Escape from Baghdad! (16 page)

Sabeen drove with the exacting precision of a German car mechanic maneuvering a prototype. Iraqi police, she explained, loved pulling over women drivers, especially ones who did not wear the full hijab. While she carried a revolver in her purse and a shotgun under the passenger seat for exactly these kinds of emergencies, it was just common sense to follow traffic rules. She had been, she said, obliged to shoot two would-be rapists so far. Silly men, they had come at her with knives. Hoffman could only marvel at her blunt pronouncements and spent the entire ride staring with idiotic rapture at her profile.

The café they pulled into promised Lebanese food in big green lettering and was just short of swanky. She was evidently known here. As she set foot inside, the entire staff, including the cashier and the owner, converged on her, each one trying to outdo the next in salaaming deeper. Hoffman noted genuine respect, lust, and even downright
terror in the menagerie; she must have shot some of
them
in the past too.

Behruse sat in a corner table facing the door, eating and drinking, his neck and shoulders creating an obscene shadow on the tablecloth. An array of half-finished dishes, Lebanese and otherwise, said that far from working, Behruse had, in fact, been sitting here for most of the day.

“God, how can you eat like that, Behruse?” Hoffman flopped down across from him.

“Eh? You want some lamb?” Behruse waved his hand unenthusiastically at him. “No? More for me. Have coffee instead. Americans love coffee.”

“You're a sick man. I need some beer.”

“This is lunch for me,” Behruse said. “I already had breakfast.”

“What the hell did you guys do to me last night?” Hoffman asked.

“You told him about the mushrooms?” Behruse looked at Sabeen, who shrugged.

“Mushrooms?”

“Sure,” Behruse said. “Very rare stuff. It acts like a kind of retrovirus. Nestles in your spine in a dormant state for days. Then it starts releasing chemicals into your bloodstream. You start seeing shit. Grade A hallucinations, believe me.”

“That doesn't sound so bad,” Hoffman said.

“And then you start bleeding from all your orifices,” Sabeen said.

“Oh.”

“Don't worry. Sabeen has the stuff to keep it in check,” Behruse said. “So long you don't piss her off, of course.”

“After all our scams, all the money we've made together, this is what it comes down to?” Hoffman asked, with feeling. “We were brothers, man—and you go and poison me? What would your mom think?”

“Hell, the boss poisoned me too, first time he met me,” Behruse said. “It's standard operating procedure with him. It messed up my metabolism. That's why I'm fat. You should have seen me before. I
was like Mr. Baghdad. Eventually it goes away. By that time, he either trusts you or kills you.”

Hoffman could only whimper.

“Stop your whining,” Sabeen said. “Last night you couldn't wait to eat the mushrooms. Behruse, you have anything on the watch?”

“I checked all the drop boxes,” Behruse said. “Mostly crap. Oh, Maliki is a fag apparently.”

“Drop boxes?” Hoffman asked.

“Old school stuff,” Behruse said. “You guys monitor cell phones and air waves. Heh, like pros use phones anymore. We got mailboxes rigged up all across town. Paper and pencil, baby, that's the way to go.”

“I gotta remember this,” Hoffman muttered.

“Don't worry. You work for Sab now,” Behruse said. “I once saw her kill a man just by touching some nerves on his neck. Dim Mak, you know, the death strike.”

Sabeen ignored the comment, asking: “Did you do anything at all useful today, Behruse? I'm not paying for this lunch by the way.”

“It's on Hoffy's tab,” Behruse said with a belch. “While I was sitting here resting after breakfast, I started thinking about the Druze stuff. I remembered an old report. Underneath the basement of the Al-Rashid Mental Hospital, there is a hidden ward for violent mental patients. About nine months ago, some Blackwater guys accidentally bombed it. Word was, they thought the crazy fucker Uday had stashed some of daddy's gold in there. Couple of his friends had suites there. Come to think of it, he even visited them sometimes. Anyways, I digress. After the Blackwater guys killed the guards and searched the place, they found no gold bars, so they pulled out. The place was wide open for like ten days before government officers came to lock it back up. A lot of patients simply wandered out.”

“Behruse, is there a point to this?” Sabeen asked.

“One of our old Mukhabarat boys was put in charge of covering it up,” Behruse said. “And he told me about a very interesting inmate. Their most dangerous inmate, in fact. They kept him sedated and shackled at all times. Apparently, he had the strength of ten men and
could take 200 volts and keep walking. They used to trank him up and run bets on how many tazer hits he could take. His file name was Afzal Taha. Some of his ramblings included crazy religious stuff about reincarnation. As I always say, after breakfast my brain reaches genius levels. Superhuman strength, nutty attitude, religious crazy—something clicked. So right before lunch, I went over and got the file from my friend. Do you want to see it?”

“You haven't even looked at it yet? Give it here.” Hoffman snatched it from Behruse's pudgy fist. It was a yellowed file discolored from water damage, tied with red string, bristling with papers of different sizes. The latest noting was done in a close, formal English handwriting in red ink, affixed with numerous seals. Hoffman read the script with his finger, his lips moving laboriously.

“Behruse, you're a genius!” Hoffman announced, forgetting momentarily that he had been effectively kidnapped and poisoned. “This man is the Lion of Akkad.”

Then the smell of the lamb hit him, and he promptly threw up over the file, Behruse, and a tiny part of Sabeen's shoe.

14: WARDS OF THE STATE

T
HE FILE ON
A
FZAL
T
AHA WAS A CONUNDRUM
. T
HE INDEX PROMISED
an immense farrago of paperwork from over ten different public institutions; sealed dossiers, letters of transfer, contradictory treatments and diagnoses, rosters of crimes committed, punishments meted out, varied medications, experimental procedures carried out on him, amid a sea of bureaucratic waffle and blame shifting. The body, however, contained only a single volume in close handwriting, the English extremely precise and formal, language typical of someone whose fluency in a second language had been hard won. Small notes had been penciled in cryptic Arabic in the margins, which Sabeen said were mostly clarifications or references to other files, none of which were included in the dossier.

This single report was the work of Dr. Sawad, who had been chief administrator of the restricted wing of the Al-Rashid. His credentials identified him as a specialist in schizophrenia in violent offenders. Stumped, Sabeen and Hoffman took turns trying to decipher the pages, and Hoffman's attempts were desultory at best. Behruse, near somnolent with the weight of three mid-day meals, lay basking in the glory of his original good idea, flicking ash on the table, scattering flies with his deep rumble, offering advice from afar.

“Here's Sawad's CV,” Sabeen said. “Big credentials.”

“Mukhabarat,” Behruse said, looking over the picture. “I can tell.”

“What, he has a secret haircut or something?” Hoffman asked. “Seriously, Behruse, sometimes I think you just make shit up.”

“You think the chief of the ‘restricted' mental ward of a place like Al-Rashid is not going to be Mukhabarat?” Behruse said. “What do you think ‘restricted' means? I'll tell you. Experimental procedures
equals: interrogation techniques, biological warfare, chemical warfare. Standard practice for Mukhabarat.”

“You tested interrogation torture methods on mentally ill patients?” Sabeen asked. “That was standard procedure?”

“Hey, it's better than monkeys,” Behruse said. “From a data gathering point of view, I mean.”

“Listen to this,” Hoffman cut in self-importantly. “I quote: ‘Patient 99% certainty suffers from auditory command hallucination. These episodes are extremely powerful. Patient believes he is communicating with some unidentifiable religious icon. He is extremely secretive regarding these communications and refuses to divulge any details as to the nature of the hallucinations, despite intense questioning. Acute paranoia is present even in periods of lucidity.”

“Hah!” Behruse said. “Intense questioning. What you think that means, habibi? Mukhabarat all the way.”

“Anything about treatment there?” Sabeen asked.

“Some heavy drugs,” Hoffman said. “Speaking of treatment, you wanna give me some more antidote? I'm feeling faint. Also, I think I'm seeing two of Behruse. I could swear he's gained weight since morning.”

“I gave you a pill just two hours ago, for God's sake.”

“I'm delicate,” Hoffman moaned. “My insides are burning. I'm not a fat bastard like Behruse.”

“Your insides burn because you're constantly high or drunk or eating weird shit,” Sabeen said. “Now what were the treatments for this patient?”

“Mostly tranks,” Hoffman said with a martyred air. “Sawad writes that the patient was extremely dangerous and responsible for injuring medical staff on three different occasions. He was kept in isolation and heavily drugged except for specific ‘interview' days. These interviews were conducted by Sawad himself.”

“And?”

“I can't find any details on these interviews anywhere. All references and annexure have been removed,” Hoffman said. “Behruse is right. This guy seems to be hiding the good stuff.”

“Wait,” Sabeen said. “He wrote a long note in Arabic here. He's talking about enough interesting details to make a stand-alone paper. I think he wanted to submit something to the medical journals. He might have pulled all the annexure files for that reason.”

“So we go and find this guy,” Behruse said. “If he's Mukhabarat, he'll probably help us. If he isn't, we'll have to try out some interviewing techniques of our own. I'll call my friend.”

An hour later, after a series of conversations, Behruse's mood had considerably darkened.

“This Sawad prick lived alone and worked alone,” Behruse said. “Typical Mukhabarat. No friends, not much family, and they all appeared to hate him anyways. So no one missed him, really, when he
fell off his roof two weeks ago.
”

“He reminds me of you,” Hoffman said. “Was it an accident?”

“His apartment was robbed two days prior to that,” Behruse said. “What do you think?”

“The police didn't investigate?” Hoffman asked.

“Police? In this city?” Behruse said. “Robberies are pretty common, and falling off your roof is pretty common too. Two separate reports were filed with the police station, only because he was a government employee. No follow ups afterwards. I had an old friend pull up the police file. Guess what? The file got ‘left behind' by accident when they shifted stations.”

“You think it's the Druze silencing him?” Sabeen asked.

“Someone pretty well connected, anyway.”

“So where'd his stuff go?” Hoffman asked. “Any kin? I thought you guys all had fifteen kids each.”

“One daughter,” Behruse said. “She might know something about his work. She's also a doctor, but she lives in the green zone. Can you get us in?”

“Hmmm,” Hoffman said. “I might actually be in some trouble over there.”

“For what?” Sabeen asked. “Deserting? Isn't that a shooting offence? Can we get invitations to the gallery?”

“No, they reprimand you strongly,” Hoffman said, injured. “And you don't have to sound so excited about it.”

“I'd like to watch if they shoot you,” Sabeen said.

“I'm on a top secret mission, FYI,” Hoffman said. “Full authority from high up. I just haven't checked in lately. Actually, you guys might be able to help me. You don't have any WMDs stashed away anywhere? Just a few would do.”

“Are you high?” Sabeen asked.

“Well, I just had that one joint in the car, plus that last dose of the antidote, which, I gotta' say makes for a sweet head rush.”

“For God's sake, Hoffman, you're not supposed to use the antidote to get stoned,” she said, exasperated.

“Maybe Avi could arrange for one?”

Sabeen stared icily, “One what?”

“A WMD.”

“No,” Sabeen said. “And don't bandy his name about. Not if you want to keep your head.”

“Just something small?”

“For God's sake, you idiot.”

“I guess we'll have to improvise,” Hoffman said. “Come on. Let's go. I might get stopped and questioned at some point. Just play along like a dumb foreigner.”

The path across the Tigris was a continuous snake of traffic, slowed to an inching worm by the check-posts on the bridge. The 14
^th
of July Bridge, originally called after the date of Ba'athist rise to power, had retained its name despite efforts by the Americans to change it to the Fourth of July Bridge, and, bizarrely, by the Georgian contingent to the “Tbilisi Bridge.” The Georgians claimed that they, in fact, had captured the bridge originally and should have the conquerors' right of renaming it. For some reason, the Georgian name had stuck for some time, and a Tbilisi café had even sprung up nearby. Suspecting a conspiracy, the American high command had rotated the Georgian
contingent away from bridge duty to some other part of the green zone; the Tbilisi lobby had faded away, and the bridge had reverted back to the old 14
^th
of July.