Brian Haig - Man in the middle

Solving a closed-room mystery, after all-especially with abundant forensic evidence-is no more challenging than tying a hangman's knot. But putting a name to the killer would look good on paper, at least. Everybody was regretful, embarrassed, and uptight. A high-value detainee had been whacked under their noses, in their own ultra-high-security prison. This isn't supposed to happen.

When the Feds were finally bored with taking my statement, Tirey informed me that Phyllis wanted to see me in the observation room.

I shut the door behind me as I entered, and I found Phyllis and Bian alone, seated side by side at the conference table, sipping pale Iraqi tea and enjoying an amiable chat, the topic of which was not bin Pacha, not this case, not even Iraq. At the moment I entered, in fact, Phyllis was informing Bian, "… incredible shoe sale, twice a year at Nordstrom. The best brands. Usually about half off."

To which Bian had replied, "I'll be sure to watch for it."

I mean, you forget these are women, with a life outside of spying and soldiering, with feminine interests, quotidian things like shopping, cooking, knitting. Somebody get me a gun.

I said, "Excuse me," before we were all sharing recipes and trading reviews of Danielle Steel's lastest novel.

Phyllis shot me an annoyed look. "In a moment." She handed Bian a wallet-size photograph. "I appreciate your sharing this with me. He's a most attractive young officer."

The picture was Magnificent Mark, of course. I watched Bian tuck it gingerly inside her wallet. She smiled at Phyllis. "He's a great guy. I'm very lucky."

I cleared my throat. "Is this an inconvenient moment? I mean, our prisoner was just murdered, this case is completely blown, and I want to go home."

Phyllis massaged her temples. "We're all upset, Sean. Outrage won't help."

"What will help? New shoes?"

"We were waiting for you, so Bian and I decided to use the opportunity to become better acquainted."

Bian said to me, "Besides, it's not complicated-al-Fayef played us for idiots."

"We are idiots."

Phyllis awarded me a hard stare, no doubt regretting her stupid "maverick and misfit" management theory. Despite losing arguably the most valuable prisoner of the war since Saddam, she appeared cool and collected, another day at the office, another blown operation. But, after all, the Agency had suffered so many setbacks and embarrassments since September 10, 2001, that I suppose you either respond with studied indifference or you eat a bullet. She said to me very quietly, "We are not idiots. But in retrospect, yes… we should perhaps have been more vigilant when he was so agreeable about forgoing rendition."

No perhaps about it, lady.

She looked at me and said, "You were the only one who asked why there were no Americans on the cellblock. Why? Did you anticipate something like this?"

She did not add, "Because we all were blind to this possibility, including a guy named Drummond." But that was understood. "No," I admitted, and added, "I was operating on my general distrust of Saudis."

"We all let down our guard," commented Bian. "In my view, we were all fooled… and we all share responsibility."

Right. But the board of review wasn't going to see it that way- when it's pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey time, there's only one dart, and they shove it up only one ass. But why bring that up?

Phyllis, to her credit, did say, "It's my responsibility."

I asked, "Are you the senior officer in the facility?"

"Technically, that would be Tirey. But this was my operation."

"I thought Waterbury was in charge. Speaking of which, where is the golden boy?"

"Gone." She gave me a faint smile. "A few minutes after bin Pacha was shot, he remembered he had an urgent appointment with somebody in Baghdad."

I smiled back. In other words, the moment the poop hit the fan, his feet hit the floor. And by now I was sure he had called his buds back in Washington and pointed the finger for this screwup at Phyllis. To err is indeed human, but to blame others is the mark of a promising political appointee.

We all knew, though, that the parties who ultimately were responsible were the power brokers back in D.C. who ordered Phyllis to cooperate with the Saudis in the first place and, de facto, set this chain of events in motion. But if you believe any blame was going to fall in their exalted direction you've never held a job in the federal government.

Of course, the guiltiest party was whoever tipped off the Saudis to bin Pacha's impending capture in the first place. This was the name on Ali bin Pacha's death warrant, and this was the guy I really wanted to meet.

I asked, "What was al-Fayef keeping us from finding out?"

Bian looked at Phyllis and suggested, "Maybe bin Pacha and/or Zarqawi have an arrangement with his intelligence service? Maybe he's protecting Zarqawi?"

So Phyllis spent a few moments verbally hashing this idea, essentially giving it short shrift, because Zarqawi now was hooked up with Al Qaeda, and Osama had already added the Saudi royal family to his list of people to fuck with. I wasn't so sure about this, but she concluded, "The Saudis may once have entertained notions that they could accommodate bin Laden, but now they know he's a mortal enemy. And I'm sure they've figured out that after Zarqawi's work in Iraq is done, he and his people are coming after them next."

This made sense, but who knows? There were so many players with their fingers in Iraq, I wasn't even sure all the players even knew they were players. Like some huge sex orgy in a dark room, it was impossible to know who was screwing whom, who was being screwed by whom, and who wanted to screw whom-but it doesn't matter anyway because it all changes every few minutes.

Shifting to a topic we could get our arms around, I asked Phyllis, "Was the killer identified?"

"Yes. A sergeant in the security service. Abu Habbibi by name. Acting alone."

"All five of those guards were pointing weapons at us. He wasn't alone."

"Tell me something I don't know, Sean."

"That's the problem. I don't know what you don't know."

She smiled, but it had a hard edge.

I said with some understatement, "I hope you confronted al-Fayef about this."

"We talked."

"And…?"

"He was shocked. He claimed ignorance. He swore he had no inkling this would happen."

"He's lying."

"I know he's lying. At least he had the good manners to make it a well-constructed lie."

"Meaning what?"

"He called his headquarters for a background check on Sergeant Habbibi. It turns out the man's parents died in an Al Qaeda streetside bombing about six months ago. This offers a compelling motive for murder-revenge."

Bian and I exchanged amazed looks. This was the same cooked-up pretense she had contrived and tried out on Tirey only an hour earlier. It hadn't worked then, and was even less persuasive now. Bian remarked, "What a coincidence."

This irony sailed over Phyllis's head, and she replied, "I called our station chief in Jidda. The story was in the Saudi newspapers. Habbibi's parents went out shopping, they parked in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their body parts were scattered across two city blocks."

Bian conceded, "Even if it is true, it only explains why he was chosen as the executioner."

Phyllis smiled. "Now you're getting it." She looked at me and said, "Tell me everything you saw. Everything."

I was beginning to feel like a M*A*S*H rerun. But I pushed mental rewind and went through everything, from the moment bin Pacha awoke, through the mist of red spray that blew out the side of his head.

I finished my account and Phyllis considered it a moment. She remarked, "A conversation? You're sure?"

I nodded. "I'm sure. He may have been talking to himself, but it looked like he was conversing with somebody. The sound from the video was muted, as you know. No recording was made."