Baghdad Central (16 page)
He laughs. “But don't worry, I'm told we're right after them in line.” Khafaji lights another cigarette and laughs too. The more he smokes, the less he has to smell the formaldehyde.
Khafaji shakes the coroner's hand again and is again surprised by its warmth. He writes down Citrone's name on a piece of paper and says, “Let us know if you come across a body matching the description.”
The coroner smiles and says, “I'll be calling you every day, my friend.”
When Khafaji arrives at the stairs, the power goes out. He stands in the darkness, listening to the rustle of living bodies. Footsteps, breath, conversation, even laughter. Then matches striking and the hissing of gas lanterns. Someone offers to lead a small group up the stairwell and out to the lobby. There, Khafaji joins the crowd of people streaming out, leaving the building to its doctors and patients, both those above and those below.
The first time Khafaji was handed a deskful of informants' reports, he was at a complete loss.
“Here's the Baghdad âB' Set,” is all the Colonel told him. “Get to work. I've got meetings in Tashree all afternoon. I want you to brief me on them first thing tomorrow. We've got problems we need to identify.”
“Yes, sir,” Khafaji replied. “Would you like me to look for anything in particular?”
The man squinted at Khafaji while putting on his jacket and cap. “You're supposed to be one of the smart ones.”
“Yes, sir. Is this a complete set?”
“Should be. All I want is for you to tell me what they mean.” He looked at his watch and added, “You've got fourteen hours.”
Khafaji sat reading for the next four hours before he reached the bottom of the pile. He got up and found another pack of cigarettes in his jacket, and sat thinking about what he had just read. The reports were from all over the city, and filled with miscellaneous accounts of treachery, fraud and betrayal. It seemed as if the whole of society needed to be put under watch. But still, there was something wrong. These reports contained only information, but no system and no intelligence. As his colleagues went home for the day, Khafaji sat circling names and words and phrases that
recurred, but still it meant nothing. He called Suheir to explain and she was forgiving. “That's OK, I'll go over to Nidal's. You get your work done and I'll see you as soon as you can come home.”
As Khafaji was saying goodbye, Suheir interrupted him.
“So be content with what God has divided amongst us, for verily, He who allocated the qualities amongst us also knows them better than anyone else / And when righteousness was apportioned amongst the people, He gave us more than our fair⦔
Khafaji didn't have to think about it at all. “Fair share.
And when righteousness was apportioned amongst the people, He gave us more than our fair share
. Labid. I love you, Suheir. I'll be home as soon as I can get there.”
Khafaji sat down with the rest of the reports, determined to go through all of them until he found their pattern. Their rhyme. Their meter.
By the time the Colonel reappeared in the morning, Khafaji was able to show that the importance of the reports wasn't to be found in what they contained, but rather in the way they shed light on how the network was functioning. There were clusters of supposedly disconnected informants producing remarkably similar claims, and others who were connected, but producing disparate reports.
“The latest attempt hit the networks hard, and now they're full of holes.”
“Explain,” the Colonel merely said.
“The holes are like lines of poetry that are missing feet. And then there are entire lines that are missing too, and we need to find out where they've gone.”
The Colonel looked at Khafaji, puzzled.
“What I mean, sir, is that it is not a complete set at all â and that's what's so interesting about it. And we can't know
what they mean until we put them back together.” Khafaji had drawn a chart of the informants, their chains of reporting, and the places in the structure where information was missing or duplicated, or where it had been corrupted.
“I can't tell you what information belongs in the empty spaces. I can only point out that they're there. It's patterns, sir. In poetry, if you know the rhyme and you know the meter, you can make intelligent guesses about pieces that go missing. Each report in this set is like a line, but they were out of order and missing all sorts of feet. First I had to put the lines back into their right order, and then I had to figure out where they were missing pieces. Then I⦔
The Colonel stared as Khafaji talked.
At the cafeteria, one of the Indian men waves to Khafaji from behind the counter. Khafaji walks over and the man smiles and serves him a cup of hot sweet tea. Khafaji thanks him and goes over to an empty table where he sits down by himself. He watches a discussion of an American sport on television as he eats. He follows every word, but can't understand a thing. He finishes quickly, reaches for a cigarette and lights it. He looks around him for an ashtray, but someone shouts, “No smoking! Excuse me â there's no smoking here!”
Embarrassed and angry, Khafaji gets up and walks toward the nearest door. As he walks down the hall, he hears a frantic voice behind him. “Khafaji! Khafaji!”
The assistant is at his arm as he turns. “Citrone called and needs you now. You need to put that out.”
Khafaji throws the butt on the ground and stamps on it and the assistant shakes his head. Then they start quickly down another hall, and a narrow set of stairs. They are almost running, and the assistant speaks in a rushed voice. “They just turned up something at a safe house. Bodies. Citrone was on his way there. He thinks our missing interpreter may be among them. They're holding the place. Crime-scene
protocol â he wants you to see what you can find. A carrier is coming to take you there right now.”
They wait in an alley until a Humvee pulls up. The assistant walks forward, shows his identification and begins talking to the driver. The door opens and a hand motions for Khafaji to get in. There are two black men in the front seat, and one white boy in the back. Khafaji slides into the open seat and straps on his seat belt before they tell him to. Then they are off. From the window, Khafaji watches the Victory Arch. It seems to turn and spin as they drive around it. When they drive closer, he can see the bulging muscles. The forearms grasping giant swords. Khafaji turns to look at his feet, somehow embarrassed.
They depart from a small gate onto Damascus Street. They're speeding toward Mutanabbi, then veer right at Mansur Street. When that ends, they turn right onto 14th of Ramadan. Khafaji never looks up and his companions are pretty quiet. The soldier in the front passenger seat reads out directions and the driver answers him, but in a voice so small Khafaji can't make out a word. The soldier next to him looks out the window the whole time. Though Khafaji looks over at him a few times, he never once sees the man's face. The car is quiet. The traffic thin. They speed.
Khafaji's heart explodes when the car is hit. Not once, but lots of times. At first it sounds like bullets and he imagines the worst. But then he notices that no one else reacts in the slightest. The navigator turns on the stereo. Khafaji peers out the window for the first time and watches as a crowd of boys hurling clods and bottles recedes in their wake. He keeps his eyes on the floor after they turn left at 14th of July Street.
When they hit traffic, Khafaji speaks up. “Mosul Street is easier.” The navigator looks at Khafaji in confusion. Khafaji
looks at the map, and points. “Michigan Avenue, right? It'll be easier.”
Two troop carriers stand at one end to the street. A third blocks off the far end. Khafaji moves to get out, but is stopped by the hand of the soldier who's been sitting next to him. The man shoulders his weapon as he gets out and walks over to the other Humvee parked in front of a long row of villas. Khafaji stares at them.
This could have been my street
.
A brown-skinned sergeant gets out of the other vehicle and the two men talk for a moment. Then the soldier walks back, and waves Khafaji over. Khafaji shakes the sergeant's hand. He is young and friendly, with piercing green eyes. He explains the situation. “Our informants have been telling us about this villa for a couple weeks. Abandoned months ago. Then suddenly men coming through at all hours of the day and night. Jihadis. We wanted to make sure we knew who we were dealing with, so the place was put under round-the-clock surveillance. Yesterday, there was a spike in chatter, and so we decided to go in. They had a loud night in the house last night. Must have been a party!”
He laughs and shakes his head in fatigue. “We waited as long as we could then went in when the first call to prayer went out. Most had already split. By the time we came in, there were only four of them. Two were killed in the gunfight. The other two were pretty badly hurt.”
Khafaji nods and looks around the street again. Not a person in sight. The other man takes out a pack of cigarettes and offers Khafaji one. Khafaji lights both their cigarettes.
“Where is Citrone?” Khafaji finally asks.
“He got called away. He was one of the first to get here, you know. We've seen some shit out here, but nothing like this. These are the bad guys. Kidnapping girls for sex or ransom.
They must have killed their victims last night, but that's not our business. We had our orders to wait until you got here.”
“Where did they take the ones they captured?”
“The PUCs? It looked like they were going to take them to the hospital before sending them to hell. Need anything else? No? We're out of here.”
He shakes Khafaji's hand, slaps the top of his jeep and they drive off. Khafaji looks around and realizes that the other soldiers aren't Americans. It's not even clear if they are soldiers at all. The logo on their troop carrier reads Meteoric Tactical Solutions.
Khafaji turns, and notices the jeep that delivered him has also sped off. As the two jeeps drive away, neighbors begin to come out of their houses.
Khafaji flashes his ID to the armed men at the gate and walks in. He doesn't ask for a tour of the place because he already knows the two-story layout. Men's sitting room, women's sitting room, two bathrooms, a kitchen and then upstairs.
The smell in the front room nearly makes Khafaji vomit. He doesn't have to look hard to know it's coming from the downstairs bathroom. Who knows how many men were staying here when the toilet stopped working? Khafaji lights a cigarette and keeps it perched on his lips to block out the stench. He peeks into the kitchen. Trash cans overflowing with garbage. Piles of plastic bags and plastic Coke bottles on the counters. Carcasses of roast chicken. Pieces of dry bread on the floor. The refrigerator wide open. Nothing in the cupboards. A shell of a house.
If the living room looks like a filthy barracks it's because that's what it was. Blankets and clothes strewn across old threadbare couches and the floor. Khafaji walks through a dining room that is filled with dirty cots. More than a dozen
in all. A single bare light bulb. A quick check on the back patio tells nothing. The smell in the bathroom makes Khafaji avoid it completely. He turns toward the stairs, but pauses at the open door. He opens it and shuts it and looks closely at the unusual configuration of thick deadbolts.
Could be locked on both sides
. Khafaji taps on the thick metal and wonders why such a heavy door was put here.
Before he even reaches the landing on the second floor, he can hear the flies. From below a voice calls out, “Hello there, Hajji! Come here! Arms up and easy.”
Khafaji turns to see a blond man with a saccharine smile. His puffy face stuffed under a tight blue beret. His puffy chest stuffed into a black T-shirt.
“This is a closed military zone, Hajji. Arms up. That's right. Easy now.” The man's accent is peculiar. English, but not English. “What are you doing here?”
He fingers the identity badge hanging around Khafaji's neck.
“What's this?” He removes it, and holds the picture up next to Khafaji's face. Khafaji's smile has disappeared.
“Listen. Do you speak English?”
“Do you?”
The man stops and takes a step back. “Whoa now, Hajji.” He looks at Khafaji's ID again, then begins to speak deliberately slowly. As if Khafaji were a child. “You're down range, Hajji. This area is secure, as you can see. And then suddenly you show up. What the hell are you doing?”
“I was sent here to investigate.”
“You need to explain, Hajji â I don't know about this.”
“I was explaining. If you can't understand my English, talk to Citrone.” For the next fifteen minutes, Khafaji gets to know his new cigarettes.
“â¦well, you can understand why we needed to ask. We don't even know yet if the place is secure. We knew you were sending someone, but we weren't expecting natives.”
“⦔
He looks Khafaji over from head to toe, then turns away. “Well then, don't send them out in civvies.”
“⦔
“I'll let him get on with it.”