Silently they moved through the hallway, each man immersed in his own thoughts.
In the courtyard al-Alazar looked into Ari’s eyes, searching for a sign of weakness. “We’re going to make it,” he said, finding none.
Ari grunted and stepped out into the night.
Suleiman Sarraj and Yussaf Fuad sat impatiently in Sarraj’s office waiting for the phone to ring. Fuad sipped his coffee slowly; Sarraj’s cup sat at the end of the desk, untouched. Nervously clicking his amber worry beads in one hand, he was too angry to drink. Those bungling fools of his had lost track of Ben-Sion. The Israeli might have contacted Operative 66 and left the country by now.
Suddenly the phone rang and Sarraj snatched at it.
“He’s back at the hotel,” a voice said hurriedly.
Sarraj did not allow himself a sigh of relief. “I want the watch on him doubled,” he shouted into the phone. “I want four teams of men following him at all times. And I do not want them to be seen. Do you understand?”
“Yes, general.”
“Good.” Sarraj slammed down the receiver and turned to Fuad. “Ben-Sion’s back at the hotel. He must have made contact with Operative 66. Whatever they’re planning has probably been set in motion. We must put a stop to it immediately.”
Fuad set his cup and saucer down on the desk. “I still think it would be less risky if we arrested Ben-Sion and let my men question him in their own delicate manner.”
Sarraj shook his head. “I’m afraid he’d die before he talked.” Besides, Sarraj added to himself, the success was to be his, not the Mukhabarat chief’s.
Fuad bared his white teeth. “There are ways of keeping the Israeli alive while breaking every bone in his body one by one. The effect is most excruciating. I assure you, no man can withstand the pain.”
“No,” Sarraj said loudly. “Your methods will be employed only as a last resort. I’ve studied this Ben-Sion carefully. He is not the type who will betray a fellow agent under physical pressure. He would welcome death first. I’m certain a much higher percentage of success lies with Kim.” Under the threat that Fuad would intercede and arrest Ben-Sion if more information was not forthcoming, Sarraj had been forced to divulge the details of his entire operation.
Fuad folded his hands on his lap. “I am becoming impatient with your Miss Johnson.”
“Without her we would not have known that what they’re planning is set for the twenty-second,” Sarraj said.
Fuad leaned back in his chair. “Two months’ work and that’s all she’s been able to come up with. I’m hardly impressed. Let me remind you that the twenty-second is the day after tomorrow. We cannot exactly afford to just sit here. I will give Miss Johnson twenty-four more hours. If she does not produce results by then I will order the arrest of the Israeli. I will not wait until the twenty-second, when it may be too late.”
“All right,” Sarraj said, slamming the table with his fist. “We’re meeting again in the morning. I’ll tell her she must induce him to talk without further delay. But you must give her time.”
Fuad stood and moved toward the door. “We have already given her too much time as it is. My personal opinion is that she is growing fond of Ben-Sion and that she will never obtain the information we desire. Didn’t you notice the way she spoke about him this evening, the way she kept calling him Ari? I think she’s as much in love with him as he is with her. If we don’t arrest him soon, the two of them will probably escape together and you’ll receive a wedding invitation postmarked Tel Aviv.”
“She’ll have the information out of him by tomorrow!” Sarraj shouted.
“I hope so.”
Fuad smiled and left the Second Bureau offices.
◆◆◆
Ari slipped the key into the lock in the hotel door and pushed himself into the room. Kim lay sprawled on his bed reading last week’s Sunday supplement of the London Times. At the sound of his entrance she rushed over and flung her arms around his neck. He felt her breasts rubbing against his shirt.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said, kissing his ear.
The touch of her lips sent a rush through him. His reaction irritated him; he shouldn’t be feeling that any more. He laced his arms around her. He had to maintain his cover, he told himself, but he knew that was only part of his reason for holding her. He wished she could tell him that what al-Alazar had said wasn’t true, but he dared not ask—for al-Alazar was right. He saw it now in her every movement. Why else would such an attractive, vigorous young woman be interested in him? He’d been so blind.
“You meet with anybody tonight?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed as he pulled away from her.
Instead of answering he began to undress.
“Did you do anything interesting this evening?” she repeated, rephrasing her question so that it sounded less like she was probing for something specific.
“No.”
Moving close, he pushed her onto the mattress. Roughly lifting her negligee over her head, he stared at her naked body, reeling from the fact that the brief moment of happiness she’d given him had been false.
“Ari,” she protested.
“Just be patient,” he whispered to himself. “Tomorrow night I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
Abruptly he thrust himself between her legs, driving his anger down through his loins and into her. She tried to respond as best she could. Seconds later, it was over.
As he slipped out of her she shifted position. “I hope that’s not it for the night,” she said.
He forced a smile.
Later, after several attempts to elicit information that he blunted with the excuse of being too tired to talk, he tried to enter her again. But he couldn’t. Using the tips of her fingers she enticed his body into cooperating. Once together he worked for a long time, unable to achieve release. Finally, he fell away, drifting into a morose fog that robbed him of real sleep.
22.
SEPTEMBER 21
Ari woke slowly. First he heard a sound in the hallway and then he was aware it was morning. Even with his eyes closed the bright rays of Middle Eastern sun slanting in through the window shot through his lids, causing his head to pulse. His mouth was sticky and his throat parched. Outside the cry of the muezzins rose, held for a long breath, then fell away. He stared at the cracked ceiling; the lines seemed to be dancing in the air. He flipped onto his stomach. Pressed tight against the mattress he pulled the sheet over his face. He lay there, sweating, afraid to get up. An hour passed, then another. He drifted in and out of nightmare. His mouth grew drier. Finally forcing himself out of bed, he shuffled toward the water faucet in the bathroom, suddenly realizing that Kim had left already.
He felt a little better after he showered and ate. Faced with the prospects of what he hoped would be his final day in Damascus, he phoned Mustafa Suidani and arranged to be picked up at one-thirty and shown several glass factories in Kissoue, a village on the road to Amman, twenty miles south of Damascus. Ari’s interest in hand-blown glass vases registered just below his interest in withered ideas and last year’s insights. Yet he was anxious to accompany Suidani, not because spending the afternoon shopping for exportable merchandise would draw suspicion away from his intention to flee the country that night, but because haggling with Arab manufacturers promised to chew away at the hours. Cramming activity into his day would divert his thoughts—and help him resist the depression overwhelming him.
For a long time Ari had sensed that he was being watched. Except for the short, squat Arab in the hotel lobby he had not actually seen anyone suspicious; but the feeling was there nonetheless, a palpable certainty that pairs of eyes followed his every movement. As he stepped out of the hotel to wait for Suidani the feeling intensified. They had lost him the night before when he jumped from the train. They would not be so careless again. Ari casually glanced around him, sensing that he was being monitored from the street, from cars, and from the roof across the way. He just hoped al-Alazar�
��s escape plan worked. They would not have a chance to try an alternate one.
◆◆◆
Despite the shift in winds it had been an oppressively hot afternoon and Ari was exhausted by the time they returned to the New Ommayad. The car wasn’t air conditioned and they’d been forced to drive with the windows down, the sand and dust flying in their faces. A thin line of mud ringed Ari’s hairline where he sweated. As Suidani switched off the ignition key a group of school age boys, wearing heavy flannel military uniforms, trudged toward the Tajhiz Secondary School.
“Saika guerrillas—they’re in training,” Suidani explained, catching the perplexed look on Ari’s face.
“But why are they wearing such heavy uniforms in this heat?”
Suidani started to get out of the car. “Their clothes are specially designed to toughen them for the struggle against the Zionists.”
Ari nodded and stepped out onto the sidewalk, looking at the waves of air behind the Renault’s exhaust pipe, thinking about the eighteen- and nineteen-year-old boys training in Israel. There are few things more sad, he believed, than the sight of young people who are preparing to kill each other.
Suidani thanked him verbosely for his generous investment in Damascus glass, giving his assurance that the merchandise would be packed and shipped with the utmost care. Ari promised to phone him in a few days, said good-bye, and walked toward the lobby. Inside, he went directly to the house phone and asked for Kim’s room. To his dismay there was no answer. He had intended to set a specific time for them to meet that evening, but Kim had left early, before he had the chance to arrange anything. Now he started to worry. What if she didn’t return to the hotel before nine? He knew the answer to his own rhetorical question. Al-Alazar’s timetable would be destroyed—and both their lives with it.
Before going up to his room he asked the desk clerk to phone him as soon as Miss Johnson returned to the hotel. To insure that the young man’s memory did not fail him Ari tore a ten-pound note in half and stuffed one piece into his breast pocket.
Once in his room he poured himself some arak and though he should have taken only a few sips, just enough to insure that his breath smelled of alcohol, he drained the glass. After pouring another and drinking it he went into the bathroom, taking the bottle with him. He looked into the mirror and mussed his hair. Exhaling listlessly, he returned to the bedroom, set the bottle on the nightstand, and prepared to wait.
Hundreds of times over the years he had gone through these same motions, preparing the room for the target, readying himself for a duel in deception with his adversary. But this time he felt different; no sense of animal joy bounded through him. The exhilaration that had always electrified the moment before he sliced the rope that sent the trap crashing down on his victim was absent. A heaviness pervaded his movements. He was tired and sad and ready to go home.
When the phone rang he checked his watch before answering it. Eight-eleven, there was plenty of time.
“Monsieur Hoffmann, this is the front desk. The American, Miss Johnson, just entered the hotel. I took the liberty of mentioning that you were interested in speaking to her. I hope that…”
“That’s fine,” Ari cut him off. “You’ll have the other half of the bill in the morning.” He hung up without waiting for a response.
A few minutes later Kim entered the room, a smile brightening her face. She knew the door would be unlocked so she hadn’t bothered to knock.
“I see you’ve been bribing the hotel staff to report my whereabouts again.”
“Do you mind?”
She hung her leather handbag on the chair. “No, actually I’m flattered you’re so anxious to see me that you’re willing to throw good money away.”
He smiled, took a sip of the arak, and held the glass out to her. “Would you like some? I’m afraid I’ve already had a little too much.”
She took a small sip and settled on the bed next to him. “What are we celebrating?” she asked, looking over at the half-empty bottle.
He took the glass from her hand and drank off the remaining contents. “We’re leaving Syria tomorrow night—the two of us.”
“Oh, Ari.” She hugged him with unbridled excitement. “Then you finished what you came here to do?”
Resting her head against his shoulder, she was the perfect actress. There wasn’t the slightest hint of duplicity in her manner. He held her tight against him; he couldn’t bear to meet her eyes, that’s what he’d been so angry about last night. He despised himself for the feeling that still darted through him when he looked at her.
“No, it’s not quite over yet,” he said. “I have to meet Operative 66 tomorrow. He’s gathered some crucial intelligence on Syrian Scud missile emplacements. It’s imperative that the information be sent on to Jerusalem—that’s why I came to Damascus, to serve as an intermediary.” Ari stared across the room at the blank wall. At least he had steered the Syrian away from the Operation Goshen.
She unbuttoned his shirt and played with the hair on his chest. “Operative 66. I don’t understand. What’s that?”
He forced a laugh. “Not a what but a who. He’s a man, a high-placed Israeli agent called a sleeper—a spy who is stationed in an enemy country to lie dormant for five, ten years, or until he’s needed. In the meantime he works himself into a position of power, totally unsuspected by those around him because during the entire period he’s sleeping, he has no contact with his mother country.”
“And Operative 66 is a sleeper?”
“He was a sleeper,” Ari corrected her. “The Israeli Secret Service planted him in Syria in 1961 intending he remain buried until the 1980s but they hastily activated him when the Yom Kippur War broke out.” Ari laughed, the abandoned hilarity of the drunk. “I bet some heads would roll around here if the Second Bureau ever found out that a high-ranking member of the Syria Parliament was an Israeli spy.” He was irritated at himself, the touch of her fingers rolling over his chest aroused him.
“A member of Parliament,” Kim gasped. “That’s unbelievable. I wonder who he is?”
“What does it matter? I don’t want to talk about him. Come on, let’s go to bed.” He started unbuttoning her blouse. Make her work for it, Al-Alazar had said.
“I’m not in the mood right now.” She pushed his hand away. “Besides, I want to hear more about this Operative 66; he sounds fascinating. What kind of a man would bury himself in a hostile country and live there for more than a decade without once being contacted by those who sent him? Wouldn’t he worry that his superiors had forgotten him? What if the person who sent him died?’
Inwardly he bristled at her feigned naïveté. “There are always files,” he said, shaking off his irritation. “It’s impossible that any service would lose track of one of its sleepers, even by accident. Those agents are placed with extreme difficulty. The fruits produced by their long period of gestation are the sweetest intelligence life bears.”
“Tell me, what is he like, this Israeli member of the Syrian Parliament?”
Ari smiled. “Al-Alazar, well he’s…”
The expression on her face altered abruptly. She was shocked, surprised that after so long he’d slipped, letting Operative 66’s name drop so casually.
Ari pounced on the opportunity, jumping up in mock horror, forcing hatred to burn in his eyes. “What have you tricked me into doing?” He knocked at the bottle of arak and sent it reeling on the floor. “The whole evening, all you’ve been interested in is getting me to talk about Operative 66! Why?”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
He grabbed her by the neck and pushed his thumb up under her Adam’s apple, compressing her trachea, momentarily blocking the air supply.
“You’re lying,” he said.
She realized instantly by the look on his face that he knew, that any attempt to convince him of her innocence was futile. “Oh Ari, I’m so sorry,” she said, choking. “Suleiman Sarraj forced me into doing it. Kill me if you want t
o, but it won’t do you any good. The room was bugged after you slipped away from Sarraj’s agents. As soon as the Second Bureau retrieves the tapes they’ll know who Operative 66 is.”
He hesitated for a second, then threw her on the bed. “What do you mean Sarraj forced you into doing it?”
She curled up into herself, shaking. “I had no choice. I would have been sent to prison if I didn’t agree to help him!” She tried to fight back her tears, unsuccessfully. “You have to understand. I graduated from New York University with a degree in sociology. I couldn’t get a job, not even as a secretary or a salesgirl. I was over-qualified. There was a recession, everybody was getting laid off, no one was hiring. My parents are dead. I went to college on a scholarship. I hadn’t worked so I couldn’t collect unemployment. All I had was my camera, but nobody would buy any of my pictures. I was living with this man I hated. He beat me, but I couldn’t leave. I had no way to support myself. Finally one night he got drunk and hit me over the head with a lamp. I ended up in the hospital. When I was released I had no money, no place to go. I had to sell my body to eat!”
He stood there silent, immobile.
“A young Arab, Muamar Gamasy, picked me up one night in a bar. He was very kind and understanding. He took me home and introduced me to his father, who turned out to be a security officer in the Egyptian consulate in New York. A few days later the senior Gamasy offered me a job as a secretary. I grabbed it, anything to get off the streets. Eventually he asked me to do a few favors for him, to join some Zionist groups and report on the meetings. Being legally Jewish nobody suspected what I was really doing. At first I only wanted to make enough money to move to California, but before I knew it I was involved too deeply. I couldn’t quit. The Egyptians and Syrians even paid off various magazines and newspapers, getting them to print my pictures so I’d be happy. But when Gamasy asked me to fly to Israel and do a big job for him there, I refused. Then some people at the consulate brought out these movies they’d taken of me in bed with customers, complete with my taking money for my services. It was no coincidence that Muamar showed up in that bar, it had all been carefully planned from the beginning. Later his father presented me with a choice: either I flew to Israel or I went to prison for prostitution.”
The Damascus Cover Page 20