The Prince of Bagram Prison (13 page)

Barely three hours now, Kat had told herself as she started across Camp Viper, conscious of the fast-dwindling time left to her before she had to be back at the facility. If she hurried, she could still squeeze in a shower before heading to the British camp. After a night in intake and a day in the booths, she would have to.

In the real world, Kat was someone who took pride in the careful detachment with which she approached her relationships with men. When she'd slept with Colin in Oman, she'd told herself it would just be the one time, that the hazards here were too real and too many, the risk of her succumbing to her own vulnerability too high. She'd been right, she thought, and now she could not help herself.

As she turned down the narrow, rock-strewn alley that led to her tent, Kat saw her roommate, a nurse at the Combat Support Hospital, coming toward her. Sleep was as scarce a commodity for the nurses as it was for the interrogators, and the woman looked as if she'd just been roused prematurely from a much-needed nap.

“You've got company,” she called out as she passed, her expression and tone showing no small amount of irritation.

Colin, Kat thought, hurrying the last few yards to the tent. But when she pulled the canvas flap aside and ducked through the low doorway she saw Kurtz sitting in the camp chair next to her cot, his bulky frame spread out over a large portion of her few square feet of precious private space.

“Expecting someone else?” he asked.

“I haven't slept in two days,” Kat warned him, stopping just inside the door. “And I have to be back in the booths tonight. So whatever you have to say, say it fast and get out.”

Kurtz reached down and produced two frosty bottles of beer from the floor beside him. It was Murree, not the usual Uzbek swill, and Kat was tempted, but she shook her head. “What do you want?”

Kurtz shrugged, popped the cap off one of the bottles, and took a long swig. “I heard you spent the whole day in with the boy.”

“His name is Jamal,” Kat corrected him.

“You learn anything?”

“Only that he prefers chicken tetrazzini to grilled beefsteak. But then, doesn't everyone?” Kat said, referring to the notoriously bad selection of MREs. “And he's a Yankees fan. But who isn't?”

“He was friendly, then?”

“Scared shitless is more like it. He's a smart kid. He knows exactly what we want to hear, and so far he's saying it.”

Kurtz drained the remainder of his beer in one long swallow, tossed the empty bottle onto Kat's bunk, and opened the second Murree. “I've been talking to some of the Agency guys. They think they might be able to use him.”

They,
Kat thought, taking note of Kurtz's choice of words. When she'd first seen him in intake she'd assumed he was still with the Agency. Apparently, he wasn't.

“He's fifteen,” she balked. “He's not even legal. We can't keep him once his PUC status runs out. You know that.”

“Right,” Kurtz said contemptuously. “So what, you're going to send him back where you found him? I read his file. He's got nowhere to go.” Kurtz stood up.

It was a simple point and he had made it, but Kat couldn't help wondering what Kurtz's stake in the boy's future was.

He set the barely touched second beer on the wooden crate that served as Kat's bedside table. It was a calculated gesture of excess, a reminder of the resources that were available to him, and of what little regard he gave to wasting them. “They could help him, Kat,” he said. “Get him a small stipend and a place to live. He could go back to Europe, or even to the U.S., if he works out.”

Kat shook her head. “You saw him last night. He's just a kid.”

“They're not talking about James Bond stuff. He'd just be part of the community. Best case, they'd never even need to use him. Worst case, he hears something interesting, he shares it.”

“He won't do it,” Kat insisted, though she knew that he would, and gladly.

“Bullshit.” Kurtz called her bluff. “You said it yourself: he's a smart kid, he knows his odds.”

“I won't do it.”

“Sure you will.”

“Get out of my tent,” Kat snapped, motioning to the empty beer bottle on her cot. “And take your garbage with you.”

Kurt stood up and stepped past her, blatantly ignoring her last request. “You don't have to give me an answer now,” he sneered. “Go talk it over with your boyfriend, if you want. I'll see you back at the facility.” Then he lifted the flap and disappeared into the afternoon glare.

A
NYONE
,
KAT THOUGHT
, as she watched Kurtz cross the sunny expanse of the Atocha Station's atrium and disappear behind the lush indoor forest of palm and banana trees. If it could have been anyone other than Kurtz. But it wasn't, and here they were.

Kat glanced around the terminal, trying to get her bearings. She'd told Kurtz that she needed to use the restroom while he saw about tickets to Algeciras. Technically, this was true, but she also wanted to check her answering machine in case Stuart had called again. She could have told the truth, but that would have meant explaining herself, and she didn't want to have to tell Kurtz about Colin.

Spotting a newspaper kiosk at the far end of the terminal and a bank of pay phones just beyond it, Kat started across the crowded hall. She had no small change on her, only the euros Morrow had given her at the airport, which meant she'd need a phone card, or at least some coins.

A group of backpackers had arrived at the kiosk before Kat and were stocking up on cigarettes and candy. Twenty-year-olds who'd been everywhere and seen everything, Kat thought, remembering how painfully naïve she'd felt on that earlier trip, how limited her own experiences had seemed to her.

Trying to mask her self-consciousness, she glanced down at the rows of newspapers on display. The selection was typical of a big-city train station: a preponderance of sports-related publications with a handful of highbrow selections thrown in, including the more popular foreign-language papers. A small headline at the very bottom of the front page of the London
Times
caught Kat's eye.

“Another Glitch in Prisoner Death Court-Martial,” Kat read, reaching quickly for a copy. On the heels of the revelations of detainee abuse in Iraq, Stuart's case had gotten a fair amount of attention in the press, in the United States as well as in Britain, and Kat was not particularly surprised to see that Colin's death was news.

Unfolding the paper, she quickly skimmed the article:

Sources in Portsmouth confirm that the trial of a sailor accused of murdering a detainee in his custody in Afghanistan in the early summer of 2002 will take place as scheduled, despite the recent death of a key prosecution witness.

Former Special Boat Service member Colin Mitchell was found dead in London three days ago from an apparent intentional overdose. Mitchell's death is the second major setback for the prosecution in recent months.

It was revealed earlier this year that another potential witness had escaped while in U.S. custody at Bagram Air Base and was unavailable to testify. The witness in question, Hamid Bagheri, who is known to have ties to several terrorist organizations, is still at large.

“Anything interesting?”

Kat spun around to see Kurtz behind her. “Just catching up on the news,” she said hastily, refolding the paper and setting it back on the rack so as to conceal the headline. Her hands were shaking. “You get the tickets?”

Kurtz glanced at the discarded newspaper. “You don't want to bring it along? We've got a long trip ahead of us.”

Goading her, Kat thought, though she couldn't be sure. She shook her head. “I thought I'd try and get some sleep.”

Kurtz smiled. It was an expression Kat had seen before, a mixture of condescension and contempt. “Suit yourself,” he said.

And Kat thought, He knows.

T
HE LIGHT WAS FAST FADING
by the time Kat finally left her tent and headed up Disney Drive, Bagram's main drag, toward the British camp at the far end of the airstrip. On the eastern side of the valley the moon was rising, while out in the west the sun cast its last rays up over the mountains. The sky was a deep and lucid blue that is possible only at very high altitudes, the mountains clear in the thin air, the winter's snows still lingering on the otherwise barren peaks.

Unlike most of the other soldiers at Bagram, Kat felt strangely at home in the lunar landscape of the Shomali Plains. The emptiness of it reminded her of the land along the Rocky Mountain Front, and of her childhood, which came back to her mostly as one long drive across the American West.

The Norwegian mine clearers had finished sweeping space for a playing field in the no-man's-land along the runway, and a few shirtless marines were playing a game of touch football in the fading twilight. Out on the airstrip, helicopters perched, menacing silhouettes, massive Chinooks and Black Hawks, and smaller and more agile Apaches, with their banks of Hellfire missiles cradled under each wing. In the distance, the listing corpses of abandoned MIGs and Hinds served as grim reminders of the Soviets' ignominious defeat.

In war there is little concern for housekeeping. This was especially true in Afghanistan, where the inhospitable terrain made it impractical for retreating armies to take any more than their own skins with them. Relics of the previous conflict, and of the base's original occupants, were everywhere at Bagram. The main prison floor, where the cages now stood, had once been a vast aircraft shop. Abandoned Soviet machinery lined the walls, the pieces formless and hulking beneath black tarps. Virtually every surface was marked with Russian graffiti. Reminders of a grand and bloody failure, Kat thought, the voices of young men who had not made it home. But more than that: warnings of what could go wrong this time around.

Kat passed the Special Forces camp, with its barbed-wire fence and mammoth barbecue pit, then turned into the front gate of the British compound. The British camp, or Camp Gibraltar, as it was commonly known, was the subject of constant speculation and no small amount of jealousy among the base's non-British personnel. In the brief time Kat had been at Bagram, she'd heard all sorts of rumors about the superiority of the British compound, ranging from the cleanliness of the showers to the quality of the food.

From the outside, at least, the rumors appeared to be true. The camp was stereotypical in its orderliness, more like a Hollywood version of a military base than the reality Kat was used to. The tents were laid out in strict rows, the ground leveled and cleared. Bright Union Jacks and Scottish Saltires fluttered in the evening breeze.

An MP stopped Kat at the front gate and asked to see her credentials. Understandably, the Brits were fiercely protective of the small patch of colonial comforts they had managed to scrape out of the arid Afghan earth, and the compound was normally off limits to Americans. Kat was hoping her civilian clothes would provide the illusion of clout necessary to talk her way inside.

“I'm here to see the soldiers from C Squadron,” she said confidently, providing as little information as possible. If the MP was going to take her for a civilian OGA, he would have to be properly confused. “We've got some questions about the prisoners they brought into the facility last night.”

The man eyed Kat warily, but she could tell it was all show, that he already knew he had to let her in. “They're in the mess,” he grumbled, indicating a large tent toward the rear of the compound.

Fear and its perks, Kat thought as she headed back along the dirt drive, feeling good about her new role. And suddenly she understood the allure of the Agency, the benefits of being able to go wherever, whenever.

Inside the mess it was fish-and-chips night, the air rich with the smells of real food and real cooking. Unlike the Americans' meals, which were flown in from Germany and then reheated, the food here was prepared by actual human beings.

Kat scanned the crowded tent, her eyes falling on a group of soldiers in the far corner, some of whom she recognized from the flight up to K-2. This was Colin's squadron, but Colin wasn't among them.

Adopting her best OGA swagger, Kat made her way across the mess. “Where's Lieutenant Mitchell?” she snapped.

Several of the men looked up from their dinners, but none of them said anything.

“U.S. intel,” Kat said imperiously. “I've got some questions about one of the detainees he brought in last night.”

“He and Kelso are still out at the salt pit,” one of the troopers sneered.

The salt pit, Kat knew, was the old brickmaking factory on the way to Kabul that civilian intelligence had recently coopted as their own private interrogation facility. Kat had heard plenty of complaints about it from other interrogators since she arrived. In Kat's experience, it wouldn't have been unusual for the Special Forces guys to accompany detainees out to the OGA facility; at Kandahar, special ops and civilian intel had worked hand in hand, going on raids together and even conducting battlefield interrogations. But the trooper's tone told her there was something more going on here.

Kat opened her mouth to ask when Colin was expected back, then thought better of it.

“We'll be sure to pass your message along,” another trooper said, and uneasy laughter erupted from the group.

Yes, Kat thought, there was definitely something wrong.

It was no longer dusk when she reached the main gate and turned back down Disney Drive. The sky was black and cloudless, illuminated by the bare-bulb glare of a thin wedge of moon. There was a live-fire exercise going on across the valley. Large puffs of dust and smoke rose from the distant hills, followed a few seconds later by the delayed thunderclaps of the marines' 155-mm M198 howitzers.

There was no point in going back to her tent now, Kat thought. She could never fall asleep with the howitzers firing. And, even if she did manage it, she was due back in the booths in less than two hours. A catnap would only leave her groggy and pissed off. No, she decided, heading back to the prison facility, she may as well get some work done.