“You cried out.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Husband, you are killing yourself. It was so long ago…. Please let it be.”
“I cannot.”
“You must!” She lashed out, knocking the album to the floor. “Please—”
“Stop it, Elia.” He gripped her hands. “Stop it.”
She leaned forward into his lap and began sobbing.
“It is not over, Elia,” he said. “She was ours. Ours! And you… you are…” Sweet wife... so forgiving, Azhar thought.
“Barren,” she finished. “You should find another wife who can give you sons. I will take care of the house and you can—”
“No,” he replied. “No. Allah be witness, I will not bring another child into this world.”
After a while, he carried her back to bed and lay beside her until she fell asleep, then returned to the fire. On the floor, the album had flipped open to a photograph he hadn’t seen in years.
It showed him and another man, a Westerner with coffee-brown hair and laugh-lined, ocean-blue eyes, at a dinner table. Their arms were draped around one another’s shoulders, and they were smiling. The man wore one of those silly hats with the flat top and the tassel… What was it called? Such a ridiculous hat. The scene seemed so familiar, yet so distant, as though he were enjoying someone else’s well-told story. Who was he? Why couldn’t he remember this? Why?
Azhar closed the album and laid it aside. It didn’t matter. None of it. Only one thing mattered anymore, and before long, that, too, would be over.
He was awakened by a tapping on the door. He picked up the Makarov pistol from the table and crept to the door. “Yes?”
“It is Mustafa.”
Azhar opened the door a crack, saw the man was alone, and let him enter.
Mustafa al-Baz had been Azhar’s closest friend and ally for four years. A dedicated soldier, al-Baz wore many hats as Azhar’s second-in-command: operations officer, intelligence officer, and chief enforcer.
“Shu fi?” asked Azhar. What’s going on?
“He was watching the building in Basta,” said al-Baz. “We caught him near al-Mataf. He was trying to slip across.”
“Going where?”
“We don’t know. We searched his apartment but found nothing of use.”
“Where is he now?”
“We took him to the warehouse.”
“Good. We must vacate Basta—”
“I’ve already ordered it.”
“Have you gotten his name yet?”
“We’ve just started on him. He claims his name is Marcus.” Al-Baz hesitated. “Abu, I think he’s American.”
“American!”
“Or their agent. Also, after we started questioning him, he mentioned a ship.”
Azhar bolted forward. His teacup clattered to the floor. “What!”
“We could not get any more; he lost consciousness.”
“Find out what he knows — quickly. We must know before the final phase.”
“We may get what we need from him, and we may not. He may have only a small view of his operation. This is common; it is what the Westerners call ‘compartmentalization.’”
“Then we may need to go to the source.”
“My thinking as well. For that, I have a thought.”
“Tell me.”
Al-Baz did so, briefly outlining his idea.
Azhar was silent for several minutes. “It is risky.”
“So is going ahead with the operation blindly. When I was in Khartoum last year, I saw a training transcript from a former KGB officer who specialized in this kind of operation. He is retired but does contract work, I believe. And from what I have heard, he is in Damascus.”
“And the man on the ground? Who do you have in mind?”
Al-Baz told him.
“The timing would be difficult,” said Azhar.
“Perhaps,” al-Baz said. “But the information we require is simple. Either they know, or they do not. We, too, can play the compartmentalization game. Once we know why this Marcus has come here, we can make the decision. Better to know now, while we can stop it. Once the operation has reached a certain point, it cannot—”
“Yes, yes, I know.”
“Besides, I grow tired of being the target. Always Al-mu ammara! Always it is American agents, Mossad — they all think Lebanon is their playground. Perhaps it is time to play our own games.”
Azhar nodded, sharing his deputy’s feelings. Al-mu ammara was a distinctly Lebanese term meaning “the conspiracy.” For decades Lebanon had been the world’s chosen surrogate battlefield. Superpowers played their spy games, tested their weapons, exercised their tactics and strategies, and Lebanon paid in blood and ruination. But truth be told, Azhar was also using Lebanon. But this was different, he told himself. What they were doing was for the good of all. Strife always preceded change. The coming months would either ruin Lebanon or save it.
Mustafa was right, Azhar decided. They would take the initiative. “I will contact the general. You find the other man and arrange a meeting. Before we go ahead, I want to know if this is feasible.”
“And Marcus, the agent?”
“Work on him. But for the time being, he stays alive.”
In his Tel Aviv apartment, Art Stucky, the CIA’S Near East division chief, awoke to the ringing of his phone. He groaned and reached across the nightstand, knocking over an empty bottle of gin. “Fuck…” He fumbled the receiver, found it. “Yeah.”
“Sir, this is the embassy communications center. We have traffic for you.”
Stucky looked at the clock: 5:00 A.M. His head pounded. “What kind?”
“Pardon me?”
“I said what kind!” The voice on the other end sounded young. These college punks were worthless, but they were easy to fluster, which was always fun. “You call me at five in the morning, and you don’t know what kind? What’s your name?”
“Peterson, sir.”
“Well, I’m waiting, Peterson, what kind of message?”
“Uh… uh…” Paper rustling. “Landline, sir. It was a SYMMETRY—”
“What!”
“SYMMETRY. Alternate three, off protocol.”
Shit, thought Stucky. One of SYMMETRY’S agents had panicked about something — probably lost his goddamned camel or turban or something — and made contact. In covert operations the terms protocol and off protocol indicated whether the method of contact followed ComSec (communication security) guidelines. In short, whoever this “alternate” was, he’d fucked up.
“What’d you tell him?” Stucky asked.
“To call back in an hour on a scrubbed line That’s in… another forty minutes.”
“Jesus, why didn’t you call me earlier!”
“We did, sir. You didn’t answer. And your pager is off.”
“Huh.” Stucky smiled. Really tied one on, Art. Didn’t even hear the phone. “Okay, I’m on my way.”
Stucky hung up and lit a cigarette. His mouth tasted like wool. He downed the last dribble of gin from the bottle, swirled it around his mouth, swallowed, then forced himself upright and began looking for his pants.
Thirty minutes later, he walked through the embassy’s gate, flashed his ID at the Marine sentry, then took the elevator up two floors to his cubicle, passing the CIA station chief’s office as he went. “Let me know as soon as you hear something, Art?” called the station chief.
Fucking Peterson. “Sure, boss,” he muttered. The current chief — working under the same diplomatic cover as Stucky, Office of Economic Liaison — was another bureaucrat in a long line of lifers who knew nothing about operational intelligence. And as far as Stucky was concerned, the guy didn’t know a dead letter drop from his asshole.