The Company We Keep

by Robert Baer

  It’s a little after eleven before the sheikh finally leads us into dinner. I stop in the doorway, not knowing what to say. A twenty-foot banquet table sits covered with gold platters, towering mountains of lamb and saffron rice, at least twenty different bowls of things like quail eggs, caviar, and sweetmeats. The sheikh is delighted and claps his hands like a child.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Edge … there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

  —Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels

  Beirut, Lebanon: BOB

  The taxi drops us off in front of the Albergo Hotel, a restored Ottoman mansion in the old Christian Beirut suburb of Ashrafiyah, and we run to the door with coats pulled up over our heads against sheets of frigid rain. The hip Italian restaurant inside is packed with young Lebanese out for a fun night. We don’t see Qasem and Leila until they wave to us from a table. Qasem’s in a suit, Leila all in cream, with a pair of large teardrop diamond earrings.

  We’ve come to really like Qasem and Leila. He’s earnest, but at the same time always ready with a genuine laugh. Leila, a professor, is charming, beautiful, and smart. After our dinner at the sheikh’s house in Damascus, they invited us over for dinner, and tonight we’re reciprocating.

  As soon as we order drinks, Qasem looks to Dayna and Leila. “Do you two need to freshen up?” Leila takes the cue and gets up, but Dayna stays. Qasem waits a moment, then half turns in his seat to make sure Leila isn’t on her way back. “There’s this business plan I think we should mull over,” he says. He stops again, obviously considering how he’s going to put this.

  “Look,” he says, moving a bottle of wine out of his way. “We will borrow ten million from the sheikh, for the bank he wants.”

  “But we don’t know anything about banking,” I say.

  “No, of course. That’s not the point. We take the money from the sheikh”—Qasem stops again and looks around the restaurant to make sure no one is listening in—“and not pay it back.”

  “Why not the full twenty million while we’re at it?” I ask, trying to pass it off as a joke.

  “You don’t understand.” He pauses again, dropping his voice to a whisper. “We borrow the money and then have him taken care of.”

  I can’t hear the rest of what Qasem says because of a ripple of laughter from the next table, and it’s too dark to see Dayna’s expression—but I can imagine it. Like me, she’s probably thinking that the sheikh might be eccentric, but he certainly doesn’t deserve what Qasem seems to have planned for him.

  Qasem must see the expression on my face. “It’s not my idea. It’s Badar’s. It’s crazy, no?”

  Badar is a Syrian-American we all know. He’s always struck me as slippery. He was the one who sold us the cell phone that stopped working when I was in Paris meeting Carlos.

  I catch sight of Leila coming back. “Don’t pay any attention to Badar,” I say. “He has a sick sense of humor.”

  On the ride home after dinner, neither Dayna nor I say anything until we’re out on the terrace of our apartment. I pull two chairs together to talk.

  “This doesn’t exactly sound like a good business plan to me,” she says.

  I know what’s going through her mind. While we never considered going into business with either the sheikh or Qasem, the very idea that anyone would think we’d be interested in murder for profit is unnerving. We may have spent our lives in a fairly rough trade, but we’re not killers.

  “This cannot end well,” Dayna says. “We need to leave here.”

  She’s right, of course.

  Two days later we do leave Beirut, abandoning our apartment, our furniture, and two months’ rent. As soon as we land in Geneva, I call the sheikh. He seems already to know people are plotting his murder. His driver died when the brakes mysteriously failed on the sheikh’s new van. Before I hang up, I tell him to be careful.

  Like a lot of things in life, it will take time for us to see Beirut for what it’s been. Both of our lives have turned so many times over the years that it’s been hard to tell the major shifts from the minor ones. But later I’ll see Beirut as the biggest of them. I went there looking for a raw look at the “real” Middle East, one outside the bubble of the CIA. I suppose I was even looking for adventure. But what I found was more trouble, the kind that convinced me I should leave the CIA. I, of all people, should have known that adventure and trouble go hand in hand. But, apparently, I would need one more lesson.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Marathon Sparks Block 32 Feeding Frenzy—U.S. oil producer Marathon Oil is selling a 20% stake in Angola’s deepwater Block 32 that could fetch almost $2 billion, attracting bids from China’s big three oil companies, India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Brazil’s Petrobras, sources close to the matter said.

  —www.upstreamonline.com/live/article160847.ece

  New York City: BOB

  My son Robert has now been in the shower for twenty minutes, and we have to be out the door in five more or he’ll be late for school. I knock. “Hey, Slick, we gotta get going.” Having Robert living with us—he’s now twelve—has taken a bit of adjusting. He came to us when his boarding school in southern France called me shortly after we got to Geneva from Beirut. The school said it might not be the best fit for Robert; he’d fallen in with an Algerian gang. They put him on a train the next morning, and I met him at the station. With his beat-up suitcase and wrinkled blazer, he was a good match for his nomad father. Dayna, understandably feeling unmoored and in need of a real-world skill, was in the middle of applying to law school, and I took him under my wing. Better late to fatherhood than never.

  Robert exits the bathroom in his towel, followed by a cloud of steam, and runs to his bedroom. He’s back in a minute, fully dressed. I don’t know how he does it. He looks at the bowl of cereal I put out for him and says he’ll eat on the walk to school. Then he goes to the cupboard, reaches in the back until he finds a granola bar, and shoves it in his jacket pocket. He runs for the door.

  “The rabbit?” I say.

  He taps his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Who could ever forget the rabbit?”

  When Robert first found out that a rabbit was part of his new family, he was speechless. His wonder only grew when I told him the story about the ill-starred rabbit in Beirut, and how Dayna had searched the city until she found this one in the bird market. Traveling with the creature presented certain challenges. For example, when we were all flying to New York, KLM wouldn’t allow the rabbit to fly in the cabin, worried it might escape and attack the cockpit. Dayna had no choice but to fly separately on Air France, a company that allows rabbits in the cabin. But Robert has grown fond of the rabbit and doesn’t mind that it’s his responsibility now.

  He runs into his bedroom, looks under the bed, then dashes into our room and gently coaxes the rabbit out from under our bed. As he puts it in the cage, I go to find my folder.

  Out on Second Avenue, Robert asks, “The bus or walk?”

  “Let’s walk. It’s your birthday.”

  “It’s tomorrow.”

  He likes to walk, especially when I accompany him all the way to school.

  “So what’s for tomorrow?” he asks.

  “Oh, I don’t know, I was sorta thinking of the opera—or we could stay home and read.”

  “Come on.”

  “First we’ll go up the Empire State building.”

  “And then dinner?”

  “Wait until you see what Dayna has for you for your birthday.”

  “I already know.”

  By 42nd Street we’re behind schedule and I pick up the pace.

  “What is it again that you’re doing today?” Robert asks, hurrying to keep up.

  “A big, important business deal,” I say, teasing him.

  “Dressed like that?” I’m in jeans and an old slicker with a ripped pocket.

  “They’re friends.”

 
; After I drop off Robert at school, I cut over to Fifth Avenue to kill time window-shopping and browsing in Barnes & Noble. I’m looking at new fiction when my cell phone rings. I push through the doors and am back out on to Fifth Avenue.

  “How’s your schedule?” It’s Chuck, the investment banker I’m meeting.

  “Pretty clear.”

  “Look, I’m jammed up. Mind if we meet at eleven thirty?”

  “That’s good.”

  “And better yet, let’s do it in front of McCormick and Schmick’s, find a place to get a cup of coffee. I got a lunch date there later.”

  I get to McCormick & Schmick’s early. At eleven thirty I stick my head in to make sure Chuck didn’t somehow slip by me. He’s not there. Everybody’s late in New York, I think. I wait outside, checking my folder again to make sure I didn’t forget any papers.

  At five to twelve I pick out Chuck, a big man, borderline fat, his shoulder curved forward, negotiating the noontime crowd on Sixth Avenue. When he’s up to me, he pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket to wipe the sweat off of his face. “Jesus, I’m sorry.” He takes a couple of deep breaths. “I had to batter my way out of a meeting.”

  Chuck looks up and down Sixth Avenue, obviously for his lunch date. “Lunch is at noon.”

  “I got everything here,” I say, tapping the mauve folder.

  Chuck looks at it, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Chuck, very quick. This is an offer for Angola’s deepwater Block 32. I mean ten percent of it. No middlemen—other than me, that is.”

  “I don’t know what Block 32 is.”

  “A megafield, a new one. It’s carried interest. Total puts down the capital and lifts it. I don’t know, maybe a 120 thousand barrels a day.”

  I know that I’m out of my depth, trying to sell one of the biggest oil properties in the world. But, as much as I understand it, it seems pretty straightforward: the French major oil company Total drills the oil, pumps it, and markets it. Whoever buys the 10 percent I’m selling gets a percentage of the money flying through the door. It’s just a matter of determining what 10 percent of the block is worth, which is why I called Chuck.

  Chuck motions for me to give him the folder. He opens it and glances at the first fax.

  “I know this sounds weird,” I say, “but I have an exclusive on it for the next three months. It’s a friend-of-a-friend sort of deal. You know the strange people I know.”

  Chuck closes the folder and puts it under his arm. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Chuck spots three men in suits coming toward us. “That’s them. I’ll call you.” Chuck turns and walks away to meet his three lunch partners at the entrance of the restaurant.

  I never do hear back from Chuck on Block 32, although it did seem to me like an interesting offer. But I have to admit I’m not all that surprised Chuck passed; I’m not much good at selling things.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  This provincial capital Ramadi is the eastern terminus of a highway across the desert from the Mediterranean Sea. The town was founded in 1869 by the local rulers of the Ottoman Empire in order to control the nomadic Dulaym tribes of the region. The British won an important victory over the Turks there in 1917. Ramadi was established for political reasons, but proved vital as a stopover on the caravan routes between Baghdad and the cities of the Levant.

  —www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/Iraq/ramadiyah.htm

  Washington, D.C.: DAYNA

  The day I finish taking the bar exam I come home to find a message for Bob from ABC News on our answering machine. “Your contract’s ready.” It’s a woman’s voice I’ve never heard. “Can you leave for Iraq next week?”

  Iraq? Going to Iraq isn’t exactly a detail that someone you’re living with should keep to himself. Especially when the United States is about to invade the country. I’m both pissed and hurt that he didn’t tell me. I call him on his cell phone. It’s off, so I leave a message: “Have a great time in Baghdad.” Period.

  It’s just like Bob to make travel or work arrangements and then fill me in at the last minute. He didn’t tell me until years later that he’d promised the crazy Argentine oil guy Carlos we’d go to Afghanistan, and even then he dropped it into a conversation purely for color: “Well, we almost went to work with the Taliban in Kabul.” We almost did what? Now the same thing is happening. It especially hurts because we’re just starting to put down roots.

  We moved down from New York to Washington for me to go to law school. We bought a tiny carriage house on Capitol Hill that we filled with two Labradors. Bob was trying to learn an entirely new profession, turning himself into a writer.

  There was a setback to our little family when Robert’s State Department–employed mother was assigned to Pakistan, and, given a choice, Robert went to live with her. We missed Robert a lot when he left. He and I both liked to bake, and we made elaborate frosted cakes together. Bob and Robert had boy-chats on the way to school. But I knew the decision was right for him, and frankly I was a little jealous that he was off on a grand adventure of his own. And now Bob is going on one too.

  It’s not that I blame Bob for wanting to see the war, to be there for Saddam’s end. He was always fascinated by the man. But I need to make him pay for not checking with me first, so when he comes home that night, I pick a fight. Well, not a fight, more like an accounting.

  “How could you make plans without even telling me?” I say.

  “Well, I didn’t think it was serious.”

  “But there’s a contract.”

  “Well, I know … but these things rarely work out … and you know one thing leads to another.”

  He tells me that ABC’s plan is to send him and a cameraman across the border to help film a documentary on the last days of Saddam. They’ll stay with Bob’s Iraqi friends at their compound near Ramadi, to capture their reaction to Saddam’s fall.

  Somewhat mollified, we go to Las Placitas around the corner on Eighth Street, where the margaritas put the day’s problems far behind you. On the walk there, I admit to him that I’m not so much mad because he didn’t tell me about the ABC deal as envious that he has this offer to film a war and I don’t.

  “I’d be envious too,” he says.

  But things have a way of working out. The next day ABC calls and tells Bob they can’t find a single cameraman willing to go to Ramadi with him. He immediately volunteers me for the job, convincing ABC that in the CIA I’d become a whiz with small cameras—and it’s only a small step to TV cameras. Buying it, ABC sets a date to train me in New York to operate the miniature camera that the reality television shows are using now.

  Dropping into the middle of a war in the Middle East is not exactly the real world I thought I’d enter when I went to law school, but it does make me believe that maybe I did leave the CIA with a few transferable skills, after all.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Iraqi tribal structure consists of a confederation, tribe, clan, lineage, and the extended family. A confederation is a group of tribes who are related to each other by shared geographic residence, historical ties, kinship, ethnicity, or some other factor. The tribal confederation is not based on kinship rights. A tribe is a group of clans which vary in size, anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand members. A tribe is usually named after a founding ancestor who in some cases may actually be a fictitious figure. A clan is a group of lineages related through a common ancestor. The lineage is the number of extended families related through a common male ancestor. Traditionally, extended families live within the same village, work on shared land, and act collectively as political and military units.

  —First Lieutenant Jonathan M. Davis, Military Intelligence

  Professional Bulletin

  Washington, D.C.: BOB

  I’ll tell Dayna later, but the truth is that getting into Iraq before our troops arrive comes down to the strength of my friendship with Marwan, the man I drove with Robert through a Washington blizzard to see. That night, after Dayna
and I first talk about the Iraq trip, I try to fall asleep, but wind up lying awake, making an accounting of my own.

  Marwan and I first met in Paris in September 1990, a month after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He was staying at the Meurice, an elegant old-world hotel facing the Tuileries Gardens and the Seine River. Marwan had the penthouse suite, the only room on the seventh floor.

  Marwan called down for a bottle of wine, and we went outside on the room’s private terrace to enjoy the sunset and watch the tour boats and barges ply the Seine. Not five minutes later a waiter let himself out onto the terrace with the bottle of wine and two glasses, followed by a boy with two chairs and a table. As we watched them set the table with a white linen tablecloth, Marwan started to tell me about himself.

  He first came to Paris in the sixties to work for a Texas oilman. He’d just graduated from Stanford with a degree in petroleum engineering. Marwan would stay with the boss at the Meurice. When the boss went out at night—he kept a mistress in Paris, a ballerina—and Marwan was on his own, he’d wonder where life would take him. Until then he’d never understood the wealth and power that comes with oil.

  Since then, Marwan had spent his life in oil and construction, almost all of it in the Middle East, first in Saudi Arabia and later in Iraq, where he worked for a Sunni tribal chief from Iraq’s Anbar Province. The chief, whose tribe belonged to the Dulaym confederation, was extremely influential in Iraqi politics. The chief was a member of the ruling Ba’ath Party.

  Through Iraq’s modern history, the Dulaym had been a mainstay of every ruling Sunni regime, providing about 25 percent of the noncommissioned officers and soldiers in the Iraqi army. Saddam Hussein, a Sunni like the tribal chief, looked at the Dulaym as a critical source of support. Saddam would push work in the tribal chief’s direction, calculating that the chief’s construction company would come to depend on government contracts.