, his body was covered with clean white sheets, and somebody—Bian—was watching him. From his expression, he realized this woman in an Army uniform was not one of the fabled Stygian virgins waiting to celebrate his martyrdom.

Then the roving black eye discovered me.

I cleared my throat and informed Ali bin Pacha, “You are in an American Army field hospital in Baghdad. I am Colonel Drummond. This is Major Tran.”

He stared back wordlessly.

I continued, “We know you work with Zarqawi and we know you are . . .
were
his moneyman. As such, you are not a prisoner of war, you are an international terrorist and will be afforded none of the protections of the Geneva Conventions.” I leaned closer and asked, “Do you understand?”

His face remained impassive.

Bian informed him, “You
do
understand. We know you speak English. In fact, we know a great deal about you.”

Which was true, courtesy of the file Sheik Turki al-Fayef had promised and actually delivered the day before, albeit a skeleton of the mighty file it had probably once been. It told us a great deal about this man personally, and nothing about him professionally, which was helpful, though not nearly as helpful as it might’ve been. She allowed bin Pacha a moment to consider her words, then said, “We know you grew up in Jidda in Saudi Arabia. Your father’s name is Fahd, your mother is Ayda. Your father is an importer of fine automobiles, which has made him very prosperous. You have six brothers, no sisters.”

I added, “From 1990 through 1991, you were a student at Balliol College at Oxford. On your entrance exam, your English was rated as excellent. In fact, you wrote your first-year essay on the poetry of John Milton.”

He did not acknowledge this revealing insight either.

I needed to get a rise out of this guy and said, “I read it. Let me be frank. I found it immature, pompous, and presumptuous. You don’t know the difference between iambic pentameter and a pizza pie. And you totally misunderstood Milton’s intent. About what I expected from an ignorant, backward camel jockey.”

I was sure this crude cultural aspersion was irritating for him—it was meant to be—but his expression was immutable.

Bian’s turn. She said, “The colonel has lost friends here. He . . . well, he’s not a big fan of Arab cultures.”

Women have a sixth sense for what gets on a man’s nerves, and Bian was cueing me to stay on this path. I said to her, “People who wipe their asses with their hands don’t have culture. They can make chemical weapons and bombs, but can’t figure out how to produce toilet paper?” I looked down at Ali bin Pacha and asked, “Hey, how do Arabs practice safe sex?” He wasn’t going to touch this, and I said, “They put marks on the camels that kick.”

A choking sound came from bin Pacha’s throat. It sounded like he was trying to clear it, or was pushing words through a dry windpipe. Bian bent forward and said, “Oh . . . you must be parched.” She found a glass and a water pitcher by the bed, filled the glass, and held it to his lips. “Here. Drink.”

He took a few shallow sips and coughed. Bian placed the glass back to his lips and he drank more heartily. She removed it, bin Pacha turned his eyes to me, and he found his voice. “You will rot in hell.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Only by the grace of Allah do you still breathe.”

“Allah-my-ass. You were too slow on the trigger, pal. Any American kid could’ve gotten off that shot.”

“If there is a second chance, I will kill you. I promise you this.”

I laughed. He did not like this, and his eyes sort of narrowed.

Bian said to bin Pacha, “Don’t let him goad you. You’ve just been through a traumatic operation. Don’t let him get you worked up.”

He ignored her and informed me, “I do not speak with American whores. Do not let her touch me again. Order this infidel bitch to leave my presence.”

Bian leaned toward him and said, “Fuck you.” Her arm drew back but I grabbed it before she laid one on him.

Well, so much for good cop, bad cop. Now it was bad cop, bad cop, bad prisoner. Obviously, he had a problem with American ladies. This could be a religious or cultural thing, or maybe Ali bin Pacha had some of those icky Freudian issues with his mother, or he liked boys, or girls had never reciprocated his affections because he was a murdering terrorist asshole.

I informed bin Pacha, “American prisons are filled with female guards. They’re going to order you around, watch you do potty, and occasionally will strip-search you and do those nasty cavity searches up your butt. Get used to it.”