David Ignatius - Agents of Innocence

“Marvellous woman,” said Stone to Rogers. “I knew her father in the war.”

What a wonderful evening it was, said Jane as they were driving home. What a fine man Mr. Stone was.

“He saved my job today, I think,” said Rogers. Jane waited for him to explain, and when he didn’t she assumed that it was one of those things that her husband would tell her, if he could.

A week after the Director’s visit, Hoffman left on a trip to Saudi Arabia. The trip had come up suddenly, he said. He would be back in a few days. Rogers felt uneasy. Hoffman had kept to himself since the meeting with the Director and Stone, and whenever Rogers had tried to draw him out, Hoffman had made a crude joke or otherwise evaded Rogers’s queries.

Hoffman looked ebullient when he returned. He stopped by Rogers’s office on his way back from the airport and Rogers thought at first that it was a practical joke. Hoffman was wearing a well-cut silk suit and smoking a fat Cuban cigar.

“How do I look?” asked Hoffman. “Like a million dollars, right?”

“You look great,” said Rogers. “What happened in Riyadh? Did you hit the daily double at the camel races?”

“Better than that,” said Hoffman. “Much better than that.”

“What’s better than money?” asked Rogers.

“Even more money!” said Hoffman. “And that’s what you’re looking at!”

“Maybe you should explain what’s going on,” said Rogers.

“Gladly,” said Hoffman. And with a flourish, he withdrew a business card from his coat pocket and handed it to Rogers.

“Arab-American Security Consultants, Inc.,” read the card. “Frank Hoffman, President.”

“Oh shit!” said Rogers.

“You don’t like the name?” said Hoffman. “I was going to call it ‘AA-Arab-American Security Consultants,’ so it would be first in the telephone book. But then I realized that the Arabs don’t have telephone books, so what would be the use?”

“I’m not talking about the card,” said Rogers. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re quitting the agency. I can’t believe it.”

“Oh that,” said Hoffman. “You’ll get used to it.”

“No I won’t,” said Rogers.

“Have it your way,” said Hoffman. He was relighting his cigar.

“What happened? When did you do it? I thought everything had been settled between you and the Director.”

“Let’s face it,” said Hoffman. “I had to quit. I mean, really, how could I stay after what happened? I had no business talking to the Director like that. In an outfit like ours, you obey orders or you quit. It’s that simple. The Director should have fired me for insubordination. I decided to save him the trouble.”

“Wait a minute,” said Rogers. “Aren’t you being a little easy on the Director?”

“Maybe,” said Hoffman. “But I’ll tell you the truth. The Director may have been out of line the other day. But it isn’t really his fault. The truth is that this is a rotten business. You do terrible things and usually you don’t think about it. And then one day, you just get sick of it. You decide you just don’t want to eat another bite of the shit sandwich.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Security! Didn’t you read the card?”

“Yeah. But what does it mean?”

“For starters,” said Hoffman, “it means taking very large amounts of money from Saudi princes who are terrified that their Arab brethren are going to cut their throats. I intend to sell these gutless bastards the latest in security technology. Whatever will help them continue whoring and drinking in reasonable safety. Bodyguards, bullet-proof limousines, alarm systems. How the fuck should I know? I’ve only been in this business a few days.”

“So that’s why you went to Saudi Arabia.”

“We call it client development, in my new line of work,” said Hoffman. “And I’ll tell you, the Saudis are ready to be developed. The way I figure things, the richer they get, the more scared they’ll get, which means more money for yours truly. After just one trip, I have already lined up contracts worth nearly a million bucks. How does that grab you, junior?”

“Frank, there is nobody in the world I would rather see get rich than you.”

“Don’t suppose you’d like to join me in this raid on the Saudi treasury? I could use a partner.”

“I don’t think so,” said Rogers. “I’m not quite ready to pack it in here.”

“Go fuck yourself then.”

“Have you told the front office yet?”

“Of course I have,” said Hoffman indignantly. “Just because I’ve become a businessman doesn’t mean I’ve become dishonest. I told the Director and Stone ten days ago, just before they left Beirut.”

“They certainly kept it to themselves,” said Rogers.

“They’re that way, if you hadn’t noticed. They don’t tell the troops any more than they have to.”

Rogers looked at Hoffman, resplendent in his new suit, a silk handkerchief in his pocket, a pair of expensive alligator shoes on his feet. Rogers shook his head. There was something he didn’t quite understand.

“You know, Frank, somehow I never imagined you as a businessman. In fact, it never really occurred to me that you were all that interested in making money.”

“Life is full of surprises, kid,” said Hoffman. “Sometimes we do things for no reason other than the simple fact that we fucking well feel like it. And do you know what? It feels good.”

With that, Hoffman headed off to his own office, a bouquet of flowers in his hand to give to his secretary, Miss Pugh. Rogers looked at the card in his hand, bearing the imprint of Arab-American Security Consultants, and laughed from deep in his gut, for what seemed like the first time in a very long while.

Several days after Hoffman’s announcement that he was quitting, Rogers travelled to the mountains east of Beirut to meet with Samir Fares of the Deuxieme Bureau. It was a routine meeting, intended partly to reassure Fares and his colleagues in the Lebanese intelligence service that Hoffman’s departure didn’t imply any change in agency policy toward Lebanon or the Middle East.

On his way back, Rogers did something that, for him, was very unusual. He acted on impulse.

He was driving along the road looking at the scenery when it occurred to him that he was near the village where the Jezzines lived. And he decided, without really thinking about it very much, without considering the consequences for his marriage or his life or anything else, to stop and pay a visit to Solange Jezzine. He had dreamed often enough about having an affair with her, in a casual sort of way. But his idle fantasizing had very little to do with the deliberate, impulsive decision that day to turn the wheel of the car hard to the right, head down a different road in the Lebanese mountains, and step on the gas pedal. It had less to do, at that moment, with sexual desire than with curiosity, an impulse to do something different, whose outcome wasn’t predictable or even under his control.

As Rogers drove the car up the cedar-lined drive toward the Jezzines’ house, he felt his heart racing. Gone were the tough-looking young men with automatic weapons who used to police the grounds in the old days, when General Jezzine ran the Deuxieme Bureau. Manning the front gate instead was an older man who looked like a gardener.

Rogers gave his name to the gatekeeper, who phoned to the big house on an intercom and then waved Rogers through. Rogers parked his car in front of the great stone mansion. There was no sign of the general, or of anyone else, for that matter. As Rogers stepped out of the car, he saw a woman’s face peering down at him from an upstairs window.

He rang the bell. A maid answered the door and escorted him to the living room, where she asked him to wait. There was a great stack of European fashion magazines on the coffee table. Rogers admired the pictures. Many of the women, he thought, had the same radiant and exotic look as Solange. He turned the pages. His palms were moist. The maid returned after five minutes carrying a vellum envelope on a silver tray. It was like the letter she had sent Rogers many months ago. Crisp and creamy and tied with a red ribbon. Inside the envelope was a note: “My darling. You have come to me at last. In a few minutes, I am yours.”