Jericho Mosaic (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 4)

by Edward Whittemore

  Finally, the Syrian officer had no choice but to arrive at the conclusion so skillfully prepared for him. Halim only looked as if he could be useful in espionage. In fact recruitment was out of the question. Halim was a mystic and such men were always unreliable as agents, although they could be fascinating in other ways. In the end the Syrian intelligence officer went away without an agent, but with an intriguing new friend.

  Colonel Jundi’s offer was different because the times were different. The intelligence situation in Damascus had changed with the advent of the dictator, the man Ziad referred to as el presidente. There were still a dozen Syrian intelligence agencies continually shifting in size and influence, but now they all reported to the president, who used this system to absorb the energies of conflict beneath him. Ambitions were played out in intelligence rather than in open politics, and the agencies served to counterbalance each other’s power.

  Like the president, Colonel Jundi was from the minority Alawite sect. He was a former tank commander who had distinguished himself in the 1973 war. He ran one of the very small secret services that operated directly out of the president’s office. His job was to keep watch over the internal affairs of all the Syrian secret services. To do this he used a small number of agents who reported directly to him, most of them professional employees of the various Syrian intelligence agencies, their connection to Colonel Jundi unknown within their own agencies. Colonel Jundi spied on the spies and it was the secret identity of his agents that gave him his power. He moved freely in government circles but was seldom seen at public functions. Naturally he was feared, but within the upper echelons of the intelligence agencies themselves, not in the army or the ministries at large where his true role was unsuspected. Even someone as experienced in gossip as Ziad thought Colonel Jundi was merely a minor military adviser attached to the president’s office, an ex-hero with a sinecure. Another Alawite crony, Ziad called him.

  Halim knew better. The dictator was far too clever to have less than a superior man in such a position. Halim had great respect for Colonel Jundi. He had met him several times but didn’t know him well. His knowledge of Jundi’s agency came from secondary sources and was inexact, more suggestive than anything else. Tajar had gotten into the habit of referring to Colonel Jundi as the inspector general of Syrian intelligence. It was an organizational term that a man inside might use, but Halim thought it was probably accurate. The fact that Halim knew so little about Jundi’s work was itself an indication of the high caliber of the colonel’s operation.

  The setting Colonel Jundi chose for Halim’s recruitment was as spectacular as the offer itself. Halim didn’t keep a car in Damascus. Instead he walked and took taxis, part of the method of operation worked out long ago by Tajar. When Halim had business in Beirut he hired a car and driver for the fifty-mile trip. One autumn morning at the border crossing into Lebanon, a Syrian official asked Halim to step inside the customs shed. This was unusual but of course Halim went in. The official excused himself and Halim was left alone. A moment later a man in civilian dress appeared and presented identification showing he was a major in a Syrian security service. Politely, he asked Halim to accompany him. They went out a back door and Halim was ushered into an automobile with curtains over the rear windows. The major drove over bumpy roads for twenty minutes and deposited him at a small farmhouse high up on a hillside, with a magnificent view of the Bekaa Valley.

  It was a simple stone house surrounded by olive trees. Standing in the doorway was Colonel Jundi, also in civilian clothes. He welcomed Halim and thanked him for coming, then led him through the house to a flagstone terrace overlooking the valley. The three of them seemed to have the little house to themselves. Halim and the colonel sat in rough wooden chairs on the terrace, facing west, while the major went off to make coffee. A mild autumn sun warmed their backs. The major brought coffee and retired inside the house. Halim was struck by the serenity of this perch above the peaceful valley, by the stillness and the sweeping beauty of the view. Goats’ bells tinkled from some distant crevice in the hills. A thin line of smoke rose far away in the clear sky. The terrace was blissfully remote, rich with the smell of earth and sunshine. Colonel Jundi smiled, gesturing toward the valley.

  Syria, he said. Our true boundary in that direction has always been the Mediterranean, since ancient times. Today we have these artificial creations of the West, Lebanon and Jordan and Palestine, these legacies born of British and French scheming at the end of the First World War when they carved up the Ottoman Empire to suit themselves. But though empires come and go, real countries remain. You know all this and you know it’s time we set things right, and I think it’s time you came to work for me. Now what do you say to that?

  Colonel Jundi smiled affably and Halim was astounded. He didn’t know what to say. He stared at the colonel and then stared again at the view. There was a large bowl of purple-black grapes on the table, freshly washed and glistening with drops of water. The colonel plucked a grape and popped it into his mouth. He plucked another and went on munching, smiling at Halim as the sun cast its autumnal glow over the peaceful valley.

  They ended up talking for several hours, finishing the grapes together. The colonel called for another bowl which they also ate, one at a time, each man popping a grape when he had a point to make. The colonel excused himself after his third cup of coffee and wandered away to relieve himself under an olive tree, still enjoying the view. Later Halim followed his example. Halim had begun with his usual reservations but Colonel Jundi waved them aside. He knew all about that. Halim’s manner and reputation were exactly what the colonel needed. In effect, he wanted Halim to spend more time in Beirut and report on the activities of the various Syrian intelligence agencies in Lebanon. Some of this he said directly, much of it was only implied. Obviously the colonel had regular agents in Lebanon who provided him with specific information on specific subjects. What he wanted from Halim was far more personal: the judgment of an outsider. Halim had the right sort of work and character, the colonel felt, for the kind of assessment he wanted in Lebanon. Halim was known to have refused a number of offers in intelligence and his reputation among the Palestinians was unique. He would not be seen as someone from Syrian intelligence, least of all as Colonel Jundi’s man. And that was the most important factor from Colonel Jundi’s point of view. Halim was perfect for the role because he was so unlikely.

  The colonel said he would give Halim only a minimum amount of training. Halim was to be himself. Above all it was Halim’s status as a nonprofessional that made him valuable to the colonel, and the colonel didn’t want to jeopardize that.

  They would meet at the little farmhouse as they had met that morning, never in Damascus. The colonel would tell Halim what he wanted to know and Halim would report directly to the colonel. He wouldn’t deal with anyone else. It wasn’t all explained in exactly this way to the Runner, but as a professional he quickly grasped what the colonel had in mind. The Runner was to be the private informant in Lebanon of the inspector general of Syrian intelligence, with all the access that implied.

  It was an offer that Halim the patriot couldn’t refuse, an offer that the Runner could hardly have imagined. In a way it would do for the Runner operation in the seventies what exhaust systems for bunkers had done for it in the sixties.

  Once more Tajar had a great deal of planning to do to adapt the Runner’s new situation to the needs of the Mossad, to assure the operation’s security, and to safeguard the Runner himself. It was difficult and Tajar was careful never to underestimate Colonel Jundi’s abilities, but he was also confident that he and the Runner could make it work as it should.

  Sometimes, it seemed to Tajar, idealism could indeed produce strange and wondrous results.

  Ziad also found himself with a new job in a different secret service. One weekend the captain he served moved over to another Syrian intelligence agency to work full time in the hashish trade. Since Ziad had proved himself competent as a courier, the captain took
him along. Halim’s careful warnings to his friend, in effect his training of Ziad for an undercover role, had favorably impressed Ziad’s superiors.

  Ziad was happy with his new job because it meant he no longer had to travel south of Beirut. He had learned to fear southern Lebanon, now the province of PLO militias and commonly known as Fatahland. Even as a Syrian and a courier for one of the Syrian military intelligence agencies, Ziad had felt the danger there.

  Various Syrian intelligence agencies financed different PLO factions. Other Syrian secret services were conduits for Arab oil money. Many Moslem and Christian factions of Lebanon ran their own operations in the south, either business or intelligence or both, sometimes separately but more often in conjunction with a PLO group. The Iraqi secret services were always busy. There were invisible border crossings between one group’s territory and another, often in every village. Armed men jumped up at checkpoints and Ziad was stopped, interrogated, stopped again. He never knew whether he would get through with his briefcase with the false bottom. There were stories of hijackings and robberies, and all day long everyone was waving automatic weapons in the air or pointing them with bored, blank expressions.

  At what? For whom? Many of the gunmen were no more than boys. They had thin black hairs on their upper lips. They hadn’t begun to shave yet. Did they know what game they were playing? Did they care? Did they know who was giving them their orders that day, or why?

  Ziad was used to guns, to army coups and tanks in the central squares of Damascus. But armed men to him meant uniformed soldiers marching in ranks. Discipline was brutal in the Syrian army. For that matter, discipline was brutal in all of Syria, a strict Moslem society with rigid rules of conduct, oppressive but orderly and regulated. To Ziad the anarchy of southern Lebanon was frightening. He couldn’t stop shaking when he entered those villages where all the boys and young men were running around with guns. Obviously someone was paying them to do something, but he didn’t know what it was. Everything about it terrified him.

  So Ziad was overjoyed with his new job, his promotion as he called it. His talents had been recognized and he no longer had to stand in front of the boyish gunmen of Fatahland, humiliated and frightened as he looked down the barrels of automatic weapons. Now he lived like a civilized man, traveling to Beirut and sometimes on to the Christian areas of central Lebanon.

  Hashish and a promotion—perhaps Europe and Paris would be next? As usual he confided the details of his work to Halim, who already knew the full scope of the venture he served. Hashish was Lebanon’s leading export, a source of enormous illegal wealth. Lebanon supplied the huge Egyptian market and also shipped hashish to black Africa, to other Mediterranean countries and to Europe. Within Lebanon it was a vital political factor to many people. Even without Colonel Jundi’s interest in the politics of hashish, Halim would have known all about the notorious new alliance that had just been set up between Syria and Lebanon.

  The dictator in Damascus wasn’t himself corrupt in a personal way, but he had a younger brother who was. At the core of loyalty was family, even more important than clan or religious sect. The dictator thus allowed his younger brother to maneuver and accrue power in his own right, if he were clever enough to do so. The younger brother had begun close to home. First he organized special army battalions in Damascus to protect the dictator, a palace guard. The special units were under his personal control and all the officers were Alawites, former peasants like him and the dictator, men who owed their good fortune in life entirely to him. After that the younger brother naturally wanted to have his own secret service. To finance it and to have independent funds for other enterprises in the future, he struck up a hashish alliance with one of the leading Maronite Christian families of Lebanon. With the protection and influence of the Syrian dictator’s younger brother, the Maronite clan’s position would be greatly strengthened to control more of the hashish trade out of Lebanon. The younger brother’s specific partner in this alliance was an ambitious and sophisticated Maronite who was about his age, also in his middle thirties: the oldest son of the Lebanese president.

  Ziad’s boss, the captain, was now employed in the hashish department of the younger brother’s intelligence agency. And Ziad, far down the line, was still a courier who traveled to Beirut with sealed envelopes in the false bottom of his briefcase. But now he met well-groomed young Maronite men in expensive hotels, rather than gun-waving Palestinian boys in poor villages. Using Halim among others, Colonel Jundi kept track of the alliance at the top, watching it as carefully as he watched everything else in Lebanon.

  As for Halim, he couldn’t help but feel sad when Ziad spoke of his new life. His friend was always so eager, so excited as he paced up and down describing it all to Halim, and what made it so terrible was Ziad’s absolute conviction that this was actually a promotion, that he was finally being rewarded by life.

  Ziad described himself sitting in an expensive café on Beirut’s seafront, waiting for a contact who would give him his instructions. It was a sunny winter day and the Mediterranean glistened beside him. Everyone was smiling and laughing, the men in their Italian silks and French tailoring. Exquisite women walked by, breathtaking in their beauty. Gleaming automobiles drew up, their doors opened by driver-body-guards. On the table before him was a real cappuccino, a real croissant, lovely delicate china. He was holding a copy of Le Monde, bought crisp and new in a hotel lobby, and it was all an idyll of true grandeur. Here at last was the great world. Here were taste and comfort and beauty, the very magic of his dreams.

  And one scene above all. One small heartbreaking moment that touched Halim so deeply he could never recall it without feeling that tears were coming to his eyes.

  It was a glimpse of Ziad in the evening, sitting alone in the lounge of one of those splendid hotels by the sea, one whole side of the room an immense window showing the lights on the Mediterranean at night, the little ships in the distance, the moon. There was laughter and music. A stringed orchestra was playing and people were dancing, smiling at each other. Near Ziad a party was going on, a birthday celebration for an elegant white-haired woman who wore jewels. A handsome young man rose and asked her to dance. It was her son. Everyone in the party cheered and applauded as the son escorted his mother out to the dance floor. They danced slowly, gracefully, and soon all eyes were upon them, for they must have been known to the people of Beirut. In the corner Ziad sat gripping his Scotch and staring in wonder and awe, sweating in his ancient winter suit, hardly able to breathe.

  It was so beautiful, he said to Halim. That room with the lights on the water behind them, the soft music and the proud way he held her and the proud way she danced, the love and joy in their eyes, this elegant woman and her handsome son…

  It was snowing in Damascus the night Ziad described that scene to Halim. They had gone downtown to a favorite neighborhood restaurant, a small place which was all but deserted because of the weather, and after dinner they walked along the river as they always did when they went there. It was cold and no one was out by the river. The paths were new and white, without a footprint, the city unusually quiet under the snowfall. Suddenly Ziad turned and clutched Halim’s hand.

  Don’t you see? he said. I know you’ve worked hard for what you have in life, but you’ve also succeeded. People respect you. People admire you. You’ve built a place for yourself in the world and I don’t have that. Other than you, no one will ever care that I’ve lived. For years and years it doesn’t seem to matter too much. You just go on and that seems all right. But then later it does matter and you begin to realize how alone you are, how you have almost no one, and it’s frightening. Most of us don’t want to be just alone in the end. I know you manage that way but you’re different. Most of us aren’t like you. Solitude terrifies me. So that’s why this is a chance for me. What does it matter if it’s an illusion? I know what I look like sitting in one of those cafés in Beirut. I look the way I always look anywhere—ridiculous and awkward and out of place. But e
ven an illusion is better than nothing. Anything is better than nothing…

  SEVEN

  BEIRUT IS THE FLASHY whore of the Middle East, said Tajar, with a hundred major pimps and a thousand major customers. The pimps are armed like Barbary pirates and every one of the customers lusts after a different menu of earthly and spiritual delights. In such a situation you have to expect some kind of trouble…

  The gangsters and militias of Beirut began their civil war in a desultory way, about three decades after the French put together a famous ancient coastline and a string of mountains and called it the country of Lebanon. According to the National Covenant, the Lebanese Christians still controlled the government in the middle 1970s, although they were no longer the majority community. Their main partners in power were still the Sunni Moslems, although the poorer Shiites were now the majority Moslem sect. The Druse were in the mountains and the Shiites were in the south, which was controlled by Palestinian militias. Even before the Palestinians arrived there had been eleven major communities. Beyond religion were clan politics and commerce and clan warfare, honor and profit and hatred and fear, and refugees from every lost cause in the Middle East. There were also the agents of dozens of foreign intelligence agencies, all of them spending money and some of them making as much as oil princes.