Edward Whittemore - Jericho Mosaic

Tajar was greatly amused to hear of this last contact. He looked into it before his next meeting with Yossi near Beirut.

True enough, Tajar told Yossi. Suspicion confirmed. I ran my own little operation inside headquarters and it turns out this man who had his eye on you was actually on the Runner back-up team in the sixties. He didn't think there was a chance in the world that Halim would bite, but his boss was so impressed by Halim's reputation he thought an effort had to be made through that Lebanese who talked to you. A bizarre turnabout, but at least it shows the Runner's security is everything it should be. . . .

With his years of experience, the Runner saw these approaches coming long before an offer was made. What he couldn't always discern was whether the offer would be professional or personal. Syrian intelligence officers often engaged in smuggling and other illegal ways of making money, and Halim as a businessman who traveled was a natural target for their schemes. But Tajar had foreseen this and Halim kept strictly to his reputation as the incorruptible one, an eccentricity in Damascus and one of those odd characteristics that made Halim unusual. To his friends, it was part of the idealism that had brought him back from Argentina in the first place.

When the approach was professional, however, and a Syrian intelligence officer began by appealing to Halim's patriotism, his reaction had to be much more intricate and subtle. With great charm Halim set out to project that quality of vision, almost of naïveté, that Ziad had felt so strongly in the early days of their friendship. Halim spoke warmly of all the important causes and his enthusiasm was real, but he also seemed hopelessly impractical when it came to politics, a dreamer who couldn't grasp the everyday facts of life in the Middle East. Perhaps it was because he had grown up in Argentina and saw Syria differently, not really the way it was. In any case he drifted off into a nonexistent realm of airy concepts and futile abstractions, talking on about Arab unity and the Palestinian cause and the Syrian role in Arab brotherhood. The Syrian officer who had thought of recruiting him would soon be accepting Halim's unspoken claim that it was only bookkeeping and basic engineering that he understood in a practical way. Certainly Halim was a patriot, but he just wasn't suited for a clandestine role. He lacked a devious eye. He lacked cunning and the essential traits of espionage. In political matters he had faith instead of understanding, an innocence that was nearly childlike in its simplicity.

Finally, the Syrian officer had no choice but to arrive at the conclusion so skillfully prepared for him. Halim only looked as if he could be useful in espionage. In fact recruitment was out of the question. Halim was a mystic and such men were always unreliable as agents, although they could be fascinating in other ways. In the end the Syrian intelligence officer went away without an agent, but with an intriguing new friend.

***

Colonel Jundi's offer was different because the times were different. The intelligence situation in Damascus had changed with the advent of the dictator, the man Ziad referred to as el presidente. There were still a dozen Syrian intelligence agencies continually shifting in size and influence, but now they all reported to the president, who used this system to absorb the energies of conflict beneath him. Ambitions were played out in intelligence rather than in open politics, and the agencies served to counterbalance each other's power.

Like the president, Colonel Jundi was from the minority Alawite sect. He was a former tank commander who had distinguished himself in the 1973 war. He ran one of the very small secret services that operated directly out of the president's office. His job was to keep watch over the internal affairs of all the Syrian secret services. To do this he used a small number of agents who reported directly to him, most of them professional employees of the various Syrian intelligence agencies, their connection to Colonel Jundi unknown within their own agencies. Colonel Jundi spied on the spies and it was the secret identity of his agents that gave him his power. He moved freely in government circles but was seldom seen at public functions. Naturally he was feared, but within the upper echelons of the intelligence agencies themselves, not in the army or the ministries at large where his true role was unsuspected. Even someone as experienced in gossip as Ziad thought Colonel Jundi was merely a minor military adviser attached to the president's office, an ex-hero with a sinecure. Another Alawite crony, Ziad called him.

Halim knew better. The dictator was far too clever to have less than a superior man in such a position. Halim had great respect for Colonel Jundi. He had met him several times but didn't know him well. His knowledge of Jundi's agency came from secondary sources and was inexact, more suggestive than anything else. Tajar had gotten into the habit of referring to Colonel Jundi as the inspector general of Syrian intelligence. It was an organizational term that a man inside might use, but Halim thought it was probably accurate. The fact that Halim knew so little about Jundi's work was itself an indication of the high caliber of the colonel's operation.

The setting Colonel Jundi chose for Halim's recruitment was as spectacular as the offer itself. Halim didn't keep a car in Damascus. Instead he walked and took taxis, part of the method of operation worked out long ago by Tajar. When Halim had business in Beirut he hired a car and driver for the fifty-mile trip. One autumn morning at the border crossing into Lebanon, a Syrian official asked Halim to step inside the customs shed.

This was unusual but of course Halim went in. The official excused himself and Halim was left alone. A moment later a man in civilian dress appeared and presented identification showing he was a major in a Syrian security service. Politely, he asked Halim to accompany him. They went out a back door and Halim was ushered into an automobile with curtains over the rear windows. The major drove over bumpy roads for twenty minutes and deposited him at a small farmhouse high up on a hillside, with a magnificent view of the Bekaa Valley.

It was a simple stone house surrounded by olive trees. Standing in the doorway was Colonel Jundi, also in civilian clothes. He welcomed Halim and thanked him for coming, then led him through the house to a flagstone terrace overlooking the valley. The three of them seemed to have the little house to themselves.

Halim and the colonel sat in rough wooden chairs on the terrace, facing west, while the major went off to make coffee. A mild autumn sun warmed their backs. The major brought coffee and retired inside the house.

Halim was struck by the serenity of this perch above the peaceful valley, by the stillness and the sweeping beauty of the view. Goats' bells tinkled from some distant crevice in the hills. A thin line of smoke rose far away in the clear sky. The terrace was blissfully remote, rich with the smell of earth and sunshine. Colonel Jundi smiled, gesturing toward the valley.

Syria, he said. Our true boundary in that direction has always been the Mediterranean, since ancient times.

Today we have these artificial creations of the West, Lebanon and Jordan and Palestine, these legacies born of British and French scheming at the end of the First World War when they carved up the Ottoman Empire to suit themselves. But though empires come and go, real countries remain. You know all this and you know it's time we set things right, and I think it's time you came to work for me. Now what do you say to that?

Colonel Jundi smiled affably and Halim was astounded. He didn't know what to say. He stared at the colonel and then stared again at the view. There was a large bowl of purple-black grapes on the table, freshly washed and glistening with drops of water. The colonel plucked a grape and popped it into his mouth. He plucked another and went on munching, smiling at Halim as the sun cast its autumnal glow over the peaceful valley.