I asked Colonel Hakim, “Were you here this morning when the CIA was here?”
“You should ask them, not me.” Colonel Hakim had become impatient with us and said, “Let us see now the prisoner.”
Dr. Fahd grabbed his medical bag, and we all stood and followed Hakim out of the room and down the corridor.
I wasn’t sure if all this was bringing us any closer to The Panther, but it was at least interesting. A small insight into Al Qaeda’s modus operandi, though not their heads. Probably I’d never get into their heads-we weren’t even on the same planet. But I thought I understood a little about Rahim ibn Hayyam, though I hadn’t yet met him. He was a scared kid, and he was happy to talk. He might not think he knew much about the bigger picture, but he probably knew more than he thought he did.
With any luck, Rahim had met The Panther, and with any more luck, The Panther was still in the Marib hills. And if he stayed there, he’d have John Corey up his ass.
CHAPTER THIRTY
We came to an iron door where a guard was taking a khat-nap in a white plastic chair. Hakim kicked the man’s leg, and the guard stood quickly and opened the door.
Hakim entered first, followed by Sammy, Dr. Fahd, Brenner, and me.
The cell, probably an interrogation room, was about ten feet square, lit only by a high, barred window and a single hanging lightbulb. The walls were whitewashed brick with some interesting reddish stains around the perimeter, including a few red handprints.
A filthy mattress lay on the stone floor, and on the mattress was a young man with a wispy beard, wearing dirty white prison pajamas that were bloody around his left leg where his wound had bled through the bandages. I noticed, too, that his right eye was swollen shut. Also, his lower lip was split, and his hooked nose was crooked. I also saw that his arms and legs were shackled, and the leg chain was bolted to the floor.
Hakim explained to his American guests, “He is chained to prevent him harming himself.”
Right. He has lots of people to do that for him.
Hakim snapped at the prisoner, who sat up slowly and moved his back against the wall.
Hakim also explained, “As you can see, this man has been injured when he resisted capture by the security forces at the American oil company.”
I recalled the same bullshit in the Aden prison. Interesting that the Yemenis thought they had to lie to the Americans about beating prisoners. My jokes to the contrary, I’m not a big fan of torture. It’s messy, risky, not productive, and not right. What you want from a prisoner is in his head, so you have to beat up his brain, not his body. Takes longer, but you get better results.
Dr. Fahd moved a chair beside the prisoner to check out his vitals.
There were four other white plastic chairs in the room, and Colonel Hakim invited me, Brenner, and Sammy to sit facing the prisoner. Hakim moved a chair against a wall between us and the prisoner and sat.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw an empty plastic water bottle near the prisoner, and a full basin of what looked and smelled like urine. There were old cigarette butts on the floor, and what appeared to be well- masticated khat leaves. The whole room reeked of a hundred years of misery.
Dr. Fahd looked in the prisoner’s eyes with a light, took his temperature, listened to his heart and lungs, then took his blood pressure.
The good doctor stood and said, “The prisoner is well.”
Actually, the prisoner looked like he’d just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. But maybe his vitals were good.
Dr. Fahd sat in a corner and lit a cigarette. I guess it’s all right for doctors to smoke here.
Colonel Hakim spoke to the prisoner, obviously introducing his visitors, and I heard the word “Amrika.”
The prisoner closed his good eye and nodded.
Hakim said to us, “You may begin.”
I nodded to Brenner, who looked at Rahim ibn Hayyam and asked, “How are you feeling?”
Sammy translated, Rahim replied, and Sammy, who apparently forgot or wasn’t told that Brenner understood some Arabic, said to us, “He is feeling well.”
Brenner corrected, “
Sammy glanced at Colonel Hakim, and Hakim said to Brenner, “If your Arabic is so good, I will send the translator away.”
Brenner replied, “My Arabic is good enough to know when I hear a false translation.”
Hakim ignored him and looked at me. “And you, Mr. Corey? How is your Arabic?”
“Better than your English.”
Hakim didn’t like that, but he said something to the guard, who left. Hakim said to Brenner, “Continue.”
So having established that we couldn’t be totally conned, Brenner, with the clock ticking, got right to the point and asked, “What is the name of your commander?”
Sammy asked, Rahim replied, and Sammy said to us, “As he has stated, he knows only given names.”
“Okay. What was the given name of his commander?”
Sammy asked and Rahim replied, “Sayid.” Rahim said something else, and Sammy told us, “This was one of the men who died in the attack.”
Well, I guess that’s a dead end.
Brenner asked, “What was Sayid’s nationality?”
The answer was Iraqi.
The guard returned with a bottle of water that he threw on the mattress, and Rahim opened it and finished it in one long gulp.
Brenner asked a few more questions about Rahim’s comrades in arms. Bottom line, this platoon-sized unit of fighters really didn’t know each other’s full names, which was good security in the event one of them, such as Rahim, was captured. They did, however, know nationalities and some hometowns, and Brenner established that about half of them were Saudis-our good allies-and some were from Kuwait, the country that we liberated from Iraq in the first Gulf War. There were also a few recruits from neighboring Oman, a few from Egypt, and only five Yemenis-probably recovering khat chewers. Interestingly, most of the spiritual guides were from Saudi Arabia, and most of the military trainers and commanders were Iraqis, former members of the now-defunct Iraqi Army, who were currently employed by the group called Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Hey, you got a kill skill, you gotta sell it somewhere.
Anyway, Brenner, ex-soldier, then asked Military Intelligence-type questions about command structure, equipment, morale, and so forth, and he got some interesting information to pass on to the embassy military attache. But we weren’t any closer to The Panther.
In fact, this interrogation, as we both knew, had some problems. Not only was time short, but Colonel Hakim of the Political Security Organization was listening to every word, so he’d know what we were looking for, and he could figure out what we already knew or didn’t know.
If these people were real allies, it wouldn’t matter much. But they weren’t. In fact, for all I knew, Colonel Hakim, and maybe the interpreter and the doctor, had a brother-in-law in Al Qaeda. I remember having the same problems with interrogations in Aden.
Considering all that, Brenner and I had to do a balancing act. This was probably our only shot at the prisoner, and we had to maximize the opportunity without giving away too much to our allies. Or our enemies. On the other hand, we did want Al Qaeda to know one thing-John Corey was looking for The Panther from Perth Amboy.
Brenner now put on his cop hat and said to Sammy, “Tell Rahim that if he continues to answer truthfully, the Americans will assist in returning him to his home.”
Sammy glanced at Hakim, who nodded, and Sammy passed on Brenner’s kind bullshit. I mean, Rahim was an Al Qaeda jihadist who just attacked an American-owned oil facility, so he had a better chance of being repatriated by the Yemenis than by Americans-and if Rahim ever wound up on American soil, the place would be called Guantanamo. But the offer must have sounded sincere to the desperate Rahim, and he nodded vigorously.
