“Yes, as a matter of fact there is,” said Hoffman. “We can stay the fuck out of the way! We can do our best to see that when this little papier-mache democracy falls apart, as few Americans as possible get hurt.”
Rogers looked away glumly.
“We aren’t the Salvation Army,” Hoffman continued. “Some of our colleagues tend to forget that sometimes. Like a few years ago, when people got sentimental ideas about saving democracy in another little turd of a country. Remember where?”
Rogers didn’t answer.
“I’ll give you a hint,” said Hoffman. “The capital is Saigon.”
“What about the Bombmaker?” asked Rogers quietly. “Isn’t there something we can do about him?”
“You tell me,” said Hoffman. “What can we do about him?”
There was a long silence. The words were on Rogers’s lips: Kill him. Deprive the demented bastard of his ability to build any more bombs. Just kill him. But he couldn’t say it, and he knew in that moment that Hoffman was right. There was nothing that they could do except stay out of the way.
“Saving the world isn’t our job,” Hoffman said gently to the younger man. “We aren’t priests and we aren’t assassins.”
Rogers thought of a Lebanese proverb he had heard from a Druse friend. It was becoming a kind of Lebanese national prayer, and perhaps it was Rogers’s prayer as well. The proverb said: Kiss the hand you cannot bite, but call upon God to break it.
Rogers was sitting at home one night late that summer, reading a book. There was a knock at the door, then the sound of something heavy dropping to the floor, then the sound of footsteps running away down the stairs and out the door of the apartment building.
Jane was closest to the door. She had risen from her chair to answer the knock but Rogers stopped her and went himself. He looked carefully through the peephole but saw nothing. Curious, he unbolted the door to make sure nobody was there.
“Oh my God,” muttered Rogers.
He closed the door and told Jane to go into the nursery immediately with the children and stay there. He placed a quick call to the security officer at the embassy. Then he went back to the front door.
There on the floor of the landing was the body of Amin Shartouni. The face was horribly distorted, caught in what seemed a final scream of anguish. Dried blood covered his mouth and chin and was crusted on his shirt. There was something on the floor next to the corpse. In the dim light of the hallway, Rogers could barely see it at first. It looked like a piece of meat, rough and red. He bent down and looked at it carefully and then felt a surge of nausea.
It was the boy’s tongue, which had been cut from his mouth and left as a warning.
The war of the bombs began a few months later, when a series of explosions rocked Beirut. The bombers hit a wide range of targets, from a pharmacy owned by the leader of the right-wing Phalange Party, to the offices of a leftist, pro-Iraqi newspaper.
What frightened the Lebanese was that the attacks were so random and anonymous. The Palestinians seemed the most likely perpetrators, since they had an interest in destabilizing Lebanon. But there were other theories. Some blamed the Jordanians, who wanted to force Lebanon to crack down against the fedayeen just as the king had done. Others blamed the Israelis, who also wanted to push the Lebanese to take a tougher stand. But the ominous fact was that nobody knew for sure who had done it and nobody was ever brought to justice. The bombings created a feeling of instability throughout Lebanon, a sense that something frightening was happening in the shadows.
30
Damascus; June 1971
Yakov Levi’s last run was to Syria. They told him to service four dead drops: one in Aleppo, one in a remote village south of Homs, two in Damascus. It was the assignment that members of the Mossad station in Beirut dreaded most. Levi had been hoping-praying-that his tour in Beirut would end before he had to do it again. But he was unlucky.
Shuval, the station chief, took Levi out to dinner the night before he left for Syria. They drove in separate cars to Chtaura, halfway to the border, and ate at a Lebanese restaurant there. It was the chief’s way of holding Levi’s hand as long as he could before letting him go. They talked in French through the dinner. Shuval laughed and told jokes about the life Levi would be leading in a few months, when he went back home. The girls on the beach. The loud talk and laughter in the streets. All the sights and sounds and fellowship of that other place, which the chief never named.
The organization had promised Levi the moon. When he got back to Tel Aviv, he would be a senior deputy in the section they called Tzomet- Junction-that handled the collection and analysis of intelligence. His specialty would be analyzing information about the Palestinian guerrilla groups. With a nice raise in pay, and a down payment for a new apartment in Herzliya. How did that sound? Didn’t that make it all a little more bearable? What they were really saying was: Hang on. Keep it together for a few more months and you can put your Maalox away in the drawer. We’re bringing you home.
Levi picked at his food in the restaurant in Chtaura. He pushed the humous back and forth on his plate with the pita bread. He cut his kibbeh into smaller and smaller pieces, but ate only the pine nuts and the spiced-lamb filling. He looked awful. Tired, frayed nerves. And he hadn’t even started the run yet.
The station chief embraced Levi when the dinner was over.
“See you in a week,” he said.
“Insha ‘Allah,” said Levi, not really meaning it as a joke. If it pleases Allah.
The chief drove back to Beirut. Levi went to his room in a small tourist hotel in Chtaura and slept fitfully. He rose at dawn to the sound of two taxi drivers arguing over a fare. They were screaming at each other so loudly and angrily that Levi worried, as he shaved, that one of them might start shooting. A policeman arrived and the fight ended. Levi breakfasted and headed for the border.
Levi reached the border before 9:00 A.M. Syrian customs officers dressed in khaki uniforms were questioning drivers and searching their cars. They weren’t the problem. The dangerous ones were the security officers at passport control.
Levi went through his final checklist as he braked the car near the checkpoint. He was Jacques Beaulieu, totally and completely. He saw the images of his cover identity in his mind as if he was looking at snapshots. His imaginary parents, brothers and sisters, friends from Marseilles. He knew what each of them looked like. Hair color, eye color, height, and weight. It was a game he played, like a blind man inventing the shapes and colors of his world.
Levi’s commercial cover was easier, because it was all real. The man carrying the passport in the name of Jacques Beaulieu traded goods throughout the Mediterranean, there were hundreds of people who could attest to it. He was coming to Syria to negotiate a contract for exporting agricultural products. It was true, he had the papers in his briefcase, the contract typed and ready to sign. He was a trader. That’s all he was. Who could prove otherwise? His identity fit as smoothly and tightly as a silk glove.
Levi parked his Citroen sedan. He got out and walked to the passport-control office at the border. He stood in the shortest line. In a minute-too quick-he was standing at the window. His knees felt weak when he looked at the passport-control officer. He steadied himself by remembering the snapshots of his fictitious father and mother.
“Papers!” growled the Syrian officer. He was unshaven and had a cigarette dangling from his lips.
Levi handed the Syrian officer his French passport and his Lebanese residency card. In theory, the residency card allowed him to come and go in Syria at will. That was one of the benefits of the Baath Party’s claim to sovereignty over Greater Syria. They didn’t recognize, officially, the existence of a separate nation of Lebanon. But that was only in theory.
The border guard looked at Levi suspiciously. Don’t panic, Levi told himself. They always do that. The guard was looking in a thick book covered with Arabic writing. Shit! Why the delay? What was he looking for? Was Levi on a watch list? The security man looked at Levi again through hooded eyes. Despite himself, despite all his
