Damascus Station

by Unknown

  Mariam pulled a wipe from her purse and he scrubbed speckled blood from her face and neck. She tucked her blouse back in and pulled her hair back. She rubbed her eyes, which were twitching. Sam gave her the address.

  His phone vibrated. The message said: Ok. 10 minutes.

  “We can’t go together,” he said. “You go toward Rawdah. Shortest SDR in the world, our pickup is ten minutes.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Someplace where we can talk.”

  THE FUNDS ALLOCATED TO THE BANDITOs had purchased a spartan apartment on the northern tip of Malki, nestled into the feet of Mount Qasioun. There was one bedroom with a mattress splayed on the floor, although there were no sheets; a small kitchen, stocked with canned soup; and, in the entryway, a card table with a single metal chair. The overhead lights flickered. It smelled like ammonium disinfectant and mothballs. Anticipating blackouts, the BANDITOs had set several battery-powered camping lanterns along the wall of the bedroom.

  Elias would text again in two hours and would ferry Mariam most of the way home, far enough to get her through checkpoints but not all the way to her front door. In spite of the squalor, Sam would have loved nothing more than to spend time with Mariam here. But even two hours was pushing it. And if Mariam was being watched—as he knew she was—a prolonged absence would generate questions from the people keeping track of her.

  They sat on the mattress facing each other. The lights shivered again and went out. He heard artillery overhead. Sam turned on one of the lanterns.

  “Why were you there?” he asked.

  “I had to tell you something.”

  He almost screamed at her, Why didn’t you use the device we gave you? But he already knew why—it was why he felt both betrayed and assured of her loyalty—though it did nothing to cool his frustration. No longer trusting his own judgment, he remembered Procter (“Collect the intelligence”). His eyes were narrowed at her. “What is it?”

  “I heard Rustum tell Bouthaina the location of a backup facility for the sarin.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Wadi Barada.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I overheard. I was in her washroom. I’d just put the bag in Atiyah’s office. I—” She started crying.

  By now the Syrians would have learned of the shoot-out and connected Sam to the murders. They might kill him if they found him. Or they might arrest him and put him on trial and then kill him. He would have to get the information to Langley tonight.

  “Who has the device, Mariam?”

  She looked directly at him, eyes aflame. “I’m so sorry, habibi, I’m so so sorry.” She sobbed, pressing her hands into her eyes. “Forgive me, please forgive me.”

  “Who has it?”

  She sobbed. “I’m sorry, habibi, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “Where is it?”

  She looked up, face wet and flushed red. “Ali Hassan has it. They took Razan, Sam, they came into my apartment and arrested her the night before I left for Italy. Ali Hassan used me against you, habibi, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  He had expected it, and thought he’d be angry when she confessed. Instead he was sad. Sad that she had not told him in Italy, when he and Procter could have helped her. They could have gotten her out. Now they were trapped in Damascus and he wondered whether they would get out of this mess alive.

  “Do you know what they wanted from the device, or from me?” Sam asked. She was shaking now, wiping streaks of makeup with her hands, wetting spots of dried blood from the fight missed in the harried cleanup. Now, in the stillness of this squalid apartment, he actually saw her for the first time since Italy. Her face was sallow, broken. Dark rings hung under her eyes. She bit at red-raw finger skin.

  “They were not specific with me, Ali only said that they knew you were meeting with a traitor and had to find him. I wondered if it is me they want.”

  He gently placed his hand on her fingers and lifted them away from her mouth and held her hands in his.

  “What did you give them other than the device?”

  “Background information, mostly. I told them about Procter.” She bit her lip. “And the safe house here in Damascus. They told me to make contact with you. They knew that I had met you at the party in Paris. Ali wanted me to operate against you. He wanted the device.”

  Sam ran the inventory: A top-of-the-line covcom device and primo safe house burned, a crown jewel Syrian asset the leak. Counterintelligence would go berserk.

  Sam began pacing the room. More artillery fire on the mountain. The electricity came on. Within seconds the apartment darkened again.

  “Why did you follow me tonight?”

  “I heard the information and knew you needed it. And I had no way to contact you.”

  “Did you run the Atiyah op? Is the bag switched?” Station had heard nothing since the return from Italy.

  “Yes. But I didn’t tell you because I didn’t have the device.”

  “Did you tell Ali about the Atiyah op, or Bouthaina’s computer?”

  “No. I am loyal. We fight together.”

  “I know you are, habibti, I know.” He sat down. Her head slumped onto his shoulder and she wept. She had betrayed the CIA, betrayed their agreement in France, betrayed him. But Sam knew she was telling the truth. She’d risked everything by killing the militiamen. In another life, in another world, they would have settled down somewhere. But instead they were in Damascus with front-row tickets to the city’s descent into hell. He would put the anger and the sadness and the shame aside. He would focus on the one thing he could control right now. He would protect her.

  “Did they release Razan?” he asked.

  She shook her head, setting her jaw and staring at the lantern. “Not yet,” she said. “Ali Hassan is a liar.”

  Sam’s mind worked quickly now, considering responsibilities and potential moves. Protect your agent. Keep your promise.

  “Then the only way to protect you,” he said, “is to give Ali exactly what he wants.”

  THEY BUILT THE PLAN FACING each other on the mattress.

  “In case something breaks we’ll need a way to talk, even if just for a few seconds,” he said finally. “I’ll have Elias give you a throwaway phone on the drive home.” He texted the BANDITOs. He gave her his burner number.

  He didn’t need to check his watch, he already knew: they had twenty-five minutes until Elias arrived to collect Mariam.

  Sam stepped into the kitchen out of earshot and called Procter. He explained the attack but did not tell her where he was.

  “Time for exfil, man. This party is over,” she said.

  He honestly had no idea how to explain his next move, so he just said: “You need to pass this tonight, Chief. ATHENA intel: the sarin is at Wadi Barada. Confirmed subsource.”

  He hung up and took a deep breath. Even if he pulled this off, he wasn’t sure that facing Procter and the CIA brass would be that much better than a Syrian trial. In the end, the only difference would be whether he got a star on the wall.

  Mariam was on the mattress when he returned. He lay down next to her. Please forgive me, habibi, she said again and again until he pressed his forehead into hers. They sat entwined in silence for several minutes until they were breathing in rhythm. He kissed her.

  Mariam wiped her eyes and held his gaze as she unbuttoned his shirt. He cringed as the sleeve pulled on his shoulder.

  “This might actually be the last time, habibi,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. “But we’re usually wrong.”

  44

  RUSTUM MANAGED A LITANY OF VENDETTAS AS HE walked into the National Security Bureau headquarters on the balmy, sun-drenched morning of July 18.

  The list would balloon as the day wore on.

  These damn meetings were tiresome. The President had established a group, chaired by his little brother, to centralize the counterintelligence effort during the war. The one amusing aspect of the meeting
s was that they had to gather outside of the Security Office because Ali’s run-down headquarters did not have a conference room large enough to seat everyone. But, jab at his brother aside, Rustum found the meetings exhausting because so many of his comrades were doughy bureaucrats. They were nothing but talk.

  “Commander, I need a moment,” he heard a familiar voice say as he entered the building. Basil stood in the lobby, awaiting his arrival. Rustum pulled him aside.

  “Do you have him?” Rustum whispered. The NSB headquarters was not the place to have this conversation.

  “There was an incident last night with the militia.”

  “An incident? Speak plainly, Basil,” he said, drawing the gaze of a passerby.

  “The men sent to arrest the CIA officer are dead,” Basil said. “He killed them and escaped.”

  Rustum stood dumbstruck. Someone saluted him. He ignored it.

  “We found the bodies early this morning,” Basil continued. Shot up near the river. One stabbed in the penis. Another tossed onto the embankment with his eye gouged out.”

  “Stabbed in the penis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Haywaan,” Rustum growled. Animal. He felt his blood pressure rising. “Find him.”

  “We are searching everywhere, Commander.” A pause. “And if we find him?”

  “Alive. If possible.”

  ENRAGED, ALI WALKED INTO THE conference room and took his seat at the head of the table. He had prepared an agenda for this meeting, but it was now useless because the only thing on which he could focus was the violent anger he felt toward his sadistic brother and Basil, his imp of a henchman. Volkov, usually stoic, had been equally apoplectic to learn that Ali had not approved or been aware of Rustum’s surveillance call-off the previous evening. Hearing the news, the Russian had thrown a ceramic mug against the wall of the Security Office command center, the liquid mess confirming his anger by the fact that it had been at least half full of Zhuravli, his vodka of choice for the early morning hours. Ali had burned down two cigarettes watching one of the Russians sweep up the mess.

  The manhunt for Samuel Joseph had then commenced as every security agency—all seventeen—had been informed and instructed to prioritize the search. Ali had personally led the raid on the American’s apartment. They had searched the safe house he had provided to Mariam Haddad. Ali had summoned Mariam for an interview. The border guards had been put on alert. The Americans had been officially informed in a tense meeting that, Ali had heard, ended with the Syrian deputy foreign minister cursing at the U.S. ambassador. And still they could not find Samuel Joseph.

  Ali waved over the boy serving tea as he shuffled through papers. He could never remember his name. The boy walked around the table pushing a creaky cart. He tried to fill the cup but instead spilled much of it along the sides and onto the serving tray. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry, General,” he stammered, wiping down the sides of the cup.

  “It’s fine,” Ali said, taking the tea. “Just give me a napkin . . . remind me of your name, again.”

  “Jibril, General.”

  “Well, Jibril, hand me that napkin.” But the boy did not hear. He was staring toward the door with his mouth open. Ali turned.

  President Assad walked in. He was always invited to this meeting but had not once come. Ali stood to shake his hand and stepped aside, giving up his center seat for the President, who was now greeting each of the officials around the table.

  Rustum took his seat at Assad’s right and ignored Ali, who leaned closer to his big brother. “I know you tried to kill the American last night. Do you have him in custody, or did your men really screw up so badly?”

  “You think I killed three militia to throw you off the scent, little brother? Make you think he’d escaped when I in fact have him?”

  “I would not put it past you, big brother.”

  Rustum smiled. “Fuck you, little brother, I don’t know what happened to him or where he is.” The President reached Rustum and shook his hand before sitting down. He smoothed his tie and nodded to Ali to start the meeting.

  “Our focus today is on finding the American Samuel Joseph,” Ali said to the group, his eyes darting toward the rickety tea cart as Jibril finished serving the interior minister and moved closer. Assad waved Jibril over and the cart squeaked loudly as he rolled it to a stop between Ali and the President. Ali stopped talking because every eye in the room was locked on the distracting tea cart. Jibril tried pouring, but he spilled and hot tea ran down the sides of the President’s cup onto the table. “Damn it,” the President said, sliding the liquid away from him in a vain effort to keep it from rolling onto his pants. He stared at Jibril, who frantically searched the tray for a napkin. This kid was having a very bad morning. He looked sick.

  “Don’t you have one in that cart, boy?” The President pointed to the bottom of the cart, which was draped by a tablecloth.

  “I . . . I . . . need to go get one, Mr. President.” Jibril began to walk away, leaving the cart between Ali and the President.

  “Boy,” Rustum snarled, “take the tea cart to the other end of the table so it’s out of the way.”

  Jibril looked at the President, then at Ali, who could see sweat forming on the boy’s brow. Ali started his briefing again as the tea cart squeaked away. The boy parked it between the defense minister and Turkmani at the other end of the table. Ali saw that Jibril stared at him as he left the room. Something felt strange. Ali had stopped talking, and he now looked down at his papers, struggling to focus.

  “General Hassan,” the President said. “Please try to continue. My ears are ringing from that damn cart, too.” Assad stuck a finger in his ear and moved it around, laughing.

  Ali heard a faint ring. Then came the heat, his body covered in a hot light that blotted out the room. Then the sensation of spinning, weightless, in the depths of a pool as his arms and face seared and smoke caked his nostrils. A severed leg tore through his field of vision in slow motion as he somersaulted again. Then, spinning again, he glimpsed a fuming, jagged hole in the floor—or maybe the ceiling—and as the world stilled, the edges focusing, the rotations slowing, all he could hear were grunts, shrieks, whimpers, and desperate, heavy breathing.

  Finally, he heard the President offer a struggled gasp: “Ya allah. My god.”

  Ali discovered himself now sitting upright against the wall, several feet behind his chair. The President lay behind his own chair, head up and moving. Ali looked down and saw his legs, still there, intact. He felt one with a finger. He could sense the pressure. He tried moving a toe. He could.

  He looked around the smoky room, hacking phlegm. Chunks of blackened flesh littered the floor. The far side of the table had vanished. The ceiling tiles had disintegrated, leaving a gaping hole above. He could not see to the other side of the table, but to his right lay Rustum, slithering toward him on his elbows.

  Assad stood, wild-eyed, then collapsed again, wheezing in the haze. Ali found he could stand. He hobbled to Assad and helped him up. Rustum also stood, and held the wall for support. Ali looked around and the defense minister’s eyes looked back furtively, as if asking where the bottom of his head had gone.

  AN HOUR LATER ALI SAT with Rustum and Assad at the Palace. The President wore a bandage over his right eye and dressings for the burns on his arms and chest. The doctor had insisted Rustum wear a foam bandage around his neck. Ali miraculously had suffered only minor cuts on his face. He had not yet called Layla. He did not know what to say. He wondered if he was in shock.

  They watched a report on Al Jazeera waiting for Jibril’s audience with the President. The boy had been caught trying to flee the building after the bombing. On the television, Zahran Alloush, Douma’s warlord, claimed responsibility for the bombing and said it was the start of an offensive to take the capital. Assad threw the remote into the television, cracking the screen and killing the picture. Ali put his head in his hands. They all sat in silence.

  Then the head of presidential
security swung open the office door. The manacled tea boy Jibril marched in front, sweaty and bruised, his eyes wide with shock, probably because both he and the President were still alive.

  Ali wanted nothing more than to go home to Layla and his boys, but here he was, stuck in the Palace, watching yet more misery unfold. He hated this. He hated himself. Jibril stared at the floor.

  “Look at me, boy,” Assad said. Jibril shuddered. The President took a step closer. “I said look at me, boy.” Jibril looked up. The President spat into his eyes. Then he slapped him across the face. Jibril began crying. Ali looked away.

  “My father did not spend three decades constructing Syria to have traitorous filth like you destroy it during my reign,” Assad said. “This country must be governed by the boot, the sword, the gun, you understand? There can be no freedom in Suriya al-Assad, precisely because of creatures like you. You, boy, are the chaos my family has held back for decades. You are the reason why I fight, why my government will never surrender. Syria is mine, boy, not yours.”

  Assad motioned to his head of security, who dragged the boy out.

  “Start it now,” Assad said to Rustum.

  Rustum nodded and left, ripping off the neck brace as he walked down the stairs out of Assad’s office.

  “Find the American,” the President said to Ali.

  KANAAN DROVE ALI BACK TO the Security Office, and as they rode through traffic—six checkpoints—he watched the Syrian MiGs overhead and the tense Republican Guard officers and wondered if this was it. He called Layla.

  “Habibti, are you and the boys at home?”

  “Yes. What’s going on?”

  “There was an attempt on the President during our meeting. I am fine. Others are not. The Guard is preparing an offensive.”

  “What should we do?” Her voice was shaky. He could hear Sami yelling in the background.

  Ali considered the options:

  Run. Bad idea, rebel checkpoints are popping up all around the city and Rustum is no doubt shuttering the airport.