Damascus Station Read online

  The Brit bet $750. Sam stared at the man. Dress shirt clinging to the gut is heaving a bit. He’s trying to control his breath. If I go at him again and he sticks with me, he’s paying for the flush draw.

  Sam re-raised another $1,000.

  The smile vanished. The Brit looked again at his cards. The final release of a hand with unmet potential.

  The Brit tossed the cards to the dealer, who raked the pot toward Sam.

  “What’d you have, you don’t mind me asking?” said the Brit.

  “Queens,” Sam lied.

  The Brit nodded and took a sip of his whiskey. “Damn. Well played.”

  Sam felt a hand on his shoulder. “Time for the buffet? Dinner ends at ten.”

  Sam ran his hand along the felt, fluttered his fingers along the clay chips, took their weight in his hands. He closed his eyes and inhaled the reassuring, musty smell of a table in action.

  SAM STROLLED TO THE CASHIER with Bellagio resident, late-night buffet partner, and occasional CIA talent spotter Max Huston. Huston had introduced Sam to the CIA. Huston’s relationship with the Agency was unofficial, ad hoc, shadowy. Huston found talent in Vegas and directed them to Langley recruiters. He was not paid. He’d told Sam once, after a half dozen vodka sodas, that he was merely doing his civic duty, sticking it to the commies and the Russkies and the Qaeda camel-humpers. “CIA has to have the best, not just the Ivy pricks,” he said with one eye open, the other flickering off and on. “CIA needs the girls and guys who know how people work, Sam.” Six months after meeting Max Huston, Sam had been in the Field Tradecraft Course at the Farm, the first test given to new case officers to determine if they had the mettle required for the Mission.

  “Good hunting tonight?” Huston asked, sipping at his vodka as Sam slid the chip tray through the slot to the leathery cashier behind the glass.

  “Yes. Like old times.”

  “Good man.”

  “Can you break it into two checks and one single bill?” Sam asked the cashier.

  Huston laughed.

  “Of course.” The cashier’s brow crinkled. He eyed Huston, then the dwindling vodka. He tried to smile.

  “One check for ten thousand to Sam Joseph. Me.” He slid his driver’s license through the slot. “A single hundred-dollar bill. Then one more check for the remainder made out to Clara Grace Joseph.” Sam spelled the name.

  Huston chuckled and finished the vodka. “What does she do with the cash?”

  “Before Cairo she bought a car.”

  “Baghdad?”

  “There was no check before Baghdad.”

  Huston grinned. “I know.”

  Sam pulled a pre-addressed envelope from his jeans pocket:

  CLARA GRACE JOSEPH

  15 BIG RICE ROAD

  SHERMANS CORNER, MN 55395

  He slipped a check for $24,480 into the envelope and asked the cashier for a pen and a slip of paper. On the paper he wrote: For anything. I love you, Mom. He put the note into the envelope and sealed it.

  “She’s a lucky mother,” Huston said. “Even though you broke her heart. Now, the buffet. I will also note that, as usual, you have not withdrawn funds sufficient to cover my drinking habit.”

  SAM STACKED HIS PLATE WITH a pile of seafood and slid into the booth across from Huston, who was already downing another vodka. He’d ordered one for Sam.

  “I always appreciate my former students letting me know when they’re in town.” He raised his glass. Sam did the same. The vibe was energetic amid the din: plates clattered in the kitchen, a group of drunken Chinese businessmen hooted from across the room, Huston raised his glass to three attractive women strolling by, their skirts impossibly short, painted on, their hair bleached into downy oblivion. He looked back to Sam, who had started in on the snow crab. Huston’s brow furrowed. “Something wrong?” he said.

  “Yes. We lost someone.”

  Huston grunted and raised his glass. “Can’t say more, I imagine?”

  “No, unfortunately.”

  Huston cut a chunk of prime rib. “Bradley get you involved?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re his fixer, you know that, Sam. That’s why he puts you in the action.”

  He raised his glass so Huston could not see his lips purse. He hated hearing himself described as a fixer for Bradley—because it was true.

  The Chinese businessmen erupted into raucous laughter as one fell out of the booth. The waiter stepped over him. “You miss this place?” Huston said, changing the subject.

  Sam looked at the businessman, now clinging to the edge of the table, trying to stand amid the whoops of his inebriated colleagues. “Just your smiling face, Max.”

  Sam was about to pull the rip cord after two more rounds of vodka, one more trip through the buffet, and a thick finger of a peaty scotch that Huston habitually insisted was the only appropriate nightcap. It had a name Sam could never remember. Then Huston pointed his empty glass toward one of the televisions mounted above the prime rib carving station.

  Sam turned around and read the CNN chyron: U.S. official killed in Damascus. Then the caption: Senior national security officials have told CNN that Valerie Owens, a U.S. diplomat, has died in Damascus. The Syrian government has not released an official statement.

  SAM HAD POLISHED OFF FOUR bottles of mini-fridge whiskey and now stood facing the Strip below with its illuminated fountains, the Eiffel Tower replica, mountains shadowed in the distance.

  The Bellagio fountains, white sunbeams in the night, licked skyward.

  This is why you left. This city dances, oblivious, and the war happens elsewhere. He wondered what Mariam would think of this place and felt a pang of nostalgia for France. Before Mariam had disappeared back into Damascus. Before he’d seen that picture of Val.

  He opened a fifth bottle of whiskey and downed it quickly. Fucking media leaks. Val had served in secret and was entitled to be buried that way. Instead, some goddamn college yearbook photo was splashed all over the news. It made him furious. He lay on the bed and waited for sleep, but in its place was a mental slideshow of a dead friend and her crazy laugh from Baghdad. When daybreak finally arrived, he brewed coffee on the room machine and drank it in silence watching the fountain, now naked and unilluminated in the comedown of the Vegas dawn. He set down the coffee cup and turned one of the empty Jack Daniel’s bottles over in his hands.

  Drinks back home in a few weeks, Val had said.

  VAL OWENS DIED BEFORE THE annual Memorial Ceremony, so the stone carvers had time to chisel the 134th star into the marble wall exactly six inches to the right of the 133rd. The calligrapher inking the mortal harvest into the goatskin-bound Book of Honor, held in a case jutting from the wall, added a similar black star but no name. Valerie Owens was under diplomatic cover at the time of her death and her role at the Agency remained classified.

  The lobby was crammed with Agency brass, approved reporters, families of the dead, and anyone else able to squeeze into the Original Headquarters Building lobby. The Director did not utter her name during the ceremony. Unwashed masses, lacking blue badges and Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearances, filled the audience.

  Sam stood in the back. Scanning over the seated crowd, he saw a middle-aged woman with tousled gray hair in the front, sobbing as the Director described the recent loss of a case officer in a Middle Eastern country. It was Val’s mother, Joanna. Val’s dad was dead.

  Sam had never thought much about CIA officers killed in the line of duty. Most were Special Activities Division paramilitary guys—Ground Branch, typically—who died in a war zone engaged in something that more closely resembled combat than it did intelligence collection. But this was different. Looking at the star, it was as if Val had been annihilated save for an etching in the wall.

  The Director thanked everyone for coming, praised the fallen with vague honorifics, and the crowd began to shuffle away. Sam cut through the crowd for Joanna Owens. Her cheeks were red, eyes wild with the
despair of a mother who’d outlived her only child. Sam shoved past a faceless well-wisher and gave Joanna a bear hug. “I knew her in Baghdad, she was like a sister to me then,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” Joanna cried. He stood back, wanting to say that CIA would do its best to find her daughter’s killer. But he had no idea if Joanna knew her daughter had been murdered, or if Langley would ultimately try to avenge Val. He held her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said again. She sniffled and nodded. Guilt rising, he turned away and pushed through the throng to leave the lobby.

  SAM TRAVELED TO DAMASCUS ON an economy-class ticket purchased by the Global Deployment Center under Agency Regulation 41-2, stipulating that any journey must “meet or exceed thirteen hours in duration, including layovers, to merit the purchase of an airfare above Basic Economy Class—or its nearest equivalent—on a U.S. carrier (Delta, American, United, etc.).” He’d argued with the old lady in Deployment that a good night’s sleep in a lie-flat seat would really help the jet lag, but she didn’t budge. The lowest available fare had a total one-way trip of twelve hours forty-seven minutes.

  Sam connected through Vienna because Austrian Air was one of the few Western carriers still flying into Damascus. He was just nodding off when the pilot announced they’d begun the steep descent into Damascus International Airport and everybody just hold on tight. He did not explain why, but Sam knew: a rapid drop lowered the aircraft’s profile in case rebels wanted to sling a shoulder-fired missile into the plane. His stomach swung past his head as the pilot dropped through the chop.

  Out the window he saw the smoke wafting in columns from a few of the embattled suburbs and the sprawl of stone apartments coating the desert floor. From the air the suburban ring around the city appeared like an endless string of cinder blocks. The city center, the ancient Old City, was dotted by minarets and the green of parks. It was beautiful from the air and for a moment allowed him to forget the danger Mariam faced, to push from his mind Val’s scream as he’d careened out of Damascus during his only previous visit to this city.

  The wheels slammed into the runway and the pilot offered a half-hearted welcome. Sam looked around. No one appeared thrilled to have arrived.

  SAM DEPLANED AND FOUND THE embassy expediter waiting at the gate, as specified in the cable confirming his PCS (permanent change of station) to Damascus. The man shook his hand, welcomed Sam to Syria, and he hustled them off at a near-run. Clearing passport control, they arrived at baggage claim, where Procter waited. The Chief, unsmiling, sported aviator sunglasses and an olive drab blazer meant for a polar climate. In the presence of the expediter—a Foreign Service National, or FSN—they said nothing. Sam collected his single suitcase from Damascus International’s baggage claim area: conveyor belts inoperable, the bags collecting in sloppy piles, passengers thronged about like the refugees he’d seen jostling for sacks of flour in Baghdad. Whisked through customs, he wheeled his bag through the dusty terminal and into the blazing light of the afternoon.

  Like all competent expediters throughout the Arab world, the man had parked illegally: a white embassy Land Cruiser sat smack in front of the terminal with its flashers blinking. Procter waved the expediter off, sending him to another car—no doubt parked legally, some distance away—and took the wheel. Sam opened the back to toss in his suitcase, noting the odd presence of a shovel before hearing the Chief’s comforting first words: “Rebels kidnapped some Republican Guard guys on the airport road this morning, so I’m here to keep you safe, make sure you don’t end up dead on day one.”

  Five minutes into the drive, they hit the first checkpoint. They showed their black diplomatic passports and were waved through without even a quick examination of the bags in the back. The airport was thirty minutes southeast of the city. “We’ll go from war to peace in about twenty minutes,” Procter said. Sam took in the palm trees, the ubiquitous billboards littered with regime propaganda, and the cinder-block suburbs. The situation had worsened since the operation to rescue Val and KOMODO. As they neared the city, they passed shuttered strip malls, restaurants, and auto-body shops that appeared abandoned to some long-ago apocalypse.

  Procter played tour guide as they drove. “Rebels have started to hit regime soldiers and militia on this road,” she said, gesturing to the scrubby plains flanking the airport highway. “Sometimes it’s kidnappings, sometimes they fling a goddamn rocket-propelled grenade into the car like whoosh.” The Chief made an unsettling gesture toward the Land Cruiser’s windshield. “Before you move around in this city you make peace with your god.”

  When they reached Jaramana, another restive suburb, they hit five more checkpoints. Each uneventful, yet pulse-quickening with uncertainty. Procter, rolling up her window after checkpoint number five, captured the feeling well: “Never know when one of these teenagers is going to decide to have some fun with us.” Three attack helicopters hovered above the suburb, machine guns rattling into the rubble. The Guard had blocked off the entrances, but Sam could see that most of the buildings inside had been shattered: whole sides cleaved off, concrete pockmarked by shell fire, surfaces soot-blackened from explosions. “It’s like Afghanistan in there,” Procter said. “Without the joyful atmosphere.”

  The world brightened inside central Damascus. Shops were still open, sidewalk cafés peopled, buildings whole, traffic bustling. Procter parked her car on the sidewalk of the circle outside the embassy. “I’ll show you around,” she said, unbuckling and jumping out of the vehicle. They left Sam’s bag in the trunk and walked west outside the embassy’s white stone walls. The stone was about ten feet high, topped by another fifteen feet of fencing designed to prevent climbers from gaining a foothold. “No real setback from the road here, huh?” Sam said.

  “Yep, big-ass problem,” Procter said. “Back in ’06 some terrorists tried to drive a truck bomb through the front door. Not much stopping anyone, except the midget pylons on the sidewalk.” They entered on the western side and went through the metal detectors under the watchful eyes of three Marine guards. Sam already had his badge, so they walked into the embassy’s chancery building and Procter gave him the codes to open the doors. “Floor two,” she said, “the State bigwigs. Ambassador, Deputy Chief of Mission, the Political and Economic Sections. Ambo has a SCIF in there we sometimes use for briefings. Third floor is Marines and the commo freaks, all their antennas and shit. That, by the way, is where we rally if things go all Tehran ’79 on us,” she said.

  “Now the basement,” she said, pointing down a plaster-flaked hallway with a spasmodic bank of fluorescent lights and a bathroom—door ajar—at the end. “This is us. Welcome to Damascus Station.” She approached the metallic vault door, punched a code, and heard the buzz. She swung open the slab.

  Sam had become accustomed to the rustic nature of the CIA’s Middle Eastern real estate during his first tour in Cairo. Damascus Station was no different. It was bathed in artificial light and held fewer than ten desks, all eerily empty as though there had been layoffs, or a plague—not impossible, given the recycled air. The austerity sprang from the fear of ransacking. Hard drives were removed from the computers each evening, papers shuffled into the acid-boosted shredders or safes, and personal effects were discouraged. Television monitors beamed security footage of the area outside the Station’s heavy vault door.

  Procter walked him to his desk. The rebel flag and a portrait of Bashar al-Assad fluttered in front of a vent.

  The first thing he noticed in Procter’s office was the shotgun.

  One of her Moscow case officers had mentioned it. Procter kept a Mossberg combat shotgun propped in the corner of her office next to the trash can, a gross violation of several Agency regulations. A sign taped above it read PULL IN CASE OF HOSTAGE CRISIS.

  When he entered the prison-cell office—windowless, ten-by-five, furnished with only a small desk and a table—Sam saw that her desk was covered in greasy wrappers and pita crumbs. Procter removed her blazer and tossed it on the floor. She wore a black tank top, and with her back
turned he could see imprinted on her lats a tattoo of seven simple stars in a line, the words IN HONOR marked above. A personal memorial wall inked on her back. Procter then explained she wanted to dive into the ATHENA ops plan, which Sam thought was pretty aggressive given he’d been in Syria for about an hour and a half and had not slept in a day. He recalled the verdict on Procter: Energizer bunny. She stood at her empty whiteboard and picked up a red marker as if she had an idea. But she wrote nothing. Then she set the marker down. She looked at her clock, then pointed at the door.

  “Time to get out so I can meditate.”

  17

  THE PACKET OF SVR INFORMATION ARRIVED IN ALI’S office on Wednesday, as it did every week, one of the fruits of an agreement struck between Assad and Putin for Russian support against the rebels. The new intel from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service was an improvement from the drivel the SVR provided prior to the unrest, in the salad days when Syria had not been at the heart of the proxy war between Washington and Moscow.

  Ali, flipping through the papers, learned that the Americans, even after the recent arrests, had recruited a new source. He read an intriguing report titled: “SYRIAN PRESIDENTIAL PALACE PERSONALITIES AND POWER DYNAMICS.” It was very accurate.

  It concluded with a short commentary paragraph drafted by the SVR’s Middle East Department in clunky Arabic:

  SVR SOURCE ALSO REPORTS RUMORS OF NEW, HIGHLY-PLACED CIA ASSET IN SYRIA. SOURCE ELICITED INFORMATION DURING INFORMAL EXCHANGES. SVR FOLLOWING UP TO PROVIDE MORE DETAILS.

  The SVR did not describe their source, but Ali assumed the Russians had an asset inside the CIA or the Israeli Mossad, because the digital scan of the actual CIA report in the packet had a banner that read: “TS//HCS//OC REL ISR.” The “REL ISR” meant it had been cleared for release to the Israelis.