The Prisoner of Guantanamo

by Dan Fesperman

  “Maybe they need one of those scoreboards like McDonald’s. ‘Millions served.’”

  Civilian humor. Not to the general’s liking. Falk supposed that raves in the world of the brass about the new soft-serve machine earned as many brownie points as the week’s best gleanings from interrogation.

  “So tell me what you know,” the general said, wiping his chin with a napkin. “What’s the current situation?”

  “On Ludwig?”

  “We’ll get to that. You just spent a few hours with Mr. Bokamper. What’s his read on where this team is headed?”

  “In terms of arrests?” He wished Trabert would get straight to the point.

  “In terms of scope. How deep it’s going to go.”

  All the way to Havana, he could have said, but he doubted the general would understand.

  “Bo’s a friend, but he doesn’t tell me everything. I get the impression that in some ways he’s as much in the dark as the rest of us.”

  It was a bureaucrat’s response, but it seemed to reassure Trabert. Maybe that was what the general had wanted to hear—that Bo and he were still on the outside. It was impossible to say whose side Trabert was on, or what his agenda was.

  “Well, they’ll be wrapping up their business inside a week, I hope. We need to clean our stables and move on. I was damned pissed off about Boustani, I can tell you that. That man had our trust, and look what he did with it.”

  “Do they really have much on him?”

  “He’s got some friends back in the States you probably wouldn’t be comfortable with. There and elsewhere. That’s all I can say right now. How are people reacting?”

  The general was a fast eater. He had already moved on to the sheet cake.

  “About how you’d expect. A lot of gossip. Some think it’s a witch hunt, some that it’s the worst thing since Aldrich Ames.”

  The general nodded.

  “Not good, either way. And your work? It’s progressing?”

  “I could use a little help. The J-DOG intelligence people took Ludwig’s mail before I could get a look at it.”

  “My mistake,” Trabert said. “I take full responsibility for that.”

  “So you’ll speak to them?”

  “They wanted me to speak to you, actually. Part of the reason for this dinner. Seems I’ve gotten some noses bent out of shape. I’ve decided it would be best for all concerned if you turned over your findings to J-DOG. That way you can be released back to your interrogation duties.”

  “Is this a suggestion?”

  “An order. Effective immediately. In compensation for the time you’ve put in on this matter, I’m granting you a three-day leave to the mainland, with my compliments.”

  “Is that an order, too?”

  “Are you turning down a leave?”

  “I was thinking the Bureau might have something to say about it.”

  “What you do with your time away from here is up to them. Your time at JTF-Gitmo is my concern. When you return from R and R you’ll start with a fresh slate.”

  “Who’d I piss off?”

  “Like I said, my screwup. We should have handled Ludwig in-house from the get-go. There’s a seat for you on tomorrow morning’s flight to JAX.”

  “Will my furniture be in the street when I get back to Iguana Court?”

  “You’ll be more welcome than ever around here once the smoke clears. I’d imagine even your friend Bokamper would agree.”

  “Did he know about this?”

  “This was my decision, Falk. Mine alone. You’re to hand over your notes and any other findings on Ludwig to Captain Van Meter by twenty-one hundred.”

  Van Meter again. Another finger in another pie. Falk still had plenty of questions, but it was clear the general wasn’t in the mood, and there was no food left on his plate. Maybe Trabert had worked out some kind of a deal. Consolidate all the dirty laundry into one tidy sack—the security investigation, Ludwig, the works—as long as everything was cleaned up fast. That way he won, they won, and everybody’s new buddy Van Meter kept building his little empire.

  Or had Falk’s quick trip out of town been engineered by Endler, perhaps, as a backdoor way of making Falk available to meet Paco?

  Trabert stood, signaling an end to the evening. Falk’s plate was still half full.

  “See you on Monday, then, when you can hit the ground at top speed.”

  “I’m certainly leaving at top speed.”

  The general stood ramrod straight, unsmiling. Falk had to restrain himself from saluting.

  HE PHONED BO AS SOON AS he reached the house. He suddenly had a lot to do and little time for doing it, but the only thing he needed more than time was answers. The most onerous chore was his planned visit with Harry. He would have gotten it over with tonight if possible, but by now Harry was at home in Guantánamo City, twenty miles beyond the fenceline. The Cuban commuters arrived in the early morning, so that would be Falk’s best opportunity.

  He wondered what he would do on this forced leave, especially if there was no rendezvous with Paco. Maybe he would just hang around Jacksonville. Drive to a nearby beach and veg out. He thought fleetingly of catching a flight to Maine. The possibility of a long walk in the woods, alone and out of touch, sounded pretty good right now. It was strange how much he was thinking about home lately. Coming back to Gitmo had been like revisiting a room from his past. This was the first place he had come after leaving Maine and basic training. In a sense he had returned to the threshold of his boyhood, his point of departure, so why not use it as the portal for his return? He wondered if his father was even alive. Surely someone would know where to find him.

  But first things first. Bo, fortunately, was easy to reach.

  “It seems I’ve been voted off the island,” Falk said. “General Trabert has magnanimously granted me weekend leave. Not that I had any choice. I’m on the morning flight to JAX. Any idea what he doesn’t want me around for?”

  “None.”

  “Positive?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Just thought you might have had something to do with it. You or your boss man. Especially if he thinks my old pal wants a face-to-face.” He didn’t dare say the names “Harry” or “Paco” on this line, and hoped Bokamper was wise enough to take the same precaution.

  “Easy, Falk. I wouldn’t set you up like that.”

  “Your boss would.”

  “Not without telling me. Fowler’s a likelier suspect.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess we’ll find out while you’re gone. Which reminds me, do you plan on seeing your old friend before you go?”

  “Tomorrow before breakfast.”

  “Good plan. So what happens with Ludwig while you’re away?”

  “Case dismissed. I’m to turn over all notes to Van Meter.”

  “Mr. Versatility. When do you get back?”

  “Monday. Assuming Trabert doesn’t have them bump me off the return flight.”

  “I wouldn’t think the Bureau would like that.”

  “They don’t like Trabert, either. So it would hardly matter.”

  “Well, I would promise to keep you posted by e-mail on anything you’re missing, but from down here …”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Speaking of which.”

  “I know. We’ve said enough already.”

  “Give me a shout in the morning. After your, uh, ‘breakfast.’”

  “Will do.”

  His next call was to Pam, who answered on the first ring, as if she’d been waiting. His news got a poor reception.

  “So you’re throwing me to the wolves? You know, my rating goes up another three points while you’re gone.” Falk couldn’t help wondering what would happen if she and Bo came face-to-face. As if to allay such worries, she added, “I guess I could use some early nights. Today’s been a drain, with all the uproar over Boustani. Everybody else seems to think it’s great entertainment, but our te
am’s a man down. They won’t even let us have his notebooks. I had to interpret for two other people in addition to my own interrogations. What I’d really like to do tonight is get hammered, but what I need is a good night’s sleep.”

  Her reference to work shook loose a thought.

  “Adnan,” Falk said.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. You reminded me. I should check in with Adnan before I clear out. Bad enough I haven’t touched base since the other night. If I let three more days slip by who knows what he’ll think. He’s probably already feeling used and abandoned.”

  “Join the club. At least he gets a farewell visit.”

  “Hey, this isn’t my call. Trabert practically ordered me off the base.”

  “Remind me not to be sitting with you next time the general walks into the mess hall.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a joke. Although I do think you’ve forgotten the way things work in the military. I have to be more careful about making an impression than you do, that’s all. But you’re right about Adnan. You need some face time, even if only on the dawn patrol.”

  “It’ll take more than that. We need a sit-down. As if I didn’t have enough to do. Long night ahead.”

  “Guess I won’t see you ’til breakfast.”

  “Not then, either. Got an errand to run.”

  “For Trabert?”

  “For Bo. Can’t go into details.”

  She pouted after that, and the conversation didn’t end the way he would have liked, only in a lukewarm good-bye that bothered him. He also wondered about her crack about being seen with him by the general. Maybe it was just a joke, but he could only imagine how she would react if she found out he was damaged goods.

  He threw his suitcase on the bed, then noticed Ludwig’s letters, still lying on the pillow. He was about to tear one open when something told him to slow down, use caution. Maybe it would be better to let Van Meter think he hadn’t read them. Whitaker was still at work, so Falk took both letters to the kitchen, filled a teakettle at the sink and turned on the stove. When it began to steam, he held the letters in the jet, working the flaps free without tearing the paper.

  It was a familiar routine, not from his days as a special agent—the Bureau had far more sophisticated methods for this kind of chore—but from his childhood. He had become a snoop in his own house, searching for hidden answers when things began to fall apart. As his mother disappeared and his father drifted into uselessness, Falk had watched the notices from the tax men and the bill collectors pile up on the couch, neglected and unopened. So he had steamed them open in an empty house and delved inside, secretly reading the signposts on his family’s road to ruin. He had known before anyone else of the coming foreclosure and the tax auction, and also of the letter postmarked in Boston from a defiant wife on the run, vowing never to return. This, by comparison, was nothing. Just another sleuth’s trick taken from the playbook of Frank and Joe Hardy at the Deer Isle public library.

  He read the personal letter first, jotting down the name of Ludwig’s wife, Doris, along with their address in Buxton, then the name of a brother-in-law, Bob, mentioned on the first page. Bob was eager to go fishing next time Ludwig was home, and wanted to know what was biting in the Caribbean. It sounded like Ludwig was at least somewhat comfortable on the water.

  Most of the letter was small talk: The tomato plants had blossomed, but the fruit was small and the leaves were curling; the baby’s ear infection was better; their daughter, Misty, still missed her daddy; Ed from the bank had called and said he would be in touch; that nice widower Mr. Williams from down the street had died and left everything to his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Packard, who for the moment was still married; a new Sam’s Club was opening on the bypass, thank goodness, twenty miles closer than the one in Revell. Four pages later Falk slipped the pages back into the envelope, then smoothed down the flap. It opened back up, of course, and he had nothing with which to reseal it. So much for old tricks.

  He considered leaving the letter from the bank untouched. But something about the first letter’s reference to “Ed from the bank” nagged at him. He pulled it back out.

  “Ed from the bank called to get in touch, so I gave him your address and he’ll be writing. It’s about business.”

  Wouldn’t the bank have had his address already? This sounded more like a veiled warning than news, so he pulled the letter from the second envelope.

  It looked official enough, typed and single-spaced, with the “Farmers Federal” letterhead across the top. The writer was branch vice president Ed Sample, a lordly title for a fellow who probably outranked only a handful of tellers and loan officers. The first part was boilerplate. Hope you are well, business has been steady, blah-blah. The rest was odd, to say the least.

  “I am still wondering exactly what to do about the wire transfers you authorized last week involving the banks in Peru and the Caymans. I have placed a ten-day hold on the transactions pending your further instructions. Please advise.”

  Then, back to the boilerplate, as if the query about the transfers had been the sort of thing that any banker in rural Michigan might ask about. Mentioning “Peru,” “Caymans,” and “wire transfer” in the same breath was like waving a red flag to banking regulators and the Drug Enforcement Administration. In a game of word association the answer would be “cocaine money.” It would take balls to authorize something like that from anywhere, but to do it from Gitmo seemed foolhardy in the extreme.

  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.