“That is just the problem, Tom,” replied Fares with a sad smile. “A promise is a promise. And no more.”
Rogers looked stung. He had come a very long way to try to settle accounts with people he cared about, and his first check was bouncing. Fares saw that he was upset and tried to patch the conversation back together.
“You are worrying too much about this,” said Fares. “You are acting like it is the kiss of death to work with the Americans in the Middle East. But it isn’t. It is very valuable. I am the proof! Everyone in Lebanon knows that I am friendly with the Americans. They do not know the precise details, but it is no secret that I am well connected with the American Embassy. And do you know what? It helps me! The Syrians take me more seriously. The Egyptians take me more seriously. Because they suspect that I work for the CIA.”
“Baloney,” said Rogers. “Nobody trusts a spy. Not even in Lebanon.”
“You are wrong,” said Fares. “In Lebanon, we do not take someone seriously until we know that someone in the West is prepared to buy him.”
Rogers had a look of exasperation. He wanted to resolve the problem.
“I have a proposal,” he said. “I have cleared it with the Director. The deal is this: You are terminated, as of now. The annuity for your wife and children remains in effect. But you don’t owe us anything anymore. We will assume that our relationship is finished.”
“Fine,” said Fares. “And I will assume that our relationship continues.”
“I give up,” said Rogers.
They reached Ashrafiyeh in East Beirut and headed up the coast road toward Jounie, toward the apartment along the beach where they had once met with a frightened young Lebanese Christian boy named Amin Shartouni, who had talked of something called la puissance occulte- and had eventually been killed by it.
Rogers was lost in thought. Fares was glancing at his watch.
“I’m afraid I have a meeting back at the palace,” said Fares apologetically. Rogers changed direction and headed back toward Baabda.
“By the way,” said Rogers, “whatever happened to the Palestinian Christian who trained Amin Shartouni? The man we called the Bombmaker.”
“We see his bombs, but not the man himself. He has gone deeper underground in the last few years. They all have. It’s much harder now to find out what’s going on. When you pick up a rock now, you don’t see the bugs underneath. You just find dirt.”
“The Bombmaker is still alive?” asked Rogers in a tone of disappointment.
“Most certainly. From what little we pick up, he is busier than ever. All of the groups use car bombs now, and he is the master.”
“You would think someone would kill him,” said Rogers.
Fares laughed.
“Who would kill him, Tom? Everyone deals with him a little when they need him. What purpose is there in killing him? He doesn’t know anything, except how to make bombs. And even if he died, his students are everywhere, in all the groups. There are many, many people in Lebanon now who know how to make bombs.”
Rogers shook his head. They drove back to Baabda mostly in silence. As they neared the gate to the Presidential Palace, Fares spoke up.
“Do you remember a woman named Solange Jezzine?” he asked. “The wife of my predecessor?”
“Of course I do,” said Rogers. “She is not a woman that you forget.”
“You knew her a bit, didn’t you?” asked Fares. He spoke matter-of-factly, as if he knew the whole story.
“A bit,” said Rogers. He thought of her sharp eyes and soft body. “Whatever happened to her?”
“She’s remarried,” said Fares.
“Oh really?” said Rogers. “To who?”
“To a very rich young man. He is an arms dealer, the agent of the Saudi minister of defense. It is a very lucrative job, as you can imagine. He’s very active in Lebanon, too. Sells guns to both sides.”
“Does she still live in Lebanon?”
“No. She mostly lives in Paris now. And Marbella. Would you like her address? I am sure they can find it back in the office.”
Rogers paused to think. Did he want the address, the passion, the exhilarating plunge from a high place, and the long convalescense?
“No,” said Rogers eventually. “I don’t think so.”
They reached the entrance to the palace. Rogers stopped the car. Fares sat in his seat for a moment, trying to think of what he wanted to say.
“We have a saying in Lebanon,” said Fares, “Like so many other things, it is something that we borrowed from the French.”
“What is it?” asked Rogers.
“ ‘Seule le provisoire dure,’ ” answered Fares. “ ‘Only the temporary lasts.’ Goodbye, my friend.”
As Fares watched Rogers’s car leave the palace grounds, it occurred to him that Rogers was an unlikely spy. He was a man who yearned for permanency in a business where that was impossible. He seemed to want relationships that were built on trust, honesty, a sense of mutual responsibility. Fares suspected that it was this quality of idealism that made Rogers seem so American-and perhaps also dangerous to those who worked with him. Rogers had a will to believe things that were not always true.
44
Beirut; October 1978
Rogers waited for Jamal in a safehouse in the West Beirut neighborhood of Ramlet el-Baida. When he entered the apartment, he had an eerie feeling that he had been there before. There were the same flowers, the same bottle of whisky on the sideboard, the same packs of cigarettes on the table. The same tape recorder in the wall, no doubt.
Rogers looked at his watch. Jamal was late. As he waited, Rogers thought back eight years to another meeting with Jamal, in another safehouse on the beach in Kuwait. And how, in closing his recruitment pitch, he had made Jamal a promise. We don’t make mistakes, Rogers had said. We will keep the fact of our relationship with you secret. And how he had added: “I haven’t lost an agent in ten years.”
There was a sharp knock at the door, followed by the exchange of code words. In walked Jamal. Rogers didn’t bother to ask him if he was carrying a weapon. West Beirut was Fatah’s town now. They had the guns.
“Ahlan, Reilly-Bey,” said Jamal.
“Hello, Jamal,” answered Rogers.
Jamal looked older. Still fit, still handsome, but with signs of age and stress. The wild black hair was now combed neatly in place. The face had the doughy look of clay that has been kneaded and packed and massaged into place one too many times. The black leather jacket was gone, replaced by a brown one. Rogers noticed something else. For the first time he could remember, he saw a look of sadness in Jamal’s eyes.
“You have a lot of nerve coming to see me now,” said Jamal.
“What do you mean?”
“After Camp David! The Old Man is furious. He says you have betrayed him. After all our fine talk in secret about solving the Palestinian problem, after our conversations in 1976 when I went to Washington to meet the great Director of Central Intelligence. After all that, what do you do? You let the Israelis and the Egyptians sign a separate peace treaty that leaves us in the cold.”
“It wasn’t my doing. Talk to the president.”
“We would like to do that very much,” said Jamal. “But we can’t.”
Jamal’s manner was aggressive and insistent. That much hadn’t changed. He spoke earnestly, like a former student who wants to convince his old professor how well he has done in life. Who wants to show that he is a serious person now and not someone to be trifled with.
“Camp David is not the end of the story,” said Rogers. “There is more to come.”
“You have been saying that for eight years. We are getting tired of hearing it.”
This was not the conversation Rogers wanted to have. Not at all. He changed gears.
