The Sleeper

by Christopher Dickey

  After about two weeks the guards started bringing a big-wheeled gurney to the cages. The shackle shuffle was taking too much time. The stumbling prisoners were too clumsy. So the guards stretched a detainee flat out on the cart like a body in a morgue and wheeled him away to the sheds for questioning. Eighteen days after I arrived at Guantánamo, the gurney came for me.

  In the air-conditioned cold of the windowless interrogation room they seated me opposite a steel schoolteacher’s desk with my back to the door. Two guards fastened my restraints and left. But for a long time no one else came. A chill settled into my shoulders and spine. Then the door opened behind me. Wet heat flooded the room with a thin mist. “It shouldn’t have taken this long,” said a voice I knew, and a rush of fear and hope and despair and anger swept through me like a sickness. Griffin sat down on the edge of the desk facing me. “It shouldn’t have taken this long,” he repeated.

  I shook my head. “Where are my wife and child?”

  “They’re in good shape. They miss you, but Betsy’s holding everything together.”

  No words came easy. “You see them?”

  “Last time was last week.”

  “You’re not lying.”

  “No lie.”

  “Do they know I’m here?”

  “Nobody knows you’re here. What they know is you’re on a mission.”

  “Where are they?”

  Griffin moved his eyes over the room, looking at the corners of the ceiling and at the floor. “When you get out, we’ll take you to them.”

  “When?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Then who can tell me when I get out?”

  “Maybe the President.”

  The white noise of the air conditioner filled the room.

  “We’ve done good so far, Kurt. Real good. We stopped the ships you told us about.”

  I nodded. “Hamdulillah,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Griffin. “By the grace of God and you,” said Griffin.

  “Cut the shit.”

  “It’s true. I don’t want to have to tell you that you saved America. But, hell yes, you could say that. At least for now.”

  “So give me a medal.”

  “Someday.”

  “And let me get the fuck out of here.”

  “Soon.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me tell you what happened with the ships.”

  “Is that going to get me out of here sooner?”

  He looked again at the corners of the box where we talked. “Maybe.”

  “So tell me.”

  “The information you gave us from Abu Zubayr identified six possible targets and three ships.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And each ship a bomb.”

  “Yes.”

  “We got all three ships.”

  I nodded.

  “We caught one freighter in the English Channel just after Christmas. It was held for three days while it was ‘searched.’ It took us that long to figure out what to do with what we found the first hour we were on board.”

  I nodded. “Nitrates. Like Nairobi. Like Yemen.”

  “And worse.”

  “How worse?”

  “Cesium and other medical isotopes.”

  “A dirty bomb.”

  “Dirty enough. The conventional blast would have been huge. Maybe fifty times bigger than Oklahoma City. Then panic caused by the radiation would have been much worse. Geiger counters off the charts, and people out of their homes fleeing the slow, silent death; the fear of contamination lasting—who knows?—maybe a generation.”

  “The target was London?”

  “The target was an American nuclear sub near the mouth of the Thames River, which would have been just perfect for Qaeda: you take out a military objective, you attack a symbol of American power, you terrorize civilians, and you drive a deep wedge between the United States and its closest ally, Britain.”

  “But you stopped that one.”

  “We did. Watched it from Djibouti on, then closed in as it reached the Channel.”

  “And the other two?”

  “The second was a freighter off the coast of Japan. The Japanese Navy blew it out of the water over a mile-deep trench. Said it was North Korean. Said the whole crew died. And you know what? The whole thing’s been forgotten already.”

  “Same kind of target?”

  “Same. U.S. warships near Okinawa.”

  “And number three?”

  “Ships just disappear at sea all the time. They leave one port, they never arrive at another.” Griffin smiled. “This one we took out ourselves, and a lot more quietly than the Brits or the Japanese. Qaeda’s probably still looking for it.”

  “And the crews?”

  “We got all of them.”

  “That’s good news. I mean, that is good news.” I looked at the restraints that trussed me to the chair. “Now do I get the fuck out of here or not?”

  “Soon.”

  “Griffin, look at me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You saved my life.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “And you tell me you saved Miriam and Betsy.”

  “We kept them safe.”

  “But that’s not enough to keep me from killing you if you’re lying. I’ve spent the last two months in Hell. And in Hell you learn to hate real good.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Am I going to get out of here?”

  “Yes. And if anybody listens to me, you’re going to get out sooner, not later.”

  “I don’t like that ‘if.’ ”

  “I don’t either. But you and me, Kurt, we’re in this together.”

  “I’m in chains and you’re not.”

  “That’s your cover.”

  I just looked at him.

  “We need you, Kurt—No, let me be real straight: I need you, and I need you right here right now in this place. Because this war ain’t ending.” He stopped himself and stared at the corners of the room, then down at the surface of the desk.

  “And I’m in here for the duration?” I asked.

  “Not if I can help it—and not if you help me—help all of us.”

  “Fuck you. I paid my dues and then some.”

  “Help Betsy. Help Miriam.”

  “That a threat? Touch them and you’re going to die,” I said.

  “No, man,” said Griffin. “You’re going to help all of us live.”

  I shook my head.

  “Kurt, there are more ships. Maybe a lot more. Maybe nine, ten, twelve more. Some of the crew we caught told us enough to know that. Those ships weren’t ready before. They might be now. And the only way to stop ships is with information. If one of them cruises full bore into Boston harbor or Naples or Gibraltar or Miami—if they ever get that far, then there’s going to be hell to pay.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “We think we have one man who knows more.”

  “Abu Zubayr?”

  “No. There’s nothing left of him but the rind.” Griffin swallowed like there was something bitter in the back of his throat. “It’s another man, one we thought was just crew on the boat off Japan when we picked him up.”

  “And now?”

  “And now some of the others say he’s a planner. But he’s not responding to interrogation.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think some of the detainees here respect you. I think maybe they talk to you. Brag to you.”

  “And?”

  “And they might let ‘Qibla’ know a little about what’s going on.”

  “That’s why I spent seven weeks in the hole, no questions asked? Is that it? You wanted to make me one of them again?”

  “You were in the hole to keep you safe.”

  “From who?”

  He motioned lazily with his hand and seemed to indicate the walls around us.

  “Nobody believed me when I said I was American,” I said.

  Gri
ffin nodded.

  “Nobody had my file,” I said.

  “Maybe that was lucky for you,” said Griffin. “Maybe that was lucky for all of us. An American would have to be in jail in the U.S.A., ain’t that right? An American would have to be charged; go to trial.”

  “But a non-American—a nobody—you can do whatever you want with him.”

  “That’s right,” said Griffin. “Anything at all. And you know what? We might even be able to let him go.”

  “You tell me something: Who’s my enemy now? The assholes in the cages, or the assholes outside of them?”

  “I’m your friend, Kurtovic.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “You’re damn straight you will.” Without warning the back of his powerful right hand came across my face hard and blinding.

  I tasted blood-salt inside my mouth. “You’re gonna die, fucker,” I said, spitting red.

  “You think so, you uppity piece of shit. Well let me tell you something.” He leaned in close to my face, his teeth bared in anger, but his voice a whisper. “It’s you and me against the world right now,” he said. “There’s shit coming down inside and outside. And I am your friend. Your only friend.”

  I just nodded, feeling the tingle fade from my face and jaw and sensing fear in his whisper.

  “You awake now, asshole?” he shouted.

  I spit again.

  “Listen to me, boy,” said Griffin. “You want to get out of here—ever—you got to play the game.” He spit on the floor. “Think it over.”

  After a long pause, all I said was “Move farther faster and fight harder.”

  Griffin smiled. “Now you got it, Ranger boy.”

  “If I get you what you want, you get me out of here. No more bullshit.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Yeah. Right.” He was lying. But as far as I could see, the only way out of this place for weeks, maybe months or years, was his way. We could count up the lies and settle the scores later on. “Who do you want me talking to?”

  “Who we want talking to you is already in a cell next to yours.”

  “The Sudanese? The Kuwaiti?”

  “A Pakistani—a Baluchi, in fact.”

  “The Squatter,” I said.

  Chapter 25

  “They’re afraid, the Americans,” the Kuwaiti whispered through the wire after lights out. “Afraid at last! That’s why they broke your lip last week, Qibla. That’s why they kept me for so long in the question house today. They are, how do they say, shitting in their shorts.”

  There was a long silence. Afraid at last. A twisted sentence echoed in my head: Afraid at last. Afraid at last. Great God Almighty, afraid at last. “They know about the weddings,” I said.

  “They know nothing.”

  “Enough to be afraid.”

  “Hamdulillah,” laughed the Kuwaiti.

  “After the weddings, then the real jihad,” I said.

  “War everywhere,” he said.

  “ ‘Are the people of the townships then secure from the coming of Our wrath upon them as a night-raid while they sleep?’ ” I quoted one of the verses I memorized long ago from the Qur’an, and that I’d read again from the copy of the Book left in my cage by the U.S. Marines. “ ‘Or are the people of the townships then secure from the coming of Our wrath upon them in the day-time while they play? Are they then secure from Allah’s plan?’ The words spoken by the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

  “Peace be upon him,” said the Kuwaiti.

  “Soon Allah’s plan will be revealed. But—”

  “But?”

  “I think one wedding was stopped,” I said. “Maybe more.”

  The Kuwaiti was quiet.

  “When they ask questions,” I said, “then you learn things. You learn what it is they want to know.”

  “Yes.”

  “They are asking about boats. And I don’t know anything about boats.”

  “Yes. They talk about ships.” After a long silence in the next cage, the Kuwaiti said, “They are not so smart.”

  “Tell them nothing,” I said. “Silence is jihad.”

  About an hour later, when he thought I was asleep, I heard the Kuwaiti at the corner of his cell whispering to the Squatter in a language I didn’t recognize. But the tone, even in a whisper, was urgent.

  The Kuwaiti kept away from me for most of the next day, and I didn’t try to talk to him. Whatever he knew, whatever he found out from the Squatter, he’d have to come to me with it in his own time, and I figured he would. He liked to talk, this Kuwaiti kid. What had happened in September and since, I realized, was all kind of unreal to him. I wondered if he’d ever seen a man dead, and if he had, if he’d ever thought about what he saw. The real slaughter in the name of his imagined God was no more real to him than the video gore of a shoot-’em-up game. He talked about the attack on America like a teenager who’s just typed in his name for the high score.

  The Squatter was almost impossible for me to read. He sat for hours on his haunches looking around him slowly, really slowly, like a bird on a wire. His skin was black, his eyes were black—not like he was African, but like he was charred, like he was a devil who used to sit on some ledge in Hell. I watched him watching for hours at a time, a slime-black toad, a soot-covered carrion crow, and I could feel sometimes, starting to crawl under my skin again, the same ants I’d felt in the hole on the ship. Not until then would I look away, close my eyes, begin again to nail the shingles one by one on the roof of the house by the pond. As far as I could tell, the Squatter didn’t speak any English at all, and in the weeks we’d been caged side by side he’d never even looked me in the eyes. But each morning when the chaplain made his rounds, the Squatter, at last, stood up to talk.

  It must have been two or three nights after the session with Griffin that I heard the Kuwaiti whispering at me again after lights out.

  “They say you are American,” he said. “I told them no, you are Bosnian. But they say they are sure.”

  “How would they know?”

  The kid was silent.

  “Did the imam tell them?”

  “No, no,” he said too quickly.

  “Listen,” I said. “I am Bosnian and I have an American passport. Don’t you?”

  “My brother has one.”

  “And is he American or Kuwaiti?”

  “Yes. You are right. But Ahmed does not trust you.”

  “Ahmed? Is he that man in the next cage? I do not trust Ahmed. He talks too much to the imam. But I do not want anything from him. So why do I care?”

  Silence. “He says you are spying for the Americans.”

  “And the imam is not?”

  “That is what he says.”

  “Then he’s not very smart.”

  “You are wrong. He is very, very smart. He knows about the weddings. He knows very much about the weddings.”

  “Bless him, then. I am his friend whether he believes me or not. Now let’s get some sleep while the night is a little cool.”

  The Kuwaiti was only quiet for a couple of minutes. “Only two weddings were canceled,” he said.

  “Hamdulillah,” I said. “I can sleep better now.”

  Two weeks to the day after Griffin’s first visit, thirty-two days after I arrived at Guantánamo, eighty-two days after I got shackled for the first time, Griffin had me strapped to the gurney and wheeled to the interrogation shed for our second meeting. He was leaning against the desk staring down at me as the guards started to strap me to the chair.

  “Leave it,” he told them.

  “Sir?” said one of the guards.

  “Leave it. The interrogator has the prerogative. I’m exercising that prerogative.” Griffin looked at his watch, impatient. The guards left. The door closed behind them and we were sealed in the interrogation shed. I was standing but still shackled. “They’d have stayed if they took off the other shit,” he said. “Can’t leave me alone with a dangerous son of a bitch like you.”

&nbs
p; “I think I got some of what we need,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “There are six more ships.”

  “We knew that.”

  “You mean you heard that. I’m confirming it. And there’s more. But tell me about Miriam and Betsy.”

  “They’re good,” said Griffin, and a kind of sadness passed over his face like a shadow.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Your family is okay.” The discipline snapped back in his voice. “Now tell me what you got.”

  “Griffin, man—what’s wrong?”

  “Tell me what you got.” He looked at his watch again, a big steel Rolex. “You got the targets for the hits? How many ships?”

  “Six.”

  He nodded.

  “Port of departure.”

  “Somewhere in Indonesia, I think. Can’t say what island. But that was a while ago. The idea was to lose them—change the ships’ ID completely—on the long trip around the world.”

  “Targets?”

  “In the United States, two new ones: Houston—because of oil and Bush.”

  Griffin nodded again.

  “And Chicago, because it’s in the middle of the country. ‘The heart of the country’ is what they say. But they could change that any time.”

  “Where else?”

  “New York and Boston, like we knew before. And outside the U.S., Gibraltar and Panama.”

  “You’re batting a thousand,” said Griffin. “What else you got? Names? Dates? Methods?”