David Ignatius: Agents of Innocence

They were near the line. Rogers heard the sound of gunfire a block or so away. He slouched down low in his seat as the Lebanese driver put the accelerator to the floor, and held his breath until the car was safely across to the other side.

Across the Green Line lay the Christian strongholds of East Beirut and the mountains beyond. Here there was more evidence than in West Beirut of orderly government and prosperity: the municipal parking lots and trash dumps organized by the Phalange Party, the bumper-to-bumper traffic of BMWs, Jaguars, and Mercedes-Benzs. But it was still thug-land.

As they climbed the hills toward the Presidential Palace in Baabda, Rogers could see the city spread out below like a ragged quilt. He could see the layers of destruction that had been inflicted over the past four years, marking the recent history of Lebanon as precisely as layers of sediment.

The damage began at the core of the city and radiated outward like a hail of machine-gun fire. The first casualties had been the grand facades of the old business district, where buildings had been shelled from both East and West during the worst days of the civil war. Now the fine buildings were crumbling ruins, covered with ferns and moss, and weeds grew in the streets.

Next came the battered walls of the residential neighborhoods near the Green Line-Sioufi in East Beirut and Ain el-Mreisseh in West Beirut-which had been shelled heavily in the recent renewal of the Christian-Moslem bloodletting. Then to the southwest, the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Shelled by the Christians, bombed occasionally by the Israelis, yet still the boisterous capital-in-exile of the Palestinians. And finally in the distant southern suburbs, the seemingly random destruction of the Shiite-Moslem slums-deprived, brooding, ready to explode.

Rogers surveyed the devastation with a sense of resignation and disgust. He remembered a phrase that one of the Christian militias had popularized a few years earlier. “Al Arab Jarab”-The Arabs are leprosy.

The Presidential Palace, modern and gleaming white, seemed to Rogers almost a parody of Lebanon’s condition: grand but empty. It was a place of soundless, marble-clad halls; of vast desks at which the few Lebanese government officials in evidence pretended to work; of suites of offices that, on inspection, housed only people to make tea and coffee for the pasha down the hall.

Rogers disliked visiting the palace and was relieved when he saw Fares waiting at the entrance. The Lebanese intelligence chief was dressed much as before, in a tweed jacket and bow tie, looking like a fugitive from an Ivy League faculty lounge. He looked healthy but overworked.

Rogers suggested that they take a drive, alone. He dropped the embassy driver at a cafe near the entrance to the palace, and took the wheel.

“Mabruk!” said Rogers, using the Lebanese word for congratulations. “You’ve done it!”

Fares smiled graciously and put his hand over his heart.

“I am grateful to my friends,” said Fares.

“We had nothing to do with it. “Don’t kid yourself.”

“It is a dubious honor, actually,” said Fares. “I am the head of an intelligence service that doesn’t have a country. We are like a brain with no body.”

Rogers told him he was being too modest. They made small talk for a few minutes, asked about each other’s wives, traded gossip about old friends. Eventually Rogers got around to the point.

“I wanted to see you for a reason,” he said.

“Knowing you, I did not expect that it was just a courtesy call,” said the Lebanese.

“Years ago I made you a promise. Do you remember what it was?”

“Of course I do.”

“I promised you,” said Rogers in a slow cadence, as if he was reciting a catechism, “that if you ever became head of your service, we would release you from the arrangement you had made with us and allow you to serve your country with a clear conscience.”

“Yes,” said Fares. “That is what you said.”

“I want to keep that promise.”

“I’m touched,” said Fares. “But it is not that simple, is it?”

“Why not?”

Fares looked at Rogers curiously.

“Let us be honest. You can tell me that I am free, that I am no longer under your control. But what will happen when you find yourselves in extreme difficulty, when you need a favor? You will come to me, at least I hope you will come to me, and you will ask me to help. You will tell me that I am free to say no, but we will both know better.”

“A promise is a promise,” said Rogers.

“That is just the problem, Tom,” replied Fares with a sad smile. “A promise is a promise. And no more.”

Rogers looked stung. He had come a very long way to try to settle accounts with people he cared about, and his first check was bouncing. Fares saw that he was upset and tried to patch the conversation back together.

“You are worrying too much about this,” said Fares. “You are acting like it is the kiss of death to work with the Americans in the Middle East. But it isn’t. It is very valuable. I am the proof! Everyone in Lebanon knows that I am friendly with the Americans. They do not know the precise details, but it is no secret that I am well connected with the American Embassy. And do you know what? It helps me! The Syrians take me more seriously. The Egyptians take me more seriously. Because they suspect that I work for the CIA.”

“Baloney,” said Rogers. “Nobody trusts a spy. Not even in Lebanon.”

“You are wrong,” said Fares. “In Lebanon, we do not take someone seriously until we know that someone in the West is prepared to buy him.”

Rogers had a look of exasperation. He wanted to resolve the problem.

“I have a proposal,” he said. “I have cleared it with the Director. The deal is this: You are terminated, as of now. The annuity for your wife and children remains in effect. But you don’t owe us anything anymore. We will assume that our relationship is finished.”

“Fine,” said Fares. “And I will assume that our relationship continues.”

“I give up,” said Rogers.

They reached Ashrafiyeh in East Beirut and headed up the coast road toward Jounie, toward the apartment along the beach where they had once met with a frightened young Lebanese Christian boy named Amin Shartouni, who had talked of something called la puissance occulte- and had eventually been killed by it.

Rogers was lost in thought. Fares was glancing at his watch.

“I’m afraid I have a meeting back at the palace,” said Fares apologetically. Rogers changed direction and headed back toward Baabda.

“By the way,” said Rogers, “whatever happened to the Palestinian Christian who trained Amin Shartouni? The man we called the Bombmaker.”

“We see his bombs, but not the man himself. He has gone deeper underground in the last few years. They all have. It’s much harder now to find out what’s going on. When you pick up a rock now, you don’t see the bugs underneath. You just find dirt.”

“The Bombmaker is still alive?” asked Rogers in a tone of disappointment.

“Most certainly. From what little we pick up, he is busier than ever. All of the groups use car bombs now, and he is the master.”

“You would think someone would kill him,” said Rogers.

Fares laughed.

“Who would kill him, Tom? Everyone deals with him a little when they need him. What purpose is there in killing him? He doesn’t know anything, except how to make bombs. And even if he died, his students are everywhere, in all the groups. There are many, many people in Lebanon now who know how to make bombs.”

Rogers shook his head. They drove back to Baabda mostly in silence. As they neared the gate to the Presidential Palace, Fares spoke up.