Damascus Station Read online

  Ali called Kanaan and asked for the reports from the U.S. Embassy. The mukhabarat officers monitoring the building submitted daily reports logging the arrivals and departures of every American.

  Waiting, he finished a cigarette and called Layla for no reason.

  Layla was explaining that the electricity was out, an increasingly common frustration even in Ali’s neighborhood, when Kanaan entered with the papers. He left them on the desk. Ali told Layla he would call her back.

  He started reading. There were pictures and commentary on each American official. Some were listed as “Suspected CIA” or “Confirmed CIA.” These categories represented more than twenty names. Then he saw a name he did not recognize: Second Secretary Samuel Joseph. Nor did he recognize his face, which he now saw in the grainy pictures of Mr. Joseph entering the embassy at 7:56 a.m. and departing again at 11:45 a.m., probably for lunch, then heading back for the afternoon before clocking out for the day at 6:48 p.m. The report labeled him “Suspected CIA” and noted that he’d been in Damascus for two days.

  He called Kanaan and asked him to scour the records departments at the various mukhabarat agencies to determine if they knew anything about this Samuel. Ali closed the reports and shifted to the other pile of paper on his desk. Ali wore the unofficial uniform of the Syrian mukhabarat: plain white collared shirt, loose-fitting black slacks, and scuffed black leather shoes. Nondescript, functional, and cheap—an international detective uniform. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone because of the heat. Another summer of war on the way, he thought. Certainly not the last.

  He turned his chair to the window and scanned the eastern sky, the sun’s hazy rays illuminating the city’s rebellious suburbs. He thumbed through a report on Republican Guard operations in Douma. Rustum’s men had finally sealed off the district last night, closing down what they thought was the last of the tunnels. The strategy was collective punishment: seal off a restive area and contain the population until they hated the rebels for inciting the regime’s terror. Until they turned on them.

  Then he came to the pictures. Victims with names, some biographical information, causes of death. Some pictures only included pieces of the dead, the remainder presumably lost or misplaced amid the skittering bullets, mortar fire, or jerry-rigged bombs dropped, inaccurately of course, from the government’s ancient fleet of Soviet fighter planes. All the victims were emaciated, many were children. He put the report down. His mind drifted to his own boys, and then to the conversation with Layla when it all began.

  APRIL 2011. IT HAD BEEN the first spring in the new and crumbling Syria, just four weeks after the protests started. They’d left the twins with Layla’s mother for the afternoon and taken a basket stuffed with mezze and Syrian wine to a secluded ridge on Mount Qasioun overlooking the city. He felt the anger in the air and knew then that everything was falling apart. He told Layla so. The mukhabarat shooting innocents, the demonstrations growing, the criminals and jihadis lurking in the shadows, the kidnappings and torture, the rebels painting red X’s on Alawi doors to mark them for death. The chaos was embryonic, sure, but it was there. He was looking closely, tracing its patterns to understand if he would survive. He and Layla talked through the choices, as everyone did: leave, stay and support the President, join the demonstrators, keep your head down.

  They were all bad options.

  But the choice had been simple. They did not have the resources to take their extended family along if Ali fled. And, given his role in the regime, he could have been arrested for war crimes depending on the destination. Leaving Syria would be a death sentence for many relatives, and potentially for him. Defection to the opposition would be even worse for his family. The government would arrest them, confiscate their property, torture and kill a few to make the point.

  “What do you think of Assad?” Layla asked after her third glass of wine. “Do you support the government?” She’d never asked before, and he’d never volunteered an opinion.

  Ali decided to tell Layla the truth, knowing he never would again. “Assad is going to kill his way out with all of us lashed to his throne. He will take our souls.”

  That sufficed for an answer because it left just one option. Stay put, keep your head down.

  He had felt like a coward. He still did.

  KANAAN VICTORIOUSLY WAVED A FOLDER in the air as he entered Ali’s office. He slid a copy across the desk. “Something interesting from one of the officers in Paris. Mohannad al-Bakry. One of the clerks in records knows him. Notorious for over-filing. He drafts regular surveillance reports on the embassy staff. They of course despise him.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But in this case al-Bakry’s fastidiousness has served us well, because he filed a report just a few weeks ago mentioning Samuel Joseph.”

  Ali’s pulse jolted. He again felt like a detective beginning to unravel a long thread. In this moment he was an investigator, not an accomplice to mass murder.

  “It describes an interaction between Samuel Joseph and a Palace official named Mariam Haddad,” Kanaan continued.

  “Haddad?” Ali’s brow furrowed. He lit a cigarette.

  “Yes, old Damascene Christian family.”

  “Everyone knows them. What does the report say?” Ali asked.

  “Well, al-Bakry writes here that Mariam and this Samuel struck up a conversation at a diplomatic event in Paris. Apparently he tried to warn her against speaking with Americans, but she told him off. He describes the interaction as ‘warm and friendly with amorous overtones.’ ”

  Ali laughed. “She might have just thought he was an attractive American diplomat and struck up a conversation to pass the time. And why not tell al-Bakry off? She comes from a good family, she can tangle with a low-level mukhabarat officer.”

  Kanaan reached into his briefcase, pulled out a photo, and slid it to Ali. “As you can see, she is quite—er—striking. It is easy to see why al-Bakry may have been jealous.”

  Ali looked at the picture of her state identification card. Long dark hair, lightly spun and whorled like Layla’s.

  “Let’s talk to Mariam.”

  “Of course, General, I’ll arrange it.”

  The desk phone rang as Kanaan stood to leave. Unfortunately, Ali recognized the number. “Hello, big brother,” he said.

  “Little brother,” said Rustum. “I am running an errand tomorrow and had a question about a detail from Marwan Ghazali’s testimony.” At the mention of the dead spy, Ali again felt Rustum’s weight pinning him down in the interrogation room. He coughed.

  “What detail?” Ali said.

  “In one of your reports you wrote that Ghazali said he provided a list of SSRC employees to the CIA. Potential sub-sources, I believe. He claimed they were unwitting.”

  “That’s right,” said Ali. “We’ve been monitoring many of them, just to be sure.”

  “Was Colonel Daoud Haddad on the list?”

  “He was not on the list,” Ali said. Rustum hung up without a word.

  Ali set down the desk phone. A lack of caffeine had turned into a throbbing headache and he wanted to think about an investigation. Anything other than Rustum, Basil, Marwan Ghazali, Valerie Owens. He dismissed Kanaan and asked his assistant for tea. Then he creaked back in his chair, pressing his thumbs into his temple to dull the pain. He wondered if Samuel Joseph’s arrival was connected to the CIA’s new source. The CIA Station transitioned officers frequently, he knew. It could be just another rotation. But what if the two were linked?

  He did not yet know how Mariam fit into the picture, but something spoke to him from beyond the reports, something buried deep in the maze of his investigator’s brain. There is something here. Unravel it.

  18

  RUSTUM’S ARMORED LEXUS SUV ZIGZAGGED THROUGH the concrete barriers outside the airfield and pulled onto the tarmac. Several staff cars, including Basil’s, were parked in a triangle next to a Russian-made MiG-29 bomber that was fueling on the runway, their headlamps illuminated in
the early morning darkness. A tractor-trailer pulled between the cars and the plane. Rustum signaled to his driver to stop. Armored personnel carriers maneuvered into positions covering the airfield’s perimeter as a helicopter whirred overhead. Jumping down from the car, Rustum nodded to Basil and approached Colonel Daoud Haddad and one of his technicians. The men stood over a computer resting on the hood of a battered white Toyota pickup. Flaking paint on the door marked it as SSRC.

  They shook hands as a bomb lift truck drove toward the plane. “Colonel,” Rustum said as they shook hands. “Thank you for arranging a team so quickly. This is a highly sensitive matter. I am glad you could personally oversee it.”

  “Of course, Commander,” Daoud said.

  As the lift truck passed by, Rustum noticed Daoud eyeing the green paint on the bomb’s midsection, the Soviet indicator for chemical munitions. Basil sidled up next to Daoud, who took a step away, smiling politely as he did so.

  “We’ll need your men to load the components into these bombs and one of your technicians to interpret the results of the test,” Rustum said. “We’ve installed sensors at the site.”

  Daoud nodded. “We are not going to the proving grounds for the test?”

  Rustum shook his head. “No. Somewhere else today. A new site.” Daoud huddled up his team and explained the requirements. Their forklift carried the drums alongside the bomb lift truck. The operator had opened the munition’s compartments and Daoud’s team filled them with care, measuring the output of each component using sensors on their rubber vacuum hoses. Daoud gave Rustum a thumbs-up fifteen minutes later as the bomb lift operator drove the vehicle away from the plane. The pilot was now in the cockpit performing preflight checks.

  “A very light wind at the site, Commander,” an aide said to Rustum.

  He nodded. “Get Daoud and his team loaded up, let’s go.”

  THIRTY MINUTES OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, THE convoy of Rustum’s staff car, three Republican Guard jeeps, and two armored personnel carriers stopped on a hilltop stretch of road overlooking the village of Efreh. The town, perched on an opposing hill, was a ramble of stone huts cut by a single road, a mosque on the southern end. Rustum saw the lights of the bomber appear to the north, beyond the village. It was still dark. The only light in Efreh came from a small hut, a fire still burning on its roof. Rustum had not wanted to bring another SSRC official into his confidences, but he required Branch 450’s expertise today in Efreh, and Colonel Daoud Haddad was considered loyal.

  Rustum kicked his boot into the gravel and got out of his car to stretch. “Bring Haddad over,” he told his aide. Haddad hustled over. “Commander?”

  The captain spread a map on the hood of the Lexus. It was spotted with red dots. “We’ve placed sensors in a grid pattern throughout the village,” Rustum told Daoud. “We’ve also put some of them in an old tunnel complex the terrorists used. We want to see how effectively they spread underground. Now tell me, where should we drop the bombs?”

  Daoud now picked at the back of his neck as he looked from the map to the village, asking one of his technicians for the wind speed and direction. Presently, Daoud pointed to a spot on the map a few hundred yards south of the village. “Given the light southern wind, I would drop the munitions here. The wind will then carry them over the village.”

  Rustum nodded and gestured toward his aide for the walkie-talkie. The jet now circled overhead. He clicked the walkie-talkie and read the coordinates from the map.

  The explosions tore into an olive grove on the hill’s southern tip. Four plumes shot skyward, then clumped together and eventually engulfed Efreh. The town was empty and silent. Rustum watched through binoculars, his gaze settling on a single home resting in the shade of the mosque. Some of the men played cards on the armored vehicles. Daoud stared at the computer screen with his technician.

  One of the officers wandered between vehicles offering cigarettes. A few sat asleep and upright in the armored personnel carrier’s ragged leather seats. Basil whittled on a stick with his knife, staring at the same house in the village. He had overseen the operation to clear the village, and it had been bloody.

  “We should take Haddad in with us,” Rustum said. Basil nodded, keeping his eyes locked on the house.

  The smoke dissipated as the sun rose.

  After twenty minutes Rustum approached Daoud and the technician and asked for a preliminary report. Sarin, he knew, is deadliest when inhaled as an aerosol. The sensors he had ordered his men to place throughout Efreh would monitor the sarin’s airborne persistence and the radius of contamination. In some parts of the test site the toxicity would be sufficient to kill everyone. In others, people would merely become sick.

  “The coverage is good, Commander,” Daoud said. “I’m seeing lethal persistence in most sectors. The exception is the row of sensors at the northern end. There I’m seeing concentrations that would lead to severe, not lethal, effects. The winds were calm, which also helped focus the dispersion.” Daoud’s voice was pinched. The man could tell something was wrong.

  Rustum placed a hand on Daoud’s shoulder. It was time. “Shall we examine the town, Colonel? A few of my men have not seen it since the clearing operation. They are anxious to return.” He smiled at Daoud.

  Daoud looked down at the village. “To gather up the sensors, Commander?”

  Basil laughed.

  ALL OF THE SARIN HAD evaporated—Daoud, to Rustum’s irritation, had explained it to them twice—but Rustum had a healthy respect for the gas and ordered the small search party to don protective suits. They entered the first home. Plastic chairs were overturned near a woodstove. Spent rounds littered the floor by the window. A selection of clothes—a white shirt, a baby’s left shoe, a kaffiyeh, camouflage vests—lay crumpled about, mapping the transition from home to rebel outpost. Rustum saw the hatch built into the flooring. It was nailed down from the outside, and he motioned for two men to pry it open.

  It creaked as they worked it loose with crowbars and knives until the men succeeded in tearing it loose. One of the officers threw it aside and disappeared into the darkness down the plywood ladder. Basil followed him. Rustum smiled through his fogging mask and slapped Daoud, now ashy white, on the back. “Your turn, Colonel,” he said. Daoud looked toward the door, then at the baby shoe. He nodded and slowly descended the ladder. Rustum followed, his eyes adjusting to the tunnel’s blackness as he reached the bottom, nearly twenty feet beneath the hut.

  Daoud faced one of the walls, his mask on the floor. He was hunched over and dry-heaving. Rustum slapped Daoud on the back. “You are like a blind painter, my friend, finally seeing your handiwork for the first time.” He laughed. “What do you think?”

  Basil swept his flashlight over the bodies before focusing on a man who looked about seventy. Rustum saw the spittle around the mouth and the throbbing red haloing the eyes. He patted the dead man’s cheeks. Basil walked farther into the tunnel to inspect the line. He stopped and knelt over a teenage boy. “This one almost bit his hands off trying to escape, Commander.”

  “Are they all dead?” Rustum asked.

  “It appears so.”

  Rustum took Daoud’s shoulder and pointed him down the line of fifty-seven bodies. They’d counted the prisoners after the operation to clear the village. “They’d have done the same to us if they could,” Rustum said as he kicked at a woman’s bare foot. “Even the women. Do not forget that, Colonel.”

  Daoud stared down the corridor.

  “I count on your discretion,” Rustum said. “You are a good soldier.” He led Daoud farther into the tunnel, stopping when they came to a young girl with closed eyes and an open mouth. “Even if your daughter does not know when to keep her mouth shut.”

  19

  ON HIS FIRST WEEKEND IN DAMASCUS, SAM WALKED the Old City to see the typical tourist sites: the Umayyad Mosque, Souq Al-Hamadiya the Street Called Straight, the Ananias Chapel, a half dozen more. He took pictures, he purchased trinkets and swag with Assad’s face on it fo
r his brothers. He smiled stupidly at checkpoints, handing over his black diplomatic passport and explaining how grateful he was to be in Damascus. He stayed in the pocket of the city center. The route appeared normal for any new American diplomat. And it was.

  The stops were preparation for a set of SDRs he’d designed since leaving France. He scanned for fixed surveillance, for cameras, he took in the city’s terrain and its feel. He felt watched everywhere.

  He drank bitter coffee at a tumbledown café in Kafr Sousa as the afternoon salat, the call to prayer, rang out from the muezzin loudspeakers. When it concluded, he left and walked toward a jewelry store, where he planned to purchase something for his mother. On the way he strolled past a building marked SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND AGRARIAN REFORM.

  He passed another building up the street and saw a bank of windows facing the road. He noted the address, the phone number for the leasing company, and then the mukhabarat tail bumper-locking him. He continued to the jewelry store, where he examined the inventory for an hour: silver, ornate gold, mother-of-pearl. He settled on a big silver ring. Crafted in Aleppo, it resembled a flower.

  The poor mukhabarat guy looked very bored as he watched the shopping trip from outside the store.

  THE BANDITOS HAD ALSO ARRIVED in Damascus.

  Sam—in his role as State communications officer (second secretary)—had called Rami from his office and asked if he and his brothers would consider discussing the business environment in Syria with the ambassador. “We would value your perspective on the economy, given your vast commercial interests,” Sam had said.

  The brothers had made the requisite calls to clear a meeting at the U.S. Embassy: the Interior Ministry, Military Intelligence, General Intelligence, Political Security, Air Force Intelligence, the Palace. All consented. Military Intelligence faxed talking points to use with the Americans. Rami threw them away.

  Sam greeted the brothers at the embassy, ushered them into the chancery, past the ambassador’s office, and into the metallic SCIF used by the State Department team upstairs.