Part 2 • A spy with a homing device

(Page 2 of 3)

(J.C.) I spent my first full day of captivity sitting in a plastic chair in the second-floor bedroom of a house in Baghdad, while the sound of gunfire echoed around me.

I kept thinking, it's just Baghdad, that's the way it is. But the shooting, which had begun the night before, went on all day. Some of it was close.

Around dusk Abu Rasha, the No. 2 in charge and owner of the house, came into the room. He looked exhausted.

"I'm very, very tired, all day I'm fighting with the soldiers," he said. Then he made a ggggg-ggg sound, in imitation of an automatic weapon.

He sat down on the bed and sighed.

"They're right here. They're very near," he said. "Why, Jill? Why are the soldiers here? Why are the soldiers so near here?"

The question was an accusation.

I realized he thought I was somehow telling the US military where I was. For my own safety, I needed to make him see I was very upset by that idea.

"I don't know! I don't know!" I said, my voice rising.

"You don't have a mobile phone?" he said. "Maybe in your hair?"

I ripped off my head scarf and shook my hair loose. This was completely inappropriate behavior that would normally have deeply offended a Muslim man as apparently devout as he, but I was desperate.

	ILLUSTRATION BY JILLIAN TAMAKI

His hands went through my hair, checking my scalp for whatever he imagined I might have hidden there. Finally, he was satisfied. He left the room.

I collapsed into the plastic chair and started to cry, silently, afraid he would be angry if he heard me.

But suddenly he returned. He rushed over, grabbed my hand, and knelt next to me.

"I'm so sorry. No, Jill, don't cry. I'm so, so, so sorry," he said, emphatically. "No, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm your brother."

He was overwrought. Why should he care if I was upset? He'd kidnapped me, after all.

I knew I had just learned something important, something that might help me get through whatever was to come.

The next day I was told that US and Iraqi soldiers had raided the Um al-Qura Mosque - just a mile from Adnan al-Dulaimi's office.

Much later, I learned that the raid was prompted by a tip from an Iraqi civilian about my location. It was the closest US forces would come to rescuing me over the next three months.

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