CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The alarm went off at 2:30 p.m. and I awoke from my nap. I walked to the rear of the plane, back to the master suite, where Bian was asleep on the big bed, and I awoke her as well.

We both used the bathrooms to dash cold water on our faces and brush our teeth, and then we reconvened in the galley. We brewed a large pot of coffee, poured peanuts and trail mix into a large bowl, and then moved to the conference room, where we settled in to await the arrival of Phyllis and Adolf Waterbury.

The few hours of sleep seemed to agree with Bian, and her mood had brightened-albeit still a little coolish toward moi. We chewed the fat awhile, the kind of shallow, aimless conversation people have who are just becoming acquainted-or who are working on becoming less acquainted-before she changed the subject and mentioned, "I liked the way you handled Abdul Almiri."

I nodded.

She said, "So you saw the consequences of a street bombing at the field hospital?"

"I did."

"What was your impression?"

"What would anybody think?"

"I don't care about anybody. What do you think?"

I put down my coffee and answered her. "These people are savages. They're not making war, they're mass-murdering innocents under the guise of a cause."

"That's it? Nothing deeper?"

"Tell me what I'm supposed to think."

She sipped from her coffee and stared at me a moment. She said, "You can't imagine how many of those things I witnessed during my tour. As an MP, we were often the first responders. I have dreams about it still."

"Dreams or memories?"

"They mix together."

"Tell me about one."

"It… it was my first. They all leave an impression, of course. But that first one…" She took a long sip from her coffee. "This was before bombings became the tactic du jour. I was in my humvee going to visit one of our roadblocks, and the ops center called on the radio and told me to divert immediately to a neighborhood in Sadr City, the big Shiite slum in the northeastern part of Baghdad. So I directed my driver to the street."

I nodded.

"It was only ten minutes away… and we came around the corner, and we turned onto the street, and I… Understand, Sean, the ops center had given me no warning-and a blown-up car was there, burning, smoke billowing up… and in the street I saw this huge hole and a blackened blast scar. But all around, there were… well, body parts… scattered like confetti… like garbage. Hunks of human flesh and limbs, arms, heads… and a lot of them were really tiny, and I realized… they were… they were pieces of children." She went silent for a moment. "About fifty people were just sitting there, wounded and mangled, waiting to be helped. The dead are dead… aren't they? They feel no pain, no misery, but the wounded… their wounds are so… so horrible." After a moment, she said, "You must've seen that this morning."

"I did see that."

"So… okay. How did it affect your view of this war?"

"It pissed me off, Bian. Don't ask me to think deeper or verbalize more than that. I really don't know."

"I see." She looked away and said, slightly dismissively, "At least that's an honest answer."

I squeezed her hand across the table. "I don't know what you want to hear. It's an ugly impression, an image so horrible and contemptible it's almost surreal. It was something ugly that should never have happened, but it did." I looked her in the eye and went on, "You've had time for it to congeal into something else. It takes time. When combat veterans talk about having repressed memories and flashbacks, that's what they mean. Nobody forgets. They just aren't expecting the instant when the carnage rushes back to the surface with full import."

She seemed to understand and seemed disappointed. She said, "I was hoping you would see why we really can't lose this war. Not to these people. Not after all they've done…"

Clearly something had happened here, something that had strongly affected Bian's view of this war. I had already suspected that, of course. But now that we were closer, geographically closer, and mentally closer, I was getting a stronger sense of how utterly obsessed she was.

Also, I guess I knew what she was saying. The idea of losing any war is militarily and politically anathema-for soldiers, it is a mark of shame and dishonor; for a nation, a strategic setback; and for the nation's citizenry, a mortifying scar on the psyche that never fully heals.

Like Vietnam. Here we are, thirty years after that last helicopter wobbled off the U.S. embassy roof, and still we haven't come to grips with it. And in the classic military sense that wasn't even a defeat; it was a negotiated withdrawal, a wearied and bloodied boxer refusing to fight to the finish, regardless that the other guy had been stomped almost to death.

But some enemies are worse than others, and the idea of people who are willing to unleash such nihilistic savagery, that we would let them win, that we would cede control of an entire nation to their blood-encrusted hands, clearly this was something we needed to think long and hard about.

These ruminations were interrupted by voices from the front of the plane, and after a moment Phyllis and Waterbury, accompanied by a third gent-Arab in complexion and wearing shimmering white robes with fancy gold embroidery-entered the conference room.

Phyllis was dressed in a smart blue summer dress, and Waterbury in a sort of tropical, crap brown leisure suit with white loafers and a matched belt that were in nauseating taste even two decades ago when they were in fashion.

After we exchanged a few greetings, Phyllis said to Bian and me, "You did a fine job."

"Thank you," said Bian, assuming it was sincere.

She then looked at me, and added pointedly, "I really wish, however, that bin Pacha hadn't been shot. What a botch-up. We now have to wait for him to recover before we can begin an interrogation. If he knew where Zarqawi was, that knowledge might now be too stale to exploit."

I had expected her to say that, and still I found it irritating. I made no reply.

She remembered her good manners and said, "Our guest is Sheik Turki al-Fayef, from Saudi Arabian intelligence. He is here, in an unofficial capacity, to advise us concerning Mr. bin Pacha."

Bian and I exchanged quick looks of surprise. Wow, a lot had sure happened since we left D.C. Unofficial?

Anyway, the sheik neither stuck out his hand nor even acknowledged our existence. He assumed a bored expression with his dark eyes sort of roving around the interior of the plane as if waiting for a salesman to appear.

Waterbury decided he had let too much time pass without making his presence known and said, "Let's all sit. Tran and Drummond, I believe you owe us an after-action report."

Without further ado, the sheik moved immediately to the head of the table, which told you where he placed himself in the pecking order.

Waterbury moved to and then sat at the other end of the table-ditto.

Phyllis pulled out a chair from the middle and seated herself beside Bian.

You have to pay attention to these things. Apparently Phyllis no longer was in charge of this show, and Waterbury was now the man.

Of course, Waterbury couldn't wait to confirm this, looking at me and saying in a commanding tone I found very grating, "Drummond, you lead off. Begin with a brief summary of the operation for Sheik al-Fayef's benefit. Then I'd like to know everything you've learned."

Before I could say, "Up yours," Phyllis interjected, "And Sean, please… keep it brief. We've had a long, tiring flight." Which was code for, "Play along with this idiot, and watch what you say in front of our berobed friend. And, yes, and since you didn't ask-traveling five thousand miles in the company of Mark Waterbury really did suck."