Wells paid the driver, unfolded himself from the cab. The men in the chairs looked curiously at him as it pulled away, trailing diesel smoke. Hani wasn’t among them, and Wells didn’t recognize any of them from the mosque. They were arranged in front of a store whose shelves, as far as Wells could tell, held only cardboard boxes of spark plugs.
“Salaam alekeim.”
“Alekeim salaam.”
The men’s galabiyas were gray with dust, their bodies limp, as if they had been sitting for so long that they were molded to the chairs. They could have been forty, or seventy. They struck Wells as the Egyptian equivalent of the old men who had — in the days before Wal-Mart and air-conditioning — sat in town squares in the South and watched the world go by.
“May I sit?” Wells asked the man on the far right. He seemed younger, or at least more awake, than the others.
“Sit, sit.”
Wells plopped down. Based on the regularity of the traffic passing them, the road through the cemetery seemed to be a major route to eastern Cairo. Wells couldn’t help feeling that running roads through a graveyard was somehow disrespectful. Yet did the dead prefer the loneliness of the immaculately maintained cemeteries in the United States? At least this way they were connected to the city where they had lived.
What nonsense, Wells thought. In truth, if this place proved anything, it was the foolishness of ghost stories. Wells didn’t claim to know where the dead went. But he was sure they weren’t here. Their bones might be, but their spirits were long gone.
The man next to him moved a few degrees toward vertical.
“I am Essam.”
“Nadeem.”
“You visit the cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“Now? At this hour?”
“Why not?”
Essam didn’t seem to know what to say next. He slumped in his seat, reached for the sheesha. Its coals were out. He whistled sharply. A very small and very dirty boy, no more than ten years old, emerged from the spark-plug store, carrying tongs and a brass brazier trailing white smoke. He plucked two red-black coals from the brazier, arranged them on the sheesha.
“You like to smoke?” the boy said to Wells. “Very good smoke. Apple, cherry, strawberry, melon—”
“No, thank you.”
“Very good smoke.” The boy tugged at Wells’s galabiya with a small hand black with coal dust. “You Kuwaiti?”
“Not you, too. Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Then Wells realized why the boy had asked. “Yes. Kuwaiti. You have something for me?”
The boy ran inside the store, reemerging with a piece of paper. “For you. One pound.”
“Who gave you this?”
“One pound.” One Egyptian pound was about twenty cents.
Wells gave him a pound, received the note in return. “Keep walking,” it said in Arabic. Nothing more. “Who gave you this?” But the boy had already gone back to spark-plug heaven.
“Who left this?” Wells said. “A fat man?” As an answer, Essam put the sheesha pipe to his mouth and took a long draw. He closed his eyes as the coals glowed red and the sheesha burbled happily. Wells stood, looked at the crumbling brick buildings around him, wondering if he was being watched, by the muk or the jihadis or both. But nothing moved.
Wells was gripped by a feeling he had never heard properly named, the sense that he could stay with these men for a thousand years, waiting for something to happen. Anything. And nothing would. Yet every moment would be as pregnant with anticipation as the one before, even as his feet took root in the earth, even as he turned into a living statue. The opposite of déjà vu. A state of permanent expectation.
“Good-bye,” Wells said.
Essam exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “Come back. Smoke sheesha with us.”
I know where to find you, Wells didn’t say.
“Ma-a-saalama.”
“Ma-a-saalama.”
THE STREET CURVED LEFT and then right. The dead were all around him — the living, too — huddled inside one-room mud-brick houses that reached the edge of the road. The neighborhood’s poverty was obvious here. The houses had uneven holes for windows. Mangy dogs slept fitfully in garbage-strewn lots, their ribs visible under thin brown fur. At the sight of Wells, they stirred but didn’t bother to stand.
Around the next turn, a narrow alley ran perpendicularly from the street. As Wells walked past it, a boy in dirty brown sweatpants hissed at him. “Are you the Kuwaiti?”
Kuwaiti. The magic word. The password for tonight’s adventures.
“Yes.”
“Follow me.”
Wells turned down the alley, following the boy. This section of cemetery sloped north to south. They headed south, down a narrow staircase, concrete steps crumbling. The alley shrank as it continued, buildings pressing on both sides, leaving just enough room for two men to stand side by side. Wells wasn’t happy. An ambush here would be lethal. He peeked over his shoulder but couldn’t see anyone.
“How much farther, boy? ” he said. The kid ignored him, trotting ahead.
THEY PASSED AN OPEN SQUARE filled with tombstones and one large mausoleum, the first evidence Wells had seen of an actual cemetery in the Northern Cemetery. Ahead, the alley swung left, a blind turn. The boy whistled and ran. Here it comes, Wells thought. As he made the turn, he felt rather than saw a man in a black mask stepping out of a hole in the wall behind him. He tried to turn, to protect himself, but something hard and metal crashed into the side of his head—
A sap—
His last thought — and then his legs sagged underneath him and he was out.
9
The letter was a single white page, typewritten, undated, no letterhead.
To: Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense
CC: Frederick Whitby, Director of National Intelligence
CC: Vincent Duto, Director of Central Intelligence
CC: Lucy Joyner, Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency
Dear Mr. Gates:
This letter is in reference to the illegal activities of a unit operated by the army and the Central Intelligence Agency. Squad 673. This unit operated in Poland. Based at Stare Kiejkuty army base in eastern Poland. It had the job of interrogating “enemy combatant” detainees. Those known as high-value.
This squad 673 was led by COL Martin Terreri of the Fourth Special Operations Brigade. The second-in-command was Brant Murphy. A CIA officer. The unit had ten members. You should know that Brant Murphy and Colonel Terreri stole at least $1 million from the unit. They received kickbacks from Europa West Aircraft in return for hiring Europa West for Charter Flights. Flights #11, #19, and #27 never took place.
Dr. Rachel Callar and other members of Squad 673 knew about the stealing by BRANT MURPHY and COLONEL TERRERI. However they did not profit from it. They did not want to report the leaders of the squad. You should ask them!
Also, the unit did do acts of torture on its detainees. Including Waterboarding, Electric Shock, Stress Positions, Prolonged Sleep Deprivation, Mock Executions. And other bad acts.
I am not making this up. For proof, here are the prisoner identification numbers (PINs) of the detainees: