alligator shoes on his feet. Rogers shook his head. There was something he didn’t quite understand.
“You know, Frank, somehow I never imagined you as a businessman. In fact, it never really occurred to me that you were all that interested in making money.”
“Life is full of surprises, kid,” said Hoffman. “Sometimes we do things for no reason other than the simple fact that we fucking well feel like it. And do you know what? It feels good.”
With that, Hoffman headed off to his own office, a bouquet of flowers in his hand to give to his secretary, Miss Pugh. Rogers looked at the card in his hand, bearing the imprint of Arab-American Security Consultants, and laughed from deep in his gut, for what seemed like the first time in a very long while.
Several days after Hoffman’s announcement that he was quitting, Rogers travelled to the mountains east of Beirut to meet with Samir Fares of the Deuxieme Bureau. It was a routine meeting, intended partly to reassure Fares and his colleagues in the Lebanese intelligence service that Hoffman’s departure didn’t imply any change in agency policy toward Lebanon or the Middle East.
On his way back, Rogers did something that, for him, was very unusual. He acted on impulse.
He was driving along the road looking at the scenery when it occurred to him that he was near the village where the Jezzines lived. And he decided, without really thinking about it very much, without considering the consequences for his marriage or his life or anything else, to stop and pay a visit to Solange Jezzine. He had dreamed often enough about having an affair with her, in a casual sort of way. But his idle fantasizing had very little to do with the deliberate, impulsive decision that day to turn the wheel of the car hard to the right, head down a different road in the Lebanese mountains, and step on the gas pedal. It had less to do, at that moment, with sexual desire than with curiosity, an impulse to do something different, whose outcome wasn’t predictable or even under his control.
As Rogers drove the car up the cedar-lined drive toward the Jezzines’ house, he felt his heart racing. Gone were the tough-looking young men with automatic weapons who used to police the grounds in the old days, when General Jezzine ran the Deuxieme Bureau. Manning the front gate instead was an older man who looked like a gardener.
Rogers gave his name to the gatekeeper, who phoned to the big house on an intercom and then waved Rogers through. Rogers parked his car in front of the great stone mansion. There was no sign of the general, or of anyone else, for that matter. As Rogers stepped out of the car, he saw a woman’s face peering down at him from an upstairs window.
He rang the bell. A maid answered the door and escorted him to the living room, where she asked him to wait. There was a great stack of European fashion magazines on the coffee table. Rogers admired the pictures. Many of the women, he thought, had the same radiant and exotic look as Solange. He turned the pages. His palms were moist. The maid returned after five minutes carrying a vellum envelope on a silver tray. It was like the letter she had sent Rogers many months ago. Crisp and creamy and tied with a red ribbon. Inside the envelope was a note: “My darling. You have come to me at last. In a few minutes, I am yours.”
The seduction began as Rogers sat there on the couch, the vellum notepaper in his hand, imagining Solange. He could see her body. The long curves of her legs, the gentle slope of her thighs, the fullness of her breasts, the radiance of her face. The scent of her body, not just the perfume bought in Paris, but the fragrance of olive and jasmine on her skin. The look of her eyes, so deep and dark, inviting pleasure and seduction.
There was a sound on the stairs. Rogers turned and saw her walking toward him, dressed in a silk robe, even more beautiful than he had imagined. Her lips were open in the shape of a kiss. She walked toward Rogers silently, took his hand in hers, and led him to a room that had once been the library, but had now been made over into a kind of harem chamber. There were no couches, only large pillows on the floor. A broad shaft of light streamed through the filmy curtains that covered the windows, and there was a slight breeze blowing.
Solange closed the door and locked it. Rogers moved toward her hungrily, but she held up a finger, bidding him to stop. I will take you, her eyes said. She took his hand and led him to one of the large pillows and bade him sit down. She took his shoes off, one by one. Then his socks. She unbuttoned his shirt, one button at a time, then gently unfastened his trousers. She was a courtesan now, kneeling gracefully on the floor before Rogers. As she leaned toward him, Rogers glimpsed through her silk robe the curve of her breasts. She was all softness.
When Rogers was naked, Solange rose from the floor and stood silently before him. She slid the silk robe off her shoulders so that it clung briefly to her breasts and then fell gently to the floor. She was perfectly naked except for a gold chain around her waist, hanging low on the curve of her belly.
Rogers thought momentarily of the consequences of this act of pleasure and disorder. But only a moment.
“Come to me,” said Solange Jezzine as she arranged herself on one of the fat pillows on the floor. And Rogers did. He surrendered himself entirely to the woman, her beauty, her eroticism. He closed his eyes and felt a wave of pleasure. It was a heady feeling, like falling from a great height in a dream.
PART IX
June 1978-January 1979
40
Washington; June 1978
“The most competent intelligence service in the world today is the Mossad,” proclaimed John Marsh from the podium of a small conference hall in Arlington, Virginia. “It pains me to say that after all these years, but it’s true.”
There was a burst of applause from the audience of conservative intellectuals, Republican congressional aides, trusted diplomats, and former intelligence officers who had gathered for a conference hosted by the Center for the Study of Responsive Intelligence. The Center was a sort of organized cheerleading section for the old-boy network of the Central Intelligence Agency. It seemed to exist chiefly for the purpose of holding conferences to excoriate the current CIA management, especially the new Director, Charles “Chuck” Hinkle.
The topic of this particular gathering was “Rebuilding the CIA: How and Why.” John Marsh-recently retired from the agency-was the featured speaker. Dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, his hair slicked back against his head, Marsh looked slightly like a gangster. He wagged a finger at his audience as he continued with his lecture.
“You all know what has happened to CIA,” Marsh admonished them. “The agency has been raked over the coals by its critics. Its secrets have been exposed for all the world to see. It is the laughing stock of the other Western intelligence agencies. It is a sad, sad story.
“Certainly there were misdeeds in the past. Certainly there were some overzealous officers and unwise operations. And certainly there are things that need to be corrected. Nobody questions that. There is always room for improvement. But can’t we all agree that there are limits to responsible criticism? Shouldn’t our critics in Congress and the press remember that without a strong intelligence agency, they wouldn’t have the freedom to be so critical?”
There was more applause from the audience. A twenty-five-year-old congressional aide, dressed in a green Dartmouth blazer, shouted “Hear! Hear!” Marsh realized that he was rather enjoying his new life as a public speaker.
“I would like to share a little secret of my own with this group,” said Marsh. “Nothing classified, of course. I wouldn’t do that, not even for a gathering of friends. But I would like to tell you, in my own words, why I left the CIA several months ago after nearly twenty years with the agency.
“As many of you know, I spent most of the 1970s working on congressional liaison for the agency. Our office tried to keep Congress from opening Pandora’s box, and I must admit to you that we failed. They asked for our dirty linen and, despite the efforts of some of us, the agency gave it to them. Do you know what bothered me most? The fact that we lacked political leadership-in Congress, in the White House, and yes, even at the CIA-that was willing to say no.”
