Brian Haig - Man in the middle

We walked for a distance in silence. A solitary runner in battle dress trousers and brown desert boots, off to our left, was jogging laps around a building on the airfield, and he drew both of our eyes. His brown Army T-shirt was soaked with dark sweat, his chest heaved with exertion, and he continued to place one foot in front of another, running in endless circles. He and I had a lot in common; but he and this war had even more in common. Phyllis dabbed her upper lip with a hankie and commented, "This is such a miserably hot and complicated place for a war, don't you think?"

"I don't recall any wars in good places."

"I recall better wars. Less convoluted ones." In a rare moment of philosophizing, she said a little sadly, "All wars have an ugly underbelly to them. The people who fight those clandestine battles are never invited to the ticker-tape parades, and afterward you won't find them bellying up to the bar of VFW lodges, bragging about their battles."

Moving back to the topic at hand, I observed, "At least we will now know what bin Pacha tells the Saudis."

She smiled. "We would've known anyway."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you think you're the only smart person in the room? Before bin Pacha's wound was closed, Enzenauer embedded an electronic device beneath his skin. Mr. bin Pacha is already on the air and broadcasting."

I should've been surprised by this revelation, yet for some reason, I wasn't.

I observed the sheik, off in the distance, with his robes aflutter, scurrying across the airfield, back into the hangar and up the airplane steps, without the slightest clue how completely out of his fucking league he was.

I took Phyllis's elbow and guided her back to the hangar. We walked up the steps to the plane and, just at the moment Phyllis stepped through the doorway, I mentioned, "By the way, I doubled the pay for Eric and his team."

If nothing else, I would always have the memory of her expression.

We reconvened and the next few minutes were spent hashing out the logistics, details, and timing of Ali bin Pacha's interrogation. This whole conversation had a rushed and surreal quality, which is usually the case when the room stinks of guilt.

For Bian, and for me, it felt like being rotated on a barbecue spit.

In return for this "small favor you are providing," Turki promised to provide us "a very illuminating file" his intelligence service had on Ali bin Pacha. By inference, bin Pacha had been a target of interest to the Saudis for a long time. I already suspected this, of course, though it was nice to have it confirmed. Then again, the file we received would look like Mom's old coupon book after a busy day at the mall; nothing but holes and ragged edges, a remnant of the mighty file it once had been. He didn't say this; he didn't need to.

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."