“Would you like that in writing?” asked Rogers.
“Please,” said the Palestinian. He looked embarrassed, as if he had been caught in the midst of his own espionage operation.
Rogers retreated to the bedroom and retrieved from his brief case two sheets of paper. He handed Jamal the one that contained the Jordan position, nearly word for word identical to what he had just said.
Jamal read the text several times.
“It looks to me as if you are telling us to go to hell!” said the Palestinian.
“No,” said Rogers. “But perhaps we are telling you to go to Lebanon.”
“And then?”
“On behalf of the President, I give you a commitment that the United States respects the legitimate rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people and will seek a just solution to the Palestinian problem in all its aspects, based on the principles set forth in United Nations Resolution 242.”
“Copy, please.”
Rogers handed him the second sheet of paper, stating the American position on the Palestinian problem.
“What does this statement mean?” asked Jamal.
“We shall discover that together,” said the American, more than a little curious himself.
The sun rose in a quick burst of pink at the eastern rim of the Persian Gulf, and then climbed majestically in the sky amid deeper tones of red and gold. Rogers and Jamal watched this splendid sight from their chairs on the deck of the beach house, where they sat drinking Turkish coffee.
“What do you want from me?” asked Jamal as he sipped his coffee.
“We want security assistance. We want to know about terrorist operations that endanger the lives of Americans. We want more of what you just brought me: names, dates, passport numbers, work names. You say that you oppose international terrorist operations. Then help us!”
“What is the benefit for Fatah?”
“The promise of American help in resolving the Palestinian problem. If you are honest, you will realize that this provides the only realistic chance of achieving your goals.”
“How will you protect me from the Israelis?” asked Jamal.
“We won’t. That’s your problem. But we do guarantee to keep the fact of your contact with us secret. If you agree to continue meeting with me, your identity will be known by only four people: me, the chief of station in Beirut, my division chief, and the Director of Central Intelligence. All of us will do our best to protect this operation.”
“And if you make a mistake?”
“We don’t make mistakes,” said Rogers. “I haven’t lost an agent in ten years.”
“I’m not an agent!” said Jamal sharply.
“Of course not,” answered Rogers quickly. He thought for a moment that he had blown it.
Jamal rubbed his eyeballs. In the soft morning light, he looked younger and more vulnerable than he had the previous day.
“Will you work with us?” said Rogers. He was a salesman now and it was time to close the deal.
“It’s not my decision alone. I have to discuss it with the Old Man.”
“That’s not enough. I need an answer!”
“You already have it.”
“What is it?” said Rogers, raising his voice.
“It is not no.”
“Say it!”
“Yes,” said Jamal at last. “I will work with you. If the Old Man approves.”
“Will you tell him everything about our meeting?”
“Almost everything. But not everything. There are some things he wouldn’t understand.”
“Then we have a deal,” said Rogers, shaking Jamal’s hand.
He sat back in his chair, put his lucky cowboy boots up on the railing of the deck, and watched the sun climb upwards in the heavens.
PART IV
March-May 1970
15
Beirut; March 1970
Yakov Levi noted Rogers’s return to Beirut on a file card in a box he kept at the office. Levi entered the dates of the trip and the notation: “Kuwait.” The entry followed one marked: “Amman.” The information came from a contact at the airport who provided passenger lists and, when necessary, photographs of passengers.
It was a puzzle, Levi thought to himself. Why was Rogers taking these trips? What was he doing? Who was he meeting?
Levi fretted about such puzzles, and about most things. He was a short, wiry man, with dark features and a look of perpetual uneasiness. His family was from Marseilles, he told friends, with a few distant relatives from Corsica. He was a nervous man with a bad stomach, who chewed antacid pills through the day in the vain hope that they would relieve the tension that was eating away at his gut.
Yakov Levi’s problem was that he didn’t exist. Not in Beirut, at least. There was no one in the city by that name. There was instead a Frenchman, an import-export trader named Jacques Beaulieu, and Levi lived inside his skin. The worldly Monsieur Beaulieu worked in an office on the Rue de Phenice in West Beirut, several blocks from the St. Georges Hotel. The brass plaque on the door said “Franco-Lebanese Trading Co.” It was a busy little import-export firm, quite profitable, it was said, staffed by a handful of bright young men and women who were well-mannered, spoke French, English, and Arabic, and had a wide circle of acquaintances in Lebanon. Members of the firm travelled extensively in the Arab world and had a reputation for paying generous commissions on business deals.
Levi’s import-export firm was, in reality, the Mossad station in Beirut. His family had indeed lived in Marseilles once, but no longer. The survivors now lived in Israel. All except for Yakov Levi, who called himself Beaulieu. He was a Jew, living secretly in the midst of Arabs who wanted to kill him, and he was perpetually frightened. A fear so deep and constant that it had entered his body and flowed in his veins. He had been in Beirut for three years, burning out his circuits day by day. A few months ago they had promised him a fancy desk job back home at the end of the year, but he didn’t believe them. It was a lie, told to keep him living a few more months in Hell.
The Mossad station in Beirut, the very fact of its existence, was one of the few true secrets in a town where gossip and spying were a way of life. The station had been in operation, in various locations, since 1951. The Americans hadn’t a clue where it was, nor had the Deuxieme Bureau, nor had anyone else. The Israelis who worked for Franco-Lebanese Trading didn’t tell a soul their true identities or what they were really doing.
They were Israel’s eyes and ears in the Arab world. They serviced dead drops, acted as couriers, spotted potential agents, scouted the terrain. They might recommend the recruitment of a particular Lebanese or Palestinian, but they never did the actual recruiting or handling. That was too dangerous. One false move would blow the station’s cover. They left such tasks to Mossad officers in Europe, who could meet agents easily in Paris or Rome, receive their information, pay them their stipends. In Lebanon, the handful of Mossad officers were under a cover so deep that they didn’t like to talk, even to each other, about their real work.
Watching the Americans was part of Levi’s job. Identifying the intelligence agents among them, tracking them, trying to understand what they were doing in secret in the Middle East behind the veil of America’s public policy. Levi was perfect for the job. He believed almost nothing that anyone said, least of all the Americans.
Levi had been watching Tom Rogers for more than six months. He was convinced that he was a CIA case officer, but that part was easy. All you had to do was study the diplomatic list and look for the odd man out. The person whose resume didn’t quite make sense: who had been a consular officer one place and a commercial attache somewhere else and was now a political officer. Or you could look for social quirks: a political officer who didn’t attend the Christmas party given by the head of the political section at the embassy. Or if you were still stumped, you could look at the State Department’s foreign service list, published in Washington. With chilling precision it listed the CIA officers under diplomatic cover as “reserve” officers of the foreign service-“FSRs,” they were called-rather than as full-fledged FSOs.