David Ignatius - Agents of Innocence

“How did he do?”

“Smooth as silk,” said Rogers. “Mr. Reasonable. He made a lot of friends.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?” said Hoffman. “The person I remember was a wild-ass kid who had trouble keeping his pecker in his pants. The guy you’re talking about sounds like he graduated from Yale.”

“Same guy,” said Rogers. “Something happened to him after you left. He grew up.”

“I’ll tell you what happened to him. The Israelis scared the shit out of him. That son of a bitch is lucky to be alive. If he’s become such a sweetheart these days, maybe it’s because he thinks that snuggling up to Uncle Sam will keep him alive.”

“That’s ancient history,” said Rogers. “The Israelis aren’t still after him.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Hoffman. “The Israelis have very long memories, my friend.”

The waiter was hovering near the table, waiting for Monsieur Hoffman and his guest to place their orders.

“I’ll have the filet of sole,” said Hoffman. “And a steak.”

The waiter’s eyeballs expanded as he wrote the order on his pad, but he said nothing.

“Just the steak for me,” said Rogers. “And a salad.”

“Do you have any chocolate sauce?” asked Hoffman.

“Of course,” said the waiter.

“I’ll have that for dessert,” said Hoffman. “No ice cream. Just chocolate sauce. Hot, please.”

The waiter smiled. He evidently regarded Hoffman as a culinary idiot savant.

Rogers had been mulling over a question during this interlude, and when the waiter left, he spoke up.

“There is one thing that confuses me,” he said.

“What’s that, my boy?” said Hoffman.

“I wonder sometimes whether the Israelis really did try to kill our man.”

“They say they did. They brag about it! How they killed twelve of the leaders of Black September. How they nailed Abu Nasir in his apartment. How they tried to kill our boy in Scandinavia and blew it. Just read Time magazine.”

“Then why did they fail?” said Rogers. “If they tried so hard to kill our man after Munich, why didn’t they succeed?”

“Maybe they’re not quite as brilliant as you think they are,” said Hoffman.

“Or maybe they’re even smarter.”

“Bullshit,” said Hoffman. “If you want my opinion, they’re overrated. They’re hot dogs. That’s what I tell my Saudi clients. They love to hear that.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Actually, no,” said Hoffman. “The Israelis run a nice little service. But they make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes.”

The first course arrived. The waiter deftly fileted the fish while Hoffman looked on approvingly.

“What about us?” asked Rogers when the waiter had left. “How do we look to you now that you’re out?”

“You really want to know the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Pathetic.”

“Why?”

“Let’s face it,” said Hoffman. “The United States, strictly speaking, doesn’t have an intelligence service any more. Once the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee and this committee and that committee are finished pulling on the yarn, there isn’t much sweater left. Honestly, now, would you entrust your life to an intelligence service that turned its secrets over to a bunch of fucking congressmen? These people must be insane.”

“So what are we, if we aren’t an intelligence service?”

“As near as I can tell, the agency today is a collection of lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, and bureaucrats. With a bunch of fancy hardware up in the sky. But when it comes to making things happen on the ground, there’s nothing left. It’s amateur hour. In my humble opinion.”

“That’s great,” said Rogers. “A real morale booster. Is that what your Saudi friends think?”

“They can’t understand what’s going on. They’re so mesmerized by America that they can’t believe we’re as incompetent as we look. Every time we fuck something up, they invent a new conspiracy theory to explain how it’s really a devious new American plot against the Arabs. Want to hear the latest conspiracy theory?”

“Definitely,” said Rogers. “Maybe it will cheer me up.”

“The Saudis think we’re behind the rise of Khomeini in Iran.”

“But that’s silly,” said Rogers. “Why would we threaten our own client?”

“Think about it. Maybe it’s not so crazy.”

“Frank,” said Rogers. “You’ve been out in the desert too long. You’re beginning to think like them.”

“Maybe so,” said Hoffman. “Maybe so. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m very glad I am not, in fact, one of them. Yessiree. I thank my lucky stars every night that I am not a reasonable, pro-Western Arab trying to keep it together. And do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because if I was, I’d have to depend on the United States for help. And that, my friend, is a losing proposition these days.”

London; September 1978

Levi scanned the group of several dozen men gathered in a corridor in Whitehall, looking for Rogers. He had a recollection of him from Beirut: tall and thin, dressed in a corduroy suit, looking sensible and self-possessed, peering over the top of his glasses. But that was nearly ten years ago, and that general description seemed to fit half the men in the corridor.

There were no name tags, of course. It wasn’t that sort of group. Indeed, the very fact of the conference was a secret. They were meeting under the nominal auspices of the British Foreign Office, in a secure conference room in the interior of a great gray pile of a building along Whitehall. The arrangements for the meeting, the speakers list, and the guest list had all been drawn up by officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.

A British junior official was serving coffee from a silver urn as Levi approached.

“White or black?” said the official.

“White,” said Levi. When he saw the vast amount of milk poured into the coffee, he wished he had said black. His hand jiggled as he took the coffee, and a small white wave lapped over the top of the cup and into the saucer.

Levi was nervous. Not in the way that he used to be, when he was collecting intelligence from dead drops in Kiev and Aleppo and the sweat dripped down his sleeve in a trickle of fear. This was different. It was a fear of failure. Levi, in all his career, had done very little recruiting. How would he establish rapport with Rogers? What would he say to him after so many years of watching him from the shadows? It was the anxiety of a blind date.

The talk in the corridor, as best Levi could hear from the buzz of conversations in various languages, was about two recent developments in the Middle East: the Camp David peace agreements between Egypt and Israel, which had been signed two weeks earlier; and the rapidly deteriorating situation in Iran. A German was praising the bold diplomacy of the American president. A Frenchman was complaining about the weakness of the Shah. It was like hearing two sides of the same argument. The competent and incompetent faces of American foreign policy, walking side by side.

The British junior officer had moved away from the coffee urn and was ringing a small brass bell, signalling that the morning session was about to begin. There was still no sign of Rogers. Levi joined the line heading into the conference room. He took his place at the table, marked with a small Israeli flag rather than a name card.

A tall man in a blue suit entered the room just then and took the seat marked by an American flag. There were traces of gray in his hair, but otherwise he was as Levi remembered. Levi tried not to stare. The American was smiling, shaking hands, studying the program, scribbling some notes. Then, Levi noticed, he stared off into space for a moment, looking at nothing in particular, lost in a cloud of thought.