In the small hours of the morning, Saddam Hussein descended to the deepest cellar of his Adhamiyah estate.
West of the main house, in back of the outbuilding that abutted the lion enclosure, was a plain-looking steel door secured by an electronic keypad. Past the door, a circular stairway descended to a guard room staffed by a half dozen of Saddam’s most trusted men. Two of the men wore the standard Republican Guard uniform and were armed with riot guns. The other four were dressed as if for a heavy contact sport: chest, shoulder, and thigh pads; knee, shin, and elbow guards; groin cups and throat protectors; reinforced gloves and boots; and helmets with face shields that they lowered into place as Saddam entered the room.
The four-man extraction team preceded Saddam and the two gunmen through a long cellblock. The cells were empty and had been for some time, but bloodstains were still visible on some of the walls and a search of the floor would have turned up the occasional tooth or fingernail among the rat droppings.
At the end of the cellblock was another flight of stairs and another security door, beyond which was a brightly lit antechamber containing two chairs. One was a throne-sized easy chair with a matching ottoman; the other was a steel-backed restraint chair that had been bolted to the floor.
The antechamber also contained a liquor cabinet, and Saddam helped himself to whiskey while the gunmen positioned themselves to either side of him and the extraction team continued on through a final security door. From beyond the door came sounds of a man being tackled and pummeled into submission.
The extraction team returned with the prisoner. He was a blond American in his early thirties, tall and muscular. He wore camouflage fatigue pants and a gray ARMY T-shirt; a skull in a green beret was tattooed on his upper right arm.
The prisoner was limp and unresisting as the guards carried him out, but as they approached the restraint chair he abruptly came alive and began to fight again. This was an old trick and the extraction team were ready for it. They kept hold of him, and with some joint-twisting, a bit of head trauma, and a few hard taps to the solar plexus they got him into the chair and strapped down. Saddam picked up a small remote from atop the liquor cabinet. There were electrical contacts inside the chair’s wrist and ankle straps, and by pressing a button on the remote he could deliver painful shocks.
The extraction team had stepped away from the chair and were looking at Saddam expectantly. A flexible black cable tipped with a large alligator clip dangled from the seat of the chair between the prisoner’s legs. This was an optional attachment that could be used to deliver current directly to the prisoner’s genitals, but to put it on him, they’d have to remove his pants or at least cut a hole in the crotch—a delicate procedure.
“No,” Saddam said, to the unspoken question. “We won’t need that tonight, I think. Leave us.”
His men went back up the stairs. Saddam rested a forearm on the back of the easy chair and sipped his whiskey. The prisoner watched him, grinning despite a bloody nose and a black eye; probably he was thinking about what he would do if his restraints were removed.
“You know, these displays of defiance are unnecessary,” Saddam said. “No one here questions your manhood. But you are alone and powerless. You can’t escape. You can’t kill me. There’s no shame in accepting these facts.”
“Thank you for the advice,” the prisoner said. “I appreciate you acknowledging my manhood. But you know I don’t have that much else to occupy me, so I might as well try to kill you.”
Saddam smiled. “Your Arabic is improving. You must be studying very hard.”
“Like I say, I don’t have much else to do. I couldn’t even follow the TV, without it.”
“So you’re happy with the television? The screen is big enough?”
“Yes.”
“And that Xbox thing I got for you—you like that?”
“I do,” the prisoner said, truthfully. “I could use some more games for it.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I want you to be happy. Anything else you’d like, just ask . . . Are you sure you don’t want a woman?”
“No, and we’ve been over that. I’m not interested in Helen Keller, and if she can see me or hear me she can tell people about me, and that means you’ll kill her, after. I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“This world is full of people who are already as good as dead,” Saddam Hussein said. “I could find you a woman like that, a beautiful woman. There’d be nothing for you to feel bad about.”
“No thank you.”
“Or we could keep her here as your guest. Someone to play Xbox with, how would that be?”
The prisoner considered it. “No,” he finally said. “Trapping a woman in this place wouldn’t be much better than killing her.” Thinking of Uday: “Maybe worse, in some ways.”
“Very well,” Saddam said. “But if you change your mind . . .” He freshened his drink, then took a seat in the comfy chair. “And now I would like some entertainment. You have a story for me?” His eyes narrowed. “A good story, this time?”
The prisoner smiled. “You didn’t like that last one, huh?”
“No I did not.”
“What part didn’t work for you? It was the ending, right? Where the Mahdis stretched your fucking n—uuhhhhhhhh!”
Saddam kept his thumb on the button of the remote while he took a long sip of whiskey. When he finally let up on the current, the prisoner sagged forward, gasping.
“That was four,” Saddam said, indicating the remote’s numbered dial. “Would you like me to remind you what ten feels like?”
The prisoner was too busy catching his breath to answer.
“Now I want to hear a story,” Saddam continued. “It doesn’t have to be perfect—I know you’re not a professional—but it needs to be inspirational, something that acknowledges my manhood. No more of these ridiculous fantasies about military defeats, or spider-holes, or . . . guilty verdicts. I want a tale I can believe in. Are you ready to give me that?”
The prisoner had recovered enough to fix his captor with a look of absolute hatred. For a moment it seemed as though he might spit, but Saddam held up the remote, turning it to show the numbers on the dial. The prisoner held out a moment more, then lowered his eyes and capitulated.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to hear.”
“You’ll tell me what I want to hear, what?”
“I’ll tell you what you want to hear . . . Mr. President.”
The call to dawn prayer had just ceased when Saddam came back up out of the cellar. His son Qusay was waiting for him.
“What is it?”
“Mustafa al Baghdadi,” Qusay told him. “He’s inside. He has the object.”
Saddam smiled. The day was starting off welclass="underline" He’d enjoyed the prisoner’s story very much, and now this.
“The senator’s daughter is with him,” Qusay continued. “And the other agent, Samir, the one the Mukhabarat say is reporting to Al Qaeda.”
Better and better. “So Bin Laden will hear about anything we say.” Saddam nodded. “We’ll have to make sure he gets an earful, then . . . You had them all searched?”
“Yes.” Qusay hesitated. “There was a problem with the senator’s daughter. Uday tried to pat her down himself, instead of calling a woman from the house to do it. She reacted violently to the insult.”
“Tell me that idiot didn’t hurt her.”
“She is fine. Uday I think is very lucky she’d already surrendered her weapon.”
Saddam reddened. “Where is your brother now?”
“Out. I told him to go for a long drive.”
“When he gets back, I want to speak to him . . . What about the object? Where is it?”
“The Guard are taking it to your office.”
“Bring Mustafa and the others there, too.”
“Do you want me to exclude the senator’s daughter?”