“I think that Amin is ready to tell us more about la puissance occulte today,” said Fares. “Isn’t that right, Amin?” The young Lebanese nodded.
“Please tell our American friend about the organization that you joined in East Beirut.”
Gently, gently, said Rogers to himself. The curtains were closed and the lights were dim.
“Yes, I will tell you about the group,” said Amin. “Not all about it, but some.”
Rogers nodded and the young man began.
“The name of the group is Al-Jabha. The name is supposed to be secret.”
“Al-Jabha?” asked Rogers.
“Yes,” said Amin Shartouni.
“And what does that mean?” asked Rogers. He knew the answer, but that wasn’t the point.
“It means ‘The Front,’ said Shartouni.
Rogers nodded. He believed that interrogations had a kind of rhythm. Make someone answer a first question, and then a second, and a kind of rhythm develops, like a trance.
“Please continue,” said Rogers.
“Al-Jabha was founded sometime in the late 1960s, I don’t know when. I don’t even know who founded it. Once I asked the man who recruited me and he just laughed.
“What did he say?”
“ ‘Les cinq illustres inconnus!’ The five illustrious unknowns. A doctor, several lawyers, an engineer, an insurance man. All professional people. But he wouldn’t tell me their names. His tone of voice made me think there must be others—bigger and more powerful—behind these people.”
“How were you recruited into the organization?” asked Rogers.
“It happened gradually. First I heard from one of the other students at St. Joseph about a group that was training people how to use weapons in case of trouble with the Palestinians. Then a friend from my neighborhood in Ashrafiyeh approached me. He said that I should do something for Lebanon and told me about the organization. When I said I was interested, he took me to meet a man who owned a bookstore near my house. This man told me that Al-Jabha had been watching me for some time and asked if I was interested. I said yes.”
“And what happened then?” asked Rogers. Gently, gently.
“He gave me a number—611—and said that from then on that was my only identification in the group. He said I should never write the number down. Just memorize it. The bookstore owner’s number was 138. My friend’s number was 457. We were a cell, the three of us. That was it! I was in. There were no meetings, no papers, nothing.”
“Tell us about your training,” said Fares.
“It started right away. The bookstore owner told me to be ready the next Saturday. He said I should go to the Sin el-Fil roundabout and look for a car that had on the rear window a map of Lebanon and the words: ‘Lebanon for the Lebanese.’ He said I should follow this car up into the mountains.”
“Was that a slogan of the group?” asked Rogers.
“Yes,” said Amin.
“Were there other slogans?”
“Yes. There was one other. ‘The first responsibility is to the nation. Everything else comes second.’ ”
“And where did you go from Sin el-Fil?”
“We went deep into Kesrouan, to an abandoned convent in a remote valley that I had never seen before. We were very far up the mountain, and completely hidden from outsiders. As we got near the training site, the road signs were covered over with paper so that we couldn’t be sure where we were.”
Rogers nodded. Come on, come on.
“There were about forty people there. They seemed to have come from all over Lebanon. I thought I recognized a few faces—one from school and another from the law faculty—but I didn’t say anything to them because it was supposed to be secret. There was an instructor—his number was 808—who drilled us in hand-to-hand combat and taught us to shoot automatic rifles. It was like the Boy Scouts, except it was more serious.”
Rogers nodded again. Fares sat close by, puffing his pipe.
“We met like that each Saturday for the next six weeks, each time following a car to that hidden place in the mountains. I would tell my parents that I was going hunting.”
“Did they believe you?”
“At first they did. To keep up my alibi, I would stop on the way home and buy some birds that somebody else had shot. Eventually I think they realized something was going on. But they never said anything, not even to this day.”
“What did the instructor tell you was the purpose of Al-Jabha?” asked Rogers.
“During the first six weeks, they just talked in general terms about fighting the Palestinians. They said that foreigners were trying to take over our country and change its identity so that it would be like the rest of the Arab world. It was always in terms of Lebanese against foreigners, but we knew what the instructors meant.”
“What did they mean?” asked Rogers.
“That the Palestinians were Moslems and they wanted to kill the Christians.”
Fares now sat forward in his chair. He had been through this debriefing once already, without Rogers, and it had stopped at this point. They were now about to cover new ground. He wondered if the frightened young Lebanese would continue.
“What happened later in the training?” asked Rogers gently. Amin looked warily at Fares.
“What happened later?” repeated Rogers.
“There was another kind of training,” said Amin.
“And what was it?”
“After the first round, the instructor—202—took me aside and said that he wanted me to enter a special course for the inner circle of the group.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said that I would. I was very flattered that he asked me. It seemed like a very great honor. It was only in this later training that it became clear to me what the group was doing. That was when I began to understand about occult power. You see this secret organization—Al-Jabha—was really just a cover for another, even more secret group.”
“What was the more secret group called?”
“It was called ‘The Guardians of the Mountain.’ ”
“Can you tell us about this inner group?” asked Fares.
“I don’t think so. They made us swear on the gospels that we would not reveal what we learned.”
“I want you to tell me,” said Rogers firmly.
“I can’t,” said Shartouni. “It is too dangerous.”
Rogers was wise enough to back off before the frightened young man broke completely from the thin tether with which they held him.
“Perhaps another day,” said Fares.
“Perhaps,” said the young Lebanese.
Having begun the process of confession and absolution, Amin wasn’t going to stop. He met again with Rogers two days later. Again, Fares spent time with the young Lebanese before the meeting, stroking his wounded psyche and encouraging him to tell the rest of his story. They gathered at an apartment near Jounie, in a complex overlooking the sea. The session began in the late afternoon, as the sun was beginning to set on the western horizon of the Mediterranean.
“Today, Amin would like to continue his story by telling us about the inner circle of Al-Jabha,” said Fares. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” said Amin Shartouni.
“Amin has promised that today, he will tell us everything about the group,” said Fares.
Shartouni nodded. Rogers settled back in his chair. Fares lit up his pipe. Amin sat on a couch facing the sea.
“The purpose of the inner circle was to do the things that the Lebanese Army could not do,” the young man began. “The leaders told us that because of political problems in the army, especially the friction between Moslem and Christian officers, it was no longer possible for the army to take the measures that might be necessary to defend the republic. That would be our job. They called it ‘special operations.’ ”
“What did they teach you in this second round of training?” asked Rogers.
“They taught us to make bombs,” answered Amin. His lips were cr
inkled into an odd smile that Rogers hadn’t seen before.
“Please tell us about it,” said Rogers.
“Very well. We had a new instructor in the inner group, who knew everything about making bombs. He had travelled around the Arab world and knew the secret tricks of warfare.”
“What was his name?” asked Rogers.
“He didn’t have a name,” said Amin. “We just called him ‘the Bombmaker.’ ”
“And what did he teach you?”
“First he taught us how to make homemade explosives.”
“Tell me,” said Rogers.
“They were the simplest kind at first, which you could make by mixing a pesticide with a fertilizer. The Bombmaker said that the nitrogenous compound in the fertilizer, combined with the acid of the pesticide, would produce a powerful explosive. But he recommended against using this mixture.”
“Why?”
“Because it was unstable. It would explode if you shook it, or dropped it.”
“I see,” said Rogers.
“The Bombmaker recommended what he called ‘nitrocotton.’ He had me mix it in the bathtub. We took pure cotton and mixed it very slowly, very gently, with nitric acid. The Bombmaker warned us that if we mixed nitrocotton too fast, it would explode right there in the tub!”
“And you made nitrocotton?”
“Yes,” said Amin. “It was difficult for me at first, because my hand was shaking so much that it was churning up the acid. But I learned how.”
“What came next?” asked Rogers.
“Detonators. The Bombmaker taught us how to make a simple detonator. You start with gunpowder. You can get it from any bullet. Then you take a flashlight bulb, break the glass, put the gunpowder around the resistance wire, and recap the bulb with wax. When you run electricity to the bulb, Boom! You have a detonator!”
Amin smiled that peculiar smile again. Rogers wondered if he was a lunatic after all.
“But those were just the basics,” continued Amin. “We moved on to real explosives: gelignite and melignite and plastique. The Bombmaker said the simplest way to get these fancy explosives was to steal them from the military. He said that tons of explosives disappear from NATO stocks every year, and if we wanted some, we should bribe an American soldier in Europe who would steal what we wanted. If we didn’t need the high-quality military explosive, the Bombmaker said we should just buy dynamite from the people who sell it to construction companies. All we would need to make it legal was a construction license! The Bombmaker also told us about another way, but he said it was very dangerous.”
“What was that?”
“To buy explosives from the Palestinians.”
“What?” asked Rogers, unsure that he had heard correctly. “Why would the Palestinians sell explosives to the Christians?”
“I don’t know,” said Amin. “That’s just what the Bombmaker told us.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“He taught us how to make remote-control detonators. That was really the most interesting part.”
“How do you make a remote-control detonator?” asked Rogers. He felt his stomach beginning to tighten.
“You start by buying a simple radio-control kit, like the kind that children use for model airplanes or boats. You can buy them in any big toy store. The Bombmaker warned us that we should buy only one kit in each store. Otherwise, people would get suspicious.”
“How do they work?” asked Rogers.
“In each kit, there is an emitting device and a receiving device. One for the ground controller, if it’s a toy airplane, and one in the plane itself. Mind you, when you use the kits to make detonators, you must change the frequency and select a new one that isn’t used by model builders or amateur radio operators. Otherwise, the bomb might explode in your hands because of a child who is playing with a model airplane nearby and sets it off by mistake!”
Rogers nodded.
“The kits usually have two frequencies, one to regulate the speed of the toy plane and one to control its direction. That’s the kind that you want, because it gives you two keys on the detonator. A simple electronic transmission on the first frequency opens one key; an audio signal—a voice, let’s say—opens the second key.”
“And then?”
“Then, BOOM! Remote-control detonator.”
“Amin,” said Rogers softly. “What were these bombs and detonators to be used for?”
Amin ignored the question. “Would you like me to tell you the most frightening part of the training?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Rogers.
“It was connecting the electric battery to the detonator. And do you know why? Because of static electricity! Sparks can jump from the battery to the detonator, even when the switch is off. Then, BOOM! The Bombmaker taught me a safety trick. Before you get the battery wires near the detonator, touch them together and make them spark. That removes the static electricity.”
Rogers nodded. Who is mad, he wondered, this poor man or his country?
“I hated attaching the battery,” said Amin with a shudder. “The Bombmaker made me do it over and over, and my hands trembled and shook. But he said it was necessary. Everyone had to do it.”
Remembering the experience, Amin trembled once again.
“The rest of the receiving device was easy,” he continued. “You just attach the detonator to the aerial.”
“The aerial?”
“Yes. The car aerial.”
“Amin!” said Rogers loudly. “Why did they need an aerial? What were they going to use the remote-controlled bombs for?”
“Don’t you know?” said Amin, tilting his head. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No,” said Rogers.
“Car bombs!”
Rogers felt sick. He could not ask the next question.
“Why did your group need car bombs?” asked Fares.
“Because the other side had them. The Palestinians.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because the Bombmaker told us.”
“Yes, but how did he know?”
“He knew because….” Amin began to laugh. “It’s sort of funny, really.”
“How did he know?”
“He knew because a few months before he came to us, he had been working for the Palestinians. Teaching them how to make bombs. That was his job, you see. Teaching people how to make bombs!”
The young Lebanese continued to laugh. It was a nervous giggle—like the sound of a frayed nerve vibrating—that masked emotions Amin could not express.
“And who were the targets?”
“What?”
“Who were the targets?”
The question produced another stutter of laughter from Amin. Then there was silence, and a look of pain and exhaustion that distorted his face.
“That was what bothered me,” said the boy, his face frozen. “The Bombmaker told us that it didn’t matter! We could decide about all that later. He said it would be easy. With car bombs, we wouldn’t need specific targets!”
“Why not?” asked Rogers, almost in a whisper.
“Because we would only need an address.”
“An address?”
“Yes. A street address. Where to park the car.”
The apprentice terrorist looked at Rogers. He put his head in his hands. Was he crying? Was he laughing? It didn’t matter. Fares embraced the boy.
“Do you have any more training sessions scheduled with the Bombmaker?” asked Rogers.
“Yes,” said Amin. “One more.”
“Good boy,” said Rogers. “You are very brave to have come here and talked with us. Go to your next session. Behave normally. And don’t be frightened. We will make sure that no harm comes to you.”
The young Lebanese nodded. Fares escorted him to the door, speaking gently to him in Arabic. Rogers watched him walk out the door, into the Christian heartland of Kesrouan, and then turned to Fares.
“Follow him,” said the American.
>
29
Beirut; June 1971
They followed Amin Shartouni until he led them, several days later, to the Bombmaker. Then they followed the Bombmaker.
Hoffman organized the surveillance. It was, he said, the most interesting and complicated surveillance problem he had encountered. How do you track someone, with the utmost discretion, when you can’t use your usual trackers? Borrowing people from the Deuxième Bureau was out of the question. Most of the other agents available to the CIA station would be too obvious. It was like trying to play chess without chessmen.
Eventually, with Fares’s help, they put together a small team, gathered mostly from Ankara, that could maintain loose surveillance on the Bombmaker. They also obtained photographs of him and some of the people he met. The results of this exercise were as startling as anything that Rogers had come across in more than a decade of intelligence work. When the evidence was ready, he took it to Hoffman and briefed him in detail.
Hoffman was standing at his open window when Rogers arrived for the briefing. The station chief was feeding bits of a chocolate eclair to a pigeon that had landed on the window sill.
“Show-and-tell time?” asked Hoffman.
“Yes, sir,” said Rogers.
“Awaaay we go!” said Hoffman. He scooted over to his desk with a dancelike motion similar to the one made famous by the comedian Jackie Gleason. Looking at him, Rogers wondered whether perhaps the station chief was becoming more eccentric than a government official could afford to be.
“This is the man known as ‘the Bombmaker,’ ” began Rogers.
He handed Hoffman a grainy photograph taken from a distance with a high-powered lens. It showed a heavyset Arab man with a stubbly beard and a mustache. He had a bald spot on his head and was wearing thick glasses. There were bags under his eyes and a look of perpetual sleeplessness. He was wearing what appeared to be an expensive silk shirt, open at the neck. Because he was overweight, the fabric was pulling at the buttons. Around his neck, matted in the hair on his chest, was a large gold ingot.
“So this is the face of evil,” said Hoffman. “He looks to me like your average fat slob.”
Rogers handed Hoffman the next photograph.
Agents of Innocence Page 24
