Damascus Station Read online

  They set the pizza on the coffee table—purchased at the flea market by a Paris Station support asset with an eye for vintage chic—and realized the safe house did not have a bottle opener. By tradition they did not drink during the planning phase of an operation, and had not noticed the oversight until now.

  “Unbelievable,” Sam said.

  No one had a cigarette lighter, so Sam got a chef’s knife from the kitchen and tried to pry the caps loose. The blade broke almost immediately. They only chipped the table a little bit as they placed the lip of the cap on the table and smacked it down against the wood, snapping it off. Sam brushed aside the teak fragments and took a long swig of beer.

  “French stringers?” Rami said as they arrived on topic.

  “Feels unlikely,” Sam said. “The French aren’t this sloppy. It’s the Syrians.”

  Sam ripped off a slice of pizza and lifted it to his mouth, only to realize the crust was still linked to the pie by a foot-long cord of cheese. “Are you kidding me with this food? This is the best you guys can do?”

  THE SYRIAN TEAM COMPLICATED THE operation. Sam had to pitch her privately, and it could not be on the street. He could try to exploit a gap in the Syrian surveillance team’s coverage, but it would be risky. If they saw her speaking with an American on the street, even casually, they might ask follow-up questions. He could put her in danger. No, he needed a few minutes with Mariam in a place where it would be normal to speak briefly with an American.

  So Sam went to Paris Station to read operational SIGINT—signals intelligence—and rebuild the plan. A techie named Lisa who was on loan from NSA helped compile the relevant recordings: a few calls from Bouthaina Najjar to an as-yet-unidentified lover—“Probably want to skip those, though,” she said, flushing red, “a bit graphic”—and a recorded call between Mariam and her father. Sam found he enjoyed listening to her singsong Arabic and laugh. When the conversation turned to the battle in Aleppo (NSA comment: “Georges Haddad’s III Corps has been stationed in Aleppo since October”) Mariam’s voice tightened and her father grew quiet and evasive. “Turn it off,” Sam said gruffly. “They can have the moment.”

  The techie clicked stop.

  “Anything on the delegation’s schedule?” Sam asked.

  “One thing,” she said. She wheeled around to her computer and pulled up a short NSA report dated six days earlier. It was an intercepted conversation between the French ambassador to Damascus and the French deputy foreign minister. In it, the ambassador explained that despite the public relations optics, it would be helpful to the foreign minister’s rapport with Bouthaina if a social event were held sometime during her visit. The deputy foreign minister agreed as long as he did not have to attend. It would be important to have multiple foreign partners represented, particularly the Americans, the ambassador concluded, before hanging up abruptly.

  Sam picked up the paper and made for Peter Shipley’s office. He loitered outside as the Chief concluded a tense phone call with his ex-wife about his son’s math test. Not the best time to poke the bear, but Sam had no choice. The diplomatic event would be his best chance to pitch Mariam. Hearing Shipley put down the receiver on his open line, Sam knocked on the door. Shipley waved him in and put on a pair of reading glasses to review the report. After a few seconds, he flipped the paper onto the desk. “Goddammit.” He leaned back in his chair and thumbed at his left suspender. “The Ambo keeps this shit from us all the time. You’re certain she’s covered?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Step outside for a second, this will be unpleasant.”

  Sam sat on a fuzzy green couch outside the office for three minutes while Shipley called the U.S. ambassador to France: pharmaceutical executive, gold-plated political donor, hoarder of useful information. The details were hard to make out, but the tones were not. The screaming started at the tail end of minute one, hit crescendo halfway through the second, and simmered into a hissy conversation through the third. It ended with the ceremonious slamming of a secure telephone into a desk and the unambiguous utterance of the word “motherfucker” from the Chief of Station Paris.

  When he opened the door, his face was still red with rage, but Sam caught a wry smirk breaking through Shipley’s scowl.

  “I got you an invite. Tomorrow night. Palais Louis Philippe. Eight p.m. Wear something nice.”

  MOST RECRUITMENTS TOOK MONTHS, OR even years. The skills that separated the recruiters, a rare breed, from the rest of the case officer cadre was that they could spot people with the right access, build a relationship, then successfully pitch them to work for CIA. Sam had done it fifteen times in his ten years in the service, the most of anyone in his Farm class by a long shot. He knew people, understood how they worked, and could read them. He had yakked it up with Saudi princes, Egyptian mukhabarat, itinerant gamblers in Vegas, the union boys at the flour mill back home in Minnesota. Agent recruitment was his sport.

  The Farm prescribed a three-part outline for public, official encounters like this: strike up a conversation, elicit as much information on the target as possible (without raising suspicion), arrange a follow-up in a more private setting. It would come down to chemistry. Sam had one evening to start the process. If they had a bond, she might agree to meet the next day. If they didn’t, it would be over.

  Patridge, one of the State Political Counselors, showed their invitations outside a palatial building a few blocks from the Foreign Ministry building at the Quai d’Orsay. Twenty or so protesters gathered outside, flapping tristar Syrian rebel flags and holding motley signs. A crew of gendarmes idled on the sidewalk, radios crackling with static, machine guns pointed into the pavement. At the massive door, a tuxedoed attendant ushered them inside with a sweep of his arm. Patridge disappeared to mingle without saying a word.

  The room was decorated in the style of a corporatist cocktail party: cavernous, wood-paneled, chandeliered, two bars, and a table for hors’ d’oeuvres. Sam foraged a small plate of spiced chicken and sidled up to one of the high tops, alone, to take the room’s pulse. One chicken skewer in, he saw that nations were clumped together, mostly speaking to themselves. He fiddled with his tie.

  He first noticed her trying to escape from conversation with a squat diplomat, whose home, Sam could tell, lay somewhere east of the Iron Curtain. He watched, smiling, at Mariam’s subtle but growing discomfort as she planned her flight from the conversation. Her eyes moved about, looking for help.

  Then they met his.

  The look she threw to Sam was universal: I need a bailout. Now was the time to take the shot. Walking over, he gave her a warm hug and in fluent Arabic asked how she had been. He was relieved when she held the embrace and told the diplomat she had to catch up with her friend. Scowling, he stomped off.

  The image of Mariam in that dress would linger in Sam’s mind. Silky and bright red, almost matching her lipstick, it cinched above her hips before flowing to the floor. Her hair was up, revealing much of her back.

  “Sam Joseph,” he whispered as they took up residence at a high-top table, still pretending to be old friends as the glaring Slav nursed his wounds across the room with a new drink. They accepted champagne from a passing waiter.

  “Mariam Haddad,” she whispered back. She smiled and looked at Sam. “American?”

  He nodded, holding her gaze.

  “Your Arabic is excellent.”

  “Thanks. Lots of practice. How do you know Igor over there?”

  “Who? Oh. His name is Nikolay, I think. Bulgarian.”

  “Oh, uh, yeah, Igor was just a general way to . . . Never mind. Yes, Nikolay.”

  “I just met him tonight, unfortunately. Thanks for the rescue, by the way.” She had switched to a near-flawless English.

  “Of course,” Sam said. “Now he’s targeting one of my friends. She deserves it, though.” Mariam laughed as they watched Nikolay beeline for Patridge.

  “Your English is perfect, by the way,” he said. “Where did you learn?”

&nb
sp; A waiter strolled by with a platter of crackers topped with a mysterious gray meat. Sam waved him off.

  “Lessons here when I was young,” she said. “My mother was a diplomat. She took advantage of the Paris posting and helped me learn French and English. And also how to fight.” She gave a menacing smile and took a sip of champagne.

  He took a sip of champagne, reading her body language and considering whether the fighting comment was in jest.

  She rearranged the dress. “I’m serious,” she said.

  He thought she was. “Your mother wanted you to learn self-defense?”

  “Of course. My mother savors scandal, so she recommended Krav Maga.”

  He smiled, now not sure if she was sarcastic. She could tell.

  “What better way to get in the head of the Zionists than to beat them at their own games?” She joked. “Know thine enemy.”

  He laughed. Mariam gave a wry smile but it disappeared as a mustachioed Syrian in a suit at least two sizes too small approached the table, reminding her gruffly that all interactions with Americans must be reported. He evidently did not know that Sam spoke Arabic, because he made several derogatory remarks pointing in his direction. Sam figured him for the mukhabarat goon who kept tabs on the embassy staff, and just smiled at him stupidly.

  She gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Of course I know, Mohannad,” she said in Arabic as if Sam could not understand. “I’ll file the report in the morning. For God’s sake, go bother someone else.” She turned away. His face clenched and he walked off, glaring at Sam.

  They sipped champagne silently until Mohannad reached the bar and began wolfing down crackers, still looking at them. Then she turned to Sam. “Mohannad is very suspicious and he enjoys writing reports,” she said in English.

  “Maybe we could continue our discussion tomorrow evening over a drink?” he said. He’d already scouted a small bar near the Sorbonne.

  She took a sip of champagne, holding his eyes. “Where?” she said.

  “How about Au Torchon? Latin Quarter. You name the time.”

  “Eight-thirty? We have meetings until seven.”

  “That’s perfect. See you then.”

  She clinked an empty glass to his and walked off. He caught himself staring as she left and then downed the last pull of champagne. There was a lot to unpack: the initial cartoon of the sensual, olive-skinned desert princess melting into the English-speaking, Krav Maga–practicing diplomat and eventually arriving downstream to the capable professional who had the courage to uproot Mohannad. Also, that dress.

  “More champagne, monsieur?” A waiter intruded on the thought. Turning him down, he scanned for one last look at Mariam but had no luck.

  On his way out he smiled at Patridge, still trapped in conversation by the girthy Bulgarian.

  8

  THE NEXT MORNING SAM, PROCTER, AND BRADLEY joined a secure video-teleconference to debate the wisdom of meeting for a drink with Mariam if the Syrian team continued to blanket her. “A quick conversation at a party,” Procter said. “That’s fine. Security goon from the embassy writes it up, she says an American cornered her, no biggie. But a second meet? Puts you on the mukhabarat’s radar.”

  “Agreed. Make sure she’s clean before you meet with her,” Bradley decreed.

  Sam, free of surveillance duty, now sipped coffee a block from Au Torchon, listening to the BANDITOs chatter as they continued their vigil.

  “She’s clean so far, Sam,” Yusuf said. “I’ve got the cab’s tail.”

  “I’ll go to the restaurant,” Sam said as he set aside his coffee.

  “Copy.”

  He’d chosen Au Torchon because it had a back room and three possible exits. The BANDITOs would watch from the outside. Sam would ditch the encrypted radio earpiece and instead monitor a throwaway phone, which the BANDITOs would contact if the Syrian team approached the restaurant.

  He went to the back room and found a small table in the corner. Two French college students sat on the other side of the room, leaning in close. An elderly couple shuffled in behind him.

  Sam removed the earpiece—assets found them off-putting—and sent a text message to the BANDITOs: At restaurant. Switching to phone.

  The reply from Elias: Five minutes out. Still black.

  Sam pretended to scan the menu as he considered the task. Paris Station had highlighted SIGINT with the Syrian delegation’s travel itinerary: they planned to stay in Paris for another four days. He could continue developing the case in Damascus, but it would be more complicated. Time was short.

  Rami: Arriving. Black.

  Those dimples greeted Sam as Mariam entered the back room. She wore dark jeans, gray suede heels, and a breezy white top. Her hair was parted slightly left of center and fell down either shoulder. “Well, hello,” she said playfully.

  Sam, who wore a blue suit and white oxford—he ditched the tie— stood to greet her. “You’ve escaped your friend, I see,” he said.

  “Sometimes he lets me out of the dungeon, and other times I leave without telling him,” she said. “I filed a scandalous report on you this morning, so he was happy.”

  Sam smiled, curious what was actually in the report. “A glass of wine?”

  They sat and she snatched the menu. “Yes, but I will order. You strike me as a . . . a . . . how do you say it in English?”

  “A beer guy?”

  “A man of simple taste.”

  “That works.”

  She grinned, then flagged the waiter, asked him a few questions in flawless French, and placed an order off the wine list.

  The waiter returned with two glasses of a red from a village called Gigondas. “I visited with my mother. A lifetime ago,” Mariam said. She sipped the wine and nodded to the waiter, who disappeared.

  “How long did you live in Paris?” Sam asked in Arabic.

  “Two years. I was sixteen when we arrived, eighteen when we left. I went back home to go to college. My father insisted I attend Damascus University.”

  She would expect questions about work, he knew. Banter about the conflict in Syria, the discussions with the opposition. He did not want to talk about any of that, not with her, not now. He needed to fuel the recruitment by building the connection, by getting her talking about herself.

  “What do you love most about Paris?” he asked.

  She took a sip of wine. “The freedom,” she said, fingers running along the stem of the glass.

  “Tell me about it.”

  She smiled and took another sip.

  “When I first arrived, I was sixteen and I’d never been out of Syria. It was May. I remember leaving our apartment. I walked along the Seine in the sunshine. I could feel lightness in the air. It’s hard to describe. It was like someone had been pressing a hand into your chest, not hard, but enough to make you feel the pressure. I’d carried it my entire life, but in Paris the hand came off and I remember closing my eyes and just breathing. And then I was running, coat flapping, tears streaming down my cheeks.” She laughed.

  Sam smiled. “Everyone must have thought you were nuts.”

  She snorted, the same sound from the NSA recordings.

  “I bought cigarettes. Once darkness came I was outside Sacré-Coeur, on Montmartre, looking at the city lights below. I smoked and watched the twinkling sea.”

  “Breathing?” He smiled.

  She snorted again. “Every chance I could. Expecting the hand to return, but it didn’t. The world was light. And then from nowhere a woman sidled up. She was young, very thin, dirty blond hair cut short and these beautiful wide cheekbones and milky skin. She asked for a light. I lit her cigarette and she sat and we stared down the hill. She told me she’d run away from home. I asked why. She told me she had to be free. That now she was. She looked into my eyes and asked if I was free. I didn’t know, I said. She finished her cigarette and left.”

  Sam took a sip of wine. “Do you want anything to eat?” he asked.

  “No, I’m fine, thanks. So, I’ve just
told you a story about me. Tell me something about you. Something fun. Not a chronology. A story.” She leaned back in her chair and smirked as she twirled the wineglass on the table. “Tell me a crazy story, Sam.”

  The elderly couple across the room, now seated on the same side of a four-seat table, had begun kissing. He motioned toward them. Watching, Mariam suppressed a laugh as she turned back to face Sam. So sweet, she mouthed in Arabic. “Won’t get you out of the story, though.”

  He laughed. “Fine. I grew up in Minnesota, it’s a state in the northern part of the country. Small town called Shermans Corner. Farm, flour mill, very working-class. I’m twenty, maybe, when some guys from the mill invite me to a poker game. And I clean up.”

  “You are good at cards?”

  “I became obsessive. I read everything I could, I watched poker tournaments on TV and covered up the spot on the screen where they show the hand, to guess what the players had. I kept winning and finally one of the guys comes to me with a proposition: poker tournament, pretty high stakes, down at an Indian casino out of town. Five thousand bucks to enter, two hundred and fifty grand for the winner. He asked, if a few of the guys chipped in, would I play? I would take twenty-five percent of the winnings.”

  “Let me guess, you won?”

  “I did. Sixty-two thousand dollars. As we drove home I looked around the car, all these guys going home to their wives and kids and the mill, and I thought: This is a ticket out. They dropped me at home, I went upstairs, packed a duffel bag, jumped in my car, drove down to Minneapolis, and bought a ticket for Vegas. I stayed. My mother was furious.”

  “I would be, too, if my son just left. So let me guess, you went to Vegas and won millions and decided you did not need more money, why not do something incredible, like join the State Department and travel the world?”

  He laughed. “I wish. I did well to start. I found the right games, I played it safe, generally. If I felt myself losing control, I would walk away. I became even more obsessed with the game, kind of OCD. Soon I’m up to almost one hundred and fifty thousand and it gets in my head. I joined a big-time, high-stakes private game. I put down everything.”