The Prisoner of Guantanamo (18 page)

Falk jotted down Ed Sample's phone number from the letterhead. Then he tucked the letters beneath the pages of his legal pad. Van Meter could have the rest of his notes, but this might be something the Bureau would want to look into. Or that's what he would say if Van Meter ever asked why he had held on to these items.

He left the house for Camp Delta. The prison had four main sections, and Adnan was in the highest-security wing, known as Camp 3. Camps 2 and 1 had progressively more lenient rules, although Camp 4, counterintuitively, offered the easiest conditions of all, with communal cellblocks, white jumpsuits, bigger meals, and more time for exercise and showers. The guards called it “the Haj,” after the pilgrimage Muslims make to Mecca.

By the time Falk made it past all four gates into Camp 3 the sky was darkening. It was the time of day when the place began to calm down. You could still smell the detainees' dinner on a cloud of their collective farts and exhalations, hundreds of them in their tiny cells, preparing for the night.

Falk hadn't had time the day before to sign up for a session with Adnan, so he went straight to the young man's cell, expecting to find him in the usual position—hiding beneath the sheets, in spite of the heat. Instead the cell was empty. Falk's reaction was immediate and visceral. Someone must be poaching. Someone was in for a world of trouble.

“Guard! MP!”

A private came running from around the corner, face reddening. He must have thought Falk was in some sort of trouble.

“Where's this prisoner, soldier?”

“He's signed out, sir.”

“To who?”

“Don't know. I'll check.”

“You do that. Fast.”

Falk waited by the door as if Adnan might return any minute. Instead the private returned, walking briskly. He flinched as a detainee shouted something in a language Falk didn't understand.

“Well?”

The private leaned low, Falk not understanding why until it occurred to him that the guard was trying to keep the prisoners from overhearing.

“It was an OGA, sir,” the guard whispered. The local acronym for the CIA. “Here's his ID number.”

Falk wrote it down, but he already recognized the number because it had the prefix of his own tiger team.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered. “And thank you, private.”

A few minutes later he was strolling toward the interrogation trailer in a fury, flashing his ID at another MP before flinging back the door. Maybe this was why they were sending him away for the weekend. Lots of tidying up to do in his absence. He threw open the door to the first booth. Empty. Then the second. Empty. He got the same result at three and four, like a bad sitcom, the jealous husband checking closets for his wife's lover. Slam. Nothing. Slam. Nothing. All the way down the line until he reached the seventh booth, where an Army sergeant he recognized as one of Pam's classmates from Fort Huachuca looked up in irritation. Seated at the table in a relaxed pose was a prisoner in white, meaning he was from medium security.

“Sorry,” Falk blurted. He then couldn't help but add, “You seen Tyndall?”

No answer. Just an enraged shake of the head.

Chastened, Falk gently shut the door before checking the last booth, again finding nothing at this slow time of day. He supposed Tyndall could have taken Adnan to the CIA's booths in another trailer, but generally that wasn't the man's style. Falk's anger was turning to panic, and he practically ran back to the cellblock, tracking down the MP as sweat rolled down his back.

“Private, what was the sign-out time on that detainee?”

“I was going to tell you, sir, but you were in too much of a goddamn hurry. It was last night. Or this morning if you want to get technical. Three a.m.”

“Then where the hell's the prisoner?”

The private shrugged.

Falk went to Adnan's cell for another look, as if he might have somehow materialized in the interim. This time he also noticed that there was no toothbrush, no soap, no towel, and no prayer mat or Quran. The place had been cleared out. Even trips to the infirmary didn't warrant this kind of handling.

“There been any medical incidents today?” he asked the private, who was nearly out of breath, having followed him at a trot.

“No, sir.”

“How 'bout transfers to Camp Four?” Meaning medium security. Perhaps Adnan had finally caught a break.

“No, sir. None of those, either.”

For the intents and purposes of Camp Delta, then, Adnan al-Hamdi no longer existed. But Mitch Tyndall did, and Falk had a pretty good idea of where to find him.

         

T
YNDALL WAS INDEED AT HIS
usual evening perch, holding court near the bartender with another Agency geek and a raptly attentive female officer from a unit of Kentucky Reservists. Falk didn't waste time with preliminaries. He planted a hand on Tyndall's right shoulder, exerting a little extra force.

“Hey, what's with the Vulcan nerve grab?” Seeing Falk, Tyndall colored immediately.

“A word, if I might. In private.”

“I was going to tell you, but the orders were expedited and I couldn't find you.”

“Likely story. C'mon.”

The Kentucky MP's mouth was agape, but Falk ignored her. When the Agency colleague made a move to intervene, Tyndall waved him off.

“Save it, Don. It's personal. Keep my beer warm, will ya?”

Falk steered Tyndall to the periphery of the tables. It wasn't yet late enough for much of a crowd.

“Okay. What the fuck have you done with him?”

“Easy. I was going to tell you everything, but I couldn't get you at home last night, and this afternoon you were out on a boat or something.”

“Convenient. So you were going to wait 'til I came back, I guess.”

“Came back from where?” He frowned. If it was an act, it was a good one.

“Long story, but I'm out of here for the weekend. So where's Adnan?”

Tyndall looked around. Don was still watching from the bar. The pretty MP looked like she might not get over this for weeks.

“C'mon. Let's go down by the water.”

“This place will do. Just whisper in my ear, like we're inside the wire.”

Tyndall frowned again but complied, keeping his voice low enough that Falk had to bend closer.

“They've moved him to Camp Echo.”

Camp Echo was off-limits to Falk. It was the CIA's prison within a prison, Gitmo's house of ghosts, where, officially speaking, no one had a name or a future. For a moment, he was too thunderstruck to reply. Then he boiled over.

“Jesus, Mitch. They've made him a ghost? Why?”

Tyndall shook his head.

“Keep it down. Please. He's no ghost. It's too late for that. The Red Cross already has his name. He'll be accounted for, one way or another.”

“Then you're playing with fire.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So why do it?”

“Orders from upstairs.”

“Trabert?”

He shook his head.

“My shop. Special request from the clientele, apparently.”

“Which customer?”

Tyndall looked around again. Falk had never seen him so antsy. Tyndall waited while a couple of drinkers strolled past to another table, then spoke again, in a voice so low Falk could barely hear him.

“This can't go beyond you. And definitely not to Whitaker or anyone else at the Bureau.”

“Go ahead.”

“It was Fowler. Him and his lapdog Cartwright. They've been busy little beavers. Adnan's not their only acquisition.”

“How many others?”

“Two that I know of.”

“Names?”

“Adnan's the only one I know. Somebody else signed for the other two. It might have been Don. But they're all Yemenis, like Adnan. Maybe it's got something to do with Boustani.”

“Boustani never handled Yemenis. He did Lebanese, a few Syrians.”

“The detainee letters, though, the ones he was going to mail. They might have been from anybody.”

“Maybe.”

“Either way, this didn't come from me. But I figured I owed you from the other night.”

“The way I see it, now you owe me another one.”

“Whatever. As long as this stays between us. The last thing I need is to piss off those two.”

Pretty impressive when you could scare a CIA man, but Falk could hardly blame him. He, too, was feeling the heat. He knew that the odds of Boustani's collecting letters from the Yemenis were slim and none. Only a handful of interrogators and analysts at Gitmo regularly had access to those detainees, and Falk was one of them. If Fowler and Cartwright were zeroing in on Yemenis, then he was almost certainly on their radar.

Getting out of town was starting to sound like a pretty good idea.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
HE SUN WAS BARELY UP,
but Pam Cobb was already dressed in her morning uniform—Army shorts, fatigue T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes that had carried her across miles of dusty, hardened trails. She sat on her rump to stretch, long legs splayed across the linoleum of the kitchen floor. It was the corner of the house farthest from the bedrooms, and she always stretched there to keep from waking her roommates.

Pam yawned, then bent forward at the waist and arched her neck, reaching slowly for her ankles as her calves tightened. She could have used some extra sleep, but there was strength to be found in this daily routine, a reassuring rhythm that kept her moving in the right direction even when everything else was veering off course.

The strategy had served her well on several occasions at Gitmo. She recalled the morning after she first heard about General Trabert's plan to sexually taunt some of the detainees. Pam spent all evening worrying about the possibility she would be roped into the effort, and managed only a few hours of troubled sleep. The next morning she ran six miles through the creeping heat of dawn and emerged with enough focus and determination to finagle a meeting with the general. She spent nearly an hour arguing against the plan's insanity, although she never dared use a word as impolitic as “insanity.”

She instead took the subordinate officer's customary approach, deeming the plan a potentially fine idea that deserved a fair shot—just not the sort of shot that required her participation. Not right for her playbook, she told the general. Disruptive to her game plan. She had learned that in conversations with military superiors, especially males, it always helped to use football metaphors, just as it always helped in football conversations to use military metaphors.

Trabert let her off the hook, but made it clear that the dispensation was conditional. If the strategy worked for others, then she, too, would have to add it to her playbook. Yes, he said “playbook.”

This morning, conditions at Gitmo again called for some grounding as she set her course for the day ahead. Boustani's arrest had shaken her. Either the investigators had screwed up or Boustani had hoodwinked her completely along with the rest of her tiger team. To top it off, Revere Falk, the only other dependable aspect of her life here, was about to depart for the weekend for God knows what reasons, and she wouldn't even see him at breakfast.

She bent forward again, fingers reaching the soles of her shoes and feeling a pebble caught in the tread. Above her, the sink dripped, a loud plop into an oily pool of dishwater. Did sinks in these billets ever do anything but drip? There was something inherently depressing about military-issue kitchens. She'd known several from officers' housing at earlier postings. Always the same outdated box of linoleum and Formica, as if stamped out at a munitions factory in the seventies. Avocado refrigerators and countertops. None of the appliances ever quite up to par. Stovetop rings that glowed brightly in some places and dimly in others, like dying stars. Not at all like the big farm kitchen in the house where she grew up, with its ceramic sink and propane burners, a stout wooden counter piled in a clatter of cast-iron skillets and stockpots, plus an oven large enough to roast whatever beast her father and brothers dragged in from the hunt. She thought of them on a fall morning, faces dewy and flushed, everyone smelling of damp leaves and warm blood.

What would they think if they could see her here, talking tough to generals and speaking earnestly to surly young Arabs, then dating an FBI man by night, fooling around in his car like a date at the town drive-in? She wondered what Falk was up to this morning. He had mentioned a vague errand that would keep him away from the mess hall. Doing it for his buddy, Ted Bokamper. What an asshole. Supposedly another suit from Washington, but more like half the officers she dealt with daily. From the way they sometimes treated her you'd never guess she was their equal or better in rank—their free and easy innuendos, the offhand sexual humor, always trying to get a rise out of her. She knew better than to take the bait. Well, most of the time.

But Bokamper wasn't in her chain of command, so she had cut loose for a while last night. Her reaction obviously made Falk uncomfortable, and for a moment she regretted her sharp words. Then she remembered Bo saying, “I don't poach,” just loud enough for her to hear, and she swore under her breath. Her hands gripped hard against the soles of her feet, calf muscles stretched to the limit.

She let go, then stood up and leaned against the countertop, legs straightened behind her at a slant, feet flattened to the floor. Almost ready to roll. Well, with any luck, Bokamper and the other new arrivals would be gone soon enough. A few more arrests to further muddy the waters and generally make everyone's lives miserable, then they'd grow tired of the heat and the midges and fly away.

Falk offered a more complex set of worries. She recalled something the general had said a week ago at a beach bonfire after he'd spotted Falk and her strolling hand in hand. Her first instinct had been to pull away, like she'd been caught smoking in the girls' room. She recalled with embarrassment her flush of anger when Falk refused to let go—the dangerous boy determined to show defiance. Trabert had made a joke about “fraternization,” then laughed. But she had seen his jaw tense, as if it pained him to make light of it. He then turned on his heel in the hard sand like a squad leader on a parade ground. Had that been a caution, a warning not to let things get out of hand? She knew the Bureau and the brass were at war over tactics. In Trabert's mind she was sleeping with the enemy, and Falk wasn't exactly the company man most people expected when they thought of special agents. That was part of his appeal, she supposed. That, and the way he saw through the shell she had built for professional survival. Most guys never got past that, or tried to taunt their way around it, like Bokamper. Falk had recognized it right away as a bluff, maybe because he had his own facades. She wondered again about the tale she'd heard in interrogation, the odd story of the Marine with the Cuban connection, the Marine who had become a fed.

“He talks with the Cubans, sells them secrets,” Niswar had insisted. “He is one of your people, and he talks to the Cubans.”

It would have been more disturbing if it weren't so ludicrous on the face of it. How the hell would a bunch of jihadists who had spent their entire lives in Arabian deserts and Afghan mountains know anything about Cubans, much less an American who talked with them? She well knew how easily rumor and fantasy took flight among the fevered imaginations inside the wire. Only three days ago yet another prisoner had told her about the cabal of Jews that was secretly advising the Saudi royal family.

All the same, maybe it would be safer to put it on paper somewhere official, strictly as a matter of housekeeping. But she would wait until Monday, after Falk returned. She had promised him that much. By then Niswar would probably have changed his story anyway.

Her stretching was done, and she looked out the window. It was already a half hour later than she usually set out, and here that could make a world of difference. She'd need a sweatband for her forehead now, so she padded down the hall to her room, passing a roommate who was stumbling bleary-eyed toward the kitchen.

“Made any coffee?”

“Sorry, Patty. Just heading out for a run.”

Patty grunted in reply. She always needed a few cups to reach full consciousness.

Pam pulled open a drawer and rummaged through her socks for the sweatband. As she pulled it on she thought she heard a door shutting. Probably a kitchen cabinet, Patty on the prowl. Then Patty appeared at the bedroom doorway, her eyes as wide as if she'd already downed a full pot.

“What is it?”

“You've got company.” Her voice was high. A visit from Falk would never have prompted this reaction. Was it Bokamper, then, already sniffing around before his “little brother” even left town?

“Who is it?”

“Three of them. A couple of MPs, plus one of the new guys from Washington. Fowler, I think he said.”

Disdain gave way to alarm. Then she steadied. Boustani. They must be making the rounds with everyone on his team. Pretty strange time of day for a house call, though. And so much for setting herself back on course with a nice long run. At this rate, she might not get out of the house for hours.