“Is he reliable?” asked Rogers.
“That’s for you to tell me, my boy. Because starting now, he’s your agent.”
Rogers laughed and shook his head.
“Does he know that he’s on our books?”
“Sort of,” said Hoffman. “Let’s go.”
They walked back to the car in silence. When the doors were closed, Hoffman turned to his new case officer.
“There’s something you need to know about Fuad that isn’t in the files,” said the station chief.
“His father was assassinated a few years ago. He thinks the man who killed his father was a Lebanese Communist.”
“Is that true?” asked Rogers.
“I have no reason to doubt it,” said the station chief. “But who cares what I think? The fact is that Fuad believes it.”
Rogers met Fuad in an apartment in Rauche, overlooking the sea, which served as one of the agency’s half- dozen safehouses in Beirut.
The apartment was furnished in the garish style many Arabs enjoyed, derided by interior decorators as “Louis Farouk.” Gilt-edged mirrors, overstuffed couches in pink and yellow with tufts of material sprouting from the fabric, coffee tables lacquered with enamel. Rogers arrived early and scouted the apartment. It was hideous, the sort of decor that might impress a Bedouin from the desert, but not an honors graduate from AUB.
There was a knock at the door, and the ritual exchange of passwords.
“Are you busy today?” asked Fuad.
It struck Rogers as a foolish code, hardly worth the trouble, but he went ahead with the prearranged reply.
“No, I have a few minutes now.”
Rogers opened the door, shook Fuad’s hand, and led him to one of the pastel couches.
“Hello again, Fuad,” said Rogers.
“Hello, Mr. Reilly.”
Fuad moved across the room with the agility of a cat. He was dressed today in the clothes of a young Lebanese playboy. A jacket with wide lapels, pinched at the waist; linen trousers; matching suede belt and shoes; and the inevitable Ray-Bans. It was an outfit, Rogers reckoned, that must have cost Fuad a month’s salary.
The curtains in the apartment were drawn, and the room was dark. As he sat down on the couch, Fuad removed his sunglasses and stared at Rogers with the intense curiosity of a man who is putting his life in another person’s hands. There were two striking things about Rogers. The first was the American’s size. He was over six feet, a giant by Arab standards, a size normally associated with Kurdish wrestlers or Circassian bodyguards. The second was his informality. The loose fit of his clothes, the frayed collars on his shirts, the way he stared out the window when he was smoking a cigarette. The combination made him seem an embodiment of the Arab image of America: big and relaxed, exuding power and intimacy at the same time.
The housekeepers from the Beirut station had arranged the room carefully. The plate on the table was full of packs of cigarettes, three different brands, in an Arab gesture of hospitality. Fruit and drinks were in the pantry. Fuad took the pack of cigarettes closest to him-a pack of Larks-and lit the first of many cigarettes. Rogers poured sweet Arab tea into two glass cups and made small talk. He asked about Fuad’s family, talked about his own wife and children, inquired about the political situation in Egypt. When they had finished the preliminaries, Rogers came to the point.
“Tell me about the Palestinian guerrilla leaders. Which ones should we try to get to know?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Reilly,” said Fuad. “But the ones you should get to know are the ones who won’t talk to you.”
He’s right, thought Rogers. But he said nothing and waited for Fuad to proceed.
“In Egypt, I met two kinds of Palestinians,” Fuad continued. “There are the traditional leaders, the ones who can be bought, who are useless. And there is the new group-the fedayeen-who are not so easy to buy, and who are shaking the Arab world like a volcano. But you have a problem. The new ones are revolutionaries. They’re getting training and guns from Moscow. Why would they want to talk to America?”
“Everybody wants to talk to America,” said Rogers. “That’s the one thing I have learned in this line of work.”
“I am sure you are right, Mr. Reilly,” said Fuad cautiously.
“Tell me about Fatah,” said Rogers.
“It is the largest guerrilla group.”
“Yes, yes. I know that. Tell me about the leaders.”
“First there is the Old Man,” said Fuad. “He is not really so old, but everyone calls him that. He is a very complicated and devious man. Perhaps a people with no country will inevitably select a leader like him, with no morals. The Old Man will say anything to anyone. He gets money from the Saudis and guns from Moscow. He tells his Saudi friends that he is a devout Moslem and his Soviet friends that his only god is the revolution. This man may look like a fool, but you should not underestimate him.
“Then there is Abu Nasir. He is the head of their intelligence organization. A very clever man. The Egyptian intelligence service, the Moukhabarat, were afraid of him. They tried to control Fatah intelligence by training a dozen of Abu Nasir’s people. It didn’t work. The training only made them more dangerous.
“And there are others. The man they call the Diplomat, who lives in Kuwait. He is smart, rich, well-connected in Saudi and Kuwaiti business circles. He thinks that he, rather than the Old Man, should lead Fatah, and he doesn’t mind telling people so. Then there is Abu Namli, who runs the dirty operations. He is a clever politician but he talks too much. He does everything too much. Eats too much. Smokes too much. Drinks too much. This one is dangerous. He is a killer.”
Rogers was jotting down notes, mostly for show. The tape recorder was running and he would read the transcript tomorrow morning.
“The most interesting person in Fatah is someone who you’ve probably never heard of,” said Fuad.
Rogers put down his pen and listened.
“He’s only twenty-seven, but he’s already the Old Man’s favorite. I met him in Cairo two years ago at a conference on Palestinian politics, and we talked half the night. I have heard since then that he is a rising star in Fatah.
“He’s complicated. We would say in Arabic mua’ad. His father was a famous Palestinian fighter who was killed by the Jews. Part of him wants to be like his father-become a martyr and uphold the family name. But another part rejects the world of his father as backward and corrupt. That is why he is an interesting man. He is a modern Palestinian who wants to break out of the sickness of Arab culture. He loves Western things: cars, women, appliances. Anything that is modern.”
Fuad paused a moment.
“Go on,” said Rogers.
“You may not understand what I am saying, but he doesn’t act like a Palestinian. He doesn’t boast or brag. He doesn’t tell lies like the Old Man and the rest of the Fatah leaders. He doesn’t have the Arab sense of shame and inferiority about the Israelis. To him, they are the enemy, pure and simple.
“I saw him once in Cairo reading a copy of The Jerusalem Post. I don’t know where he got it, but only someone very brave would do that. He told me that the Israelis were clever because they knew how to use the press to reach the Jews of Europe and America. The Palestinians should learn from them, he said. Nobody else in Fatah would dare to say such a thing.
“I had a strange feeling talking to him, as if I was playing chess with someone who had thought out his moves to the end of the game.”
“What’s his name?” said Rogers, trying not to sound too interested.
“Jamal Ramlawi.”
“Perhaps,” said Rogers, “you could renew your acquaintance with Jamal Ramlawi.”
