“My name is Roger Ferris.” The words sounded rough and misshapen, as if they had been pulled out of his gut. “I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Ferris stared at the floor. He cradled the stump of his finger in his good hand as if he feared someone were about to chop off another. Hani gruffly commanded Ferris to speak Arabic and finish with his story. Ferris started up again slowly in his weary, language-school Arabic.
“I am Roger Ferris. I work for the CIA. This is my confession. For many years, I have been part of an operation to penetrate Al Qaeda. We tried to trick the Muslim people into following our agent. We apologize to all the Muslim people.”
Ferris stopped and looked fearfully away from the camera, toward Hani. At that, the Jordanian slapped Ferris hard on the cheek. Ferris groaned, and not simply for the camera. Hani had struck him with considerable force. His cheek was reddening from the stinging of the blow.
“Say the name,” shouted Hani. “Who was your agent?”
Ferris struggled to find the words. His eyes darted back and forth. He put his mangled hand to his face.
“Our agent was a Syrian. His name is Karim al-Shams. He calls himself Suleiman the Magnificent. He pretended to be Al Qaeda’s planner of operations. But all along, he was working for the CIA. We apologize to all the Muslim people. We do the work of the devil. We apologize to all the Muslim people.”
The hand swept toward Ferris once more. This time, Hani hit him so hard he knocked Ferris from his chair to the floor. He lay there moaning until Hani turned off the video.
“Jesus,” said Ferris, massaging the wound on his cheek after Hani had untied his wrists and sat him back in the chair. “That was pretty fucking good.”
A CYPRIOT doctor was summoned to attend to Ferris. Hani insisted on it. He had understood the need for brutality on camera, but he was mortified that he had hit Ferris so hard he had drawn blood. He asked Ferris to take an hour to recover, and fed him kebabs and rice. He offered arak, too, but Ferris refused. The most important part of his plan was coming and he needed a clear head, however bruised.
Ferris changed into prison garb: simple gray trousers and tunic. He walked with Hani to a large interrogation room that had three chairs. Ferris sat down in one and waited while he was bound once again, hand and feet. Then he was left alone in the room. He couldn’t see the video camera, but he knew it was there behind the two-way mirror, focused tight on the chair next to him.
Suleiman arrived ten minutes later, hobbling between two guards. He was cuffed and manacled, and the guards pushed him roughly into the chair next to Ferris. He didn’t recognize the American at first, but when he saw who it was, he muttered an oath. Ferris looked up, his face far more battered than Suleiman’s.
“You are Fares, the CIA man,” said Suleiman. “What are you doing here, dog?”
Ferris stammered his words as if from the pain. He only needed to get a few sentences from Suleiman, just a few dozen phrases, and he would have it.
“You were wrong about me,” he croaked. Then his head slumped down as if from exhaustion. He didn’t speak, except for an occasional low moan, as he waited for Suleiman to draw him out. Thirty seconds passed, a minute. Ferris was beginning to worry that Suleiman wouldn’t take the bait, but eventually he spoke again.
“Why are you here?” Suleiman repeated.
“They caught me,” said Ferris. “They made me confess.”
“So it is true? You are a Muslim? You were really working with us?”
“What?” Ferris strained, as if he could not hear, from the pain.
“You are a CIA man, but you were working with us?”
“Together?” Ferris groaned it as a question.
“Yes. Together. You were working with us, Fares?”
“Yes. All along.”
“And all the CIA reports were true?”
“Yes, all true. You were inside the CIA.”
“W’Allah!” said Suleiman with a smile. “I was inside the CIA. That is a satisfaction to me. Thanks be to God.”
“Thanks be to God,” repeated Ferris.
“We could have done great things together, for the umma. So many things.”
Ferris groaned, and let his head slump back toward his chest. He had enough now. He didn’t want to overplay his hand. Suleiman asked him another question, but he just moaned.
Ten minutes later, Hani entered the room in his mask and took the third chair and shouted to Ferris and Suleiman to pay attention. Hani spoke a rough Arabic dialect, not his usual elegant voice, but in the manner an Al Qaeda operative might use in interrogating a former chief who has betrayed the cause.
“Look at me, Karim al-Shams. The great ‘Suleiman.’ Were you getting information from the CIA man Roger Ferris?”
Suleiman laughed. It was a show of independence. Hani slapped him, far harder than he had done with Ferris. Then he kicked him hard in the shin, and the knee and the thigh. The hidden camera caught Hani’s arm and leg, but not his face.
“Did you receive information from the CIA man Roger Ferris?” Hani repeated.
“Yes,” groaned Suleiman. “And I am glad of it. Thanks be to God. This was our victory.”
“Why did you do this terrible thing?” snarled Hani.
“We are proud of it. We are proud of this operation with the American.”
“You insult the Muslim people. I put my shoe in your mouth. You have brought shame to the umma.”
“I am not ashamed. I am proud. It is a great thing we did for the Muslim people, this operation with the American. It shows we can do anything.”
Hani punched Suleiman full in the face, as if he couldn’t control his rage. Blood spurted from his nose. Hani cursed him and got up and left. Behind the two-way mirror, the cameraman clicked off the video. They had all they needed now.
One of Hani’s men came to untie Ferris. When his arms and legs were free, he stood over Suleiman and smiled down at him. That was all it took for Suleiman to realize what had just happened. There was a look of utter despair on his face. He knew, suddenly.
“You lose,” said Ferris.
Suleiman cried out in anguish, the howl of a broken spirit. They had him. He had worked with a CIA man. He was worse than dead.
FERRIS HIRED a taxi in Beirut and told the driver he wanted to go to Damascus, three hours away over the crest of Mt. Lebanon. It was a Subaru, a comfortable enough car. He had wanted to take a serveece group taxi, but Hani had advised against it. It would seem odd for an American to be a passenger with Turkish laborers and Sudanese chambermaids. Ferris should find a good car and sit in the back, like a proper American. In truth, Hani hadn’t wanted Ferris to go to Damascus at all. Let someone else deliver the tape to Al Jazeera. But Ferris had insisted. If there was trouble, he was the only one who could explain it. His presence certified the tape’s provenance—he was the proof of its authenticity. Hani knew it was true, but still he protested. He offered to send a Special Forces team as bodyguards, but Ferris refused. That would make the trip more dangerous, not less. Hani agreed that Ferris was right, but he was unhappy. He did not want the bomb Ferris was carrying to explode in his hand.
The Subaru left the Beirut waterfront and began the steep climb through the hillside towns of Aley and Bhamdoun and up to the crest. There was deep snow atop Mt. Lebanon, and the roads near the summit were icy, even on this sunny day. They snaked up the highest ridge, past the Lebanese army checkpoints, and then rumbled down toward the town of Chtaura and the Bekaa Valley. Ferris began to feel a clutch of fear in his stomach as he neared the Syrian border. As long as he had been in the Middle East, he had dreaded this frontier. This was a point of no return. On the other side, you were at the mercy of hidden hands.
Hani had given him a Jordanian diplomatic passport. In theory, that should have made things easy. But the Syrians were curious. Why would this man “Fares” be traveling on behalf of Jordan? Their information systems were too primitive to do any serious search of another identity, bu
t still, they were suspicious. They asked Ferris how long he would be in Syria, and Ferris answered that he expected it would be only a few hours. He had a delivery to make, and then he would be returning to Lebanon. That seemed to reassure the captain of the border police. Ferris might be trouble, but he wouldn’t be trouble for long.
The car traversed the anti-Lebanon range along the Syrian border and in thirty minutes they were on the outskirts of Damascus. The city stretched for miles along the Syrian plain, a jewel of the East that had lost its sparkle. Ferris gave the driver the address of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Abu Rummaneh, near the French Embassy. The office was in a bland, unadorned concrete building. Like most of Damascus it seemed to have fallen out of a time capsule from the 1960s. When they arrived, Ferris told the driver to wait; he would only be a few minutes and then they would return to Beirut.
Ferris clutched his little parcel with the original of the videocassette wrapped in brown paper. He had a copy in his coat pocket. He rang the bell marked “Al Jazeera,” and when a secretary opened the office door, he asked for the office manager. A stocky man came out, wearing a George Raft double-breasted suit and a stained tie. The office manager scanned Ferris dubiously.
Ferris cleared his throat. He didn’t want to seem nervous, but he couldn’t help it. This was the end of a very long road.
“I have a tape for you, from Raouf,” said Ferris.
“Who?” asked the station manager, backing away.
“From Raouf. That is the name he uses. He told me that you would be expecting a tape from him. A special tape that would be of great interest to your viewers.”
The station manager looked ashen. He retreated quickly back into his office, and Ferris heard him talking on the telephone. His voice sounded submissive. Ferris heard him repeat the name “Raouf” several times, but he couldn’t make out anything else. Eventually the manager returned. He looked relieved, and it was soon obvious why. He was getting rid of his troublesome guest. The manager handed Ferris a slip of paper, on which he had written an address in the Old City.
“You go see Hassan, if you have tape from Raouf,” he said. “Not here. This address.” He motioned with his hands, as if to shoo Ferris away from his door.
“Let me leave a copy for you,” said Ferris, taking the cassette from his pocket and placing it on the table. “If anything happens to me and I cannot make my delivery, you will want to see it. It is very important, for all the Arabs. It is a special gift from Raouf.”
The manager looked unhappy to be left with this worryingly important gift. But he didn’t try to give it back.
THE ADDRESS was in Bab Touma, in the Christian quarter of the Old City, of all places. Perhaps that was another form of taqiyya. The driver navigated the weaving traffic and beeping horns along Baghdad Street until he got to the turn for Bab Touma. They inched down an old street, past remnants of the ancient city wall. They finally reached a cobbled lane that was too narrow for the taxi. The driver motioned with a flick of his wrist. The address was down there somewhere, amid the donkey carts and dark alleys. Ferris told the driver to wait; he would return in a few minutes.
Ferris set out on foot. His leg was throbbing from the shrapnel wounds, but he willed the pain to go away. There was a stream of Syrians in the narrow street, out doing their shopping. A butcher was chopping a raw hunk of lamb in the open air; a few doors down, two young men were looking at a Syrian girlie magazine in a barbershop while they waited to get their hair cut. A couple was shopping for a wedding ring in a jewelry store. Dark-eyed children were coming out of the playground of an Armenian school down the street. Ferris felt as if he were disappearing into the anonymous swarm of this Arab city, but he knew that wasn’t so. He stuck out like scar tissue. In every window Ferris saw a brooding icon of Jesus, a dark Eastern Jesus, one who truly knew what it was to suffer.
He saw the address just ahead. There was a little shop on the first floor, selling music and videocassettes under a colorful awning. Next to it was the entrance to a walkup apartment. There was a faint light upstairs, above the video shop. Ferris stopped and looked up and down the street. The bustling crowd seemed to have thinned. People were returning to their shops and homes. Perhaps they knew. That was the thing about a place like Damascus: It had a secret language. The moment something happened, or was about to happen, everyone knew it instantly. That was how people survived.
Ferris stuck his head in the door. It was dark inside, so he pushed the button for the hall light. A woman in a far doorway backed toward the darkness.
“Where does Hassan live?” asked Ferris.
The woman jerked her head, pointing her eyes upstairs, and then closed her door. Ferris mounted the creaky stairs. Each floorboard seemed loose underfoot, and the wooden banister wobbled. At the top of the stairs it was dark, and Ferris couldn’t find the light. He fumbled about, his palm feeling along the wall for a switch, when a door opened. A man’s bearded face was half illuminated by the light behind.
“Are you Hassan?” asked Ferris. “I have something for Hassan.”
The bearded man didn’t answer. He motioned for Ferris to follow him into the dimly lit room. Ferris didn’t like anything about the scene, but he had no choice now. It had all come down to this. He had to make the delivery; that was all. The tape would do the rest. Behind him, he heard the click of the door lock.
Inside the apartment stood another man. Like the first, he had a thick beard. He was wearing a knitted prayer cap. From the cool intensity of his eyes, he might have been Suleiman’s brother.
“I am Hassan,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I have a tape for you, from Raouf,” said Ferris. “Raouf told me to give it to you, for Al Jazeera. That was his last wish. He said that I should give it to you, and that you would be waiting for it.”
“You are the American? The one Raouf was waiting for?”
“Yes,” answered Ferris. He was being drawn in deeper, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they take the tape.
Hassan nodded. He knew who Ferris was—that was why he had opened the door—but he was unhappy. “We were waiting for this tape a few days ago. But then we lost contact. Where is Raouf? Why haven’t we heard from him?”
“I don’t know,” answered Ferris. “I just know he wanted you to have this.” He handed the brown paper parcel to his host. Hassan carefully unwrapped it and then looked at the cassette. He checked some markings that were written in Arabic on the side. They must have been code words. Hassan read them twice and then nodded.
“Thanks to the God,” he said.
“Thanks God,” repeated Ferris. “I will go now. Raouf said I should leave when I gave you the tape.”
“No,” said Hassan. “First we look at the tape.”
A liquid heat flooded into Ferris. The dimensions of the room seemed to shrink. He had to push the room back somehow before it crushed him.
“I must leave,” said Ferris, backing toward the door. “When you see the tape, you will understand. This must be shown on Al Jazeera.”
“We will decide that,” said Hassan. He handed the tape to the other man, who turned on the television set in the little living room. It had a built-in VCR player. In a few moments they would put the cassette in the player and the images would be on the screen. Ferris knew that he was running out of time.
“I have to leave,” he repeated. “Now.”
Hassan moved behind Ferris to block the door. This is it, thought Ferris. He stole a glance at the window and remembered the shop below. He thought he remembered that it had an awning.
“Play the tape,” said Hassan. His assistant put it into the slot, and an image began to flicker on the screen.
Ferris moved instinctively, ignoring his bad leg, his bruised muscles, the fear that was knotted in his limbs and joints. He turned so that his back faced the window and hurled himself at full force against the frame, shielding his head as best he could. He heard the wood of the window frame splinter and crack again
st the force of his body, and felt the shards of glass slicing his skin like a thousand paper cuts. And then he was floating through the air, not sure if his body would hit the sharp stone of the cobbled pavement or the soft cloth of the awning. It took only an instant, but the next thing he felt was a bounce against the awning frame, just enough to break his fall, and then he was on the ground.
People in the streets were screaming, pointing at Ferris. He didn’t realize why until he put his hand to the back of his head and pulled it back, covered in blood. He had only a few more seconds before Hassan and his man would be down in the street after him. He tried to stand and staggered for a moment before gaining his balance. And then he began to run down the street, moving as fast as his bad leg would allow. People were still screaming, but he didn’t care. The best thing that could happen to him was that the Syrian police would arrest him. But they left him alone.
As Ferris neared the gate of Bab Touma, he realized that Hassan and his man weren’t following, either. Where were they? And then it was obvious. They had started the tape just as Ferris had made his leap. They had been transfixed by the image of Suleiman: shaken, stunned, paralyzed. The poison pill had touched the first node. Now it would continue and continue, passing up every nerve and synapse until it reached the center of the center. And then the lights would begin to go out, and the system would begin to recoil and wither, the skin would peel back against itself.
FERRIS’S DRIVER was waiting just where he had left him. He had a towel in the trunk, and Ferris used it to wipe away the blood. Instinct told him to stay away from a Syrian hospital or the American Embassy. He directed the driver to the French Embassy, the best and most modern in the city. He explained to the French military officer at the front gate that he needed to see the DGSE station commander. Perhaps it was the blood, perhaps the look of absolute determination in Ferris’s eye, but the French soldier invited him inside, behind the embassy’s heavy door, while he made a call. The DGSE man arrived a minute later with a nurse who cleaned Ferris’s wounds in the embassy clinic and called a doctor. He had broken two ribs in the fall, and he needed more than forty stitches to close all the cuts, but he had been lucky. Ferris explained a little of what he had done—not much, but enough that the DGSE man wouldn’t look ridiculous when he filed his cable. When the Frenchman asked why he hadn’t gone to the U.S. Embassy, Ferris answered, “I’m retired,” and the Frenchman smiled sympathetically.
Body of Lies Page 33