Levi looked at the boxes slowly and deliberately. No mistakes this time. There was the tiger. There was the horse. He turned each one over this time, thinking that perhaps the design might be on the bottom. No, no. His heart was sinking. No, no, no, no. He had spent nearly ten minutes studying the boxes. The merchant was getting impatient. He had come to the end without finding what he was looking for.
There was a man outside, browsing. Shit!
Levi looked at the merchant. The man was expecting a sale. He would have to buy something. An idea came to him almost as an afterthought.
“More boxes?” he asked quietly. “Don’t you have any more boxes?”
“More?” said the merchant.
“Yes,” hissed Levi. Yes, you scrofulous, lice-ridden old bastard. Go get the other fucking boxes.
The merchant disappeared into a closet at the back of the one-room shop. He emerged carrying four boxes decorated with inlaid mother-of-pearl. One showed the Great Mosque at Mecca and the Kaaba stone; a special box for Saudi customers. One showed a naked houri. Big tits and a flabby stomach. One showed the flag of Palestine, which made it subversive.
And one showed an elephant.
Levi feigned interest in the box with the naked woman. He looked at it closely. Then at the one of the elephant. Then at the naked woman. Then he took the elephant in his hands.
“How much?” said Levi.
The merchant looked at him through very narrow eyes. What did he know? That a foreigner wanted to buy one box out of a hundred. That he insisted on this box, which had only arrived yesterday and did not even have a price tag yet?
“As you like,” said the merchant. It was the time-honored beginning of negotiations with a foreigner. Make him start the bidding, for in his nervousness, he will almost certainly offer too much.
Levi thought a moment. He wanted to make a reasonable offer, but he had no idea what the box was actually worth.
“Fifty,” said Levi. “Fifty pounds.”
The merchant clucked his tongue and gave Levi a look of reproach. He reached for the box, shaking his head.
“How much?” asked Levi again.
The merchant took out a piece of paper. He wrote out the number 500.
“What?” asked Levi in genuine astonishment. “Five hundred Syrian pounds?”
The merchant nodded.
“Impossible,” said Levi. He took the piece of paper and wrote out 100. The merchant shook his head.
“No, no. Four hundred.”
“Two hundred,” offered Levi. I don’t believe this, he said to himself. This is the worst moment of my life. I’m nearly paralyzed with fear. And I’m standing here haggling with an asshole merchant about the price of a wooden box.
“Three hundred,” said the merchant.
You sick, demented bastard, thought Levi. But another voice told him, Play the game.
“Two hundred and fifty.”
The merchant looked Levi in the eye, measuring the limits of extortion. He could see the fear and the need, without knowing why.
“Three hundred.”
“Okay,” said Levi. Who gives a shit? This is insane.
The merchant wrapped the box carefully in tissue paper, then in brown paper, which he tied with a neat string.
“Fatura?” said the merchant, using the Arabic word for receipt.
“Yes,” said Levi. Why not?
“How much?” asked the merchant with a corrupt smile that was all gums and saliva.
You crooked Arab camel jockey, son of a whore, are you really asking whether to falsify the receipt? Is that what you think this is all about? Taking a cheap little wooden box through customs with a phony receipt?
“Three hundred,” said Levi. He could not help but laugh as he said it. As the sound of laughter came out of his parched throat, he felt something snap inside him.
“As you like,” said the merchant.
Levi walked out of the shop clutching his parcel. He lit a cigarette. It was the best taste of his life. He saw a soldier, strolling down the arcade, gun in hand. He should have been scared, but he wasn’t anymore. The absurdity of the encounter in the shop had cleansed him, momentarily, of fear. He walked slowly through the souk, stopping in one stall to buy some pistachios for the trip home. As he bought them, he realized: I am going to make it. That is why I have bought the nuts. They aren’t a cover for anything. I’m going to eat them on the way home.
He had one more bad moment, at the Syrian border. That was always the worst time, leaving any country. The security forces know that is their last shot, so they play games. They invent reasons to ask questions and make you squirm.
In Levi’s case, it was the way he said the word marhaba- hello-to the border guard. He rolled the “r” slightly. Which would be fine, normally. Except that the one thing that every Arab policeman knows about native Hebrew speakers is that they roll their “r’s” making a sound in the back of their throat. But then, so do many Frenchmen from Marseilles.
The border guard studied Levi’s passport. He checked in his book. He took it back to show his superior, a fat colonel. The colonel came out and asked Levi questions. What had he been doing in Syria? Where had he been? Who had he seen?
Levi answered the questions serenely. He knew why. His nerves were finally broken. There was nothing left to feel scared with. The colonel finally sent him on his way. Levi drove across the border into Lebanon, eating pistachios.
Levi didn’t see the fruit of his labor until many months later. It was sent to Tel Aviv, where a Mossad officer decoded the message that had been hidden in the box with the mother-of-pearl elephant. It proved to be an extraordinary piece of intelligence.
The message from the Palestinian agent in Damascus said that the leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had concluded that there was an American agent inside Fatah. The reason they were so sure, the agent reported, was that the Old Man had boasted to the PFLP leaders a few months ago that he had a secret channel to the White House. When the radicals called him a liar, the Old Man said that he had obtained the secret text of an American peace plan more than a year ago.
The agent in Damascus didn’t know the identity of the American contact in Fatah. But he reported the guesses made by the PFLP leadership. The American agent had to be someone high up in the Fatah intelligence network. Only an intelligence man would be given the job of intermediary, the radicals said. The most likely suspect, concluded the agent’s report, was the young man who had risen so quickly in the Rasd-the Old Man’s pet, Jamal Ramlawi.
PART VII
1971-May 1972
31
Beirut; Spring 1971
Mohammed Nasir Makawi, known as Abu Nasir, was a dark, intense man with a thin face and a thick mustache. He was Fatah’s chief of intelligence and he looked the part. His eyes were deeply set and so ringed with circles that they seemed to be perpetually in shadow. Like many of the best Arab intelligence officers, he had a deadpan, expressionless face that gave nothing away.
Abu Nasir lived in Beirut, on the sixth floor of a building on the Rue Verdun, a busy street that sloped southward from the center of West Beirut toward Corniche Mazraa and the sea. He worried about the security and planned to install a blast-proof metal door at the entrance to the apartment. He wasn’t sure what to do about electronic surveillance. One of his Russian friends had advised him that the only way to be certain you weren’t bugged was to build new walls, ceiling, and floorboards on top of the old ones-covering over any hidden microphones. That seemed like too much work. So Abu Nasir played the radio.
The apartment was sparsely furnished. A brown couch with too much stuffing, an easy chair covered in the same fabric, a large television set that dominated the living room, a small wooden table, and a cheap, machine-made tapestry that spelled out the name of Allah in elaborate Arabic script. The only real decoration was a large nargilleh pipe, which stood next to the easy chair. The blinds were drawn tight, which added to the dark and desolation of the room.