excrement, though a hint of all that remained in the air.
We climbed a spiral staircase to the diwan level, where a white-robed man sat behind a table, on which was a stack of assault rifles. I guess you had to check your guns here. The man smiled, decided we were probably English speakers, and said, “Welcome. For lunch or room?”
Brenner replied, “Restaurant, please.”
The desk clerk/maitre d’armaments stood, grabbed three menus, and we followed him through one of those Casablanca-type archways with hanging beads into a large, sunlit dining room that took up the whole floor of the tower house. He escorted us to a low round table with beanbag chairs near an open window and said, “Good looking.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant the view, or if he meant me or Brenner. Kate was scarfed, so he didn’t mean her. I replied politely, “Thank you. This is a Christian Dior shirt.”
“Yes?”
So we sat cross-legged on these horrid stuffed cushions, and I looked around. It was a pleasant enough place, with ceiling fans, oil lamps on the tables, and carpets on the floor-sort of a cross between Rick’s Place and the den of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
I asked Brenner, “Come here often?”
“Now and then.” He explained, “It’s not a good idea for a Westerner to be a regular anywhere in Sana’a.”
“Right.” Except maybe the Russia Club.
I looked out the window into the backyards of several tower houses. The yards were crowded with vegetable gardens, goats, and chickens. There were no play swings or slides, but a few barefoot kids were having fun chasing the poultry. A woman in a full black balto and veil was scrubbing clothes in a copper tub. In some weird way, this scene reminded me of the tenement I grew up in-sans goats. It was such an ordinary, peaceful scene that it was hard to believe the rest of the country was descending into violence and chaos.
Brenner said, “That’s our emergency exit if we need one.”
“Right.” About a twenty-foot drop into a pile of manure. How would I phrase that in my incident report?
There was a weird, smoky smell in the air, which I commented on, and Brenner informed me, “That’s frankincense.”
“Where’s he sitting?”
“It’s an Arabic gum resin. Used in perfume or incense.”
“Yeah? How about frankin-khat chewing gum? Yes?”
Kate interjected, “Stop.”
Brenner further informed us, “The Yemenis believe it was a Yemeni wise man who brought the gift of frankincense to the baby Jesus.”
Better than fruitcake. Right?
Anyway, the place was about half full on this Sunday afternoon, mostly young Westerners, male and female, but also some weird-looking dudes wearing daggers and white robes, with dark beards and black eyes, who were glancing at us. There were no Yemeni ladies lunching.
Kate still had her scarf over her face, which limited her choices on the menu, but Brenner said to her, “You can uncover your face here, but I’d advise you to keep your hair covered.”
Kate did that, and I said to her, “I forgot how beautiful you were.”
Brenner also said to Kate, “It might be best if John or I gave your order to the waiter.” He explained, unnecessarily, “Men don’t take orders from women.”
“Incredible,” Kate said.
Brenner was right-this place could grow on you. But to show my sensitivity to women’s issues, I said, “Unbelievable.”
Brenner agreed and said, “The male guest workers who return from Europe and America have seen the twenty-first century, and they’ve been subtly influenced by what they’ve seen in the West.”
I thought about Nabeel, and also The Panther, and I wondered if this was true. Or, if they
A waiter dressed in theme costume came over, and Brenner suggested the local fruit drink or the shai, a spiced tea. Kate said to Brenner, “Shai,” and Brenner repeated it to the guy and ordered one for himself. The menu was written in Arabic and bad English, and I saw that they had non-alcoholic beer, which possibly had fermented in the bottle, so I said to Kate, “Tell Paul to tell the waiter I want a beer.” Did I get that right?
Anyway, we made small talk, and Kate asked Brenner, “Where are you from?”
“South Boston.”
“Do you miss it?”
“I don’t get there much. I live in Virginia now. Falls Church.” He added, “That’s where CID Headquarters is, and it was my last duty station before I left the Army.”
Kate seemed to want to know more about Paul Brenner, and with some prodding, he gave her his history- drafted into the Army at eighteen, infantryman in Vietnam, decided to make the Army a career, went to military police school, second tour in Vietnam as an MP, then transferred to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, and served in various Army posts around the world. He had apparently been in a special CID unit that handled high-profile and/or sensitive cases, and his last case involved the murder of a female U.S. Army captain who was also the daughter of an Army general who had been highly decorated in the first Gulf War.
I thought I remembered this case, because it had made the news at the time, a year or so after the Gulf War, and I had the impression that this case had somehow led to the early retirement of Chief Warrant Officer Paul Brenner.
Brenner didn’t mention his clandestine mission to post-war Vietnam, either out of modesty or because he still wasn’t allowed to talk about it. This mission, though, must have redeemed his reputation or something, and maybe the Army’s equivalent of Tom Walsh asked him to name a job, and Brenner picked the Diplomatic Security Service. Fun and travel. In fact, Brenner told us that he’d served with the DSS in London, then Athens. I wonder what he did wrong to get sent here.
Brenner concluded his edited history, and I noticed it was all professional, lacking any personal details, with no mention of marriage or divorce, kids, or the current lady back in the States.
Kate didn’t prod him on that subject, and I certainly didn’t. All I wanted to know about Mr. Paul Brenner was if I could trust him, and whether or not he had a set of balls. He seemed okay in both categories. He also seemed bright, which was good, but I couldn’t determine if he had good or bad professional judgment, which was crucial. I myself display impressively bad judgment on occasion, but I always temper that with acts of irrational risk taking. Ask my wife. Brenner, I suspected, was a little like me in those respects, which is the sign of the alpha male. Most of us are dead by now, of course, or incarcerated, or permanently disabled, but some of us are lucky. I’m lucky. And smart.
Anyway, I thought I could work with this guy, and I didn’t think he was going to get me killed-I could do that on my own, thank you.
Kate, too, seemed impressed with Paul Brenner, though I doubt she’d analyzed why. Women’s intuition.
Our cocktails arrived, and the waiter asked if we had made a choice for lunch. We hadn’t, but a quick scan of the menu showed me that my choices were limited to animals that I could see from the window.
Kate said to Brenner, “Why don’t you order for us?”
Brenner had to order for Kate anyway, so I agreed but warned him, “No organs.”
Brenner ordered in Arabic, then asked us, “Do you want utensils? Or do you want to use your fingers?”
We didn’t know one another that well, so we agreed on utensils, and when the waiter left I took the opportunity to speak to Brenner without Buck present. I asked, “Why do we need a CIA guy on the team?”
“It’s their show. Also, they have all the information we need.”
“Let’s get the information and leave the CIA guy in Aden.”
Brenner asked me, “Why wouldn’t you want a CIA officer on the team?”
Because the CIA wants to kill me and my wife. But that would sound silly if I said it out loud, so I replied,
