Man in the Middle

by Brian Haig

  To which Bian had replied, “I’ll be sure to watch for it.”

  I mean, you forget these are women, with a life outside of spying and soldiering, with feminine interests, quotidian things like shopping, cooking, knitting. Somebody get me a gun.

  I said, “Excuse me,” before we were all sharing recipes and trading reviews of Danielle Steel’s lastest novel.

  Phyllis shot me an annoyed look. “In a moment.” She handed Bian a wallet-size photograph. “I appreciate your sharing this with me. He’s a most attractive young officer.”

  The picture was Magnificent Mark, of course. I watched Bian tuck it gingerly inside her wallet. She smiled at Phyllis. “He’s a great guy. I’m very lucky.”

  I cleared my throat. “Is this an inconvenient moment? I mean, our prisoner was just murdered, this case is completely blown, and I want to go home.”

  Phyllis massaged her temples. “We’re all upset, Sean. Outrage won’t help.”

  “What will help? New shoes?”

  “We were waiting for you, so Bian and I decided to use the opportunity to become better acquainted.”

  Bian said to me, “Besides, it’s not complicated—al-Fayef played us for idiots.”

  “We are idiots.”

  Phyllis awarded me a hard stare, no doubt regretting her stupid “maverick and misfit” management theory. Despite losing arguably the most valuable prisoner of the war since Saddam, she appeared cool and collected, another day at the office, another blown operation. But, after all, the Agency had suffered so many setbacks and embarrassments since September 10, 2001, that I suppose you either respond with studied indifference or you eat a bullet. She said to me very quietly, “We are not idiots. But in retrospect, yes . . . we should perhaps have been more vigilant when he was so agreeable about forgoing rendition.”

  No perhaps about it, lady.

  She looked at me and said, “You were the only one who asked why there were no Americans on the cellblock. Why? Did you anticipate something like this?”

  She did not add, “Because we all were blind to this possibility, including a guy named Drummond.” But that was understood. “No,” I admitted, and added, “I was operating on my general distrust of Saudis.”

  “We all let down our guard,” commented Bian. “In my view, we were all fooled . . . and we all share responsibility.”

  Right. But the board of review wasn’t going to see it that way— when it’s pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey time, there’s only one dart, and they shove it up only one ass. But why bring that up?

  Phyllis, to her credit, did say, “It’s my responsibility.”

  I asked, “Are you the senior officer in the facility?”

  “Technically, that would be Tirey. But this was my operation.”

  “I thought Waterbury was in charge. Speaking of which, where is the golden boy?”

  “Gone.” She gave me a faint smile. “A few minutes after bin Pacha was shot, he remembered he had an urgent appointment with somebody in Baghdad.”

  I smiled back. In other words, the moment the poop hit the fan, his feet hit the floor. And by now I was sure he had called his buds back in Washington and pointed the finger for this screwup at Phyllis. To err is indeed human, but to blame others is the mark of a promising political appointee.

  We all knew, though, that the parties who ultimately were responsible were the power brokers back in D.C. who ordered Phyllis to cooperate with the Saudis in the first place and, de facto, set this chain of events in motion. But if you believe any blame was going to fall in their exalted direction you’ve never held a job in the federal government.

  Of course, the guiltiest party was whoever tipped off the Saudis to bin Pacha’s impending capture in the first place. This was the name on Ali bin Pacha’s death warrant, and this was the guy I really wanted to meet.

  I asked, “What was al-Fayef keeping us from finding out?”

  Bian looked at Phyllis and suggested, “Maybe bin Pacha and/or Zarqawi have an arrangement with his intelligence service? Maybe he’s protecting Zarqawi?”

  So Phyllis spent a few moments verbally hashing this idea, essentially giving it short shrift, because Zarqawi now was hooked up with Al Qaeda, and Osama had already added the Saudi royal family to his list of people to fuck with. I wasn’t so sure about this, but she concluded, “The Saudis may once have entertained notions that they could accommodate bin Laden, but now they know he’s a mortal enemy. And I’m sure they’ve figured out that after Zarqawi’s work in Iraq is done, he and his people are coming after them next.”

  This made sense, but who knows? There were so many players with their fingers in Iraq, I wasn’t even sure all the players even knew they were players. Like some huge sex orgy in a dark room, it was impossible to know who was screwing whom, who was being screwed by whom, and who wanted to screw whom—but it doesn’t matter anyway because it all changes every few minutes.

  Shifting to a topic we could get our arms around, I asked Phyllis, “Was the killer identified?”

  “Yes. A sergeant in the security service. Abu Habbibi by name. Acting alone.”

  “All five of those guards were pointing weapons at us. He wasn’t alone.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Sean.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know what you don’t know.”

  She smiled, but it had a hard edge.

  I said with some understatement, “I hope you confronted al-Fayef about this.”

  “We talked.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “He was shocked. He claimed ignorance. He swore he had no inkling this would happen.”

  “He’s lying.”

  “I know he’s lying. At least he had the good manners to make it a well-constructed lie.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “He called his headquarters for a background check on Sergeant Habbibi. It turns out the man’s parents died in an Al Qaeda streetside bombing about six months ago. This offers a compelling motive for murder—revenge.”

  Bian and I exchanged amazed looks. This was the same cooked-up pretense she had contrived and tried out on Tirey only an hour earlier. It hadn’t worked then, and was even less persuasive now. Bian remarked, “What a coincidence.”

  This irony sailed over Phyllis’s head, and she replied, “I called our station chief in Jidda. The story was in the Saudi newspapers. Habbibi’s parents went out shopping, they parked in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their body parts were scattered across two city blocks.”

  Bian conceded, “Even if it is true, it only explains why he was chosen as the executioner.”

  Phyllis smiled. “Now you’re getting it.” She looked at me and said, “Tell me everything you saw. Everything.”

  I was beginning to feel like a M*A*S*H rerun. But I pushed mental rewind and went through everything, from the moment bin Pacha awoke, through the mist of red spray that blew out the side of his head.

  I finished my account and Phyllis considered it a moment. She remarked, “A conversation? You’re sure?”

  I nodded. “I’m sure. He may have been talking to himself, but it looked like he was conversing with somebody. The sound from the video was muted, as you know. No recording was made.”

  She turned to Bian and without explanation said, “Please get Enzenauer. You’ll find him in the ambulance.” She added, “Tell him to bring his special equipment.”

  Bian left. Phyllis and I sat and uncomfortably ignored each other for the next five minutes. I was not happy with her; she was not happy with me. Why discuss it?

  Eventually, the door opened and Bian entered, followed by Bob Enzenauer, carrying a mechanical device of some undetermined nature. He placed it in the middle of the conference table, where I examined it more closely—I thought at first that Phyllis must be experiencing a cold-blooded, slow-motion heart attack, and this was a defibrillator—before I realized the pole sticking off it wasn’t a shock stem but a fat antenna.

  I had completely forgot
ten about the transmitter sewn into bin Pacha’s stomach. So this odd device was the receiver, and maybe everything wasn’t lost. Maybe.

  Phyllis gave him a welcoming smile and said, “Have a seat, Bob.”

  He did, and for a moment he studied our faces, which betrayed our apprehension, because he asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “Very much so,” replied Phyllis. “Ali bin Pacha’s dead.”

  “Oh . . . well . . .” An expression of real concern crossed his face, as he apparently assumed this was a result of his medical advice or skill.

  And characteristic of her profession, Phyllis was screwing with his head, she knew it, and she let his agony brew for about ten seconds before she clarified, “By assassination. The Saudi guards.”

  “Ah . . .”

  Phyllis continued, “Unfortunately, our Bureau friends failed to record the events inside his cell. So my questions for you are these: Was he transmitting and was he recorded?”

  And characteristic of his profession, Enzenauer spent about thirty seconds looking profoundly thoughtful, as if Phyllis had asked him to solve the mystery of the universe. “Well . . .” he eventually said, “the device is noise-activated. So”—he looked at each of our faces— “yes . . . if he emitted noise, he transmitted. As to whether it was recorded, I frankly don’t have a clue.”

  We all stared with deep fascination at the contraption on the desk. I cleared my throat and asked, “Can you make that thing work?”

  “Of course.” He pushed a few buttons, and we heard the first optimistic whirring sound of a tape rewinding. For the first time that day, it looked like something was going right; we stared at one another in disbelief. The tape stopped and Enzenauer pushed start.

  As he had warned, the transmitter was noise-activated, and the first sound came through clear as a bell—Ali bin Pacha let loose a terrifically long and loud fart, which he repeated a few times, followed by satisfied grunts. Nobody laughed or even smiled. Such was the mood that even I resisted the impulse to offer a crude comment.

  Doc Enzenauer, however, feeling the need to offer a medical diagnosis, pushed pause and said, “After three days of unconsciousness, it’s natural for the body to purge itself.”

  Well, now it was almost irresistible. But Bian read my mind and was giving me a look.

  The doc pushed play, and next came the noise of people screaming and howling from pain.

  To Phyllis and Enzenauer, I noted, “A tape. To scare the new prisoners.”

  Phyllis nodded like she already knew this.

  Next a voice, yelling, and then the bed creaking as bin Pacha got up. Then, very distinctly, voices—two different voices—and they were speaking to one another. There was some back-and-forth between bin Pacha and an unidentified party, in Arabic, and I understood nothing. The conversation was brief, lasted for perhaps a minute, and ended with a loud bang.

  Next, Bian’s voice, on tape. “He’s dead. Those bastards assassinated him. They didn’t want us to hear what he had to say.”

  Tirey. “This . . . this Saudi arrangement . . . this was . . . you know, the CIA’s bright idea. It did . . . it originated with your people. I . . . I merely followed orders and . . .”

  Me. “This is a crime scene. Treat it as one.”

  “Uh . . .”

  Me again. “Was the killing recorded?”

  I reached forward and pushed stop. Phyllis remarked, “Tirey wasted no time, did he?”

  “Wait till the official inquiry. That was only the first rehearsal.” I looked at Bian. “Translate.”

  “I’ll need to hear it again. All that noise from the torture tape . . . it’s . . .” She shrugged.

  So the doc took it backward and forward for her a few times, and now Bian was concentrating fiercely and jotting notes. A few phrases—actually, names—were decipherable even to me.

  Bian glanced up from her notepad and said to Enzenauer, “Once again, please. I think”—she scribbled something—“I nearly have it.”

  Enzenauer played it again as Bian tracked the dialogue on her page. “All right,” she said, and then read, “After bin Pacha’s . . . after the flatulence . . . the first voice is a guard. He yells, ‘Are you awake yet?’ Bin Pacha replies, ‘Yes,’ and he asks the guard, ‘Why are they playing that stupid recording? Only fools would try a trick of such obvious ignorance. It sounds like something Americans would try.’ The guard laughs, and yells back that the tape might be phony, but bin Pacha’s pain will soon be real enough.”

  Bian looked up and explained, “Words to that effect. Arabic is structured differently than English. More formal. Also the verbs and nouns are displaced. I’m converting to the vernacular.”

  I told her, “You’re doing great.”

  She looked down at her pad and continued, “Bin Pacha asks the guard’s name. The guard replies that he is named Abu Habbibi. Then bin Pacha warns him, ‘You are making a big mistake that will be poor for your personal health.’ Again, Habbibi laughs. He asks, ‘Why is that?’ ”

  Bian paused, then said, “Bin Pacha told him that to learn the answer to this riddle, Habbibi must make only two phone calls.” She looked up for a moment and explained, “Because the tape is noise-activated, there are no breaks in the conversation. I think here, though . . . from the change in their tone, there was a pause.”

  Recalling what I had observed on the video, I suggested, “This must be when bin Pacha walked to the cell door.”

  She nodded—“Makes sense”—and continued, “Again, he tells Habbibi, ‘Just make two phone calls—all will become clear. If you fail to make these calls, now I know your name, and you and your family will suffer horrible deaths. But there is a big reward you will be very happy with, if you call and do what these men tell you to do.’ Habbibi replies, ‘I can barely hear you. The noise from the tape is in the way. Come closer. Move to the opening. Tell me what you have in mind.’ ”

  “And then . . .” Bian had been looking at our faces, and she looked back down at her notepad and continued, “Then bin Pacha said, ‘Call Prince Faud ibn al-Souk, or Prince Ali ibn al-Sayyed. They will tell you what to do with me.’ Habbibi answered, ‘I can’t hear you—’ ”

  Phyllis interrupted, “You’re sure of this?”

  “Positive.”

  “I’m referring to the names. He named the two princes?”

  “I know what you’re asking. Listen to the tape yourself. Both names are easily distinguishable.”

  Phyllis nodded. “Please continue.”

  “There’s not much after that. Bin Pacha recites the phone numbers to Habbibi. I’m not sure I heard them right—he had repositioned closer to the door and the speaker noise was overwhelming.”

  “Do your best,” I told her.

  “Well . . . Habbibi had trouble hearing him also—or he pretended to have trouble—because his last words to bin Pacha were, ‘I need to hear the phone numbers again. Come closer. Move your head against the opening.’ ” Bian looked up and added, “Then bang—the gun went off.”

  We all sat back in our chairs. Nobody said a word. Unlike the others, I had a mental visualization to accompany the soundtrack, and as I replayed the scene in my mind, matching words with deeds, it all became clear: a double cross trumped by a double cross.

  In retrospect, Ali bin Pacha had thought he was playing us; I recalled that curious smile back in the hospital bed when Bian and I notified him he was being turned over to the Saudis. A smile. We believed we were telling him the last thing he wanted to hear; he believed he was hearing the sound of salvation.

  It was, in fact, a death sentence. Neither Ali bin Pacha nor we understood that, though. This man, responsible for countless deaths, believed we had just pulled the ace from his sleeve for him, even as Habbibi maneuvered him, like a big stupid fish, into the perfect position to blow his evil brains out. It was funny, and it was very sad.

  Eventually, I looked at Phyllis and asked, “These two princes, who are they?”

  She shook her head.
“There are five or six thousand princes. The men of the royal family marry many women, and are atrociously fertile. It’s the national curse.”

  I moved on to the next logical questions, which were more in the nature of Socratic statements. “Why would bin Pacha have their phone numbers memorized? And why would he refer Habbibi to them?”

  “Protection. He obviously expected some form of intervention.”

  “But why would they protect him?”

  Without answering, she stood and paced to the phone. She lifted it up, punched a number, and after a moment ordered somebody to track down Sheik Turki al-Fayef and escort him to the conference room.

  She hung up and said to us, “I will do the talking. You will both remain quiet and polite. Don’t challenge or harass him.”

  “I promise,” I told her. I might rip off his head and crap down his throat, but I would neither challenge nor harass him.

  Phyllis stared at Bian, who replied with obvious reluctance, “I understand.”

  We sat in silence.

  A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The sheik swept into the room. In his hand was a thin valise constructed of buttery leather, on his body the same ash-stained robe, and on his face his customary visage of complacent boredom.

  What his expression did not convey was the slightest trace of regret, worry, guilt, or anxiety. Give the man credit, he had panache, which usually I admire; just not this time. I wanted to get my hands around his throat and throttle him.

  Phyllis looked lost in thought for a moment, but finally she looked up and said, “Have a seat. We have something you need to hear.”

  His quick black eyes took us all in, and settled briefly on the receiver/recorder, which he then made a point of ignoring. I was sure he sensed that he had just entered the lion’s den, that the animals were hungry, and that this mysterious device was part of the seasoning. He coolly lit a cigarette, set his valise on the table, and sat. Phyllis nodded at Doc Enzenauer, who nodded back and pushed play.

  The sheik puffed on his cigarette and listened. To his professional credit, not when the princes were named, nor even when the shot exploded through the speakers, did he flinch or show the slightest emotional reaction.