The Midnight House (18 page)

“With a needle—”

“Yes, with a needle. And I fell asleep, and when I woke up I was on a plane. And then I was somewhere very cold.” Alaa shivered at the memory. “I don’t know where. Since I got out, I tried to figure it out. I think somewhere like Germany. But maybe not.”

“They never said.”

“No. And I couldn’t see anything about it, where they kept me. If I ever left the building, they put a hood on me. But it was Americans who ran it, I’m sure of that. It had a special name. They told me. They were proud of it. They called it ‘The Midnight House.’ ”

“Midnight House.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why they called it that?”

“They said it was always midnight for the prisoners.”

“Were there a lot of prisoners?”

“Not that I saw. Mostly, I was alone.”

“And they hurt you?”

“These men, they were much different than the ones in Iraq.” He closed his eyes, took a slow, deep breath. “I know I must talk about it, what they did, but—”

He broke off. The room was silent, the only sound the faint buzzing of the bulb overhead. Somewhere outside, a dog barked fiercely.

“They told me, it’s very simple to hurt you. And it was. They make me stand all the time with my arms out, make me stay awake, hit me with the electricity. They put me in a very small cell, so small I can stand only like this—” Alaa hunched over. And even though he held the position for only a few seconds, his face went slack in fear and pain, the muscle memory overwhelming him. He stood up, slowly.

“Nothing that ever left a mark,” he said. “I would look at myself and wonder if I had dreamed it all. Yes, sometimes, when they stopped, brought me back to my cell and I fell asleep, I thought the sleep was real and the torture was the dream. I said, ‘Allah, Allah, help me, help me escape these evil dreams, sleep in peace.’ But he never helped. And you must see, they never stopped. Not like Iraq. In Iraq, the guards and soldiers, they came and went. They had many prisoners. But in this place, this house, it was only me, and they never stopped. And after a while, I don’t know how long, maybe three weeks, I couldn’t resist anymore. I didn’t know if they would kill me or send me back to Iraq or what they would do, I only knew I couldn’t resist.”

“Anyone would have done the same,” Wells said. “But what I don’t see, even now, is why you protected this man who sent you to Iraq at all.”

Alaa laughed, low and bitter. “Not to protect him. To protect my family. Do you know who it was, the man I drove? Samir Gharib. He owns half of Heliopolis”—a wealthy neighborhood in northeast Cairo. “His daughter is married to Mubarak’s grandson.”

“And it was his son who sent you to Baghdad?”

“Do you see now, Kuwaiti?” the imam said.

Wells saw. The American government supported Hosni Mubarak, for all his flaws, because he was viewed as a reliable ally against radical Islam. If his family had been connected to the Iraqi insurgency, the outcry in Washington would have been immediate and intense. Congress might have ended the billions of dollars of aid the United States gave Egypt every year. And Mubarak would have lashed out, setting his men on Alaa’s family. Angering a pharaoh was never wise.

What Alaa hadn’t realized was that his confession would be so toxic that the agency and the army had no alternative but to bury it. Then, with no reason to keep him, they’d told 673 to let him go.

Amazingly enough, the truth had set Alaa Zumari free.

 

 

IN THEORY,
Alaa might still be responsible for the 673 murders. But why? His captivity had lasted only a few months and had ended with his regaining his freedom. Now he simply wanted to be left alone. Nonetheless, Wells figured he should ask about the murders.

“Are you angry with the Americans?” he said.

“The ones who hurt me? Sure, I’m angry.” Though Alaa’s voice was even. “I wish that they would see how it feels. But not the woman. She was kind.”

“The woman.”

“One was a woman. A doctor.”

“Did she talk to you?”

“Only a few words. I don’t think she knew so much Arabic. But she had a kind face. That’s the only way I know how to say it.”

“Do you know what’s been happening to them?”

“What do you mean?”

“This unit that held you.” Wells paused. “They’re dying.”

“I don’t understand.” The surprise in his voice was genuine.

“They went back to the United States. And now someone is killing them.”

“I don’t believe it,” Alaa said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Wells was sure now that Alaa hadn’t been involved in the killings. He couldn’t be a skilled enough actor to fake this.

And then a distant high-pitched whistle breached the room, a long, warning cry. The imam stepped forward, cupped a hand around the wound on the back of Wells’s head. “They’re coming.”

“I swear on the Prophet it wasn’t me,” Wells said. “Hani saw the note you sent. He works for them.”

The imam’s silence was answer enough. Wells wondered if they had time to escape. If the
mukhabarat
had seen the note, they knew he was headed for the Northern Cemetery but not exactly where. They had put a bug and a tail on Wells, figuring it would be easier to follow a Kuwaiti than the imam and Ihab, who knew the local streets. But Wells had lost his bug and his pursuer. Now the police were regrouping. They had tracked him to the
sheesha
café and were going from there.

“Leave,” Wells said. “I’ll go the other way, draw them off.” But the imam seemed frozen.

Wells heard the distant thumping of a helicopter high above. Would the
mukhabarat
bring in a copter for this op? Apparently so. And no one would be surprised when Alaa was killed during the arrest.
A suspected terrorist died early this morning in a counterterrorist operation in eastern Cairo, Egyptian authorities reported. . . .

No.
Wells wasn’t going to help the Egyptians kill this man, or send him back to prison. Alaa had suffered enough. Wells wondered briefly what the agency would make of his helping a fugitive who’d been connected to the Iraqi insurgency, and decided he’d care later.

Another whistle, this one closer. Wells stood, braced himself against the wall. He didn’t know how far he could run, but he’d have to try. “Follow me or don’t,” Wells said to Alaa. “But decide
.
”

Wells stepped out of the hut and found himself in the alley where he’d been sapped. Alaa followed. A helicopter buzzed overhead, but Wells couldn’t see it. Good. Like the bumper stickers on eighteen-wheelers said,
If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you.
American helos had see-through-walls radar, but Wells didn’t think that technology had come to Cairo yet.

He pulled himself up to the roof of the one-room house where he’d been held, then squatted low and oriented himself. Alaa followed. They were in a tough spot. The cemetery was a long rectangle that ran more or less north-south. Its east and west perimeters, the long sides, were hemmed in by broad avenues that formed natural bulwarks, easily patrolled and defended. Getting to the northern or southern edges, where the cemetery blended more naturally into the the city, meant running a half mile or more through the alleys full of police, or over the rooftops—in full view of the helicopters. Two lurked over the cemetery, one to the north, one to the south, shining their spotlights in tight circles.

Despite the helos, Wells thought their best bet was to stay high for as long as possible. The rooftops were filled with debris and scrap metal. The police would avoid them and stick to the alleys. If Wells and Alaa could just get through the first cordon, they might be able to disappear.

Still bent over, Wells scrambled crabwise south along the rooftops. The helicopter to the south was shining its light in a slow, looping pattern, moving slowly north, trying to catch any movement on the roofs. It paused. Wells saw that a dog was caught in its beacon, barking madly upward. Then it moved on. Wells and Alaa reached a two-story building, a ruined mosque, with a low wall that offered concealment.

To the west, three motorcycles streaked along the avenue, their red-and-blue lights flashing, a flying patrol cutting the cemetery off from the city. In the alleys around them, flashlights popped up and disappeared. To the north, a whistle sounded. A man shouted, “You! Raise your hands!”

Between the helicopters, the motorcycles, and the men on the ground, one hundred or more
mukhabarat
officers had to be on this mission. Wells realized now that he’d unwittingly put Alaa in special peril. Lost in the Cairo slums, Alaa was no problem for Mubarak. But now that Alaa was a threat to tell his story to the world, the police were determined to find him.

Overhead, the helicopter closed in, the chop of its blades and growl of its turbine growing louder each second. A wave of nausea pulled Wells sideways, and he braced himself to keep from falling over. That crack on his skull was the gift that kept on giving. Right now he ought to be lying in a dark room with a compress against his head and a friendly nurse rubbing his shoulders. Forget the nurse. Forget the compress. He’d settle for the room. He almost laughed, then bit his tongue to stop himself.

He tried to stand and couldn’t. Too dizzy. He couldn’t get much farther.

“Nadeem,” Alaa shouted. “It’s coming.”

“I’m going into the spotlight. Pull it away. You go south, get out of here.”

“But—”

“Go.”

Wells bit his cheek, hard enough to draw blood, hard enough to jolt himself with adrenaline. He stood and ran along the uneven wall of the mosque. He stepped down, into an alley. He jogged through a narrow archway and found himself in a courtyard filled with crumbling graves. The spotlight swung at him and night became day. So much dust filled the air that the light seemed almost liquid, white fire pouring down from the heavens, setting the gravestones ablaze.

Wells tried to dodge, hiding behind a grave, knowing he couldn’t. The spotlight settled on him. He stumbled a few steps farther and then fell to his knees and raised his hands in surrender and waited for the police to come. He hoped they wouldn’t shoot him on the spot. He hoped Alaa had followed his instructions and run south. He closed his eyes, let the furious thrum of the helicopter’s turbine fill his ears and shake his skull until he disappeared.

The police found him quickly. They grabbed him and cuffed his arms tightly and marched him out to the avenue. Hani waited for him there, leaning against a black Audi sedan with tinted windows. He stepped forward, backhanded Wells hard, his gold ring digging into Wells’s cheek.

“What trouble you’ve caused us, Kuwaiti,” he said. “Now you’ll be our guest. See our prisons firsthand. You can make your own video when we’re done with you. Interview yourself.”

“Sounds like fun,” Wells said in English. “But I’m not Kuwaiti.”

“No? What are you, then?”

“American. A CIA operative. Name’s John Wells.” His last card. His trump card. Wells would rather have avoided playing it. Not exactly
pukka sahib.
He wished he could have made a clean escape, avoided the nonsense certain to follow. But he had no alternative. He wasn’t sure he could have gotten past the cordon tonight even if his skull was in one piece. His embarrassment was a small price to pay for Alaa’s freedom.

Hani must have known Wells was telling the truth, because he slumped back, his mouth half open, a fisherman who’d just reeled in the biggest catch of his life only to watch it wave and jump off the deck and back into the ocean. “John Wells. You work for the CIA,” he said finally.

“So they tell me,
habibi.
”

T
he Gulfstream jet’s itinerary had taken it at forty-one thousand feet over a half-dozen countries, all avoided by anyone with a lick of sense. Exceptions included oil workers, who made good money for their trouble, and Special Forces operatives, who knew how to take care of themselves. The natives, too. They didn’t have a choice.

After leaving Faisalabad and climbing northwest over Pakistan, the G5 crossed into Afghanistan roughly at the Khyber Pass. For an hour it flew over the Hindu Kush, jagged snowcapped peaks glittering in the cloudless sky. Eventually the Kush gave way to the steppes of Turkmenistan, a vast expanse hardly touched by roads or cities. Even the most intrepid travelers rarely visited Turkmenistan. The country existed mainly as a bridge between more appealing destinations, nations with amenities such as oceans, reliable electricity, and the rule of law. The ultimate flyover country.

Had the jet kept on the same route, it would have entered Russia next. But the other men in the G5 preferred to avoid Russia. Instead, the jet veered left, over the Caspian Sea, a vast blue-black expanse broken only by an occasional oil platform. Then over Azerbaijan. The less said about Azerbaijan, the better. And into Georgia, not the former heart of the Confederacy but the former (and perhaps future) Russian republic.