The Amateur Spy

by Dan Fesperman

  As an aid worker I was accustomed to embassies. We occasionally need their help with passports, visas, and the like. In addition, their staffers like to touch base with us now and then because we’re decent sources of information. Twice at embassy receptions I’ve sensed gentle recruitment efforts in progress, veiled suggestions from officials of uncertain pedigree that I might be of service to my country in some unspecified manner, if I were so inclined. Both times I politely demurred, and no one ever took it personally. Which is another reason it was so shocking when Black, White, and Gray bounded through our windows on Karos.

  I cleared one security station, then another, relaxing a bit more at each point along the way. A U.S. Marine in dress blues escorted me back to Mike’s windowless office.

  “I was worried about you,” he said in greeting. “Supposedly there was some little dustup out at Bakaa involving an American this afternoon, and it crossed my mind that it might be you.”

  I searched his face for any sign of irony, but there was none.

  “Hadn’t heard that,” I said warily.

  “Oh, yeah. Blew up a cab and everything. But apparently the fellow got away all right, so maybe it’s nothing.”

  “I could always ask around next time I’m out there.”

  “Could you?” He seemed sincere. “That would be great, especially if we get questions from the press.”

  It took me aback. But Mike himself was a reassuring presence. Physically he had barely changed. Trim, tan, and with plenty of laugh lines, he still wore the sunny if weather-beaten look of the young vagabond he had been in Gaza, only now his wardrobe included a red tie and blue blazer.

  “Nice digs,” I said, trying not to wince as I settled gingerly into a chair. “Where’s the squash court?”

  “Beats the hell out of the old bunker off Second Circle, doesn’t it?”

  “What became of that building, anyway? I was at the InterCon the other day and didn’t even see it.”

  “Tore it down. Just as well. A bomb trap, really.”

  “So what’s the occasion, Mike?”

  “Occasion? None really. Just wanted to say hello. Maybe catch up on old times. And I thought it might be easier meeting here. Or less embarrassing for you, anyway.”

  “Embarrassing how?”

  “Well, given your current position, obviously.”

  So maybe he was going to be up front about things, after all, although I doubted he would come right out and say “CIA.” I’ve yet to meet any embassy employee who would willingly utter those initials on the premises.

  “How do you mean?” I said, expecting him to offer a nod or wink, or some other clue to verify his status. But he disappointed me.

  “Working for Omar and his new NGO. Being a local outfit, they’ve probably got all the local phobias, and we’re surely one of them.”

  “With ‘we’ meaning exactly who?”

  “Americans. I figured that was obvious.”

  “Okay. Any other reason I should be embarrassed to be seen with you in public?”

  He furrowed his brow.

  “None I can think of. Can you?”

  So he was going to play it coy, after all. Or was it possible he was really in the dark? Either option seemed plausible.

  “I guess not,” I finally answered.

  “How’d you end up climbing aboard with them anyway? Last I heard you were headed off into a Cyclades sunset with the lovely Mila. Did I miss something?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “C’mon, Mike. Don’t tease. What is it you really want?”

  Mike frowned, and then shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs.

  “I must be missing something. This isn’t official, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s not like I’ve been asked to debrief you, or that I think you’ve got something to hide.”

  “Not from you, anyway.”

  Mike cocked his head.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “This is amazing.”

  “Okay, forget I said that. But this conversation is damned strange.”

  Another possibility was that this was a test, a means of finding out how easily I could be goaded into blowing my cover. That would certainly explain why he had invited me inside, since he wouldn’t have wanted to try it out in public. So for a moment I said nothing, which only seemed to discombobulate him more.

  “I’ll start over,” he said. “As one old pal to another, why on earth are you doing this gig? Really. I mean, not to pry or anything, but you and Mila are still together, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then why give up the good life to get back into the aid racket? If anything, I’d heard you were a little burned out.”

  I decided to stick to cover.

  “Maybe I got a second wind. Or maybe I was just burned out on the UN. The whole damned bloat and bureaucracy of it. Some auditor from the Secretariat always asking where you’d stuffed those last hundred tents.”

  “And you figured Omar knew better how to save the world?”

  “Or his little corner of it.”

  “Quite a corner. And not exactly one that’s going hungry, needy or not.”

  “Which is why he’s focusing on the medical side. C’mon, Mike. He’s trying.”

  “Just never had you pegged as the type who’d enlist with an Islamic aid agency. You were always as neutral as they came.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. But it’s Arab, not Islamic.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Omar doesn’t even fast. He drinks, for Chrissakes. He’s no zealot.”

  “I was referring more to his funding sources.”

  “Which are?”

  “Well, the Gulfies—that’s the assumption around here. Oil-rich Saudis buying off their consciences. They’ve been seen ’round his office, I’m told.”

  That information might have come straight from my report. In which case Mike was a damned good actor. Or maybe I wasn’t the only person watching Omar.

  “You know what they say. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Mike grinned uneasily.

  “Like I said earlier, this is one of the strangest conversations we’ve ever had,” he said.

  “Not counting when we were young, drunk, and foolish in Gaza.”

  That finally relaxed him a bit. He seemed happy to move to the more comfortable ground of our past.

  “And using controlled dangerous substances in uncontrolled dangerous places.”

  “I guess this really is off the record. Or did you turn off the microphone before that last crack?”

  He laughed, taking it as a joke.

  “Glad to see you returning to form, Freeman. Should we head out, then? Try an Abdoun hot spot? I’ve even started smoking nargileh. Not bad when you get used to it.”

  “Maybe your first instincts were right. Maybe it’s not such a great idea to be seen together in public. At least until I’ve settled in.”

  “Suit yourself.” He stood, the smile gone. “You know where to reach me.”

  Mike and the Marine escorted me to the exit. I handed back the security badge and turned to wave good-bye. He stood with hands in pockets, brow creased, as if he had just spotted a familiar face but couldn’t quite place the name. If it was a test, had I passed?

  I rode a cab back to the house and spent the first ten minutes sipping bottled water. I was still a little shaky, and when there was a knock at the door I nearly jumped out of my skin. Maybe it was Fiona. I’d be happy to take her up right now on that offer of a drink.

  Instead it was the DHL man, the same one as yesterday, with yet another flat envelope. This time there was a note inside, printed on plain white paper: “Check e-mail.”

  Without an in-box, that might be difficult, but I booted up the computer anyway and clicked for the dial-up connection. The message appeared before I could make a single keystroke. It was from Black.

/>   “Emphatic YES on Athens. Follow closely. Note all contacts. Take laptop. From airport, proceed to this address:” It listed a scooter rental shop in Plaka, in the city center. “Present yourself as Robert Higgins.”

  A bit odd, I thought, although not as much as the next paragraph.

  “Emphatic NO on further prying in all the wrong places.”

  Was he referring to Mila’s recent actions, or to something I had done? Either way, his closing comment was downright alarming, the last in a long day of shocks to the system.

  “Need I remind you of the stakes? (1) Tanzania. (2) Mila.”

  The order of those items made me wonder if they had finally made the connection. If so, then my last and most vital secret was blown, and everything important was in danger.

  I took a moment to collect myself. Then with a shaky hand I copied the information about the scooter rental and cover name. It was a good thing I did. When I checked the computer later, the message was gone. They were very thorough, these people. And, like the angry young men of Bakaa, they certainly knew how to keep me in line.

  16

  Washington

  Aliyah was beginning to wonder if her fears about Abbas were unfounded.

  It had been a week since she discovered he was secretly renting a vacant storefront downtown, but in a pair of subsequent visits to the site during her lunch hour she saw no sign of occupancy. The “For Rent” sign was still on the door.

  Abbas had also exhibited none of the odd euphoria that had so unnerved her—that strange light in his eyes that seemed to promise only trouble—and for five nights running he hadn’t talked in his sleep. If he was still taking the bootleg antidepressant, he was hiding it well, because it was no longer in the medicine cabinet. Perhaps the crisis, if there was one to begin with, had passed.

  The only recent surprise from Abbas was a pleasant one.

  “The Harmons have invited us over for dinner Saturday,” he announced on Wednesday during their drive home from work. “Just a small group, if that’s all right with you. I assumed you might want to get out of the house.”

  To say the least.

  In the past year Abbas had turned down every social invitation that offered the prospect of intimate conversation. They had attended only a few large fund-raisers or charity functions, mob scenes that allowed him to hide in the crowd. Even at those she noticed him nervously scanning the room for familiar faces. Whenever anyone they knew moved within range, he steered her by the elbow to a remote corner to ride out the storm.

  She understood his reticence, and for a few months she shared it. It was a fear that someone might offer their sympathies, or ask too many prying questions, or, heaven forbid, say something awkward about the way Arab Americans were being treated by the government. Any such instance might have offered too great a temptation for Abbas to cut loose. They had worked hard to hold their anger in check.

  But their reticence and isolation took their toll. For a while she felt like an over-inflated balloon, and assumed Abbas did as well. One puncture and who knew where they might fly off to?

  Besides, people simply had no right to assume kinship with their feelings. Live in a West Bank village for a while and get back to me, she wanted to say. Or have your children manhandled by a policeman because of their surname.

  The pressure eased as the months passed, and she found herself craving some of the old evenings they had once spent among friends. Now maybe Abbas was also ready to reemerge into the light. When he announced the dinner invitation, it was like watching him exit from an air-raid shelter and blink into the sun. Aliyah didn’t want to startle him back underground by making too big a deal of it, so she swallowed hard and responded matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, that sounds like a nice evening. We haven’t been out in a while.”

  Had she been allowed to fashion her own night on the town, her preference would have been a concert or a trip to the theater, followed by a late but leisurely dinner with friends in Georgetown. But for now a dinner party at the Harmons’ would do just fine.

  As they dressed on Saturday evening, she decided to press her luck.

  “What finally changed your mind, Abbas?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About getting out of the house. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to it. But you surprised me. I was worried about you, thinking maybe we’d lost you for good.”

  He shrugged and looked the other way while he pulled on his trousers.

  “I don’t know. I guess I decided it would be good to see people outside of work again. Maybe it’s time.”

  “Yes, maybe it is.”

  She smiled, and then glanced toward him as if trying to catch him in the act—of exactly what, she couldn’t have said. But he was still facing the other way, a small gesture of concealment that gave her the slightest pause before she concluded she was overreacting. Guarded progress was better than none. She should accept it at face value.

  “Who else will be there?” she asked.

  “The Harmons. Todd and Maggie Wilkins.” Another doctor-and-wife combo. Not exactly a diverse crowd, but the Wilkinses were pleasant enough. “Plus Skip Ellington and his wife. What’s her name? Sheila?”

  “Sharon. Now that’s a surprise.”

  “What, that I forgot her name?”

  “That you still said yes when you heard Skip was coming.”

  “I don’t mind Skip.” His tone was defensive.

  “You used to.”

  “No more than any other lobbyist. At least he’s on our side.”

  That, too, was debatable. Skip Ellington had once been an administrator at Abbas’s hospital. Ten years ago he became a lobbyist, employed by one of the big law firms in town. His first client was the American Medical Association, but he soon added drug companies and makers of medical hardware to his customer list.

  “You used to say that he drove you crazy.”

  “He can be pretty entertaining if you know how to take him.”

  “And you do?”

  “Of course. He has a lot of good war stories.”

  “He’s certainly a name-dropper, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s half his charm. Get a few drinks in him and he will even tell you what some of the high and mighty are really like. As long as you’re not working for the competition.”

  She decided not to argue the point. But something about the prospect of Skip’s presence made her uneasy. Maybe it was his fondness for steering medical conversations onto awkward ground by posing hypothetical questions, then seeing how far he could push everyone toward their ethical boundaries. He made it all such fun. Even Aliyah found the discussions entertaining. Yet she always sensed an underlying smugness on Skip’s part, as if he were proving to himself that these high-minded healers were just as susceptible to a sellout as he was.

  But the specific nature of her worries didn’t occur to her until they arrived at the Harmons’ and she spotted Skip Ellington across the room, drink in hand. His face crinkled into a teasing grin as he said something to Maggie Wilkins. Aliyah could easily imagine him putting that smile to use in the corridors of Congress, killing his audience not with kindness but by feeding its insatiable appetite for gossip about the enemy. Now Skip was laughing archly. That was when Aliyah remembered.

  It was a conversation that had taken place years ago, at a gathering like this. Skip had waited until everyone was well into their cups before broaching the subject.

  “So tell me something,” he had said. “Having worked in a hospital awhile—though never from your side of the bed, of course—one thing I’ve always wondered is how easy it would be to bump off one of your patients. Not saying you’d ever do that, of course. But let’s say you wanted to, and without risking a malpractice suit.”

  There were a few gasps, as well as a few giggles. That’s what made it quintessentially Skip—his usual game of ethical roulette, bumping the stakes higher on every spin, yet smiling all the while because, hey, no on
e’s playing for real money.

  Aliyah got just as caught up as the others, alternately fascinated and appalled as the doctors described tweaks and dosages that might cause a borderline patient to quietly slip away, no questions asked. Abbas was the only one who didn’t participate, which Aliyah didn’t notice until he piped up at the end, a fussy voice of doom.

  “This really isn’t an appropriate conversation, you know.”

  “Oh, Abbas, don’t be such a prude,” she answered, embarrassed. “No one’s taking it seriously.”

  “But that’s my point.” He plowed on. “Deep down we all know there really are times when we might consider something like this. I mean, let’s say that the world’s most notorious butcher, someone responsible for the genocide of thousands, suffered some sort of emergency while on a state visit to Washington, then ended up on your operating table with, I don’t know, a fifty-fifty chance of survival. Would you really do everything within your power to make sure he could live to kill again?”

  “Interesting,” said Skip, never one to squander such an opening. “Addition by subtraction, you mean. Save thousands by maybe not doing your best for one.”

  “You could say that. But to me there is still no question that you would do your best. Or else you’re playing God. The Hippocratic oath has to count for something. We can’t just rent ourselves out as medical soldiers in someone else’s cause. We have to do our duty, no matter how loathsome to others.”

  “Bravo,” Skip had cried. A little too glibly, Aliyah thought. But by then they were on the fourth bottle of wine.

  The thought that troubled her now was: What if something like that came up again? Given his current state of mind, Abbas might say anything. And now, as opposed to last time, sensibilities had become far more tender on such topics. After 9/11, you had to be more careful what you said, because word could get around. Especially with a name like Rahim. It sounded so paranoid, but that’s how it was.

  “Aliyah, how lovely to see you.” It was Becky Harmon, the hostess. “Let me take your coat. I’ll have Bob get you a drink.”

  “Please. Something stronger than wine, if you don’t mind. Gin and tonic.”