Agents of Innocence (8 page)

Stone drafted an urgent cable for Hoffman. It said the Fatah project had the “highest repeat highest” support and should be put on a crash basis immediately. Headquarters’ Operational Approval for the recruitment would be expedited, Stone said, and all necessary paperwork should be forwarded as soon as possible.

“This is to be run as a controlled-agent operation, not liaison,” Stone concluded. “Please advise soonest your plan for recruitment.”

Beirut; January 1970

“This is classic!” said Hoffman the next day as he read the cable from Stone assigning the highest priority to the espionage operation against Fatah.

“One month they don’t want to hear about the Palestinians, and we have to beat them over the head to get anything approved. The next month the PLO is the hottest thing since Oleg Penkovsky.

“You see,” Hoffman confided. “That’s why
they
are on the seventh floor, and we’re out here shovelling shit. Because they
understand
these things.”

“Why is the front office so interested all of a sudden?” asked Rogers. “And why so much emphasis on control?”

“Beats me,” said Hoffman. “That’s your problem. But I know a three-alarm fire when I see one, and this is a three-alarm fire! So take a friendly word of advice from your old pal: Don’t fuck up!”

The words were still ringing in Rogers’s ears several hours later as he pondered the case. He now had all the support he could dream of. The only thing he lacked was a plan that would lead promptly and surely to the recruitment of Jamal Ramlawi as an American agent.

The problem, Rogers reassured himself, was a familiar one. He had faced it over the years with Saudis, Omanis, Yemenis, Sudanese. How do you get a potential agent to cross a line that he doesn’t want to cross? How do you impose your will on him and establish control? Do you buy him? Break him down, find his weaknesses and exploit them? Or do you try to establish a bond of trust and personal commitment?

Rogers thought back over his own career. For all his training in deceit, his successes as a case officer had most often come from being open and straightforward. The true marvel of the intelligence business, in his experience, wasn’t the gadgetry or the shadowy operations. It was the simple fact that people like to talk. The old politician wants to tell war stories. The young revolutionary wants to explain how he plans to change the world. They shouldn’t tell you these things, but they always do. And all of them, all over the world, want the ear of an interested American. That was what made the business fun.

That gentle approach, unfortunately, didn’t seem to be what Langley wanted in this case. They wanted something quick and dirty. Rogers decided to have a chat with Hoffman.

“Let’s go out and have a drink,” suggested Hoffman when Rogers stopped by his office late that afternoon. “I know just the place. The Black Cat!”

The Black Cat was a sleazy strip joint on a narrow side street off Hamra. It was dark inside, and it took Rogers a few seconds to adjust to the red lights and clouds of cigarette smoke. When his eyes had focused, he saw a long bar, with a half-dozen overweight European women in various stages of undress sitting on the bar stools. On the stage, glowing under a blue stage light, was a woman—completely naked—careessing a rubber snake.

“The virtue of this place,” said Hoffman, pushing his stocky frame past one of the chubby bar girls, “is that nobody would think to look for us here.

“The other virtue,” he added in a whisper, “is that we own it. Don’t ask me why, but a few years ago it seemed like a good idea. That means nobody will overhear us. Except us.”

There were a few other patrons, mostly Arabs in long white gowns. One of them was sitting in a corner, drunkenly trying to undo the bra of one of the bar girls.

“Saudis!” said Hoffman scornfully. “Blackmailing Saudis is so easy it’s pathetic.”

The arrival of the two Americans had roused the woman on stage to more aggressive courtship of the rubber snake. She pulled it slowly between her legs and then caressed each breast with the serpent’s tongue. The blue light showed on the woman’s head. She was naked, Rogers noticed, except for a small black veil covering her face. The mysterious East.

“Jesus!” said Hoffman, looking at the row of tired women propping up the bar, each making half-hearted gestures of seduction in their direction.

“These girls should be wearing feedbags! Remind me tomorrow about hiring a new team.”

They ordered drinks, refusing an offer by several of the bar girls to join them. The women retreated to the bar and resumed gossiping among themselves.

“Now what did you want to talk about?” asked Hoffman.

“The case,” said Rogers.

“Which case?”

“You know,” said Rogers. “
The case
.”

“Oh. Okay. Shoot.”

“I think we have a problem,” began Rogers. “The guy we’re going after is a patriot. He’s not interested in working for us. He wants to work
with
us. For the good of his people.”

“So make him interested,” said Hoffman. “Find a handle!”

“I’m not sure that’s the way to go.”

“Look, my boy,” said Hoffman. “This business is easy. Don’t make it complicated. You find somebody you think can help you. You grab him by the balls. Then you squeeze real hard. It’s simple.”

Rogers was silent.

“Give me a break!” said Hoffman, gesturing to the stage. A new dancer had arrived, leading a large dog on a leash.

“That’s disgusting!” said the station chief, turning away from the stage after a minute or so of rapt attention.

“Christ! Where do we get these girls?”

Hoffman lit up a cigarette before realizing that he already had another one going.

“I agree with you that the business is easy,” said Rogers, picking up where they had left off. “But I look at it a different way. Recruiting someone is about getting him to do what you want, rather than just forcing him to do what he doesn’t want. I learned a long time ago that it’s easy to manipulate people—if you know what you want from them and don’t tell them why you’re being so friendly.”

Hoffman straightened up in his chair and cocked his eye toward Rogers.

“Say that again,” said the station chief.

“For me,” continued Rogers, “getting a hold on somebody works like this: You go see a prospective agent once, talk to him about his life, his family, his politics. He’s flattered. You’re an American, from the embassy. He’s still on his guard, because you might be a spy, but you play it low-key. You’re polite, discreet. You bring a present for his child.

“Then you go back and see him a second time. He’s nervous about seeing you again. But what can he do? He’s an Arab. He has to be polite. You see him a third time. And then you do him a favor. Nothing spectacular, but a nice gesture. He’s in your debt. He knows it, but neither of you say anything about it. It’s just friendship, hospitality. Then you see him a fourth and fifth time, and a little business begins to flow his way. He’s comfortable. He likes dealing with you.”

“Right,” said Hoffman. “And then you bust his balls!”

Rogers laughed, despite himself.

“Can I tell you a story?” asked Rogers.

“Sure. So long as it doesn’t involve dogs.”

“A few years ago, during the civil war in Yemen, I needed information very badly. There was a sheik I thought could give it to me, but he was supposed to be totally hostile to the West and unrecruitable.

“I thought I would give it a try anyway, so I trekked two days into the desert to meet him. I went alone and unarmed. I wasn’t even sure why I was going at all. When I arrived, I was exhausted. The sheik gave me coffee, fed me. It was the least he could do. We began to talk. He couldn’t believe that I spoke Arabic fluently. He kept calling his aides over to marvel at me. Apparently the Russians always used translators. Anyway, we stayed up all night talking and chewing qat. By morning this guy—without ever realizing it—had become a CIA asset. He provided me with goodies for more than a year.”

“There’s a name in the trade for what you’re talking about,” said Hoffman. “It’s called ‘rapport.’ ” He said the word daintily.

“I take it you don’t approve,” said Rogers.

“To be honest, ‘rapport’ sounds to me like a limp dick. But it’s your case.”

“What do you recommend?” asked Rogers.

“That we try to get a handle on your man. Do a little surveillance, some taps, some pictures. See what we’re dealing with. If there’s a hook, grab it. If not, then we’ll see.”

Hoffman looked again at the tawdry cast of characters in the Black Cat.

“I have a suggestion,” said the station chief. “Let’s get out of this dump.”

Hoffman busied himself arranging the surveillance of Jamal. He insisted on managing the details himself, despite Rogers’s protests.

Hoffman loved surveillance. He regarded it as the purest form of intelligence, a street ballet whose beauty lay in its precision and economy of motion. He delighted in seeing how few people he could use in a surveillance team and still maintain adequate coverage of the target. He would sit in his office with a map of the stake-out area, studying it like a chess problem, seeing if he couldn’t replace a body here or there. He would draw little diagrams illustrating the most efficient way to cover a suspect who entered a store with several exits, or to track a suspect who took taxis and buses and changed directions frequently to throw off his pursuers. Hoffman regarded himself as a maestro of the streets.

To Rogers, it was pure pedantry. The part of Hoffman that made him seem most like an FBI agent.

The surveillance on Jamal was gradually put in place. Loose coverage of his movements day and night, to get a general picture of where he went and who he saw. Tight coverage of his office, audio and video. A special team, flown in from Europe, tapped the phone line and placed a microphone in the ceiling. And by drilling through an empty office next door, they managed to plant a tiny camera in one wall, no bigger or more prominent than a speck of dirt, which took excellent pictures.

Rogers said nothing to Fuad about the surveillance or the new urgency of the operation. Instead, in his twice-weekly meetings with the Lebanese agent, he focused on basic tradecraft. They agreed on the location of dead drops in downtown Beirut where messages could be passed quickly and discreetly. They reviewed extraction procedures for getting Fuad and Jamal out of Beirut in an emergency. Rogers urged Fuad to deepen his cover as a pro-Palestinian Lebanese businessman by spending time with other Fatah officials. Every additional Fatah man in Fuad’s circle of acquaintance, he stressed, was additional protection for Jamal.

The surveillance reports began to accumulate. The trackers who were following Jamal described the subject as an Arab playboy. He stayed out late at discos and nightclubs, almost always in the company of a beautiful woman. He woke up late in the morning, often in the bed of a young lady, went back to his apartment to shower and shave, and arrived at the office around 11:00
A.M.

He was rootless and almost bohemian in his lifestyle, drifting among the offices and apartments of friends, co-workers, and lovers. He ate nearly all his meals in restaurants and always had a fat roll of banknotes. The oddest thing about his routine, the trackers reported, was that he would occasionally go to the library of the American University of Beirut in the afternoon and read. Just read! Science books, news magazines, pop-music tabloids. Books about America and the Soviet Union. Even books about Israel.

There was a final detail, said the trackers. He loved to buy presents, the more expensive the better. On his way to an appointment, he would often stop in a store and buy for his host some fruit, or flowers, or candy, or books. Sometimes he would stop at fancy women’s shops on Hamra and buy gifts in bulk for his girlfriends: bottles of perfume; a dozen silk scarves; a half-dozen pairs of gold earrings.

“I can tell you one thing about our boy,” said Hoffman, after the surveillance had been in place for several weeks.

“What’s that?” said Rogers, suspecting that he already knew the answer.

“This guy loves pussy!”

Rogers groaned.

“No really, come here. Take a look at these pictures. When this guy tells people he put in a hard day at the office, he really means it!”

Spread out on Hoffman’s desk were a dozen glossy photographs, culled from hundreds that had been taken by the camera hidden in Jamal’s office wall.

“Check this out,” said Hoffman. “This is babe number one.”

He handed Rogers a picture that showed a blond woman with very large breasts lying spread-eagled on top of a desk. Her blouse was open and her skirt was pulled up to her waist. On top of her was Jamal.

“What a unit!” said Hoffman. “That girl’s got a pair of Hogans!”

“Hogans?” asked Rogers, who had never heard the expression before.

“Yeah, wise guy. Hogans. Bigger than big.”

Hoffman picked up another picture and studied it.

“Blow job!” announced Hoffman. “Yesirreee. No question about it. The woman is playing the skin flute! Eating tube steak!”

“I get the point,” said Rogers, taking the picture from Hoffman. It showed the blond woman kneeling on the floor, performing fellatio on the Palestinian, who was smiling and had his eyes closed.

“Don’t swallow it, lady! It might explode!” shouted Hoffman.

“Are you aware that we already have a file on this woman?” said Rogers, who felt foolish looking at dirty pictures.

“Hubba! Hubba!” responded the station chief.

“She’s a German girl,” continued Rogers. “She drives a red Ferrari and keeps house for a Lebanese millionaire. This is how she gets her kicks.”

“Outstanding young woman,” said Hoffman. “Sensational. No wonder the Germans lost the war. They were exhausted.”

He went back to the pile of photographs and pawed through them until he found the one he was looking for.

“Okay. Here’s babe number two,” said the station chief.

“First, we have a little get-acquainted shot.” The photograph showed a dark-haired women in a fashionable dress with her back to the camera. She was passionately kissing Jamal, who had his hand under the woman’s skirt.

Hoffman was already looking at the next picture. “Woof, woof!” barked the station chief.

He handed the photo to Rogers. It showed the dark-haired woman completely naked, kneeling on a desk chair. Jamal was entering her from behind. The woman was slender and her body was darkly tanned. She seemed to be a European, but her head was down, which prevented any clear identification.