The Mirage: A Novel (28 page)

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 well: 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?”

“You are sure she’s not armed?”

“Positive. Still, she has reason to wish you dead, so perhaps to be absolutely safe—”

“No, that’s fine. Let her in. She’s welcome to stare daggers at me all she likes.” Saddam rubbed his hands together. “But the only one getting his wishes granted today, is me.”

Amal
did
stare daggers at him. But the sharpness of her gaze was tempered by a small smile, the latter inspired by knowledge of the .22 pistol, hidden in a fold of her abaya, that both Uday’s clumsy pat-down and the more thorough search that followed had failed to discover. The gun was single-shot and not very accurate, but Amal was confident of her ability, if she chose, to put a bullet in Saddam Hussein’s brain.

Of course she would die too, then. On another day she might have at least considered making the trade, but now, like Mustafa, she had other priorities. It was enough to know that she could have done it—that Saddam was vulnerable. She could always come back and shoot him later.

Though his face didn’t show it, Samir was also thinking about shooting Saddam. But he didn’t have a hidden weapon and he definitely didn’t want to die. That was the problem: Idris had been very insistent about acquiring Saddam’s prize for himself, and while the botched commando raid wasn’t Samir’s fault, he knew Idris would hold him responsible anyway. So while Amal stared at Saddam, Samir cast side glances at the submachine gun slung over the shoulder of Saddam’s nearest bodyguard. He thought: Grab the gun, take down both guards, take down Saddam, take down Qusay, grab the battery, and run, run, run . . .

Yes, and if he were super-spy Jafar Bashir he might have pulled it off, might even have made it out of the mansion before being cut down by the rest of the Republican Guard. Samir Nadim would be lucky to get out of the room alive . . . assuming he had the heart to try, which he did not.

Mustafa, the only one of them not contemplating murder, focused his attention on the brass bottle. He’d examined it as carefully as he could in the moving taxi. It contained nothing but a few grains of sand and a faint odor of incense: Sniffing at the bottle’s opening, Mustafa detected an undertone of sulfur. The smell sparked no special memories, but the weight of the bottle in his hands was weirdly familiar.

Mustafa had offered Iyad a chance to examine the bottle as well, but Iyad was no longer interested. As soon as they were clear of Sadr City, he pulled the taxi over and told Mustafa and the others to get out. “And next time you need a favor, cousin, try calling the Mukhabarat.” Mustafa didn’t argue with him, only nodded solemnly and said, “Peace be unto you, Iyad.”

As Iyad drove off, Samir suggested with forced casualness that they return the bottle to headquarters and “have it checked out.”

“Checked out for what?” Amal asked. “It’s empty.”

“Well, yeah, there’s nothing in it, but what if the thing itself is . . . I don’t know, radioactive or something.”

Amal laughed. “If it’s radioactive, I say we get it into Saddam’s hands as soon as possible.”

Mustafa had sided with Amal, so they’d hailed another cab and gone directly to the Republic. And now they stood waiting while Saddam’s antiquities expert verified the authenticity of the “battery.” The expert, a diminutive Kurd whom Saddam had introduced as Mr. Rammal, acted more like a fortune-teller than an archaeologist: He laid both hands on the bottle, closed his eyes, and muttered under his breath. When this incantation, or whatever it was, was completed, he looked over at Saddam and nodded.

“Excellent!” Saddam said.

“Are you sure?” said Mustafa, who’d found himself hoping incongruously that the bottle would fail the test.

“Of course we are sure,” said Saddam. He glanced at the Kurd, who repeated his nod. “If Mr. Rammal is satisfied, so am I. And so should you be.”

“It’s just that this object isn’t what I was expecting. There’s no iron bar inside, no copper cylinder . . .”

“Copper cylinder?”

“To generate the electric current. If it’s really a battery, it’s a broken battery.”

“Mustafa al Baghdadi, you think too hard,” Saddam Hussein said. For a moment his good humor lifted like a veil, exposing a more dangerous emotion underneath.

Then he was smiling again. “Come! Let me give you your reward!” Saddam turned to the wall map of Samarra and pulled it down to reveal a hidden safe. He opened the safe and took out an index card which he handed to Mustafa.

“ ‘V. Howell Industries,’ ” Mustafa read from the card. “This is the source of the mirage artifacts?”

“It’s as close to the source as I’ve been able to get,” Saddam told him. “My agents have traced several of the items in my collection to V. Howell. Whether they’re the origin or just a link in the chain I can’t say.”

“And this address: 1145 Jefferson Davis Pike, Herndon, Virginia . . .”

“It’s a small office park.”

“In Fairfax County?”

“Yes. A section that the Marines didn’t burn down. From the outside it looks like a low-security facility, but every spy I’ve sent in for a closer look has failed to report back.”

“So this is the big lead?” Samir said. “An office park in America?”

“It’s more than you had,” Saddam said. “It’s more than Bin Laden has. Al Qaeda would give a lot for that address, I’d bet. Though whether they’d be able to do anything with it . . .”

“But you think we can?” said Mustafa.

“If you’re working for the president as you claim. You can have the Marines escort you while you make your inquiries. I imagine they’d be only too happy to help convince V. Howell Industries to cooperate.”

“And if we end up disappearing like your spies?” Amal said. “I’m sure you’ll shed a tear for us from the safety of Baghdad.”

Saddam shrugged. “I promised information, not immunity from danger. I think it’s more than a fair trade. But here, I’ll sweeten the deal . . .” He reached into the safe again and pulled out a sheet of paper. “This information is less exclusive, but still quite valuable.”

The sheet contained a list of names. “Who are these people?” Mustafa asked.

“Candidates for my own deck of cards,” Saddam Hussein said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I believe you would call them ‘persons of interest.’ If you can find them and get them to talk, they should have many fascinating things to tell you.” He added: “I’d like to interrogate one or two of them myself, if I could. In fact I would pay for the privilege. Handsomely.”

“But you don’t know where they are?”

“At least some of them should be living in or around the American capital,” Saddam said. “A few others may be in Texas. They will probably be people of influence, well respected, but however much power they have, it won’t be what they feel they deserve.” His expression clouded. “They’ll be . . . frustrated. Eternally frustrated.”

“You are talking in riddles,” Mustafa said, “and I’m afraid after being up all night I have no head for it . . . Who are these people? How did you get this list?”

“I can’t tell you where the list comes from.”

“Somehow I thought that would be your answer.” Mustafa sighed and stared at the paper. “What kind of name is ‘Condoleezza’?”

“A woman. A black lady. She’s less interesting to me than some of the others. The names higher up the list, those are the ones I really want.”

The top two names on the list were almost identical. “A father and son?” Mustafa asked.

“Yes,” Saddam said. “Those two I would very much like to have as my guests.”

“You would like . . . So is this list for our benefit or yours?”

“There’s no reason why we can’t all benefit. If you should find any of these people, and if, after questioning them, you decide to pass them along to me, I will of course show my gratitude. Get me the father and the son, and you can have anything that is within my power to give . . . But please, don’t say yes or no now. Just keep my offer in mind.”

Mustafa ran a hand through his hair. He looked from the paper to the card and back again, then took another long look at the brass bottle. “Very well,” he said finally, “I’ll thank you for this information and see where it leads us. Enjoy your ‘battery.’ ”

“Oh, I will,” Saddam Hussein said. “And you, Mustafa al Baghdadi . . . Good hunting.”