Threatcon Delta (5 page)

Nonplussed but gracious about it, she told him his car would be welcome and gave him the information, which he sent over to Harper. The deputy director would send a small chopper out of New Haven, most likely. Something with a maximum range of four hundred miles could make both legs of the trip without stopping to refuel.

Kealey told Ellie that he didn’t have a check to make a deposit but he noted the woman’s bank information and told her he would transfer funds before the day was out. He said he would trust her to get the paperwork in order while he was away. He didn’t think he would be gone very long.

“Are you always this impulsive?” she asked.

“Not by choice,” he laughed. Kealey thought about the many times he had had to make a decision on the fly that meant life or death for anyone from one to one million people. Yes, he was impulsive. “In this case, I’d call it being certain of something,” he smiled. “I don’t get that a lot in my life.”

“I see.”

“Do you always trust strangers with your personal finance accounts?” he asked.

“You just met my airstrip and you’re already trying it out. If that’s not a sign of loving this place, what is?”

Kealey laughed at that. “I’m guessing you’ve damned a few torpedoes in your life, too,” he said.

“Not as many as I wish I had,” she said. “But there’s still time left. Well, you’ve picked a good anchor for a new life.” She glanced behind her. “This home has been a rock for me.”

They finished their coffee and watched the clouds. Within the hour they could hear a helicopter coming in low from the south. Kealey hugged Ellie good-bye as the Bell 429 set down among the tall, wheat-like grasses. He ran over, climbed aboard, and loved the house and grounds all over again as he lifted off.

Like General MacArthur departing the Philippines, he found himself vowing that he would return . . . and soon.

“H
e’s allowing me to sit in on one of his sessions?” Dina Westbrook asked incredulously as she walked down the hall with Lieutenant General Sutter.

“Gave us permission in writing,” replied the compact, impeccably courteous officer. “After he made his decision, I think the psychologist felt she had no choice, so she agreed, too.”

“Very helpful of him,” Dina mused. “Almost too helpful.”

“As if he’s going out of his way to show he has nothing to hide?”

“It would make sense if he’s been turned.”

“I will say, over the past two weeks we confined him to barracks and the mess hall while we discussed what to do, and we did decide that he was a hero, not AWOL. The Pentagon notified me this morning.”

“A hero and not AWOL, for sixteen years.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure what I can add to that decision, sir.” She was subtly chiding him for wasting her time, and she intended for him to know it.

He picked up on it. “It was a strategic decision, ma’am. If he has been turned, we’re more likely to discover that in a man who’s being treated like a hero instead of a deserter. That’s why he’s been in evaluation for two weeks, and we’ll be shipping him stateside soon, where he can be monitored by the Warrior Transition Brigade.”

“And you want my opinion?”

“Your reputation for reading people is legendary, and I don’t use that word lightly.”

“All right,” Dina said with a smile. He was trying so hard, after all. “Give me the thumbnail sketch.”

“In March of 1998 Chaplain Major James Phair left his forward post with the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division in the midst of a massive assault against an Iraqi Republican Guard tank division. According to what he has told our psychologist, he slipped away to minister to the spiritual needs of wounded Iraqis being carried into an abandoned government office. A bomb exploded on the building. We listed him as missing in action and presumed dead. Apparently, all this time he has been ministering to Iraqis of every stripe. He’s been working with Sunnis, Shiites, Yazidis, various Christian sects like the Nestorians. He’s learned their customs, faiths, and their languages.”

“So if he hasn’t been turned, he’s a remarkably valuable asset,” Dina confirmed.

“Like money can’t buy,” the lieutenant general said, then smiled at his lapse in military enamel. “Two weeks ago, an Irish Guardsman discovered the chaplain in Basra, where he was helping South Korean Christian missionaries feed orphaned children. There was a suicide bombing, and afterward a metal detector registered the dog tags he was wearing around his waist. They brought him to us.”

“And you made him a hero.”

“Personally, ma’am, I think he is one.”

He had finally fallen for her bait. That was exactly what she’d been trying to ascertain.

“It’s just down this hall,” he said, and began to turn a corner. She put a hand on his arm to stop his stride, then faced him in the hall.

“What does the psychologist think about it?”

“She’s refused to summarize her assessment until after this last session.”

“Any reason why she’d be swayed one way or another?”

“Well,” Sutter thought. “I think she’s starting to feel guilty.”

“For what?”

“Ma’am, have you heard of the controversy about General George Patton’s treatment of a certain soldier in 1943?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“A battle-fatigued private in Sicily was refusing to go back to the front, so Patton slapped him across the face. Patton was relieved of combat command for a year for it. I’ve heard Major Dell, the chaplain’s psychologist, refer to our pharmaceuticals as a ‘slap.’ ”

Dina nodded. “The Army Medical Corps doesn’t have the time or personnel to handle all the PTSD—”

“Experienced by one in four soldiers in Iraq.”

“So they medicate.”

“One-third are back on the field in a week. One-half are back within a month.”

“And it’s wearing on her. On you, too.”

The lieutenant general looked shocked, vulnerable. Then he sealed the enamel back on. “Major Dell is part of a team that we all are hoping can find a better answer.”

“Good, thank you for informing me of her perspective. What medications has she prescribed for the chaplain?”

“None.”

“None at all? Has anyone prescribed anything for him?”

“He hasn’t appeared to need any.”

“After sixteen years in Iraq?” Dina’s eyebrows rose.

“In the worst of situations and through repeated traumatic crises, yes, ma’am.”

Dina’s eyebrows remained raised as she walked with the lieutenant general down the corridor.

“If there’s a crash coming for him . . .” she started.

“It’ll be off the charts,” Sutter finished her thought.

He stopped her at the psychologist’s door. She assembled a neutral face before he knocked.

During the introductions, Dina casually but openly regarded Chaplain Major Phair. He was nearly six feet tall, with a slight slump in his shoulders. He was shaved and groomed, his salt-and-pepper hair cut close. He was a little thin, as one might expect after all he’d been through. There was caution in the slow but constant movement of his eyes, which was also to be expected. He had not been among fellow Americans, or military protocol, for a long time. His shake was gentle, also to be expected from a pastor. His hands were badly calloused and that was a surprise to Dina. The lieutenant general excused himself and the majors sat down opposite each other while the agent sat to one side.

“We’re going to be talking at greater length in the States,” the psychologist said to Phair, “but I wanted to give us one more chance to meet here before we go back.”

She likes him,
Dina thought. But she also gave credit to Maj. Amanda Dell, a dark-haired woman with congenital shadows around her eyes, for being shrewd. A patient with the feel of a beloved place around him can remember more details, or drop his guard, however one preferred to view it.

“How long have you been here?” Phair asked the psychologist.

“Three years.”

He considered her answer. “That’s a long time, if you don’t want to be in a place.”

“Indeed it is,” she said. “I can’t wait to go home. What about you?”

“I miss my friends,” he offered.

“In America?”

He smiled. “My friends are all here.”

There was a strange, halting quality to his voice. He had mostly spoken just Arabic and dialects for years.

Major Dell made notes in a folder that lay open on her desk. Nothing was keyed into computers during sessions. The electricity was too unreliable.

Dina wondered if she was writing about his expressions of belonging and longing. Those were two of the three qualities that suggested someone had been turned, in the lexicon of covert operations. Dina guessed Major Dell would not make explicit mention of that fact in her notes, however. Even a hint of brainwashing or Stockholm Syndrome could ruin a life and career.

“Then you consider Iraq your home?” Major Dell asked.

“It’s where I’ve lived for so long,” he replied.

“Do you still regard yourself as American?”

“Of course,” he said.

The response, stated emphatically, carried a lot of weight in his favor. Dina watched Dell make another note.

“When the soldiers found you, you asked to be reunited with that family before you left . . .” The psychologist flipped through her notes.

“The Bulanis,” he said, smiling.

She found her notes on the subject. “You didn’t seem to want to say much about them when we first met.”

“I didn’t want to say much about anything,” he said. “I felt a little lost.”

“Will you tell me more now?”

“What would you like to know?”

“Do you miss them so much?”

“That, and I wish I could have helped them more,” he said sadly. “They were among the first people I met. I made”—he stopped and seemed to search for the word—“a crutch for their boy. His foot was gone. I made a strong one from two discarded table legs.” He smiled. “When he was sitting, he used it like a cricket bat, hitting rocks and shards of brick.”

“How old was he?”

“Four, then.”

“You stayed in touch during the entire time you were there?”

“We were together a great deal. Raheem is Sunni, originally from Algeria. His wife, Shada, is Shiite. They had to move frequently as militias came and went. We often traveled together.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Last month,” Phair said. “He is a driver. He has a nice little business, which I suggested to him.”

“Whom does he drive?”

“Iraqi soldiers,” Phair said. “They go home every week with their pay.”

Dell paused to read her notes. “You were not in a good way when the Irish soldiers found you.”

“Not physically.”

“Yes, I should have been clearer,” she said. “You were in the back room of a soup kitchen—”

“That was when the explosion occurred,” he said. “They found me in the front room. I was trying to help poor Kim. Have you ever seen a child make snow angels?”

The woman nodded.

Phair said, “That was what she was doing. In her own blood.”

The woman stopped nodding. She looked at her file.

Dina put her fingertips to her lips as if she were thinking. The movement surprised her. It was an old tell revealing that she’d had an emotional reaction. She’d trained hard to wipe all such tells from her system and hadn’t exhibited one in years. Something about the chaplain was getting to her.

“Before you arrived at the soup kitchen,” the psychologist continued, after a decent pause, “your trek to Basra had subjected you to hunger, dehydration, heat, cold, the elements, and occasional abuse. Also malaria and several forms of the flu. And you were nearly killed when someone from a Sunni neighborhood noticed you and followed you.”

“Yes, I was wearing the clothes of the Kurdish Peshmerga.”

“They took you prisoner and would have executed you, but you escaped.”

She paused again. Dina realized that she was trying to find a new way to ask a question she’d tried before. Had he said how he escaped from the Sunnis? If not, that would certainly explain why the military brass doubted whether he had escaped at all . . . or if he had been turned by them and planted back with the Americans.

The silence continued. Eventually Dell asked, “Why didn’t you leave Basra after you escaped from the Sunnis?”

“Because I had—a mission,” he said. “I was being exposed to the many faces of God. I was not yet finished with my study.”

Dell looked over the typed report from the unit that had discovered him. “This says you were found in the street. How did you get there?”

“With help from a Kurd I didn’t know who had heard of my plight and risked his life. How ironic,” he said. “He never would have helped me thinking I was Catholic. Or American. Yet I am the same person as the man in the Kurdish clothes.”

“You would have helped him, though, in a similar situation?”

“Of course,” Phair said.

“What happened after that?” she asked. “You could have fled.”

“They were looking for me,” he said. “I might have fled right to them. So I pretended to be homeless until they stopped searching. So many are homeless now, you see. I knew no one would notice me. But a few days later the Irish soldiers did.”

“You were wearing your dog tags,” Dell said.

“Yes.” He absently rubbed the flat of his fingers across his waist.

“Why?”

“In case anything happened to me,” he replied. “I wanted someone to know. They would have been sold in a curio shop and made their way back, eventually.”

“You were wearing them on your belt, tucked inside,” she noted. “Were you afraid they’d be seen around your neck?”

“That was one reason,” he said. “Did you know that Herod the Great carried his bona fides around his waist, and not his throat?”

“I did not,” she said. “Was he your inspiration?”

“No. He feared someone would use them to strangle him. I was not. I had a rosary attached to the chain when I first started out. It made me feel closer to God, though I’m not sure He would have appreciated the location. Still, He knew what was in my heart.”

“You didn’t have the rosary when they found you.”

“No,” he said. “It broke while I was running from a militia and fell through my pant leg. Perhaps God had the final say after all.”

“You still sound as though you wish the Irish Guardsmen hadn’t found you.”

He sighed. “Part of me was ready to come back. I had run out of resources.”

“Physical?”

He nodded. “To have any significant impact here requires money and more hands and hearts. And—something else. I don’t know what.” The forty-five-year-old grinned. “It certainly requires someone who is a little more rested than I am.”

“You can continue to do your original job, now that you’re back.”

He managed to sustain the grin. “Do you think they’ll let me?”

“That depends,” she said.

“On what?”

She replied, “On how badly you want it.”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” he said. His eyes slid to Dina Westbrook.

 

 

Later, after the chaplain left, Dina discussed the situation with Major Dell.

“Spiritually,” the psychologist said, “I have never met anyone who is more plugged in. He has squeezed every bit of religious and cultural juice from the sects he has encountered, but without taking on any of the political pulp. I would say that of course he feels lost, being removed from what he perceives are his spiritual roots.”

“But is the air of being lost just a cover for patience and a plan?” Dina queried.