The Prisoner of Guantanamo (25 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

C
AMP
I
GUANA WAS
a source of embarrassment in a place that otherwise offered no apologies. It was a white bungalow on a small grassy lawn, perched atop a rocky bluff and surrounded by a single line of fencing. Unlike the barrier around Camp Delta, this one was a mere twelve feet high, with neither razor wire nor guard towers.

It was the prisoners themselves who were controversial—three Afghan boys, ages twelve through fourteen when they first arrived. Since then, each had spent a birthday in captivity.

General Trabert still referred to them publicly as “juvenile enemy combatants,” but the MPs who attended to their daily needs simply called them “the boys,” and they had become an international cause célèbre among Gitmo's critics.

As a result, Camp Iguana was now a regular stop on Gitmo media tours, so the authorities could show off the spotless, roomy, and air-conditioned quarters. The boys themselves were always hustled away to another room, kept silently out of sight while reporters inspected the bedrooms and the common area.

One of the mandatory parts of the tour was a twenty-foot-long viewing hole that the authorities had cut into the fenceline's green mesh. This gave the boys a gull's-eye view of the sea, and it was the possibilities of that view that intrigued Falk.

By showing up uninvited, he found it a little harder to get inside than the tour groups did. An MP retrieved a Staff Sergeant Wallace, who wasn't impressed by Falk's Bureau ID.

“The boys are doing a math lesson,” he said. “We could set up a time for tomorrow.”

“I'm in kind of a hurry.”

“Maybe they are, too.”

As if any prisoner at Gitmo were in a hurry. Falk raised his eyebrows, and Wallace seemed to realize the folly of his statement.

“Sorry, it's just that we get a lot of requests, and I'm kind of protective.”

“Understood,” Falk said. “This won't take long.”

When Wallace wasn't doing Reserve duty, he was a teacher. In middle school, no less, and he had discovered that his wards here had many of the same quirks, anxieties, and ephemeral moods as his students back home, except theirs also came with the emotional freight of war and imprisonment.

“Let me get 'em squared away,” Wallace said. “They should probably be in their rooms while we talk.”

A minute or two later the MP ushered him inside. The door opened onto a small kitchen and a smaller TV room with a couch and coffee table.

“They got cable?”

Wallace smiled.

“I wish. Videos only.”

There was a stack of VHS tapes on the TV table.
National Geographic
fare, mostly, plus a couple of movies—
Old Yeller
and
White Fang.
Nature stuff with leafy trees, the great outdoors, and very few people. A chessboard with a game in progress was open on the coffee table. Over in a corner was a boxed Parcheesi set, and stacked at the end of the couch were three notepads and math textbooks. The only other book in sight was a copy of
Curious George
in a language that looked like Pashto.

A short hallway led to their bedrooms and the bath. None of those rooms had doors, presumably to reduce the chances of suicide. Now that would be embarrassing.

A brown face poked out from one of the bedrooms, with large dark eyes and an inquisitive stare. The face quickly darted back inside when the boy saw Falk watching him. It was hard to imagine that face on anyone toting an AK-47 or scuttling for cover behind some dusty boulder in the Afghan hills, but he knew it happened often enough.

“What do you need?” Wallace asked. Before Falk could answer, a kid's voice piped up from down the hall.

“Meester Wallace, please?” Timid, a supplication more than a question.

“Hold on a sec,” Wallace said to Falk. “I'll be right back.”

Falk took the opportunity to snoop a little more. He stepped into the small kitchen, which was spotless except for the remains of the evening meal on four stacked trays in the sink. Wallace must have eaten with them. Falk opened the refrigerator and saw cartons of juice and milk, a chocolate bar, a few carrot sticks, and a packet of beef jerky.

“Hungry?” Wallace asked in an edgy voice. Falk hadn't heard him return.

“No. Just curious.”

“Everyone is,” he said, in a weary tone. “They're just kids, really. No matter what they might have been when they got here.”

“I'm sure you're right. Everything okay back there?”

“Just a homework question.”

Falk nodded toward the gleaming white stove.

“They cook their own meals?”

“It's not plugged in. Aesthetic purposes only.” A line right out of the media tour, no doubt. But it was an odd touch, all the same. All that trouble to haul an oven here, just to give the place an extra measure of domesticity. Or maybe it had been here all along.

“So how 'bout you get to the point?” Wallace said.

“You heard about the soldier's disappearance, I guess. From down on Windmill Beach?”

“Christ, that again? Didn't the captain get enough?”

“The captain?”

“The security guy.”

“Captain Van Meter?”

“That's him. Barged in like Sergeant Hulk. Scared the boys half to death. Sat on their beds and grilled 'em for half an hour. Of course, I lost it and got everybody even more upset. So forget it, no way we're covering that ground again.”

“Sorry. I had no idea.”

“Don't you guys talk to each other?”

“There's a question over jurisdiction. We're not exactly sharing notes.”

Wallace shook his head.

“Just like every other goddamn thing down here. Not that I should be using that language in front of the boys. You should've seen the catfights over how much to pump 'em. How long to keep 'em. Have you ever tried requisitioning textbooks through the Pentagon? I finally just went and borrowed a couple from the school up on the base. Unbelievable. But you can get what you need from Captain Van Meter.”

“It's not that easy, I'm afraid.”

“It never is.”

“Look. I don't even need to bother the boys. I'm just wondering if any of them saw anything that night.”

“They're pretty much under lock and key after dark.”

“Don't they have windows?”

He nodded.

“Can't see the beach from them, though. Not with all the screening on the fence. You only see the horizon, way out at sea. And at night, nothing.”

“So all three would've been indoors?”

“That's what they told Captain What's-his-name, and that's what they'd tell you.”

“Then I'll be on my way. Mind if I have a quick look outside first?”

“Whatever gets you out of our hair.”

Wallace walked him to the door, and then turned. When he spoke next he had lowered his voice, as if he didn't want the boys to hear. “Didn't mean to bite your head off. It's just that one of the boys had bad dreams for two nights after that asshole came by, and I don't want an encore. Shakeel was the biggest head case to begin with, but with counseling he's made a lot of progress. Would hate to see it come to nothing.”

“You should tell the general.”

Wallace shook his head. Maybe he had already tried.

“C'mon, I'll show you the grounds of the estate.”

The lawn out back was a patch of brown grass about fifteen by twenty-five feet, with a picnic table and a small soccer goal at one end. An American football lay on the ground.

“They ever use that?”

“They throw it around. They're pretty good. They'd rather play soccer, but the ball went over the fence a few days ago.”

“Ah. More requisitioning.”

“You got it.”

As advertised, there was a long cutaway across the mesh. The view of the sea was spectacular.

“No wonder they like it out here.”

“It's why they have all those nature videos. They can't learn enough about the ocean, fish, anything to do with the sea. They'd never even seen an ocean before they got here.”

What a strange place for expanding your horizons. He supposed if they ever got home, the experience might actually do them some good. Falk strolled over for a closer look. Only by putting your face up to the fence could you see Windmill Beach. And after dark, like Wallace said, you probably saw nothing. They would have been in their rooms anyway. A waste of time for him to have come, in other words.

“Okay, that'll do it. Sorry to be a bother.”

“No problem,” Wallace said. They walked toward the exit.

“They going home anytime soon?”

“There's been talk. And lots of paperwork. But so far that's all it's been.”

Falk drove back past Camp America and the prison, clearing the checkpoint, then heading for home. It was dusk, and a sense of desolation settled in as he navigated the curves. On impulse, he decided to swing by Pam's apartment on Windward Loop. At the very least he would find out what kind of attention they were paying her. With luck she would be looking out her window and see him. Yet another similarity to a high school romance, he supposed. The lovelorn boy cruising the street of his dreams.

The neighborhood was quiet, and Falk approached as slowly as possible, without attracting too much attention. A Humvee was parked out front, and there was a sentry by the door. Even though he knew she was under house arrest, the extra security dismayed him. She hadn't even been charged with a crime. Was all this just to keep him away? What if someone else visited? Van Meter could probably waltz right in. And what about Bo? What were the rules for him, and how had their one visit gone in his absence? He wondered how her roommates had reacted. Maybe they were still one big happy family, the usual sorority house atmosphere, except with an extra touch of sternness to ensure that their dates dropped them off on time. No more stolen kisses on the porch.

He resisted the urge to stop and drove on through to Sherman Avenue, turning left to loop back toward Iguana Terrace. In the mood he was in he might as well stop at the Tiki Bar, if only to seek out some company. With a few beers maybe he would sleep easier. If he was lucky the gossips wouldn't be out in force.

The bar was hopping. The arrests may have damaged morale, but they hadn't killed anyone's thirst. Falk decided to go with something stronger for a change and ordered a gin and tonic. It was well watered, so he soon returned for another, loitering at the bar while scanning the crowd for a familiar face.

Seeing none, he picked up a stray copy of
The Wire
from a barstool. The movie schedule was always worth checking, but otherwise the rag was worthless. He was mildly surprised to see a small story inside about the arrival of Fowler's team. The official line presented by the public affairs officer who had written the story was that the team was here “to evaluate the security and efficiency of current J-DOG and JIG operations.” The story urged everyone “to offer all possible assistance as they fulfill their important duties.” Blah blah blah. Next to it was their picture, all three of them squinting into the sun like golfers waiting for the last member of the foursome. Bo stood slightly apart from the others.

The only coverage of Sergeant Ludwig's disappearance was a brief story on the memorial service Falk had missed. It said Ludwig had drowned during a late-night swim from Windmill Beach.

He was rolling up the copy to take back to the house when he was distracted by some noisy new arrivals, led by a couple of MPs still in uniform. One gave him an odd look, nodding in recognition, and then whispered something to his buddies.

Great, Falk thought. Just what he hadn't wanted. Now the guy was walking toward him, beer in hand and nodding again.

“You were just over at Iguana, right? The FBI guy?”

“How'd you know?”

“I was in the back with the boys. Saw you out the window when you and Wallace went for a walk. I got off shift right after you left.”

“Your sergeant's pretty protective.”

“He's a good man. And they're good kids, really. Deserved better than being kidnapped by the Taliban and having an AK put in their hands. Hard to imagine, isn't it?”

“Yeah, well. That's war in their part of the world, I guess.”

“Ain't it the truth.”

Neither of them said a word for a while, and Falk figured the guy was about to head back to his friends. Instead he lingered awkwardly, looking down at his feet while peeling at the label on his beer.

“So Wallace said you weren't working with that other guy, Van Meter.”

“That's right.”

“Some kind of jurisdictional snafu?”

“Something like that.” Falk shrugged, trying not to lie any more than he had to.

“Well, don't ever tell Wallace I said so, but it's probably my fault that asshole came around to begin with.”

“How so?”

The MP looked around warily. Falk, paying closer attention now, saw that he looked to be about nineteen, only four years older than the oldest kid at Iguana. Children watching children, all of them far from home.

“Maybe we shouldn't talk about it here,” the soldier said.

“C'mon.” Falk shook the ice in his empty glass. “Let me freshen this, then we'll go for a walk.”

The kid went to tell his friends while Falk ordered a third gin. Then the two of them strolled off past the tables toward the water, down a small slope to a narrow floating dock where pleasure boats sometimes pulled in. A runabout droned past offshore in the deepening darkness, headed for the marina with its green and red running lights on. The dock bobbed up and down on the waves of its wake, groaning against the pilings.

This was a convenient getaway for the bar crowd at times. For those who felt a sudden pang of homesickness between drinks, it was a refuge for collecting yourself before rejoining the gang. It also served as a testing ground for men and women contemplating pairing off for the evening, a place to see how things went with a little privacy. Pam and Falk had come here the night she first bought him a beer, a memory that put a small stab through his chest. He thought of her locked in her house, grounded without privileges, all because her bad boyfriend had somehow pissed off the teachers.