by Tal Bauer
David had to see. He had to see the swing, the strain in the rope. Had to see the crazed crowd cheer, chant wildly, convinced they had just done something wonderful, something to celebrate. He had to see the bodies, broken and suspended, left for all to stare at, to judge. And for the world to judge them, in return.
He had to see.
He’d seen bloodlust consume people’s soul, their humanity, until there was nothing left.
He’d seen a man hung before.
Baghdad, Iraq
April 28, 2004
“This is a picture of an Iraqi prisoner of war, and according to the US Army, Americans did this to him.”
The man stood on a crate, hooded, with wires stuck to his fingers, his penis, and shoved up his ass.
His image went around the world in four seconds.
More pictures followed. Iraqis in dog collars and on leashes. Naked, and forced to masturbate. Naked, and staked in pyramids. Covered in feces. Bound and stretched against metal bars. Hooded, and forced to simulate sex with one another.
Humiliation screamed from the images. Ravaging, aching, burning humiliation.
Every Arab felt it, in their bones. The past and the present, eternally connected in the Arab soul, twisted again. A thousand years of Western aggression distilled into a series of photos, proof positive of a thousand years of mistrust, betrayal, and anguish.
Iraqis flooded the streets. Riots erupted around the Middle East. US Embassies locked their gates.
“It’s Abu Ghraib,” David breathed, watching the news report for the fifteenth time. “We walked down that hallway. We saw those prisoners.”
If Kris hadn’t come for him that day he was on the ground at the military checkpoint, would he have been taken to Abu Ghraib? He was nothing but an Arab to the soldiers, and Arabs were just targets. Humiliation had washed his soul on the street, shoved to the ground and stepped on, treated like an animal. They would have thought nothing of sending him to Abu Ghraib, where he would have been treated the same way.
David rewound the tape and watched the news report again.
Once, when he was a boy, he’d looked at the United States of America with hope. His tearstained soul had lost his father, and he’d been promised that things would be better in America. Everyone told him, America is free. America is good. America is where you will have a better life.
He’d had so much hope, flying cross the ocean to a land that seemed almost mythical. If it was true, if he could really live a free life in America, then he’d give everything back to America, he’d promised as the plane slowly descended into New York City.
Thirty-four years old and a lifetime later, it was next to impossible to resurrect that same hope he’d once felt. His soul felt dirty, tarnished with the buildup of things he’d done, the things he’d seen. Things he’d condoned, for being a part of the silence.
He froze the video, staring at the image of the hooded man on the crate.
Could his father be under that hood?
Could he?
What was the difference between that man and him?
Was he—were they—on the wrong side of history?
Where had everything gone wrong?
Abu Ghraib was the chip in the dam, the first domino to fall.
George, ashen and shaking, called them to his office nearly every day.
They didn’t like each other, not really. David looked at George the way he looked at most spineless bureaucrats. Medical marvels, humans capable of existing without spines or the guts to do anything meaningful at all. Afghanistan, all they’d been through there, was a distant memory, Pakistan and Thailand far more vivid.
“There’s been a leak,” George told them. His voice shook. “Director Thatcher called. Said it’s going to hit tomorrow’s papers.”
“There are a thousand leaks, George.” Kris smoked inside George’s office, blowing his cigarette smoke over George’s desk. “What are you talking about now?”
“I’m talking about what doesn’t exist!” George snapped. “The detainee program! I’m talking about Zahawi.”
Kris’s chuckle was dark, the kind of laugh the devil made when he came for Faust. “Out of everything that is leaked, that deserves to be made public. It deserves a Congressional inquiry and a fucking indictment.”
“Are you so Goddamn naive that you think it was just a handful of people? Some cabal of evil that needs to be taken down? It fucking went to the top!” George trembled, from his fingers to his toes. He tried to clench his hands, ball them up. His fists shook on his desktop. “And you were there. You both were.”
Kris blew smoke in George’s face.
Washington DC
May 2004
The president admitted the detainee program existed.
He admitted to enhanced interrogation techniques.
He admitted to waterboarding detainees in the CIA’s detainee program.
Director Thatcher resigned from the CIA, in the outcry that followed.
But it was the vice president who came out swinging, insisting that the United States did not torture anyone. “Look, waterboarding is not torture. Based on the legal definition of torture, we do not torture anyone.”
“The legal definition as defined by this administration?” the interviewer asked.
The vice president ignored him. “We use aggressive interrogation techniques. And I do not apologize for that. Not ever.”
Baghdad, Iraq
May 2004
The video was five minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. It was uploaded to a jihadi website that had been a clearinghouse of Saqqaf’s. They watched it together in George’s office.
The video opened on a man dressed all in black, his face covered in a balaclava, standing over a pale man in an orange jumpsuit, his arms and legs bound.
“Nation of Islam, great news!” the man in black boomed. He read from a script that he held in both hands. “The signs of dawn have begun and the winds of victory are blowing!”
“It’s him.” Kris fought back a gag. “I know the voice.” He reached for David.
“You’re sure?” George hovered over Kris’s right shoulder, General Ramos over his left. “We have to be sure.”
“It has all the hallmarks of Saqqaf’s messaging. It’s his style.”
“Why the orange jumpsuit? Saqqaf doesn’t keep prisoners,” Ramos asked.
“It’s because of Abu Ghraib.” David, finally, spoke. “In Abu Ghraib, you put prisoners in orange jumpsuits. He’s drawing a direct line between the two.”
Ramos glowered at David. “When you say ‘you’, do you mean the military, or do mean Americans? Because I thought you were American.”
David blinked at Ramos.
The video kept playing, churning onward in George’s office. Saqqaf issued a blistering tirade, berating the Americans and their occupation.
“How can a free Muslim sleep soundly while Islam is being slaughtered, its honor bleeding and the images of shame in the news of the abuses of the Muslim men and women in the prison of Abu Ghraib? Where is your zeal and where is your anger?”
David’s gaze bored into Ramos.
“O, to the president of the Great Satan, I deliver this warning. Hard days are coming to you. You and your soldiers are going to regret the day that you stepped foot in Iraq and dared to violate the Muslims. The dignity of the Muslim men and women in the prison of Abu Ghraib and others will be redeemed by blood and souls! You will see nothing from us except corpse after corpse, casket after casket, of those slaughtered in this fashion.”
Saqqaf drew a machete from his belt and grabbed the prisoner’s hair—
Kris slammed the laptop shut. “I’m not fucking watching this.”
He shoved back from the desk, toppling his chair. Ramos and George jumped out of his way, giving him space. He ran to the line of garbage cans by the door and heaved. Gagging filled the office, retching.
David stared at the marble floor, the cream and beige tiles.
; Kris rose, wiping his lips. He glared at George. “I fucking told you,” he hissed. His voice shook. “I fucking told you we shouldn’t torture anybody. I fucking told you, I fucking told Director Thatcher, and I fucking told the Goddamn vice president!” His shaking finger pointed at George’s closed laptop. “You, and everyone who sanctioned the detainee program, who sanctioned torture, caused this. This blood is on you.”
General Ramos stared out the windows, his eyes narrowed as he watched the setting sun beyond the Tigris. George’s jaw pulsed, clenching and unclenching.
Kris ripped open George’s office door. David followed him down the marble hallway.
“He’s got a new nickname,” George called after them. “The ‘Sheikh of the Slaughterers’. We’ve got to take him out, Kris. I’m fucking begging you. We’ve got to get this son of a bitch.”
“I can’t unfuck what’s been fucked, George.” Kris stilled, but didn’t turn around.
“The White House is serious now. And the president wants to hear what’s going on, from you. We’re going to DC. They are going to put everything behind you, Kris. Everything.”
Washington DC
June 2004
“Do not, under any circumstances, shoot your mouth off.” George growled into Kris’s ear. “Do not make a scene in front of the new CIA director. Do not, for the love of fucking God, say ‘I told you so’.”
“I wasn’t going to say it. My plan was to do a tap number on the center of the table, belt out, ‘I fucking told you so’ at the top of my lungs, and end in the splits in front of the VP. So he could suck my dick.”
George gaped at him.
“Do you think I should do an opera rendition, or should I stay more along the lines of Bernadette Peters? More Broadway, you think?”
George’s face slowly turned purple. David smirked behind his hand.
“What do you think the VP’s face will be like when he sees me walk in?”
“You are your own worst enemy. I swear to God,” George finally choked out.
“I didn’t invade Iraq and fuck up the entire Middle East. I didn’t fulfill the hopes and dreams of al-Qaeda, and a prophecy they cling to.”
“Caldera, I swear—”
The door to the Situation Room opened. The new director of the CIA, Christopher Edwards, stepped out. His gaze bounced from George to Kris.
“You must be Kris Caldera.” Hand outstretched, Edwards smiled broadly.
Kris shook his hand, coy smile on his face. Just what had the new director, ushered in after Thatcher’s fall and the conflagration of the prisoner abuse scandal, heard about him? His head tilted. “My reputation precedes me? Or my fashion?”
To really stick it to everyone, just everyone, he’d bought a new suit for this, a charcoal Brunello Cucinelli, on a layover in Rome. A fuchsia pocket square puffed out of his chest. David had helped him pick it out, and had nearly torn the suit off him in the dressing room, fire in his eyes as he dropped to his knees.
That was a memory to carry while wearing the suit. While meeting the new CIA director. Briefing the president.
Instant swagger.
Edwards chuckled, and, not missing a beat, said, “A bit of both. Director Thatcher warned me about you on his way out.”
“Warned you about me?”
An aide poked her head out of the Situation Room. “The president and the national security council are ready for you.”
Edwards led them into the president’s Situation Room, the storied command center of presidents waging war.
Thought it would be bigger. The room was cramped, dominated by the conference table and a bank of monitors along one wall. Kris recognized everyone in the room, all the big names and faces of the administration. Secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor, the joint chiefs. Other generals and admirals. Military aides and officers squeezed beside their generals, and civilians in suits juggled calls and emails on Blackberries and bulky laptops balanced on their knees.
They were given three seats near the head of the table. George sat along the wall as David and Kris settled next to Edwards. Dim lights hummed above while the wall monitors were on, illuminating the table but keeping the occupants’ faces bathed in shadow.
The president stood behind his chair, talking fast and furiously with someone who looked like they wanted all of their bones to liquefy and to drop to the ground, and then slink out of the room.
The seat across from Kris pulled away from the table. Hands appeared in the light, holding a coffee cup, and then arms, a body, sitting down. A face.
Kris stared as the vice president sat across from him.
It took a moment for the vice president to recognize Kris. He frowned, like he was sifting through his memories. The frown shifted, turned to a scowl. His lip curled. He looked away.
George sighed, just loud enough for Kris to hear. Edwards, next to Kris, turned and gave him a slight—very slight—grin. The ghost of a smile.
David squeezed Kris’s hand beneath the table.
“We all here? What are we waiting for?” The president settled into his leather seat at the head of the table. “Let’s talk about Saqqaf.”
Edwards guided the room through Saqqaf’s biography, a report Kris had written the month before. He stopped, though, just after Saqqaf’s move to Afghanistan. “I brought the agency's Saqqaf targeteer here today. He’s the CIA’s expert on Saqqaf. I look for his reports first, every day.” Edwards looked at Kris. “Mr. Caldera.”
All eyes were on him. No pressure. Kris’s eyes flicked from the president to the vice president. Did the president remember him, smelly and sweaty and unwashed after September 11?
David laced their fingers beneath the table.
“Mr. President.” Kris nodded his hello.
“Go on, Mr. Caldera. If Christopher here thinks you’re all right, then we want to hear what you have to say.”
Kris walked everyone through the timeline of Saqqaf’s rise, from his backward days in Jordan to his sideshow days in Afghanistan, kept at arm’s reach from al-Qaeda, a curiosity more than an asset. His flight to Iraq, and the administration's use of him to help justify the invasion. His subsequent rise, following the invasion, in the lawless, hopeless wasteland that Occupied Iraq had become.
His savage butchery since, and his stirring of a sectarian civil war that was pushing Iraq to the brink of collapse.
David spoke next. “Mr. President, my name is David Haddad. I work with Mr. Caldera on the ground in Iraq. Saqqaf has taken over the global jihadist movement where Bin Laden has fallen short. Bin Laden has been relegated to near obscurity, issuing dry pronouncements from caves and spending his days in hiding. His claim to fame, after nine-eleven, is that he’s evaded us. Saqqaf, on the other hand, is captivating the world with his brand of jihad. Where Bin Laden looks old and dreary, Saqqaf is seen in videos as a young man, actually fighting. He looks like a John Wayne jihadi, and his violent rhetoric, his promises of freedom and revenge, and his slick propaganda are pulling the disenfranchised to him.”
The vice president’s gaze narrowed. “How many do you believe are with Saqqaf?”
“About ten thousand active fighters, pulled from around the world. Iraq, the near east, north Africa, Saudi and the Gulf states, Afghanistan, Chechnya, even as far as Tajikistan. About half of those are designated for martyrdom operations, suicide bomber training. He preys on feelings of guilt and shame, promising recruits who martyr themselves they’ll be forgiven for everything. That martyrdom will also avenge the shame of the entire Muslim community from the occupation. For people, youth especially, who are attracted to the promise of a better world, but feel they’ve broken the strict moral code of the jihadis, the promise of a cleansing martyrdom and a rich afterlife is a potent recruitment tactic.”
“They’re just kids?”
“Many of them are. Teenagers and young adults. College age. After arriving in Iraq, they’re sent to suicide bomber schools and kept purposely isolated from everyon
e and everything. The first time they see an Iraqi or an American soldier is right before they blow themselves up.”
The president’s eyes narrowed. He shook his head, lips thinning. “We’ve got to stop this.”
Shouldn’t have created the problem to begin with. Kris kept his thoughts to himself, though. “Saqqaf’s silent support, the Iraqis who have welcomed him and his men, are the people we need to reach. They’re stuck, forced to pick a side in this ongoing civil war, and we haven’t given the people of Iraq enough to want to pick our side.”
“We Goddamn got rid of Saddam for them,” the vice president growled. “We gave them their country back. What the hell else do they want?”
“To not be tortured,” Kris snapped. So much for keeping quiet. “They wanted us to bring electricity back, but they didn’t want us to shoot it up their asses. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for. They want to live in a secure country. To not have to face a sectarian civil war, an occupation, and a rising jihadi army all at the same time. Safety. Security. Jobs.” He started listing off the country’s woes until he ran out of fingers. “Should I keep going?”
Behind them, Kris heard George’s heavy sigh. Edwards looked down at his notes, shuffling papers.
“What does Saqqaf want? The end of America? To get us out of Iraq? He want to be the next Iraqi prime minister?” The president looked tired.
“No, Mr. President. Saqqaf isn’t even Iraqi. He’s Jordanian. He doesn’t care about Iraq, not like you think. He wants to destroy Iraq, because after the country is destroyed, he can take over and institute a new way of life. He wants to fulfill the prophecy. Bring about the end times and usher in the Islamic Caliphate.”
“Don’t the Iraqis have a problem with that? They want their country back. Not some medieval Islamic empire.”
David nodded. “Yes, they do. There’s some evidence of resistance. An awakening, of sorts, against the brutalities of Saqqaf. No one wants suicide bombers in Iraq. No one. But, there just isn’t enough safety on the ground for people to turn against Saqqaf and his people. He’s controlling the areas he and his fighters hold through brutal repression, a firebrand fundamentalism that is holding the Iraqis hostage.”
