Jericho Mosaic jq-4

by Edward Whittemore

  It was a serious failure for the Syrian army, which had been acting under the influence of the civilian cadres of the Baath. The Syrian defense minister, a career army man, seized power and made himself president, which was a victory for the military wing of the Baath. But more important, the new man was the son of peasants and from the minority Alawites, a poorer Moslem sect which was traditionally scorned and oppressed by the majority Sunnis. Further, it turned out that the new president was not merely the head of another coalition of officers. He ruled alone, something no Syrian had done in centuries. His first act was to arrest his mentor in the Baath, the former president, and have him sentenced to life imprisonment in a notorious desert dungeon.

  Ziad was cynical and excited.

  An Alawite as president? he said to Halim. An inconceivable thing, it's never happened before. People will see him as representing all those who have always been wronged, which is naturally most of the country. So now we have a real presidente, our very own Perón to be the father of the shirtless ones, but far cleverer in the ways of the souk and not a banana dictator. Oh no, a genuine Levantine leader who knows how to scheme and cut throats. A despised Alawite? An ex-peasant whose first act is to turn on the man who made him?

  Despised minorities produce patient, angry men, and people will love him for that kind of treachery. Secretly, it's what they all dream of. And this ex-peasant even had the foresight to change his name to Lion as a young man. The king of the beasts as our dictator? It's apt. It fits. Maybe he'll even be strong enough to get back our land from the Israelis. Dominate or be dominated? Anyone who is different is inferior? This Alawite knows how it is. He has to. He is an Alawite, after all.

  Ziad was also enthusiastic because once again he sensed a new future for himself. A new government meant new loyalties. A dictator meant new kinds of opportunities. And a dictator from a minority sect which was despised by most Moslems meant there was suddenly a chance for little men, failed men, to rise in society.

  ***

  Ziad found his new life — in espionage. He was hired by one of the new men, a captain in Syrian intelligence whose agency ran a Palestinian militia which was establishing itself in southern Lebanon, after having been expelled from Jordan. The new Syrian government was continuing the old government's policy of not mounting operations against Israel from Syria itself, to avoid reprisals. With Jordan now closed to the PLO militias, the Syrian secret services were redirecting their money and arms into Lebanon.

  The intelligence agency Ziad worked for was one of a dozen secret services maintained by the Syrians.

  These secret services were independent of each other in their budgets and tasks and authority. All of them kept their own files, controlled their own agents, and pursued the goals set for them by the man at the top of their organization, who might be a major or a colonel, a minister or the president. Some of the intelligence agencies were much larger than others, with those run by the army and the defense ministry being the largest of all. But size didn't necessarily signify importance. An agency employing many thousands might not be as influential, at a given time, as a much more secret organization with only a few dozen key agents.

  These intelligence agencies operated out of the defense ministry, the foreign ministry, the interior ministry, the army, the Baath, the president's office — all the centers of power in Syria.

  The agencies were seldom separated into the usual spheres of intelligence: foreign or domestic, espionage or counterespionage. Most of them worked both sides of any question, since friends and enemies abroad were as crucial to the power center in Syria as friends and enemies at home. Nor were the military and political functions separate, since there was no strength in one without the other. The military agencies also had political targets, and the civilian agencies also worked in the army.

  Some of the Syrian intelligence agencies had more specialized interests. The Baath Party in Syria had long run an intelligence agency devoted solely to Iraq, where a Baathist party was also in power. This civilian service concentrated on manipulating and subverting Baathists of consequence in Baghdad, under the guise of fraternal relations with like-minded comrades, while countering the constant subversion by Iraqi Baathists in Damascus.

  Egypt, as the largest Arab country, was another special case. In the past Syria had been briefly controlled by Egypt in a political union, and there were still pro-Egyptian officers in the intelligence agencies run by the army and the defense ministry. But the intelligence agencies run by the interior ministry were fervently anti-Egyptian. Jordan, as a neighbor, was the province of the secret services run by the army and the foreign ministry. Liaison with the KGB was ostensibly handled by a secret service in the foreign ministry and another in the defense ministry, but in fact a second defense ministry agency was deeply involved.

  As a matter of course most Syrian intelligence agencies tried to penetrate each other, or at least have a source in the others with access to some of the files. This was done most aggressively by the secret services run by the Baath — its civilian wing, its military wing — which planted men wherever it could in addition to its regular counterintelligence service, which it ran as a counterweight to the counterintelligence service run by the interior ministry.

  Secret money from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil states, an important source of funds for covert operations, was another special case and was channeled through the secret services of the defense ministry. But other agencies could acquire it for selected targets, or if they had the right connections. In one way or another all the Syrian secret services operated in Lebanon and all of them used Palestinians. In the Middle East, Beirut was the meeting place for the agents of every secret service, not just those of Syria, and the Palestinians were the foot soldiers and mercenaries who ran the errands.

  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 paranoi
d, 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.

  His captain had given him a briefcase with a false bottom, which he was very proud of. In this false bottom he carried the money and directives in sealed envelopes. He had been told never to let the briefcase out of his sight and therefore took it with him when he went out in the evening to prowl Beirut's bars and nightclubs. In order to stretch his meager pocket money, he did his serious drinking at the open-air stands for laborers which were to be found in any alley. There he would throw off tumblers of cheap arak, then chew mints to mask the smell of arak on his breath as he wandered deeper into the night, examining the photographs on display by red-leather doors and savoring the florid promises of extravagant floor shows, the special acts of obscenity direct from Sweden and Holland and Germany, listening in evil-smelling alleys to the whispered offers of smooth-faced boys and giant glistening black women from the Sudan, knowing that somewhere behind one of these grimy doorways the ritual of a French circus was taking place — a small amphitheater heavy with peculiar animal odors and the smoke of hashish, the narrow wooden benches in utter darkness above a sawdust-covered pit lit by bright lights, deafening music pounding the fetid air, two sweaty handlers in the pit, a male donkey between them with a rag tied over its face, the beast in a frenzy and bucking wildly because the mask over its eyes and nostrils gave off the pungent scent of a mare in heat, and beneath the donkey a slovenly fat woman insensate from drugs, heaving in the harness that held her.

  And then finding his own place at last behind a red-leather door, his private little corner in some nightclub for the evening, a stool in a dim crowded room where he could lean on the bar when he felt dizzy and sniff his single Scotch and have a clear view of the floor show, of the blond women moaning with their snakes and cucumbers in the harsh white glare of the spotlight, then squatting on the fringes of darkness to suck up thick phallic rolls of money from outstretched, straddled hands, the wandering pink and blue searchlights of the room playing over his face and catching his eager smile in garish half-tones . . . an adventurer ready for the world, ready for anything.

  To Ziad these private evenings of isolation in the alleys of Beirut were a baroque fugue of sin, a dream of wickedness far removed from the pathetic sexuality he had known his whole life: alone in his barren, wretched room at night, furtively pouring over magazines of naked women as his right hand churned and his mind danced through a phantasmagoria of human parts. Yet it wasn't that he couldn't have wanted more than pornography from sex. Sometimes he did imagine more when he saw a romantic French film in Beirut. It was just that sexual reality for him was always reduced to pornography by the harsh ways of his society, by the strict separation of men and women and the primal fears of his religion.

  He did a minor trade in Swiss watches, smuggling one or two at a time into Syria in the false bottom of his briefcase, along with the sealed envelopes. One night in Beiru
t, drunker than he realized and made forgetful by the enchanting pink and blue lights, he left his briefcase in a bar. The moment he awoke the next morning with a shattering headache, he knew what had happened. He vomited in the sink of his sordid hotel room and rushed through town to the bar, where a cleaning man knew nothing. Miserable and sick, Ziad sat in the foyer until a man in a suit finally showed up at noon and retrieved the briefcase from a cupboard, which also revealed a shoe and a cane and a soiled address book, the lost-and-found remnants from the previous evening of glory. Ziad tipped the man outrageously and rushed back to his hotel room to examine the false bottom of the briefcase. It hadn't been opened. One of his hairs was still pasted across the secret opening inside — a trick he had learned from a spy movie. He was ecstatic and celebrated by getting drunk in an alley behind the hotel.

  Ziad was absurdly enthusiastic over his new role and had to tell Halim all about it. He told Halim far more than he should have and Halim was seriously concerned for his friend's safety, both with his employer and in Lebanon itself. Ziad didn't seem to realize that along with its freedom and glitter, Beirut was a city of real danger. The bars of Beirut were not the same as the coffeehouses of Damascus, which Ziad had grown up with and understood intuitively. Life could be dangerous in Damascus, but Syria was also ruled. Only those in authority could kill people. The dangers of Beirut, with its gangsterism, were totally different.