David Ignatius: Agents of Innocence

“Do you remember a woman named Solange Jezzine?” he asked. “The wife of my predecessor?”

“Of course I do,” said Rogers. “She is not a woman that you forget.”

“You knew her a bit, didn’t you?” asked Fares. He spoke matter-of-factly, as if he knew the whole story.

“A bit,” said Rogers. He thought of her sharp eyes and soft body. “Whatever happened to her?”

“She’s remarried,” said Fares.

“Oh really?” said Rogers. “To who?”

“To a very rich young man. He is an arms dealer, the agent of the Saudi minister of defense. It is a very lucrative job, as you can imagine. He’s very active in Lebanon, too. Sells guns to both sides.”

“Does she still live in Lebanon?”

“No. She mostly lives in Paris now. And Marbella. Would you like her address? I am sure they can find it back in the office.”

Rogers paused to think. Did he want the address, the passion, the exhilarating plunge from a high place, and the long convalescense?

“No,” said Rogers eventually. “I don’t think so.”

They reached the entrance to the palace. Rogers stopped the car. Fares sat in his seat for a moment, trying to think of what he wanted to say.

“We have a saying in Lebanon,” said Fares, “Like so many other things, it is something that we borrowed from the French.”

“What is it?” asked Rogers.

“ ‘Seule le provisoire dure,’ ” answered Fares. “ ‘Only the temporary lasts.’ Goodbye, my friend.”

As Fares watched Rogers’s car leave the palace grounds, it occurred to him that Rogers was an unlikely spy. He was a man who yearned for permanency in a business where that was impossible. He seemed to want relationships that were built on trust, honesty, a sense of mutual responsibility. Fares suspected that it was this quality of idealism that made Rogers seem so American-and perhaps also dangerous to those who worked with him. Rogers had a will to believe things that were not always true.

Beirut; October 1978

Rogers waited for Jamal in a safehouse in the West Beirut neighborhood of Ramlet el-Baida. When he entered the apartment, he had an eerie feeling that he had been there before. There were the same flowers, the same bottle of whisky on the sideboard, the same packs of cigarettes on the table. The same tape recorder in the wall, no doubt.

Rogers looked at his watch. Jamal was late. As he waited, Rogers thought back eight years to another meeting with Jamal, in another safehouse on the beach in Kuwait. And how, in closing his recruitment pitch, he had made Jamal a promise. We don’t make mistakes, Rogers had said. We will keep the fact of our relationship with you secret. And how he had added: “I haven’t lost an agent in ten years.”

There was a sharp knock at the door, followed by the exchange of code words. In walked Jamal. Rogers didn’t bother to ask him if he was carrying a weapon. West Beirut was Fatah’s town now. They had the guns.

“Ahlan, Reilly-Bey,” said Jamal.

“Hello, Jamal,” answered Rogers.

Jamal looked older. Still fit, still handsome, but with signs of age and stress. The wild black hair was now combed neatly in place. The face had the doughy look of clay that has been kneaded and packed and massaged into place one too many times. The black leather jacket was gone, replaced by a brown one. Rogers noticed something else. For the first time he could remember, he saw a look of sadness in Jamal’s eyes.

“You have a lot of nerve coming to see me now,” said Jamal.

“What do you mean?”

“After Camp David! The Old Man is furious. He says you have betrayed him. After all our fine talk in secret about solving the Palestinian problem, after our conversations in 1976 when I went to Washington to meet the great Director of Central Intelligence. After all that, what do you do? You let the Israelis and the Egyptians sign a separate peace treaty that leaves us in the cold.”

“It wasn’t my doing. Talk to the president.”

“We would like to do that very much,” said Jamal. “But we can’t.”

Jamal’s manner was aggressive and insistent. That much hadn’t changed. He spoke earnestly, like a former student who wants to convince his old professor how well he has done in life. Who wants to show that he is a serious person now and not someone to be trifled with.

“Camp David is not the end of the story,” said Rogers. “There is more to come.”

“You have been saying that for eight years. We are getting tired of hearing it.”

This was not the conversation Rogers wanted to have. Not at all. He changed gears.

“I bring you greetings from the new Director, Mr. Hinkle,” said Rogers. “He sends you his personal thanks for your help in protecting our diplomats and citizens. He says that the American people owe you a debt of gratitude that can only be expressed, for now, in secret.”

Jamal touched his heart. Was it the politeness of the Arabs, or an example of the inexplicable, mesmerizing power held by whoever happened to hold the position of Director of Central Intelligence?

“That is kind of the Director,” said Jamal. “Please give him my regards. Tell him that whatever our differences on the political level, we will continue to abide by our promise to protect American citizens.”

“He will be pleased,” said Rogers.

Jamal nodded. He took out a cigarette and lit it.

“Jamal,” said Rogers. “I have something that I want to tell you.” But Jamal wasn’t listening. The mention of the Director and security cooperation had sent him off on a new tangent.

“I have a spy story for you,” said Jamal. “You can tell the new Director when you get home.”

“I’m not sure that he likes spy stories. And there is something important I have to tell you.”

“He will like this one,” said Jamal. “Do you remember the man they called the Snake?”

“The man from the PFLP?” said Rogers. “The super-terrorist.”

“Yes. You read that he died, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Rogers. “Of leukemia. In a hospital in East Germany.”

“That is not how he died,” said Jamal with a thin smile.

“It isn’t?”

“No. He was murdered.”

“How?”

“He was radiated to death.”

“What in the hell are you talking about? Where was he radiated to death?”

“In Baghdad.”

“How?”

“Aha. Now you are interested. I will explain. The Snake was working then for the Iraqi Moukhabarat. Whenever he went to see the chief of the Moukhabarat, he would be received in a special waiting room, which had been constructed just for him and shielded with lead.”

“Lead?”

“Yes, lead. The Iraqi would make the Snake sit there in that waiting room for thirty minutes, maybe an hour. The Snake thought nothing of it. You know how the Arabs are. They always keep you waiting. But all the time he was in that room, they were pointing an X-ray machine at him, beaming it through a hole in the wall.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got sicker and sicker. Just as all the newspaper stories said at the time. But he didn’t know why. He went to Algeria for treatment. And then finally to East Germany.”

“Where the diagnosis was leukemia.”

“Yes,” said Jamal. “But when he died finally in East Germany, they made an autopsy. And that East German autopsy report was very interesting. It spoke of ‘unnatural complications’ in the case. We have a copy of the autopsy report, if you are interested.”

“Of course I am interested,” said Rogers.

“Would you like to know what the payoff was for the Iraqis?”

Rogers nodded.

“Look at the oil production totals for the OPEC countries in the months before and after the Snake’s death. You will notice a large increase in Iraqi production and a roughly equal decrease in production by Saudi Arabia.”