Damascus Station Read online

  “Maybe he pulls a gun on me?” Mariam said. She took another drink of water and spat the saliva congealed around her mouth guard into a sink.

  Beni nodded, retrieved a fake handgun from the wall rack, and gave it to Sam. “You come up behind her, point the gun at her head, demand money? You pause enough to give her a chance to respond, but after that, pull the trigger if you get the chance. I judge who wins, d’accord?”

  Sam nodded, weighing the gun in his hand as if to ensure it was, in fact, fake. Mariam sat in a chair. He approached from behind and pressed it into the back of her head.

  “Give me your purse,” he said.

  She snatched the weapon with her right hand and brought it into both hands as if it were her own, then stood, straightening his arm and spinning clockwise with her shoulder pressed up, under his elbow, keeping him taut. She tightened her grip with her left hand, released her right, and reached around his front to hit him in the face mask. He gasped, and his body went a little limp. She spun around, pulled his arm, and folded it around his back as if preparing him for a royal bow. She gave a quick jab to the back of his skull—another gasp, his body flopped—then took his shirt collar in her left hand, yanked it down, and jumped into the air. She drove the plastic gun into the top of his vest, just below the neck.

  He collapsed and rolled onto his stomach. The whole thing had taken four seconds.

  He got up, eventually. Beni asked if he was all right. “My ears are ringing,” Sam said as he went over to the sink, pulled off his face mask, and spit. He caught his breath as he watched the blood run down the drain, and turned back to Mariam with a wry smile visible through his face mask. “When is it my turn?” he said.

  Beni laughed, smacked Sam on the shoulder, and went to the wall rack for a club. “Mariam comes at you with this, d’accord?”

  Sam nodded and went to the other side of the mats.

  The club attack was one where the normal human instincts would get your arm broken. An attacker comes at you with an overhand strike, you put up your arm, the blow shatters your radius or ulna. You collapse, they beat you to death. The key was to run toward the strike, arms extended in front, protecting the head while making it nearly impossible to break the bones. Then you fight—elbows, teeth, fists, head butts, whatever. The club’s advantage has been neutralized by the close quarters.

  She looked at the club and thought of the mukhabarat man driving the truncheon into Razan’s eye, her cousin’s helpless blocks, the screams. You did nothing, girl. You watched.

  She ran at Sam, club in the air. He did not raise his arm but instead came at her, closing the distance. She went for the head, but he dodged and her strike harmlessly glanced off his left shoulder and they were in close. She felt her grip on the club quiver as he got hold of her club hand and compressed the bunch of nerves between her thumb and forefinger. The club dropped onto the mat. He gripped her wrists, firm but not painful, and she locked on his eyes, waiting for the jab, the knee, the finisher. Her muscles, bones, they were all sore. She wanted water.

  He held her wrists, hesitating to deliver the blow. Looking into her eyes.

  She head-butted him directly in the face mask. He grunted and fell back.

  Beni laughed and whistled to call the fight.

  SAINT-GERMAIN AT NIGHT: THE RAIN gone, the leafy avenue was now clotted with Sorbonne students ambling through clouds of cigarette smoke and café-goers sporting evening wear, wet bottles of Sancerre sweating in their tableside buckets. They walked together down the boulevard, maybe unwise, but the BANDITOs said she was black and Sam knew he was. They’d changed from their athletic clothes, but Sam still sported a bruise on his forehead from the head butt, which, she admitted, had struck a little high.

  They found a sleepy brasserie and ordered too much food. Foie gras, duck confit, a white bean cassoulet, a plate of fries, at which Mariam sniffed. She ordered the wine. He paired a beer with the fries. “Just one,” he’d said. She laughed. “If anyone back home saw me drinking wine with fries, they’d kill me.”

  “And where is home for you now, anyway?” she asked.

  “Right now, it’s D.C. I’m covering the Syria Desk at State before my next posting, so I have an apartment in the District.”

  “Ah,” she said as the waiter brought out the duck. She placed her napkin on her lap. “Dogs?” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  He shook his head.

  “Cats?”

  He smiled. “No, no pets.”

  “Girl?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I can picture this place. There is horrible beer in the fridge and nothing on the walls.”

  She was pretty damn close, though she’d missed the fact that there was not much furniture on the floor, either. The fridge was also empty. He laughed and ate another fry. “You’re not wrong, but it’s an interim apartment until my next post. So I won’t be there long.”

  “Where will you go next?”

  He debated telling her about Damascus but decided to hold back for now. “It is still undecided, but probably somewhere in the Middle East.”

  She nodded and took a bite of bread.

  “Where is home for you?” he asked.

  “I have an apartment in the Old City.”

  “I take it from that look that you don’t have a dog?”

  “No. Filthy creatures.”

  He laughed, remembering his tour in Cairo and the aversion to dogs common in the Arab world. “A cat, then?”

  “No.”

  “Boy?”

  “Girl. Very scandalous.” She winked and he laughed.

  “Razan?” he asked.

  “Yes. She’s staying with me. Our apartment, unlike your sad bachelor pad, is nicely furnished and stocked with food.”

  The waiter returned to clear some of the smaller plates. Sam decided to use the gap in conversation to elicit something. He needed to show progress to Langley. “How are the meetings going?” he asked after the waiter had disappeared.

  She picked at some of the duck, working a cord of meat from the bone. “Not well. The talks collapsed today. My boss has gone home. My meeting with Fatimah Wael, one of the oppositionists, went poorly.”

  Sam dunked a fry in ketchup as Mariam eyed him. She’d shared her first secret. He bit the fry and took a sip of beer.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, debating how hard to push. “Are you leaving early, too?”

  She shook her head. “My boss asked me to stay a few more days to follow up with Fatimah.”

  He nodded, understanding he should not press too hard. Mariam’s phone rang and she looked at the number.

  She grimaced. “I need to take this.” She walked out of the restaurant. Sam finished his beer and refilled their wine. He’d grown more assured that CIA had an ideological angle to play with Mariam. But the intimate conversation and the charged sparring: it worried him, on two counts.

  First count: That he wanted her. He couldn’t deny it. It was also a major problem. A case officer romantically linked to an asset was cause for separation from CIA. A violation of his oath of service and probably a dozen Agency regs. And yet, he doubted his self-control if the issue were pressed. Second count: His recruiter instincts judged the best path to putting this asset in harness was kindling the spark of romantic energy. He was less certain the usual approaches to shuffling a developmental through to recruitment would work: the amenities provided to drive reciprocity, the unstated authority, the excitement of espionage. Sam thought she wanted him. That the romance would propel the recruitment. What would Bradley say? He’d say that you’re delusional, Sam.

  Mariam returned and sat down. “Fatimah is traveling tomorrow. Her family has a home near Villefranche-sur-Mer, on the coast. She has agreed to meet me there. I will go tomorrow morning.”

  “She must have been intrigued by your meeting, to agree to another,” Sam said.

  Mariam spread foie gras on a toast corner. “Yes, but I cannot imagine why.”

 
“Why not?”

  “Because I threatened her family if she did not denounce the opposition. We are doing this with all foreign-based oppositionists. I run the program inside Bouthaina’s office.” Mariam now looked off, out the window, and took another bite of the toast. She looked back at him. “This is widely assumed, no?”

  “Of course.” But it had not been confirmed by an unvetted contact with firsthand access, he thought. Until now.

  “You said you are staying for a few more days in Paris?” she said.

  He nodded, finished the beer, and decided to put it on the line. “I had planned to. But what if I came to Villefranche while you were there?” he said. “For a few days.”

  She dipped one of the remaining toast points in the foie gras and washed it down with a gulp of water. She gave him that look he’d see at the poker tables when an opponent would lay down with shaky fingers what they thought could be a winning hand. “I think I would like that,” she said.

  THEY WORKED THE LOGISTICS OVER crème brûlée: she would take the train down to the coast tomorrow morning, he would follow in the afternoon, find lodging—a safe house, he thought, hoping Shipley had one nearby—and wait for her to propose a time and place to meet. As they spoke, his mind meandered through the half dozen cables he knew Langley would need that evening.

  He checked his phone. Nothing from the BANDITOs. They hugged and held a long embrace, eyes locked, both sensing the boundaries, the intentions, the expectations. She pressed her forehead into his, avoiding the bruise, and leaned back.

  “Softer than the head butt,” he said.

  She snorted and smiled. “You hesitated.”

  He looked around. They had closed the restaurant down.

  “Tomorrow in Villefranche?” Sam said.

  “Tomorrow in Villefranche.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and left, door jangling behind.

  Sam wiped off the red lipstick in the bathroom before the outbound SDR. Sam’s reflection reminded him that he’d just violated Agency Regulation 22-345—“Restrictions on Contacts with Foreign Nationals.” His reflection shook its head in reproach, then disappeared.

  11

  ARTEMIS APHRODITE PROCTER WORE A LIME-GREEN velour tracksuit for the secure video teleconference. Sam and Shipley sat in Paris Station, Bradley at Langley, Procter in Damascus. Sam’s late-night cable on the Mariam case had tickled a list of interested parties so numerous—Syria Reports, Weapons Intelligence and Counterproliferation, the Medical and Psychological Assessment Center—that Bradley had organized a quick huddle to talk ops with only those that mattered.

  “What is that neon animal you’re wearing?” a very pixelated Ed Bradley asked.

  “It’s a velour tracksuit, you ignoramus. Casual Friday here in Damascus Station. You like it, by the way?”

  “It’s a good look. Reminds me of a Ukrainian mobster I was developing a few years back,” Sam said with a smirk.

  Procter told him to shut up, tied up her curly black hair, and then picked up something yellow. How close do you think we are?” she asked.

  “Close.”

  “How close?” Procter shot back, though she wasn’t looking at Sam. She was struggling with what looked to be a small package of Starburst.

  “She’s disillusioned with the government and her job. She’s offering more and more each time we meet.”

  Procter, apparently having succeeded in opening the wrapper, popped a candy into her mouth and began to chew loudly. “We can work out the details here in Damascus,” she said. “But from my standpoint the critical hurdle to clear with Mademoiselle Mariam in France, before she returns to Damascus, is to get her comfortable with the idea of meeting with an American out of the public eye.”

  Procter picked up a whiteboard marker and twirled it in her fingers. “Let me get you up to speed on what’s happening in D-town, Damascus, the oldest continually inhabited city on the goddamn planet,” she said. “Things have gone downhill since your last visit.”

  Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Procter steamrolled on. “There is literally no reason for an American to meet a Syrian in Damascus right now. They don’t invite us to the cocktail parties. Reasonable, I guess, given we told Assad to step aside, but still rude, a tad uncouth if you ask me.” Her hands left the frame, and when they returned the marker had been replaced by another candy. She tossed it into her mouth. Her eyes held the screen as she talked. “Best-case from Damascus Station perspective is Mariam leaves France with a safe house address and a basic commo plan. Signal site, dead drop combo probably. We’ve got no short-range comms available, and before we get her on a fancy device, I’d suggest we get something we can corroborate.”

  Sam nodded in agreement. “The Iranians run dangles at us all time, and they’re coaching the Syrians. We need to be sure. I’ll work to get something good from her.” Sam had zero doubt about Mariam’s credibility, but there was still a process to run. And it was true that while she had provided sensitive information, none of it would do any damage to the Syrian regime. CIA needed more to vet her properly.

  “Chief, how is the security situation impacting asset—” Sam said before Procter cut him off.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, bobbing her head. “The asset meetings? It’s been an issue. A manageable issue, though, okay? We don’t need the security guys yet—thank God, that sure as shit kills the mood in meetings. Central Damascus tends to be fine, like it was when you drove in to get KOMODO and Val. Government controls it. Occasional suicide bombings but rebels don’t run the turf. We’ve also noticed that the Syrians have redirected surveillance resources against the rebels, so some days they don’t really tag us. Though if these guys decide to bumper-lock you, they can swamp us with bodies—not top-notch tradecraft, but it’s their turf and they know the streets. They can slog up a good route with lots of fixed surveillance positions.

  “Point being,” Procter continued, “developing Mariam in Damascus will be a real treat. Obviously, the Syrians are going to watch you twenty-four/seven for at least the first few weeks. They’ll harass you. Maybe break into your apartment, maybe knock on your car window when you’re sitting in traffic, smile at you with a big toothy Syrian mukhabarat grin. Maybe someone takes a dump on your bed. All of these realities will shade development,” Procter concluded. “The more work you do in France, the better.

  This time she let Sam get it out: “I’m going to try to recruit her this week. At least take a shot.”

  “Atta boy,” Procter said.

  “Shipley,” Bradley said. “Can we get a safe house near Villefranche?”

  “I’ve got one down there,” he said. “But it will beg questions as to how a diplomat could afford the rental fees,” Shipley said.

  “You said in one of your cables that you told her about Vegas?” Bradley asked.

  “That’s right. I could tell her I paid for it with my winnings,” Sam said.

  “Hope you were good,” Shipley said. “This place is wild.”

  SAM TOOK THE TGV FROM Paris to Nice and as the graffiti-painted concrete of Paris’s slums receded to the bright greens of rolling farmland, he wrestled with a thought that had nagged him all week: Who were the three Syrians that had followed Mariam in Paris? He’d originally dismissed them as embassy mukhabarat, but for some reason his mind could not put the issue to rest. The three Syrian men were not trained in surveillance. It felt like a plot, a setup.

  He ordered coffee from the dining car. Spotting the BANDITOs at a table on the far side, he returned to his seat without a word. Sam watched pastures and vineyards and small villages fly by. He thought of how he would try to recruit her, sharpened his assessment of her personality and motivation. He began drafting the recruitment cable in his head: the comprehensive agent assessment, commo plan, financial arrangements, the ops program to produce intelligence. If he succeeded it would all generate a cryptonym to signify Langley’s blessing that the recruitment was made or at least far enough down the path. One plank of t
he strategy remained vulnerable. He had no plan for how to manage his feelings for her.

  The train sped toward the coast, stopping in Avignon for mechanical problems. He left his seat to stretch on an open-air platform that was flanked by cypress and caught the clean spring breeze of the Provençal countryside. It reminded him of Mariam’s hair.

  MARIAM WALKED FROM FATIMAH’S WATERCOLOR home onto the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat peninsula, taking the narrow trails hugging the coastline. Mohannad had tried to follow her to Villefranche, but Mariam had asked Bouthaina to intervene and her boss had won the battle, arguing that Mariam would be more persuasive without a mouth-breather over her shoulder. She had four days alone on the French Riviera. She could hardly believe it. In fact, she’d wondered—still did—whether it was some kind of trap set by Bouthaina or the mukhabarat.

  Now Mariam watched a small white sailboat plying the waves into the horizon as Fatimah walked beside her in silence. They turned a corner and the view widened to an expanse of wave-smacked coastline bearded with scrub and pines. Across the bay she could see Villefranche’s red-roofed homes, the village a seaside smattering of yellow and ocher resting on the hillside like so many shoe boxes.

  “Thank you for meeting again,” Mariam said.

  “I felt we had more to say to one another,” Fatimah said.

  “What do you mean?” Mariam asked.

  “I think you know.”

  Mariam stopped and put her hand on the oppositionist’s shoulder. She held Fatimah’s eyes for several significant seconds. “I’m afraid I do not.” She started moving again, Fatimah a pace behind.

  “I can tell that you are not an Assadist,” she said, catching up. “Why not help us instead?”

  Paranoia, birthright of all Syrians, now took hold. She considered the angles, the possibility of deception and subterfuge. Fatimah could be a mukhabarat plant inside the opposition, trying to recruit government officials to test loyalties; she could be an informant for Bouthaina; she could be what she appeared: a well-meaning, hopeless idealist.