by Matthew Dunn
The admiral coughed, choked; nurses came; he waved them away with his liver-spotted hands. Then he fixed his eyes on Mason, who had dark hair back then and a reassuring demeanor. “Mae’s got money. Made sure of that. Man to man, I need . . .”
“I’ll look after her.”
“She’ll tell you no man should be tasked to look after her.”
“Then I’ll tell her I need her to look after me. It’s not far from the truth.” Mason bowed his head and held the admiral’s hand as it grew cold. “I can’t promise you angels.”
Since her father’s death, Bäcklund had considered Admiral Mason to be an uncle of sorts. Five years ago, she was twenty-seven, didn’t need to work, and had just completed a Ph.D. at Stanford. Mason took her out for a celebratory dinner during which he asked her if she’d come to work as his assistant in a land-based Pentagon job he’d just been assigned to. At first she declined, but Mason was canny and knew that she had aspirations one day to get into politics. He gave her sage counsel that before that day came, she could learn the ropes from the inside. He would teach her the ways of politics until such time as she was ready to withstand the ugliest realities of government and run for office.
And teach he did. She respected the fact that he gave her no special dispensation because of who she was. On the contrary, Mason could be as withering in his comments to her as he was to Tanner. Only when they were alone would he soften and speak to her with a light touch and a paternal combination of admiration and concern for her well-being. Maybe Mason’s role in her life would recede if she got hitched to a guy. Right now that wasn’t in the cards. On the rare occasions that men fleetingly entered her private life, she had felt sorrowful and unfulfilled. Finding the right guy was tough when you were an independent woman with a job that frequently shunted your brain into overdrive.
Bäcklund and Tanner were silent. Mason sat on the edge of his desk and said, “Interesting meeting.”
“President, Secretaries of Stuff, you.” Tanner’s smile broadened. “Who else was there?”
“Britain, France, and Israel.” Mason patted his short silver hair. “Their premiers, anyway, via video link.”
Bäcklund was motionless. “France equals pedantic legal jurisdiction. Britain equals meddling has-been. Israel equals rabid dog on a leash.”
Mason eyed her with the look of a professor addressing a gifted but overly forthright student. “Perhaps I’ve been too long at sea to realize that the psyches of three countries can be distilled down to one sentence each.”
It was Tanner who responded. “Perhaps you have, sir.” He was careful because Mason would crucify him for too much sarcasm. “Israel wants blood.”
“Yes. Why?” Mason was very still, watching them like a killer who would turn on his captives if one of them gave the wrong answer.
Bäcklund put a cigarette in her mouth and left it unlit. “Israel kills a Hamas official last week; yesterday someone kills Israel’s ambassador to Paris. Has to be Hamas; ergo two egos need to have a head-to-head in the locker room. Should we care?” She glanced at Tanner, wondering whether the man-boy seven years her junior would take her bait and make a crass remark. “Boys with dicks and toys. Right?”
“Yeah, right.” Tanner tried to decide whether tonight he should finish writing his monograph on God and physics or instead play Texas Hold’em poker with his pals. “Last time I checked, shit happens a lot in the desert. We shouldn’t care.”
Mason ran a finger along the crease in his trousers. “But we do care, don’t we?”
“Not me.” Tanner smiled.
Mason did not. “Then I’m in the company of a fool. Think.”
Bäcklund withdrew the unlit cigarette from her lips and looked at its sodden butt. “Escalation.”
Tanner added, “Not just a few missiles lobbed into Gaza.”
They took it in turns to articulate their thoughts at rifle-shot pace.
“It’s an excuse.”
“One Israel’s been waiting for.”
“Take revenge against Hamas.”
“Big style.”
“Invade Gaza . . .”
“The West Bank . . .”
“And . . .”
Mason nodded expectantly.
Bäcklund concluded, “Lebanon. Shit, this is a whole different story.”
The admiral was pleased with his assistants because they’d nailed what the Israeli prime minister had said in the meeting. Israel believed the assassination of its ambassador gave it legitimacy to obliterate Hamas once and for all. And it had no problem invading two territories and one country to do so. “What do you think is the position of France and Britain?”
“You know the answer to that. You were at the meeting.”
Mason said, “If I hadn’t been there, I’d still know the answer.”
Bäcklund placed the unlit cigarette in her jacket pocket, her craving momentarily over. “They’ll have made the obvious point that Israel has no concrete evidence that Hamas killed the ambassador, and in turn they’ll say Israel doesn’t yet have any legitimate cause in international law to start a ground offensive.”
“Correct. Going to war on a hunch.” Mason loosened the knot on his tie. “And what is our beloved president’s stance?” This was to Tanner.
The young man was silent for three seconds. “He’ll be urging Israel to be restrained. But he’ll also be worried that if he can’t persuade Israel to hold fire, he’s going to be in a political quagmire, because if he doesn’t show public support for Israeli actions he’s going to suffer big time at the domestic ballot box.”
“U.S. voters are not the only issue, though I concede it is a relevant one.” Mason looked out of the window at the manicured grounds beside his office and wondered if he’d be able to sneak in some Japanese Salix integra “Hakuro-nishiki” miniature trees for one of the flowerbeds. “The only solution for the president is to prove to U.S. voters that his decision to back or not back Israel is undeniably the correct one.” Mason returned his attention to his employees.
Tanner asked, “You got an idea?”
“I do.”
“You gonna share it with the president?”
Mason smiled. “I already have.” His smile vanished. “And to everyone else present at the meeting. It’s bought time. Israel’s given me two months to make the idea work. If it doesn’t, international law be damned as far as Israel’s concerned. It will go to war with or without our blessing. People will have opinions about whether going to war is the right or wrong thing to do, but no one will know for a fact whether it’s the correct course of action because no one knows for a fact that Hamas killed the ambassador.”
“And the Middle East will tear itself apart before looking west.” Bäcklund shook her head. “Anarchy. Bearded crazies foaming at the mouth and turning on us.”
“Yes.” There was a tinge of sadness in Mason’s otherwise piercing cold blue eyes. “If my idea fails, the world should be wishing that I’d been a smarter man.”
Tanner asked, “What is your idea?”
“We must get undeniable proof that Hamas did or did not conduct the Paris assassination.” The admiral added, “My solution’s being enacted right now. It’s called Gray Site.”
SIX
Mosques were calling people to pray in Beirut, the amplified sounds nearly drowned out by the noise of traffic on the streets, the buzz of people going about their early morning business, construction workers building and repairing buildings, and cargo vessels in the Mediterranean sounding their horns to warn other vessels that they were cruising slowly into and out of port amid a mist that still hadn’t been burned off by the sun.
A tall man named Laith Dia—though that wasn’t the name he’d used to enter Lebanon two days ago—ate a freshly baked za’atar croissant while standing in a doorway and watching not only a large derelict house, underneath which a newly constructed intelligence station had been established, but everything around the building. He was a paramilitary CIA officer. O
ne of the men in the nearby subterranean complex was a colleague; the three other officers were respectively British MI6, French DGSE, and Israeli Mossad. Right now they were testing the newly installed electronic surveillance and intercept equipment. Laith was here to watch their backs for twenty-four hours, trying to establish if there were any indications that people knew they were here. It was his last job for the CIA, because a week ago he’d resigned from the Agency.
Though he was a big man with a striking visage, Laith blended in just fine. He looked like he was Lebanese or North African, and he was wearing clothes befitting an entrepreneur who was grabbing a bite to eat before heading off to his car dealership or dockland import-export business. It was a great time of day to do surveillance, because the people moving past him were bleary eyed from drinking wine and smoking hookahs last night, oblivious to everything beyond getting to work and forcing their minds into gear. It would be easy to spot professional threats to the Western intelligence complex.
Laith sauntered along the street, taking another bite out of his breakfast while casually taking in his surroundings. The street was on the outskirts of Beirut, lined with a mix of residential and commercial buildings and bustling with traffic and pedestrians. It had looked very different the previous night. Then, it had been almost deserted, though the sounds of the city had been evident throughout Laith’s all-night vigil.
He saw an SUV stop. Two men got out and began walking, one on either side of the street. Clearly, they were looking for something. They didn’t look bleary eyed. And though the young men looked similar to many of the pedestrians around them, they moved with vigor and purpose, showing no signs of having just dragged themselves out of bed after an evening of over-indulging. After years of serving in the CIA, and prior to that in Delta Force, Laith knew the type. Still, they could just be innocents rather than Hamas terrorists who were looking for hostile intelligence officers spying on their activities.
Laith quietly spoke into his radio throat mic while watching the men. “May have something. Two men on foot. Just got out of an SUV. About one hundred yards from you. They’re walking the street.”
The MI6 officer in the underground office responded in Laith’s earpiece. “Suspicious?”
“Hard to tell at this point.”
The men were stopping people in the street, speaking briefly to them before moving on. Maybe they were asking directions. Or maybe they were inquiring as to whether the local residents had noticed any strangers recently arriving and positioning themselves in their community. Perhaps these men were Hamas but their intentions were benign. Though it was a terrorist organization, Hamas spent more time acting like the Mafia—trying to get a grip on the streets of Beirut, policing it, doing business with locals, punishing them sometimes.
The men stopped outside the derelict house containing the intelligence complex.
Laith placed a hand over his concealed handgun, ready to run to the men if they went inside. “They’re right outside your building. At stop.”
“Shit!” The MI6 officer made no effort to conceal his unease. “But just two of them, right?”
“On foot, yeah.” Laith glanced at the vehicle they’d earlier disembarked from. “But there’s another three in the SUV. And the SUV’s following them at their pace, about fifty yards behind them.”
Five potential terrorists versus five Western intelligence officers. But that wasn’t the sum of it—what worried Laith and his colleagues was that a firefight would not only compromise the new intelligence station; it would also mean that he and his colleagues would somehow need to escape Lebanon alive. And there was every probability that if the men he was watching were Hamas, they’d have reinforcements nearby.
“What are they doing?” The British officer sounded professional, yet tense.
“Just standing outside your building, looking around.”
“Can you get to them if they enter?”
“Not sure, because I’d have to take out the vehicle first.”
Laith looked in the opposite direction. He saw another SUV at the end of the street. Again, the occupants didn’t look like the locals. “Damn it. Another vehicle. Five more men.”
“Coincidence?”
Laith answered, “I’m thinking not. But that doesn’t mean they know you’re here, or are looking for you.”
The MI6 officer—a man called Edward whom Laith had briefly met and who’d seemed as cool as a cucumber—said, “We’re trapped in here! One route in and out. We won’t stand a chance.”
“Steady your nerves.”
Laith saw the two men on foot get back into their SUV. It drove off at speed. The second SUV turned off the street into another road.
Laith said, “Never mind. They’ve left.”
Rob Tanner walked across the vast parking lot and got into his car, looking back at the Pentagon. It was midafternoon; all the cars around him belonged to people who were still ensconced in the Pentagon, hard at work and wishing it was closer to 6 P.M. He unlocked the glove compartment and took out a cell phone that only one other man knew about. He turned it on and typed in the number that he’d memorized because the phone had no contacts list or any other compromising information in it. While it was ringing, he recalled the man who’d placed the phone in his hand saying, “This is your first test. I hope I’m not making a mistake.”
The man answered on the fourth ring, but didn’t speak.
Spots of rain hit the windshield. “I have news.”
The man was silent.
“He’s set up something called Gray Site. We need to meet.”
SEVEN
The previous evening, Safa had watched a movie before getting into his new bed, whose sheets felt like an angel’s hand enfolding him and gently rocking him to sleep. The movie was made by Hollywood, and for most of the film there was only one actor—a man he’d never heard of. Because Safa’s English was limited, his guardian had put on French subtitles. The American character was a courier whose flight across the Pacific Ocean had crashed into the sea. He’d had to survive alone on a desert island for five years, his only companion a football on which he’d painted a face. To avoid death or the loss of his sanity, the American had finally decided to throw his life to fate and ventured away from the island on a raft. By pure luck, he was spotted and picked up by a cargo ship. Later, after receiving medical treatment and having his hair and beard cut so that he resembled the man he once was, he was flown back to the States. During that flight, he was given a glass of Coca-Cola with cubes of ice. The American could barely remember ice; it seemed remarkable and otherworldly to him.
Safa knew exactly how that felt.
He’d been on a desert island of sorts for all of his young life. Of course, he’d had glimpses of the outside world and had knowledge of what it contained. But it is not until you gaze upon these things in person, smell them, feel them, drink and eat them, that you truly understand their wonder.
Since he’d arrived in France, there’d been so much to wonder at, almost to the point that everything around him was overwhelming. His guardian—the United Nations official who’d rescued him from Gaza—was aware of this and careful with Safa’s integration into the West. “Little by little,” he’d told him over the preceding weeks. “We don’t want your delicate mind overloaded.”
Safa was educated by the UN man and lived in his home. It was a palace as far as the Palestinian boy was concerned. The house was tastefully furnished, had open fireplaces, books and oil paintings everywhere, wooden beams, ornate candles that were more often the source of light than electric bulbs, and an overall ambience of love, academia, warmth, and passion for locally sourced and well-cooked food. It was the home of a seigneur, a term that Safa had never heard before but one that was explained to him by the guardian. In Napoleonic times, a seigneur was a privileged gentleman, but also a true leader who had compassion for all those who needed him. Seigneurs were not nobles; on the contrary, they desired to destroy the elitism of undeserved royal asc
endency. They were rebels, but supremely powerful ones.
Safa had to be careful, the UN officer had told him upon arriving in France. Somehow, his guardian had managed to secure false papers for his charge, including medical history. They were all in the name of Safa, though with a different surname. But they were not enough to protect the boy, because it was technically illegal for Safa to be in France. He needed a cover, his guardian had told him. If anyone asked, Safa’s parents lived in Marseille, were French citizens, and had recently died. His guardian had legally adopted him. The UN official had given Safa many more details about his false background and current circumstances, and had made Safa memorize and recite these details over and over again until he could do it faultlessly.
Safa was in his bedroom when the UN man called, in French, from downstairs, “Safa, I need to speak to you.”
Safa entered the open-plan kitchen–cum–living room, his favorite part of the house, and sat at the dining room table. The UN officer brought him a cup of cocoa. The smell of roasting chicken and rosemary wafted across the room from the large oven. Today was special. Since Safa had arrived in France, his guardian had taken him back and forth to private doctors, who had placed him on a strict diet that allowed his body to slowly recover from malnutrition but didn’t cause it to crash. He’d only been permitted small portions of meat and fish. But today, all bets were off. The doctors had given the boy the all-clear to eat as much as his slim belly could cope with. And roast chicken was his meal of choice.
He sipped his cocoa, yet another addition to the repertoire of foods he was now permitted. Blessed God, it tasted so good.
His guardian sat opposite him and gently placed his hand on Safa’s arm. “I’ve just received a call from one of my colleagues in Gaza. I’m so sorry, son. Your mother has passed away.”
“Passed away?”
“Died.”
Safa was unable to think clearly. He thought he should be crying, shaking, calling out to his beloved mama. But the news came as no shock to him. Did this make him a bad boy, one with no heart? It all seemed so confusing, because he thought he had a huge heart.