ERICA IS SITTING IN DUBAI Airport waiting for her connecting flight to Baghdad. Outside the massive wall of plate glass, the temperature is hovering at 125, and heat mirages dance over the runways. She’s never been to Dubai before, and even though all she’s seeing up close is the airport, she’s in no hurry to come back. It just feels like the most artificial place on earth—a gleaming, glossy monument to extravagance sitting in the baking blistering sun, its very existence made possible by the all-seeing, all-knowing God of Air Conditioning.
And now she’s onboard the jet for the two-and-a-half hour flight to Baghdad. Her fellow passengers are a mix of businessmen—both Western and Arab—and women in burkas lugging shopping bags from posh boutiques. Where do they wear their Chanel suits and Lauren belts and Hermes perfume? At clandestine dress-up parties? Or do they simply hang them in their closets and hope the day arrives when they can proudly flaunt their wealth on the streets?
They land, and Bob Ruggio is waiting to meet her. He’s in his forties with a slight paunch, bald on top, half glasses hanging on a cord around his neck.
“Welcome to Baghdad.”
“I’m psyched to be here.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“I could use a shower and a nap.”
After getting Erica’s suitcase, they step out into the furnace-like air and get in the waiting car. Erica is fascinated by what she sees. Her first impression is that everything is so . . . sandy. The streets, the buildings, the land, even the air. The architecture is a mix of ancient turreted mosques rising gracefully to honor Allah, and more recent and far less graceful office and apartment buildings. The scars of war are everywhere—empty lots, pockmarked houses, broken windows, rusting hulks of burned-out cars, concrete barriers. This is a nation that has been at war for decades now, and it shows. The streets have little foot traffic, and the few people who are out hurry along. She sees children playing, though, running down streets, throwing balls, laughing. They’ve lived with war their entire lives and they won’t let it stop them from being kids, although when they glance at her car their eyes look wary.
“Here’s a phone for you, and here’s a backup,” Ruggio says. “We’re due to drive up and look at the old jail tomorrow. Then we’ll head to the village where the one surviving guard lives.”
“He’s key here. I just hope he has the information I need and is willing to part with it.”
“We’ll bring cash. It has a way of loosening lips.”
“And the area is currently under government control?”
“Yes, but ask me again in ten minutes.”
“It’s that bad?”
“It’s worse.”
They’re silent for the rest of the drive. They enter the gated and heavily fortified Green Zone. Rows of steel-reinforced concrete barriers guard the front of the Al Rasheed hotel. It’s a long hulking building, and the lobby is decorated in shades of dated and tacky. Erica checks in, thanks Bob, tells him she’ll be waiting in the lobby at eight in the morning, and heads up to her suite.
Before she opens her suitcase she calls Anwar Hamade, the journalist Greg put her in touch with.
“It’s Erica Sparks.”
“Welcome to my beautiful country,” he says with an ironic edge.
“Everyone I’ve met at the hotel has been very nice.”
“That’s a good random cross section.”
“So any chance I could lure you over here for dinner?”
“Of course. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Erica takes a long shower and tries to grab a short nap. No chance. So she does twenty minutes of Tae Kwon Do. She dresses down—though not in the I’m-a-man camo Nancy brought her—and heads down to the restaurant. Hamade is at a table, and he stands and waves her over.
“Greg speaks very highly of you,” he says as they shake hands.
“And of you.”
Hamade is around fifty, with thick black hair going gray at the temples, knowing restless eyes, and a half smile that reads as bemusement-as-a-defense. Erica likes him immediately.
“Greg tells me you’re an expert on covert action.”
“As an Iraqi journalist, I hardly have a choice.”
“This may be a stupid question, but has the CIA been very active in Iraq?”
“The CIA has been very active in the entire Middle East for many decades. The region is still crawling with CIA agents, operatives, and informers. In fact . . .” His eyes scan the room.
“Seriously?”
“Count on it. And they know you’re here.”
Erica looks around. Several diners quickly avert their eyes. Suddenly the restaurant, the hotel, doesn’t feel like a safe place.
“Do you think it’s possible the CIA had something to do with Mike Ortiz’s capture, imprisonment, and escape?”
“It’s very possible. You know, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about Ortiz’s case.”
Erica leans forward. “Say more.”
“First, why was he taken, and not one of the other three congressmen? From what I have been told, he was not the easiest target. The congresswoman who was shot was the logical choice—closest to the gunman and least able to resist. But they went straight for Ortiz. So clearly they had orders to take him and him alone. This is an issue the American authorities have never raised. Why not?”
The question hangs there as they order. The waiter is inscrutable, unsmiling. When he has left, Erica asks, “Do you have any theories?”
“They are only theories. But Ortiz, after his own tour in Iraq as a marine and his subsequent election to Congress, became a fierce opponent of the war and its architects in the Bush administration. Perhaps the CIA was engaged in a little payback. After all, his capture neutralized his criticisms of the war.”
“Are you saying his own government had him kidnapped?”
“As I said, it is only a theory. But stranger things have happened in this region. And many can be traced back to the CIA.”
“And his escape?”
“A little too neat. A little too easy.”
“So you think he had help?”
Hamade shrugs.
“But who?” Erica asks.
“Look at how it has benefited his campaign for president.”
“Yes, but surely the CIA doesn’t want him in the White House. He’s a critic of American involvement in foreign wars. He advocates for diplomacy.”
“Yes, that is my thinking. And that is what makes this case so fascinating. There are many questions. Perhaps tomorrow we can find some answers.”
“If you’re right about his capture and escape, Ortiz isn’t a hero at all. He’s a pawn.”
“As I said, nothing has been proven. But there have been rumors all along. You know, Iraq is a nation in crisis. We take one step forward and two back. It’s heartbreaking on many levels. The Iraqi people have suffered so much; the country has so many problems . . . We don’t devote too much time and energy to Mike Ortiz.”
“But he may become president on the basis of lies.”
“Well, he would hardly be the first leader to accomplish that.”
Hamade’s cynicism is showing. It’s understandable. But if this was all a setup, Erica is not going to let the American people be fooled. Ortiz will be the most powerful man on the planet, capable of molding the course of history. And if he’s under the control of the CIA or some other unknown entity, the American people have to know it. Before election day.
“I’m going to head up to Baiji tomorrow. I need to see the jail where he was kept. And my producer has tracked down the village where the one guard who survived Ortiz’s escape lives. I’m going to try and find him and get his version of events.”
Now Hamade leans forward. “Are you taking an Arabic speaker?”
“My producer knows some Arabic.”
“Would you like me to come? I can translate. I would like to see the jail myself and hear what the guard has to say.”
“Of course. You know it’s a very dangerous area.”
“This hotel is a very dangerous area.”
After dinner Erica goes up to her room. She tries to piece together what Hamade has just told her, but she is so tired that her synapses aren’t firing. Her exhaustion is physical, emotional, and psychic; she can barely keep her eyes open. She undresses and slips between the sheets. But sleep won’t come. Her mind is racing from thought to thought, from fear to terror. According to Hamade, the CIA knows she’s in Iraq. And he implied it wasn’t just the CIA; it was any number of clandestine agencies or even terrorist groups. Erica feels sweat break out over her body—she’s being watched; the room is probably bugged; she’s in danger.
She throws off the covers, leaps out of bed, and starts to pace. The implications of what Hamade has told her about Ortiz are staggering. She goes to the window. Baghdad looks ominous. Patches are lit by streetlamps, but great swathes of the city are dark—dark streets and dark houses. How can she prove Ortiz’s capture and escape were premeditated, a setup, a fraud, designed to propel him to the White House? How can she prove that he was subjected to mind control, to brainwashing? And what if she’s wrong about all of it?
The darkened room feels like a prison cell. Erica can’t go outside, doesn’t even feel safe going down to the lobby. She races into the bathroom and splashes cold water on her face again and again. She goes back out to the room, leans against the wall, and then slowly slides down it. That’s when she notices something moving on the rumpled bedsheets. At first she thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her. Then slowly it comes into focus—first two claws, then the head and body and the creeping movement as the huge scorpion makes its way to her pillow.
Erica jumps up and freezes, watching the scorpion with wide, petrified eyes. Then, not taking her eyes off it, she slowly makes her way across the room to where she’s put the work boots Nancy gave her. Grabbing one by the toe, she moves toward the bed. When she’s close enough she brings the heel down on the scorpion again and again and again, until it’s nothing but a twisted mass of glistening guts and smashed shell.
Erica pulls a wad of tissues out of the box, picks up the mess, walks into the bathroom, and flushes it down the toilet. Then she goes back out into the room and turns on every light and conducts a thorough search, including pulling off the mattress and all the bedding. The room is clean. Of scorpions at least.
Erica has to sleep. If she doesn’t, she’ll be incoherent in the morning. She takes out her cards and plays a half dozen games of solitaire. Then she pushes through the wall of her fatigue and forces herself to do an hour of vigorous, even punishing Tae Kwon Do until she’s sweating and aching and literally unable to remain standing. And finally it comes, a restless sleep that brings no answers and no solace.