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, “Not well. And he says he needs food and water.”
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 attaché. 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.
Brenner then asked, “Did any of your companions or commanders ever live in America?”
Sammy asked the question, and Rahim seemed to hesitate, then replied. Sammy said to us, “He says one of his companions, Anwar, the Egyptian, lived for a time in America. He also says he had heard that