Damascus Station Read online

  Instead of the ambassador they met with Sam and Procter for two hours. They covered the waterfront: safe house provision, the logistics of reopening the family’s Damascus villa, the creation of a business rationale for their return.

  “Guys, no one is going to ask questions as long as we make the right payments,” Yusuf said as he picked at a hamburger from the embassy commissary. “There is a long list of bribes, but once that’s done they won’t care why we’re back. Lots of sons of the regime sunning themselves in Beirut, like we were.”

  The CIA would put $500,000 into the BANDITOs’ escrow account to cover start-up expenses. Sam slid the address for the building he had scouted across the table. Yusuf picked up the paper, read it, and handed it back.

  “We’ll take care of it,” Yusuf said.

  “We still need the high-level accounting, like before,” Sam said. Always an embarrassing topic. Sometimes DO Finance audited operational accounts and asked nosy questions.

  Elias laughed. “We should work for the DGSE, no way the French are asking for paperwork.”

  “Just don’t write down the bribes,” Sam said.

  A CHUNK OF THE BANDITOS’ cash went toward the provision of a new safe house (Directorate of Operations Finance category: Housing).

  Rami, under the auspices of a shell company, had paid six months’ rent on a cramped ninth-floor office. Sam had specified the location, including the required view, but not the target. Not yet.

  The SDR to the new office required ten hours. Rami greeted Sam at the door and apologized with a grin that they’d already eaten dinner. “We started doubting you’d make it. We left you some cold shawarma, though.”

  The office was a testament to whitewashed corporatist style: particle-board desks, faux-black-leather chairs, disconnected Avaya desk phones, cheap gray carpet. It could have been anywhere. But it was in Kafr Sousa, one block from the Security Office.

  Yusuf showed Sam the two cramped cubicles and led him into the conference room. The air smelled of chemical wash and paint. A fluorescent light hummed above. The room hurt Sam’s eyes.

  “Internet and phones will be connected on Tuesday,” Rami said.

  “Good. I’ll send someone to sweep the place on Wednesday,” Sam said. A tech from the Station had visited yesterday for the initial scrub.

  Sam poured a glass of lukewarm white wine and picked up the shawarma, its once-white wrapper now translucent from grease. They sat at the table. Elias refilled his glass and smacked Sam on the shoulder as he walked behind him.

  “Good to be back in Damascus,” he said without conviction.

  Sam lifted his glass. “To our work together.”

  “And that we all make it through the war to grow old,” Yusuf said. They clinked glasses and drank.

  “Let’s talk about the view,” Sam said, knowing he had about fifteen minutes.

  Elias stood and motioned toward the cubicles. Sam and his brothers followed. Elias and Sam squeezed into the cubicle closest to the conference room. The square window, cut into the middle of the wall, provided a direct line of sight to the Security Office’s main entrance. Elias oriented Sam.

  “Two entrances, far as we can tell. This one and a smaller one on the western side. Used to be the Agriculture Ministry. Obviously, it’s not anymore.”

  The entrance was about two hundred yards down the street. Sam could see the concrete berms, a small guard hut, and a manually operated gate. Three guards holding AK-47s loitered outside. Behind them, a cinder-block wall surrounded the building.

  Sam looked at the street below. Cars were parked on the sidewalks. He saw mukhabarat officers weave between them as they approached the gatehouse, where they would flash a badge before walking into the entrance courtyard. He looked down the road at the parked cars and the mukhabarat officers snaking around them. He watched a man bump into the trunk of a car as he walked past.

  They returned to the conference room and sat down. Sam pulled a photograph of Ali from the compartment in his bag and put it on the table. He registered the thought that he was usually planning to recruit foreign officials, not kill them. The prospects of a lethal covert action finding against Ali Hassan had changed all of that.

  “This stays in this room, no outsourcing. It’s a lot to ask, but I need some combination of the three of you to hold watch here for a week. I want to know when this man, General Ali Hassan, enters and exits the building. The usual. Time-stamped logs, photographs, and the street he takes when he arrives and exits.”

  Rami looked at the photo and asked: “Who is he?”

  “Runs the Palace’s Security Office. Bad dude.”

  “Want us to follow him on the street?”

  “Not yet. Just the building for now. And all watching from this office.”

  Elias smiled, watching Sam’s brain work through the angles. “I wish I knew what you were thinking right now, man,” he said.

  “Trust me, you don’t.”

  20

  THE USB STICK JAMMED INTO SAM’S RIGHT RUNNING shoe had arrived in an orange diplomatic pouch. It had been designed by the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology at exceptional cost to the American taxpayer, contained fifty terabytes of storage, and housed a malicious software program that could pirate the contents of a computer in ten seconds. That did not sound like long, but it would feel like an eternity for Mariam. She’d agreed to the idea in France. It was part of the deal, they both knew. She had signed up to work for CIA. But he still felt sick. His feelings for her nagged. They made him feel less like a CIA case officer and more like a manipulative boyfriend.

  The stick pinched his heel as he jogged past a restaurant onto one of Qasioun’s overlooks. He stopped and stretched, using the opportunity to again check for surveillance as he took in the view. The evening was cool for summer, and a light wind bristled the pines. The lights of central Damascus illuminated as homes and shops and restaurants prepared for the evening. The suburbs were dark.

  At the start of his run, near his apartment, a mukhabarat gorilla had aggressively bumper-locked him. He’d been a hair tweaked because this was just no fun, having a constant shadow on you.

  Now, near the drop site, he felt black.

  “HOW FREQUENTLY DOES SAMUEL JOSEPH exercise?” Ali asked Kanaan after waving off the surveillance team. They’d needed the resources for another operation against a man suspected of smuggling weapons for the rebels.

  “Probably twice, maybe three times each week,” Kanaan said. “Very normal for him.”

  Ali stared at the map. The single team had tracked him for an hour on a winding run around central Damascus. It had been a waste. He lit a cigarette, wondering if Samuel was a dead end. Then he heard again the little whisper in his head, the one that helped him track down a serial killer on the coast all those years ago, and now it said, No, you keep at this American. Ali took a long drag on the cigarette, snuffed out the butt in his ashtray, and called Layla to hear her voice.

  FEELING ALONE, SAM CHECKED HIS periphery and the hills above without moving his head. Nothing. The path ahead cut steeply upward until it turned to the right. He began sprinting up the hill. His legs and lungs burned. Cold sweat ran down his forehead. The path evened out and he emerged from the pines. He saw the retaining wall drop site twenty yards ahead. It looked identical to the image from Procter’s tablet in France.

  He sprinted closer, now risking an obvious look back to see if anyone trailed him. He was still alone. Ten feet from the trash pile, he eyed the unlabeled can. Kneeling down, he lifted the lid from the can, pulled the USB stick from his shoe, and placed it inside.

  He finished tying his shoe and set off down the path.

  TERROR HAD ACCOMPANIED MARIAM SINCE France. She lay with it in bed, recognized it in Razan’s eyes. It pricked her neck when she strolled the Old City. She waited for the mukhabarat. She waited for Jamil Atiyah’s assassins to return. She used the moves Sam taught her in Nice to watch for the watchers. She carried a hunting knife in her purse an
d in her room practiced unsheathing it, gutting an assailant, slashing the neck and chest and face.

  She also felt the lightness return to her chest, because she’d chosen a side and taken back control. The fear, oddly, confirmed the righteousness of her decision to spy. The espionage set her against a murderous government, but the fright lingered because the opponent still stood. She had not yet won. Maybe she never would.

  Now, in her office, Mariam rubbed her clammy palms into the couch’s upholstery and checked her face to confirm she was not sweating as she slipped the USB stick into the pocket of her own binder, closed it, and spread Bouthaina’s folder on top. She checked the time. Two minutes until her meeting. She started walking down the hall toward Bouthaina’s office, careful not to move too quickly. She noticed her hands did not shake but her heart was racing.

  Mariam had asked for an evening meeting at the time when Bouthaina usually took a call from Rustum. Sometimes business-related, sometimes amorous, but always a distraction for several minutes. Sometimes she would shoo Mariam from her office, others Bouthaina would decamp into her palatial washroom. Occasionally, but rarely, she would take the call in front of Mariam. She hoped that would not be the case tonight.

  Bouthaina waved in Mariam, who took a seat. Bouthaina donned her Chanel tortoiseshell reading glasses and joined her at the table. Mariam slid the top binder to Bouthaina and began an update on the latest divisions inside the National Council. All of it unsurprising, salacious, delightful to Bouthaina’s destructive sensibilities. “We don’t even need to do anything, do we, Mariam? They destroy themselves.”

  Mariam had just finished when Bouthaina’s mobile phone rang. Mariam heard her voice shift, almost imperceptible, but she understood the softening tone indicated Rustum was on the other end. Bouthaina excused herself and went into the washroom, closing the door behind.

  Mariam stood by the table. Her whole world the toxic USB stick and the stream of sweat on her back. She remembered something Sam had told her in Èze: the operation itself is usually short. The setup, the planning—now, that’s arduous. He’d said the Science and Technology folks work on this for years. Probably millions in R&D. Lots of people behind the scenes making it all happen. Analysts, techies, the operators, logistics in Damascus. But it all depends on someone like you having the courage to go into an office and put this into a forbidden computer. Ten seconds, he said, but everything is on the line.

  She slipped the USB stick from her own binder and picked up Bouthaina’s documents. At the desk she set down the documents—the alibi for her relocation here—and flicked open the cap of the USB stick. She stared at it for what seemed like hours, her conscience struggling to keep pace with the facts unraveling before her. She’d already committed treason, she figured. But had she? Maybe now is the time to walk away. Smash this with a hammer and dump it in the trash.

  Her mind never raised the counterpoints because she just stuck the damn thing into the computer and sat down at the desk and began shuffling the papers around as if preparing to leave the binder for Bouthaina to read later.

  Then Jamil Atiyah swung open the door.

  21

  MARIAM’S SKIN WARMED AS IF SHE’D BEEN ROTATED Over a fire but she said nothing, looked at him, and smiled big and white.

  Atiyah’s eyes locked on Mariam, then the desk, then scanned the room, searching for Bouthaina. From her fogged periphery Mariam registered the USB stick blinking green but she could not remove it with Atiyah watching. Atiyah gave a menacing smile and clicked his tongue. He entered the office and closed the door.

  “Getting accustomed to the boss’s chair, Mariam?” he said.

  “Just laying out documents,” Mariam said, trying not to stare at the USB stick.

  Atiyah had cast an eerie shadow over her life since Villefranche. She assumed he’d intended her as a sacrifice in the race with Bouthaina for Palace prestige, but she still did not really understand why he had targeted her. Now, in Syria, she watched, looking around corners and waiting for the tingle that would announce the presence of his thugs. There had been nothing, and, as Sam told her, that was the maddening part. She could never be sure. The stillness might be a trap.

  Atiyah was bald and muscular, but his face and mustache drooped like melted wax. “He looks like that from all the sex,” Bouthaina had explained once. “You can’t bed thirteen-year-olds and look presentable.” Now he looked toward the washroom as a hushed and sexual phone call unfolded inside. Murmurs escaped from beneath the door and a smile spread across Atiyah’s face.

  “Can you retrieve her? I need her in my office now.”

  Mariam considered her options. She could not pluck the USB stick from the computer while he watched, and she could not disobey Atiyah. If Bouthaina actually went to his office, Mariam might have a chance to retrieve the thing and leave. Her spine was now a rolling stream—thank God she’d worn a black dress—and her vision was clouded. She realized, though, that she was smiling pleasantly and walking smoothly.

  Mariam knocked on the washroom door. “Bouthaina, Jamil Atiyah is here for you. He says it is urgent.” She knocked again, this time a bit harder. The murmurs stopped. She heard a harried voice that ended the phone call. Bouthaina opened the door, her cheeks flushed, eyes feral. “Jamil, to what do I owe this honor?” she gritted out.

  Atiyah wore an amused smile as he stared past Bouthaina into the washroom.

  “My office. Now,” he said. He smirked at Mariam, then spun around and left. Bouthaina hustled to her desk in manic silence and began searching for something. Her right hand grazed the USB stick. “Can I do anything, Bouthaina?” Mariam heard herself say. She did not know if she was still standing, but she realized she was smiling like a good subordinate.

  Bouthaina looked down at the computer, toward the USB stick. “Nothing now. I’ll handle this.” She found the folder she sought and stormed from the room.

  Mariam would not remember the full chronology of her return home that evening. In its place: fragments. Standing over Bouthaina’s desk, yanking the USB stick. Her own office, stuffing a binder in her purse. Dark open skies above the city as she strolled home. The whump-whump of mortar fire as if heralding her treason. Falling into bed in her sweat-soaked dress.

  And through the adrenaline one sensation above all: her chest airy and unburdened. The absence of the hand that had pressed her down since youth. But my god, the terror.

  DAYS LATER THE LITTLE USB stick still felt radioactive. Mariam wanted it gone. So she’d stashed it in the bottom of a vase in her bedroom and loaded the dead drop asking for a brush pass at the site she’d reviewed with Sam back in Èze. She had debated dead-dropping the stick in the can, but it seemed risky. No, it had to be in her possession until she gave it to Sam.

  Now Mariam wove through the bustle of the spice market, the Souq Al-Bzouriye, examining the powdery goods as she had as a little girl. She stopped at her favorite stall and took in the scents of star anise, coriander, cinnamon, cardamom, thyme, and a hundred others she couldn’t even name. When she was young, she’d enjoyed walking this market with Razan. Now, her purse stuffed with a brown plastic bag filled with cinnamon and a USB stick containing stolen material, she felt her heart crawling around inside her chest amid the usually comforting hubbub of the market. She haggled and purchased a bag of cinnamon identical to the one in her purse. She glanced at the clock on her phone. Just a few minutes. Two more cross streets, then a sharp left.

  The covered market defended shoppers from the sun, but Mariam registered slickening sweat on her lower back. The heat and stress were making her feel delirious and she started thinking of the mountain of pain she would climb if the mukhabarat saw the brush pass. They’d ask her to start writing and, eventually, would find a lie. This was the torturer’s base camp. Then they would move to a light beating, then more questions at a table, then onward to an “examination” administered by some handsy erotomaniacal lesbian, before reaching the sadistic hilltop: the voltage. However one reached th
e summit, they always found the same thing waiting: the hangman. For all the barbarism, it was paperwork that made the final push toward the noose: drafted by the mukhabarat, approved by a Supreme State Security Court magistrate, and embossed with Assad’s signature and the quraysh hawk of the Syrian coat of arms. Then, a great mercy, the whoosh of the floor disappearing and the final crack of her own neck. Peace.

  She reached under her black T-shirt and squeegeed her lower back with her fingers. She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and checked the time. Mariam took the bag of cinnamon from her purse, the one with the USB stick in it, and brought it to her face. She closed her eyes and inhaled the spicy sweetness and then resealed the bag. She put the bag in her right hand and turned left, back into the spice market, hugging the corner as she walked. The aisles were packed, and Mariam bumped into a woman in a silky pink hijab, apologizing as she double-checked her grip on the bag.

  Don’t drop it. Don’t stop walking. And don’t look at him.

  Mariam saw Sam appear on her right as she turned the corner. Then she felt him press an identical bag into her chest. She secured it with her left hand while he took the one containing the USB stick from her right. Maintaining her strolling pace, Mariam slid the new bag down to her right hand, where the old had been.

  It took less than a second.

  Mariam walked to another spice stall and purchased cardamom, relishing the fact that her hands did not shake as she paid. As she left the stall, she paused again to look at the array of spices. The colors had never seemed so vibrant, so alive.

  22

  “WE ALL KNEW ATHENA’S INTEL WOULD MAKE WAVES,” Procter said. “I just didn’t expect it to drown us. How’s the lady analyst, by the way? Esmerelda? Isn’t that the chick from The Hunchback? She’s a Syrian-Mexican-American, you know.” Sam stared blankly, wondering where she was going with all this. “Her dad’s one hundred percent Syrian, born in the States, and her mother’s a Mexican,” Procter said. “Born in Mexico. Now, is Esmerelda a Mexican name?”