Brian Haig - Man in the middle

So this was a base for Special Operations warriors, which made sense because the CIA and Special Forces, which have always been close, after 9/11 have become as inseparable as a hunter and his favorite fetching dog.

After about a quarter of a mile, we stopped in front of a small compound within the compound-also surrounded by concertina barbed wire, and containing five small squarish buildings, each constructed of rough, reinforced gray concrete, ugly and utilitarian. I saw no signs, no windows, and definitely no smiling people standing by the stoop waving welcome signs.

The Army has an umbilical addiction to signs-even the uniform is a billboard of data-so this was not an Army facility, and the absence of windows suggested that these airless dwellings were either ammunition storage facilities or jails. If you were wondering, by the way, only a fool would place an ammo dump in the middle of a troop compound.

As I dismounted from the rear of the ambulance, Bian approached me and said, "When I was stationed here, I heard stories about this place."

"Tell me about those stories."

"Whenever we got our hands on high-value detainees-HVDs, we called them-we of course reported that up the chain. Often, that same night, a group of serious gentlemen in civilian clothes would show up with transfer orders and spirit them away. We jokingly called this the Ministry of Truth."

As Bian explained this, I kept the corner of my eye on Phyllis, who was leading the sheik and Waterbury past the concertina wire and straight to the first building. She opened the door and the group disappeared inside. She appeared to be at home, and something about the sheik's movements and gestures suggested this wasn't his maiden visit either. Why did this not surprise me? I asked Bian, "CIA operation?"

"I believe the FBI is here as well."

"Are they the prisoners?"

She laughed.

I looked around for a moment, then said, "I'll bet one of these buildings has a bar."

"You know what, Sean? You're like one of those guys marooned in a desert. There's no oasis and there's no f-ing alcohol in a combat zone. Get used to it."

"Wanna bet?" Smart as she was, she was a slow learner-Agency people create their own rules, and I couldn't imagine them spending a year, anywhere, without a gin mill. I said, "First round?"

"You're on." She stuck out a hand and we shook.

I looked around again and asked, "Did you ever see any prisoners return from here?"

"That's part of the rep. Once you land here, you disappear into a black hole. Except Saddam. Word is he spent time at Alpha being wrung dry before he was transferred to Camp Cropper in Baghdad. A lot of the prisoners who come here, I think, eventually end up at Gitmo or are renditioned to their own countries."

Supposedly, prisoners apprehended in Iraq are not subject to rendition. But as I was learning with Ali bin Pacha, exceptions are made, especially when they think nobody's looking.

Also the buildings did not appear expansive enough to hold more than one or, at most, two prisoners apiece. I didn't see a graveyard or a large incinerator, so maybe Bian was right. I said, "We'd better go inside before Phyllis cuts a deal and we end up in cells."

We followed the same path Phyllis took, through the concertina wire and the same doorway into the same building, and ended up inside a cramped, rectangular room with a receptionist behind a gray metal desk, but otherwise devoid of furniture and, more mysteriously, of Phyllis and her playmates. I looked around for another door. None. I wondered if we had entered the malicious lair of Dr. No, and at any moment the sly villain behind the desk would break into an evil cackle, push a button, and the floor would drop out beneath us, revealing a pit of snapping alligators.

The receptionist did not look particularly demonic, but you never know. Actually, he was a nice, earnest-looking sort in a white short-sleeved dress shirt, without tie, who very pleasantly asked, "Can I help you?"

I gave him our names, flashed my Agency ID, and informed him we were part of Ms. Carney's party.

He smiled. "Oh… right." The floor did not drop, and he said, "She instructed me to tell you to wait here. She'll be back up in a minute."

So Bian and I leaned our butts against the wall and cooled our heels. The room was hot and stale, with that pungent, unpleasant odor of damp earth. The young man behind the desk had said "back up"-ergo, there was a hidden stairwell or elevator that led to a subterranean facility, and probably there was a control device on his desk, and for sure there was a gun under the desk for unwelcome visitors. I smiled at him and tried to look welcome.

It was all coming together-an underground jailhouse. Actually, it made sense. No visible footprint, the noise and activity would be muffled, belowground facilities are fairly secure from breakout, or from break-in, and better yet, are largely bombproof. Ironically, the prisoners here were probably in the safest place inside a country they had made incredibly unsafe. I mentioned to Bian, "I'll bet there's a camera inside that light fixture."

She pushed a lock of hair into place. She said, "Smile for the viewing audience."

Why not? I smiled. A by-product of this shadowy war against terrorism has been the emergence of these clandestine detention and interrogation facilities, about which my reaction can best be described as Jekyllish and Hydey. My lawyer side regards them as an abomination of all that the American legal establishment holds dear-transparency, rights of the accused, timely representation and trial, due process, and so forth. And in my soldier's heart, I have absolutely no problem with them.

The truth is, the people incarcerated in these hidden prisons aren't ordinary criminals; in fact, they aren't criminals at all. Nor, in my personal view, are they prisoners of war, because terrorism is not war, it is the incoherent slaughter of innocents. No, these perps are something else entirely, a conspiracy of assassins and mass murderers who obey no rules, who respect no boundaries, neither moral or geographic, in an age when technology affords them the ability to really bring down the house. New games, new stakes-new rules.

I mean, nobody squawked when the tools of law enforcement were fudged and expanded to handle the Mafia, who, comparatively, are just a bunch of quaint fat guys who never got the message about gold chains and leisure suits. At least they have a code of behavior, and the awareness that they can whack themselves to their heart's content, but when they kill cops or innocents, the gloves really come off. For the terrorist, innocence is the target, and deterrence is the need to look around for a softer target.

No, the nature of this war wasn't of our making; it was theirs, and in a conflict such as this, you win or you lose on intelligence. As Bian noted, this isn't a battle for the enemy capital, or for the decisive terrain, or to capture enemy guidons, the traditional measures of victory in war as we knew it; it is a struggle to locate and get the worst assholes off the street, then climb inside their heads and learn who their friends are, and what nefarious schemes are afoot before you learn about it on the evening news.

This doesn't mean the wardens get carte blanche; however, a little isolation and secrecy and some imaginative mind-bending can be worth their weight in human lives.

Anyway, reverting to my lawyer half, I stared into the light fixture and waved my middle finger. Bian laughed.

"Excuse me," I asked the nice young man, "Is there a bar in this compound?"

He looked up and gave me the best news of the day. "Yep."

I smiled at Bian. She gave me the middle finger and said, "I'm shocked."

"And I like scotch." I turned back to him and asked, "Where?"

"Third building back."