Dr. Arslani apologized to his guests for making them travel to the mountains. He rarely went to Beirut anymore, he said. He found it too depressing. His goal as a professor had been to help train a modern civil service in Lebanon, the old man explained. But when he went to Beirut now and saw what had become of the Lebanese bureaucracy, he felt that his life’s work had been a failure.
“They are pickpockets,” Dr. Arslani said scornfully.
In his lapel, the old man still wore the fading emblem of the Order of Lebanon, awarded years earlier for his services to the republic. Looking at him, Rogers felt he was seeing a remnant of a vanishing era. Dr. Arslani excused himself after a few minutes and left Rogers and Fares alone to talk.
The conversation began awkwardly, since neither man wanted to admit, at this early stage of their discussion, what they had come so far to talk about.
“How is the new regime treating you?” asked Rogers.
“Well enough,” said the Lebanese Army officer. “They pay my salary.”
“Is it much different from the old?”
“We do the same things,” said Fares. “But we have stopped believing in them.”
“Why?”
“Because our job has become absurd,” said Fares. “We are charged with protecting the security of a state whose citizens no longer trust the state to do anything. So we are protecting something that is, in reality, nothing.”
“Why is this country unravelling?” asked Rogers, posing the question as much to himself as to the other man.
“Ask Dr. Arslani,” answered the young Lebanese. “He’s the professor.”
“You were his student,” continued Rogers patiently. “What do you think he would say?”
“He gave me a book once, years ago,” answered Fares. “It was a history of the Weimar Republic in Germany. It tried to explain how democracy collapsed in Germany. Inflation, demoralization, the growth of extremism. It was a story of how a country lost its center and collapsed from within. When Dr. Arslani gave me that book fifteen years ago, I wondered why. What could this possibly have to do with Lebanon? Now I’m beginning to understand.”
“What should a sensible German have done?” asked Rogers.
“If he had known what was coming?”
“Yes.”
Fares smiled thinly, almost grimly. He could see where Rogers was leading.
“He would have worked to strengthen the political institutions of his country,” said Fares.
“And if that was hopeless?” pressed Rogers.
“He would have left.”
“Where, do you suppose?”
Fares laughed.
“To America,” he said.
“Yes,” said Rogers. “I agree. That is what a sensible German would have done.”
Rogers decided then that he liked the young Lebanese and, what was considerably more, that he trusted him. The two men talked for another hour, still in vague and general terms, before emerging from the closed drawing room and joining Dr. Arslani for a pleasant lunch on a terrace overlooking the mountains and the sea far beyond.
Rogers and Fares met twice more before they concluded an arrangement. Fares was a professional, and he had no illusions about what he was doing. It was treason. The only mitigating factor, he told Rogers, was that the way things were going, in a few more years there wouldn’t be a Lebanese nation left to betray.
Rogers explained what he wanted: access to the underground movement that was developing among the Christians of Lebanon.
“Let’s be clear on one thing,” said Fares. “All I can do for you is to make introductions. I have my own network of agents in East and West Beirut, and I hope that they can help me to penetrate these organizations. But it won’t be easy. The militias are very secretive and their members are intensely loyal to each other. It is like trying to recruit one member of a family to provide information about his brothers. So don’t get your hopes up.”
“We need to see inside the cave,” said Rogers. “We’re seeing shadows on the wall, but we don’t know whether they are made by a giant or a dwarf.”
“I know what you want,” said Fares. “You want to know who makes the bombs.”
“Yes,” said Rogers. “But I also want to understand why he is doing it.”
“Those are good questions,” said Fares.
To Rogers, that sounded like a deal.
“I insist on two things,” said Fares, when they were down to the final bargaining. He was puffing on his pipe, releasing a cloud of fragrant smoke into the air with each puff.
“First,” said Fares, “I want an annuity that will allow my wife to live comfortably abroad and my children to complete their studies in America if anything happens to me. And I want it done in a way that neither my wife nor my children ever know that you are providing the money.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said Rogers. “We do this more often than you might imagine. We have accountants who can buy the annuity and establish a trust fund for your children, and brokers who can manage the money, all very quietly. We even have our own offshore banks and mutual funds in the Caribbean to handle the paperwork. What’s the second request?”
“It’s more complicated,” said Fares. “You may find this strange, given what I am doing, but I still love my country.”
“I don’t find that strange,” said Rogers.
“Good, because then you will understand what I am asking,” said Fares. “Several years ago, my commanding officer told me that someday I would run the Deuxieme Bureau.”
“I hope he’s right,” said Rogers.
“Personally, I doubt it. But if it should ever happen, I want your promise that the agency will terminate me immediately as a controlled agent and allow me to serve my country honorably.”
Rogers thought a moment.
“I can make you that promise,” said Rogers. “What matters is that you believe me.”
Fares looked at him warily.
“We’ve been down this road before,” Rogers said matter of factly. He explained that the issue came up surprisingly often. People recruited by the agency when they were young men, studying in the United States or serving in junior positions in their governments, inevitably rose in the ranks. Some of them rose to the very top. The agency had dealt with the problem often enough that it even had a phrase for agents who did so well that it became embarrassing. They called it “the prime minister syndrome.”
“So you will never betray me,” said Fares.
“That’s right.” said Rogers.
“I suppose I should find that reassuring,” said Fares, extending his hand toward Rogers. “But even America cannot suspend the laws of human nature. Let us say that you will never betray me unless it is absolutely necessary.”
28
Beirut; May 1971
“There is someone I would like you to meet,” Fares told Rogers a month later over lunch at Le Pecheur restaurant near the port. Rogers had finished eating and was smoking a cigarette as he gazed out across St. Georges Bay at the tramp steamers lying at anchor and the small boats used by the smugglers and fishermen. He had removed his tie and his open shirt was blowing in the sea breeze.
“Who’s that?” asked Rogers, turning to Fares. The Lebanese intelligence officer was wearing a tweed coat, which made him look all the more like a junior professor.
“He is a young agent I have recruited from a secret organization in East Beirut. He came to me because he is
