CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

William Buckley, the American kidnapped in Lebanon by Hezbollah on March 16, 1984, was officially described as a political officer at the U.S. embassy in Beirut. In fact he was the CIA head of station.

Cam Dewar knew Bill Buckley and thought he was a good guy. Bill was a slight figure in conservative Brooks Brothers suits. He had a head of thick graying hair and matinee-idol looks. A career soldier, he had fought in Korea and served with the Special Forces in Vietnam, ending with the rank of colonel. In the sixties he had joined the Special Activities Division of the CIA. That was the division that carried out assassinations.

Bill was single at fifty-seven. According to Langley gossip, he had a long-distance relationship with a woman called Candace in Farmer, North Carolina. She wrote him love letters and he telephoned her from all over the world. When he was in the USA, they were lovers. Or so people said.

Like everyone else at Langley, Cam was angry about the kidnapping and desperate to get Bill released. But all efforts failed.

And there was worse news. One by one, Bill’s agents and informers in Beirut began to disappear. Hezbollah had to be getting their names from Bill. That meant he was being tortured.

The CIA knew Hezbollah’s methods, and they could guess what was happening to Bill. He would be permanently blindfolded, chained at the ankles and wrists, and kept in a box like a coffin, day after day, week after week. After a few months of this he would be literally insane: drooling, gibbering, trembling, rolling his eyes, and letting out sudden random screams of terror.

So Cam was savagely pleased when at last someone came up with a plan of action against the kidnappers.

The plan originated not with the CIA, but with the president’s national security adviser, Bud McFarlane. On his staff Bud had a gung-ho marine lieutenant colonel called Oliver North, known as Ollie. Among the men North had recruited to help him was Tim Tedder, and it was Tim who told Cam of McFarlane’s plan.

Cam eagerly took Tim into the office of Florence Geary. Tim was a former CIA agent and an old acquaintance of Florence’s. As always, he had his hair cut as if he were still in the army, and today he wore a safari suit that was as close to a military uniform as civilian dress could get.

“We’re going to work with foreign nationals,” Tim explained. “There will be three teams, each of five men. They won’t be CIA employees and they won’t even be Americans. But the Agency will train them, equip them, and arrange finance.”

Florence nodded. “And what will these teams do?” she said neutrally.

“The idea is to get to the kidnappers before they strike,” Tim said. “When we know that they’re planning a kidnapping, or a bombing, or any other kind of terrorist act—we will direct one of the teams to go in and eliminate the perpetrators.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Florence. “These teams will kill terrorists before they commit crimes.”

She was not as excited by the plan as Cam was, evidently, and he had a bad feeling.

“Exactly,” said Tim.

“I have one question,” said Florence. “Are you two out of your fucking minds?”

Cam was outraged. How could Florence be against this?

Tim said indignantly: “I know it’s unconventional—”

“Unconventional?” Florence interrupted. “By the laws of every civilized country it’s murder. There is no due process, there is no requirement of proof, and by your own admission the people you’re targeting may have done nothing more than merely think about committing crimes.”

Cam said: “Actually, it’s not murder. We’d be acting like a cop who gets off an early shot at a criminal who is pointing a gun at him. It’s called preemptive self-defense.”

“So you’re a lawyer, now, Cam.”

“That’s not my opinion, it’s Sporkin’s.” Stanley Sporkin was the CIA general counsel.

“Well, Stan’s wrong,” said Florence. “Because we never see a pointed gun. We have no way of knowing who is about to commit a terrorist act. We don’t have intelligence of that quality in Lebanon—we never have. So we’ll end up killing people who we think might be planning terrorism.”

“Perhaps we can improve the reliability of our information.”

“What about the reliability of the foreign nationals? Who will be on these five-man teams? Local Beirut bad guys? Mercenaries? International-security-company Eurotrash? How can you trust them? How can you control them? Yet whatever they do will be our responsibility—especially if they kill innocent people!”

Tim said: “No, no—the whole operation will be arm’s-length and deniable.”

“It doesn’t sound very deniable to me. The CIA is going to train and equip them and finance their activities. And have you thought of the political consequences?”

“Fewer kidnappings and bombings.”

“How can you be so naïve? If we strike at Hezbollah this way, you think they will sit back and say: ‘Gosh, the Americans are tougher than we thought, maybe we’d better give up this whole terrorism idea.’ No, no. They will be screaming for revenge! In the Middle East, violence always begets more violence—haven’t you learned that yet? Hezbollah bombed the marine corps barracks in Beirut—why? According to Colonel Geraghty, who was the marine commander at the time, it was in response to the U.S. Sixth Fleet shelling innocent Muslims in the village of Suq al-Gharb. One atrocity brings another.”

“So you’re just going to give in and say nothing can be done?”

“Nothing easy can be done, just hard political work. We lower the temperature, we restrain both sides, and we bring them to the negotiating table, again and again, no matter how many times they walk out. We don’t give up and, whatever happens, we don’t escalate the violence.”

“I think we can—”

But Florence was not yet done. “This plan is criminal, it’s impractical, it has horrendous political consequences in the Middle East, and it endangers the reputations of the CIA, the president, and the USA. But that is not all. There is yet one more thing that completely rules it out.”

She paused, and Cam was forced to say: “What?”

“We are forbidden by the president to carry out assassinations. ‘No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.’ Executive Order 12333. Ronald Reagan signed it in 1981.”

“I think he’s forgotten that,” said Cam.

•   •   •

Maria met Florence Geary in downtown Washington at the Woodward and Lothrop department store, which everyone called Woodies. Their rendezvous was the brassiere department. Most agents were men, and any man who followed them in here would be conspicuous. He might even get arrested.

“I used to be size thirty-four A,” said Florence. “Now I’m thirty-six C. What happened?”

Maria chuckled. At forty-eight she was a little older than Florence. “Join the club of middle-aged women,” she said. “I always had a big ass, but I used to have cute little boobs that stood up all on their own. Now I need serious support.”

In two decades in Washington, Maria had assiduously cultivated contacts. She had learned early on how much was achieved—for good or ill—through personal acquaintance. Back in the days when the CIA had been using Florence as a secretary, instead of training her to be an agent as they had promised, Maria had sympathized with her plight, woman to woman. Maria’s contacts were usually women, always liberal. She exchanged information with them, giving early warning of threatening moves by political opponents, and helped them discreetly, often by assigning higher priority to projects that might otherwise be sidelined by conservative men. The men did much the same.

They each picked out half a dozen bras and went to try them on. It was a Tuesday morning, and the changing room was empty. Nevertheless, Florence kept her voice low. “Bud McFarlane has come up with a plan that is complete madness,” she said as she unbuttoned her blouse. “But Bill Casey committed the CIA.” Casey, a crony of President Reagan’s, was head of the CIA. “And the president said yes.”

“What plan?”

“We’re training assassination squads of foreign nationals to kill terrorists in Beirut. They call it preemptive counterterrorism.”

Maria was shocked. “But that’s a crime, by the laws of this country. If they succeed, McFarlane and Casey and Ronald Reagan will all be murderers.”

“Exactly.”

The two women took off the bras they were wearing and stood side by side in front of the mirror. “You see?” said Florence. “They’ve lost that sit-up-and-beg look.”

“Mine, too.”

There was a time, Maria reflected, when she would have been too embarrassed to do this with a white woman. Maybe things really were changing.

They started to try on the bras. Maria said: “Has Casey briefed the intelligence committees?”

“No. Reagan decided he could just inform the chair and vice chair of each committee, and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate.”

That explained why George Jakes had not heard about this, Maria deduced. Reagan had made a sly move. The intelligence committees had a quota of liberals, to ensure that at least some critical questions were asked. Reagan had found a way to sideline the critics and inform only those he knew would be supportive.

Florence said: “One of the teams is here in the States right now, on a two-week training course.”

“So the whole thing is quite far advanced.”

“Right.” Florence looked at herself in a black bra. “My Frank is pleased that my bust has changed. He always wanted a wife with big tits. He claims he’s going to church to thank God.”

Maria laughed. “You have a nice husband. I hope he likes your new bras.”

“And what about you? Who will appreciate your underwear?”

“You know me, I’m a career girl.”

“Were you always?”

“There was a guy, a long time ago, but he died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“And no one else since?”

She hardly hesitated. “One near miss. You know, I like men, and I like sex, but I’m not prepared to give up my whole life and become an appendage to some guy. Your Frank obviously understands that, but not many men do.”

Florence nodded. “Honey, you got that right.”

Maria frowned. “What do you want me to do about these murder squads?” The thought occurred to her that Florence was a secret agent, after all, and she might have found out, or guessed, that Maria had leaked stories to Jasper Murray. Did she want Maria to leak this one?

But Florence said: “I don’t want you to do anything, right now. The plan is still a stupid idea that may be nipped in the bud. I just want to be sure that someone outside the intelligence community knows about it. If the shit hits the fan, and Reagan starts lying about murder the way Nixon lied about burglary, at least you will know the truth.”

“Meanwhile, we just pray that it never happens.”

“Amen.”

•   •   •

“We’ve selected our first target,” said Tim Tedder to Cam. “We’re going for the big guy.”

“Fadlallah?”

“Himself.”

Cam nodded. Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah was a leading Muslim scholar and a grand ayatollah. In his sermons he called for armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Hezbollah said he was their inspiration, no more, but the CIA was convinced he was the mastermind behind the kidnapping campaign. Cam would be glad to see him dead.

Cam and Tim were sitting in Cam’s office at Langley. On his desk was a framed photograph of himself with President Nixon, deep in conversation. Langley was one of the few places where a man could still be proud of having worked for Nixon. “Is Fadlallah planning more kidnappings?” Cam asked.

Tim said: “Is the Pope planning more baptisms?”

“What about the team? Are they trustworthy? Are they under control?” Florence Geary’s objections had been overruled, but her misgivings had not been stupid, and Cam was now remembering what she had said.

Tim sighed. “Cam, if they were trustworthy, responsible people who respected legitimate authority, they wouldn’t be available for hire as paid assassins. They are as reliable as such people ever are. And we have them more or less under control, for now.”

“Well, at least we’re not financing them. I got the money from the Saudis—three million dollars.”

Tim raised his eyebrows. “That was well done.”

“Thanks.”

“We might consider putting the whole project technically under the control of Saudi intelligence, to improve deniability.”

“Good idea. But even then we’ll need a cover story, after Fadlallah is killed.”

Tim thought for a minute, then said: “Let’s blame Israel.”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone will readily believe the Mossad did a thing like this.”

Cam frowned uneasily. “I’m still worried. I wish I knew exactly how they were going to do it.”

“Better if you don’t know.”

“I have to know. I might go to Lebanon. Get a closer look.”

“If you do,” said Tim, “go carefully.”

•   •   •

Cam rented a white Toyota Corolla and drove south from the center of Beirut to the mostly Muslim suburb of Bir el-Abed. It was a jungle of ugly concrete apartment buildings interspersed with handsome mosques, each mosque on its broad lot, like a gracious specimen tree carefully cultivated in a clearing amid a crowded forest of rough pines. Poor though the country was, the traffic in the narrow streets was heavy, and the shops and street stalls were besieged by crowds. It was hot, and the Toyota had no air-conditioning, but Cam drove with the windows closed, fearful of contact with the unruly population.

He had visited the district once before, with a CIA guide, and he quickly found the street where Ayatollah Fadlallah lived. Cam drove slowly past the high-rise apartment building, then went all around the block and parked a hundred yards before the building on the opposite side of the road.

On the same street were several more apartment buildings, a cinema, and, most importantly, a mosque. Every afternoon at the same time, Fadlallah walked from his apartment building to the mosque for prayers.

That was when they would kill him.

No foul-ups, please, God, Cam prayed.

Along the short stretch of street Fadlallah would have to follow, cars were parked nose to tail at the curb. One of those cars contained a bomb. Cam did not know which.

Somewhere nearby the trigger man was concealed, watching the street like Cam, waiting for the ayatollah. Cam scanned the cars and the overlooking windows. He did not spot the trigger man. That was good. The assassin was well concealed, as he should be.

Cam had been assured by the Saudis that no innocent bystanders would be hurt. Fadlallah was always surrounded by bodyguards: some of them would undoubtedly suffer injury, but they always kept the general public well away from their leader.

Cam worried whether the bomb’s effects could be predicted so accurately. But civilians were sometimes hurt in a war. Look at all the Japanese women and children killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the United States had been at war with Japan, which it was not with Lebanon; but Cam told himself that the same principle applied. If a few passersby suffered cuts and bruises, the end surely justified the means.

Still, he was alarmed by the number of pedestrians. A car bomb was more suited to a lonely location. Here, a marksman with a high-powered rifle would have been a better choice.

Too late now.

He looked at his watch. Fadlallah was behind schedule. That was unnerving. Cam wished he would hurry.

There seemed to be a lot of women and girls on the street, and Cam wondered why. A minute later he figured out that they were coming out of the mosque. There must have been some special event for females, the Muslim equivalent of a mothers’ meeting. Unfortunately they were crowding the damn street. The squad might have to abort the explosion.

Now Cam hoped that Fadlallah would be even later.

He scanned the cityscape again, looking for an alert man concealing some kind of radio-operated triggering mechanism. This time he thought he spotted the man. Three hundred yards away, opposite the mosque, a first-floor window stood open in the side wall of a tenement. Cam would not have noticed the man but that the afternoon sun, moving down the western sky, had shifted the shadows to reveal the figure. Cam could not make out the man’s features but recognized his body language: tense, poised, waiting, scared, two hands grasping something that might have been a transistor radio with a long retractable aerial, except that no one held on to a transistor radio for dear life.

More and more women came out of the mosque, some wearing only the hijab head scarf, others in the all-concealing burqa. They thronged the sidewalks in both directions. Soon, Cam hoped, the rush would be over.

He looked toward Fadlallah’s building and saw, to his horror, that the ayatollah was coming out, surrounded by six or seven other men.

Fadlallah was a small old man with a long white beard. He wore a round black hat and white robes. His face had an alert, intelligent expression, and he was smiling slightly at something a companion was saying as they left the building and turned into the street.

“No,” said Cam aloud. “Not now. Not now!”

He looked along the street. The sidewalks were still crowded with women and girls, talking, laughing, showing in their smiles and gestures the relief felt by people on leaving a holy place after a solemn service. Their duty was done, their souls were refreshed, and they were ready to resume the worldly life, looking forward to the evening ahead, to supper, conversation, amusement, family, and friends.

Except that some of them were going to die.

Cam jumped out of his car.

He waved frantically toward the tenement widow where the trigger man lurked, but there was no response. It was hardly surprising: Cam was too far away, and the man was concentrating on Fadlallah.

Cam looked across the street. Fadlallah was walking away from Cam, toward the mosque and the assassin’s lair, at a brisk pace. The explosion had to be seconds away.

Cam ran along the street toward the tenement building, but his progress was slow because of the crowds of women. He drew curious and hostile looks, an obvious American running through a throng of Muslim women. He drew level with Fadlallah and saw one of the bodyguards point him out to another. Before many more seconds passed, someone would accost him.

He ran on, throwing caution to the winds. Fifty feet from the tenement he stopped, shouted, and waved at the assassin in the window. He could see the man clearly now, a young Arab with a wispy beard and a terrified expression. “Don’t do it!” Cam yelled, knowing he was now hazarding his own life. “Abort, abort! For the love of God, abort!”

From behind, someone seized him by the shoulder and said something aggressive in harsh Arabic.

Then there was a tremendous bang.

Cam was thrown flat.

He was breathless, as if someone had hit him on the back with a plank. His head hurt. He could hear screams, men cursing, and the sliding sound of falling rubble. He rolled over, gasping, and struggled to his feet. He was alive, and as far as he could tell not seriously hurt. An Arab man lay motionless at his feet, probably the person who had grabbed him by the shoulder. The man had taken the full force of the blast, his body shielding Cam, it seemed.

He looked across the street.

“Oh, my Jesus,” he said.

There were bodies everywhere, horribly twisted and bloodied and broken. Those not lying still were staggering, stanching wounds, screaming, and looking for their loved ones. Some people’s loose Middle Eastern clothing had been blown away, and many of the women were half-naked in the true obscenity of violent death.

Two apartment buildings had their fronts destroyed, and masonry and household objects were still falling into the street, massive chunks of concrete alongside chairs and TV sets. Several buildings were burning. The road was littered with damaged cars, as if all the vehicles had been dropped from a height and had landed haphazard.

Cam knew immediately that the bomb had been too large, far too large.

On the other side of the street he saw the white beard and black hat of Fadlallah, who was being rushed back toward his building by his bodyguards. He appeared unhurt.

The mission had failed.

Cam stared at the carnage around him. How many had died? He guessed fifty, sixty, even seventy. And hundreds were injured.

He had to get out of there. In not many seconds people would start to think about who had done this. Even though his face was bruised and his suit was ripped, they would know he was American. He had to leave before it occurred to anyone that they had a chance of instant revenge.

He hurried back to his car. All the windows were smashed, but it looked as if it might go. He threw open the door. The seat was covered with broken glass. He pulled off his jacket and used it to sweep the seat free of shards. Then, in case he had missed any, he folded the jacket and placed it on the seat. He got in and turned the key.

The car started.

He pulled out, made a U-turn, and drove away.

He recalled Florence Geary’s statement, which at the time he had thought hysterically exaggerated. “By the laws of every civilized country it’s murder,” she had said.

But it was not just murder. It was mass murder.

President Ronald Reagan was guilty.

And so was Cam Dewar.

•   •   •

On a small table in the living room, Jack was doing a jigsaw puzzle with his godmother, Maria, while his father, George, looked on. It was Sunday afternoon at Jacky Jakes’s house in Prince George’s County. They had all gone to Bethel Evangelical Church together, then had eaten Jacky’s smothered pork chops—in onion gravy—with black-eyed peas. Then Maria had brought out the puzzle, carefully chosen to be neither too easy nor too hard for a five-year-old. Soon Maria would leave and George would drive Jack back to Verena’s house. Then George would sit down at the kitchen table with his files for a couple of hours and prepare for the week ahead in Congress.

But this was a moment of stillness, when no engagements pressed. The afternoon light fell on the two heads bent over the puzzle. Jack was going to be handsome, George thought. He had a high forehead, wide-apart eyes, a cute flat nose, a smiling mouth, a neat chin, all in proportion. Already his expressions showed his character. He was completely absorbed in the intellectual challenge of the puzzle, then when he or Maria placed a piece correctly he would smile with satisfaction, his small face lighting up. George had never known anything as fascinating and moving as this, the growth of his own child’s mind, the daily dawning of new understanding, numbers and letters, mechanisms and people and social groups. Seeing Jack run and jump and throw a ball seemed a miracle, but George was even more heart-struck by this look of intense mental concentration. It brought to his eyes tears of pride and gratitude and awe.

He was grateful to Maria, too. She visited about once a month, always bringing a gift, always spending time with her godson, patiently reading with him or talking to him or playing games. Maria and Jacky had given Jack stability through the trauma of his parents’ divorce. It was a year now since George had left the marital home. Jack was no longer waking up in the middle of the night and crying. He seemed to be settling into the new way of life—though George could not help feeling apprehensive about possible long-term effects.

They finished the jigsaw. Grandma Jacky was called in to admire the completed work, then she took Jack into the kitchen for a glass of milk and a cookie.

George said to Maria: “Thank you for all you do for Jack. You’re the greatest godmother ever.”

“It’s no sacrifice,” she said. “It’s a joy to know him.”

Maria was going to be fifty next year. She would never have a child of her own. She had nieces and nephews in Chicago, but the main object of her maternal love was Jack.

“I have something to tell you,” Maria said. “Something important.”

She got up and closed the living room door, and George wondered what was coming.

She sat down again and said: “That car bomb in Beirut the day before yesterday.”

“That was awful,” George said. “It killed eighty people and wounded two hundred, mostly women and girls.”

“The bomb was not placed by the Israelis.”

“Who did it, then?”

“We did.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It was a counterterrorism initiative by President Reagan. The perpetrators were Lebanese nationals, but they were trained, financed, and controlled by the CIA.”

“Jesus. But the president is obliged by law to tell my committee about covert actions.”

“I think you’ll find he informed the chairman and vice chairman.”

“This is horrible,” George said. “But you sound pretty sure of it.”

“I was told by a senior CIA person. A lot of Agency veterans were against this whole program. But the president wanted it and Bill Casey forced it through.”

“What on earth got into them?” George wondered. “They committed mass murder!”

“They’re desperate to put a stop to the kidnappings. They think Fadlallah is the mastermind. They were trying to take him out.”

“And they fucked it up.”

“But good.”

“This has to come out.”

“That’s what I think.”

Jacky came in. “Our young man is ready to go back to his mother.”

“I’m coming.” George stood up. “All right,” he said to Maria. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

George got into the car with Jack and drove slowly through the suburban streets to Verena’s house. Jasper Murray’s bronze Cadillac was in the driveway beside Verena’s red Jaguar. That was opportune, if it meant Jasper was there.

Verena came to the door in a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans. George went inside and Verena took Jack away for his bath. Jasper came out of the kitchen, and George said: “A word with you, if I may.”

Jasper looked wary, but said: “Sure.”

“Shall we go into”—George almost said my study, but corrected himself—“the study?”

“Okay.”

He saw with a pang that Jasper’s typewriter was on his old desk, along with a stack of reference books a journalist might need: Who’s Who in America, Atlas of the World, Pears’ Cyclopaedia, The Almanac of American Politics.

The study was a small room with one armchair. Neither man wanted to take the chair behind the desk. After an awkward hesitation, Jasper pulled out the desk chair and placed it opposite the armchair, and they both sat down.

George told him what Maria had said, without naming her. As he talked, in the back of his mind he wondered why Verena preferred Jasper to him. Jasper had a hard edge of self-interested ruthlessness, in George’s opinion. George had put this question to his mother, who had said: “Jasper’s a TV star. Verena’s father is a movie star. She spent seven years working for Martin Luther King, who was the star of the civil rights movement. Maybe she needs her man to be a star. But what do I know?”

“This is dynamite,” Jasper said when George had told him the whole story. “Are you sure of your source?”

“It’s the same as my source for the other stories I’ve given you. Completely trustworthy.”

“This makes President Reagan a mass murderer.”

“Yes,” said George. “I know.”