The Devil's Light (30 page)

At the end was an abandoned warehouse with a steel panel in front. By some unknown agency the panel lifted, exposing a bus painted with religious slogans and gaudy colors. “Your chariot,” Haj said drily. “Two days from now, you will commence a tour of holy shrines with pious Shia women. There are several such stops before we return our pilgrims to their husbands in the north. A guided tour of heresy.”

Al Zaroor stifled his disgust. “Who's the driver?”

“One of ours. The truckers who were to help us know nothing of this change.”

“And my cargo?” Al Zaroor asked tartly. “Do we tie it to the roof of this abomination?”

Smiling, Haj shook his head. “Beneath it, in a compartment welded to the center of the tire rack. Be grateful your cargo goes there instead of you. Some of our fighters have found the trip unpleasant.”

I
n early afternoon, Brustein summoned Brooke to his office.

Grey was with him. Both men looked grave. “Beware of what you wish for,” Brustein said without preface. “You're a singleton NOC again—Adam Chase. For whatever that cover is worth.”

Sitting, Brooke glanced at Grey. “How did this happen?”

“We persuaded the White House to cover its tail,” Brustein answered bluntly. “As Alex Coll put it, ‘In circumstances like this, no one can ignore a dark horse. No matter how dark the horse—'”

“Put another way,” Grey added succinctly, “they don't want anyone saying they protected D.C. by sacrificing Tel Aviv.”

Brooke felt an odd mixture of relief and apprehension. “When do I leave?”

“Midnight, out of New York. You'll be in Beirut tomorrow afternoon.” Seeing Brooke's surprise, he added, “We've updated your legend. Your identification and credit cards are waiting in Adam Chase's old apartment in Manhattan. Not, as I say, that it matters.”

“It may,” Brooke said tersely. “What about Lorber?”

Brustein's expression was opaque. “You'll report to Carter and me.” He paused, saying in a lower voice, “Neither of us is thrilled about this. If we didn't think your theory was possible, we'd never risk sending you back there.”

“I understand,” Brooke said. “If the stakes weren't so high, I wouldn't go.”

* * *

Grey walked him to the car. Leaving the building, they circled the CIA insignia, observing the ritual Grey had taught him—that it was bad luck to step on the eagle.

Standing by Brooke's Ferrari, Grey winced. “You all right?” Brooke asked. “Or do you still hate my car?”

His mentor stared at the pavement. Then he withdrew a small wooden elephant from his pocket and pressed it into Brooke's hand. Grey was not a demonstrative man, Brooke knew, but he had deep reserves of feeling. The elephant was his good luck charm, which had seen him through great peril in Moscow, Afghanistan, and Iran. Gruffly, Grey said, “I don't need this anymore. But that doesn't mean I don't want him back.”

Giving Brooke a swift hug, he walked stiffly away, squaring his shoulders to stand taller.

Brooke flew to New York, picking up the emblems of his new life. On the way to JFK, he stopped at his parents' apartment.

His father mixed him a double scotch. Sitting across from them, he perceived his mother's tension. “I don't suppose,” Brooke told them both, “that I can persuade you to go to Martha's Vineyard. After all, I'm bailing. Why wait around for September 11 with your thumb in the dike?”

His father's face assumed a hard cast that Brooke had seldom seen. “I'm an investment banker,” he replied, “the member of a suspect class. But we used to have integrity. What would happen to the ship of commerce if we all swam away like rats?”

Brooke turned to his mother. “If not a rat,” she admitted, “I'm a mouse. Your father has urged me to go. But from all I read about this Pakistani weapon, it won't be a lingering death.”

Brooke smiled a little. “It's just that I'd miss you, oddly enough.”

His mother gave a flutter of the hand, dismissing any threat of sentiment. “So you're off again. What for this time?”

“They're short-staffed at the embassy. The political officer has swine flu.”

“And you're pinch-hitting?” Isabelle said in bemused exasperation. “I must say I never understood all those comings and goings, or what
you're doing lately.” Glancing at Peter, she added, “You could still join your father. Forgive me, but at least your career wouldn't seem like such a cul-de-sac.”

“I do what I can,” Brooke responded drily. “Perhaps you should mention my dilemma to the secretary of state. She'd be horrified, I'm sure.”

Isabelle looked nettled. Her husband touched her knee, forestalling any retort. “Isabelle,” he said, “we've been married for forty years. For all your quirks, I love you dearly. But sometimes your obliviousness impresses even me.”

She turned to him, piqued. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Has it never occurred to you that Brooke is a spy?”

More than surprised, Brooke studied his father, then met his mother's startled eyes. “Is this true?” she asked.

Brooke nodded. “Score one for Dad.”

She shook her head, as though clearing cobwebs. “Why didn't you tell us?” she protested.

Brooke caught his father's smile. “My job carries certain strictures,” he informed his mother. “I do recall you labeling my colleagues ‘sadists and buffoons.' But I'm barred from revealing which category I'm in.”

A rare look of chagrin crept into his mother's eyes. Matter-of-factly, his father inquired, “I take it this trip is about the bomb.”

Brooke shrugged. “It could be about nothing at all.” He glanced at his watch. “I really do have to go.”

His mother's eyes misted. “I'm very sorry, Brooke. And very frightened.”

Brooke kissed her on the forehead. “I'll be fine,” he assured her. “I've been doing this for almost a decade now.”

Peter walked Brooke to the door. In the privacy of the alcove, he said, “I've always been proud of you, son. You should know that.”

Touched, Brooke regarded his father with affection and curiosity. “When did you scope this out?”

“Pretty much from the beginning. That was a bad year for you—first the young woman, then your friend. I could see the changes.”

Brooke shook his head in wonder. “You should have been in my business.”

“Actually, I considered it. But I'm happy with the life I made. I'm left to hope that you are.”

Brooke pondered his answer. “I guess the word is ‘satisfied.' At least when the work is good.”

Peter nodded. “Keep safe, son. Call us when you get back.”

Brooke promised that he would. At midnight, he began his journey to Beirut.

Lebanon—Iraq—Syria
September 3–6, 2011

W
ithin moments of landing in Beirut, Brooke found himself edgy, yet absorbed in his return to Lebanon and to the field.

As before, Brooke was struck by the city's startling juxtapositions: south Beirut, the dominion of Shia and Hezbollah, was wholly Middle Eastern, with signage in Arabic, covered women, and a profusion of Hezbollah iconography—posters of Nasrallah, Moughniyeh, and various martyrs. The Sunni section was similar, but the symbols of Hezbollah were replaced by representations of Rafik Hariri, in whose assassination Hezbollah was suspect. Minutes away, the Christian area of Beirut was quite European, featuring highly sexualized advertisements—often in English or French—and the shops, restaurants, and high-rises of a thriving cosmopolitan city. These worlds coexisted—to the extent that they did—on a knife edge. All this Brooke had to navigate in the guise of Adam Chase.

In late afternoon he checked into his favorite hotel, the Albergo. A historic landmark in a flavorful section of Christian Beirut, Achrafieh, it was a tall, alabaster structure guarded by palm trees. His room was a sybarite's dream: sumptuous bed coverings; fine colonial-era artwork; a multicolored crystal chandelier; pink walls with green trim; an elegant sitting room with a marble table, intricate Persian rug, and commanding view of the Beirut skyline. Bolting the door, Brooke checked his communications equipment—an encrypted cell phone that continuously switched channels, a “tempest-proof” computer that scrambled messages and gave no signal. Then he resolved to test his reflexes in the cobblestone streets of Achrafieh.

On the surface, it was an enclave of stately buildings, smart shops and restaurants, and exclusive hotels—built, in an unintended nod to Lebanon's complex history, on the Roman city of the dead. But now and then Brooke saw walls scarred with bullets fired in the Lebanese civil war, or rubble left by an Israeli bomb. This was Lebanon as Brooke knew it—tragedy amid beauty, death warring with vitality, the place where he had almost perished.

In his seemingly aimless amble through Achrafieh, Brooke took narrow streets, stopped frequently, and turned as if on impulse into other narrow streets—tactics that exposed an enemy, or compelled him to conform his own pattern of movement to Brooke's. He spotted no one. Satisfied, he returned to the Albergo and took the venerable screened elevator to the roof garden.

Each table was screened from the others by artfully arranged plants and trees, yet all had views of the city and, on one side, the Mediterranean. As a pastel twilight fell, the Muslim call to prayer wafted over the garden, reminding Brooke of a trip with Michelle Adjani to the ancient city of Byblos. They had wandered among the Roman ruins, visited a small gem of a Christian church, then had lunch overlooking the Mediterranean. As they did, Brooke heard the call to midday prayer through a loudspeaker system. He had enjoyed his sense of two religions side by side until the call was replaced by a sermon, delivered in the hissing tones of hatred, calling for the death of Americans and Jews. Michelle, a dedicated heathen, promised to intervene on his behalf.

What was she doing now? Brooke wondered. He would not call her; there was no time, no explanation for his sudden departure. Gazing out to sea, he recalled that beautiful, fateful day in June.

“Adam,” a smooth voice said. “So thoughtful. Am I interrupting some deep reverie?”

Brooke smiled up at Bashir Jameel. “A near-death experience,” he answered.

They embraced with a warmth tempered by irony. Jameel was a trim, handsome man in his forties, elegantly tailored, with the first touch of gray in his black hair and a smile that came and went in an instant, never quite touching his dark, watchful eyes. But Jameel was one of the few men in Beirut that Brooke trusted. A Maronite Christian, he despised American policy in the Middle East, loathed Israel for its works in Lebanon,
and wished devoutly that the fractious people of his wondrous, forlorn country would stop killing each other, or being killed by whatever outsider chose to lay waste to some patch of earth and whoever occupied it. Lebanon, Jameel once told Brooke, was Satan's playground. He was sick to death of it.

The two men sat across from each other, drinking gin and tonics brought by a white-jacketed waiter. “How are Janine and the kids?” Brooke asked.

Jameel's thin lips framed the same swift smile. “Janine is great,” Jameel said. “As for the twins, they reverse the old expectations of gender—our daughter is intense and ambitious, our son beautiful and languid. Only his soccer skills redeem him.”

“Boys ripen slowly,” Brooke assured him. “If I'm an example, there's hope.”

“If it's all the same to you,” Jameel said evenly, “I'll seek hope in other places.”

“You're a wise father, Bashir.” Brooke paused, then asked in a lower voice, “Who knows I'm here?”

“No one
I've
told. You know the problems in my shop. My former boss reported to the Syrians, our new director to God knows who. Some of our Shia answer to Hezbollah; our Sunni to the Hariris; our Christians to the Maronites.” Jameel reached for his drink, exposing an elegant silver cufflink. “Fortunately, the few men aware of your concerns share them. They don't want our country to be a launching pad for tragedy, even against a country we loathe. Humanity aside, we've experienced your Israeli friends' penchant for collective punishment.”

“Which al Qaeda hopes to see repeated,” Brooke answered. “What's the situation at Ayn Al-Hilweh?”

Jameel put his drink down emphatically, a gesture of disgust. “Fatah al-Islam retains pockets. The problem festers. Two years ago, when that cretin Lorber aborted our work, we also lost our best sources of intelligence.”

As a young couple passed, obviously Americans, Brooke briefly switched to Arabic. “There was only one source—the PLO. Khalid's murder was meant to warn them.”

Jameel lit a cigarette. “Consider them warned. The new leader at Ayn Al-Hilweh gives us the sweat off his balls. Which is more than we offer Palestinians.”