by Brad Taylor
“How’s a mosque going to help us? We can’t even get in.”
She started walking again. “The Umayyad Mosque is one of the holiest shrines of Islam. It’s a huge tourist attraction. Yeah, we can’t get into the inner workings, but we can get to the courtyard, which is enormous. Big enough to get the signal we need with a plausible reason for being there.”
She looked back at me. “Unlike a simple soccer field.”
The comment was meant to convey she understood the mission and was thinking about how to do it given our operational cover.
We reached the end of the souk and circled around to the tourist gate entrance of the mosque. After buying our tickets, we went through a doorway labeled “putting on special clothes room.” We were given hooded cloaks to wear, me because short-sleeved shirts were frowned upon and Jennifer because, well, she was a woman.
“What’s up with this place?”
“It’s the first great mosque.”
“Great is right. It looks like a crib from MTV with all the marble and gold.”
She was scowling at my verbal history slight when I saw a mausoleum off to the right, a small, white building with a red roof.
She said, “Saladin’s last resting place.”
“Saladin? The Saladin? For real?”
I saw a little grin seep out because I was enjoying the same thing she did. Old dead people and pottery shards.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get to the courtyard and get this God-almighty-important message.”
“Hey, let’s look around a little bit. Work the cover some. We’re tourists.”
She smiled for real. “If it’s got something to do with bloodshed, you get interested. Okay, you want me to tell you about Saladin?”
Jennifer was famous in the Taskforce for her history lessons. Not in a bad way, as if she was always spouting off, but in a good way, because she knew more about the history of the world than any knuckle-dragger in the command. In this case, I didn’t need the lesson. Saladin was a Kurd who’d smoked the European crusaders, giving them fits with his military skills. A leader of the first order. I knew all about him, but had no idea he’d been entombed in Syria.
“I’m good on this one. I’ll just go take a peek. Why don’t you take the GPS into the courtyard? I’ll catch up.”
She disappeared through a door, and I entered the mausoleum. There wasn’t much to see inside, and I realized that I was itching to know what the Taskforce wanted. I wished I hadn’t given the GPS to Jennifer, allowing her to see the message first. I glanced around for a few seconds, then took off at a fast walk to find her. I entered into the courtyard, which was as large as Jennifer said it would be. I saw her sitting down, looking at the screen.
“Did you get it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I did.”
Her demeanor gave me no clue if it was going to be good or bad. “Well?”
She stood up and dusted off her pants. “It’s instructions for a PM.”
Whew. PM stood for personal meet and was spy-talk for a clandestine meeting between a controller and his asset, which in this case would be us. Nothing more than an hour out of our life.
“See. All that crying over nothing. We’ll do the meet and continue on once this visa mess gets sorted out. Kurt probably just wants to pass us instructions to check something out here in Damascus before we head north. More than likely it was just too much data to send using the GPS.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
She handed me the GPS, the smile from earlier long gone.
“The PM’s in Beirut.”
11
Two days later, Jennifer walked into a café in the Hamra section of western Beirut, just down the street from the American University. She saw a hodgepodge of tourists and students, with the right wall lined by twentysomethings smoking water pipes and discussing political opinions, one of the few areas where such discussion wouldn’t end in gunfire.
She crossed the threshold at precisely twelve minutes past one o’clock, as the GPS message had stipulated. She was wearing a shirt that buttoned in the front and was carrying a map in her right hand, per the instructions.
She knew she was being watched, but made no attempt to look around. Instead, she went to the hostess and asked for a menu, getting redirected to the menu on the wall.
While pretending to look at it, she sensed someone gazing over her shoulder.
A man said, “This place is supposed to have the best breakfast in town, but I don’t know about lunch.”
She turned and saw a fiftysomething executive in a business suit, swarthy, maybe Mediterranean, maybe Latino, with a large gut protruding over his belt.
She said, “Lunch is probably just as good.”
The man smiled at the correct response. “Join me, if you want.”
She followed him to the back of the café, beyond the prying ears of the students and tourists, sitting at the last small table in the restaurant.
He immediately began giving her instructions, a mad minute of information on why they were meeting and what they were discussing, should she be asked later. A facade to cover the conversation and protect both of them.
She said nothing, memorizing everything that came out of his mouth. When he stopped, his serious demeanor left, replaced by a cocky smile.
“My name is Louis Britt, and I guess I’m supposed to help you out.”
“Louis Britt? You’re kidding. Not ‘Abdullah Mohammed’?”
“Unfortunately, no. Trust me, this damn name has caused nothing but trouble over here. I’m sure the idiot who gave me my documents is laughing.”
He picked up the menu and said, “I thought they would be sending me an operator. No offense.”
She smiled back, taking a liking to him for some reason. “They did.”
“No, I don’t mean another case officer, I mean a Taskforce operator. Someone who can act on my information. Kurt contacted me and gave me a dump on a hit in Tunisia, then directed this meeting. I’ve been deep so long, I was shocked when it happened. I thought the world was ending. And now I’m meeting you. You CIA? DIA?”
“Look, I’m just an overeager anthropologist with a liking for Middle Eastern historical sights. I’m supposed to be in Syria on a dig. Unfortunately for me, I also have some other unique skills. So does the man who watched you enter the restaurant. I don’t know what a true ‘operator’ is, since I’ve never been in the military, and it seems like everyone who’s ever held a gun says that’s what they are nowadays, but I do know I’m the one they sent for this meeting. What do you have?”
He leaned back. “Wow. I have been gone too long. The world is just not right.” He said it with a smile, breaking off when the waitress approached to take their order. Watching her walk back to the kitchen, he said, “Man, to be young again. These Lebanese women are friggin’ hot.” He winked. “Not that my age has stopped me any.”
Jennifer gave a tentative smile, wondering where this was going. Is he coming on to me? Really?
She’d never done an operational link-up with a deep asset and was unsure what to make of the guy. On the one hand, when they’d met, he was as professional as anyone in the Taskforce, executing the operating procedures like a robot. Now, he was acting like a drunk businessman who’d come to Beirut for a convention.
He saw her draw back and took her hand. The act sent her instincts into the red zone, until she felt something in her palm.
“Don’t worry. I’m not trying to get in your pants. Unless you’d like it, that is.”
He grinned again and pulled his hand away.
“That’s an SD card with a complete rundown on a hit that happened in Tunisia three days ago. Taskforce took down a guy that was financing an assassination here in Lebanon. Originally, we didn’t care because all the indicators pointed to a simple sectarian hit against some other faction in this fucked-up country. Taskforce now thinks it may be directed against Western interests. Meaning the U.S.”
“So what are we supposed to do? Get this card to someone else? Why were we pulled from Syria?”
He snickered, then saw she was serious. “They didn’t tell you why you were sent?”
“No. All we got were the PM instructions.”
“Well, operator,” he said, “you’re here to save the day. Get the assassin. Protect American interests and all that bullshit. Same thing we always do.”
Jennifer said nothing for a moment, doing the wasted mental calculations of how the mission would affect her trip to Syria. Like a child who’d let go of a balloon, seeing it float inexorably skyward, she tried to find a way to get back what she wanted. She realized Syria was lost for good.
“All right. What can you offer me besides this SD card?”
“Well, for one there’s a very big discrepancy between the information found in Tunisia and what I know. I’ve been hearing about a hit for a few months, but it was always against internal Lebanese interests. Now, the intel weenies think the guy from Tunisia was financing a hit specifically against a U.S. government official. I think they’re wrong.”
“Why? If it’s single-source intel from the mission, it seems prudent. Not something to ignore.”
“It came from the hit, but there wasn’t any smoking gun. You’ll see when you boot up that SD card. The target hasn’t talked yet. The Taskforce intel folks went through his hard drive and pieced it together. They’re keying on the words ‘infidel’ and ‘American,’ and made a leap of logic. It’s prudent if taken by itself, but I’ve been working here for over seven years, feeding the beast quality intel. Those analysts go through one hit and all of the sudden everything I’ve said is discounted. I’ve been hearing those same words used in reference to plenty of assassination attempts, but not as the target.”
“You mean they’re going to kill a foreign national in the presence of an American? At an American-sponsored conference or something?”
“No. In this case, ‘infidel’ has a very specific meaning to these guys. I’m telling you the assassin is an American.”
12
Back in our hotel room, Jennifer gave me a rundown of what she’d learned while I went through the SD card the agent had passed. I hated hearing the briefing secondhand, but I’d had to make a hard call on who went into the café and had decided that I’d do more good outside, ready to react should something go wrong. Jennifer possessed a steel-trap mind and would draw much less attention to the meeting than I would. Hot little hammer meeting a businessman was better than a roughed-up expat.
The case officer’s story certainly matched up; the SD card had a clinical report, with all primary references being the thoughts of some analyst with a fifty-pound head. No concrete information on the target or the timing, with every statement preceded by “appears to be…” or “suggests…” Not a lot of help in our decidedly fluid mission statement. I decided to do my own investigation.
“Come on. Let’s go see a guy I know.”
“Who?”
“A soldier I met a long time ago on a training package here. Before the Taskforce. Before Nine-Eleven. He’s a Special Forces guy I trust.”
We left our fancy hotel, a five-star treat that tried hard to make you forget the deadly terrain it was parked within, but failed because of the metal detectors and physical searches at the door.
Heading to the coast road, we passed the destroyed Holiday Inn, a mocking, bullet-ridden reminder of the animosity simmering just below the surface of Beirut. A testament to both the potential and the reality of the country.
Going generally south along the coast, we left the city behind us. About forty minutes later, we turned east and entered the foothills of the Chouf Mountains, home of the Druze sect.
One of the eighteen recognized sects in Lebanon, it was a monotheistic religion that was neither Christian nor Muslim. Primarily found in the Levant, the Druze were known for their fighting prowess and staunch loyalty.
Driving along winding mountain roads, full of switchbacks, we reached the small town of Deir Al Qamar. I cut north, finally stopping at a modest stone house, carved straight into the side of the mountain with a view that would command millions in the United States.
I killed the engine and said, “Hope he still lives here.”
“Really?” Jennifer said, “That’s the best you can do? How long has it been? Ten, fifteen years?”
“Yeah, but all these homes are family owned. This isn’t like America. The sects tend to stick together for survival, and none more so than the Druze. If he’s not here, whoever is will know where he lives now, and it’ll be somewhere close.”
The door of the house swung open before we were out of the car, an attractive girl of about thirteen on the stoop. She said something in Arabic back into the house, then, in heavily accented English, said, “Can I help you?”
I stopped at the base of the steps. “We’re looking for an old friend of mine. I met him when I was in the Army a long time ago. His name’s Samir al-Atrash.”
Before she could answer, Samir himself came onto the stoop. He looked exactly the same, a tall, rangy guy with jet-black hair and a bushy mustache. He stared at me without recognition for a second or two, and as I waited to see if he would remember me, I realized I was wrong. He wasn’t exactly the same.
My memory of him had been frozen decades before, and like holding an old photo to your reflection in a mirror, I saw the changes. He had some gray coming through and a few more wrinkles. Crow’s-feet around his eyes where there’d been none before.
He said, “Pike?”
I grinned. “I was beginning to think I hadn’t left an impression on you, what with all the money we wasted on your training.”
His face split into a smile. “Impression? No, you didn’t. At least not in any good way.”
I introduced Jennifer, and he led the way into his house. We settled into a small, comfortable den, the girl from earlier now teamed with a younger boy, both clinging to the armchair Samir was sitting in.
“You’ve been busy,” I said. “You were single the last time we talked.”
“Times change. Sooner or later, you realize what’s truly important. You don’t have a wife? Children?”
“No.” Not anymore.
He laughed and said, “You’re going to die a greasy, dirty old man. You should try it, Pike. I think you’d like the lifestyle.”
I barked a fake laugh and awkwardly changed the subject, not wanting to make him feel bad. His brow furrowed at the abrupt shift, but I pressed on, talking about our business interests instead. How we loved the travel and adventure. Jennifer helped out by asking questions about the Druze. As usual, she knew more than I did and had never even been to the country.
At a natural pause in the conversation, he whispered to his kids, then watched them scamper away and disappear into the back of the house.
“What can I help you with?” he asked, “Surely you didn’t drive into the mountains just to banter about your lack of commitment or your love of travel.”
About time.
“Well, I was hoping to run something by you. Your unit, actually. See if that intelligence fusion cell you always bragged about can corroborate anything. Surely that thing is wired throughout the country by now. Pride of the Lebanese Armed Forces. Isn’t that what you said it would be?”
He glanced at the floor, then said, “I’m not in Special Forces anymore.”
“Oh…well, can you still get access? As a regular grunt?”
“Pike, I’m not in the Army. I quit after the 2006 war.”
“Really? You would be the last guy I thought would leave the Army. What happened?”
His demeanor shifted, and not in a good way. “Israel invaded us and the Lebanese Armed Forces did nothing, letting Hezbollah do all the fighting that should have been done by the LAF. We didn’t even react when the Israelis blew up one of our convoys, killing a general. It was disgusting. Even my Special Forces unit sat on the sidelines and watched the civilians
get slaughtered. If it hadn’t been for Hezbollah, many, many more would have been killed.”
The answer surprised me, not the least because of his vociferousness about the subject. This wasn’t the soldier I had left. A man all about unity and Lebanese solidarity, about a true armed force that had no sectarian leanings. Now he was siding with Hezbollah, the “militia” that started the fight in the first place by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers. And it was Hezbollah that Israel went after. Not the LAF. I wasn’t looking to get into a political argument, realizing more things had changed than the crow’s-feet.
“I’m sorry to hear that. It was good seeing you again. We’ll get out of your hair.”
He sat up. “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t need your pity, and I’m not confused. I’m the one who lives here. I saw it happen. Thousands of Lebanese civilians killed, compared against maybe one hundred and fifty Israelis. All soldiers.”
He was gripping the armchair hard and breathing heavy, daring me to say something against him. I recognized the signs. We were skating over a sore that I had opened, and he was about to do something we’d both regret.
I said, “I’m not looking for a fight. We’ll just leave.”
He stood up, mocking me. “Not looking for a fight? That’s not what you used to say. All that training to protect something and all you were doing was helping out the Israelis. You in the West are all alike. Train the stupid locals then leave when the hostilities get to a level you don’t like. You don’t know what suffering is.”
That was enough. Very few had suffered as I had, and the fact that he had two children walking the earth told me he wasn’t one of them. I balled up my fists, ready to go as far as he wanted to take it. I saw Jennifer jump up, probably wondering what she should do. I was wrong.
She stepped between us, looked Samir in the eye and said, “Pike’s family was murdered. Both his wife and child. For nothing. That’s why he changed the subject when you started talking about marriage. Don’t push his buttons about suffering. I promise you won’t like the results.”
