We sat on A blanket on the bare cement floor and picked at a plate of flatbread, olives, and yogurt, and drank tea. Blackout curtains covered the window, but I could tell it was turning light.
"The Iranian." I said. "Frankly, I find it hard to believe he's dead."
It wasn't going to help to tell Nabil about my history with the photo. But if Mousavi really was dead, I was more confused than ever as to why Millis had dragged it along with him to the Breezeway Motel. Or why anyone wanted to grab it from me now.
"Whatever this man means to you, he's dead. I'm sure."
"Someone misinformed you maybe."
"My people were there. A bombardment in Lebanon, two years ago. A 155-round landed on the house he was sleeping in."
It was all a waste of time coming here, I thought. I was out of questions, frustrated, not sure where to go next. And yet a minute later, I don t
know what it was-training, twenty-five years of running informants, curiosity-but I realized I'd come too far to stop asking questions now.
"Tell me about the day the photo was taken."
Nabil said he was coming back from Karachi and stopped by to see bin Laden. Bin Laden had guests. They were closeted in a back bedroom when he arrived.
"First to come out was bin Laden. Then an old man, a foreigner. He was wearing a salwar chemise."
Nabil picked up the picture and pointed at the man with the missing head.
"I think it was him. He had a cane, but you can't see it in the photo."
"A foreigner?"
"An American. He spoke to me in English. He had an American accent."
That surprised me. Even during the Afghan war when bin Laden was nominally allied with the United States, he was a strict Wahhabi and avoided Americans. Europeans, too. Nabil must have been mistaken. Maybe it was a foreigner who spoke American English.
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
"Why was he there?"
"He couldn't stand for very long. Bin Laden was worried about his health. But the man seemed perfectly at ease, like he'd known bin Laden for a long time. I wondered if he was one of those Americans who seem happy only when they're away from home. I have no idea why he was there."
"He spoke English with bin Laden?"
"No. He spoke to bin Laden in Arabic. And later he spoke to me in Arabic. Fluent, classical Arabic."
That was even stranger.
"Then I heard him and the Iranian speaking in Farsi. They spoke very fast. It sounded to me like the American's Farsi was fluent, too."
"Wait. The American knew the Iranian?"
Now it was getting really interesting. For a start, only a handful of Westerners speak both fluent Arabic and Farsi. But throw in the fact that he knew the man who may have kidnapped and killed Bill Buckley, and I
was starting to understand why someone had cut this man's head out of the photo. Who in the hell was he? I still wasn't convinced he was American.
"Did the Iranian have red hair?" I asked.
"Maybe. I can't remember. There are a lot of Iranians with red hair."
"His eyes?"
"I don't remember. It was a long time ago."
This wasn't going anywhere, and my interest shifted back to the American. The easy answer was he was a journalist. The war was hot. Bin Laden was a scoop. But then again I'd never heard of an American journalist speaking fluent Arabic and Farsi. And they certainly don't make friends with Iranian Pasdaran officers. Something about that day was critically important. I just couldn't nail it down.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Who took the picture?"
"Khalid."
"Khalidwho?"
"I never knew his surname even though he was always at bin Laden's house. He was a Kuwaiti. And like the Iranian, the American knew Khalid. He kept putting his hand on Khalid's shoulder. The American had a camera with him. He asked Khalid to take the picture. 'To memorialize the passing of the torch,' he said. I remember because I didn't know what he meant. Khalid drove away that day in the same car with the American and the
Iranian."
"Don't you find this all very strange?"
"I don't have an answer. You need to talk to the other person who was there that day. A Kuwaiti. A prince of the Al Sabah." He pointed to the young man, almost a boy, immediately to bin Laden's right.
I'd forgotten the Gulf prince. Neither Millis nor I could place him, and I'd just assumed he was some inconsequential hanger-on.
"The prince knows Khalid. And he has this very strange story, which 1 know only part of."
"Where is he now?" I said.
"In Lebanon. The Biqa' Valley."
Lebanon wasn't my first choice of places to go-hell, it wasn't my second or third choice, either. The Pasdaran still had free range of the country?
and if they thought I was back looking for Buckley's kidnapper, they might try to put an end to my hunt for good. But now with this new piece of information that there was an American-or whoever he was-in touch with both bin Laden and a Pasdaran officer, there was no way I wasn't going to go see Prince Al Sabah and ask him what he knew about it.
One of the Fedayeen was waiting outside to lead me back to my hotel. When I turned to say good-bye to Nabil, he was still sitting in his plastic lawn chair, looking at the picture of his mother and father. In a way, we weren't that different, both of us shoved in a corner, our room for maneuvering narrowing by the day, both hanging on to a photo.