Brian Haig - Man in the middle

Air Force people are actually misplaced civilians, loose, jocular, with manners more befitting a college fraternity than an armed service. Army people, on the other hand, tend to exemplify the military mind-set, totally tightassed about trivial minutiae, and really into the yes sir/no sir funny business. So, as much as Air Force types grate on Army people, I can only imagine how they view us. Anyway, the young lady in question stopped swiping her nails for a moment and offered me one of those synthetic airline smiles. "Sure."

"I'm supposed to meet a friend here. We seem to have misplaced each other."

"Well… that can happen."

"Her name's Bian Tran… T-R-A-N. I was wondering if she caught an earlier flight."

"Hold on." She shifted her attention back to the computer, and I held my breath as she punched in Bian's name, and then said, "Wow… did you two get your signals crossed."

If only she knew.

"She flew out at eleven this morning," she continued. "She's long gone."

Gone, perhaps. But not abducted. Not dead. And not forgotten- at least not by me. What had been a suspicion, an ugly theory, now was a confirmed fact. Not a surprise, though.

The right and proper thing to do was immediately notify Phyllis about my suspicions and seek her instructions. But Sean Drummond wasn't in the mood to do that. Phyllis was playing her own game, and I still wasn't sure what that game was called. No, I did not trust her, and I definitely did not want to appoint her judge and jury. Besides, what could she, or what could the Agency do that Sean Drummond could not do?

Well, an all-out manhunt was one possibility. Except the law enforcement community would never move on that without first demanding a valid legal justification from the Agency. And Phyllis would never do that, because exposing what Bian had been doing would also expose what the Agency had been doing, which would be like grabbing a shark's fin to save yourself from drowning-only the shark goes home happy.

Which left option two, termination, which with these people means losing a little more than just your job. Certainly, the stakes were high enough. Plus, Bian already was listed on Army rolls as missing in action and presumed to be in the hands of murderous terrorists, so it was really convenient for everybody. But would Phyllis do that? Phrased differently, why wouldn't Phyllis do that? Could I live with myself if I gambled no and yes happened?

Besides, for me this had become personal. I still had no idea what was really going on, but I knew this: Phyllis and Bian had both used me as a pawn for their own ends. Right now they both thought I was still Stupid Sean, totally clueless and in the dark. Wrong. I was now Totally Pissed-Off Sean. I was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed me-which it might.

So I thought back to what the young airman had just told me. Bian had caught an eleven o'clock flight. Tirey, his handpicked crew, and I had entered Charabi's Green Zone office at nine, and we exited with our tails between our legs some thirty minutes later. An hour and a half after that, Bian climbed on an airplane and blew town. Was there a coincidence? Or if I asked the same question differently, was there a connection between our raid on Charabi's office and Bian's decision to fly the coop? I don't particularly believe in coincidences, incidentally.

What I needed to do now was to reconstruct her actions, to work backward and consider what had occurred, to start at Z and find my way back to A. Because my only hope of finding Bian, and of stopping her, was by understanding what she had done. And from there, with a fertile imagination and a little mental elbow grease, how and why.

So, what was Z? Well, that would be the odd look the blonde female reporter gave me as we exited Charabi's office. I had never seen her before-I was sure of it-so it wasn't that she recognized my face, per se; it was the Drummond on my nametag that was familiar to her, because whoever had tipped her off about our raid on Mahmoud Charabi's office had also informed her that I would be there.

And I would bet that if I could go back and have a word with that reporter-if I could make her breach her journalistic omerta code- she would confirm that her source was Bian Tran.

And if I stepped back from that moment a few hours more in time, to earlier that morning, I would bet as well that Bian was that mysterious voice who, speaking Arabic, had called and anonymously alerted the MP Operations Center to the location of an abandoned and bloodstained Toyota SUV.

And earlier, there was that moment in the dining facility when Bian had insisted on driving alone to Baghdad, and then, despite orders, chose to depart without me.

Right. She had to be alone to stage her own ambush and kidnapping, and then to disappear into the streets she knew so well. She was a military cop, and she knew how abandoned U.S. military vehicles are processed and handled. So she deliberately planted the necessary documents to lead the MPs to Camp Alpha, as well as a bloody clue on the dashboard that would lead Sean Drummond straight to Mahmoud Charabi.

I wondered if she had found a concealed spot to observe us as we entered Charabi's office. Probably she did. I would.

But everything-her plan and her escape-depended on first creating, then sustaining and shielding the misbelief that she had been kidnapped. Which explained, I thought, what she had been doing during the days she supposedly was trysting with Mark in Baghdad- locating an AK-47 automatic rifle to shoot holes in her SUV, filling a medic's bag with her own blood, which she could splatter around the cab of the SUV, and scoping out where she would leave the ambushed SUV-arranging both the pantomime of her disappearance and the logistics for her escape.

"Excuse me…" the airman said, "I asked, is there something else?"

"Uh… where will she land?"

"Went to-" she again examined the screen, "-Dover Air Force Base."

"Thanks." I picked up my bag and shoved off to Gate 6 for my flight.

Not only had Bian taken a military flight, she had even used her own name on the manifest. This was so in-your-face, I should've been amazed. I wasn't, though-that's why I had asked. She was confident that she had fooled us all, and she knew that nobody was going to cross-check the flight manifest for a soldier who only that morning was listed on Army rolls as MIA. But this suggested more than confidence, this suggested a lady in a hurry.

As the MP at the terminal gate checked my orders I checked my watch. My partner had a ten-hour head start on me. But she would land at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, from where it would require two or, with luck and/or typical Washington traffic, possibly three more hours to drive to D.C. My flight would land at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, only thirty minutes from D.C.

I would cut her lead by at least two hours. No longer would I mischaracterize Bian Tran, nor would I underestimate her. Still, I had only a dim idea what was going on here, and I wasn't sure what she had planned next, or even if she had more plans.

I knew where to look, though.

We arrived at Andrews Air Force Base without my plane experiencing a mysterious and unfortunate midair mishap. Nor did I see a CIA welcoming committee to help me find my way to Langley. Phyllis was slipping.

Getting a taxi, even with two hundred unruly and ambitious soldiers in competition, was faster than you can say abuse of rank.

The instant the first cab pulled up to the guest terminal, I stepped forward and bullied a poor private out of the back, leaving two hundred mutinous soldiers in my wake.

A helpful steward on the plane had kindly recharged my cell phone, and I made two quick calls, first to a person who confirmed what I had already guessed, and second to a person who answered a few simple questions regarding my hypothesis. Then I told the driver where to take me.