The Amateur Spy

by Dan Fesperman

  “Oh, one more thing, Freeman. Your car will be delivered tomorrow. A Passat, in fact. And with our logo prominent on the side.”

  Omar and I then retreated to his office to discuss my salary. It was small, just as he’d hinted, but I assured him it was fine by me. I spent the rest of the morning snooping through the files for more information, but didn’t turn up anything of interest. At lunch I caught a cab back to Othman Bin Affan Street, where I spent several minutes at the laptop, e-mailing details of Omar’s travel plans and asking for further instructions. As I sent the message it occurred to me that Omar might be having some sort of affair. A weekend fling to the ruins of the Acropolis with a lover, perhaps? It even seemed possible he could be traveling with Raniya, who would have booked her own ticket separately. Stern or not, she was quite attractive, and I could imagine the two of them in one of the fine rooms of the Grande Bretagne—Raniya flushed and breathless, pulling open the brocaded curtains onto a sunny view of the leafy park scene of the parliament square; her fine features smiling up from the bed, hair unpinned. An affair with the boss would certainly explain her wariness around me better than secretarial zeal. If it was true, then I pitied poor Hanan, who deserved better.

  I returned to the office to find that Omar was away, gone to another appointment with Dr. Hassan. He had left the message that I was welcome to join them. But I had another Bakaa destination in mind—the gun seller’s address Nabil had given me the previous morning. I was just leaving my cubicle when the phone rang.

  “For you, Mr. Lockhart. An American.”

  A quick response to my e-mail, perhaps? Surely Black wouldn’t call here.

  “Freeman?” a man’s voice said.

  Familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “So it’s true. You really are in town. Mike Jacoby here.”

  “Good God. You’re with the embassy, aren’t you?”

  I detected a flicker of interest from Raniya, so I swiveled the chair away from her and lowered my voice. My antenna was on alert. If someone at the embassy had heard I was here, the news must have come through back channels via Black, White, and Gray.

  “Yes,” Jacoby said. “I’m the press officer. Third year in Amman. Not as exciting as what we used to get up to in Gaza, but it’ll do.”

  Mike Jacoby had started out with the same cheap aid agency as I had. He, too, knew Omar from back in the day. Since then he had taken the Foreign Service exam and joined the diplomatic corps. We hadn’t spoken in years.

  “Anyway, I heard you were in town.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  So he was going to play dumb. Fine.

  “Nothing. Inside joke. It’s good to hear from you.”

  “I was hoping you might want to stop by. See our new digs in the high-rent district.”

  Was this official? He was certainly convincing at making it sound offhand. Maybe he, too, had learned to play this game. Press officer seemed as decent a cover as any.

  “Love to.”

  “Maybe we can go for a bite afterward.”

  “Sure. When’s a good time?”

  “Around seven? That way we beat the crowds. The hottest places are packed by nine.”

  “Sounds good. See you then.”

  Interesting. Maybe this was Black’s way of relaying some sort of message. And, conveniently, the hour of our appointment still left me with enough time to do a little snooping in Bakaa. I fingered the business card Nabil had given me and headed for the door.

  The taxi driver was reluctant to wait for me in that part of Bakaa, but the promise of an extra ten dinars overcame his anxiety. I could understand his concern. This was a district of metalsmiths and welders, of blank storefronts and locked metal security awnings. Instead of pulsing with busy shoppers and playing children, it was sparsely patrolled by watchful young men. A few carried weapons, and all wore an earnest, burning look that said they were out to earn their stripes.

  All this tended to make a yellow Mercedes taxi look vulnerably out of place—even more so when an American in khaki slacks and an oxford shirt stepped out from the passenger door and began trying to act like he belonged.

  Maybe this was the sort of neighborhood Omar had in mind when he warned me not to travel alone. It also occurred to me that Nabil had arranged a setup, if only to teach me to back off.

  The name on the card he gave me was Malik al-Masri, but there was nothing on the rusting gray door to indicate either Malik’s presence or that of a gun shop.

  I tried the handle. Locked.

  Turning around I saw two armed men staring from across the lane.

  I knocked, loudly, then heard the scuffle of sandaled feet and the groan of rusty hinges.

  A strong smell of hot oil and metal poured from the opening. A bearded man stepped forward. He beheld my presence as incredulously as if I had just descended from the clouds.

  “Nabil Mustafa gave me your address,” I said in Arabic.

  He nodded, puzzle solved, then stood aside for me to enter. It was a dim, windowless room, lit only by a bare forty-watt bulb dangling from a cord above a service counter. The air was dusty, and so were the counters. But all the boxes stacked on shelves that ran the length of the room were quite clean. In a seller’s market I suppose they didn’t have time to collect dust.

  My host said nothing. He shuffled behind the counter while a second man watched from the most distant corner, peering through the gloom without expression. Some sort of big ugly gun was slung across his back. There was an unintelligible shout from somewhere in the back, and a new face appeared behind the counter. It was Hakim, the fellow I’d seen at the field office carrying the AK. No wonder, if he worked here. Maybe he got an employee discount. In his hands was an unmarked white box. Hakim set it on the counter and signaled that it was mine.

  Under the circumstances, I supposed I had better buy it. I dug out my wallet, hoping I had enough cash.

  “How much?” I asked in Arabic.

  “No,” Hakim said in English, waving his hand in refusal. “It is gift. Gift from Nabil.”

  “Gift?”

  He nodded.

  “In exchange, you must come see. See with me.”

  “See what?”

  “Here. I show you.”

  He handed over the box, unexpectedly heavy, but guns almost always are. Then he came around the counter and led me to a side door, next to the glaring sentry. It opened onto a smaller room, empty, with yet another door. Hakim opened that, and we entered a world that might as well have been in another dimension, so different was its lighting, atmosphere, cleanliness, and bustle from the one we had just left. Several children played with blocks in a corner. Three more sat in blue plastic chairs alongside their mothers. They looked a little sleepy, maybe sick. The walls were painted bright green, with a quote from the Prophet in shaky Arabic beneath a hand-drawn Palestinian flag. A main entrance opened onto the street just around the corner from the gun shop.

  “Clinic,” Hakim said. “No price.”

  “A free clinic, you mean?”

  “Yes. Free. With Dr. Hassan, there is price. Bad cold, three dinar. Bad stomach, three dinar. Anything, three dinar.”

  Or about five bucks a visit. The sort of rates Americans would kill for, but maybe a full day’s pay for, say, one of those women in black selling toothpaste downtown.

  “Here, no dinar. The guns, they pay.”

  I switched to Arabic to make sure I had it right.

  “You mean, they use the proceeds of the gun shop to keep the clinic going?”

  “Yes.”

  So this was what Nabil had wanted me to see, the secret knowledge he wished to impart. His friends selling guns for butter. Or guns for aspirin, anyway. Of course, with the gun trade there was always an additional price, paid by whoever was on the receiving end of the ammunition. But I doubted Hakim would want to talk about that.

  The revelation was a disappointment to my
spying side. And it was almost touching in its naïveté, because my handlers would be interested only in the gun running, not the clinic. I doubted Omar’s money helped keep supply lines open, but I supposed I was obligated to mention all this in my report.

  “Impressive,” I said, figuring that was what Hakim needed to hear before concluding our tour.

  He nodded. Then he escorted me back the way we had come without a further word of explanation.

  “Thank you,” I said when we reached the gun shop. “It was interesting.”

  “You wait,” he said, continuing our awkward exchange of him in English, me in Arabic. “Earlier I call Nabil. He comes.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t stay. My driver is waiting.”

  Hakim nodded again, but looked disappointed.

  My driver was indeed anxious to leave by the time I emerged. But I still had one last chore, so I slipped the bag with the gun box through the window along with an extra fiver and said I would be only a few minutes more. I walked ’round the corner to check out the rest of this miniature wonderland, and he nervously followed, driving slowly in my wake as if I might try to get away.

  The route took me past an alley leading behind the gun shop just as a truck was backing down it, toward the shop’s rear entrance. If this was a delivery, then I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to get a tag number, although I certainly wasn’t fool enough to take out my notebook.

  Word of the big event must have spread, because kids began appearing from nowhere, some with mothers and fathers in tow. A gun truck as Pied Piper. I recognized two boys from the ones who had been playing with blocks inside the clinic. The sullen men who’d been lurking in the streets also gravitated to the scene, and within minutes there must have been a few dozen people.

  Someone threw open the rear door to the shop and another fellow hauled open the truck’s louvered cargo door. The truck was half filled with long wooden crates, some of which had Chinese characters stenciled on the side. One fellow was dragging crates to the edge of the cargo bed and another was hefting them into the shop. The next crate that emerged had some sort of shipping manifest on the side, so I eased past a couple of boys for a closer look, hoping to see something I could memorize for my report.

  That’s when a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind and a stern voice said in Arabic, “Stop him!” Another hand reached out, and between the two of them they nearly wrenched me to the ground. I saw then that the crowd had swelled to more than fifty people.

  In the field I long ago learned to trust my gut when it told me that something was not quite right—a road or a village that had grown too eerily quiet, a crowd tipping toward a mob—and belatedly I realized this situation was out of hand. I stepped briskly away from the truck—the taxi was idling at the end of the alley—but the men who had grabbed me followed, and one took hold of me again, pulling roughly.

  “Easy,” I said in Arabic. “No need for that. I’m leaving.”

  “He speaks Arabic!” my assailant announced. “He is a spy!”

  Lucky guess.

  I tried breaking into a run, but the crush of the crowd prevented me, and two more men closed in.

  “Jew!” one shouted.

  I looked around frantically for Hakim, or the owner, but the men pushed me back, then knocked me down. The last thing I saw before I was submerged beneath them was my driver being pulled from his taxi. My hands broke my fall against the dirty cobbles just as a sneakered foot kicked me sharply in the buttocks, then another kick thudded into my lower back. I tried to rise, but a new set of hands shoved until I was prone, so I rolled onto my stomach and raised my hands around my head for protection. More hands and feet went into action, turning me on my back like some great squirming beetle.

  “Help me!” I shouted, but only once, because one look at the surrounding faces and I knew that helping me—or anyone—was the furthest thought from their minds. The odd thing was that no one was shouting now, not in bloodlust or encouragement. It was a workmanlike effort fronted by a handful of men, and the only noise was their grunting as they kicked and flailed, blow after blow into my sides, legs, and arms.

  I was panicked, screaming inside, kicking out with my feet and still trying to rise, while certain that any minute a blow would find my head and the world would go dark, lights out on Mila and everything I lived for.

  Then a voice raised itself in anger, at first unintelligible, then clearer, shouting, “Stop! You must stop!”

  Some of them did. One didn’t, and another shoe landed hard against my thigh.

  “He is a friend of our people. You must stop!”

  Everyone went still. I lay there, breathing heavily, heart beating so wildly it seemed as large as an overripe melon, primed to burst. But I felt joy, too, a giddy release, because I recognized the voice as Nabil’s, even though only his sandals had come into view. Then his face leaned down, and he helped me to my feet. Somehow, maybe because so few had been participating, he had stopped them.

  I wobbled on my first step, and he steadied me. One of the small boys who had been in the clinic rushed to my other side and took my arm, but everyone else stood back and turned away, refusing to look me in the eye now that everything was over.

  “You must go,” Nabil whispered tersely in my ear. “Quickly!”

  He helped me over to the taxi, where the boy opened the door. I slumped in and found myself sitting on crushed glass. The windows were smashed, and the driver was gone.

  “Where are the keys?” Nabil said.

  “I don’t know.” My voice rasped. I was aching, out of breath. “Driver took ’em.”

  “Then you must walk. But just go, and do it now.”

  I nodded, climbing stiffly into action. Bruises and welts were already rising, hardening to knots in my sides and rear.

  “Here, take this.” It was the gun, still in its bag and box. “You see now why you must have it with you, always, when you are in Bakaa.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Nabil. Thank you.”

  The acknowledgment seemed to embarrass him, and when I looked in his eyes I could tell we both realized that neither of us would repeat a word of this to Omar. Not Nabil because it would reflect poorly on his clumsy effort to educate me. And not me partly because, yes, I had been spying, just as my accuser claimed. But even more so because I had been a fool. Decades of aid work had wrongly convinced me that my selflessness, not the organizations I represented, had secured a lasting covenant with the wider world, as if my very nature as a do-gooder managed to shine through the surrounding brutality.

  In taking this assignment I had crossed all my old boundaries, exceeded my limits, and it had stripped away my immunity. Shorn of the UN’s blue globe, or even Omar’s logo, I was easily spotted by these rough fellows of Bakaa for what I had become, or perhaps what I had always been—at best a voyeur, at worst a snoop, showing up time and again to feed upon their misery.

  “Go,” Nabil said. “Go quickly.”

  Strangely, bizarrely, I simply walked away. First one block, then another. No one followed. No one in the street even wanted to look at me, much less hunt me down. As I neared the end of the second block I heard the whump of a small explosion, and turned to see a column of smoke rising. The taxi. A bonfire of my troubles, burning away the last remnants of the incident for the benefit of all concerned.

  Eventually I flagged down another cab and rode numbly to my house in Jebel Amman, taking refuge in the driver’s silence and the click of his beads on the mirror. I showered, dressed a few cuts and scrapes, and put on fresh clothes. Other than feeling like I had just been tackled by a gang of stevedores, I was surprisingly intact. Nabil had arrived just before the blows began inflicting real damage.

  Emotionally the verdict wasn’t as clear. Although I wouldn’t admit it until much later, some vital part of me was critically wounded that day, not just by the beating but by the experience of having the whole episode watched by a crowd, everyone staring and silent, seemingly impassive as to whether I lived or d
ied. Ask those people about it now and I’m sure they would claim to a man that nothing much happened that afternoon, just a brief flare-up in which they had no role and barely saw a thing. Previous experience had taught me that this was common behavior among most witnesses to thuggery or even genocide, at least for those with no emotional attachment to the victims. They take refuge in what they later decide is their neutrality, and offer themselves the absolution of a faulty memory. A dodge that sounded all too familiar.

  That afternoon, however, my most salient emotion was an urge to move on. Buck up, I told myself. You survived, so pull yourself together. I had chosen this path and would follow it to its conclusion, if only because Mila stood waiting at the end with her salvation intact. That was what kept me moving.

  But, good Lord, did I ever need a drink, and there was nothing but juice and soda in my Ramadan fridge. A hotel bar would have to do the trick. The InterContinental wasn’t even a mile’s walk, but I was stiff and sore, and in no mood to navigate sidewalk crowds of Jordanians. So I caught another cab. Toward the bottom of a double gin and tonic I glanced at a clock and remembered I had an appointment in half an hour, at seven.

  Had it been anywhere but the embassy I probably would have called to cancel. But, if anything, that location sounded appealing right now. Mega security. A Marine in the lobby. Rub elbows with my own kind for a while, people with the same faults and weaknesses. A chance to lick my wounds without fearing a fresh blow.

  There were also practical matters to consider. For all I knew, I was about to receive new marching orders. I swallowed the last of the gin, laid a dinar on the bar, and headed for the door, already back on the beat.

  The embassy was rather grandiose—three stories of beautiful sandstone blocks. It squatted in the middle of a walled compound surrounded by palm trees and well-watered grass. If not for the smallish windows—for security reasons, no doubt—it would have looked like a pricey hotel.