How to Break a Terrorist (8 page)

I switch gears even as my mouth opens, “Uh, why marry a second time, my friend?”

Maybe she wasn’t a virgin and that’s why nobody wanted her. Asking why she couldn’t get married would have made him reveal that, and he’s already been embarrassed enough.

Abu Gamal doesn’t want to answer this question. For a moment, his look hardens. But his face dissolves in shame again. He mutters something almost under his breath.

Hadir nods, translating: “I wanted to have another son.”

The bloodline. He did this to try and perpetuate his bloodline.

As I’m digesting this, Bobby asks, “Does she live in the same house with your first wife?”

Good one. This is a significant question. If she does, that means his first wife approves of her.

Abu Gamal guffaws. “No. If my second wife lived with us, my first wife would kill me.”

I can’t help laughing at that. Bobby does too, and Hadir grins as well. The pitfalls of polygamy.

Even Abu Gamal chuckles, but he clearly meant what he said.

“I have to put her up in another house. Actually, it is an apartment.”

He’s just volunteered something for the first time in two sessions. I can feel him moving toward us.

“Where does she live?” I ask.

“The apartment’s in Baghdad.”

“Is the apartment expensive?”

Abu Gamal shakes his head. “No, it is pretty average.”

“Is it expensive to have two wives?” This is, of course, a loaded question.

Abu Gamal listens to Hadir’s translation. I notice he’s
starting to fidget. He’s getting antsy, playing with his hands and fingers.

“M–my s–s–second w–wife,” he begins, stuttering severely, “s–she has all t–these needs and wa–wa–wants. It is because sh–she’s young. Sh–she likes a lot of th–thi–ngs.”

We’re circling the truth here. I’ve got to empathize with him. Play the role. The doppelgänger takes form.

“My wife’s the same way,” I say sympathetically.

He nods his head. I continue, “She always wants more. If I buy her a ruby, she wants an emerald. If I buy her an emerald, she wants a diamond. If I buy her a diamond, it isn’t big enough.”

Abu Gamal’s eyes light up. He nods vigorously.

“It’s never enough. She always wants more, bigger and better.”

He nods again. He’s stopped fidgeting, and he looks me directly in the eyes. I see hurt behind his. I see a man of good intentions whose been trapped by a bad decision. He’s seeking understanding, and I’ve given that to him. He’s grateful.

“Yes…yes…I know it as well, Mister Matthew. My second wife…she loves expensive cosmetics.”

“Oh yes, mine as well,” I tell him.

Abu Gamal volunteers something else, “Cosmetics, yes, yes. My second wife loves them. The more expensive the better.” He pauses, then adds, “And blue jeans. She loves blue jeans as well. Expensive clothes, and jewelry. She is difficult to please.”

I nod my head sympathetically. He finishes with a sigh, “She’s very expensive.”

We’re still circling the truth. I push forward.

“Tell me, my friend, it must be very tough on you since your electronics shop isn’t doing well.”

Abu Gamal goes rigid. With deliberation, he nods his head once. He spears me with his eyes. They don’t move from mine as he responds, “Yes, it is. That is why I took this job driving for Abu Raja.”

And there it is. Everyone in the booth recognizes it, like a lightbulb just went on over each of us. Abu Gamal has just given us his motive for joining Al Qaida.

Money. He’s in it for the money.

I study him. He’s still rigid. But I can see in his eyes he knows what he’s just said. He knows exactly what he’s given us. He’s confessed without confessing. He’s taken the first step toward us and is gauging our reaction.

It all makes sense now. His shop is circling the drain. His cash-flow situation is getting desperate. His second wife’s demand for luxury is insatiable, even in the midst of a war. He cannot continue this lifestyle, yet Islamic law forces him to try.

Then along comes his cousin’s husband, Abu Raja, with an offer to make money on the side.

I decide to keep playing the empathy card.

“My friend, I can understand that. It is really hard for Iraqis to make money right now. The American government…well…we’ve made many mistakes that have caused the economy to be very bad.”

Abu Gamal listens to this and reacts with surprise. He nods lightly in approval. He didn’t think an American would criticize his own country.

“Sunnis have lost all their government jobs. The army
was disbanded. There is no law and order. It is very difficult to find work.”

“It has been very difficult for us, Mister Matthew.”

“And the Shia militias have attacked Sunni neighborhoods and executed many innocent people.”

This doesn’t have much of an effect on Abu Gamal. He nods without emotion.

He doesn’t care about the Sunni-Shia fighting. It isn’t a motivator for him. It’s all about the money. Cash is the key to him.

“Regular Sunnis like you are having a hard time. I can see why you’d take this job.”

“I must provide for my family,” he says slowly.

“Yes. That is the most important thing. That’s what the Koran says. A man should take care of his family. Nobody would respect you if you didn’t care for your family first.”

Abu Gamal agrees, and adds, “My first obligation is to my family. That is true.”

“My friend, what if you could make some money to help out your family?”

Abu Gamal appears interested, but he is still very cautious. “I just want to help.”

I don’t know if this is a neutral reply or if he is pulling back into his shell.

“We can help you with your financial needs. But you have to do something for me.”

His expression goes blank.

Shit, he’s going turtle.

“I’m not going to give you something for nothing. I need to
know
that you are my friend, that you’re willing to negotiate in good faith.”

He listens, but offers nothing.

Here it goes.

“And the way to negotiate with me in good faith is to tell me about the men you were with. Who are they? What do they do?”

His blank expression solidifies. He’s retrenching.

“Mister Matthew,” he says, hands out now, trying to look totally genuine, “If I could tell you, I would. But I do not know who they are. I only know Abu Raja.”

Now I see fear on his face and I realize that he’s afraid of the other four. So he must know or sense how powerful they are. He’s still lying.

“I can’t help you if you don’t trust me. I need something to take to my boss that will show him that you are trustworthy, something that shows you want to help us.”

“
Wallah mawf
” (I don’t know).

He’s back in his shell, and there’s no time to try and coax him out again. We still have two more interrogations today.

“Okay, my friend. I understand. I’m trying to help you, but you won’t let me. I’m offering you an opportunity to help your family. But you’ve got to meet me halfway. You can think about this in your cell. I’ll see you again tomorrow. Put on your mask.”

“I’m sorry.” I sense dejection in his voice, like he knows he’s doomed no matter what he does.

He picks up the black mask and puts it over his head. A moment later, a guard comes to take him back to his cell.

I look over at Bobby, and we have the same thought. There’s $10,000 in cash sitting in our evidence locker. We can use it as bait.

T
HE ’GATOR PIT
is humming. Interrogators are prepping for their next sessions, huddled with analysts, or talking strategy. The place is never quiet before the first round of interrogations starts. We run two shifts a day and share desks in the small space. Our SF strike teams work day and night to run down the leads we give them. Their helicopters come and go constantly. The process never ends.

I sit at my desk and contemplate the pile of money in front of me. I’ve checked out the $10,000 we confiscated in an earlier raid. If I lose it or if it disappears, I will owe ten grand to Uncle Sam.

Today, I’m fishing for Abu Gamal’s true motives, and the
cash is bait. We know something about what makes him tick. I plan to test him.

When he takes his mask off, I will pull the money out and toss it on the table Bobby uses to take notes. Ten grand. That’s a fortune here, especially for a guy like Abu Gamal. I’m not authorized to give it to him. But I can strongly suggest the stack of bills could be his if only he’d cooperate.

He’ll want it.

Or will he?

I think back to a dusty Saudi road I was on a few years ago. I had a backpack slung over my shoulder and a 9mm pistol close at hand. In the backpack was $1 million in cash—payment to a Saudi contractor for work done on behalf of the U.S. Air Force. We were on the way to a bank in Tabuk; there was nobody around for miles except for the contracting sergeant, a retired Saudi colonel, and myself all packed into the colonel’s car.

On that deserted stretch of highway, I had a passing thought. With $1 million, I could park myself on a beach somewhere and spend the rest of my life riding the waves, at one with the surf. Two shots, a quick drive to the Jordanian border, and I’d have been gone forever.

But I didn’t do it. Why not? I’m no murderer. And money doesn’t motivate me. But it motivates Abu Gamal. He’ll break as soon as he thinks he can pocket these bills.

I flip through the stack. One hundred $100 bills. They’re old and worn, not like the fresh-from-the-mint bundles of cash you see in mob movies. These greenbacks have seen a lot of shady deals.

Why does money motivate Abu Gamal? He’s trying to run two households.

I drop the cash down on my desk. I lean forward. My chair squeaks. I cross my arms on my desk and sink my chin onto one wrist. The cash is at eye level now. It is bound by an old, grimy rubber band.

Why does he have that burden? He wanted a male heir.

He married Farah to give him another son, despite the fact that he’s on the far side of middle age. At sixty, how could he be a father to his young son? By the time the boy came of age, Abu Gamal would be in his late seventies if he survived that long.

For some, the idea of a teenage bride and a fifty-something groom is just disgusting. When he told us her age and how long they’d been married, I admit I felt a small twinge of repulsion. But doing criminal investigations for the air force had already brought me in contact with the most sordid things imaginable. I once worked an abuse case in which an airman had tortured his infant daughter. Afterwards, he stuffed her in a freezer and closed the door for thirty minutes. I’ll never forget having to photograph the latticework bruises on her back that matched the grill shelves in the freezer.

Compared to stuff like that, so what if Abu Gamal had a child bride?

Child bride. He wanted an heir. He wanted his family name to endure. He wanted to preserve his bloodline.

Maybe this wasn’t about money after all. We must always distinguish means from ends: This is about his heritage. His family. His pride.

Will this stack of bills work on him? Perhaps. But it’s his pride that hangs in the balance, not his savings account.

Behind me, two ’gators kick up a conversation about Iraqi law.

When I brought up the idea of making money from us, Abu Gamal was decidedly noncommittal. He certainly didn’t jump at the chance. He didn’t see it as a lifeline. Why would actually seeing a bundle of Benjamins induce a different reaction?

The two ’gators continue their discussion. It is loud, and I can’t help but overhear parts of it. I try to force their conversation out of my mind. I have to think. I’ve got to find a way to get inside Abu Gamal’s head. Time is short.

We still haven’t parsed the connections within the Group of Five. Abu Raja claims to be the leader and has a connection to Abu Gamal. Because Abu Bayda is the oldest and most distinguished, we’ve tentatively pegged him as the leader. Abu Haydar is the fourth member, and from what I’ve seen, his mind is like a whippet: fast, sharp, and agile. He’s certainly the most cunning of the group.

Why was Abu Gamal so reluctant to tell us about his second wife?

Because he was ashamed. Ashamed by her age? Ashamed by how she’s forced him to earn extra money to afford to keep her well stocked in petty luxury items?

Or is it that he feels trapped?

His second wife is spending him into insolvency just as his store is on the brink of failure. His first wife hates Farah. His son cannot give him grandchildren. Farah was his only hope, and instead of producing another son, she’s become a terrible burden.

To keep from drowning he turned to Al Qaida for a quick fix to his cash-flow problems. He’s not particularly religious. He doesn’t seem to have many political convictions. He
doesn’t hate Shias. He’s with Al Qaida simply because there’s no other way for him to stay afloat.

How do you trap a man who has already trapped himself? By setting him free.

I wonder how he will react if I offer him exit visas for his entire family. They could start over somewhere else, a new beginning in the sunset of his own life. Would that appeal to him? How proud is he of being an Iraqi? Would he leave his native land?

The two ’gators discussing Iraqi law crank their volume up a notch. Their voices are intrusive and threaten to derail my train of thought. I can’t help but listen in.

“How many wives are you allowed under Iraqi law?” I hear one of the ’gators ask the other.

“Four at a time. If you want a fifth, you have to divorce one of your other wives first.”

Divorce.

That’s Abu Gamal’s get-out-of-jail-free card.

Suddenly, I remember an article in an English version of an Iraqi newspaper that announced some reforms to Iraqi divorce law. The new Parliament had changed the laws to make it easier to get one.

I sit up, pull my desktop computer’s keyboard forward, and type in a quick Google search for Iraqi divorce petitions.

In a few minutes, I’ve found a Jordanian divorce petition. I save it to my hard drive and print it out. I’m going to need help to pull this off. I pay a visit to one of our interpreters, a Jordanian who emigrated to the United States back in the nineties. Balding, round-faced, and in his mid-sixties, he is one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever met.

When I reach his workspace, he looks up at me and flashes a huge grin. “Matt–ew, Matt–ew,” he says. He sounds like a mafia don gone Bedouin. “You haf sometin’ for me?”

I hand him the divorce petition and explain what I want to do. He beams and says, “I hafta tell yuu, Matt–ew, dis is somethin’!”

He reads through the divorce petition, then turns to his computer. In a few minutes, he’s typed it up in Arabic. One more finger to his keyboard, and the printer hums again.

“Thank you Martin.”

“I hope dis works, Matt–ew.”

Our task force has its own psychological operations unit, composed of four army NCOs. I head over to their shanty, and when I enter, the clutter nearly overwhelms me. Half finished projects litter every table top amid digital printers, printing presses, rolls of posters, and cutting boards. The place looks like a cross between Kinko’s and a counterfeiter’s lair. These guys could make a fortune if they went underground back home. Their forgeries are masterful—nearly imperceptible.

The senior NCO is a clean-cut Midwestern towhead. As with everything else in this office, his appearance is deceiving. He’s the cleverest forger we have.

I ask him to affix an official Ministry of the Interior seal on my doctored divorce petition. No problem. In a few minutes, I have a document that looks like it just came from the MOI itself.

I go find Mustafa, our Iraqi-turned-American entrepreneur. Years ago, he fled Iraq and settled in Detroit, where he opened a chain of retail stores. Here, he is an interpreter.
Light-skinned, he is a Shia from southern Iraq who returned to help rebuild his country after the 2003 invasion. He and I have had talks about Islam, and when he went home on leave, he returned with two massive Shia versions of the Koran and gave them to me. Each one was the size of a Manhattan phone book. I couldn’t believe he’d hauled them all the way from Detroit just for me.

“Mustafa, can you look at this for me and tell me if it looks real?”

He takes it and grabs a chair. Slowly he reads through it, then looks it over again.

“It is very good, but you have the wrong ministry’s seal on it.”

“What?”

“Divorces are handled through the Ministry of Justice. He’ll know that and spot this as a fake.”

“I just read in the paper that the MOI is responsible now.”

“No. Divorces go through the Ministry of Justice.”

What do I do?

Mustafa has never steered me wrong. Yet the newspaper is clear. If I blow this, Abu Gamal will see through my ruse and he’ll never trust me. We won’t get anything out of him at all.

It has to be right. I don’t have time to do any more research. I’ve got to make a choice: the paper, or Mustafa.

Maybe the news is right. But the change is so recent, most Iraqis won’t even know about it yet. Mustafa’s right. He’ll suspect something if he sees the MOI seal.

I get another copy of the petition, have the psy-op guys
doctor it with the Ministry of Justice seal, and present it to Mustafa again for his scrutiny. He gives it a thumbs-up.

I’m ready to play the game. Just before we go into the booth, I explain my plan to Bobby. He smiles and shakes his head. He knows if this works, I’ll catch him on points and he’ll have to top me again.

A few minutes later, we’re face-to-face with Abu Gamal.

“My friend, how are you today?”

“Hamdulilah.”
I am fine.

“Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Yes, I have plenty of food to eat.”

I can’t contain it any longer. My mouth twists upward into a huge grin. For a heartbeat, I just sit there smiling. He looks quizzically at me, but says nothing.

“I have some really good news for you today.”

“What is that, Mister Matthew?”

“My friend,” I begin as I pull out the divorce petition, “I am about to make you the happiest man in the world.”

He looks at the piece of paper, but can’t see what it says.

“I’m going to make you happier than the king of Saudi Arabia!”

Hadir breaks out laughing as he translates. Abu Gamal laughs as well. This is the lightest atmosphere we’ve had with him in the booth. It is a good start.

I hand him the divorce document. Intrigued, he takes it cautiously. Within seconds, he’s totally absorbed in reading it. His brow knits. His eyes focus. I’ve never seen him so intense.

A minute passes. He’s still nose-down in the document. A flutter of worry tickles my stomach.

What if he detects it is a forgery? We’ll lose any chance with him.

This ruse is a gamble, no doubt about it. I’ve thrown the dice for this one.

I remain absolutely confident, my smile plastered on my face. I have become the doppelgänger again, the hard-pressed family man with a covetous wife.

Two minutes pass. He flips the paper over and scans the reverse side.

A butterfly kisses my stomach. Then another. I try to ignore them and remain in character, confident, happy. I will give him no clue, not with my actions or body language.

Three minutes now. Abu Gamal gives no hint of what’s going on behind those pinpoint eyes of his. His face is frozen in concentration. He rereads the front side again, this time using a finger to mark his place as he goes. His lips quiver as though he wants to read this aloud to himself.

Four minutes go by. He’s reexamining the Ministry of Justice seal.

I’ve thrown the dice. There’s nothing I can do now.

Five minutes. Abu Gamal lowers the document. He turns his face to me. It is one big crooked-toothed grin.

“Does this mean I can get a divorce from my second wife?”

I share his smile. Now I’m not acting, I’m elated. The ruse has worked.

“That’s exactly what it means,” I tell him.

“Allah bless you, Mister Matthew.”

“Thank you my friend. We have Iraqi lawyers working here. They’ll help you file it and take care of the divorce at no cost to you.”

“Thank you, Mister Matthew. Thank you.” His face is totally genuine now. The obsequious mole is long gone, crushed by the weight of this gesture.

“Can I fill this out now?” Here sits his path to liberation, and every second is an interminable delay for him.

“Sure. Of course. We can start doing that.”

I hand him a pen. He takes it but remains seated. He hesitates for a moment, then locks eyes with me.

“Mister Matthew, may I write a letter to my wife as well?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll go get some drinks.”

“Thank you, Mister Matthew. Allah bless you.”

I walk out through the ’gator pit and grab three Cokes. A few minutes later I return.

“How’s it coming?”

Abu Gamal is lost in thought, a few lines of his letter scrawled on the paper in front of him. He jots down a few more sentences, then hands it to Hadir.

“Okay, why don’t we take these over to the Iraqi lawyer and get this filed today. Hadir, why don’t you come with me.”

Bobby stays behind with Abu Gamal.

Hadir and I step outside. “What’s the letter say?” I ask. I wonder how harsh he’ll be on Farah. Has he explained why he’s leaving her?

Hadir looks it over. Without comment, he begins to translate.

My Loving Wife,