Damascus Station Read online

  Two handsome, wiry boys took the stage. They demanded the President resign as the crowd cheered in approval. She saw a mukhabarat man in a leather jacket filming the masses. One of probably hundreds of such men. The crowd’s size, initially a comfort, now filled her with dread. Her eyes darted back to her cousin at the foot of the stage. A faceless protester handed Razan a megaphone. Mariam began to move. Time to rip this bint mbarih, this naïve bitch, from the stage before she gets herself killed.

  As she stepped forward, a shadow appeared on the ground in front of her, like ink spilled into the dust.

  Stopping, Mariam looked up and saw a man in black on the sweets shop roof. He had a scarf pulled over his nose and mouth and he held a large gun. He placed a hand to his head as if listening to an earpiece radio. He looked across the road to another rooftop, where a similarly clad man was mounting a gun on a tripod. One of the young men held a megaphone and cried for President Assad—her boss, technically—to legalize new political parties. But Mariam stayed behind the sweets shop. A sign passed in front of her: FREEDOM STARTS AT BIRTH. IN SYRIA IT STARTS AT DEATH. She saw a young couple kissing in the crowd, a pudgy woman with impossibly heavy breasts dancing in front of a sign that read ASSAD WAKE UP, YOUR TIME IS UP.

  Mariam watched her cousin mount the stage with the megaphone. The crowd cheered. She looked up and could no longer see the men on the rooftops. Razan wore painted-on jeans and a T-shirt embroidered with the tristar flag. She raised a defiant hand, demanded freedom, declared that the people wanted the fall of the regime. Her cousin said, Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh, and the crowd echoed.

  “He is a butcher, a tyrant,” Razan shrieked. “Assad must step down, he must resign.”

  And now Mariam really tried to move—it seemed like her muscles were firing—but instead found herself hugging the wall of the sweets shop and soon felt the wind of mukhabarat foot soldiers rushing past. The insanity of what Razan had just screamed took hold and Mariam felt like she was outside herself, watching her own body scream a string of profanities at her stupid, brave cousin.

  She saw a mukhabarat plant in the crowd whisper into his radio. Then a gunshot. Another. Another. One of the wiry boys on the stage collapsed in puffs of red and pink. Mariam plastered herself against the wall, her back cold though the stone was very hot. The air fell silent and banners began to collapse as people fled.

  Then the mukhabarat guns began riddling the crowd, the shots sporadic and hesitant before settling into a rhythm as the shooters worked up the courage. A young woman in a white hijab held up her arms to block blows from a club. A mukhabarat man swung his club into another man’s head once, twice, three times until it opened. The man tried to stand, but his legs folded and the mukhabarat man pushed him down and swung his club again.

  “Move, move, move,” Mariam yelled uselessly at Razan. But her cousin could not hear and would not have listened anyhow.

  “Freedom,” Razan screamed. “Freedom! Freedom!”

  Now the rooftop guns roared to life, the high-caliber bullets tearing through flesh and the signs and flags. Something sprayed on Mariam’s face and she looked downward, blinking, cursing her cousin, as she wiped it from her eyes. It was blood, but she did not know where it had come from. She felt her head, her legs, her chest. Everything was intact. The crowd fled past as the gunfire rattled. Razan defiantly commanded the stage, clutching the megaphone as the crowd stampeded like wildebeests.

  A beefy mukhabarat man hopped onstage waving his club.

  “Freedom,” Mariam heard her cousin scream through the megaphone. “We want freedom.” Then Razan set down the megaphone as the man approached. Her cousin looked into the sky, toward Qasioun Mountain, and closed her eyes. Then he brought down the club on Razan’s head.

  3

  “SAM, I DON’T FIT,” VAL HAD HISSED TO HIM. “I DON’T fit, man. KOMODO’s a midget and I’m six fucking feet tall.” Sam had had his hand on one of her hips, pushing down as Val tried to bend her legs into the Land Cruiser’s clandestine compartment. She cursed and winced as he folded her limbs like origami. He heard yelling in the house, the footsteps drawing close. They yelled her name as they cleared the rooms. They had come for her.

  She gave that desperate laugh, the one he recognized from Baghdad that said, This has all gone to shit. She swung herself out of the compartment. He had a sick feeling about this, and asked again if she wanted to risk it, knowing the answer. “Maybe we just take you in the front seat?”

  “You heard what they’re yelling in there, no way, man. I’ve got the dip passport. I’ve got immunity. I’ll be fine. You’re the one who’s screwed if we get caught.”

  He nodded. He’d had to offer, but both were professionals and knew what had to be done. He kissed her on the cheek. She smiled thinly and pressed the button on the wall. The garage door slowly creaked open.

  Drinks back home in a few weeks, she said, and went back inside the safe house.

  [INAUDIBLE VOICES AND THE SOUND of papers shuffling]

  Is this on? [Muffled response, noises]

  Better? Okay. This is the second joint counterintelligence and security interview of Samuel Joseph, GS-12 operations officer, upon his return from Damascus. We are presently in Amman Station. It is the twenty-sixth of March, one p.m. local time. Reference draft cable 2345 for the first half of Mr. Joseph’s statement describing the exfiltration operation in Syria.

  Interviewing officers Tim McManus from Counterintelligence and Lloyd—

  [Coughing] Hand me . . . thanks. [Unknown sounds]

  Lloyd Craig from Security. We’ll run through a set of questions based on our understanding of the operation.

  Q.Please state your name for the record.

  A.Samuel Joseph.

  Q.Valerie Owens told you the asset, KOMODO, missed three pickup windows?

  A.We discussed this earlier, Tim. Yes. She said he missed all three.

  Q.And the SDR was one-way? She was going to leave Syria with you?

  A.Tim, I feel like we’re going backwards.

  [Shuffling papers, inaudible conversation]

  Q.She didn’t talk about the SDR once she’d arrived at the safe house?

  A.No.

  Q.Is that unusual?

  A.Not if it was successful. If Val thought she was covered, she wouldn’t have completed the SDR. She would have aborted and gone home.

  Q.How do you know this?

  A.I served with her before, in Baghdad. Shit, Lloyd, we’ve—

  Q.Sam, we gotta go through the questions. Headquarters sent more an hour ago.

  A.Fine. Fine. Val was an exceptional case officer. We got our denied-area ops certs together. If she came to the safe house, she thought she was black.

  Q.You knew her well?

  A.Yes. We were close.

  [Hushed voices, coughing]

  A.Just ask.

  Q. It’s—uh— [Coughing]

  A.Just ask, Tim.

  Q.Were you at any point romantically involved with Ms. Owens?

  A.No.

  Q.Thanks. And you did not personally detect surveillance at any time while you were in Syria?

  A.No.

  Q.[Sound of paper shuffling] This is a floor plan of the safe house. Can you point and tell us where they breached the entrances?

  A.They came in the front door. Here. They used a battering ram, I think. They also broke through at least one of the windows along the street. Here. Based on how quickly they got to the garage, I’d say a couple must have jumped one of the walls into the courtyard, but I’m not certain. They were swarming in. We ran for the car. Through this hallway, then out into the courtyard. That’s when I think I heard a few of them coming over the walls. We made it to the garage, and—

  Q.Hold on, Sam, the headquarters folks had a specific question here. [Papers shuffling] Why not just drive away together with her in the front seat and bring her back home?

  A.Val and I both speak Arabic fluently. We heard the mukhabarat team yelli
ng the same phrase over and over as they cleared rooms: She’s not here. They used her name. They were coming for her, not me. We couldn’t risk being seen together.

  Q.So then you try the Land Cruiser’s hidden compartment?

  A.Yes. She didn’t fit.

  Q.What did you do then?

  A.We made a decision. She stays and takes the heat because she has diplomatic immunity. They’ll ask her questions, PNG her, then she comes home.

  Q.And if you’re caught—

  A.If I’m caught, I disappear forever into a Syrian dungeon owing to the tourist Canadian passport. It’s the right operational call and any Peer Review Board will back it up.

  Q.We’re not disputing that, Sam. So, your suitcase is already in the car. What next?

  A.She opens the garage door and I drive off and head for the border.

  Q.The mukhabarat don’t see you?

  A.They must not have known the house had a garage or an exit on that side. As far as I know they never even saw the car.

  Q.You mentioned to Chief of Station Amman that you heard something as you drove off?

  A.Yes.

  Q.Can you tell us what you heard?

  A.Val screaming.

  SAM CLICKED STOP ON THE computer audio. Noticing his fingers drumming on the table, he folded his hands in his lap. Then he stared at the wall as Val’s scream rolled through his mind. Unlike those of most of his counterparts in the Directorate of Operations, C/NE Division Ed Bradley’s “Me Wall” was bare. On the back bookshelf sat a few gifts from special friends, including a half-folded Aussie digger hat and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s AK-47. But perched on a shelf was Bradley’s pride and joy—a neutralized missile system gifted for leading the Stinger Program against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Rumor had it the launcher had not been properly decommissioned. A visitor had once pulled the trigger, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. Downrange at Bradley’s office table sat Procter, Chief of Station Damascus, back at Langley to deal with the fallout from Val Owens’s capture.

  Sam would decide after this first meeting that Artemis Aphrodite Procter, born to a father obsessed with Greek mythology, hewed to the spirit of her first name more than the middle.

  Procter was many things, and one of them was short. She barely scratched five feet. Her black hair, exploding into curls as if she were plugged into an electrical socket, contrasted with her pale, freckled skin. Everything strained and stretched with muscle. Even under the blouse, Sam saw the outlines of the toned arms and the spread of her shoulders. Sam remembered what one of her case officers in Moscow had told him: “She’s a frazzled Energizer Bunny, man. They don’t call her he Proctologist for nothing. She’s intense. And if you slow down, she’ll eat you alive.” The officer had also told Sam about an ops plan he’d designed that Procter had called “dogshit” in a cable. “She literally sent that cable back to Russia House front office,” he had said, “and you know what, she was right. I learned a lot from her.”

  Procter picked at her teeth. Bradley gripped Sam on the shoulder and collected a coffee thermos from his desk and sat down at the table. He was six-foot-two, a former linebacker at the University of Texas who had struggled—and eventually given up on—shaking the Lone Star drawl of his youth. The raw physical presence masked a finely tuned intuition for people and the savvy of an operational pro. But Bradley now shuttled between Middle Eastern crises, impatient political masters, and pompous overseers in Congress. His face bore the stress.

  “The scream,” Procter said, breaking the silence. “What kind was it?”

  “Pain. They beat the shit out of her.”

  He looked away from the wall toward Procter. “Any leads?”

  “One, actually,” said Procter. “Came in last night. We picked up an intercept that a mukhabarat agency called the Security Office recently arrested an American. Uncorroborated so far, but it seems credible.”

  “I’ve never heard of the Security Office,” Sam said.

  “Honestly we hadn’t, either,” Procter said. “But we did some research and found a couple mentions in stolen documents from late last year. Assad apparently wanted someone to keep tabs on the rest of the mukhabarat, so he put a general, Ali Hassan, in charge and vested him with a ton of power inside the Palace. Guy is a real son of the regime. His brother is Rustum Hassan, commander of the Republican Guard.”

  “It would be good news if the Syrians had her,” Bradley said. “We can at least press them government-to-government.”

  “We’ve warned Assad through back channels that we will hold the regime accountable if anything happens,” Procter said. “But they continue to deny that she is in custody. The White House and the douchebags on the Hill might be fine leaving our people in prison for weeks at a time, but I’m not. If I find Ali Hassan’s phone number, I’m calling him directly, Ed. Send him a message.”

  “We’re not threatening them at all?” Sam asked. He fingered the knot of his tie, unconsciously loosening it. “That’s crap. She’s being held illegally.”

  Bradley shot him a glare. “POTUS has a broader Syria policy to manage that extends beyond one of us, Sam. She has the dip passport. We will get her back soon.”

  “And until then we’ll just keep warning them over and over without imposing consequences?” Sam said.

  Bradley shrugged and poured more coffee from his thermos. “I agree with you, but it is the White House’s policy right now. We wait. We will get her back, it will just take time. The Syrians would have to be nuts to do anything other than put her in a cell and ask polite questions. Eventually they will turn her loose. And yes, Artemis, if NSA can find us his number, we should have a conversation with General Hassan.”

  Bradley looked at the wall clock. “I gotta run to catch a car in a few minutes. A full afternoon of grilling down on the Hill.”

  “SSCI?” Sam asked Bradley, pronouncing the acronym for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, appropriately, as Sissy.

  “Yep. The Sissies themselves,” Bradley said, clenching and pumping his right fist. “Questions about Val.”

  Sam shook hands with Procter and the Chief left. Sam dawdled, examining the Stinger launcher as Bradley packed up his lock bag for the Hill briefing.

  “I’ve heard she’s a little nuts,” Sam said.

  “Procter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s something. By the way, you got dinner plans tonight?”

  “I have a whole rotisserie chicken and a six-pack of beer in my otherwise empty fridge,” Sam said.

  “Good. Bring the beer. Come out to the farm for dinner with me and Angela tonight? I’ve got something for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A distraction.”

  SAM FOUGHT RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC ON 267 and the Greenway for nearly two hours to reach the Bradley farm, an exhausting experience on par with his drive through wartime Damascus.

  He pulled into the farmhouse’s gravel drive. The foothills of the Blue Ridge prickled the horizon, the sunset an orange ribbon receding behind them. Three horses chewed grass along the stone fence, and as he got out of the car he remembered he’d forgotten the beer. He was weighing whether to head to a store when Angela Bradley opened the front door. “Hey, Sam!” She greeted him with a hug and showed him into the kitchen. “Ed’s down in the Box”—her name for the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in the basement, which allowed him to take work calls and read cable traffic from home. Angela hated the Box. One of her conditions upon Ed taking the Near East Division job had been the horse farm on the rural edge of suburban Washington. It added an hour to Bradley’s commute, but when he had resisted, she said simply: “I don’t give a shit, Ed.”

  Without asking, she opened a Coors Light and slid it across the counter to Sam. Then she opened one for herself, popped onto the counter like a schoolgirl, and started the interrogation.

  “How is the family?”

  “Good, everyone’s good.”

  “G
irlfriends?”

  “None now.”

  “I see. Too bad for you. Where next?”

  “Powers that be working it out.”

  “Ed needs to make a goddamn decision, huh?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Interrogation complete, Angela nodded, though at and for what Sam had no idea. She wiped her hands on a rag and announced that they were having steaks. The cast-iron pan soon sizzled and two fresh Coors were cracked open when they heard Ed’s footsteps on the stairs.

  Angela tossed Ed a beer with one hand and flipped the meat with the other. He opened his mouth to speak, but Angela stopped him.

  “Listen, boys, you know the rules,” Angela said. “I get thirty minutes without any shop talk.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Sam, his best attempt at mimicking her drawl.

  She gave a middle finger in return.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, SHE got forty-five.

  Then Sam and Ed cleared the table, cleaned the dishes, and, as was their custom, took six beers in a Styrofoam cooler onto the back deck. Mosquitoes whined around the porchlights.

  They each drank half a can in silence. Then it was on to war stories from Cairo, the do-you-remembers of old friends drinking together.

  Angela cracked open the screen door as Sam finished another beer. “I’m going to bed. Sam, you sleeping here tonight?”

  “You mind?” he said.

  “Course not,” Ed said. “We can caravan in tomorrow.”

  “I figured,” Angela said. “You take the room next to the Box. Sheets and all that in the closet downstairs. Night, dear.” She planted a kiss on Bradley’s forehead and disappeared into the house.