End of Enemies

by Grant Blackwood

  Salah was old enough that the various factions in the Muslim Quarter paid him little attention. Tonight, three patrols had stopped him at their hajez, or checkpoints—in each case a pair of burned out cars sitting diagonally across the particular street they governed. In each case he had been waved on.

  At last he reached Marcus’s neighborhood. The street was quiet. Rats skittered in the shadows. This was a good neighborhood by Beirut standards; aside from a few bullet scars, most buildings were undamaged. Here a building wasn’t considered uninhabitable until it had collapsed. Beirutis had a sixth sense about the many dangers of their city, structural integrity being only one of them.

  Salah turned the corner, then stopped, ducked back.

  A car sat in front of Marcus’s apartment building. A pair of men, both armed with AK-47s, stood at the curb. Through the curtains of Marcus’s apartment Salah could see shadows moving. The light clicked off.

  Moments later, four men trotted down the building’s front steps. The lookouts waved an all clear, and the group came forward, pushing a man between them.

  Marcus! They shoved him inside the trunk and slammed it shut. The group piled into the car, and it pulled away.

  Forty-five miles east of Beirut in the foothills of the Anti-Lebanese Mountains near the village of Ma’rubun, Abu Azhar sat before the glowing fireplace in his cottage, flipping through a cracked leather photo album.

  The album was ordered chronologically, so many of the older photos were tinted sepia, but the newer ones, the images that should have evoked in him stronger memories, seemed as distant as the older ones. Photos of his mother and father; of brothers and sisters; of the now-abandoned An Nabatiyah refugee camp north of the Litani River; of a group of young men huddled around a table, smiling and drinking.

  Without realizing it, Azhar smiled, a reflex. The images meant nothing to him. He turned the page.

  Here the photos were of a young girl of perhaps two years old surrounded by balloons and streamers, her friends in the background, laughing and blowing noisemakers. A woman bent over the girl’s shoulder, their smiling faces pressed together for the camera.

  Azhar turned to the next page and he felt his heart fill his throat.

  The headline was from Al Quds, an Israeli-Arab newspaper:

  YOUNG GIRL DEAD: AUTHORITIES SUSPECT ABUSE

  Tel Aviv—Authorities today charged a young Levanda couple in the negligent death of their seven-year-old daughter. Though the names of the girl and her family have not yet been disclosed, sources say the cause of death appears to be …

  The next page, another headline, this one from the Jerusalem Post:

  COUPLE SUSPECTED OF CHILD ABUSE FOUND SLAIN

  Tel Aviv—The bodies of Helena and Ira Yakov, who were acquitted last month of the negligent death of their adopted daughter, were found murdered in their apartment yesterday morning. Details of the murder have not been disclosed, but police investigators state the Yakovs both died of single bullet wounds to the head. As yet, neither motives nor suspects have been found. …

  “Abu, why do you do this to yourself?”

  Azhar turned to see his wife sitting in the doorway. She jostled the wheels of her chair and pushed herself into the room. A petite woman of fifty, Elia Azhar would have been beautiful if not for the worry lines creasing her face. Allah, how he loved her. For all she had been through, she never felt sorry for herself but was instead a quiet rock for him.

  “Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked her.

  “You cried out.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Husband, you are killing yourself. It was so long ago. … Please let it be.”

  “I cannot.”

  “You must!” She lashed out, knocking the album to the floor. “Please—”

  “Stop it, Elia.” He gripped her hands. “Stop it.”

  She leaned forward into his lap and began sobbing.

  “It is not over, Elia,” he said. “She was ours. Ours! And you … you are …” Sweet wife ... so forgiving, Azhar thought.

  “Barren,” she finished. “You should find another wife who can give you sons. I will take care of the house and you can—”

  “No,” he replied. “No. Allah be witness, I will not bring another child into this world.”

  After a while, he carried her back to bed and lay beside her until she fell asleep, then returned to the fire. On the floor, the album had flipped open to a photograph he hadn’t seen in years.

  It showed him and another man, a Westerner with coffee-brown hair and laugh-lined, ocean-blue eyes, at a dinner table. Their arms were draped around one another’s shoulders, and they were smiling. The man wore one of those silly hats with the flat top and the tassel … What was it called? Such a ridiculous hat. The scene seemed so familiar, yet so distant, as though he were enjoying someone else’s well-told story. Who was he? Why couldn’t he remember this? Why?

  Azhar closed the album and laid it aside. It didn’t matter. None of it. Only one thing mattered anymore, and before long, that, too, would be over.

  He was awakened by a tapping on the door. He picked up the Makarov pistol from the table and crept to the door. “Yes?”

  “It is Mustafa.”

  Azhar opened the door a crack, saw the man was alone, and let him enter.

  Mustafa al-Baz had been Azhar’s closest friend and ally for four years. A dedicated soldier, al-Baz wore many hats as Azhar’s second-in-command: operations officer, intelligence officer, and chief enforcer.

  “Shu fi?” asked Azhar. What’s going on?

  “He was watching the building in Basta,” said al-Baz. “We caught him near al-Mataf. He was trying to slip across.”

  “Going where?”

  “We don’t know. We searched his apartment but found nothing of use.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We took him to the warehouse.”

  “Good. We must vacate Basta—”

  “I’ve already ordered it.”

  “Have you gotten his name yet?”

  “We’ve just started on him. He claims his name is Marcus.” Al-Baz hesitated. “Abu, I think he’s American.”

  “American!”

  “Or their agent. Also, after we started questioning him, he mentioned a ship.”

  Azhar bolted forward. His teacup clattered to the floor. “What!”

  “We could not get any more; he lost consciousness.”

  “Find out what he knows—quickly. We must know before the final phase.”

  “We may get what we need from him, and we may not. He may have only a small view of his operation. This is common; it is what the Westerners call ‘compartmentalization.’”

  “Then we may need to go to the source.”

  “My thinking as well. For that, I have a thought.”

  “Tell me.”

  Al-Baz did so, briefly outlining his idea.

  Azhar was silent for several minutes. “It is risky.”

  “So is going ahead with the operation blindly. When I was in Khartoum last year, I saw a training transcript from a former KGB officer who specialized in this kind of operation. He is retired but does contract work, I believe. And from what I have heard, he is in Damascus.”

  “And the man on the ground? Who do you have in mind?”

  Al-Baz told him.

  “The timing would be difficult,” said Azhar.

  “Perhaps,” al-Baz said. “But the information we require is simple. Either they know, or they do not. We, too, can play the compartmentalization game. Once we know why this Marcus has come here, we can make the decision. Better to know now, while we can stop it. Once the operation has reached a certain point, it cannot—”

  “Yes, yes, I know.”

  “Besides, I grow tired of being the target. Always Al-mu ammara! Always it is American agents, Mossad—they all think Lebanon is their playground. Perhaps it is time to play our own games.”
>
  Azhar nodded, sharing his deputy’s feelings. Al-mu ammara was a distinctly Lebanese term meaning “the conspiracy.” For decades Lebanon had been the world’s chosen surrogate battlefield. Superpowers played their spy games, tested their weapons, exercised their tactics and strategies, and Lebanon paid in blood and ruination. But truth be told, Azhar was also using Lebanon. But this was different, he told himself. What they were doing was for the good of all. Strife always preceded change. The coming months would either ruin Lebanon or save it.

  Mustafa was right, Azhar decided. They would take the initiative. “I will contact the general. You find the other man and arrange a meeting. Before we go ahead, I want to know if this is feasible.”

  “And Marcus, the agent?”

  “Work on him. But for the time being, he stays alive.”

  Israel

  In his Tel Aviv apartment, Art Stucky, the CIA’S Near East division chief, awoke to the ringing of his phone. He groaned and reached across the nightstand, knocking over an empty bottle of gin. “Fuck …” He fumbled the receiver, found it. “Yeah.”

  “Sir, this is the embassy communications center. We have traffic for you.”

  Stucky looked at the clock: 5:00 A.M. His head pounded. “What kind?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I said what kind!” The voice on the other end sounded young. These college punks were worthless, but they were easy to fluster, which was always fun. “You call me at five in the morning, and you don’t know what kind? What’s your name?”

  “Peterson, sir.”

  “Well, I’m waiting, Peterson, what kind of message?”

  “Uh … uh …” Paper rustling. “Landline, sir. It was a SYMMETRY—”

  “What!”

  “SYMMETRY. Alternate three, off protocol.”

  Shit, thought Stucky. One of SYMMETRY’S agents had panicked about something—probably lost his goddamned camel or turban or something—and made contact. In covert operations the terms protocol and off protocol indicated whether the method of contact followed ComSec (communication security) guidelines. In short, whoever this “alternate” was, he’d fucked up.

  “What’d you tell him?” Stucky asked.

  “To call back in an hour on a scrubbed line That’s in … another forty minutes.”

  “Jesus, why didn’t you call me earlier!”

  “We did, sir. You didn’t answer. And your pager is off.”

  “Huh.” Stucky smiled. Really tied one on, Art. Didn’t even hear the phone. “Okay, I’m on my way.”

  Stucky hung up and lit a cigarette. His mouth tasted like wool. He downed the last dribble of gin from the bottle, swirled it around his mouth, swallowed, then forced himself upright and began looking for his pants.

  Thirty minutes later, he walked through the embassy’s gate, flashed his ID at the Marine sentry, then took the elevator up two floors to his cubicle, passing the CIA station chief’s office as he went. “Let me know as soon as you hear something, Art?” called the station chief.

  Fucking Peterson. “Sure, boss,” he muttered. The current chief—working under the same diplomatic cover as Stucky, Office of Economic Liaison—was another bureaucrat in a long line of lifers who knew nothing about operational intelligence. And as far as Stucky was concerned, the guy didn’t know a dead letter drop from his asshole.

  For that kind of discernment he relied on case officers like Stucky, the backbone of the Operations Directorate. Spy and agent are widely misused terms, as both refer to controlled intelligence sources, not the people like Stucky who did the controlling. In the intelligence community there is no greater insult than calling a case officer an agent.

  After finding himself ousted from the Army just three months short of his twenty years, Stucky was hired by the CIA for paramilitary operations, but when they started steering away from “active field measures,” instead of finding himself terminated, Stucky was promoted. His superiors found he had a knack for controlling people in hairy situations.

  Over the years Stucky made the conversion from knuckle dragger to case officer, to Near East (NE) operations deputy, then to NE division chief. He was a natural at office politics and had good instincts about how far and with whom he could push. Around superiors who held a more tolerant view of homosexuality, Stucky was careful to avoid using phrases such as ass bandit or rump ranger. In the company of women, especially since the introduction of stricter harassment rules, Stucky did not discuss their anatomy or in what fashion he wished to fondle it. It was all about knowing where—and how elastic—the line was.

  As a soldier, the routine and regimen of army life suited Stucky. His lackluster people skills notwithstanding, he earned a reputation for ramrodding tough jobs. Subordinates followed him not out of respect but out of fear. They were simply too afraid to go against him.

  Stucky knew he’d found his home when he stepped through the doors of the south Detroit army recruiting office at the age of eighteen. He’d been a bully in high school, and he was a bully in boot camp. Surrounded by young men frightened by the harshness of basic training, Stucky thrived. Even at that early age, he knew that when you’re at your lowest, it feels good to belong to a group and to make others feel worse than you.

  His first tour in the highlands of Vietnam proved two things: One, Stucky was cool under fire; and two, Stucky liked hurting people. The first quality made him a perfect sergeant, and the last quality was largely overlooked. In the middle of a firefight, when your biggest concern was being overrun, a creature like Stucky improved the odds dramatically.

  Though Stucky’s moderate success with the CIA would later have the Personnel Directorate scratching its collective head, he was in fact currently running SYMMETRY, one of the CIA’s two most critical ongoing operations.

  He plopped down in his chair, searched his drawer for a bottle of aspirin, and downed four of them dry. The secure phone rang. He snatched it up. “Stucky.”

  “Uh, Peterson here, sir. He’s called back—on protocol, this time. I’ll hang up, there’ll be a series of tone bursts, then—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Put it through.”

  As advertised, Stucky heard a tone burst as the call went through the electronic scrubbers. Then a voice: “Hello? Hello?”

  Stucky checked his watch; duration for landline calls was ninety seconds. “Three, this is Limestone. You have a report?”

  “Yes, yes. I—” There was the crackle of automatic weapons in the background. “Marcus is gone, Limestone. They took him.”

  “Who took him? When?”

  “It was last night—no, this morning, about three hours ago. He missed our meet, so I went to find him.”

  “Goddamn it!”

  “Yes, I know, but I was worried. I went to his apartment. They put him in a car and drove away.”

  “Give me details.” The man did so. “Do you know this group?” asked Stucky.

  “No. What should I do? I’m afraid. Should I—”

  “Don’t do anything, you understand? Nothing! If you have any meetings set, wave them off. Pretend none of it exists. You understand?”

  “Yes, but what do I do?”

  “You’re not listening!” Stucky glanced at his watch: twenty seconds to go. “Go about your business. Whatever you normally do during the day, do that. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you’re calling from … Is it safe?”

  “In this city? It is as good a place as any.”

  “Fine. Call back at this time two days from now. I’ll be waiting.”

  “Two days from now, this time. Understood.”

  Stucky hung up, thought for a moment, then redialed. “Peterson, get me the DDO on the secure line.”

  3

  Washington, D.C.

  Director of Central Intelligence Dick Mason forced a smile on his face and waited for the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to finish his question. Not much of a question,
Mason thought. Senator Herbert J. Smith did not ask questions; Senator Herbert J. Smith made speeches that just happened to have question marks tacked to their tails.

  “And so, Mr. Director, my question to you is: What tangible progress in your so-called war on state-sponsored terrorism can you show this committee?”

  Mason held his smile but didn’t answer, knowing Smith—the master of “porcupine power” on the Hill—wasn’t quite done. Smith didn’t seem to realize this was a closed hearing; there were no media to impress.

  “We all know about the supposed Tehran/Damascus/ Khartoum/Tripoli connection, and these governments’ support of terrorism. What we don’t know is what exactly the CIA, under your leadership, and at the direction of the president, has done about it. On behalf of the citizens of this country, I would like to know what we have gotten for the hundreds of millions of dollars you’ve spent.”

  Mason cleared his throat. “That is your question, Senator?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “In general terms—”

  “I’m not interested in general terms, Mr. Mason. You—”

  “As I understand it, sir, my deputy of operations is scheduled to appear here tomorrow. He’ll be able to provide you with more specific details about the scope of our operations. That’s not why I’m here today. My answer to your last question, then, is quite simple: money.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve a better grasp of how funds are transferred from sponsor governments to the command structures of terrorist groups. Money is the key. We can’t dampen a terrorist’s fervor; we can’t cut off their source of training; and we can’t hope diplomatic measures will curtail covert support of these groups.”

  Mason paused to take a sip of water. God, he hated these things. He sounded like a goddamned sound bite from C-SPAN.

  “What we can do, however, is attack their pocketbook. As the U.S. and other Western nations strengthen their defenses against terrorism, terrorists have to work that much harder. They can’t do this—not at sustained levels—without capital.