Man in the Middle (43 page)

Phyllis suggested that since bin Pacha was to remain under joint custody, there was really no need to risk transporting him to Saudi Arabia, that in fact the CIA had a facility south of Baghdad that was perfectly suitable for this kind of legerdemain. She suggested further that “our old friend Turki”—not speaking for me— should fly in guards and interrogators, bin Pacha would be fooled, and we would jointly decide his fate afterward.

Her friend Turki agreed to this suggestion without the slightest hesitation. In fact, I thought he looked relieved.

Maybe the idea of CIA people wandering through a Saudi high-security prison was problematic for him. Who knows? We might bump into his countryman Osama bin Laden tucked away in a cell. With these people, you never know

But since we seemed to be into suggestions, I suggested, “It might be a long time before bin Pacha breaks. I’m sure you’re all very busy people. Let Bian and me handle it, and we’ll get back to you.”

Everybody was impressed by my thoughtfulness, and nobody seemed to think it was a good idea.

But it brought to the surface what we all knew. There were serious trust issues under the table: The sheik trusted nobody, I didn’t trust Phyllis, who didn’t trust Waterbury, Waterbury couldn’t spell “trust,” and Bian was playing with an ace up her sleeve. For sure, a lot of phony smiles and false assurances were being passed around, but if this were a poker table, there would be cocked pistols on everybody’s laps, and blood would be shed before the pot was claimed.

Also, Phyllis and Turki al-Fayef seemed a bit uneasy in Bian’s and my presence. Who could blame them? Rapists don’t enjoy hanging around for postcoital chats with their victims.

Waterbury seemed like Waterbury—the man had not the slightest moral clue that this was wrong, nor had he ever read anything in his manuals that suggested otherwise. This didn’t make him a bad guy. But it was scary.

At the earliest possible moment, Phyllis departed to visit the station chief at the Baghdad field station to discuss what she vaguely referred to as “important matters.”

The sheik followed on her heels, presumably to locate a five-star hotel with air-conditioning that worked and better room service.

Waterbury also left, without informing us where he was going. But my CIA country report had explicitly warned that kidnapping rings were rampant in Baghdad, and, well . . . I crossed my fingers and hoped.

Bian and I were ordered to remain on the plane and guard Abdul while we waited for the military to dispatch a military police team to transport him to Abu Ghraib prison.

She and I shifted to the galley, where we discovered a thick hoard of fresh bologna in the fridge. This struck us both as apropos for the occasion—you know, turkey at Thanksgiving, boiled potatoes for Saint Patty’s, bologna after being lied to and fucked. So we made a few sandwiches; I slathered mine with mayonnaise, she loaded hers with mustard, and we adjourned to the big conference table for dinner.

We brought the last four beers with us. It wasn’t enough to even get a buzz on, but we already were drunk with powerlessness.

So now we were alone with out first chance to compare notes. Bian kicked it off, asking, “How bad was your lecture?”

“I’ll bet yours was worse.”

“Waterbury doesn’t bother me.” She smiled. “He’s a big blowhard. Don’t let him get under your collar. Do what I always do. Tune him out.”

“Seriously, when I told you not to shoot anybody, I didn’t mean him.”

She held up a forefinger, squeezed the trigger, and laughed.

“They pulled out the rug from under our feet, Bian.”

“Why do you sound so surprised? Did you actually believe they’d allow us to take this to full fruition?”

“For all the wrong reasons, yes, I did.”

“Well . . . shame on you.”

“What am I hearing here?”

“I mean, I’m upset. I’m disappointed. Of course I am. I just . . . Look, once we understood what was happening here, the full import, the total scope, the possibilities . . . I hope this doesn’t sound cynical, but I didn’t think we’d be allowed to find the full truth.”

“Aren’t we here because you insisted we had to do this?”

“Was there a choice? You learn that the primary justification behind this war might be a big lie, that the man we sent here to be the next king could be in the pocket of the bad guys, and maybe he exposed to our enemies an invaluable secret. So you have the opportunity to find out and maybe do something about it. Do you say no?” She squeezed my hand and added, “We never had a choice. From the instant we entered Cliff Daniels’s apartment, because of who we are, we had to be here, we had to do what we’ve done, and we had to be told that’s enough.”

“And you’re okay with this?”

“I’m Army. I follow orders.”

“That’s not what I asked. Are you okay with this?”

“All right . . . I’m depressed. I’m frustrated. I’m disgusted at my own government.” After a moment, she confided, “But I’ll deal with it. You’ll have to find your own way to handle it.”

This submissive babble was the last thing I expected from Ms. Gung-ho. Her stubbornness, after all, was what brought us here in the first place. Well, I had made lots of misjudgments during the past few days, nor, like the three billion other males on the planet, have I ever been particularly good at understanding women.

After a long, thoughtful pause, she asked, “What were Phyllis’s instructions to you about Charabi?”

“There is no Charabi. Just a figment of my imagination. What did Waterbury say to you?”

“Yeah, like that. And the intelligence leak?”

“You can’t get to one without the other. Besides, Phyllis kept all the relevant e-mail messages.”

“Good point. Anything about closing out Cliff Daniels’s murder investigation?”

I looked at her.

She looked back and observed with pretended innocence, “I ask only because Waterbury mentioned nothing about it to me.”

We both sipped from our beers, and out of nowhere we heard the sound of a loud explosion. The chandelier above our heads actually swayed and shook—a little close to home. The highway from Baghdad to the airport was aptly and horribly nicknamed Suicide Alley, and it sounded like a suicide bomber had just nailed somebody. Maybe it was Waterbury; we should be so lucky.

Without speaking, Bian set up the speakerphone in the middle of the conference table. I dialed the Washington switch, gave the nice operator the number, and a few unanswered rings later heard Detective Barry Enders’s voice growl, “Jesus H. . . . Look what friggin’ time it is. If this isn’t about a murder, there’s about to be one.”

I identified myself and told Enders that Bian was beside me, listening on the speakerphone, then informed him, “We’re calling for an update on the investigation.”

There was silence for a moment. Enders then said, “What investigation?”

“Barry, it’s me,” replied Bian. Sounding slightly annoyed, she said, “Don’t jerk us off.”

“Who’s jerkin’ who off? A bunch of Feds came in yesterday. They took everything, jurisdiction, the crime scene log . . . my files . . . the lab specimens. They even ripped the pages out of my detective book. Don’t even tell me this is a surprise to you.”

Bian and I exchanged troubled looks. No wonder Phyllis and Waterbury felt no need to warn us off this venue. Bastards. But smart bastards.

Enders continued, “Now you’re calling at this hour to rub it in. What is this, some kind’ve trap play to see if I’m—”

“Barry,” I interrupted, “this is the first we’ve heard of this.”

“Yeah . . . right.”

“Who signed the order?”

“Justice Department. I was also ordered to develop a memory lapse. They were real assholes about it, too.”

“Yet this is still an open case for you, is it not? A death in your jurisdiction—isn’t it
your
responsibility to file cause of death?”

“That’s not how it works, Drummond. The Feds give the judgment, I write it down, end of story.”

I was, of course, familiar with the proper procedures, and we both knew I was testing the waters. The answer was, screw you.

He asked me, “Why do you care? You insisted it was suicide. And you know what? I have a feeling that’s what the Feds will conclude: suicide.” He laughed.

Bian recognized I had a credibility problem here and said, “I changed his mind. So did you. Now he . . . actually, we both believe it was something else. Murder.”

“Look, I think we’re done—”

“What if I offered you insights about
why
Cliff Daniels was murdered?” I asked.

“Great. I’ll give you the number to Special Agent Barney Stanowitz. Big ugly asshole with bad manners. His card’s in my office. In fact,” he confided, “he warned me that if anybody asked about this case I should call him.”

Going on instinct about Barry Enders, I said, “Give me a minute, Barry. One minute. Then make up your own mind about what you’re going to do.”

He hesitated. Not a good sign.

I nodded at Bian, who is much nicer than me, and she said, “Barry, you’re a smart guy. I think you know what’s going down. A cover-up. Conspiracy. You don’t know why, and maybe you don’t care. But I suspect you
do
care.”

Bian and I looked at each other. No reply.

Bian said, “Barry, please.”

“Okay . . . one minute. Drummond, make your case.”

This was less than a commitment but more than the phone slamming down.

So I confessed, “Maybe I misled you about the trouble Daniels was in.”

“Wow, no shit. Didn’t they teach you at law school that it’s a crime to lie to the cops?”

“Cut the crap, Barry. One minute. You promised.”

“If you want the full minute, speak more clearly.”

“Okay. Possibly Cliff Daniels betrayed this country. Possibly he gave enormously sensitive information to the wrong people in Iraq and compromised a very important operation. You wondered why a CIA person and a military policewoman were sent to his apartment. Now you know—espionage.”

There was a long, contemplative pause. He said, “My oldest boy—Elton—he’s a Marine. First Marine Division. Already been to Iraq once.” After another moment he mentioned, “Did my own four years as a Jarhead before I became a cop. Semper Fi.”

“Couldn’t get into the Army?”

“Hey, I tried. Only the Army recruiter, he said I possessed two irreconcilable issues: My parents were married, and I don’t look sufficiently stupid.”

“Really? You look stupid enough to me.”

We both laughed. He said, “All right, I’ll give you more than a minute. Go ahead, blow some more smoke up my ass.”

So I gave him part of the story, essentially that Daniels got in over his head and gave a foreign agent some information, though we didn’t yet have a clue what that information was, because it was in code, and the code was a ballbuster. Nor did I clarify
how
we learned about this.

He was a smart guy, though. He knew that when dealing with a federal government official, he was not hearing one-third of the story, another third was sprinkled with fairy dust, and the final third was total bullshit. But I fed him enough truth and his cop brain was filling in some of the blanks. I wrapped it up, saying, “Here’s the big piece you were missing—motive—
why
somebody wanted to murder Cliff Daniels. In fact, the list of people who
didn’t
want Daniels dead would fill a matchbox. There are people in Washington, and here in Baghdad, who would benefit greatly from his death. We’re sure his killer was a woman, and possibly she was hired help, but don’t exclude the possibility she was working on her own.”

For a moment, Barry said nothing. He needed time to process these clues and revelations, and he eventually asked the right and proper question. “What do you want me to do about this?”

Bian had done some thinking on this topic, because she immediately responded, “Now you
know
there was a murder. That simplifies your problem. Focus on the killer.”

When he made no reply, Bian added, “Colonel Drummond has a theory that all murderers make mistakes. Is that your theory as well?”

“Yeah, most do. We also have a thick file of cold cases that dates back to 1969. See if you can talk him into examining it. We’d love to know what mistakes they made.”

“But this killer may have left trails,” Bian insisted. “That high-priced wig. Probably hers. Wigs are no longer fashionable for women—how many stores in the D.C. area sell expensive hairpieces these days? And that triple-X video . . . we assumed it was his and maybe we assumed wrong. Likewise, how many stores in the area sell porn?” I gave Bian a look and she asked Barry, “Am I overstating the obvious?”

“Yeah, I do this stuff for a living. And you’re overlooking that people purchase wigs and porno on the Internet these days. I’ll check around, though.”

Bian looked at me to see if I had anything to add. I suggested, “They had to have gone out together once or twice before. Dated, slept together, whatever. Check his charge-card records. See where he socialized lately. Maybe somebody will remember her.”

“Long shot. We already know the guy had a lot of lady friends, right? Who knows which ones people will remember.”

“There are no short shots here, Barry.”

“You out of bright ideas?”

So I explained my new theory about how the murder was more stylistic than we initially surmised, including a few ideas about the possible symbolism in the staging of his death. On that topic I suggested, “You might spend a little time thinking about what that was intended to convey. If any profilers owe you a favor, call it in. If we get a better idea about how he was killed, maybe we’ll get closer to why, and by whom.”

“You realize I’ll have to do this on my own time.”

“You’d better do this on your own time.” I added, “And watch your back.”

“I figured out that part on my own.” He asked, “Say I find something—how do I get in touch with you?”

“You don’t. I’ll check in with you.”

“Got it. So what are you two doing in Baghdad?”

“Vacationing.”

“Aw, come on. This has something to do with Daniels’s murder. Right?”

“It’s the hottest thing in adventure tourism. They advertise it as a safari, only you’re the prey. Very exciting.”