Man in the Middle (53 page)

To which I politely replied, “Captain, I didn’t ask you to guess.”

“Uh . . .”

“I need to
know
whether she’s arrived.”

“Uh-huh . . . do you know who she’s supposed to see?”

“If I knew, why would I be calling you?”

There was a long pause. “Well, sir . . . that could take a while. There are about three dozen offices here.”

“Fine. After you check them all, ring me back.”

I gave him my number, and he promised to call. He never did. Petty prick.

After another hour, I returned to Phyllis’s makeshift office. I knocked and entered. I updated her and noted that, in my view, Bian was too good an officer, too reliable, and too responsible for the explanation to be innocent. Phyllis promised she would make some calls, and she did; Bian had never showed, but the moment she arrived—
if
she arrived—Phyllis would get a call.

Unfortunately, Baghdad is a big city, and it was already dark and too late to do anything, even if something could be done—which it couldn’t. In a city filled with murder, bombings, and kidnappings, a tardy woman is the least of anybody’s problems.

So I sat next to the phone all night and into the morning, thinking, waiting, and worrying. I tend to do nothing badly under the best of circumstances, and after thirty minutes people were avoiding me, which was fine. I finished two pots of coffee, and with each passing hour, I became more convinced that something terrible had happened. This was Iraq, after all, so the list of possibilities was endless and frightening, and I ruminated on every one of them.

The call I dreaded came at 7:30 a.m. from a sergeant in the operations shop of the 2/18th Military Police Battalion. His voice was gruff, his manner professional, and the news was bad.

In an alleyway in Sadr City, in the northeastern part of Baghdad, an abandoned silver Toyota Land Cruiser with U.S. military plates had been found by an MP patrol.

In the rear of the vehicle, the MPs discovered a green Army duffel bag. Neatly stenciled upon it was Major Tran’s name and partial social security number—from which they deduced she was an occupant— and in the front seat was a leather briefcase in which they found a form from Camp Alpha with the phone number for this facility—which explained the call here, to confirm the major’s provenance.

Regarding Major Tran, no trace of her or her body was found.

There were, however, six bullet holes through the driver’s door and bloodstains on the seat and windshield.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

W
e all walked out of the Camp Alpha compound as a military police detachment pulled up. A two-and-a-half-ton Army truck towed the silver Land Cruiser behind it, which was necessary, as the Toyota’s front tires had been blown out by bullets. I did not like the look of that, but for the moment I withheld judgment.

The MPs began unhooking the tow shackles, and Jim Tirey, accompanied by four agents, waited until they finished before approaching the Toyota. They did a quick visual survey around the perimeter of the vehicle, and then dove in, dusting for prints and taking blood samples from the driver’s seat—for once, they weren’t developing a forensic portrait of the perpetrator, but of the victim. I walked to the driver’s side.

As the ops sergeant had indicated over the phone, there were bullet holes in the driver’s door, though not six, as he had stipulated— more like ten. Also the driver’s window was blown out, with safety glass littering the inside. I studied the number and spacing of the holes; no way could the driver have emerged unscathed from such a fusillade.

An MP sergeant approached on my right and informed me, “We found it about 0600 hours, parked in an alleyway. It was, you know, a part of the city where you don’t find expensive autos.”

I looked at him but made no reply.

“An anonymous local called it in. Nobody gives you their names here,” he continued. “Our Arabic guy took the message and dispatched us.” He confided, “We were thinking VED, vehicular explosive device—you know?”

I nodded.

He said, “Ask me, it was a drive-by.”

When I made no reply to his hypothesis, he explained, “There’s gangs that rove around the city, day and night, hunting for vulnerable targets.” After a pause, he asked, “She in uniform?”

Again, I nodded.

“Plain daylight, too,” he commented with a disapproving frown. After a moment, he asked, “And she was alone, right?”

“Yes, alone.”

“Uh-huh . . . I mean, Jesus H. Christ, that’s how you spell stupid. Ask me, she was begging for it.”

I turned to him and said, “If you offer one more stupid opinion, it will take ten strong men to pull my boot out of your ass.”

He gave me an alarmed look, then wandered away. I continued to stare at the SUV.

I felt somebody take my arm, and when I turned around, it was Phyllis, staring at the bullet holes. She said, “Sean, I am truly, truly sorry.”

I didn’t trust myself to reply, and pulled my arm away. I moved to the rear of the vehicle, where Tirey’s people had now withdrawn Bian’s duffel bag and briefcase and laid them on the ground. The contents had been emptied and two agents were surveying the materials, spare uniforms, makeup kit, clean underwear, and so forth. Whatever they were looking for wasn’t going to be found in Bian’s bags.

An MP hovered over their shoulders, compiling a written inventory of her belongings on a clipboard. This I knew to be SOP whenever a service member is deceased or MIA—missing in action. And I knew also that it’s one step short from a bugler blowing taps over a quiet grave.

Tirey said to me, “What do you think?”

I ignored the MP and looked at him. “She’s alive.”

“You saw the bullet holes? And the blood?” he asked, tiptoeing around what was so clearly indicated by the evidence.

“What don’t we see, Jim? A body, a corpse. Bian. Were she dead, she would’ve been left in the car. They have no use for a corpse, do they?” He seemed to mull that over, and I added, “Also the front tires are blown out. Were it a drive-by, as our MP friends are suggesting, why shoot out the tires? Also the line of bullets in the door was a straight line, yet the window was also blown out. Think about that. If the driver’s door was locked and they needed to get inside, they would break it in to get at the prisoner.”

We both knew an immediate death was preferable to the conclusion I was drawing. He nodded slowly and contemplated this logic. He said, “I’m sure you’ve heard about the kidnapping gangs in the city. A lot of times, they call and demand ransom.”

“Have they ever kidnapped an American soldier?”

“Well . . . not that I know of. But like all criminal enterprises, these people evolve. For instance, a few foreign contractors have been kidnapped by these gangs.”

“And what happened to the victims?”

He paused for a moment. “I don’t want to offer false optimism, or pessimism.”

“Tell me.”

He said, avoiding my eyes, “They were sold to terrorists.” He continued to look away. “This happened twice that I’m aware of. Both victims ended up in Zarqawi’s beheading videos.”

I had spent the whole night preparing for this, and now it was actually happening, the finality of what I had hitherto only imagined. My chest felt like an airplane in a crash descent.

I stared at the two agents going through Bian’s stuff, and at the MP listing her possessions. I thought of Bian lying, possibly, in a room not far from where we stood, surrounded, perhaps, by Zarqawi’s people, who were sharpening their knives and rehearsing her death. This was a very courageous and resourceful lady, but she was not self-delusional; she was a realist, and she would appreciate the denouement of this story.

I left Tirey and returned to the driver’s door. I stuck my head inside the SUV for no particular reason except I really didn’t want to converse with anybody. Not with Phyllis and her guilty sympathizing, not with the MPs and their idiotic theorizing, and definitely not with Tirey, who was pulling no punches.

I stared at the dried blood inside the car. Bian’s blood. The driver’s seat was stained with it, more had splattered on the steering wheel, and some had even splashed onto the windshield and dashboard. She had bled profusely. And while I was sure she was alive when they pulled her out, that did not mean she was alive now.

Indeed, this was the Army’s worst nightmare, and for the terrorists, a dream come true; an Army major, a female soldier, a West Point graduate, a beautiful and intelligent young woman whose beheading promised a telegenic horror that would sear itself into the psyche of the American public.

Terrorism thrives or dies on shock and hype, and in their corrupted version of Hollywood, truly a star was about to be born.

“Did you see it?” asked a voice from behind me.

I turned around. A military police buck sergeant, short, black, and female, was pointing at something inside the Toyota.

“See what?”

She stepped closer. “The letters,” she replied. She leaned closer and stuck her arm inside the vehicle. “
There
. . . see it? Looks like letters . . . like she was writing something. You know?” She stepped back and commented, “In her own blood.”

I followed her finger, and on the dashboard I observed what appeared at first to be squiggles of dried blood, but on closer examination had shape and form.

“Didn’t notice it myself, at first,” she told me. “Really, not till we hooked up the vehicle to the deuce and a half,” she continued, referring to the Army truck that had towed the Land Cruiser. She explained, “Had to climb inside and put it in neutral . . . for the tow, sir. Took about fifteen minutes. Left me a lot of time to look around.”

I had leaned closer and tried to read the letters. I said, “The first one looks like . . . what—C?”

“Yes, sir, sure does. And I think . . . the second’s either a ‘d’ or a sloppy ‘h.’ ”

“Followed by an ‘a.’ Right?”

“Or a sloppy ‘o,’ ” she agreed. “But could be a ‘q.’ That last letter sort of drags off, sir. Maybe like she was yanked out of the cab as she was writing.” She added, “I tol’ my lieutenant might be she was still alive. Only he looked at all that blood and said uh-uh.” She looked around and said, “Don’t tell him I mentioned this. Please. Okay? He’s sort of a prick. He don’t like to be contradicted.”

Was this a message? A clue? Or was the explanation more innocuous? I mean, it was equally possible that, as she writhed in pain, Bian’s fingers had been convulsing on the dashboard.

I leaned forward and looked more closely. No—definitely this was neither arbitrary nor accidental. I yelled for Tirey, who rushed over and stuck his head inside the driver’s compartment. I pointed at the dash and asked what he read, and more important, what he thought.

He slipped on reading glasses, then read off C, and H, and A, or maybe O. He stepped back and suggested, “It looks like a message. That’s what it looks like. Too bad, though, because it also appears that she ran out of time.”

The MP sergeant offered the opinion, “Might be they’re the first letters of a license plate. You know, the plates of her attackers.”

I kept replaying the combinations inside my head: CHO, CDO, CHA, CHQ, CDQ, and then again, CHA—for some reason that combination popped back into my brain. But why CHA? Think, Drummond. As the sergeant suggested, a license plate? Possibly. Then, out of nowhere, it hit me—CHA, CHArabi.

Tirey was explaining to the MP, “If they are from a license plate . . . well, too bad. If they weren’t stolen, the attackers will change them and . . .”

He and she continued to chew the wrong possibilities, and I wandered away. I saw Phyllis hanging around by the entrance to the facility, alone. I approached and explained my theory that Bian was still alive—and why—and then in a hushed voice I told her, “In blood, Bian wrote three letters on the dashboard. C-H-A. Name something, or somebody, that starts with those letters.”

She pondered this question for a long moment. “I’m not in the mood for games.”

“Neither am I. Charabi—Mahmoud Charabi. And the fact that she could write confirms she was wounded, not dead, and now we know who took her.”

“Do we? You’re
sure
about the letters?”

“Am I positive? . . . No.”

“And you’re sure she wrote them?”

“Handwriting authentication is tough when the victim finger-paints in her own blood.” I told her, “The letters, however, are not Arabic, they’re Roman.”

“Okay . . . I would agree that is suggestive.”

“You shouldn’t argue with anything, Phyllis. Nothing else makes sense.”

“No, it’s the only explanation you’ve thought of. But it’s still speculative, isn’t it?”

“Interpreting evidence
is
always speculation. Footprints, fingerprints, DNA samples—until you ID the criminal, you’re guessing what they mean and how they relate to a crime.” I said, “Bian was writing something we could interpret. Something she knew we would understand.” I added, “She wasn’t a random victim. She was hunted down and kidnapped.”

“Explain that.”

I put my hand on her shoulder and said, “Somebody tipped Charabi about this investigation, and about Bian, and probably about me. That doesn’t surprise me, nor should it surprise you—from the start of this thing,
everything
has leaked.” She acknowledged that grim reality with an unhappy nod, and I continued, “The moment Bian drove out the gate yesterday, his people were waiting, they recognized her, and they ambushed her.”

“How did they know she was here? At Camp Alpha?”

“How did they learn she was investigating Charabi?”

“You’re implying an inside source.” She then asked in a skeptical tone, “And who would that source be?”

“I have no idea.” Though we both knew I was lying, and we both knew who the prime candidates were: Waterbury, and via him, Tiger-man and Hirschfield. I recalled how Waterbury had fled Camp Alpha the day before. I had assumed he was gaining bureaucratic traction from a failure, but there was an equally plausible reason: As a former cop, he knew absence of presence nearly always equals absence of suspicion.

Clarior e tenebris
—literally, the surrounding darkness emphasizes the light. Waterbury, and by extension, his cronies, were worried. About how much Bian and I knew and how much of a problem we were. And about how close we were to the truth. There was only one way to find that out: They needed either Bian or me—alive. And why not? This was the one place in the world where a kidnapped American raised no particular suspicion.