by Randy Singer
“Welcome to Yemen,” said Saleet Zafar.
Wyatt glanced around. The three stooges were nowhere to be seen. He rubbed his eyebrows to check that everything had not just been a nightmare, but he could feel no hair and wondered if the pencil-thin eyebrows of a woman were still visible.
“I trust you slept well,” Zafar said, cracking another smile.
Wyatt’s ribs still ached, though he could breathe better now. “Like a baby.”
It was light outside, and Wyatt could see a city of mud and clay built into the side of a mountain. He tried to cement the image in his mind, little details that might provide a clue to where he had been brought. “Your men were a little rough,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“They are not my men. But I knew they would get you here.”
Zafar spoke good English, with the kind of pure diction that marked somebody who had developed English as a second language in the classroom rather than living in the country.
“I understand that you were a friend of Cameron Holloman,” Wyatt said. “I’m a friend of his wife and have come to see if you would help us in our case against the director of the CIA.”
“We will talk in time,” Zafar said. “But first, you must be very hungry.”
Wyatt hadn’t come this far for a social visit, and he had no real desire to get to know the radical imam across from him. But he also knew the Anderson case hinged on two things: what was happening in the Supreme Court and what would happen in the next few hours with Saleet Zafar. Wyatt had come too far and suffered too much to lose an opportunity because he was trying to rush things.
Zafar shouted some instructions in Arabic, and before long, two women with everything covered except their eyes and hands were scurrying around and bringing in lunch. They spread a mat on the floor in the middle of the room and then, while Zafar and Wyatt talked, brought in the meal. They started with unleavened flatbread in a black iron skillet, the smell of which made Wyatt remember how hungry he actually was. They brought a glass of something that looked like the weakest coffee Wyatt had ever seen.
“It is shahi haleeb,” Zafar said. When Wyatt gave him a quizzical expression, the imam simply said, “Milk tea.”
Wyatt took a sip—it was flavored with mint—and surprisingly, he liked it. Meanwhile, the food kept coming. The women brought potatoes, eggs, and lentils. The main dish was what Zafar called mandi, lamb meat topping a plate of rice. The whole thing looked like a feast fit for a Persian king.
Zafar and Wyatt sat on the floor and ate together, taking their time, while Wyatt asked questions about the culture in Yemen and the country’s civil war. Taking a deep breath still hurt, and the dull headache wasn’t going away, but he made himself focus on the conversation.
After the men had finished eating, the women cleared the meal and brought in a small bowl of a leafy substance. Wyatt had read about this before his trip. The entire male population of Yemen would apparently eat a big lunch and then start chewing qat, a mild stimulant that created a feeling of euphoria, at about two o’clock. The men would continue chewing until about six or so at night, when they would finally spit it out. It was, Wyatt thought, an unusual phenomenon—the whole country with a mild buzz for most of the working day. Right now he could use something like that.
He took a few leaves and stems, placed them in his mouth, and chewed the leaves slowly, squeezing out the juice. He was careful about how much he took because he would need to be on his game the next few hours. After about ten minutes of talking while chewing the qat, he spit it back onto a plate. Zafar chuckled and shoved a few more leaves into his own mouth.
“Americans never appreciate the finer things in life,” he said.
“Tell your goons to go get my cigars out of the car and we’ll experience one of the finer things.”
“Phillies cigars?” Saleet asked skeptically. “Not exactly Cuba’s finest.”
How did this guy know about American brands?
“Have you ever had one?”
“I don’t smoke.”
But you chew on an amphetamine all day, Wyatt wanted to say.
“I had a letter from Gazala Holloman,” Wyatt said instead. “But your men wouldn’t let me bring it with me.”
Saleet reached over to his pile of books and, to Wyatt’s surprise, pulled out the letter. “I read it. They brought it along. And remember—they are not my men.”
“I need your help,” Wyatt said. “Gazala wants you to help. Together we can expose what really led to the deaths of Cameron Holloman and several American servicemen.”
“I may need your help as well,” Saleet replied.
The comment surprised Wyatt, though he didn’t show it. And he realized immediately that he should have known something like this was coming. Everybody always had an angle. “In what way?”
“You may know that your government is trying to kill me. It seems that any imam who preaches the whole truth of the Quran ends up on an enemies list and can be executed without a trial at the mere word of your president. I want to hire you, Mr. Jackson, as my attorney. I will give you everything you need to prosecute the case against Director Marcano and Mr. Kilpatrick. But in exchange, I want you to advocate my cause in the American media. I need you to help your country see what is happening.”
Zafar reached over his pile of books and pulled out pictures of two young boys. He placed them on the floor, facing Wyatt.
“These are my sons. They have also been targeted by American drone strikes. I have studied your history as an attorney, Mr. Jackson. I know that you are always loyal to your clients.” Saleet paused, searching for the right words as he continued. “I am not an enemy combatant of your country. I command no troops. I plot no strategy. I plant no bombs. I preach that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his Prophet. I preach about the glory of the martyrs. I preach that we are in a spiritual war. These are ideas that are not so different from the ideas spread by your American pastors. When did your country start executing religious leaders for preaching their conscience?”
Wyatt could think of a thousand rejoinders. American pastors didn’t instigate suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. Maybe American pastors spoke of spiritual warfare, but they didn’t advocate the subjugation of all Muslims by force. But now was not the time for debate. Wyatt was a lawyer, and he needed to cut a deal.
“Tell me what you know about the death of Cameron Holloman,” Wyatt said. “In our system of justice, we call it a proffer. You would need to be willing to testify about it from an undisclosed location on video. But if you tell me the substance of what your testimony might be, I’ll tell you whether I can take your case. And believe me, Mr. Zafar, if I take your case, I’ll advocate for you to the best of my ability.”
“You say I must tell you first. But then you will have the information already,” Saleet said. He studied Wyatt for a moment, his jaw working the qat, and then his lips formed into a small, sly smile. “This issue of trust is a difficult thing to establish, no?”
“Indeed it is,” Wyatt said. “But there is a question in my country: Is the enemy of my enemy my friend? We both want to expose the events that caused the death of Cameron Holloman. Our common enemies are the director of the CIA and the president of the United States. Does that not make us friends?”
Saleet smiled broadly at the suggestion, exposing a mouthful of qat. “Here in the Middle East, Mr. Jackson, we have been asking that question for thousands of years.”
81
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Paige entered the packed courtroom at 9:45, trailing behind the clerk and Dylan Pierce’s team. The folding chairs that were jammed in the well of the courtroom behind counsel tables were filled with members of the Supreme Court bar who had waited in line for hours to hear this case. It seemed that they were all staring at her.
Immediately behind them, on rows of hard wooden benches, sat the spectators who were lucky enough to get a seat. The ones in the front row were likely those who had camped out all night.
But to Paige’s surprise, when she entered the courtroom, the entire first two rows of the spectator section rose as one and stood at attention. She recognized many of the faces as members of the Virginia Beach–based SEAL teams. They had shown up today, she knew, to show their support and loyalty. The SEAL family coming through again.
Before she sat down in the front row, Paige glanced over her shoulder and nodded at them. They all sat down at once, as if she had saluted them, and it made her heart swell with pride.
“That was pretty cool,” Wellington whispered.
Minutes later, the clerk called the Court to order and the justices came out from behind a huge scarlet curtain, taking their respective seats on the bench. Paige was struck by how intimate the setting felt. In most appellate courtrooms, the podium was a good distance from the justices, conveying a feeling of respectful separation. But here, in the nation’s highest court, the lawyers and justices were just a few feet away from each other. Other lawyers had said that they could hear the Court’s oldest member, Justice Kathryn Byrd, wheezing from the bench. You didn’t have to raise your voice to be heard—this argument would be a conversation, not a courtroom lecture.
Paige studied the looks on the justices’ faces, but they gave nothing away. Before she knew it, Pierce was at the podium and the questions had started flying. He handled them with great aplomb, the perfect mix of formal respect and confident advocacy. He emphasized the separation of powers in the Constitution and how the Court had always honored the role of the executive branch in matters of foreign policy. Our country was at war, he said, and we could not jeopardize the lives of those serving abroad by spilling state secrets every time a plaintiff wanted money in a lawsuit. That was why, from the days of the Totten case in 1875, this Court had dismissed such claims instead of forcing the executive branch to divulge its state secrets.
As expected, Pierce’s argument did not sit well with the more liberal members of the bench. Justice Augustini, who was one of the newer members of the Court and therefore sat in the second-to-last seat on the right, led the charge. As a novelist, she had a knack for imagining hypotheticals that showed the danger of Pierce’s logic. Sitting on the opposite end of the bench was David Sikes. Every time Augustini made a point, he would lob a softball question to make a counterpoint.
Justice William Martin Jacobs III, a bulky man sitting close to the chief, actually scoffed at one of Pierce’s answers. “Seems to me that you’re saying the courts just have to take the words of politicians at face value and can’t even test whether state secrets are actually at issue,” he said, peering over reading glasses. “Just like the old days in the South when the politicians claimed that segregated schools weren’t the result of racist motives and we should stay out of the busing business. We should just take their word for it.”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Pierce replied calmly. “This Court has a constitutional duty to ensure that the citizens of our country are treated equally, and segregation did not pass that test. But it also has a duty to ensure that the executive branch has the latitude it needs to protect our citizens from terrorists without being harassed by plaintiff’s lawyers and tort lawsuits.”
It was obvious to Paige that the Court’s three conservatives—Sikes, Barton Cooper, and Kathryn Byrd—were all firmly on the side of Kilpatrick and Marcano. The chief was hard to read, but he seemed concerned about the prospect that Judge Solberg’s procedure might result in the inadvertent disclosure of state secrets. “Once that genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put her back in,” he said. Paige knew she couldn’t count on him.
That left the four liberal justices for Paige’s side—Murphy, Torres, Augustini, and Jacobs. But she would also have to win the vote of the Court’s newest justice, Taj Deegan, sitting all the way to the right, who had not yet asked a single question.
What is she thinking? Paige wondered.
Deegan gave a clue just before Pierce’s white light came on. “Isn’t your appeal premature?” she asked. “Judge Solberg was only trying to figure out whether there are state secrets that would require dismissal of the lawsuit. She hadn’t definitively ruled that it can go forward. Isn’t it a little extreme to say that a judge can’t even hold closed-door depositions to test the government’s claims about state secrets?”
Pierce jumped on the question as if he had been waiting for it all morning. “What you’ve seen happen in this case is exactly the problem with such a procedure,” he claimed. “A deposition that was supposed to be sealed from the public has been leaked to the press, and the state secrets that Director Marcano testified about under a promise of confidentiality have been spread across the front page of the New York Tribune. We can’t risk the country’s safety the way Judge Solberg did.”
With perfect timing the white light came on. “I would like to save my remaining time for rebuttal,” Pierce said. The chief nodded, and the lawyer took his seat.
Paige stood quickly, gathered her folder, and took her spot. She paused for just a second, taking it all in. Paige Chambers, representing the warriors of SEAL Team Six, at the Supreme Court of the United States.
“Good morning, Ms. Chambers,” Chief Justice Leonard said.
“Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court . . .”
82
YEMEN
When Saleet Zafar got rolling, Wyatt could see why he was such a powerful imam. The man could tell a story. He was all hand gestures and facial expressions and voice inflections. Smiling one moment, scowling the next. Leaning in to make sure Wyatt followed everything he was saying. He could have been a good lawyer, Wyatt thought.
Saleet was cerebral, and he peppered his story with words and descriptions that displayed a keen intellect. It was his intellectual curiosity, he said, that had first drawn him to Cameron Holloman. Cameron was not a Muslim, but he was sympathetic to the cause and distraught at the devastation Saudi Arabia and the United States were leveling against civilians in Yemen. Indiscriminate aerial strikes, Saleet called them. He began corresponding with Cameron and talked with him via Skype.
“My goal was to convert him to Islam,” Saleet said. “It was a goal I shared with Gazala.”
He and Cameron met during the reporter’s trip to Yemen. Cameron wanted to meet with some Houthi leaders to better understand their side of things.
“So I arranged that meeting,” Saleet continued. “Cameron asked questions for hours and took notes. I think he uploaded that information to the cloud, where he stored his research. He may also have sent text messages and e-mails, which I now believe were being monitored by your government. Eight days after we left the compound where he met with the Houthi leaders, a drone strike killed all three of them, as well as two women and one six-year-old child.”
He paused for a moment and weighed his words. “After that strike, Cameron was arrested by the Houthis on suspicion that he worked with the CIA. A few weeks later I was contacted by an intermediary working on behalf of the United States to see if I could negotiate Cameron’s release.”
This was news to Wyatt, though he was now to the point where virtually nothing surprised him. “Who approached you?” he asked.
“Another imam who had connections with the U.S. ambassador in Saudi Arabia,” Saleet said. He chewed his qat. “Do you know the story of Raymond Davis?”
Wyatt racked his memory. “Never heard of him.”
Saleet shook his head. “I would think that you, of all Americans, should be aware of the Raymond Davis story.”
Once again Saleet launched into his mesmerizing storytelling mode. Raymond Davis had been a CIA operative in Lahore, Pakistan, during the administration of President Obama. One day, after he withdrew cash from an ATM, a motorbike pulled up beside him at a stoplight. One of the men on the bike pointed a gun at Davis. They were just common street thieves, but they had chosen the wrong victim. Davis pulled out a Glock and killed them both.
The Pakistani police arrested Davis and accused him of being a CIA ope
rative, though Mr. Obama would never admit it, saying only that he worked for the American State Department. Eventually a solution was reached. Davis was transported from his prison cell to a Sharia court in a remote area of Pakistan, where he faced the families of the victims. Under the Sharia custom of diyat, or “blood money,” the families forgave Davis after the CIA paid 200 million rupees, or approximately $2.3 million. In this secret court proceeding, family members approached Davis, some of them sobbing, and announced that they forgave him. Davis was released and returned to the United States.
“I tried to negotiate a similar resolution for Cameron Holloman,” Saleet said. “I was authorized to offer diyat of up to $10 million. But the relatives of the victims were not willing to have their forgiveness purchased. And so your country sent in a strike force to free my friend. Even after the deaths of the American soldiers, I pleaded with the Houthi leaders to release Cameron. But they would not listen and threatened me as well. I never saw Cameron alive again.”
It was this part, Wyatt could tell, that bothered Saleet most of all. Not just the fact that Cameron had died but that he had died as an infidel and would thus, according to Muslim theology, spend eternity suffering in hell. From the look on his face, Saleet held himself personally responsible.
“How did the Houthis know the American Special Forces were coming?” Wyatt asked. “Did you know?”
Saleet gave Wyatt a sad smile. “If you’re asking whether I told the Houthi leaders that the Americans were on the way, the answer is no. I myself did not know. And I wanted to see Cameron released more than anyone.”
“Then how did they find out?”
Saleet let the question hang in the air for a moment. He was undoubtedly smart enough to understand that this was the real issue in the case. Wyatt could never win unless he could show that the administration knew the raid was doomed from the start.
Studying the imam’s expression, Wyatt could sense that he was close to the truth. His heart started beating faster, and he had to will himself to stay calm. This man knew! Wyatt could make his case right here, with witnesses from Yemen, and the state secrets defense could not stop him. “You know, don’t you?” he persisted.
