“Were there other slogans?”
“Yes. There was one other. ‘The first responsibility is to the nation. Everything else comes second.’ ”
“And where did you go from Sin el-Fil?”
“We went deep into Kesrouan, to an abandoned convent in a remote valley that I had never seen before. We were very far up the mountain, and completely hidden from outsiders. As we got near the training site, the road signs were covered over with paper so that we couldn’t be sure where we were.”
Rogers nodded. Come on, come on.
“There were about forty people there. They seemed to have come from all over Lebanon. I thought I recognized a few faces-one from school and another from the law faculty-but I didn’t say anything to them because it was supposed to be secret. There was an instructor-his number was 808-who drilled us in hand-to-hand combat and taught us to shoot automatic rifles. It was like the Boy Scouts, except it was more serious.”
Rogers nodded again. Fares sat close by, puffing his pipe.
“We met like that each Saturday for the next six weeks, each time following a car to that hidden place in the mountains. I would tell my parents that I was going hunting.”
“Did they believe you?”
“At first they did. To keep up my alibi, I would stop on the way home and buy some birds that somebody else had shot. Eventually I think they realized something was going on. But they never said anything, not even to this day.”
“What did the instructor tell you was the purpose of Al-Jabha?” asked Rogers.
“During the first six weeks, they just talked in general terms about fighting the Palestinians. They said that foreigners were trying to take over our country and change its identity so that it would be like the rest of the Arab world. It was always in terms of Lebanese against foreigners, but we knew what the instructors meant.”
“What did they mean?” asked Rogers.
“That the Palestinians were Moslems and they wanted to kill the Christians.”
Fares now sat forward in his chair. He had been through this debriefing once already, without Rogers, and it had stopped at this point. They were now about to cover new ground. He wondered if the frightened young Lebanese would continue.
“What happened later in the training?” asked Rogers gently. Amin looked warily at Fares.
“What happened later?” repeated Rogers.
“There was another kind of training,” said Amin.
“And what was it?”
“After the first round, the instructor-202-took me aside and said that he wanted me to enter a special course for the inner circle of the group.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said that I would. I was very flattered that he asked me. It seemed like a very great honor. It was only in this later training that it became clear to me what the group was doing. That was when I began to understand about occult power. You see this secret organization-Al-Jabha-was really just a cover for another, even more secret group.”
“What was the more secret group called?”
“It was called ‘The Guardians of the Mountain.’ ”
“Can you tell us about this inner group?” asked Fares.
“I don’t think so. They made us swear on the gospels that we would not reveal what we learned.”
“I want you to tell me,” said Rogers firmly.
“I can’t,” said Shartouni. “It is too dangerous.”
Rogers was wise enough to back off before the frightened young man broke completely from the thin tether with which they held him.
“Perhaps another day,” said Fares.
“Perhaps,” said the young Lebanese.
Having begun the process of confession and absolution, Amin wasn’t going to stop. He met again with Rogers two days later. Again, Fares spent time with the young Lebanese before the meeting, stroking his wounded psyche and encouraging him to tell the rest of his story. They gathered at an apartment near Jounie, in a complex overlooking the sea. The session began in the late afternoon, as the sun was beginning to set on the western horizon of the Mediterranean.
“Today, Amin would like to continue his story by telling us about the inner circle of Al-Jabha,” said Fares. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” said Amin Shartouni.
“Amin has promised that today, he will tell us everything about the group,” said Fares.
Shartouni nodded. Rogers settled back in his chair. Fares lit up his pipe. Amin sat on a couch facing the sea.
“The purpose of the inner circle was to do the things that the Lebanese Army could not do,” the young man began. “The leaders told us that because of political problems in the army, especially the friction between Moslem and Christian officers, it was no longer possible for the army to take the measures that might be necessary to defend the republic. That would be our job. They called it ‘special operations.’ ”
“What did they teach you in this second round of training?” asked Rogers.
“They taught us to make bombs,” answered Amin. His lips were crinkled into an odd smile that Rogers hadn’t seen before.
“Please tell us about it,” said Rogers.
“Very well. We had a new instructor in the inner group, who knew everything about making bombs. He had travelled around the Arab world and knew the secret tricks of warfare.”
“What was his name?” asked Rogers.
“He didn’t have a name,” said Amin. “We just called him ‘the Bombmaker.’ ”
“And what did he teach you?”
“First he taught us how to make homemade explosives.”
“Tell me,” said Rogers.
“They were the simplest kind at first, which you could make by mixing a pesticide with a fertilizer. The Bombmaker said that the nitrogenous compound in the fertilizer, combined with the acid of the pesticide, would produce a powerful explosive. But he recommended against using this mixture.”
“Why?”
“Because it was unstable. It would explode if you shook it, or dropped it.”
“I see,” said Rogers.
“The Bombmaker recommended what he called ‘nitrocotton.’ He had me mix it in the bathtub. We took pure cotton and mixed it very slowly, very gently, with nitric acid. The Bombmaker warned us that if we mixed nitrocotton too fast, it would explode right there in the tub!”
“And you made nitrocotton?”
“Yes,” said Amin. “It was difficult for me at first, because my hand was shaking so much that it was churning up the acid. But I learned how.”
“What came next?” asked Rogers.
“Detonators. The Bombmaker taught us how to make a simple detonator. You start with gunpowder. You can get it from any bullet. Then you take a flashlight bulb, break the glass, put the gunpowder around the resistance wire, and recap the bulb with wax. When you run electricity to the bulb, Boom! You have a detonator!”
Amin smiled that peculiar smile again. Rogers wondered if he was a lunatic after all.
“But those were just the basics,” continued Amin. “We moved on to real explosives: gelignite and melignite and plastique. The Bombmaker said the simplest way to get these fancy explosives was to steal them from the military. He said that tons of explosives disappear from NATO stocks every year, and if we wanted some, we should bribe an American soldier in Europe who would steal what we wanted. If we didn’t need the high-quality military explosive, the Bombmaker said we should just buy dynamite from the people who sell it to construction companies. All we would need to make it legal was a construction license! The Bombmaker also told us about another way, but he said it was very dangerous.”
“What was that?”
