Fares thought of other possible targets. There were various Druse, Sunni, and Shiite religious and political leaders, of course. But the most likely targets were among the Palestinians. The Old Man was planning to travel that week to Damascus, along with many of the other Fatah leaders. But Jamal Ramlawi, the Fatah chief of intelligence, was still in town. Fares wondered whether he should send Ramlawi a warning.
Fares did one other thing. He sent a brief report to the new station chief at the American Embassy, a man named Bert Jorgenson who had recently arrived from Kuwait, with a request that a copy be sent to Tom Rogers in Washington.
None of these tips and hints would have come to Rogers’s attention if Father Maroun Lubnani hadn’t panicked.
The Maronite priest had gone off to meet with his Israeli case officer, as he did once a month. The Israelis were meeting much more openly with their agents in Christian East Beirut now, ever since the civil war and the partition of Beirut. Why not? The Israelis were in open alliance with the Christians. They were the new kings of East Beirut!
Father Maroun had gone, as usual, to an apartment building on the beach south of Jounie. He had dressed in his bathing costume, as he did each month, and sat by the indoor pool waiting for the Israeli to meet him there. He had waited and waited. But his Israeli contact hadn’t arrived. So he had followed orders. He had come back to the beach apartments the next day, at the same time, and sat by the pool again, feeling increasingly embarrassed as he watched the nubile Christian girls in their bikinis parade past him.
The Israelis never made mistakes, Father Maroun told himself. But the hours passed that second day, and the Israeli contact still didn’t arrive. Finally, after waiting too long by poolside in an ill-fitting swim suit, Father Maroun panicked.
Father Maroun’s case officer had made a simple and forgivable mistake. In his haste to get out of Beirut, the Mossad officer had forgotten to notify his contact in the Maronite clergy that their meeting that month would be postponed.
Father Maroun was worried. The Israeli officer would not miss a meeting unless something was very, very wrong! So he did what he had been told to do in an emergency. He called the Israeli Embassy in Paris and asked for his special emergency contact there by name.
A voice came on the line.
“What is happening?” said Father Maroun, his voice trembling. “I went to meet my friend, but he has disappeared!”
“Calm down,” said the voice. “Your friend is busy. Something important has come up that requires him to miss his meeting. Everything is fine. Your friend will contact you in several weeks in the normal way.”
“Very well,” said Father Maroun, much relieved.
“Please do not call this number again,” said the voice. The line went dead.
A brief intelligence report on the conversation came across Rogers’s desk two days later, in the midst of a thick pile of other reports from around the world, with a note from the watch officer: “FYI.” After his visit to London and Beirut the previous September, Rogers had asked to see as much of the raw intelligence from Lebanon as he could.
The call had, in fact, been monitored by American intelligence, which tapped all calls going in and out of the Israeli Embassy in Paris, as well as much of the telephone traffic in and out of Lebanon. The intelligence report noted the basic details: the caller was a Maronite priest named Maroun Lubnani. The person he called was a Mossad officer in Paris who, it was thought, handled some Lebanese accounts.
What caught Rogers’s eye was the name of Maroun Lubnani, which brought to mind the figure of a stout Lebanese cleric dressed in lederhosen. But as he read the intelligence report, he found it intriguing. Why the panic? What were the Israelis up to? Why were they breaking off meetings with agents?
Rogers felt his stomach churning. He pulled from a file another recent SIGINT report from Lebanon that had come across his desk several days earlier. The signals people had captured a transmission from Lebanon by a high-speed transmitter, which sent coded communications in rapid bursts. It was state-of-the-art equipment and only used for sensitive jobs. Rogers had assumed, when he first saw the report, that the Soviets were up to something.
Now he suspected that it was the Israelis. And he thought he knew what they were doing.
It was late. Nearly 5:00 P.M. in Washington. First, Rogers sent a cable to Jorgenson, the new station chief in Beirut. Jorgenson wasn’t a genius, but he would have to do. “Request your help urgently on a sensitive matter,” the cable said. Jorgenson called back from his home on an unsecure line. That was a bad sign.
“Can’t help you, my friend,” said Jorgenson. “We’re mighty tight this week. Big project going.”
“I have a feeling this may be more important,” said Rogers. Jorgenson’s last big project had been a conference on Arab folk art.
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” said Jorgenson. “But if you’re talking about something sensitive, then I’m going to need some paperwork. A finding. A memo from the general counsel. A note saying you’ve briefed the appropriate committees.”
“But we don’t have time for that, Bert. Somebody could be dead by then.”
“Sorry, Tom. But rules are rules. The days of the rogue elephant are over!”
“For Christ’s sake!” said Rogers. He was almost shouting.
“Sorry, pal,” said Jorgenson amiably. “Can’t help. Maybe you can scare up a little local talent. Some of your old pals. We don’t see much of them any more. Be my guest.”
Rogers cursed. Jorgenson rang off.
Rogers’s next call was to Fares. It was past midnight in Beirut when he reached him.
Rogers apologized for waking the Lebanese chief of intelligence. He wouldn’t have called at all, Rogers said, except that he had a tip that somebody might be planning a major operation in Lebanon.
“Didn’t you get my message?” asked Fares sleepily.
“What message?”
“I sent a message to the embassy nearly a week ago passing along some interesting information that had come our way. I asked the embassy to forward it to you. Didn’t you get it?”
“No,” said Rogers. He was fuming. Calm down, he told himself.
Rogers thought for a moment. He was in trouble. His options were all bad. There wasn’t time for him to go to Beirut. The CIA station there wouldn’t help. Time was running out. There was only one alternative.
“Samir,” said Rogers. “A few months ago I promised I wouldn’t ask for your help again. But I need a favor. Will you do something for me?”
“Of course,” said Fares. “Tell me what it is.”
“Can you send someone you trust to an address I will give you. When your man gets there, a friend of mine named Fuad will be waiting for him. Could you have your man tell Fuad the information that you sent to me via the embassy.”
“I will go myself,” said Fares.
Rogers gave him Fuad’s address and room number in West Beirut and thanked him, haltingly.
“It is nothing,” said Fares. “We are friends.”
Finally Rogers called Fuad. He talked carefully.
“Marhaba,” said Fuad groggily in Arabic when he picked up the phone.
“This is your old friend,” said Rogers. “The man who first met you on the beach.”
“Yes,” said Fuad. “I know who you are.”
“I think that someone is trying to make trouble for another friend of ours.”
“Who?”
“The man I met in Amman.”
“The man in black?”
“Yes,” said Rogers.
“Bad trouble?”
“The worst.”
“When will it happen?”
“I don’t know. Maybe soon.”
“What should I do?”
“I’m sending someone to visit you tonight. He’ll tell you what he knows. You can trust him. He is discreet. But don’t tell him who we are trying to protect. That’s none of his business. That’s nobody’s business but ours.”