“What can I say, Sayid Rais ?” The head of the Secret Police raised his hands and let them drop in a gesture of helplessness. It was a masterpiece in the acting of self-deprecation.
“The Rais was, as ever, right, and we were all wrong. The bombing of Al Qubai was indeed no accident. There was a traitor, and he has been found.”
There was a buzz of sycophantic amazement around the room. The man in the upright padded chair with his back to the windowless wall beamed and held up his hands for such unnecessary applause to cease.
It did, but not too quickly.
Was I not right? the smile said. Am I not always right?
“How did you discover this, Rafeek ?” asked the Rais.
“A combination of good luck and detective work,” admitted Khatib modestly. “As for the good fortune, this as we know is the gift of Allah, who smiles upon our Rais.”
There was an assenting rumble around the room.
“Two days before the attack by the bombers of the Beni Naji, a traffic control point was established on a road nearby. It was a routine spot check by my men on movements by possible deserters, contraband goods. ... The vehicle numbers were noted.
“Two days ago I checked these and found that most of the vehicles were local—vans and trucks. But one was an expensive car, registered here in Baghdad. The owner was traced, a man who might have had reason to visit Al Qubai. But a telephone call ascertained that he had not visited the facility. Why, I wondered, had he been in the area, then?”
Hassan Rahmani nodded. That was good detective work, if it was true. And it was unlike Khatib who usually relied on brute force.
“And why was he there?” asked the Rais.
Khatib paused to let the revelation sink in.
“To note a precise description of the aboveground car junkyard, to define the distance from the nearest major landmark and the exact compass bearing—everything an Air Force would need to find it.”
There was a universal exhalation of breath around the room.
“But that came later, Sayid Rais . First I invited the man to join me at AMAM headquarters for a little frank talk.”
Khatib’s mind strayed back to the frank conversation in the basement beneath the AMAM headquarters in Saadun, Baghdad, that basement known as the Gymnasium.
Habitually, Omar Khatib had his underlings conduct interrogations, contenting himself to decree the level of severity and supervise the outcome. But this had been a matter of such del
icacy that he had accomplished the task himself, banning all others beyond the soundproof door.
From the roof of the cell jutted two steel hooks, a yard apart, and from them hung two short chains hooked to a timber bar. The wrists of the suspect he had had lashed to the ends of the bar, so the man hung with arms a yard apart. Because the arms were not vertical, the strain was all the greater.
The feet were four inches off the floor, the ankles tied to another yard-long pole. The X-shaped configuration of the prisoner gave access to all parts of the body, and because he hung in the center of the room, he could be approached from all sides.
Omar Khatib had laid the clotted rattan cane on a side table and came around to the front. The manic screaming of the man under the first fifty lashes had ceased, dying to a mumbling burble of pleas. Khatib stared him in the face.
“You are a fool, my friend. You could end all this so easily. You have betrayed the Rais, but he is merciful. All I need is your confession.”
“No, I swear ... wa-Allah-d-Adheem ... by Allah the Great, I have betrayed no one.”
The man was weeping like a child, tears of agony pouring down his face. He was soft, Khatib noted; this will not take long.
“Yes, you have betrayed. Qubth-ut-Allah—you know what that means?”
“Of course,” whimpered the man.
“And you know where it was stored for safety?”
“Yes.”
Khatib brought his knee hard upward into the exposed testicles. The man would have liked to double up but could not. He vomited, the slick running down his bare body to dribble off the end of his penis.