Man in the Middle

by Brian Haig

  I gave it a moment, then said, “Kemp, because this is the Army, I don’t have to swear you in or read you your rights, or any of that nonsense. I’m an officer of the court pursuing an official investigation. Lying, quibbling, or misleading statements can and will result in charges. Don’t make things any worse for yourself.”

  Kemp started to say something, and I cut him off. “We’re now on the record. Are we clear?”

  He stared at me a long time.

  I said, “According to the manual, Army criteria for hardship transfers and discharges pertain only to deaths in the immediate family. Reconsider your reply.”

  It looked like he was giving himself a root canal, but he said, “It was . . . just a situational transfer. After her fiancé’s death . . . she . . . she went to pieces. She took it very, very hard.”

  This still didn’t sound like the Army I know and love. Unhappy or mentally depressed soldiers, ordinarily, are sent to the unit chaplain, or in these more Zen-like times, to a unit counselor, they get their “give-a-shit” ticket punched, and are returned to duty. In extreme cases, the soldier can be awarded a thirty-day leave for mental convalescence—i.e., a month to drink and screw him/herself silly— which typically fixes the mood rings of most soldiers. If neither of these tried-and-true methods fails to produce a mentally stable soldier who is willing and able to kill at the drop of a hat, next step is a discharge—not a transfer—and their issues become the problems of the VA—the Veterans Administration.

  Clearly, my threats and cajolements weren’t doing the trick. As somebody knowing once said, stupidity is trying the same thing over and over and watching it not work. What I needed was a new approach, i.e., a bigger lie. I informed him, “I don’t understand why you’re being antagonistic. Bian Tran is a witness for the Army. I am not her enemy.”

  He seemed to weigh this.

  I informed him, “On the stand, where she’ll likely end up, she will be cross-examined by a vicious, mean-spirited defense attorney. The defense will of course access her personnel and medical records and, naturally, her mental stability will be at issue. Always is. And if, as you’ve led me to suspect, there is some damaging revelation, the defense attorney will exploit it to humiliate her in a courtroom before her fellow officers. You can’t protect her, Kemp.” I took his arm and warned, “Don’t try.”

  He mulled this over. “All right.”

  “All right, I’ll answer truthfully? Or all right, fuck you?”

  “Both.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. I gave him a moment to settle his nerves before I asked, “What happened to Bian Tran? I’m guessing something traumatic.”

  “Yes, it was . . . very traumatic. Her transfer was psychiatric. Bian felt responsible. She was crushed. She couldn’t stop crying. And she couldn’t function, professionally or personally. A complete mental breakdown.”

  It still wasn’t adding up. I said, “She lost a loved one. Sad, but this is war, and as a professional soldier, she surely was mentally prepared for this eventuality. A West Pointer, a battle-tested officer who led troops into combat and who suffered the loss of soldiers. Others have described her as tough, resilient, a cool customer. Why did she take it so hard, Kemp?”

  “Guilt, Drummond. Plain guilt. So heavy, so overbearing, so painful, it simply shattered her into pieces.” He looked away for a moment and said, “Imagine, if you will, how it must feel to be responsible for the death of the person you loved. What this would do to your insides?”

  “Why did she feel responsible?”

  “I didn’t say she felt responsible. She was responsible.”

  “How? Why?”

  “The CIA courier brought us a message that tipped us off to a large load of weapons and trainers coming from Iran into Karbala. This was during the midst of the Shiite uprising . . . you might remember . . . Sadr’s Shiite militia had taken over the city, his people were killing our soldiers, and we all knew a major operation would have to be mounted to restore control. So preventing those weapons and trainers from linking up with Sadr’s people . . . well, that would be a real coup. Less guns, less bombs, less American deaths.”

  “And Bian was in charge of this operation?”

  “That’s not how it worked.”

  “Okay. How did it work?”

  “Bian was the analyst assigned to shape a response. As I said, the CIA never told us how they knew, or about their sources, but they informed us that the Iranian shipment and trainers were going into the city of Karbala, in a sector assigned to the First Armored Division. Bian provided the division operations shop with an order. A description of what was coming, when, and where to intercept it.”

  The lights were now coming on. I said, “And the division assigned this mission to her fiancé’s . . . to Mark Kemble’s battalion.”

  He stared at the ground a moment, and the man was clearly in pain. Finally, he mumbled, “It was the worst coincidence I’ve ever seen or heard.”

  “Because Mark Kemble, being the battalion operations officer, decided he would personally oversee this high-value operation.”

  He nodded. “Great officer, I was told. Real hoo-ah, lead-from-thefront type. Highly decorated, loved by his men . . . all-around great guy. But something went wrong, tragically wrong—the shit hit the fan, three soldiers were killed, and obviously, Mark was one.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “If you ever learn that, be sure to let me know. Understand that the CIA, they kept our entire exploitation unit completely in the dark about the source of these intelligence insights. Every week or two, some lady courier flew over from D.C., she’d drop off some cryptic crap, she’d leave, and we had to run with it.” He added, “I have no idea.”

  I thought about this. It did not compute. After all, these were military intelligence people, and I said, “But you had suspicions, right?”

  After a brief silence, he said, “Of course we had suspicions. Pretty obvious what the Agency had, right? A mole in Iranian intelligence or inside Sadr’s movement. Somebody very high up.”

  Close, Kemp. But not close enough. I asked, “Is that what you thought? What Bian thought?”

  “We all thought that. This stuff we were getting was dead-on. Priceless.”

  “Except this time.”

  “Yeah. There was no weapons shipment. No Iranian trainers either.”

  I paused to consider my next question, which was a big mistake. Because, suddenly, it all came together—Bian had literally been turned into the instrument for her lover’s death. Kemp did not have the details just right, but he was close enough. Daniels had informed his pal Charabi about the compromised code, Charabi passed it to his friends in Tehran, and they, in turn, decided to be vindictive, sending disinformation they knew was being intercepted, decoded, and read, offering the Americans a target that was too tempting to pass up; in effect, luring an American unit into a trap. Bian ended up near the end of that long chain, and her fiancé ended up in a coffin.

  War is filled with ugly twists and bitter ironies, but this cruelty was almost incomprehensible. And before I knew it, something heavy was stuck in the back of my throat. Poor Mark. Poor Bian. I swallowed a few times and tried to dislodge the lump, but it only moved higher until it lodged behind my eyes. Chester was looking at me strangely. “Hey . . . you okay?”

  “I’m . . . uh . . . getting over a cold.” I coughed a few times and, after a moment, said, “Last question. What do you think went wrong?”

  “You know what? I’ve thought about that a lot. We all did. Mark’s unit, what they ran into, that was a prepared kill zone, an ambush. I don’t know, maybe the CIA’s source was a double agent. Or maybe the Iranians caught on to him and used him to plant false information. Whichever . . . Sadr and the Iranians knew we were coming, and they decided to make us pay.”

  A knot of staff officers carrying briefing folders crossed paths with us and we both fell silent. After they were out of earshot Chester said to me, “There was an investigation.
Afterward. But by the CIA, not us. We were even forced to take polygraph tests. But you know what? If there was a compromise, those bastards never shared anything.” He paused and then said, very unhappily, “A month after Bian left, the whole exploitation cell was disbanded.”

  “You’re a smart guy, Kemp. What’s your best guess?”

  “My best guess?”—he stopped walking—“All right, sure.” He turned and faced me. “You’re not here about any damned 15-6 investigation.”

  I started to deny this, then thought better of it.

  He said, “I have no idea why you’re lying to me, Drummond, or what trouble Bian is in. But I promise you”—he looked me in the eye— “if you hurt her, I’ll find you, and I’ll hurt you.”

  We stared at each other a long moment. I put out my hand and said, “It’s not my intention to harm her, Kemp. That’s a promise.”

  He stared at my hand, but never shook it. “Leave her alone. She’s been through enough.”

  I did not say, “More than you’ll ever know,” though, in truth, I now knew more about Bian’s problems than I wanted to. I felt a deep, deep sadness for her. At the same time, an alarm bell was making loud dings in the back of my head.

  I left Kemp Chester standing in a courtyard, fuming. I walked back to the office of the G1, where I ordered the same clerk to find me a private office with a phone, which he did.

  I called Phyllis’s cell phone and didn’t get an answer, so I chose the message option.

  I left a brief and unexplained message to immediately place bodyguards around Hirschfield and Tigerman, or better yet, get them both out of town, or barring that, make arrangements for two funerals. I hung up and thought about my next move.

  It was time to go home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Jim Tirey kindly gave me a lift to the airport.

  As I mentioned earlier, the route from the Green Zone to the airport includes Iraq’s deadliest roadway—known with grim unaffection as Suicide Alley—so Jim’s favor wasn’t in the true spirit of generosity. He wanted to see me climb on the plane, and be 100 percent sure I ended up seven thousand miles out of his hair. Really, who could blame him?

  We pulled up before the terminal, and Jim pulled up to the curb and slammed the SUV into park. I went around to the rear, withdrew my duffel, and looked around for a moment. The hour was late, yet the terminal was crowded and bustling with soldiers; from their gleeful expressions, they all were outgoing, not incoming. This was the first place I’d been inside this troubled land where people looked happy, and maybe the only place where they were sure tomorrow would be a rosier day. Tirey came around and we ended up, face-to-face, on the road.

  He said, “Enjoy the flight.”

  I said, “Enjoy Iraq.”

  “Hey, my bags are already packed. Any day now, the long arm of OPR—that’s the Office of Professional Responsibility, our Gestapo— will have me on a plane back to D.C. for a long discussion about how this shit went down.”

  “D.C. is filled with idiots,” I told him. He gave me a blank stare and I explained, “They think it’s a punishment to boot you out of here.”

  He laughed.

  During the drive, we had stuck to the kind of aimless chatter that did not distract us from identifying vehicular bombers who wanted to send us home in a box. There are no leisurely drives in Iraq, incidentally. If I haven’t mentioned it, the place sucks. But we both knew there was a big piece of unfinished business, and I asked, “What have you heard from the Bureau?”

  “Not a word . . . officially. I’ve got a pal in the Director’s office, though.”

  “And?”

  “He says I’ll love Omaha, and Omaha will love me. Lots of free time, very quiet, very law-abiding citizens. It’s impossible to screw up there.”

  “Hey, maybe there’s a CIA station in Omaha. We’ll get together. You know, prove them wrong.” This prospect for some reason did not seem to excite him, so I offered him a synopsis of Drummond’s Law. “Somebody else will screw up soon, and you’ll be forgotten.”

  “Hey, I’m a big boy. I don’t need—”

  “Seriously. They’ll send you someplace else that really sucks before you know it.”

  “I don’t think so.” He added, miserably, “That video of me with the reporter . . . they’ve sent it to the FBI Academy as a training aid for new agents. I’m famous.”

  I smiled at him, and he smiled back. A few seconds late.

  Then came an awkward moment, and we stared into each other’s eyes. He finally asked, “Did you do it?”

  “Did you?”

  He stared at me. “I saw that look the reporter gave you. I told Phyllis about it, too.”

  “No, I did not leak,” I told him. He looked skeptical, however, and I told him, “I have an appointment with the inquisitor the moment I land—thumbscrews, rack, lie detector, the works. I’ll be sure they send you the results.”

  “Do that.” He smiled and said, “Tell them to ask what you really think of me.”

  “You . . . you don’t really want them to ask that.”

  “Right . . . well . . .” He stuck out his hand and we shook.

  I told him, “Keep looking for Tran.”

  “I’ll do better than that. I’ll even leave a memo for my replacement.”

  “Look me up when you get to town.”

  He laughed. “You know what, Drummond? I like you. I don’t know why, but I really do. And if I ever see you again, I’ll shoot you.”

  Leaving him at the curb, I carried my duffel inside and went straight to the Military Air Transport counter, where a young Air Force enlisted person, cute and perky, stood buffing her nails. I said, “Good evening, Airman Johnson. I need a small favor.”

  Air Force people are actually misplaced civilians, loose, jocular, with manners more befitting a college fraternity than an armed service. Army people, on the other hand, tend to exemplify the military mind-set, totally tightassed about trivial minutiae, and really into the yes sir/no sir funny business. So, as much as Air Force types grate on Army people, I can only imagine how they view us. Anyway, the young lady in question stopped swiping her nails for a moment and offered me one of those synthetic airline smiles. “Sure.”

  “I’m supposed to meet a friend here. We seem to have misplaced each other.”

  “Well . . . that can happen.”

  “Her name’s Bian Tran . . . T-R-A-N. I was wondering if she caught an earlier flight.”

  “Hold on.” She shifted her attention back to the computer, and I held my breath as she punched in Bian’s name, and then said, “Wow . . . did you two get your signals crossed.”

  If only she knew.

  “She flew out at eleven this morning,” she continued. “She’s long gone.”

  Gone, perhaps. But not abducted. Not dead. And not forgotten— at least not by me. What had been a suspicion, an ugly theory, now was a confirmed fact. Not a surprise, though.

  The right and proper thing to do was immediately notify Phyllis about my suspicions and seek her instructions. But Sean Drummond wasn’t in the mood to do that. Phyllis was playing her own game, and I still wasn’t sure what that game was called. No, I did not trust her, and I definitely did not want to appoint her judge and jury. Besides, what could she, or what could the Agency do that Sean Drummond could not do?

  Well, an all-out manhunt was one possibility. Except the law enforcement community would never move on that without first demanding a valid legal justification from the Agency. And Phyllis would never do that, because exposing what Bian had been doing would also expose what the Agency had been doing, which would be like grabbing a shark’s fin to save yourself from drowning—only the shark goes home happy.

  Which left option two, termination, which with these people means losing a little more than just your job. Certainly, the stakes were high enough. Plus, Bian already was listed on Army rolls as missing in action and presumed to be in the hands of murderous terrorists, so it was really convenient
for everybody. But would Phyllis do that? Phrased differently, why wouldn’t Phyllis do that? Could I live with myself if I gambled no and yes happened?

  Besides, for me this had become personal. I still had no idea what was really going on, but I knew this: Phyllis and Bian had both used me as a pawn for their own ends. Right now they both thought I was still Stupid Sean, totally clueless and in the dark. Wrong. I was now Totally Pissed-Off Sean. I was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed me—which it might.

  So I thought back to what the young airman had just told me. Bian had caught an eleven o’clock flight. Tirey, his handpicked crew, and I had entered Charabi’s Green Zone office at nine, and we exited with our tails between our legs some thirty minutes later. An hour and a half after that, Bian climbed on an airplane and blew town. Was there a coincidence? Or if I asked the same question differently, was there a connection between our raid on Charabi’s office and Bian’s decision to fly the coop? I don’t particularly believe in coincidences, incidentally.

  What I needed to do now was to reconstruct her actions, to work backward and consider what had occurred, to start at Z and find my way back to A. Because my only hope of finding Bian, and of stopping her, was by understanding what she had done. And from there, with a fertile imagination and a little mental elbow grease, how and why.

  So, what was Z? Well, that would be the odd look the blonde female reporter gave me as we exited Charabi’s office. I had never seen her before—I was sure of it—so it wasn’t that she recognized my face, per se; it was the Drummond on my nametag that was familiar to her, because whoever had tipped her off about our raid on Mahmoud Charabi’s office had also informed her that I would be there.

  And I would bet that if I could go back and have a word with that reporter—if I could make her breach her journalistic omertà code— she would confirm that her source was Bian Tran.

  And if I stepped back from that moment a few hours more in time, to earlier that morning, I would bet as well that Bian was that mysterious voice who, speaking Arabic, had called and anonymously alerted the MP Operations Center to the location of an abandoned and bloodstained Toyota SUV.