Damascus Station

by Unknown

  She shuddered, looked at Ali, the rage escaping from its bag. She thought of those militia boys and Villefranche, and the image flashed through her mind of doing the same to the Hassans, standing above each brother and pulling the trigger until the magazine emptied. “You bastard, Ali, I’ve done nothing but cooperate. I got you what you wanted, and this is how I am repaid? Damn you both, I—”

  The knife slid into her side, wriggling deeper as Rustum whispered the same question again and again: Did you kill my Bouthaina? It hit a rib, but he forced it through with a grunt.

  She wanted to look him in the eye and yell, Yes, I did kill her, you monster, but instead she looked down at the blade, now hidden inside her body. She could only see its slick handle. Sam now yelled, his eyes berserk. She tried to hold on to them, like she did when they made love, but things were wobbly now and something slippery ran down her leg as Rustum removed the knife.

  THE BOY ALI LAY UPRIGHT on his bedroom floor, Rustum straddled atop, trying to bring the knife down into his throat, to finish the work undone, to avenge his father and both mothers.

  Then his grandfather knocked Rustum aside and pummeled the boy. The old man had been strong. Choking, gasping for air from the struggle, his grandfather sat against the bed and held Ali in his arms while he sobbed. Rustum, unconscious, was sprawled out next to him.

  “Whose fault is it, Grandpa?” Ali had said, the words shaky and tight. “Whose fault is it, then?”

  Not yours, my boy. Not yours.

  Rustum withdrew the knife from Mariam’s side and brought it up to her neck.

  Ali barreled into him. The blade clanked to the floor as Rustum stumbled back. Ali stepped forward again and drove a palm into his brother’s gut, then swung across his head, striking the ear with a crunch.

  Rustum fell. He tried to get up. Ali picked up the knife and kicked his chest, sending him back to the icy concrete. Then Ali sat on him, ramming the butt of the knife into his nose. Blood spurted out now, lots of it, and Ali repeated it again, this time hearing a damp crunch and Rustum’s shriek. He swung again, splatter misting his face.

  His brother’s hungry eyes looked back, his hands grabbing upward for the knife, for an eye, for anything. Ali held him down and glared at him, holding his eyes. Then Ali sank the blade deep into Rustum’s neck, severing the carotid and tearing through sheets of muscle until Rustum’s eyes dimmed, his legs stopped flailing, and his breath ceased.

  Ali rolled off his brother onto the floor and sat upright.

  Mariam was quiet now, head slumped over, Samuel shouting that she needed help. Samuel’s chair collapsed, and he tried to inch closer to Mariam by wriggling on the floor. Ali walked to the table, almost collapsing into it. The American was yelling and scooting on the floor toward Mariam, who was ashy white and still.

  One of Kanaan’s men flung the door open, hands on his head, surveying the carnage. He stared at Rustum’s body and ran his hands over his face.

  Ali fumbled to light a cigarette. “Get a doctor here. Now.”

  SAM SCRAPED TOWARD MARIAM, YELLING for her to stay awake, each breath like glass in his lungs. Though he could barely move his neck as he scooted toward Mariam, he could make out Rustum’s corpse splayed out on the floor, Ali compressing Mariam’s side with his shirt, and a man wheeling something into the room through hazy light.

  Mariam’s head was hanging lifelessly. The flicker in her eyes was gone. “Mariam! Mariam! Mariam!” he yelled.

  Someone picked him up, and he felt his entire body scream as he landed on a cart. The prison room disappeared. He felt wind on his face, bright lights above. He saw the safe, unopened, in his room. For a moment he saw Mariam on a gurney beside him. Someone, far over the horizon, yelled. She was on her side, wound tilted up. The shouting person held a bag of fluid. Tubes protruded from her body.

  He stared into the eyes for something, anything.

  Then they wheeled him away.

  52

  ALI RETURNED TO HIS OFFICE SHELL-SHOCKED AND short his white collared shirt, which had found a second life as Mariam’s shoddy tourniquet. The unflappable Volkov had actually gaped as Ali passed the Russian command center. In his office, Ali brushed glass fragments from his chair—residue from the American plane’s flyby that morning—and proceeded to smoke six cigarettes in quick succession. When his hands had stilled, he donned a spare shirt he kept in his desk drawer.

  He called Layla. “Where are you?” she screamed. “Where are you, Ali? Get home now!” He could hear the twins crying in the background.

  “Are you safe?” Ali asked

  “Yes, for now. We’re in the closet. Come home.”

  “Rustum is dead.”

  “Dead? How? The bombs?”

  “Something happened. In the office. He lost his mind. He’s gone.”

  “Lost his mind?”

  “I will explain later.” Tremors rippled in his right wrist. He tried to slide another cigarette from the pack, but it fell on the floor. He picked it up. “You are safe, Layla? You and the boys?”

  “Yes, but come home.”

  “I will. I have to do something first.”

  “Come home,” she screamed.

  “I love you.” He hung up and lit the cigarette.

  When he hit the filter, he stood and looked out the shattered window at the smoke pillars rising from Damascus, listening to the wail of sirens. He took stock of the mess.

  He had killed his brother, the commander of the Republican Guard.

  His agent, Mariam, lay dying in a makeshift hospital room several floors below.

  He had brutally, maybe even successfully, tortured a CIA officer for information. He still held the man in captivity.

  Basil’s mob was now overrunning the American Embassy.

  His phone buzzed. Kanaan.

  “What is it?”

  “We’re in Atiyah’s office. We found a document bag with a hidden compartment. Inside were false-name U.S. passports, quite official by the look of them, wads of cash, and a device. I don’t know what’s on it, but I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What about the computer, the phone?”

  “Strange texts from American and European numbers on the phone. Likely code. Same thing with his email account.”

  “Make the arrest. Bring him here and put him in lockup. I’ll call the Palace with the news.”

  Ali went downstairs. He noticed the Russians boring into his face with wary, questioning eyes. He did not care. He had no time.

  “Volkov, turn on Al Jazeera.”

  The Russian flipped on one of the televisions.

  The images switched—Breaking News—to the American President addressing reporters from the White House. He said that the United States had received credible intelligence indicating the Syrian government planned to use chemical weapons. As a result, the President explained in a muscular tone, the United States had bombed targets around Syria to stop the assault and send a message to the barbarous Assad that such cruelty would not be tolerated. The President said that the U.S. believed it had prevented the chemical assault. The President opened the floor for questions. A reporter, noting that the civil war’s death toll now measured in the hundreds of thousands, asked why the U.S. had intervened to stop a sarin attack but not the earlier conventional slaughter. The President fidgeted behind the podium. Ali turned off the television.

  Volkov looked like he had questions. Lots of them. Instead, Ali wheeled around and left, again retreating to his office. He had to get home. At his desk, wind bristling his back through the shattered windows, he considered defecting. Driving to Jordan with the family. The roads would be riddled with checkpoints now, after the strikes. The airport, too. He had official documents, it might work. Might not. Running might make him look like a murderer, which he guessed he was. The mukhabarat would arrest and interrogate Layla’s parents and brother. Maybe threaten violence to lure Ali back. This was how they lashed you to the throne.

  He went downstairs and found
the filing cabinet. Sliding open the top drawer, he found the folder labeled “Lake Assad Water Level, Reports and Analysis, 1988–1992,” and removed a videotape and photos of two corpses. Valerie Owens and her asset, Marwan Ghazali. Taking a pen from his pocket, he wrote down a number and a short phrase on a scrap of paper and slid it inside the folder. He looked briefly into the lifeless eyes in each photo. He called the doctor as he walked upstairs. “Is the American conscious?” Ali asked.

  “Yes. In bad shape but able to talk. I wouldn’t put him under an interrogation, though.”

  “I understand. I’m coming to see him.”

  THE DOCTORS SCURRIED FROM THE room when Ali arrived, leaving him alone with Samuel. A row of stitches ran up the American’s neck and cheek, his jaw had been bandaged, and he wore a fresh cast over his destroyed foot.

  The American lay on his back. He blinked at Ali. “Is Mariam dead?” he asked

  “I don’t know. I’m here with you.”

  Ali wanted to smoke, but the room was cramped, and he was not sure if the American’s lungs could manage. He rubbed his own scar.

  “You and I will now share a similar mark,” he said. Samuel held the ceiling’s gaze, blinking again.

  “A number of strange events have occurred today, Samuel. I have never had a morning quite like this. I want to go home to my family. I’m sure you do as well. So I have a proposition.”

  The American tried to turn his head to face Ali. He grimaced and lay back facing the ceiling, listening.

  “I could keep you here indefinitely, of course,” Ali said. “Wait until you heal, then run you through the electricity again to verify everything. Our friends in Hizballah have experience interrogating Americans for long periods. They held your Beirut Station Chief William Buckley for years, just to be sure they’d gotten everything. And to send a message, of course. I would learn more with you back under the knife.”

  Samuel did not speak.

  “My men are arresting Jamil Atiyah as we speak.”

  More silence from the American.

  “This morning, your government bombed Syria, stopping an alleged chemical attack in the process. Several bases were hit, and our attack did not succeed.”

  Samuel tried to speak, grunting at the effort. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Do you know what I’ve come to realize? I do not care about this government. But I do care for my family. It is all I care about. And do you know what this regime has done? Do you understand it, even a little? It takes people like me and binds them to it. The fate of my family is intertwined with the government. In your system, you have choices, how do you say, agen—, agen—”

  “Agency.”

  “Precisely. Agency. You have been a free man for a long time. You take it for granted. Probably assume I have the same leeway here in Syria. Of course, I do not. I am a slave, like the others. A higher-ranking one, but a slave nonetheless. But I do not want my family to perish. And I do not want the American government hunting me anymore. So I want to offer two things.”

  Ali put the folder down on the bed. “The first.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is a videotape of the interrogation of Valerie Owens and her asset, Marwan Ghazali. Both, as I assume you know, are dead. In the tape, you will see that I intervened in an attempt to save her life during the interrogation. I was not successful. My brother, Rustum, held me back while one of his men cut off the top of her head. They forced me to write the report afterward, to fabricate some nonsense about Valerie overdosing on pain pills.”

  Ali removed the photo of Valerie Owens from the folder and put it in Samuel’s hands. The American stared at it knowingly, like he’d seen it before.

  “How do I know this isn’t fake?” Samuel asked.

  “It would be a fairly elaborate plan on my part, no? To make a tape like this today and give it to you? I am sure that somewhere inside the CIA’s or Mossad’s files you have pictures or intercepts of him talking. You can use that to corroborate this tape, ensure it is the man I say.”

  “Name?”

  “General Basil Mahkluf.”

  Ali stood and walked closer to Samuel, hovering directly over the American. He put his hands on the bed’s railing. “I know you do not speak for your government, certainly not now, but I want your personal assurances that when you return you will convey to your superiors that I have provided this information in good faith. I would like it to be considered when future bombing targets are chosen, or should I contact you in the last days of this government, asking for help. Do we understand each other?”

  Samuel did not answer. “What are you going to say happened to your brother?”

  “The truth. He brought my agent, Mariam, into the interrogation to provide leverage against you, he lost control, and I killed him before he could murder her.”

  Samuel nodded. “Two things,” he said. “You said you would offer two things before releasing me. The Basil tape is one. What is the other?”

  53

  ON THE GREEK ISLE OF HYDRA, AN OLD FORTUNETELLER had shown then-nine-year-old Artemis Aphrodite Procter her own death.

  “And it was a lot more fucking violent than this,” Procter said to the entire Station as she heard the second volley of rocket-propelled grenades slam into the chancery building upstairs. The shabiha buses had arrived in the circle thirty minutes earlier heralding another demonstration, vandalism, and maybe a few token trespassers on the embassy compound. Instead, Procter thought, they’d sent a goddamn raiding party over the walls and shot a couple Marines inside the western entrance and breached the doors with Semtex or a land mine or some shit. She had not seen it, just heard the whiny call from the Dip Security guy whose name she could never remember. Then: Invasion. A bunch of militia maniacs swarming the compound like insects.

  Procter barked for the Station to initiate Destruction Phase 3 (personnel exfil and officer self-defense). They shredded the papers, they dissolved the hard drives and commo equipment in the acid-boosted shredders. As the shredders chewed through everything, Procter called Bradley: “Ed, we need a goddamn regiment here with horses and choppers and shit, cuz these lunatics are coming in to fuck us up.” She lifted the phone so he could hear the gunfire and explosions. Then she hung up.

  Procter went to the bank of monitors near the support officer’s desk. They beamed closed-circuit footage of the compound. She saw Marines shooting militia in the motor pool, militia running toward the ambassador’s office through a blown-out door in the chancery, a crew of State Department personnel and Marines scampering to the third-floor crow’s nest to huddle up and wait out the attack. A Syrian in the uniform of a Republican Guard general was marauding around the second floor with a combat shotgun and a goddamn knife. Total chaos.

  “Caught us with our twats flapping in the breeze,” Procter said to the entire Station. She looked around, counting her officers.

  “Where the fuck’s Zelda?” Procter said. Another grenade volley struck the chancery and the Station walls shook.

  Someone said that Zelda had been upstairs briefing the ambassador in the SCIF.

  “Fuck,” Procter shouted. Everyone held a weapon. They huddled around Procter as she watched the screens. “Why is there a fuckin’ Republican Guard general running around in here?” she said to everyone. She watched the man unsheathe a knife and enter an office. On the screens Procter could see two militia descend the stairwell into the hallway outside the Station. They walked slowly, AK-47s drawn, peering around.

  “Fuck this,” Procter said as she picked up her Mossberg shotgun, opened the vault door, and jumped into the hallway. She sent two shots into the men and pivoted back inside the Station. She heard moaning and yelled in Arabic that she would offer a quick death if they told her who was in charge. There was more moaning. Procter repeated the offer.

  “General Basil Mahkluf,” was the reply. “He shot guard. We did . . . did . . . did not mean f-f-for—” A gurgle, another groan, then silence.

 
“Goddammit,” Procter said.

  “Chief, Zelda is making a run for it,” someone said.

  Procter turned back to the monitors. Zelda ran from the SCIF and Procter saw the Republican Guard guy, this Basil, emerge from the ambassador’s office. He fired his shotgun at the fleeing analyst. Another camera captured her collapse down a flight of stairs into the landing. Basil ran toward her.

  Procter saw that Basil carried a ruddy-white scalp. Then the long-ago explosion at Khost Base in Afghanistan filled Procter’s skull. She reloaded the Mossberg and went for Zelda.

  She turned the corner and ran right into a militiaman. She raised the gun at his gigantic fucking eyes and blew his head off, clean, with a single shot. Zelda lay facedown at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I’m just gonna drag you tits-down, okay, Z? You tell me if you’re gonna pass out from the pain.”

  Procter sent another volley at a shape up the stairs and grabbed Zelda by a shoulder, dragging her down the hall into the Station as beads of shot sprayed the walls around her. Procter heard a weird bass voice declare that these Ikwhan women are indecent without their head coverings. The voice called for backup. What was this Ikhwan shit?

  Procter looked down at the analyst’s whitening face. Her legs were pretty fucking messed up.

  “Z, you there?” Procter shouted. She heard a crunch in the hall, swung around, and fired, sloughing half a leg from a man pointing a rocket-propelled grenade launcher into the Station. He fell.

  “They’re getting the big stuff now,” she yelled. She looked down at Zelda. The analyst was motionless. “Someone compress her, get a tourniquet or some shit.” One of the support officers began wrapping Zelda’s shredded legs.

  “Hold on, Z, hold on.” Procter again swiveled around the corner and slapped a burst from the shotgun into another man coming down the hall. He fell in front of the door, then looked up, shrieking. Procter shoved the Mossberg into his temple, squeezed the trigger, and dove back into the Station.

  Now she heard the weird voice again, this Basil, and she ducked into a crouch and rolled back into the hallway, where she saw him holding a scalp. She fired, and he fell onto his stomach, then tried to shimmy back toward the stairwell for cover. As he crawled, Procter fired again and heard the thwap of shot lodging in his right haunch. He gave a satisfying scream and she felt the heavy heat of rounds flying past her face. She remembered what that old Grecian seer had foretold about her end, the specific location and the time of day and the fucking wildness, and considered running up the hall because she knew she was invincible right now. But she couldn’t leave Zelda.