Agents of Innocence (38 page)

Rogers thought momentarily of the consequences of this act of pleasure and disorder. But only a moment.

“Come to me,” said Solange Jezzine as she arranged herself on one of the fat pillows on the floor. And Rogers did. He surrendered himself entirely to the woman, her beauty, her eroticism. He closed his eyes and felt a wave of pleasure. It was a heady feeling, like falling from a great height in a dream.

Washington; June 1978

“The most competent intelligence service in the world today is the Mossad,” proclaimed John Marsh from the podium of a small conference hall in Arlington, Virginia. “It pains me to say that after all these years, but it’s true.”

There was a burst of applause from the audience of conservative intellectuals, Republican congressional aides, trusted diplomats, and former intelligence officers who had gathered for a conference hosted by the Center for the Study of Responsive Intelligence. The Center was a sort of organized cheerleading section for the old-boy network of the Central Intelligence Agency. It seemed to exist chiefly for the purpose of holding conferences to excoriate the current CIA management, especially the new Director, Charles “Chuck” Hinkle.

The topic of this particular gathering was “Rebuilding the CIA: How and Why.” John Marsh—recently retired from the agency—was the featured speaker. Dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, his hair slicked back against his head, Marsh looked slightly like a gangster. He wagged a finger at his audience as he continued with his lecture.

“You all know what has happened to CIA,” Marsh admonished them. “The agency has been raked over the coals by its critics. Its secrets have been exposed for all the world to see. It is the laughing stock of the other Western intelligence agencies. It is a sad, sad story.

“Certainly there were misdeeds in the past. Certainly there were some overzealous officers and unwise operations. And certainly there are things that need to be corrected. Nobody questions that. There is always room for improvement. But can’t we all agree that there are limits to responsible criticism? Shouldn’t our critics in Congress and the press remember that without a strong intelligence agency, they wouldn’t have the freedom to be so critical?”

There was more applause from the audience. A twenty-five-year-old congressional aide, dressed in a green Dartmouth blazer, shouted “Hear! Hear!” Marsh realized that he was rather enjoying his new life as a public speaker.

“I would like to share a little secret of my own with this group,” said Marsh. “Nothing classified, of course. I wouldn’t do that, not even for a gathering of friends. But I would like to tell you, in my own words, why I left the CIA several months ago after nearly twenty years with the agency.

“As many of you know, I spent most of the 1970s working on congressional liaison for the agency. Our office tried to keep Congress from opening Pandora’s box, and I must admit to you that we failed. They asked for our dirty linen and, despite the efforts of some of us, the agency gave it to them. Do you know what bothered me most? The fact that we lacked political leadership—in Congress, in the White House, and yes, even at the CIA—that was willing to say no.”

There was more applause.

“So after watching this process of self-flagellation, I decided that enough was enough, and I got out.”

More applause. Marsh nodded his head in gratitude.

What Marsh said was not precisely true, at least not the part about leaving the agency. It was true that he had spent the 1970s in the backwater of congressional liaison after he was dumped as operations chief of the Near East Division. But he had done poorly even at that modest job. His colleagues complained that he was successful only in dealing with the most conservative members of the House and Senate—preaching, as it were, to the converted. So Marsh was removed from congressional liaison, brought back to Langley in a dead-end desk job in the Office of Security. And finally, when he neared the twenty-year mark, Marsh was offered early retirement with a generous pension, and took it.

“What we see at the CIA is just another example of our national disorder,” continued Marsh. “We see it in every area of our national life. There is a lack of discipline in our schools, on college campuses, in the news media. There is a lack of control. A feeling of drift and uncertainty. A feeling that we’re being pushed around at home and abroad.”

Marsh was nearing the end of his speech. He put his hands on either side of the lectern, like a sea captain holding the wheel steady in rough seas. Though his audience didn’t know it, he—John Marsh—knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the anarchy of the times. His own family was in chaos. His daughter had dropped out of college to join a commune. His son had been expelled from private school because he was caught using drugs.

But John Marsh wasn’t talking about his own problems that day, he was talking about America’s.

“We need to stand firm,” said Marsh. “We need to stop the decay. And the place to begin is with our intelligence agencies, which are the sword and shield that protect our freedoms.”

There was loud and sustained applause, followed by many congratulatory remarks from people who gathered around the podium. A conservative newspaper columnist asked Marsh for a copy of the speech. The director of the Center for the Study of Responsive Intelligence suggested the possibility of Marsh joining his staff. A professor approached Marsh and asked for his help with a book he was writing about Soviet intelligence operations.

The scene testified to one truth about Washington in the late 1970s. The conservatives had learned the arts of leaking and self-promotion. And in the process, some of the old discipline had gone. The conservative intelligence officers who had spent their careers protecting the nation’s secrets were now, in retirement, spending their days taking journalists to lunch, issuing learned reports on intelligence matters for friendly think tanks, writing position papers for political candidates. Something had come unstuck.

As the meeting began to disperse, a short, balding man approached Marsh. He had a face that was slightly reddish and freckled, and eyes as sharp as a hawk’s.

“What an interesting speech,” said the man in a voice that had a trace of a European accent. “But I think maybe you flatter us Israelis too much.”

He handed Marsh a card.

“My name is Shuval,” said the man. “I work at the Israeli Embassy.”

Marsh shook his hand.

“Perhaps we could have lunch sometime,” said Shuval. Marsh, basking in the attention, accepted the offer, and he was pleased when several days later, Shuval called and suggested a time and place.

Ze’ev Shuval was the chief of the Mossad station in Washington. In contacting Marsh, he had a particular purpose in mind, one assigned to him by the terrorism adviser to the new Israeli prime minister. The task was to reopen a matter that had lain dormant for the last few years—the question of American penetration of the PLO—and find out as much as he could about a particular suspected agent.

The new Israeli government was considering reviving an old plan, the terrorism adviser had explained to Shuval. They wanted to finish the job that had been started six years ago—of punishing those who were responsible for the Munich massacre. There was one man still alive—the man who had planned the operation, in fact—and that was deeply troubling to the new Israeli government.

“We need to know whether this man is still under CIA control,” the adviser told Shuval. “We aren’t afraid of offending the Americans if we have to. But we want to give them a chance to say no. And maybe it is not so bad for us if this contact between the Americans and the PLO is broken.”

The terrorism adviser gave Shuval a list of people who might know details of the case. At the top of the list was the name of John Marsh.

They met at an out-of-the-way Chinese restaurant off Wisconsin Avenue, in Bethesda. Only one other table was filled.

“We admired your work very much,” said Shuval quietly when they had been seated. “Especially when you were handling the Near East. We were shocked when you changed jobs.”

Marsh was flattered. It had been many years since another intelligence officer had praised his work.

“I tried to do what I thought was right. But others disagreed with my views.”

“So I gather,” said Shuval. He didn’t push the point. He didn’t push anything.

The waiter arrived and took their orders. Marsh deliberated between Szechuan beef and Hunan beef and then decided to have duck with orange sauce. Shuval ordered egg foo yung.

“I don’t suppose that you would be interested in doing some consulting work?” asked Shuval.

“I’m afraid not,” said Marsh. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Of course. I simply wanted to ask you the question.”

“Just so we understand each other,” said Marsh. “You ask and I answer. That’s the way I like things. Straightforward, on the table, yes or no. I think we get into trouble in our business when we forget the basics.”

“We look at things the same way,” replied Shuval. “That is what frightens us about our dealings with America. Often, they are not businesslike. We never know exactly where we stand.”

Marsh nodded earnestly. He felt that he had found a soulmate. This is why the Israelis are the best, he told himself. Because they understand that intelligence is a business, a business in which control is paramount.

“We worry,” continued Shuval, “that in the end the United States will betray us. They will keep assuring us until the last moment that they will never abandon us to make a deal with the Arabs. And then they will abandon us and make the deal.”

“Not if your friends have anything to say about it.”

“You are kind,” said Shuval. “But I will give you an example of what worries us.” He leaned forward over the table.

“We think that in the end you will make a deal with the Palestinians. You will get tired of terrorism and the threat of an oil embargo and so you will make a deal with the PLO. We see signs of it already.”

“What signs?”

“I will give you one example,” said Shuval matter-of-factly. “We have assumed for some years now that you have an agent at the top of Fatah named Jamal Ramlawi.”

“No comment,” said Marsh.

“It makes us very nervous, this relationship.”

“No comment,” repeated Marsh.

“You know that we tried to kill this fellow Ramlawi more than once? Not because he was working for you, but because he was a terrorist.”

“I am aware that you tried to kill him, yes.”

“And we may try again. But we have a question that troubles us. Is this man actually an American agent? And if he is, why can’t you control him? Why does he seem able to do as he likes?”

“Control him?” asked Marsh. “Did you say, control him?”

“Yes. Control.”

“That’s the problem,” said Marsh, almost inaudibly. “We never had control.”

“I see,” said Shuval. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment, then opened them and smiled.

“You understand of course that I am not at liberty to discuss the case,” said Marsh.

“Of course I understand,” said Shuval. “And I wouldn’t ask you to.”

“Good,” said Marsh. He was relieved. Relieved to have hinted to someone, at last, what had gone so wrong that day in Rome long ago. And relieved that he had not “said anything.”

They finished the meal in pleasant conversation and agreed to meet again.

“It is a pleasure to deal with a professional,” said Shuval, knowing precisely the right button to push with John Marsh.

Shuval filed a cable for the prime minister’s office that afternoon. The cable advised that a CIA source with first-hand knowledge of the Ramlawi operation had suggested that Ramlawi was not a controlled American agent, after all, but something different. The implication of that was obvious: Go ahead. Do it! Kill him! The prime minister’s terrorism adviser certainly took that view. But the chief of Mossad, Natan Porat, was more cautious. He wanted to take another pass at the Americans. In particular, one specific American.

London; September 1978

Levi checked into a small hotel in Sussex Gardens, just north of Hyde Park. It wasn’t even a hotel, really, more like a bed and breakfast. The administration department at the Institute in Tel Aviv had booked the room. They said it was more secure than a real hotel, but that was nonsense. It was cheaper. Levi didn’t complain. In those days of the plummeting Israeli shekel, a trip to London under any circumstances was a treat.

The Israeli intelligence officer unpacked his bag and, when he was done, looked at himself in the mirror. He had put on a few pounds in the last several years, so that his body no longer looked as if it had been wracked on a torture machine. And he was losing his hair. He stood before the mirror and combed several long strands of hair carefully across the top of his head.

He decided to take a walk. His route took him down Sussex Gardens, past the rows of tourist buses from Holland and France, to the Bayswater Road. Sidewalk artists were lined up against the wrought-iron fence bordering Hyde Park, hawking their wares to gullible passers-by. The art works were hideous: tangled constructions of metal that resembled air-conditioner parts more than sculpture; stylized paintings of waves pounding the seashore at sunset; the inevitable portraits of winsome, malnourished children and fluffy cats playing with balls of string.

Levi entered Hyde Park and ambled toward the body of water known as the Serpentine. He was thinking about Rogers, trying to imagine where he was, what he was thinking. It was an old game for Levi, one he had been playing for nearly ten years. He liked to put himself in Rogers’s place, holding the same cards that Rogers did, trying to imagine how he would play the hand. If Levi had the American network of agents in the Middle East, how would he run them? Would he encourage them to work for peace with Israel? Or would he advise them to be militantly anti-Israel, to protect their cover?

And if one of his agents proved to be a terrorist, what would he do about it? Probably nothing, Levi decided. There was always a good argument for doing nothing.

Levi walked along the bank of the Serpentine. Ducks were paddling in the muddy water. Other ducks were waddling off to join their mates asleep on the grass.

The question at hand, Levi reminded himself, was not what he would do if he ran the American networks in the Middle East, but what Rogers would do. What would the great Rogers do, for example, if an officer of the Israeli security service approached him out of the blue in London and hinted that the Israelis were reviving an old plan to kill the CIA’s man in the PLO? What would he say? What emotions would he betray?

Levi headed back toward his hotel, crossing the dirt path that circles Hyde Park. A group of girls on horseback were trotting by, led by a riding master with a prim face and tall black boots. The horses never broke into a canter, let alone a gallop. That was forbidden in Hyde Park. Just a slow, steady trot.

The Rogers game was of more than academic interest for Levi that day. After nearly ten years of imagining his American counterpart, Levi was finally going to meet him. They were both scheduled to attend an anti-terrorism conference hosted by the British Foreign Office. Levi felt nervous, like a voyeur who has watched and imagined someone in secret a thousand times, and is finally about to shake his hand.

The Arabs were everywhere in London that September. In the fancy shops on Knightsbridge buying suits and shoes; in the less fancy shops on Oxford Street buying television sets; even in Marks & Spencer’s buying underwear. They were the perfect parvenus: incalculably rich and desperately insecure at the same time. They were a merchant’s dream. The jewelers near the Park Lane hotels had learned to expect Arabs walking in off the street with their mistresses and buying, on the spot, diamond necklaces worth $50,000. There seemed to be no upper limit on what the Arabs would pay for something they wanted. The more expensive it was, the more they seemed to like it. Perhaps they realized—better than anyone else—that with the oil boom of the 1970s, the world had gone off balance. Values were askew. The Arabs had a proverb that summed things up well: “When the monkey reigns, dance before him.”

At hotels around the city, other security officials were gathering for the terrorism conference. Several Frenchmen from the SDECE, looking tough and cagey as roustabouts at a circus; a small group of West Germans, exceedingly competent but wary of demonstrating it in front of their NATO allies, lest they bring back bad memories; the Italians, led by an elegant, white-haired general named Armani, who had survived so many purges and reorganizations of the Italian security service that he was now regarded as indispensable, even by his enemies. All the conferees, except Levi, had splendid hotel rooms, cars at their disposal, generous expense accounts. Counterterrorism, like oil, was a booming business that year.

Across the Park from Levi, Rogers was checking into a grand hotel on Park Lane. The hotel was embarrassingly opulent. A queue of Rolls-Royces stood waiting out front. The hotel doorman looked disdainfully at any tip smaller than a fiver. Through the lobby marched a series of overdressed blondes, many of them on the arms of men twice or three times their age. Professionals, thought Rogers. One of the women, a blonde in a slit skirt, smiled seductively at Rogers. He looked the other way.

Rogers hadn’t really wanted to stay at such a fancy place, but Hoffman had insisted. One of his Saudi clients now owned the hotel, he explained. Why shouldn’t they accept his hospitality? If the world was crazy enough to dump all this money in the laps of the Arabs, reasoned Hoffman, the least the Americans could do was enjoy the spillover. Rogers said he would think about it and then booked a room at a more modest hotel, nearer the American Embassy. But when Hoffman asked again—and said that he was flying in himself from Riyadh just to meet Rogers for dinner—Rogers had relented. How could he say no to Hoffman?

The bellman carried his suitcase to the elevator, making conversation about the weather. Rogers was still in a daze from his flight, unshaven, half-asleep, and slightly hung-over.

As the bellman pushed the button for the fifth floor, a stunning woman walked into the elevator. She was most remarkable, with olive skin and dark hair, wearing an elegant Parisian dress and made up in the china-doll way of a Lebanese princess.

It can’t be, thought Rogers.

He studied the woman from the side: the curve of her body, the black mascara ringing her eyes, the expensive perfume.

It couldn’t be, Rogers thought again.

The elevator doors were closing when a foot, shod in a pair of Bally loafers, kicked them open again. A swarthy man walked in and stood beside the woman. He nuzzled her cheek and whispered in her ear. Rogers strained to hear. The man was talking in Italian and the woman was answering, in Italian. Rogers took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It was not Solange, after all.

The elevator door opened at the third floor and the couple disappeared down the hall. Rogers felt relieved. That particular wound had taken a long time to heal.

Rogers said the name to himself. Solange Jezzine. What he hadn’t reckoned on, the day he plunged from the heights with Solange in his arms, was the loss of self-esteem. It was like breaking a mirror. It destroyed an image of himself. He hadn’t paid a price with Jane, at least not directly. That was what Rogers had found so disorienting. He had expected the predictable scene: the jealous wife discovers her husband’s infidelity and is shattered by it; the husband confesses his misdeeds and eventually is absolved. But it didn’t happen that way. Rogers was instead left alone with his guilty conscience. Jane knew that something was wrong but didn’t know what it was. She assumed it had to do with work and didn’t press the point. The thought that her husband was sleeping with another woman simply never occurred to her.

That loyalty was at once Rogers’s curse and his salvation. Jane had an image of her husband that did not encompass the possibility of infidelity. She regarded him as virtuous and assumed, therefore, that his conduct would be virtuous. It was that simple. Jane’s noble image of her husband survived in her mind, but not in Rogers’s. And that was the trouble. Rogers found it increasingly painful, as the weeks and months passed, to see this gap between what his wife imagined him to be and what he was. So eventually he confessed. Not to his wife, or to a priest. But to the Near East Division chief, Edward Stone. And he was absolved.

Hoffman greeted Rogers with a loud hello and a bearhug when they met at the entrance to the hotel’s Grill Room. This boisterous greeting perturbed some of the other guests waiting to be seated, but Hoffman didn’t seem to care. The headwaiter addressed him as “Monsieur Hoffman” and escorted him to a table in the corner, facing the door. Next to them sat an Arab gentleman and a pneumatic blonde in a tight black dress and spike heels.

“I love the bimbos in this hotel,” said Hoffman as he sat down.

Rogers laughed. He hadn’t seen Hoffman in years, and had missed his raunchy talk and irreverence. Hoffman looked the same, except more so. His girth had increased slightly, but he had a better tailor now, so it was less obvious. He was smoking a gold-tipped cigarette.

“My friend, we live in the age of excess!” said Hoffman.

“Thanks be to Allah,” said Rogers in Arabic.

“I will give you one example of very recent vintage—about two hours ago, to be precise—that suggests the depths to which our brethren in the land of Allah have sunk. A tale of greed and depravity. Does that have any interest for a prominent government official such as yourself?”

“Does it involve sex?”

“Of course!” said Hoffman. “And it is personal! This morning I get on the British Airways flight in Dhahran to come see my old friend, Tom Rogers. I take my seat in the first-class compartment intending to get a little shut-eye when a worthy Oriental gentleman sits down beside me. He introduces himself. He’s a Saudi. Some sort of prince. Uh-oh, I think. There goes my nap.

“As soon as the plane is airborne, Abdul orders a drink. It’s only eight-thirty in the morning, but he wants a whisky sour. An hour later he’s smashed and telling me his life’s story. What can I do? I figure maybe this will be good for business. So I listen to his bullshit, have a few drinks with him, tell him a few stories. By the time we’re over the English Channel, I’m his closest friend in the world. He can’t do enough for me.

“ ‘Mr. Frank,’ he says to me. ‘When we land in London, do you know what I have waiting for me at my hotel?’

“ ‘No, Abdul,’ I say. ‘I do not.’ ”

“ ‘Mr. Frank, waiting for me at my hotel are two beautiful French whores. And because you and I are such close friends, Mr. Frank, when we get to the airport, I will make a phone call to the hotel.’

“Great, I think. He’s going to give one of the girls to me. But, noooo. That’s not what he has in mind.

“ ‘Mr. Frank,’ he says. ‘When we get to London, I will call my friends and get two French whores for
you
, too.’ ”

“Two?” said Rogers.

“These people are insane!” answered Hoffman. “What’s wrong with just
one
fucking French whore, for Christ’s sake? Honestly, the Arabs are completely nuts. As I was saying, we live in an age of excess.”

The waiter arrived to take their drink orders.

“I’ll have a whisky sour,” said Hoffman.

Rogers, who didn’t actually like whisky sours very much, decided it was futile to resist. It was, as Hoffman said, the age of excess.

“Me too,” said Rogers. “A double.”

The dining room was filling up with guests. Two men with very long hair arrived. They looked like rock stars.

“Faggots,” said Hoffman not very quietly as the two walked past the table.

“How’s business at Arab-American Security Consultants?” asked Rogers.

“Great,” said Hoffman. “Except we had to change the name to Al-Saud Security Consultants.”

“Why?” asked Rogers.

“My Saudi partner decided he liked the other name. What could I do? Everybody down there has a Saudi partner. He’s not a bad guy. Spends most of his time in Monte Carlo.”

“I gather his name is Al-Saud,” said Rogers.

“You got it.”

“And you’re making money?”

“Tons of it. It’s embarrassing, actually. I have never seen suckers like these guys. Guess what our hottest selling item is?”

“Tell me.”

“A $10,000 machine that can tell you, when your phone rings, who’s calling. So you can decide whether to answer or not.”

“That sounds great,” said Rogers.

“That’s what the Saudis all say when I show it to them. But they’re so fucking stupid they don’t realize it only works if you pre-program the machine to recognize the telephone numbers of everyone who could possibly call you. And do you know what? They never complain. Sometimes I wonder if they even plug it in. Maybe they just put it on the coffee table as a conversation piece.”

“The perfect market.”

“It is,” said Hoffman. “Although to be honest, I’ve had a few bombs, too.”

“Like what?”

“I had a scheme to import donuts into Saudi Arabia from New Jersey. Fresh, delicious donuts. I had the perfect guy to handle the air freight. We formed a company, Arab-American Aeropastries. I put a lot of money into it. But it was a bust.”

“Why?”

“The fucking Saudis don’t like donuts, that’s why.”

The waiter returned with the drinks.

“Do you have any bagels?” asked Hoffman.

“What are bagels, Monsieur Hoffman?” asked the waiter.

“Forget it,” said Hoffman.

He took a big swig of his whisky sour.

“How’s about you?” asked Hoffman. “I gather through the grapevine that you are a bigshot now.”

Rogers looked around him. The Arab at the next table was feeling up his girlfriend under the table and looked entirely preoccupied. There was nobody else close by. Even so, Rogers lowered his voice.

“The grapevine has it wrong,” said Rogers. “I am a mere special assistant to the new Director.”