Baghdad Fixer

by Prusher, Ilene

  Sam seems for a moment to have lost her words. “So...so, so please tell him I say thank you for agreeing to see us.” I translate this and he nods, saying that we are welcome anytime.

  “Just go ahead,” I say. “I’ll translate everything just the way you say it.”

  “Well,” Sam begins, “I’m an American reporter working here in Baghdad. I understand that you have been providing important documents to some of my colleagues.” I translate it just like she said, without any embellishments or commentaries. Just like she taught me to do. Don’t pad things unless I tell you, she said. Don’t candycoat. Most importantly, I did not say exactly who Sam is — or who I am. I have never seen her start off an interview this way before. She also hasn’t presented her business card.

  “Yes,” Akram clears his throat. “This is true. I have many documents that are in demand with the foreign media, and with the Americans and the British. Maybe I can help you.” He crosses one leg over the other and leans on his left elbow, sinking into it comfortably. He is taking in Sam with an ogling stare, and then converts his gaze into an artificial smile.

  “Oh?” Sam lifts. “Are you working with the Americans? Officials, you mean?”

  “Yes, of course. Ah, but wouldn’t you like some tea?” Sam understands this much, I know, but I translate it anyway, and Sam says yes and he yells out to the hallway for three glasses of tea.

  “I was in touch with the Americans before the war and as they were coming to Baghdad,” Akram continues. “I was known to them as an opponent of the regime. You see, many members of my family were killed by Saddam, and even I was almost killed on many occasions. So, we helped the Americans by showing them our information about the palaces and the villas of Uday and Qusay. We gave the Americans information about their positions. Two days before the fall of Baghdad, we found the place where Uday and his staff were hiding. We raided it and killed fourteen Ba’athists hiding there. We missed Uday, but we’ll get him.”

  Sam’s pen bounces across the page like a car in a hurry on an unpaved road.

  “We all suffered from Saddam’s regime, so we formed a commando unit, all of us former military people,” Akram says. He leans towards the end table perched to the right of his chair, a scaled-down version of the expansive coffee table, and picks up several files. “This one shows that Saddam had planned to have me executed,” he says, holding up a folder. He takes a page out and hands it to me. “Read it,” he says.

  It does have his name on it and several words are highlighted, including “death sentence for treason”. Sam’s eyes switch from Akram to the pile of files on the table next to him. “Who’s in this group?” she asks. “I mean, the commando unit?”

  “We are a group of thirty members. Some of us are relatives.”

  “So how did you get out of being executed?”

  “When I was in prison in 1991, Saddam’s brother-in-law came to my brothers and asked if they wanted a pardon for me. They asked for 200 million dinars, and my brothers paid. We had money back then. I come from a very established family, thank God. I was released and discovered that my own family was finished: my wife and my two daughters were killed. When I came home, I asked the neighbours where they went and the people said, ‘After you were arrested, they took your family.’ They never came home again.”

  Akram puts a hand over his eyes and shakes his head. “Ya Allah al-Mimtaqim,” he says, invoking one of God’s divine names — the Avenger — sometimes called out by one whose loved one has been murdered. “Do you see how evil this man was?”

  Akram gets up and walks out of the room, and Sam is about to say something to me but already he is back, holding another folder of documents. He sits down again in his chair. “This is the intelligence file on me. They were trying to prove I was a traitor and that I had a link with the monarchy in Amman. They accused me of trying to bring back the Iraqi monarchy, because my father once worked for the king.”

  I’m surprised by this information, because I was under the impression that most of the senior people who worked for the monarchy left Iraq in 1958, right after King Faisal II was dragged through the streets of Baghdad. But Sam is copying everything he says without any indication that she doubts a word of it.

  “My father also had Jewish friends who left Iraq in the 1950s, and he corresponded with one of them. After he died they found the letters and accused me of conspiracy with the Zionists, and for this I was held in prison and tortured for five years. Five years! From 1995 to 2000, I was held in a secret prison by the intelligence services. I, an Iraqi general. You understand, I was a general in the Iran-Iraq war. You should know how much we have suffered. I’m lucky to be alive. When they thought I was totally broken — and my brothers were able to pay the ransom — they decided to let me go.”

  Sam nods, pulls in her lips the way she does when she wants to show sympathy. “How awful. This country’s history is — tragic.” She lets a few moments of quiet pass. “So, may I ask you, when did you start helping the Americans?”

  “Two weeks before the war. Some undercover agents were sent from Kuwait to see me and they asked me for the location of key regime members. They were with an Iraqi who had left Baghdad many years ago. He said, ‘We need your help.’ I agreed. The Americans wanted Saddam and his sons, dead or alive. But the man I wanted was the man who took my daughters and my wife and killed them — and he was one of Uday’s aides. He was in charge of thousands, maybe tens of thousands of executions.” Akram sighs. “And that’s why I was after Uday’s house, and along with that, I came into possession of these documents.”

  “Where was this house?”

  “Behind the As-Sa’a restaurant,” he says, pointing over his shoulder. “Near the Embassy of Oman.”

  Sam shakes her pen, and draws blank circles on her page, pressing harder until the paper emits the brusque sound of a tear. She begins searching in her bag. Akram reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a green felt-tip pen. He leans forwards and offers it to her with a graceful turn of wrist. “Tfaddli,” he says.

  “Shukran.”

  “Do you speak Arabic?” he asks her slowly.

  “Shwaiy shwaiy,” Sam grins, signalling very little.

  Akram sits back in his chair. “I have a lot of information that would be of interest to you. For example, some of the documents show that one of your important politicians, Mr Billy Jackson, took millions of dollars from Saddam.”

  Akram opens another folder and pulls out a page with a light-blue background. There is an Iraqi government crest in the centre of the page, and some kind of stamp at the bottom. He holds the document on the table, facing us. “Look here,” he points. “Here is Jackson’s signature.” The document looks like some kind of an order to a finance department manager, ordering that Billy Jackson receive $1 million in cash. The document is signed and dated the 15th of January, 2003. Akram lays out another dated the 23rd of June, 2001. Then he reads off the dates of numerous other payments, stretching back to 1995.

  While I am translating this for Sam, Akram sips his tea. Then he pulls out yet another folder. He reads that so-and-so is ordered to give a $1 million gift from Saddam to...Jacques Chirac for his support of the Iraqi people...signed by Uday Hussein and Abdel Rahman Mansouri, treasury department.

  “Down here,” Akram says, “you have the signature of Jean-Marc DuBois, who is an assistant to Mr Chirac. Most importantly, they are all signed by Uday, who ran the finances, as I am sure you are well aware. And Mansouri, he was Uday’s money man. He held the keys to the vault, which of course, they raided before they disappeared.”

  Akram reaches into the pocket of his trousers and pulls out his wallet. He opens it and takes out a 10,000-dinar note, spreading it out on the table. “Look,” he says, tapping on the bottom left corner of the note. “Show her. You can compare Uday’s signature on the documents to the one on the bill. They are exactly the same.”

  “Amazing,” she says. “But why would an Ame
rican congressman or someone in Mr Chirac’s cabinet agree to sign something like that? Wouldn’t they be afraid to leave a trail?”

  Akram’s eyebrows crash in a small ditch above his nose. “Afraid? No, they weren’t afraid. This regime was in place for thirty-five years. No one could touch it. No one thought it would fall, so who would know?” He pauses. “You understand what these men have in common, don’t you?”

  Sam shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

  Akram’s lips spread flat and wide. “They were opposed to the Bush campaign to overthrow Saddam! All along, they were supporting Saddam and trying to prevent the world from sanctioning this war against him. Ah! Also Kofi Annan.”

  Sam’s eyes open wider. “The head of the UN?”

  “Yes, we can show you documents that demonstrate that Kofi Annan was also receiving money from Saddam Hussein. In return, he fought very hard to allow Saddam to sell oil when they said the restrictions on the Iraqi people were too tough.”

  Sam corrects my translation. “Or sanctions? You mean the Oil-for-Food programme?”

  “Yes, yes,” General Akram says in English before returning to Arabic. “Exactly. Saddam was allowed to sell oil again, so he gave Mr Annan a very nice tip for his help. About $3 million. What’s important is to expose all of these people who made Saddam a leader with continued legitimacy. It’s their fault he stayed in power as long as he did.”

  “I see.” Sam nods. She breathes in and exhales, then lets the tip of Akram’s pen fall on to her notebook, leaving bleeding green dots wherever it lands. “I want to talk more about Billy Jackson—”

  “Yes, Mr Jackson,” Akram interrupts. “I know personally that he received about $15 million since the early 1990s. I know a driver named Karim al-Azzawi. He was in charge of driving Mr Jackson from Iraq back to Jordan. He was told that if he didn’t get Jackson safely to Jordan with the money, he’d be executed. Then they deposited the money in a bank there.”

  Sam tilts her head to one side. With much of her hair covered by the white scarf, which she chose to wear after all, she looks younger. Simple and curious. “How do you know all this?”

  “If you want to verify what I say, I can arrange for you to interview him. This is how all the money transfers were done. There was no other way to get such a large sum of money out of Iraq. It’s not as if Saddam could wire it to New York or Paris,” he laughs.

  A young teenage boy comes into the room with a plateful of diamond-shaped baklawa, a bottle of orange soda and three glasses. Akram thanks him and pats him on the back. Sam accepts the orange soda Akram pours for her, and takes a birdlike sip. I drain my glass in one shot; the translating is wringing me dry. The general pours me another glass.

  She turns to me. Her eyes seem to search mine for cues, but she gives up and looks back at Akram. “You know, this is all really fascinating. But we got right down to talking about the documents and in fact, I wanted to ask you more about one of my colleagues.”

  Akram nods, sorting through his files as she speaks, looking up only when I am giving my translation.

  “Now, I have this colleague named Harris, Harris Axelrod, and I believe he wrote about these documents for my newspaper I’m not positive, but I think,” she pauses and looks at me, “I think that Harris has written about these very same documents for the same paper I write for. And I believe he told my editors that he got these documents from you.”

  After I translate this, Akram rises and goes to an armoire in the far corner of the room. He lifts a key from his jacket, unlocks the cabinet door, and pulls out a small cardboard box. He carries it back over to his chair and sets the box beside his feet. Inside, it seems, is another batch of documents.

  “My goodness!” says Sam. “How many documents did you get when the regime fell?”

  “Many. Many, many documents.”

  “Could you estimate?”

  “About twenty sacks. We put them in sacks because we were in a rush. Saddam and his sons took some of the most important documents from the presidential palace and put them in these villas for safe keeping.”

  “But didn’t the INC take most of the documents?” Sam asks. “That’s what was reported.”

  “No,” he replies. His tongue seems to be shifting back and forth inside his mouth, as though he is growing annoyed but knows he shouldn’t show it. “I gave them a lot of documents from the Republican Palace, just to be helpful.”

  “You mean, you had documents from there, too?”

  “We have access to whatever documents we need.” Akram bends to pick through the files in the box at his feet. “There are others here you may want to see.” His voice is muffled. When he comes up, his face looks flushed, almost burnt.

  “So, do you remember Harris?”

  The general smiles leisurely. “Of course I remember him. I met him many times. He told me he lives in Beirut.”

  “Yes, that’s right. Didn’t he get these very same documents from you, these ones on Billy Jackson?” Sam holds up the papers he handed her a minute ago. “Isn’t this exactly what you gave Harris?”

  The general signals for Sam to hand them back, and she promptly does so. “These are not the same documents,” he says. “You must be confused. Harris took the documents about the weapons facilities, not these.”

  Sam sits up straight. “You also gave him information about weapons sites?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did he buy those?”

  The general coughs, and reaches for a tissue. With a screeching hack that makes my ears hurt, he expectorates something from his lungs, crumples the tissue and puts it into the waste-paper basket beneath the end table. He tilts forwards to take his tea then looks up at me. “Smoke?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s better. I would have been tempted to ask you for a cigarette. My wife made me quit.”

  “Your wife?” I ask.

  “Yes.” He looks at his knees. “I remarried only last year. It has taken me many years to get over the death of my first wife.”

  “Allah yarhamha,” I say. God’s mercy be upon her.

  “Thank you.”

  Sam turns to me. “Did he say if—?”

  “No. I’ll ask again.” And I pose the question, once more, if Harris paid for the documents about the weapons sites.

  “Yes. But he didn’t pay for them in full. He paid a small amount and then he said, ‘I’ll come back and pay for the rest of the documents.’ He’s an honest person, I’m sure, so even if he’s late, I’m sure he’ll be back.”

  “And the documents on Jackson? Did Harris pay you for those?”

  “No, I told you, I didn’t give Harris those documents. I have them right here with me.” He shifts. “When will our friend Harris come back to Baghdad?”

  “I’m not sure. So how much did Harris pay for these documents about the weapons sites?”

  Akram sits back in his seat. “You know, I’m just one man. Many of the people in this unit, the people who are the caretakers of these documents now, were made very poor by this regime. Saddam took away everything we had. We lost our income and we suffered greatly. That’s why the money is necessary. It gets distributed to many families.”

  “I see. How much did Harris pay?”

  “Harris paid, it was around $10,000 or $12,000. I think he was expecting to get a lot of money for this information, from other people he could provide it to.”

  I’m beginning to wonder where Akram is lying and where he’s telling the truth, if anywhere at all. I wonder why Sam doesn’t tape-record the conversation.

  “Also, we have documents on the meetings between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. We have a set of about fifty documents that show the training of seven members of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The documents show how they were trained to fly planes and to do those attacks in America. We have an American television station coming tomorrow to take these documents.”

  “Really? So
when was this meeting between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden?” Sam is sounding breathless.

  “In 1999. That was when Saddam accepted seven members of Al-Qaeda to train inside Iraq, learning to fly aircraft and to use chemical weapons. These are the same people who hit the World Trade Center.” He hands a few documents to me and says fahim-ha; fahim-ha. Make her understand.

  “You’re saying seven of the nineteen hijackers were trained in Iraq?”

  “Yes. Then they participated in the attack on the World Trade Center.”

  “And how much will these TV people pay?”

  “They agreed on $20,000.”

  Sam makes an “o” with her lips. She blinks at Akram. “That’s quite a lot of money.”

  The general nods. “But very important for the Americans to know.”