The Dark Art

by Edward Follis

  Then he got his orders, shipped out, and was immediately in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. He did eighty-eight days before he was hit. He vividly described it to me: rising at dawn, humping throughout the day to find an adequate ambush site. The quarry would eventually walk through a gauntlet, and Jim and his fellow grunts would blow them to pieces.

  On the night of August 8, 1969, they were set up as usual when a whole company of North Vietnamese regulars overwhelmed them. Jim got hit with the RPG, which blew off his biceps as well as his index finger. Of the twelve guys in his squad, only three survived. Jim, nearly bleeding to death, was medevaced out from Saigon to Guam.

  Uncle Jim was a constant source of inspiration during my years in Afghanistan. He overcame all of his physical hardship, although the events of that night never left him: He remained in almost constant pain. Never had full use of his arm or remaining hand again, but still learned how to do just about any task that St. Gabriel’s had need for. He could climb sixty feet in the air on a ladder to paint, spackle, sand, and do cement replacement.

  Jim had three daughters of his own but no sons, and we would talk for hours as I assisted him with his work, sometimes in the half-shadows of the pews, or the shimmering beams from those towering stained glass windows. To this day, I can remember in great detail every story he told me about Vietnam; how, after hours of being unconscious, he came to in a hospital bed in Guam, confused, pumped full of morphine, missing his bicep and finger, to the sounds of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from a nearby transistor radio.

  Jim was going through his battles with post-traumatic stress disorder, but he never bitched and moaned. Got up at dawn and did his work. He was a typical south St. Louis guy who’d been drafted into the military, came back physically and mentally damaged, but never let that slow him down.

  Jim Fuller was constantly teaching me without even realizing it. Every little thing—even routine horseplay—became an opportunity for a life lesson. At Bishop DuBourg High School I played varsity basketball; despite being only five-foot-eight I was our starting point guard. What I lacked in size, I made up for in quickness. Senior year, I even made All-City. And though I wasn’t on the wrestling team, Uncle Jim and I used to wrestle constantly.

  I came into the church one day after school, had to put in four hours of work as his handyman assistant before a big basketball game that night. He was extremely focused on his work. I was bouncing around, full of energy and testosterone.

  “Come on,” I said. “Uncle Jim, take a break. Uncle Jim. Let’s wrestle.”

  “Nah.”

  “Come on!”

  Uncle Jim was about five-nine and 210 pounds. Despite the disabilities—or maybe compensating for them—he was strong as a bull. For a few minutes, I watched him assembling wood paneling on one of the stages in the church. I was wound up, getting ready for the basketball game that night, and for some reason, shadowboxing in place, I punched the paneling and knocked it everywhere.

  His expression instantly changed. He didn’t want to play around. Jim stood up, grabbed me, spun me, and tossed me on the floor. In a flash, he dropped to a knee and had me in a leg lock, pushing down hard on my toes. I was squirming, tapping my free hand on the polished wood floor to say, I give!

  “You give? My ass! Eddie, you just destroyed two days of my work.” He pushed down so hard on my foot that I could hear my knee popping out of the socket. He didn’t mean to injure me; he was just pissed off and didn’t know his own strength.

  After the tussle, I was flinching, but the pain wasn’t that bad and together we popped the knee back into the socket. That night I played in the big game with my leg taped up so tight that I had to run up and down the court stiff-legged. Lesson learned: Never mess with a guy putting in an honest day’s work.

  • • •

  As for my own honest day’s work, there were times when my friction with our CIA agents and our Brit counterparts got so intense that I used to indulge in a little middle-of-the-night reverie. Half waking, half dreaming, in my single bed at the embassy, I could see myself running away to live the rest of my life with HJK.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to become a drug trafficker, but every night in Kabul I would feel this intense unconscious desire to take off with Haji Juma Khan, become part of his circle, his self-contained empire in the wilds of Nimruz Province.

  Almost everywhere in the world I worked, I had static with the CIA. We’re often working the same terrain, but with different legal and moral parameters. Not being a law enforcement agency, they have no requirements of evidentiary discovery. They care solely about intel—not assembling the building blocks of a case, establishing probable cause, ensuring a chain of custody. They exist completely in the shadows. Nobody ever testifies. You really want to scare the shit out of a CIA agent? Put him on the stand.

  In the late summer of 2007, my beef with Thad “Tex” Saget, one of the CIA’s top-ranking agents in all of Southwest Asia, nearly erupted into a brawl.

  On nine occasions since I’d been appointed country attaché, the embassy had taken direct hits from enemy rockets. Through our DEA intel—particularly some sixty informants we’d developed within Pakistan—we’d been able to predict seven of the nine attacks. And because of my intimacy with HJK, the singular confidence we shared, the spooks began accusing me of knowing all about the attacks in advance—for some irrational reason, supposedly so that I’d have higher standing as an intel source with Ambassador Neumann.

  That morning, Tex got into a screaming match with me in the ambassador’s office.

  “I think Ed may have had prior knowledge of these attacks, Ambassador,” Saget said.

  “That I’ve had what? Prior knowledge? What are you saying, Tex? You’re saying I’ve been consenting?”

  Finally, the ambassador stepped between us, physically separated us, and got Tex to shut his mouth. Good thing, too. Accusing me of conspiring to have my own government—my own people—attacked and killed? Man, I was ready to go toe-to-toe with Tex right there in the embassy.

  Little wonder then that I’d lie there in my Spartan bedroom almost every night, dreaming of running away with HJK, lost in clouds of desert dust, rolling through those badlands in caravans of SUVs. Sounds strange but—compared to the amorality and treachery of these spooks—I felt more at ease in the world of guys like HJK.

  I got so intimate with this guy that, even though I couldn’t speak Dari or Baluchi properly and his English was very basic, I felt I could occasionally open up to him.

  There was warmth to his manner, openness in his laughter, a sophisticated charm. A skeptic could stay it was all charm—a master manipulator at work. But I’d like to believe there was something deeper at play.

  Most important to me, on a personal level, was the fact that he was respectful of me as a Christian. I reciprocated by always showing him the utmost respect for his Islamic faith. I know all the tricks and ploys of undercover work; this wasn’t a mask, a persona, something either of us was faking. He carried those iridescent stone prayer beads—the Arabic translation is actually “worry beads”—and was always fingering them, silently reciting the names of Allah.

  I’d inwardly smile as he did it, too, thinking, This guy is just a version of me. I remembered the countless hours I’d spent fingering my own rosary, growing up with the Jesuits in St. Louis.

  One thing made HJK unusual, especially among devout Muslims: He was constantly inquisitive. He did not judge. Though he understood next to nothing about Christianity, he was always asking me to explain more about what I believed. Again, going back to one of those principles I’d learned in Honolulu with Don Carstensen, I was finding that area within HJK’s personality that was still malleable, with which I could connect using genuine empathy.

  • • •

  It was a cloudy and moonless Saturday night when I came to find him again at Shiraz. At his request, I brought my lap
top—there was a copy of The Passion of the Christ on the hard drive. We took our place in the usual back table—we’d always stay in these restaurants for three or four hours at one sitting—surrounded by the paintings of those beautiful black Persian eyes . . .

  Before leaving for Kabul, I’d done some intensive prepping of my own, studied all the suras in the Koran. I’d gone with the Egyptian edition that is considered by many authorities the most faithful English-language version. I’d read and reread the passage that specifically calls for the destruction and enslavement of non-Muslims—Jews and Christians.

  But when I asked him about it, HJK would shrug and smile, never venturing into the darker interpretations of his religion. He’d always talk about the goodness of the Koran—to him it was all about the love of Allah. He never wanted me to ask him about the extreme beliefs of the Taliban, or what I saw as the religion’s intolerant or violent side.

  We were eating our seemingly endless courses of kebabs, vegetables, and naan. Every few minutes, he felt the need to offer up a reassurance.

  “I do believe in Isa—in Jesus,” he’d say.

  We were at the Garden of Gethsemane scene—the temptation was starting in earnest—and he asked me to stop. I hit the pause button on the laptop.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I’ve been there,” I told him.

  “Jerusalem?”

  “The Garden of Gethsemane.”

  “It’s still there?”

  “Sure. On the Mount of Olives. Right on that very spot—I fell to my knees and prayed.”

  I didn’t tell him that the first time had been while I’d been deep cover, working the Kayed Berro heroin case that had taken me from Paris to Cairo and on to Jerusalem.

  “Daud’s city,” Haji Juma Khan said.

  “Daud?” At first I thought he meant my dear friend the general . . . Took me a moment to realize he was talking about the psalmist.

  “We revere Daud,” he added. “In the Koran, he is both nabi and rasul: prophet and messenger of Allah. So is his son, King Suleiman.”

  As he said it, my mind flashed back—back to St. Louis, through wind-whipped clouds of fine snow, back to the brick church on Nottingham Avenue. I was eight years old, sitting in the pews of St. Gabriel’s, bathed in the turquoise and amber and red beams from the stained glass windows that my godfather, Jim, had recently repaired.

  Mr. Fuller was straightening the hymnals in the next pew. He saw me struggling with the pages of First Samuel, smiled, walked over, and told me that David—long before becoming king—was the first undercover agent.

  “Undercover? King David?” I said, incredulous.

  “Yes,” he said. “First undercover in history. Read that verse again, Eddie.”

  Sure enough, it was there: David, guileful as Odysseus, adopting a false persona, pretending to be insane, in order to infiltrate the court of the king of Gath.

  And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath. And he changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard. Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?

  The passage had lodged in my brain like a shard of brilliant, iridescent stained glass—the idea of putting on a persona, infiltrating the inner sanctum of a foreign king.

  Or kingpin. I laughed now under my breath.

  I felt surrounded by all the hundreds of painted Persian eyes in Shiraz. Eyes that seemed to be laughing, too. “Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence?”

  • • •

  “Yes, the City of David,” I said.

  Haji Juma Khan was still squinting at the laptop screen; he cleared his throat, coughed quietly into his fist. The scene, he told me, troubled him. In fact, it made no sense to him, no sense at all.

  Jesus looks forlorn and abandoned and asks:

  “Father, is there no other way?” That phrase knocked HJK off guard, rattling around as he shook his head. He wouldn’t let me unpause the DVD. My version of The Passion was Farsi overdubbed, and HJK stared at me, repeating the phrase.

  “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.”

  “I know,” I told him. “It’s hard—a lot of Christians can’t wrap their heads around it either. The battle was not won at Calvary on the cross. The battle was won in Gethsemane. You see, at that moment, he could still easily have escaped into the desert, then circled up to Galilee and been safe. He could have escaped. But in the Garden, he asks his Father, three times, ‘Are you sure? Is there any other way?’ Because he knew what he would have to endure. Three times, he’s asking his Father, ‘Is there no other way?’ That’s what he means by saying, ‘If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.’”

  Haji Juma Khan kept squinting at me.

  “We do not accept his godliness—Allah is one,” he said. “But for you, he is the King of the Universe?”

  “He is.”

  He tore into another piece of naan—fresh and puffy and lightly fragrant of olive oil—mulling over his thoughts carefully before speaking.

  “But if this is the Son of God,” he said, “why would his Father put him through this ordeal?”

  He couldn’t fathom the concept of God sending his Son to earth to be tortured and butchered for mankind’s salvation.

  “Tell me: Does God not love his Son?”

  I shut my mouth—and let him talk. The questions and commentary flowed from his mouth in a stream: some Dari, some English. One more cardinal rule when you’re undercover: Never enter into an unnecessary debate. You nod, you listen, and you draw out your subjects’ thoughts. You don’t need to hear your own views. You need to understand how their brains operate.

  “No, it does not make sense,” he kept saying. “If God did love his Son, why make him suffer such an agony?”

  I sipped the dregs of my red wine, hoping the waiter would notice and discreetly top off my glass.

  I stared back at Haji Juma Khan for a long time. The restaurant was silent but for the sounds of chewing, forks and knives scraping on plates. Now those hundreds of Persian eyes on the walls around me seemed to be squinting, questioning, judging. I couldn’t answer him. Without realizing it, HJK had asked the most crucial question of all—one that has led to countless believers doubting their faith. Why would the Father put his Son through such physical and mental torture?

  Why was there no other way?

  • • •

  That Monday morning—in fact, as soon as I got off the IV drip—I’d been called into a private meeting with Ambassador Neumann to discuss our strategy.

  “Ed,” he said, “we’re seriously worried that this is going to be another Tet Offensive. You’ve read the intel—all the reports about these foreign fighters coming into Kabul, stockpiling weapons and detonators for IEDs.”

  The ambassador made a special request—a highly unusual assignment.

  Since I’d become so tight with HJK, I had unprecedented access: With him at my side, I could go out, undercover, unaccompanied by any other DEA agents, and visit various mosques throughout Afghanistan. I was the only American who could travel freely to the dozens and dozens of mosques in Kabul and get an eyeball assessment: Were there foreign fighters amassing in the mosques before Ramadan? If so, that would be strong evidence of a coordinated attack on the embassy.

  I didn’t mind the mission. Dressing as a Haji was something I’d done often enough, and working undercover with HJK was becoming second nature to me now. What made all the difference in the world—at least for Haji Juma Khan—is that I had to do it by myself, wi
thout any other Americans. No bodyguards, no other agents, no translators. Together we went from mosque to mosque—sometimes more than six or seven in one day; I was always looking for signs of unrest. Groups of jihadists stashed inside the mosques. I was always looking for the typical foreign fighter: Saudis, Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians, Egyptians, Lebanese.

  Why would a young Arab even be in Kabul? They damn sure weren’t there to enlist in the Taliban. The Taliban wouldn’t even accept them. Though an asymmetrical counterinsurgency, the Talibs fight more or less like a conventional army—albeit one with morals, and tactics, from the Bronze Age. The Taliban is proud, in its own way, of engaging in a homegrown war against the invading infidels. They don’t want the help of these Arabic-speaking outsiders.

  No, these smuggled-in Arabs—almost all young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six—were there for one mission, brainwashed into believing they must martyr themselves as suicide bombers. Of the dozens of suicide bombings, mostly VBIEDs, I witnessed in Afghanistan, I can’t remember a single occasion when the suicide bomber was a native-born Afghan; they were almost all carried out by these Arabs who’d been smuggled into Afghanistan.

  In tandem with our counter-narcotics work, my friend General Daud and I had spent hours studying maps and classified intel reports to work out the logistics. The Arab jihadists were being smuggled by Al Qaeda in an elaborate pipeline: through Iran, then across the border into Pakistan. They gathered and got mission assignments in the Pakistani city of Quetta—the hotbed of radical jihadists—then traveled via caravan down into Kandahar Province, and were finally stashed in safe houses in Kabul. During our counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan, we raided dozens of these safe houses, arrested many Arabs for possession of detonators—rigged cell phones that would ignite a massive suicide explosion the minute the phone was engaged.