Man in the middle

"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."

She turned to Bian and without explanation said, "Please get Enzenauer. You'll find him in the ambulance." She added, "Tell him to bring his special equipment."

Bian left. Phyllis and I sat and uncomfortably ignored each other for the next five minutes. I was not happy with her; she was not happy with me. Why discuss it?

Eventually, the door opened and Bian entered, followed by Bob Enzenauer, carrying a mechanical device of some undetermined nature. He placed it in the middle of the conference table, where I examined it more closely-I thought at first that Phyllis must be experiencing a cold-blooded, slow-motion heart attack, and this was a defibrillator-before I realized the pole sticking off it wasn't a shock stem but a fat antenna.

I had completely forgotten about the transmitter sewn into bin Pacha's stomach. So this odd device was the receiver, and maybe everything wasn't lost. Maybe.

Phyllis gave him a welcoming smile and said, "Have a seat, Bob."

He did, and for a moment he studied our faces, which betrayed our apprehension, because he asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Very much so," replied Phyllis. "Ali bin Pacha's dead."

"Oh… well…" An expression of real concern crossed his face, as he apparently assumed this was a result of his medical advice or skill.

And characteristic of her profession, Phyllis was screwing with his head, she knew it, and she let his agony brew for about ten seconds before she clarified, "By assassination. The Saudi guards."

"Ah…"

Phyllis continued, "Unfortunately, our Bureau friends failed to record the events inside his cell. So my questions for you are these: Was he transmitting and was he recorded?"

And characteristic of his profession, Enzenauer spent about thirty seconds looking profoundly thoughtful, as if Phyllis had asked him to solve the mystery of the universe. "Well…" he eventually said, "the device is noise-activated. So"-he looked at each of our faces- "yes… if he emitted noise, he transmitted. As to whether it was recorded, I frankly don't have a clue."

We all stared with deep fascination at the contraption on the desk. I cleared my throat and asked, "Can you make that thing work?"

"Of course." He pushed a few buttons, and we heard the first optimistic whirring sound of a tape rewinding. For the first time that day, it looked like something was going right; we stared at one another in disbelief. The tape stopped and Enzenauer pushed start.

As he had warned, the transmitter was noise-activated, and the first sound came through clear as a bell-Ali bin Pacha let loose a terrifically long and loud fart, which he repeated a few times, followed by satisfied grunts. Nobody laughed or even smiled. Such was the mood that even I resisted the impulse to offer a crude comment.

Doc Enzenauer, however, feeling the need to offer a medical diagnosis, pushed pause and said, "After three days of unconsciousness, it's natural for the body to purge itself."

Well, now it was almost irresistible. But Bian read my mind and was giving me a look.

The doc pushed play, and next came the noise of people screaming and howling from pain.

To Phyllis and Enzenauer, I noted, "A tape. To scare the new prisoners."

Phyllis nodded like she already knew this.

Next a voice, yelling, and then the bed creaking as bin Pacha got up. Then, very distinctly, voices-two different voices-and they were speaking to one another. There was some back-and-forth between bin Pacha and an unidentified party, in Arabic, and I understood nothing. The conversation was brief, lasted for perhaps a minute, and ended with a loud bang.

Next, Bian's voice, on tape. "He's dead. Those bastards assassinated him. They didn't want us to hear what he had to say."

Tirey. "This… this Saudi arrangement… this was… you know, the CIA's bright idea. It did… it originated with your people. I… I merely followed orders and…"

Me. "This is a crime scene. Treat it as one."

"Uh…"

Me again. "Was the killing recorded?"

I reached forward and pushed stop. Phyllis remarked, "Tirey wasted no time, did he?"

"Wait till the official inquiry. That was only the first rehearsal." I looked at Bian. "Translate."

"I'll need to hear it again. All that noise from the torture tape… it's…" She shrugged.

So the doc took it backward and forward for her a few times, and now Bian was concentrating fiercely and jotting notes. A few phrases-actually, names-were decipherable even to me.

Bian glanced up from her notepad and said to Enzenauer, "Once again, please. I think"-she scribbled something-"I nearly have it."

Enzenauer played it again as Bian tracked the dialogue on her page. "All right," she said, and then read, "After bin Pacha's… after the flatulence… the first voice is a guard. He yells, 'Are you awake yet?' Bin Pacha replies, 'Yes,' and he asks the guard, 'Why are they playing that stupid recording? Only fools would try a trick of such obvious ignorance. It sounds like something Americans would try.' The guard laughs, and yells back that the tape might be phony, but bin Pacha's pain will soon be real enough."

Bian looked up and explained, "Words to that effect. Arabic is structured differently than English. More formal. Also the verbs and nouns are displaced. I'm converting to the vernacular."

I told her, "You're doing great."

She looked down at her pad and continued, "Bin Pacha asks the guard's name. The guard replies that he is named Abu Habbibi. Then bin Pacha warns him, 'You are making a big mistake that will be poor for your personal health.' Again, Habbibi laughs. He asks, 'Why is that?' "

Bian paused, then said, "Bin Pacha told him that to learn the answer to this riddle, Habbibi must make only two phone calls." She looked up for a moment and explained, "Because the tape is noise-activated, there are no breaks in the conversation. I think here, though… from the change in their tone, there was a pause."