“Luay,” I continued, “who is that man?”
“Muhammad Khudayr,” he whispered.
I had Luay taken out of the room. He could barely walk on his shaking legs. I sat back down in front of the prisoner.
“Obviously Luay has been helping me,” I continued, sarcastically stating the obvious. “Now that you know, I can’t allow you to leave here. That would put his life in danger. There is only one thing you can do to change the situation. Tell me where to find Muhammad Ibrahim. If you do that, then I’ll know you’re on our side. Just like Luay.” He needed to understand that I had him where I wanted him. If he tried to retaliate against Luay, I would let it be known that he had helped us capture Muhammad Ibrahim. If he did cooperate then he’d have a vested interest in keeping it a secret—a secret he would share with Luay. “Do I make myself clear?” I asked to drive the point home.
A long pause followed, as he thought over his shrinking options. “I have heard of Muhammad Ibrahim,” he admitted at last. “But I do not know him.”
I left the room again, this time returning with Muslit, Muhammad Ibrahim’s son. He still had a hood over his head, but I lifted it just enough for Muhammad Khudayr to recognize his face. For the first time since the interrogation began, I could see his composure began to crack. I took Muslit away.
“I know you know who that is,” I said when I returned. I paused for a minute, as if considering my own options. “Here’s what I’m thinking,” I continued. “I’m thinking that I’ll bring Muslit back in here to have a look at you. Then I’ll make sure that everyone gets the message that Muhammad Ibrahim’s son is going to spend the next fifty years in prison because of information you provided. I wonder how that will affect Muhammad Ibrahim’s feelings toward you?” The tactic was a long shot, but I was willing to try anything.
“Muhammad Ibrahim has no regard for his son,” he spat back.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But I wonder how he’d feel if he knew you sent his close friends to prison for the rest of their lives, too.”
“What friends?” he asked almost involuntarily.
“Basim Latif, Thamir Al-Asi, Abu Drees. I have them all in custody. I can put them away forever, and get everyone to believe that it was because of you. Would you like me to bring them in here?”
He shook his head but said nothing. We were stalemated. And there was a clock ticking loudly in the back of my head. “Muhammad Khudayr,” I said, trying another angle, “I know you are lying to me because you think I am unsure of my information. But you are wrong. I know everything about you. I know all the crimes you have committed. And I know that the only way you can escape punishment is to take me to Muhammad Ibrahim.”
“If I take you to him, he will kill me.” We were making progress, even if it was agonizingly slow. At the beginning of the interrogation, the prisoner had denied even knowing Muhammad Ibrahim. Now he was telling me how afraid he was of the man. His fear was well founded. If it were discovered that he was cooperating with us, his life and the life of his family would be in jeopardy. I needed to find a way to help him with that problem.
“I tell you what,” I offered. “You take me to Muhammad Ibrahim and I’ll make sure that everyone knows that Muslit, his son, was the one that helped capture him. He’s scheduled to be shipped off to Guantánamo Bay in a few days. Once he’s gone, we can blame it all on him. You’ll be in the clear.” This was pure bullshit. I had no idea what was going to happen to Muslit. Since he wasn’t actively involved in the insurgency, my guess was that he would be released sooner or later. But I needed to convince Muhammad Khudayr that he would have a way to protect himself and his relatives from Muhammad Ibrahim’s revenge.
“If that happened, he would kill his son,” the prisoner replied. “He would find a way. He will kill anyone who betrays him.”
“Tell me where he is,” I urged. “And he won’t be able to kill anybody. As long as he stays out there he is still a threat, even to your family, especially now that you have been arrested.”
Muhammad Khudayr’s face sagged and his shoulders slumped. I held my breath. I had seen those signs many times, just before a prisoner starts to break. “He was at my house,” he replied in a tired voice.
“When?”
“Last night.”
How could that be possible? How could we keep missing this guy? Either he was the luckiest bad guy in the world or I was the unluckiest interrogator.
Muhammad Khudayr turned to my terp John and spat out a string of Arabic. “Eric,” John said slowly, “he is saying that Muhammad Ibrahim was at the house during the raid.”
That just wasn’t possible, I told myself. The shooters who had done the hit knew who he was. They had the same photo I had. They couldn’t have missed one of the most wanted men in Iraq.
But they hadn’t missed him. If what Muhammad Khudayr was telling was the truth, then we had actually gotten him.
My mind flashed to the other detainees that had been rounded up in the raid. I had assumed that Muhammad Khudayr was the only prize. Every stage of the hunt so far had been intricate and difficult. One capture led to another and then to another. We had always taken one painstaking step at a time. And it had always seemed that the bad guys were one step ahead of us. Was it possible that we had just taken a giant leap?
“Keep an eye on him,” I said to John. I jumped up and bolted out of the room. I ran to the cell where the remaining detainees were being held.
“I need this door open now!” I told the guard as I pushed past him into the room. Crossing to the first prisoner, I lifted his hood. There was no resemblance to Muhammad Ibrahim. The same was true of the second detainee. The third seemed no more promising. The man in the photo I carried was slim and fit. I could see immediately that the last prisoner had a belly that lapped over his belt buckle. But when I lifted the hood, I didn’t need to raise it any further than his chin. He had a distinctive dimple. I would have known it anywhere.
“You’re Muhammad Ibrahim,” I said numbly, without even considering my words. “I’ve been waiting to meet you.”
He said something in Arabic. The guard outside the cell door translated for me. “He says that you are the interrogator in the blue shirt.” I later found out that I had gained a reputation in Tikrit for that shirt. Since I wore it practically every day, it made me easily identifiable. There had even been, I was told, a bounty out for the American in the blue shirt.
I was sure that I had the man I’d been hunting for so many weeks. It didn’t seem possible that in the end, it would have been as easy as walking into a prison cell and picking him out. But that’s how it happened, and in that moment I had a sudden rush of hope. We had tracked up the ladder, through the ranks of street thugs and informants and former bodyguards and insurgent lieutenants. We had penetrated their network to virtually its highest level. We had captured scores of bad guys and maybe saved hundreds of lives in the process. If we could do all that, maybe we could take this last step. Maybe Muhammad Ibrahim really could take us to Saddam.
But first I had to be absolutely certain that this was the man I was after. With so many dead ends and blind alleys, I’d become accustomed to last-minute screwups. I led the prisoner out into the hallway and left him with the guard. Then I dashed back to where Basim and the others were waiting. I grabbed the driver and took him to his cell. Then I signaled for the guard to bring out Muhammad Ibrahim. As he stood in front of the cell door, I raised his hood just high enough for Basim to see what I had seen: that unmistakable chin.