“The truth is very simple, Mr. Hoffman. So simple that it took me many months to see it. It is this: The only man on earth who could have saved Tom Rogers that day at the embassy was Jamal Ramlawi. He was the only person the Americans had ever known in Lebanon who could have penetrated the terrorist cell, learned of the plot, and stopped the car with the bomb before it reached the embassy. But Jamal Ramlawi was dead, and there was no one else to save Tom Rogers.
“Now you know what I know.
“Effendi:
“Do you know what I just heard on the radio? It is a report from Lebanon. The radio says that the Lebanese Christians have decided that they need an ally against the Syrians. So they are allowing the Palestinian fighters to come back into Lebanon, to fight against the Syrians. Can you imagine this? We fought a war for ten years, Christians and Moslems—we killed 100,000 people—because the Christians believed that it was necessary to push the Palestinian fighters out of Lebanon forever. And now they want them to come back!
“So now we know what this war was about, Mr. Hoffman. It was about nothing.”
Agents of Innocence Page 43
