Body of Lies

by David Ignatius

  THEY REACHED the center of Hama around seven-thirty, still too early. Ferris told the driver to drive to the northern suburbs and then turn back. As they drove, he looked at the buildings along the road. Some were ruined shells, and he realized that this must be one of the neighborhoods that had been destroyed when Hafez al-Assad rolled his tanks into the Muslim quarters of the city nearly three decades before and fired at point-blank range, leveling the houses and destroying anything inside. The Muslim Brothers had fled to caves and tunnels in the old city, near the river, but they had been driven out by flame throwers, gas and bullets. This was the world that had created Suleiman. The hatred that had been spawned here was now focused on America and, this day, on Roger Ferris.

  The driver parked the taxi at the bus stop near the Orontes River. Ferris sat in the car and watched for Alice. It was nearly eight. He told the driver he was going for a walk and that if he didn’t return in two hours, the driver should leave without him. He gave him a hundred dinars, which he knew was too much, but what was he going to do with money when he was dead? He got out of the car and began walking toward the ancient wooden wheels that spooned water from the river and deposited it into the town’s aqueducts. He looked all around, wondering where Hani’s men might be, if they were there at all. Better not to look too curious. He put his head down and turned up the collar of his jacket against the chill. His bad leg was stiff from the long, cramped ride, and he was limping more than usual.

  It was a cloudless morning. The winter sky was azure at the horizon, rising to a deep royal blue. Ferris sat down on a bench by the Orontes, near the entrance to the biggest of the waterwheels. The river was a placid blue-black, and in the stillness you could see reflected the old Al-Nuri Mosque and the other stone buildings that lined the banks; in the bright morning sun, the wooden wheels had a golden glow. He sat for ten minutes, then fifteen, scanning the riverbank. There were more than a dozen waterwheels arrayed on the two sides of the river, and he couldn’t be sure where she would be. He got up once and made a tour of the area and then returned to his bench. He had the sense that he was being watched, but he couldn’t tell the touts and vendors from the terrorists.

  Ferris was squinting into the morning sun when he saw a group of Arab men approach the norias from the western side. A woman was with them. She was wearing a long black dress and a headscarf, but there was something about her walk that made Ferris look twice. He rose and moved toward the group, which was now about seventy-five yards away. As he did so, the group stopped and parted. One of the men said something to the woman, it was like an order, and she removed her scarf. The man gave her a little push and then he and his friends ran away, so that she was standing alone by the riverbank.

  Ferris moved more quickly toward her, so that he could see her face and be sure. In an instant that stopped time, he knew that it was Alice. The blond hair, the graceful body, the wide smile as she sensed that she was free. They must have cleaned her up, but Ferris didn’t want to think about that. All he knew was that she was free. He called out her name and began to run toward her, but his bad leg was wobbly and he stumbled and fell. In the wind and street noise, she didn’t hear him, but that was all right. She was free.

  As Ferris moved toward Alice, he saw three Arab men, not like the others, but well dressed, converging on Alice. They were much closer to her, and Ferris could hear one of them calling out Alice’s name. He was frightened for a moment, but he realized that he recognized the voice, and as he looked more closely, he saw that it was Hani. The Jordanian had traveled north overnight to rescue Alice himself. Ferris cried out her name again, but Hani had reached her now and had his arms around her, and he and his men were leading her toward a van that was parked nearby. She seemed relieved to see him, almost as if he were a lost friend. Ferris shouted as he tried to run on the gimp leg, but a Syrian policeman moved toward him, thinking that in his cap and ragged coat Ferris must be a Syrian, so he slowed. He called out, but she couldn’t hear. Now Hani was opening the door of the van, and Alice was in the back seat with a guard on either side, and the van was backing away.

  Ferris stopped calling Alice’s name. The van was moving quickly, back toward the Damascus highway. Tears came to his eyes. The impossible had happened. The kidnappers had been true to their word. So had Hani, in his promise that he would protect her when she was released. The only piece of the bargain left unfulfilled was Ferris’s. He thought about running, but he knew that Alice would be vulnerable until she was out of Syria. He needed a trick, a ruse, something to buy time. They were waiting for his call. He took out the cell phone and then put it back in his pocket. Let them wait. He felt a dark contentment, for he knew now that Alice would survive, no matter what.

  34

  HAMA / ALEPPO

  THE CELL PHONE RANG five times before Ferris answered. An Arab voice asked if this was Mr. Roger Ferris, and he said yes. “We are waiting for you, sir. Why you have not called, please?” Ferris apologized and then hung up. He didn’t want to die if he didn’t have to. He stood up from the bench and began to move away, wondering in which direction he could run. But as he took his first steps, he saw two bearded men in winter parkas walking toward him.

  Ferris reached for Hani’s electronic pager; it was in the pocket where, until a few hours before, he had kept the poison. He pressed the button of the mock-lighter once, and then again. The two men were on either side of him now. He felt the blunt muzzle of a gun against his ribs. The man holding the gun had bright eyes and a face that was hammered gold, the color of wild honey. He looked Egyptian. Ferris thought he recognized his face from the agency’s mug shots of Al Qaeda operatives, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “You are Ferris?” asked the Egyptian.

  “Yes.” The gun pressed deeper into his side at the confirmation.

  “This is no trick?”

  Ferris shook his head. “No. This is no trick. You did what you promised. I will do what I promised.”

  “And what is that? What will you do for us?” queried the Egyptian. He had an odd smile and a cruel set to his eyes. He was trying to hide a lifetime of hatred.

  “Wait and see,” said Ferris. He looked for Hani’s men out of the corner of his eye, but he saw no one. They were taking care of Alice. That was all he had asked them to do; he was expendable. That was the deal. But Ferris was truly frightened now, smelling the acrid garlic breath of the two men and knowing that he was slipping into their control. He wanted to scream, or bolt and run, but he knew that would only hasten his death and he had resolved to hold on to life as long as he could.

  “We are sorry we treat you like a prisoner,” the Egyptian whispered in his ear. “We do not know if you tell truth or lies, so we must make you prisoner. I am sorry.”

  Ferris stared at his captors. Who were they kidding? Of course he was a prisoner. He wondered now if he should have discarded the poison and decided yes, the temptation to use it would have been too great. He might already be dead.

  The two men walked him to a yellow Hyundai that was around a corner from the main square. A driver was sitting at the wheel; next to him was a bearded guard, cradling a gun across his lap. This was the bridge of no return. Ferris reached one more time for his coat and pressed Hani’s pager, but the gunman pulled his hand away. He patted Ferris’s pockets. “What is this?” he asked, pulling the device from Ferris’s pocket. It looked like a lighter, but it didn’t seem to work. He pressed and pressed, waiting for the flame, and then grunted and tossed it away.

  “Maybe you will trick us?” The Egyptian scowled. Ferris began to protest, but a hand quickly gagged his mouth, and then tape. They patted him down in earnest now, and found the cell phone tucked in the pocket of his trousers. The Egyptian took that, too. The other gunman fished Ferris’s wallet and passport out of his pockets and put them in his parka. They pushed him into the back seat of the little Hyundai and arrayed themselves on either side. The car rumbled a few hundred yards and turned into a dusty alley and rolled down it
far enough that they couldn’t be seen from the main road; there they blindfolded Ferris, bound his wrists and ankles and pushed him to the floor of the back seat.

  “We are sorry,” said the Egyptian again to the bundle that was now Ferris. He and the other captor moved to another car that was waiting in the alley, and the convoy departed. Why were they apologizing? He was a dead man.

  THEY TRAVELED for several hours. Ferris wasn’t sure how long—the blindfold was so tight he had no sensation of light or dark—but he felt the air get cooler, and he sensed that it was afternoon. He guessed that the cars had been heading north, toward Aleppo, or east, toward Iraq. The convoy stopped eventually. They left him there hog-tied on the floor, while his captors climbed up some stairs. After a few minutes, people returned and opened the back door of the car. They pulled Ferris out headfirst and carried him like a rolled-up carpet, manhandling his neck and feet, up some stairs and into a building, then downstairs again into what Ferris assumed must be a basement. So this is where it ends, thought Ferris.

  But it wasn’t. Two men trundled downstairs, grunting Koranic aphorisms at each other. They left Ferris’s blindfold in place but untied his hands and feet, gave him water and food and let him use a stinking toilet. Then they tied him up again and dropped him on a dirty mattress and told him to sleep. And he did, a fitful sleep, broken by every sound from the floor above.

  They moved Ferris again the next morning. The blindfold had loosened from the sweat and pressure. This trip wasn’t as long—no more than half an hour. Ferris guessed that they were moving him from one safe house to another—probably in Aleppo. Iraq was too crazy a place to hide, even for them. They went through the same routine, hauling him about like a bound-up rug, carrying him upstairs and down. In this second safe house, he was again given food and water and allowed to use the toilet. This one didn’t smell so bad, and the toilet actually had a seat. Ferris had to move his bowels. They sat him down and turned their backs. Then they bound him again and left him sitting in a chair, but not for long. There was noise upstairs, the sound of several cars arriving, muffled voices of welcome, the sound of prayers.

  Ferris dreaded each time someone came downstairs, thinking that now the torture would begin. So when he heard the creak of the stair board, his stomach tightened. But the voice that greeted him this time wasn’t so gruff. He undid Ferris’s bonds, hand and foot, then his gag, and then, to Ferris’s astonishment, his blindfold. It was the same honey-colored face that had approached him in Hama and put a pistol in his side. The Egyptian handed Ferris a razor, shaving cream and a towel and led him back to the bathroom. Ferris could see now that it had a shower. “Make yourself clean,” he said. “You are our guest.”

  They were softening him up. Ferris didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t be good. He closed the bathroom door, turned on the shower and let the water run down his body. He was filthy, from riding in hidden compartments and on car floors and sleeping on a grimy bed; he watched the dirt swirl down the drain and imagined for a moment that his whole body could dissolve into that hole in the ground, too. It felt good to be clean, and better to be clean-shaven. He looked at his eyes in the mirror. They were sunken, rimmed with dark shadows. The spark was gone; what was left was hard and gray and implacable. He wondered if Alice could love such a face, in the event that he should survive to see her again. But then, she must have been changed by the nightmare she had lived. They were not the same people. Ferris toweled himself, combed his hair and prepared to meet whatever awaited him upstairs.

  They came for him at midmorning, after another car had arrived. He was blindfolded again, but only loosely, and then led up two flights of stairs to a large room in the back of the building. The room itself was dark, curtains drawn, but they turned on a bright light and sat Ferris down in a chair and told him to wait. From behind his head, someone untied the blindfold and let it drop. In the shadows at the far end of the room, Ferris saw what looked like a video camera mounted on a tripod. Oh dear Jesus, he thought: They are going to film my beheading, just the way they did with the others. A white jolt of fear lit up his body. He closed his eyes to try to calm himself. At least it would be quick, when it finally came, he thought. He hoped he could meet it in silence.

  AFTER TWENTY minutes, a man entered the room and took a chair across from Ferris. Ferris stared for a very long while. He formed the words My God! on his lips, but no sound emerged. He wanted to speak, but even more, he wanted to understand.

  It was Suleiman. His hair was lighter, his beard had been trimmed, but it was unmistakably the same man Ferris had seen so many times in briefings and mug books and photos pinned to office walls. In person, he looked even more intelligent than he had in the pictures. His eyes were pools that drew you in rather than giving off beads of reflected light. There were crow’s-feet at the edges of the eyes, and a slight upward turn at the corners of the mouth, so that he seemed, oddly, to be smiling. There was a curiosity about this face and also a stone-cold hardness. Suleiman seemed to be waiting for Ferris to say something, as if he were a prize parrot that had been purchased in the souk. Perhaps he wanted to be flattered.

  “I know you,” said Ferris. “You are a famous man for me, but I did not think I would ever see your face except in a photograph. It must be an honor, that you have come to meet me.”

  “Oh, but I had to see you myself, Mr. Ferris. It would have been wrong to leave this meeting to anyone who did not have the knowledge.”

  Ferris didn’t understand. “And why is that? You could have assigned any of your men to interrogate me.”

  “They would not be worthy. Because, sir, you are the first.”

  “The first,” Ferris repeated. He did not want to give anything away, but he had no idea what Suleiman was talking about. The first CIA captive? The first American prisoner? He was speaking in riddles.

  “Oh yes. You are our first defector.” Suleiman smiled. There was almost a twinkle in those dark eyes. “The very first. And from the famous CIA! I had to meet you myself, so that I could decide if you are what you say. What you bring to us is so good, we think it must be bad. But I think it is a great day. And you see, we are ready for you. I have the video camera, to record this moment and send it to Al Jazeera for all our Muslim umma, so that they can rejoice with us. And with you. We are making a movie, you and me. A movie for the world.”

  Ferris narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Ferris had traded himself to save the life of Alice, that was true, but he was hardly a defector. If the video camera wasn’t there to record his interrogation and beheading, what was its purpose? Instinct told him he should say as little as possible and let Suleiman establish the contours of their interaction.

  “Thank you,” said Ferris. “I am in your hands now.”

  “May God grant you good health. Would you like tea? Or coffee? Some water, perhaps?”

  “Coffee,” said Ferris. “And some mineral water.”

  Suleiman shouted out some orders to a coffee boy. Even in the terrorist safe house, they had minions. Then he turned back to Ferris.

  “I have a first question for you. I am so curious. I cannot wait. When did you realize that you were a Muslim? When did you hear al-dawa—the call?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Ferris. He stuck a finger in his ear, as if he were clearing out a layer of wax. He wanted to hear the question again.

  “When did you know that your grandfather had come from Lebanon into Bosnia before he came to America? Was it before you joined the agency? I wondered, you see, whether they would let a real Muslim into the CIA where he could learn the secrets of the Jews and the Crusaders.”

  Ferris tried to clear his head so that he could think—tried to see in his mind the pieces of this puzzle. Suleiman seemed to think he had volunteered to come into their lair because he was a Muslim. He wondered what was the right answer to his question, the one that would give him the most flexibility. He remembered his curiosity as a boy about his roots—never quite knowing what country i
t was that his grandfather had left, never understanding the secret that was buried under the grunts and mumbles. Could it be that his grandfather hadn’t been a Catholic at all, as he claimed, but a Muslim? It was possible, certainly. He thought about his conversations with his mother only a few weeks ago, and that prompted him to make up an answer.

  “It was later. After I joined the CIA. My mother found some family papers. That’s when I knew.”

  “Al hamdu l’Illah. I think we have seen these papers. They are the ones you sent to us through your intermediary.”

  Ferris nodded, but his head was spinning faster. What papers? What intermediary? Who was the author of the elaborate game that was being played out? Into whose artifice of tradecraft had he fallen?

  “We thought at first that the papers must be forgeries,” Suleiman continued, “until we checked them ourselves in Lebanon, in the records of your vilayet of Tripoli. And they were real. They listed the birth of your grandfather. There was even a record in Tripoli of your father’s birth in America. The others still thought you were a liar, but I began to wonder.”

  “Thank you,” said Ferris.

  “So I will call you by your real family name, Fares. That is right, now that you are with us and so near the land of your ancestors. Did you know that? The Sunnis of Tripoli are just a few dozen miles away, across the border. That is a gift for you, Fares. Perhaps we will let you go home, when we are finished with you. Would you like that? First, we will take you to Damascus, to give the tape of your testimony of faith to Al Jazeera, for all the umma to see. They are waiting for my word. And then we will go to Tripoli, to the home of your ancestors. Does that journey please you?”