Brian Haig - Man in the middle

But the Saudis play their own game in this region, and it goes something like this: We cover our own asses and could care less who stuffs a firecracker up yours. Clearly, the Saudis had an under-the-table treaty of some sort with Al Qaeda, probably involving a covert payoff, and the quid pro quo was that Al Qaeda would stay out of the Saudi sandbox and mess up other people, like us.

Nobody could prove this. But the beheading of the Khobar Towers suspects made it impossible to prove anything, except that nineteen American patriots died without justice. The Saudis believe in burying their embarrassments, literally, and we buried ours, quietly.

Predictably, Waterbury was outraged by my impertinence and informed me, "You're way out of line, Drummond. You'll apologize to the sheik."

"If you can convince me why, maybe I will."

"You're pissing me off. Sheik al-Fayef is an honored guest and has very generously offered his valuable assistance."

Maybe I had misjudged Waterbury. Maybe he wasn't such a bad guy; maybe he was just stupid.

Phyllis cleared her throat and said, "This finger-pointing isn't helpful. Let's see if we can reason our way through this impasse."

If Waterbury was the heavy hitter, Phyllis apparently was sent as the relief pitcher, because she looked at the sheik, then at me, and suggested, "Maybe an alternative arrangement will satisfy everybody's needs and wants."

Waterbury looked unhappy to be losing control of this thing and began to object, before the sheik raised a hand and said, "Please." He looked at Phyllis, "Describe for me… this alternative arrangement?"

I guess I now was calling the shots, because Phyllis bunted that question to me and asked, "What safeguards would satisfy you?"

To tell the truth, I knew from the start that I had no chance of winning this. I could raise obstructions and objections, and make it more painful and time-consuming for all involved. Being a pain in the ass has its satisfactions; in the end, though, I wasn't going to cause any great soul-searching, because the people who ordered this had no souls, just power.

Clearly the big boys in D.C. wanted to avoid taking this case through the Justice Department and up the chain to the Attorney General, because it would eat up time, because actionable intelligence from an interrogation of this nature has a brief shelf life, but mostly because the less people in the know, the less you have to turn into amnesiacs later.

Despite my warning her to stay out of this, Bian butted in. "Why does the rendition have to be genuine?"

Waterbury said, "Shut up."

"But-"

"I said, shut up."

By this point, I think even the sheik seemed to appreciate what the rest of us already knew; Waterbury only opened his mouth to change feet.

The sheik held up a hand and said, "I believe I would prefer to hear about this suggestion."

I thought I understood where Bian was going with this, and on the face of things the idea was very clever; I wished I had thought of it. As I anticipated she would, she said, "I'm suggesting that bin Pacha doesn't need to be rendered. He merely needs to believe he's been turned over."

"Yes, and how would this work?"

"We pump him full of drugs. He'll awaken in a Saudi cell, with Saudi guards, and Saudi interrogators. Sean and I prep him before hand, inform him he's undergoing rendition. I don't care how tough he is. It will scare the crap out of him."

The sheik overlooked this backhanded compliment about his interrogation techniques and nodded thoughtfully.

I slapped on my lawyer hat and quickly offered a few stipulations. "He stays under joint custody. We'll have direct observation and round-the-clock access to his interrogation sessions, and we provide 50 percent of the questions."

Sheik al-Fayef was now stroking his goatee. "And how is this an advantage to me?"

"You know what we know, as we know it," Bian informed him.

I added, "Or you can think of it as avoiding the ugly alternative."

He looked at me. "Alternative?"

I told him, "You can read about it on the front page of the New York Times. I'm not sure what bin Pacha knows that scares you, and I'm not sure you know yourself. But your country has enough of an image problem in America after 9/11. Think about it."

So he thought about it, very briefly, and replied, "I'll grant you your wish."

Turki al-Fayef departed the plane to call his superiors in Riyadh with the news that the old deal had just become the new deal.

Phyllis wanted a word with me, alone. So she and I marooned Bian with her boss, who looked a little frustrated and in the mood to browbeat a subordinate.

The inside of the plane was, as I said, a sauna, and my uniform was pasted to my body. Even Phyllis, who has the physiology of a lizard, sported a light coat of dew on her upper lip.

Neither she nor I said a word as we left the plane, or as we walked together through the hangar and out onto the airfield, where there was a brisk breeze, hot yet refreshing.

Eventually, we were far enough away and I said, not softly, "You screwed us and you betrayed us."

"Harsh words. You look tired. So how are you?"

"Didn't you promise to watch my backside?"

"She's a very attractive woman, don't you think?"

"She's a good soldier."

"And very beautiful, too. Do I sense something developing between you two?"

"I didn't even realize she was female until she walked into a ladies' latrine." I wasn't going to let her change the subject, and I asked, "Why, Phyllis? Why did you cave?"

"Incidentally, you handled Turki brilliantly. He's a tough negotiator. You ran a nice bluff, though you nearly drove it off a cliff." She gave me a long stare and added, "Still, you squeezed a better deal out of him than we got."

"Maybe you didn't push hard enough. Who's 'we'?"

She looked away from me. "Powerful people. You don't need to know their names and I wouldn't tell you anyway."

"Tigerman? Hirschfield? Do those names fit?"

She chose not to answer directly, but did say, "Even three years ago, the Agency could have stood up to the whole lot of them. We've lost so much prestige, clout, and influence since 9/11. Did you know the President is considering a new Director?"

"So what? The old Director will make a bundle off corporate boards and speeches and books. The new Director will learn that he needs you more than you need him. The bureaucracy is forever, and the bureaucracy always prevails."

"I'm not so sure. Washington is changing. The Agency is due for changes also. It has to… and maybe that's not a bad idea."

"Who is Turki al-Fayef?" I asked.

"Turki is the number two or three or four in Saudi intelligence."

"Which one?"

"It depends on how many royal princes decide they want to play spymaster. I've known him for many years, and with Turki around that's all they do: play. It's perfectly harmless."

"But he's not harmless."

"Don't blame him. Turki does what's best for his country, as we do what's best for ours."

"Then hire him. He does it better."

"Stop acting naive, Sean. It doesn't sit well on you."

"Excuse me for thinking we were here to do the right thing."

"How do you know we're not doing the right thing?"

Regarding Phyllis, she's not shameless, but she has that annoying Washington syndrome, a stunning inability to blush, no matter how raw the lie or how awful the embarrassment. I asked, "What does Ali bin Pacha know that's scaring everybody?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. But he's a Saudi, and his own countrymen can handle this better than we."

"I know you don't believe that."

An Air Force C-130 began sprinting down the runway, and she said something, but it was drowned out by the roar of the noisy engines. We stood, sharing a moment in silence, and watched the big plane lift off, and our eyes stayed on it as the pilot began a series of corkscrew maneuvers intended to elude ground-to-air missiles. This place sucked.