“Now we know why Jamal was in such a rush to get here,” said Rogers as he peered over the windowsill.
Below him on Jaffa Street, Rogers saw a jeep fitted with a machine gun, careening up the street at breakneck speed. A dark-haired Palestinian commando stood in the back, legs apart and hips swaying with the motion of the vehicle, holding the trunk of the machine gun in his hands and rotating it on its turret. It was a sensual, almost erotic embrace of a deadly weapon, and it was an image that Rogers came to associate with the guerrillas; the posturing of a vain but ultimately powerless people.
“Come watch the show,” Rogers whispered to Fuad. “The fedayeen are in heaven.”
“They are children,” said Fuad. “When I want to watch children, I go to the playground.”
The sound of automatic weapons rattled on through the night but tapered off toward dawn.
When he awoke, Rogers set in motion the plan he had devised over the previous two days. He wrote out a message in neat Arabic script, sealed it, and gave it to Fuad.
The message read: “A friend with important information will be in Nasser Square at noon. If you want the information, follow him.”
Rogers turned to Fuad and spoke to him carefully and deliberately.
“Take this letter to 49 Ramleh Street and knock on the door. A bald Arab man will answer the door. Tell him you have a message for Jamal Ramlawi at the Fatah military headquarters at Nasser Square, on the corner of Khaled Ibn Walid Street.”
“What if he asks me who the message is from?” queried Fuad.
“He won’t ask.”
“Who is he?” asked Fuad, wanting to understand every detail.
“A friend who has maintained contact with us for many years, who travels easily among the commandos.”
“But won’t it be dangerous for Jamal to receive the message?”
“No,” said Rogers, smiling at all the questions that were tumbling out of the usually taciturn Fuad. “Jamal is an intelligence officer, and intelligence officers are supposed to collect information. That’s their job.”
“What if something goes wrong?”
“It won’t,” said Rogers. He put his two large hands on Fuad’s shoulders, as if to brace him for the task ahead.
“When you have delivered the message, return to Beirut,” said Rogers. “Here’s five hundred dollars for the trip.” He handed Fuad the money and walked him to the door. The Lebanese walked out into the chilly February morning. He walked deliberately, Rogers thought, with the confidence of a man who, with each step, feels that he is fulfilling his destiny.
Rogers tidied up the safehouse. He collected a few bits of paper that might identify the occupants of the apartment as Americans-a matchbook cover with advertising for a restaurant in New York, a well-thumbed copy of The International Herald-Tribune- and burned them in the kitchen sink. He checked his wallet to make sure it contained only documents that supported his Canadian identity.
At eleven-thirty, Rogers left the house. He walked slowly and deliberately, his head down, along Jaffa Street. The city seemed to have calmed down after the previous night’s gunplay, and some of the roadblocks had been removed.
As Rogers crossed a side street, two teen-aged Palestinians shouted at him. Rogers’s heart pounded like a hammer against an anvil. He shouted out in Arabic, “Death to the traitor King and all his family!” One of the boys roared back a similar epithet and they continued on their way.
At the edge of Nasser Square, the scene of the machine-gun exchange the previous night, Rogers saw a half-dozen small children creeping along the sides of the stone buildings that lined the street, darting out every few steps to retrieve small objects from the ground. They were scavengers, gathering spent cartridges from the previous night’s battle. The copper linings from the spent shells would bring a few piastres in the souk.
Just before noon, Rogers arrived at the entrance to Nasser Square. There was still a smell of powder in the air. The streets were nearly empty. At noon exactly, he emerged from Ameena Bint Wahab Street, walked halfway across Nasser Square, and sat on a stone bench. Directly across from him was a tin-roofed building that housed the Fatah military command.
He felt conspicuous and wished there were more people and noise around him. He saw a man walk out of a building and disappear down Khaled Ibn Walid Street; 100 yards away he saw another man, a blind vendor selling smuggled American cigarettes. At the edge of the square a woman with a shopping bag was sitting and resting. Every twenty seconds or so, a car or truck rumbled past.
Rogers looked toward one of the upper windows of the Fatah headquarters, fifty yards away. He thought he saw a figure, all in black, staring out the window. He stood and walked a few steps closer to the building. He counted slowly to ten, feeling his pulse beat against his closed eyelids. Then he turned and walked back the way he had come, across the square and into Ameena Bint Wahab Street. Had Jamal gotten the message?
Rogers walked very slowly. When he reached the shadow of a building, he stopped and turned around. There was nobody following him. He waited fifteen seconds in the shadows, then walked another half block. He was afraid to turn around. Afraid not of who would be there, but of who wouldn’t. He took a cigarette from his pocket and turned around to light it.
And there, ambling toward him, was a man in a black leather jacket.
Bingo! said Rogers under his breath.
Jamal approached Rogers and asked him if he had an American cigarette.
“Marlboro,” offered Rogers.
The Palestinian took the cigarette and lit it.
“What information do you have for me, friend?” said Jamal.
“Come back with me to a quieter place, where we can talk,” answered Rogers.
“No. Here.” He sounded like he meant it.
“Very well,” said Rogers. “The message I have for you is this: The King will rescind his decree about carrying weapons.”
“The King will back down?” asked Jamal dubiously.
“Yes,” said Rogers. “He will back down.”
Jamal looked at him suspiciously. He brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes.
“When?” demanded the Palestinian.
“I don’t know.”
“How do you know this information?” asked the Palestinian.
“Because I know it,” said Rogers. “I can’t say any more than that.”
The Palestinian took a long drag on his cigarette. If we stand here any longer, thought Rogers, we will become conspicuous.
“There are other important things I must discuss with you,” said Rogers.
“Not here,” said the Palestinian. “Not in Amman.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere else.”
“Where?” demanded Rogers.
“I will send you a message.”
“When?”
“When I return to Beirut.”
He took another cigarette and was gone.
Rogers, tired but elated, was back in Beirut that night.
Two days later, the king held a press conference and announced that he was “freezing” his order banning the fedayeen from carrying weapons in public. The confrontation had been the result of a “misunderstanding,” the Jordanian monarch explained. “Our power is their power and their power is our power,” he said of the fedayeen.
The king had capitulated.
A week after that, back in Beirut, Jamal sent word through Fuad that he would meet Rogers in early March in Kuwait.
Hoffman listened to Rogers tell the story of the encounter in Amman, and then asked him to repeat it.
“I have one question for you, hot dog,” said Hoffman, after he had heard the explanation for the second time. “How in the hell did you know that the King was going to back down? I didn’t see that in any of the cables.”
Rogers looked sheepish.
“To be honest, I didn’t know it. But it seemed like a safe bet.”
“You’re shitting me!” said Hoffman. “You mean you risked this operation on a hunch?”