The Company We Keep

by Robert Baer

  At Kenitra, Vera takes the airport road. She stops by the side of the Oued Sebou, a rotting estuary. I get out, and the stench almost floors me. In the dome light, Vera’s eyes look like they’re frozen open wide. She once told me it was from a cheap face-lift in Bombay. I let her turn around and drive away before I walk back toward Kenitra.

  The town’s quiet, a few people cutting through the small streets, shadows on shadows. I take a narrow road that runs parallel to the airport road until I come to the first big street, Beni Hssen, where I start to look for a taxi. A block from the Safir Hotel, I wave one down and open the front passenger door. The driver moves his dinner off the seat and puts it in the back to make room for me. I tell him to take me to Salé, Rabat’s old sister city, which once was ruled by Barbary pirates.

  There are fewer trucks on the road back to Rabat, but more cars. I tell the driver to slow down, and he doesn’t ask why. When we get to Salé, a mile from where this all began, I direct the driver on to Sidi Moussa, then tell him to stop a quarter-mile down the road. I leave the money on the dash, paying him too much so he won’t argue with me. I hurry across the street and walk down a few short steps into Salé’s old city, the medina. With its twisted, narrow alleys, anyone who did not want to lose me would have to keep right on me. I zigzag along a route I know as well as the inhabitants do. I come out on the N-1 side of the medina and cross the road to the Salé train station. The old Fiat’s there in the parking lot where it’s supposed to be. I fumble in my pocket, find the keys, unlock it, and get in. It coughs and starts on the third try.

  The beach road is quiet except for couples parked facing the ocean. I park as close to the water as I can, turning the Fiat so the breeze off the Atlantic passes through the open windows.

  I pull the Pepsi out of my coat, and a bar of Toblerone chocolate. It’s melted and I lick it off the tinfoil wrapper. The Pepsi is warm. I check my watch. He’s late. I turn the radio on, and listen to an imam extolling the promise of the hereafter.

  I don’t see Salah until the door opens, and he climbs in the passenger side.

  “C’est bien passé?” he asks. Did everything go OK? Salah’s French is good. He went to college, but I don’t remember where.

  I tell him next time we’ll meet farther outside of Rabat, but still along the beach

  “So what did they say about it?”

  “It’s good stuff, you know.”

  I can’t see Salah’s face, but I can tell he’s happy. I never had any doubt the cocaine was good, pure. After all, it was for resale.

  Salah has a pouch over his shoulder. He pulls a plastic shopping bag out and opens it. In the phosphorescent light off the Atlantic, I can see it’s white, cellophane-wrapped.

  “That’s not more, is it?” I ask.

  “A half kilo.”

  “I told you to stop.”

  “It’s from last night’s Caracas flight.”

  “They don’t want it.”

  I think about telling Salah the truth, about how the cable from headquarters told me to cease and desist—we aren’t authorized to collect intelligence on narcotics in Morocco. And that’s not to mention that no one wants to hear that the king himself is trafficking in it, ferrying tons of coke from Caracas to Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc flights and sending it on to Europe by small airplanes. I decide on a useful lie.

  “Salah, we have it covered with someone else. I don’t want you thrown out of a helicopter over the Atlantic for nothing. I need you for more important things.”

  And that’s exactly what the palace would do if it caught him spying for the CIA. No one would ever find his body, just one more among the tens of thousands of Moroccans gone missing.

  “What do I do with it?” Salah asks.

  “Throw it in the ocean when we get done.”

  “Then what do you need for me to do?”

  “There’s a lot to do. We’ll talk about it at the next meeting.”

  But the truth is I don’t know what to do with an informant inside the palace who’s bent on doing something for the United States. In fact, I’m not sure what the CIA is even doing in Morocco. The country’s a backwater. And headquarters is right about the cocaine—it’s not news about the Moroccan royal family and narcotics. They’ve been trafficking hashish out of the Rif mountains in northern Morocco for centuries.

  I don’t say anything, and neither does Salah. We both look straight ahead. I think about how Soviet Central Asia is opening up, a place I have to admit really intrigues me.

  I joined the CIA in 1976, served mostly in the Middle East, and somewhere along the way became addicted to political upheaval—civil wars, revolutions, coups d’état, armies on the move. I was in Damascus during a failed coup in the early eighties, and then in Khartoum for a successful one. I was in Lebanon during the civil war. There’s nothing more fascinating than seeing a house come down, and the fight to rebuild it.

  The chances of anything like this happening in Morocco are zero. In the early seventies, the Moroccan army tried to overthrow the king, but failed. To prevent another attempt, the king eviscerated his army, and so today Morocco is as stable and boring as Switzerland. True, the king is old, but when he dies, it’s a given that his eldest son will succeed him. A state funeral and a coronation are as complicated as it’s ever going to get here.

  It seems to me that what my job is about is trying to understand the messy, unpredictable parts of the world and the raw political passions that drive them, the kind that change history. It’s with that in mind I’ve asked for an assignment to Tajikistan, a small ex-Soviet republic nestled up against the borders of Afghanistan and China. There have been stirrings of an Islamic revolution there. I’m also attracted to the place because mountains cover more than 90 percent of it. The roof of the world, as Tajikistan is called. If it doesn’t get too messy, I’ll spend my downtime hiking and skiing in them, my favorite pastimes.

  Something else you should know about me is that my marriage is going through a dead spot, and my wife and I have decided to live separately. She and our three children will live in France, where we’ve just bought an old house. The place is pretty much a wreck, but the way it sits in the grapevines on a steep hill, it has real potential. The extra money I make in Tajikistan will go to fixing it up. My wife and I believe that with time and distance, things will work out between us.

  On the other hand, I never imagined it would come to this. When we first met in 1982 in Damascus, Syria, she was a secretary at the embassy, working for the State Department, a real trooper. We both loved Syria and talked about going to more places like it together. But three children quickly followed—two born in Washington, D.C., and the last in Paris—and, well, life changed. Now my onetime would-be partner in seeing the world is completely consumed by them, as any mother would understand. And although she never puts it in these terms, she doesn’t care where I go or what I do. Coincidentally, Tajikistan is what’s called a “separation tour”—spouses and children can’t come along or even visit. It’s too dangerous.

  FOUR

  Typical duties of the Protective Agent include deploying worldwide to perform sensitive operations in support of protective requirements. Protective Agents are consistently called upon to deploy and participate in training and operational assignments, and are expected to work long hours and deploy for periods from 45 to 60 days in length. Minimum requirements include a high school diploma or the equivalent, and applicants must be at least 21 years old, physically fit and possess a valid driver’s license. Extensive military, security, or law enforcement experience, preferably in a military special operations branch, protective operations, or as S.W.A.T officers, with a minimum of 7 years combined experience. A bachelors degree or higher is preferred. Applicant should possess excellent oral and written communication and analytical skills, have high levels of integrity, trustworthiness and loyalty to the United States.

  —www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/support-professional/protective-agent.html


  Los Angeles: DAYNA

  One morning I’m at my desk, planning my day with the Thomas Guide close at hand, when I look up to see Carol standing over me. “You got a second?” she asks. She’s looking more irritated than usual. As I follow her into her office, I search my mind for what I could have done wrong.

  “Close the door,” she says.

  I sit down.

  She picks up a cable from her desk and reads it silently as if seeing it for the first time. “If you don’t want to do this,” she says, “just tell them no.” She hands me the cable with two fingers, as if it were a dirty Kleenex. Before I can even start reading, she says, “You know you’d have to leave L.A.”

  I read the first line and my heart starts to race. It’s from headquarters, asking if I want to go to the CIA’s basic training for bodyguards and shooters—six months of grueling day-and-night drilling in pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons, hand-to-hand combat, high-speed driving, killing someone by shoving a pencil up through their hard palate. It’s all the guys in the office can talk about, and what most of them joined the CIA for in the first place. At the end it means a posting to Washington, along with a lot of travel overseas. Unlike the FBI, the CIA is all about going overseas.

  I understand what Carol’s getting at when she says I’d have to leave L.A. I’m married, and the job that comes out of this course won’t be the kind where a spouse can exactly tag along. And even if my husband could, I know mine wouldn’t. He’s a municipal court judge, not exactly a portable job. In other words, I’ll either be going alone or not at all.

  Carol taps her desk with the eraser end of a pencil to get my attention. I’m about to ask “Why me?” when Carol answers the question herself.

  “We nominated you because they asked us to nominate another woman from this office. Do you want it or don’t you?”

  The other woman Carol is talking about is Lara, who went to the same course last year. A tough, energetic blonde, Lara met her husband, Brad, in the L.A. office. She took Brad with her when she left. Since they both worked for the CIA, it made perfect sense. But that didn’t stop Carol from complaining about losing them.

  I take a quick glance around at the scuffed brown Formica tables, the mismatched chairs, the dusty Wang computers, the IBM Selectric typewriters, the shabby carpets, the piles of telephone books, the tattered maps on the bookshelves, the grimy windows that look down on an auto mall. Yeah, I want it, I think. I want it very badly.

  I’m not about to say this to Carol, but I wonder if I can really do this. The only time I held a real gun was when I first went to Washington right after the CIA hired me. They took us out to a range and had us fire at a target. But no one cared if we hit it or not.

  “Well?” Carol says.

  I try to hide my excitement, not sure she doesn’t have some way to spike it, out of spite or something. Who knows what she would do not to lose another agent?

  Just as Carol reaches to take back the cable, I pull it back. “Yes. I’ll do it.”

  I leave early, walking out into the gray-glazed sun, looking for my government sedan parked in among the discounted Toyota Corollas, overflow inventory from the dealer next door. I’m still trying not to think about what it means for my marriage and how unfair it is that I got the training instead of one of the guys. Instead, I wonder whose idea it was to put us at the back of an auto mall. I guess something to do with hiding behind bleak anonymity.

  I get home before my husband. I put my briefcase down and go out in the backyard to feed my two turtles. As soon as they hear me, they come out from behind their pond and waddle over. I have lettuce for them.

  There’s almost a view of the ocean from here. If you walk a block toward the beach you can see sailboats coming back down the channel at the end of the day. At night you can hear the bell buoy and the seals barking. It’s six blocks from my parents’ house, and a five-minute walk to the yacht club where my husband and I first met. It’s a beautiful house, one my husband owned before we married.

  Corona del Mar is the only home I’ve ever known, a magical place. I grew up on the water, racing up and down the Balboa Channel in my seven-foot Sabot sailboat, darting between the moored boats, sitting on the docks eating lunch with my friends, our feet dangling in the water. By high school, if we weren’t sailing or in school, we were hanging out at Lifeguard Station Number 5, across the jetty from the Wedge, maybe the best bodysurfing beach in the world.

  My husband spent most of his life here too, and we share a lot of friends from before our marriage. He loves to golf, and spend his vacations close to home, usually in Palm Springs. He’s always told me he’ll never move; it’s just too nice here.

  I myself could see settling down in this place, at least when I’m older. But frankly, life right now feels a little too scripted, too predictable, and, well, maybe just a little too comfortable. Every time I walk up to Albertson’s, the grocery store on the Pacific Coast Highway, and talk to the checkers—many of whom I went to high school with—I’m reminded of how self-contained the world I live in is. I know there has to be more out there.

  When I was at graduate school at UCLA, I interned as a social worker counseling gang members locked up in juvenile hall. Their childhoods were a nightmare of abandonment and hopelessness, and many were in for rape and murder. One was only eight. Another told me how his father had punished him by attaching jumper cables to his nipples. Like people who slow down to look at a car wreck, I was transfixed, and reminded of something I should have known a long time ago: not everyone grows up as comfortably as I did. What else didn’t I know?

  I’m not sure what I imagined when I first picked up a CIA application at the job fair at UCLA. Working in some exotic foreign place where the dogs bark all night and the moon is always full? Well, I wasn’t that romantic. But I did think of CIA work as intriguing, maybe even vital. At the very least, I expected a world less tidy and confined.

  But working for the CIA in Los Angeles turns out to be all about looking into lives that aren’t a whole lot different from mine. It’s like boarding a bus expecting to wake up in a new city, but instead making it only to the end of the block.

  When my husband comes home, I wait until he gets his drink and sits down in the lawn chair where he likes to read. I sit in the chair next to him, pick up a magazine, and then put it down.

  “They offered me a new job,” I finally say.

  He looks over at me. “That’s interesting.”

  As I tell him what I can about the course, he listens, nodding his head. Every once and a while he stirs his scotch with his finger.

  At one point I pause to see if he wants to ask me anything. But he only keeps looking at me, waiting for me to finish. I don’t know what I want him to say. Tell me not to go and stay here with him?

  He smiles when I’m finished. “That’s fabulous.” I can tell he’s genuinely excited for me.

  “Maybe I should just go to law school here,” I say. It’s something I’ve thought about for a while.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to go to law school, and besides, you’d be miserable to live with.”

  I finally get out what’s been nagging at me since I found out about the course this morning. “It would mean I’d be based in Washington.”

  He laughs, good-naturedly. “Well, I can visit, right?”

  FIVE

  The Republic of Tajikistan gained its independence during the breakup of the USSR and is part of former Soviet Central Asia nestled between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to the north and west, Afghanistan to the south, and China to the east.

  Covering an area slightly smaller than the state of Wisconsin, Tajikistan is home to some of the highest mountains in the world, including parts of the Kunlun, Himalayan, Tienshan, and Pamir Ranges. Ninety-three percent of the country is mountainous with altitudes ranging from 1,000 feet to 25,000 feet, with fully 50 percent of Tajikistan’s territory at elevations above 10,000 feet.

  Within the Tajik population, important social d
ivisions exist according to an individual’s place of origin. Tajiks separate themselves into Kulyabis, Gharmis/Karategins, Khojandis, Pamiris, Bukharans, and Samarkandis, as well as a host of other names based on location of origin. The Kulyabis, who were not a powerful group during the Soviet era, provided the muscle to win the civil war. Since 1993, they have dominated the government, and there has been a steady migration of Kulyabis from the underdeveloped south to the capital. President Rahmonov is a Dangaran Kulyabi. Conversely, the traditionally powerful Soghd group experienced a decline in power in the central government.

  —www.ediplomat.com/np/post_reports/pr_tj.htm

  Dushanbe, Tajikistan: BOB

  Beware of what you wish for. It’s a little after nine when a friend with the UN knocks at my door, breathless. “There’s been an attack on the airport,” he says. “A bad one.”

  I immediately call up a contact at the ministry of the interior to ask what he knows about it. He’s heard the same thing, so I try calling some other people, but can’t find anyone in.

  I have a C-130 transport plane coming in this afternoon. On board are two pallets of food, books, and other stuff to get us through the next month. The plane is supposed to be on the ground for no longer than an hour, but now I can’t risk letting it land, even if the airport gives permission. I run upstairs to the communication center and type out a one-sentence cable to my counterpart in neighboring Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where the C-130 is waiting to take off: There has been an attack on Dushanbe airport and we cannot allow clearance at this time. Five minutes after my communicator sends the cable, a return one from Tashkent confirms that the plane has been diverted.

  I run downstairs and jump into my car to have a look for myself. Even if I can’t make it all the way to the airport, I’ll be able to tell from the smoke how bad the attack was.