Eric Maddox: Mission: Black List #1

The instant he saw it, Basim leapt up and backed into the corner, as far away from the powerful Hamaya as he could get. He gestured frantically for Muhammad Ibrahim to be taken away. There was a look of stark terror on his face. I gestured to the guard, and when he had taken the prisoner out of sight, I turned to Basim.

“Is that him?” I asked.

Basim just nodded. He was sobbing and muttering under his breath.

John, listening to the driver, smiled. “He thinks you are one bad motherfucker, Eric,” he translated.

I looked at Basim, trembling and tear-stained. Our eyes met as he said something else. “You are close,” John translated. “You are so close.”

“Thank him for me,” I replied. “Thank him for his help.” I reached out and we shook hands. It was the last time I ever saw Basim Latif.

It was just after 0500. The admiral’s plane would be leaving at 0800, but Lee and I had been told to be at the flight line at 0700. That gave me two hours to interrogate Muhammad Ibrahim. I may have been in the zone, but this was a man who, I believed, reported directly to Saddam. He would have a lot of secrets to hide and a lot of incentive to hide them. I had my work cut out for me.

I took Basim, Muhammad Khudayr, and the other detainees back to their cells. I wasn’t going to use them to convince or manipulate this prisoner into talking. This time it was just going to be Muhammad Ibrahim and me. I would be facing the man I considered to be the second most valuable target in Iraq, and I had one hundred and twenty minutes to find out what he knew. I could go in one of two directions. I could try to work down the link diagram and get the locations of the men who followed his orders, all the brothers and cousins and friends who made up his insurgent network. Or I could move up the last rung of the ladder to the man who gave orders to Muhammad Ibrahim. I didn’t think twice. I’d never have this opportunity again. I was going to swing for the fence.

“My name is Eric,” I told the prisoner as we sat face-to-face. “I’ve been looking for you a long time, Muhammad Ibrahim. I need you to listen to me very carefully. You and I will be talking about just one thing: the exact location of Saddam Hussein.”

He looked from me to John and back again. Then he smiled, exposing his tobacco-stained teeth. “I don’t know where he is,” he said.

“You know exactly where he is. I know you do. That’s why I’ve been looking for you. That’s why I’ve gone after your entire family. That’s why I’ve brought in every one of your friends. I haven’t been looking for Saddam. I have been looking for the man who is going to take me to Saddam. That man is you.”

“You give me too much credit,” he replied, the smile still on his face.

“I’m not the one giving you the credit. Everyone I’ve talked to gives you the credit. They all say that it’s you who’s running the insurgency. They tell me that you are a very important person, very well respected and very much feared. It’s because of that respect and fear that Saddam picked you to lead his insurgency. They tell me that you were the one that handed out Saddam’s money. They tell that you have men in Samarra and Fallujah. They tell me that Radman worked directly for you.”

“Where is Radman?” he asked. I knew that he was testing me. He wanted to find out the limits of my information. Would I tell him the truth or try to bluff him?

“Radman is dead,” I told him.

He didn’t seem surprised. Instead he sat staring at me, waiting to see what I would do next.

“Now that I have you, I’m going to go after the rest of your family,” I continued. “I will go after every brother, son, cousin, and nephew you have. You are about to bring down hell on your family and it won’t be over until we find Saddam. If you don’t tell me where he is, maybe they will. You can stop that right now. Give me Saddam and I stop hunting them.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said contemptuously.

“Look at me and listen carefully. You will give me Saddam. When you do I will allow you to leave here a free man. I will do that because you have given me the most wanted man in the world. When that happens, I will help you. Until that happens, I can’t help you. There is only one thing you need to think about and that’s how you will be able to go home. I’m the only one who can make that happen.”

“Even if I knew where Saddam was and if I took you to him, they would know it. They would kill my family. You could not stop them.”

For the first time, the prisoner was giving me a glimpse of what his terms for talking might be. He wanted protection for himself and his family. We had gone from outright denial to conditional cooperation. If he knew where Saddam was. If he took us to him. That one little word made all the difference.

“Who are ‘they,’ Muhammad Ibrahim?” I asked. “Who’s going to come after you when Saddam is gone? You are running his insurgency. Without you, Saddam has no power. Those men who are loyal to him will see that. They will stop fighting. They will respect and fear you even more because you have brought him down. Listen to me. This country is going to be rebuilt from the ground up. The old regime will never give up as long as Saddam is still out there. When we capture him, with or without your cooperation, they will know that it’s all over. They’ll give up the struggle. You can go home. Your family will be safe. Iraq will have a new beginning.”

As the minutes ticked down, I expanded on the vision of the nation free from Saddam. At regular intervals he would try to interrupt. He couldn’t help me, he insisted. He didn’t know where Saddam was hiding. But I just kept at it. I hammered home the fear and danger that existed for him, his family and his country if Saddam weren’t captured. Then I contrasted it with the safety and security they would enjoy if the dictator were run to ground. I made it as personal as I could. It was a matter of duty, I told him. He had a responsibility to his family and to Iraq. The old rule of terror and intimidation was over. A new world was coming. He could help to make that happen. And in the process he would guarantee the future of the entire Al-Muslit clan.

It was nearly 0645. “If you don’t help me, Muhammad,” I told him, “I can’t help you. The only life your family will ever know is being on the run. They will be fugitives and outlaws. And your country will be torn apart. It’s up to you.”

If anything I was saying got through, he didn’t let me know. He just stared at me without expression. Without an outward sign, I had no idea if he was even close to breaking. But I was surer than ever that, if he wanted to, he could take me to Saddam.

Lee came to the door and silently tapped his wristwatch. It was time to go. “Muhammad,” I said, “I am going to put you back into your cell. No one is going to come to talk to you again. You are going to be taken away to spend the rest of your life in a dark prison by yourself. Your family is going to be hunted like animals. Saddam can’t help them. No one can help them, except you, right here, right know. Now that we have captured you, you are of no use to Saddam. He will not help you and he won’t take care of your family. This is your only chance to help them.”

I waited for him to respond. He just glared at me.

“You have one way out,” I said, standing up and signaling to John that the interrogation was over. “You know what that way is. When you are back in your cell, think hard. Think about your family. Think about your country. Then, when you change your mind and decide to take me to Saddam, I want you to bang on your cell door. Do it as loud as you can, otherwise I’m not going to hear you. And if I don’t hear you, you will never leave that room a free man. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”