A gigantic Mafia-style operation was the way Tajar described Beirut. Lebanon, he said, is gangsterism on a scale the world has never even imagined before.
Lastly in Damascus, there were the small secret services run directly by the president's office, the most special case of all. In the past these highly clandestine services had never been involved in field operations.
Their job was to keep the president informed on the other agencies, even though in order to get where he was the president would already have been in control of some combination of the army and defense ministry intelligence agencies, and more recently those of the Baath as well.
These competing secret services in Damascus were always in the process of splitting apart and swallowing each other as fortune changed and a new group or new individuals gained power at the expense of others.
The agencies sprang up, disappeared, completely altered their targets and size and influence.
Sub-departments drifted away over a weekend to find a new home in another agency, or were liquidated, or suddenly became independent in another ministry on the other side of town. Even the most stable among them — the military intelligence agencies — radically shifted in importance as power accrued in some army field command or was pulled back into the central offices of the defense ministry. What was astonishing was that the total number of secret services in Syria — twelve — remained constant and had done so since the end of the Second World War, when the French left.
This devious confusion bewildered the Syrians as much as anyone, but fortunately for the Runner there was an expert who understood the Syrian intelligence services far better than most Syrians did, certainly far better than any other non-Syrian. That man of course was Tajar, for decades the Mossad's wizard on arcane Arab lore of any kind.
It's the magic number twelve that has always puzzled me, Tajar once said to Yossi. No other country in the world has half that many intelligence agencies, but the Syrians always do. Why? It's curious. Why have all these fellows tripping over each other? The Russians get along with just one or two. The Americans, who like free enterprise and competition, allow for three or four. And all other countries, even the most untrusting and paranoid, make do with no more than that. But not the Syrians. The Syrians insist on a dozen of the monsters. What a headache. How can they keep track of anything? The cost, the duplication, the inefficiency
— it's simply staggering. From time to time one of the Syrian agencies gets greedy and gobbles up three or four of the others, and you think some sense is in the air, some logic, the powerful are doing what you expect the powerful to do. But what happens? A few months go by and three or four new agencies have suddenly oozed their way into being, mysteriously squeezing in from the sidelines somewhere. It's extraordinary and I've never been able to explain it adequately. It's some kind of natural law of Syrian secret services, an archetypal infatuation with chaos, a passionate embrace of ultimate suspicion. Perhaps it's a state of mind that comes with centuries of having your destiny in the hands of foreigners. Of course the Italians and Greeks have these tendencies in a minor way, so some of it may be simply Mediterranean anarchy: the sun beats down, the skies are always fair, one can't help but imagine real things must be going on around the corner and undercover and out of sight. . . . But no matter. When it comes to sheer distrust, no one in the world compares to the Syrians. It's their unique contribution, on the order of the pyramids of Egypt. Like the pyramids, their distrust is monumental. As for the natural law and the magic number, that practice may have gotten started eight hundred years ago when Salah al-din was riding out of Damascus, leading the Moslem forces against the Crusaders and throwing the foreign devils out of the Middle East bit by bit. We all know he was a great general who managed for a time to get all the Moslems behind him, but as a Kurd he must have had his doubts.
About? Yossi had asked, and Tajar had nodded, laughing.
My point exactly, Tajar had replied. About everything and everyone, I suspect. That's why he was such a great and glorious general and such a successful leader, because he did have so many doubts. So many, in fact, that he knew one intelligence agency wouldn't do the job. Not even three or four would do the job. He had too many elements to contend with in his own forces, so he conceived the idea of a dozen secret services to keep a balance to things. And perhaps that memory became deeply embedded in the Syrian psyche eight hundred years ago and has been there ever since: for success, no less than twelve will do, like a country with its tribes. . . . Why not, Yossi? It's as reasonable an explanation as any other. Because it just makes no sense that a country should always have a dozen intelligence agencies when the powerful ones are continually gobbling up the less powerful ones. Surely from any rational point of view, it's incomprehensible. .
. .
Oddly, as if to substantiate Tajar's quaint theory, the new man Ziad called el presidente, Syria's first dictator in centuries, didn't change the system. What he did do was have all of Syria's twelve intelligence agencies report directly to him — something that had never happened before, or at least not since the time of Salah al-din, as mythically described by Tajar.
FOUR
After a lifetime in the poverty and Moslem austerity of Damascus, Beirut was a new world for Ziad. The bars and nightclubs where rich Arabs from the oil countries came to escape the puritanism at home, the luxurious shops and hotels and the blond women from northern Europe, the hashish and money and sex and alcohol which were everywhere, the cheerful avarice and blatant intrigue, the ever-changing parade of Europeans and other foreigners seeking quick profit from the sheiks and oil millionaires on holiday — it was all a lurid fantasy of material and erotic plenty, ripe with decadence.
And Ziad loved to think of himself as a spy. He found it immensely exhilarating to have a clandestine purpose and to be passing himself off as a foreign correspondent in Beirut. Now that he was a secret agent embarked on mysterious international missions, who could say what might follow? Perhaps these trips to Lebanon, he mused with Halim, were only the beginning of much greater opportunities. Perhaps they might even lead to a career in Europe, in Paris?
In fact Ziad was merely a low-level courier. Using his newspaper work as cover for his forays, he carried money and directives to the Palestinian militia in southern Lebanon controlled by his captain's agency. He left Damascus early in the morning, sharing an oversized taxi with six other passengers, strangers, Syrians and Palestinians with business to do in Beirut. The passengers were all nonchalantly puffing cigarettes and pretending not to look at each other, Ziad smoking as many cigarettes as anyone. In appearance the group was as ordinary as any band of messengers and thugs setting out for a day's work in Lebanon. The elongated Mercedes became an impenetrable cocoon of smoke as Ziad huddled in one of the jump seats, safe in the middle of the car with a noncommittal smile on his face. They raced across the valleys and down the mountains, scattering goats and peasants and donkeys, horn blaring without letup, hurtling toward the glittering skyline of Beirut rising high above the Mediterranean.
From Beirut Ziad slipped off south by buses and taxis to the refugee camps in the south, returning by the same route with sealed envelopes for his captain in Damascus. Often he slept in the camps. When he was lucky he managed a night or two in Beirut, staying at some cheap hotel which doubled as a brothel.