Bestiary

He held it out to Rafik, who shrank back as far as the cage, roughly the size of a phone booth, would permit, and regarded him warily.

“It’s a Marlboro,” he said, the most popular brand in Iraq before the war. To prove it was safe, al-Kalli took a draw on it himself, then exhaled the fragrant smoke. He held it out again, and this time, Rafik extended a shaky hand through the bars and took it.

Al-Kalli let him savor the moment — and perhaps hear the denizens of the facility as they stirred themselves awake. The overhead lights were blazing, uncharacteristically at this late hour, and some of the creatures were so sensitive that they might have already detected the smell of the cigarette. They would know something was afoot, and they would be curious. A yelp came from one of the nearby cages.

Rafik’s eyes did dart in that direction, as he no doubt wondered what animal had made the sound. A hyena? A jackal? A coyote? Al-Kalli gave him time to run through the possibilities, knowing that he would never arrive at the right one.

“Now,” al-Kalli said, calmly and in Arabic, “we still have some things to clear up.”

Rafik, pinching the cigarette hard and holding it to his cracked lips, said nothing.

“There were four of you, to the best of my recollection.”

Rafik had been through all this before.

“And three of you I have now come to know.”

Rafik knew what that meant. His life had been nothing but torture and imprisonment since he’d been kidnapped in Beirut.

“But I want to know you all.”

“You want,” Rafik said, lowering the cigarette, “to kill us all.”

“Not necessarily,” al-Kalli said. “I am not without mercy.” The same mercy, he thought, that had been extended to his own murdered family.

“Do you have a wife? Children?”

Rafik, he could see, was debating how to answer.

“Just tell me the truth,” al-Kalli said, in reasonable tones.

Rafik finally nodded; yes, he had a wife and children.

“Then I’m sure you would like to see them again.”

Rafik was sure that he never would. But the tiniest flicker of hope nonetheless stirred in his breast.

“I can send you back to them, or I can bring them here. To this country.”

Al-Kalli was surprised that the beast, no doubt sleeping in his cave at the rear of the enclosure, had not yet made an appearance. He began to worry that it might be even more gravely unwell than he thought.

“What,” Rafik ventured, “do I have to do?”

Ah, that pleased al-Kalli. He hadn’t been sure that at this stage of the game he would be able to ignite any hope at all in the prisoner — surely the man would know his fate was sealed. But the human spirit was a strange and wondrous thing — even in the face of the obvious, it could harbor all kinds of illusions.

“Very little,” al-Kalli said. “I know that it was Saddam himself who ordered the executions.”

Rafik had never actually said so — what was the hold that Saddam, now a toothless lion who would never again walk free, held over these men? — but he hadn’t bothered to deny it, either. In his dreams, al-Kalli imagined what he would have done if Saddam himself had ever fallen into his hands.

“But I wish to know how he chose you, and your comrades, for such a delicate task. Were you part of an elite squad? Were you handpicked?”

Al-Kalli had no real interest in the answers to these questions. He simply wanted to get Rafik talking. To give him time to think about his predicament — locked in some wild animal’s cage — and to let him think that there might possibly be some way out.

“We trained together,” Rafik said.

“Where?”

Rafik shrugged. “Baghdad.” Both of his eyes were black and blue, and his nose, slightly askew now, was clearly broken.

“So you must have grown close. Training together, enjoying all the special privileges that only Saddam could provide.”

Al-Kalli gave him a conspiratorial smile, and for a split second Rafik seemed to acknowledge it with a smile of his own. Al-Kalli was delighted.

“The others,” he said, “were all from Tikrit originally. Were you?”

“Yes.”

Saddam had always relied upon his fellow Sunnis for his most important tasks.

“And the man with the mustache,” al-Kalli said. “Also from Tikrit?”

Rafik stopped talking.

“Who served the soup to my wife,” al-Kalli said helpfully, though there could be no confusion about whom he was referring to.

“I didn’t know him.”

Right back where they’d started, al-Kalli thought with disgust. And he didn’t disguise it. He turned to Jakob, standing with his hands folded, and with his chin gestured at a paint bucket lying by the gate.

Jakob lifted the lid off the bucket, walked to the gate of the enclosure, and threw the contents of the bucket all over Rafik.

For a moment, it might have been mistaken for red paint. But then the smell came — the smell of fresh blood.

Rafik dropped the cigarette and stared down at his blood-soaked jumpsuit.

From the next enclosure, the yelping suddenly surged into a series of frenzied barks. From even farther off, a low growl arose. On a perch high above, a huge bird loudly screeched.

Rafik’s eyes went wide with the sudden cacophony — and the shock from his drenching.

“The man with the mustache,” al-Kalli said, his words now as hard as flint.

“I tell you, I didn’t know him!”

Al-Kalli pressed the release button for the inner gate, which opened wide. Rafik was now exposed to whatever lay within the enclosure.

And he knew it.

“What was his name?” al-Kalli asked.

Rafik looked frantically around the large enclosure, taking in the wading pool, the stunted trees, the low shrubs… the broken bones, covered with dust. What lived in here?

“I can close the gate again, as easily as I opened it,” al-Kalli said.

A lion? Rafik thought. A tiger? All the way in back, he saw a cavernous stony grotto, raised a few feet off the hard-packed earth.

“All I need is a name.”

What harm could it do? Rafik thought. He could give him a name — any name at all — and it might buy him time. But what if al-Kalli guessed that he was lying? What if, the clever bastard, he already knew the name, or had his suspicions, and was only waiting for Rafik to confirm them?

From within the lair, Rafik thought he saw a shadow move. Something was awake now. Something was alive.

Al-Kalli saw it, too, and was greatly relieved.

There was a long, soft sound of exhalation. A creature was struggling to its feet. And sniffing — Rafik could hear the echo from inside the cave as it sniffed the air appreciatively.

He looked down at himself. Covered in blood. And his hands flew at the zipper of the jumpsuit.

Al-Kalli laughed and glanced over at Jakob to share the joke. “He’s smarter than the last one.”

Rafik stripped off the suit as fast as he could, wadded it into a ball, and hurled it away; unfurling in the air, it caught on the branches of the nearest tree and hung down like a banner.

There was a growling from the cave.

“It’s Ahmed!” Rafik cried out. “His name was Ahmed!”

“That’s a start,” al-Kalli said, suspending his hand above the control panel that could open — or close — the entry cage.