Agents of Innocence

28

Beirut; May 1971

“There is someone I would like you to meet,” Fares told Rogers a month later over lunch at Le Pecheur restaurant near the port. Rogers had finished eating and was smoking a cigarette as he gazed out across St. Georges Bay at the tramp steamers lying at anchor and the small boats used by the smugglers and fishermen. He had removed his tie and his open shirt was blowing in the sea breeze.

“Who’s that?” asked Rogers, turning to Fares. The Lebanese intelligence officer was wearing a tweed coat, which made him look all the more like a junior professor.

“He is a young agent I have recruited from a secret organization in East Beirut. He came to me because he is troubled about something. He won’t tell me the details, and he refuses to meet with anyone else from the Deuxieme Bureau. He says that we’re penetrated by his people from top to bottom, and I suspect he’s right. But he is willing to meet with an American. I think he regards it as a sort of insurance policy. Any interest?”

“Definitely,” responded Rogers. “But I’m not putting any militiamen on the payroll.”

“I don’t think this fellow is interested in money,” said Fares. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“What kind of a Lebanese is he?”

“Confused,” said Fares. “He’s a bright young man, one of the top students at the Universite de St. Joseph, who has seen something that terrifies him. His name is Amin Shartouni.”

“How did you meet him?” asked Rogers.

“His brother is married to my wife’s sister,” said Fares.

“How Lebanese,” said Rogers.

“I can arrange a meeting in a week or so,” said Fares. “But I warn you, he’s an odd fellow.”

“ La puissance occulte! ” whispered the tormented-looking young man. “They never teach us about it in school, but it is the secret history of the Middle East!”

Amin Shartouni spoke in a raspy, breathless voice-as if in a fever-at an apartment in Ashrafiyeh. He was a thin man with short curly hair and a look of intense concentration. His skin was the color of parchment and was drawn tightly across his face. As he talked, he wagged his finger at Rogers and Fares.

“What do you mean by ‘ la puissance occulte ’?” asked Rogers cautiously. “Is that some sort of organization?”

“No, no, no! Of course not!” said Amin in exasperation. “Are you a fool? It is not a single group. It is the hidden power behind all of the groups and leaders.”

“I’m still not sure I understand,” said Rogers gently, not yet certain whether he was talking to a lunatic or a useful intelligence asset. He prodded the young man. “Perhaps you could explain what you mean in more detail.”

“Very well,” said Amin. “I will give you an example. A new leader named Hafez Assad came to power in Syria last year. There is a story about the name. Should I tell it?”

Fares nodded.

“Very well. The name of his family was ‘al-Wahash,’ which means ‘the Beast.’ So he was Hafez the Beast. But he changed it to Assad, which means ‘the Lion.’ So now he is Hafez the Lion.”

“What about la puissance occulte? ” said Rogers.

“I’m coming to that,” said Amin. “The question is, who is the real power behind Hafez the Lion? Is it the Syrian Arab Baath Party? No, of course not! Preposterous!” He snorted at the absurdity of the thought.

“The real power lies elsewhere, shrouded in mystery and deceit: Assad is an Alawite, and the hidden force behind him is the Alawite tribal council. Officially, there is no such council. Any Alawite will tell you that it does not exist. In Arabic, we even have a word for the lies we tell to protect such secrets. We call it taqiyya. But here is the truth. Assad’s father was a member of the Alawite council, and it was this council that selected Hafez as leader of the Alawites and ultimately as president of Syria! Do you understand?” He looked hopefully toward the American.

“Continue,” said Rogers.

“Ahaaa!” said Amin, pleased to have an audience. “Next, consider the Druse. Everyone assumes that the Jumblatt family controls the Druse, yes? But that is an illusion! The real power is not Kamal Jumblatt, but the secret council of Druse notables that chose him as leader. This council includes the Sheik al-Aql and others and maintains secret relations with the Druse of Israel and Syria. It is another example of la puissance occulte.”

“Tell me more,” said Rogers. He was becoming fascinated by this little dervish of a man.

“Yes, certainly,” said Amin. “Consider the Shiites. People imagine that the most powerful Shiite leader in the world is the Shah of Iran. Why not? He is the Shah of Shahs! He has money and palaces and tanks! But the reality is entirely different. The Shah rules at the sufferance of a humble man in Najf, who is the highest authority in Shiite Islam. He leads the ayatollahs of the Ulema, the Shiite religious council. If the ayatollahs ever decide to make trouble for the Shah, then poof! He is finished. Do you begin to understand what I mean by occult power?”

“I’m beginning to,” said Rogers. “But I would like another example. What about the Lebanese Christians? What is the hidden power that guides their decisions?”

An uneasy look came over Amin’s face. Rogers immediately wished he hadn’t asked the question. The young man’s hands fidgeted on the table and his eyes darted back and forth between Rogers and Fares.

“I cannot talk about that,” he said, shaking his head.

The meeting lasted thirty more minutes, but the young man had become wary. Rogers played for time by asking him simple questions: Where was he from? Where had he gone to school? Where did he work? Amin gave polite, cautious answers. When he opened his clenched palms, they were covered with sweat.

“We’ve talked enough for today,” said Fares. He suggested that the three get together again in two weeks. Amin nodded his head almost imperceptibly.

Before the next session, Fares spent several hours alone with Amin. Calming him, reassuring him, coaxing him. Fares felt like a doctor treating a patient who has been so traumatized by an event that he can’t bear to discuss it. They arrived together at the safe-house, doctor and patient.

“I think that Amin is ready to tell us more about la puissance occulte today,” said Fares. “Isn’t that right, Amin?” The young Lebanese nodded.

“Please tell our American friend about the organization that you joined in East Beirut.”

Gently, gently, said Rogers to himself. The curtains were closed and the lights were dim.

“Yes, I will tell you about the group,” said Amin. “Not all about it, but some.”

Rogers nodded and the young man began.

“The name of the group is Al-Jabha. The name is supposed to be secret.”

“Al-Jabha?” asked Rogers.

“Yes,” said Amin Shartouni.

“And what does that mean?” asked Rogers. He knew the answer, but that wasn’t the point.

“It means ‘The Front,’ said Shartouni.

Rogers nodded. He believed that interrogations had a kind of rhythm. Make someone answer a first question, and then a second, and a kind of rhythm develops, like a trance.

“Please continue,” said Rogers.

“Al-Jabha was founded sometime in the late 1960s, I don’t know when. I don’t even know who founded it. Once I asked the man who recruited me and he just laughed.

“What did he say?”

“ ‘Les cinq illustres inconnus!’ The five illustrious unknowns. A doctor, several lawyers, an engineer, an insurance man. All professional people. But he wouldn’t tell me their names. His tone of voice made me think there must be others-bigger and more powerful-behind these people.”

“How were you recruited into the organization?” asked Rogers.

“It happened gradually. First I heard from one of the other students at St. Joseph about a group that was training people how to use weapons in case of trouble with the Palestinians. Then a friend from my neighborhood in Ashrafiyeh approached me. He said that I should do something for Lebanon and told me about the organization. When I said I was interested, he took me to meet a man who owned a bookstore near my house. This man told me that Al-Jabha had been watching me for some time and asked if I was interested. I said yes.”

“And what happened then?” asked Rogers. Gently, gently.

“He gave me a number-611-and said that from then on that was my only identification in the group. He said I should never write the number down. Just memorize it. The bookstore owner’s number was 138. My friend’s number was 457. We were a cell, the three of us. That was it! I was in. There were no meetings, no papers, nothing.”

“Tell us about your training,” said Fares.

“It started right away. The bookstore owner told me to be ready the next Saturday. He said I should go to the Sin el-Fil roundabout and look for a car that had on the rear window a map of Lebanon and the words: ‘Lebanon for the Lebanese.’ He said I should follow this car up into the mountains.”

“Was that a slogan of the group?” asked Rogers.

“Yes,” said Amin.

“Were there other slogans?”

“Yes. There was one other. ‘The first responsibility is to the nation. Everything else comes second.’ ”

“And where did you go from Sin el-Fil?”

“We went deep into Kesrouan, to an abandoned convent in a remote valley that I had never seen before. We were very far up the mountain, and completely hidden from outsiders. As we got near the training site, the road signs were covered over with paper so that we couldn’t be sure where we were.”

Rogers nodded. Come on, come on.

“There were about forty people there. They seemed to have come from all over Lebanon. I thought I recognized a few faces-one from school and another from the law faculty-but I didn’t say anything to them because it was supposed to be secret. There was an instructor-his number was 808-who drilled us in hand-to-hand combat and taught us to shoot automatic rifles. It was like the Boy Scouts, except it was more serious.”

Rogers nodded again. Fares sat close by, puffing his pipe.

“We met like that each Saturday for the next six weeks, each time following a car to that hidden place in the mountains. I would tell my parents that I was going hunting.”

“Did they believe you?”

“At first they did. To keep up my alibi, I would stop on the way home and buy some birds that somebody else had shot. Eventually I think they realized something was going on. But they never said anything, not even to this day.”

“What did the instructor tell you was the purpose of Al-Jabha?” asked Rogers.

“During the first six weeks, they just talked in general terms about fighting the Palestinians. They said that foreigners were trying to take over our country and change its identity so that it would be like the rest of the Arab world. It was always in terms of Lebanese against foreigners, but we knew what the instructors meant.”

“What did they mean?” asked Rogers.

“That the Palestinians were Moslems and they wanted to kill the Christians.”

Fares now sat forward in his chair. He had been through this debriefing once already, without Rogers, and it had stopped at this point. They were now about to cover new ground. He wondered if the frightened young Lebanese would continue.

“What happened later in the training?” asked Rogers gently. Amin looked warily at Fares.

“What happened later?” repeated Rogers.

“There was another kind of training,” said Amin.

“And what was it?”

“After the first round, the instructor-202-took me aside and said that he wanted me to enter a special course for the inner circle of the group.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said that I would. I was very flattered that he asked me. It seemed like a very great honor. It was only in this later training that it became clear to me what the group was doing. That was when I began to understand about occult power. You see this secret organization-Al-Jabha-was really just a cover for another, even more secret group.”

“What was the more secret group called?”

“It was called ‘The Guardians of the Mountain.’ ”

“Can you tell us about this inner group?” asked Fares.

“I don’t think so. They made us swear on the gospels that we would not reveal what we learned.”

“I want you to tell me,” said Rogers firmly.

“I can’t,” said Shartouni. “It is too dangerous.”

Rogers was wise enough to back off before the frightened young man broke completely from the thin tether with which they held him.

“Perhaps another day,” said Fares.

“Perhaps,” said the young Lebanese.

Having begun the process of confession and absolution, Amin wasn’t going to stop. He met again with Rogers two days later. Again, Fares spent time with the young Lebanese before the meeting, stroking his wounded psyche and encouraging him to tell the rest of his story. They gathered at an apartment near Jounie, in a complex overlooking the sea. The session began in the late afternoon, as the sun was beginning to set on the western horizon of the Mediterranean.

“Today, Amin would like to continue his story by telling us about the inner circle of Al-Jabha,” said Fares. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” said Amin Shartouni.

“Amin has promised that today, he will tell us everything about the group,” said Fares.

Shartouni nodded. Rogers settled back in his chair. Fares lit up his pipe. Amin sat on a couch facing the sea.

“The purpose of the inner circle was to do the things that the Lebanese Army could not do,” the young man began. “The leaders told us that because of political problems in the army, especially the friction between Moslem and Christian officers, it was no longer possible for the army to take the measures that might be necessary to defend the republic. That would be our job. They called it ‘special operations.’ ”

“What did they teach you in this second round of training?” asked Rogers.

“They taught us to make bombs,” answered Amin. His lips were crinkled into an odd smile that Rogers hadn’t seen before.

“Please tell us about it,” said Rogers.

“Very well. We had a new instructor in the inner group, who knew everything about making bombs. He had travelled around the Arab world and knew the secret tricks of warfare.”

“What was his name?” asked Rogers.

“He didn’t have a name,” said Amin. “We just called him ‘the Bombmaker.’ ”

“And what did he teach you?”

“First he taught us how to make homemade explosives.”

“Tell me,” said Rogers.

“They were the simplest kind at first, which you could make by mixing a pesticide with a fertilizer. The Bombmaker said that the nitrogenous compound in the fertilizer, combined with the acid of the pesticide, would produce a powerful explosive. But he recommended against using this mixture.”

“Why?”

“Because it was unstable. It would explode if you shook it, or dropped it.”

“I see,” said Rogers.

“The Bombmaker recommended what he called ‘nitrocotton.’ He had me mix it in the bathtub. We took pure cotton and mixed it very slowly, very gently, with nitric acid. The Bombmaker warned us that if we mixed nitrocotton too fast, it would explode right there in the tub!”

“And you made nitrocotton?”

“Yes,” said Amin. “It was difficult for me at first, because my hand was shaking so much that it was churning up the acid. But I learned how.”

“What came next?” asked Rogers.

“Detonators. The Bombmaker taught us how to make a simple detonator. You start with gunpowder. You can get it from any bullet. Then you take a flashlight bulb, break the glass, put the gunpowder around the resistance wire, and recap the bulb with wax. When you run electricity to the bulb, Boom! You have a detonator!”

Amin smiled that peculiar smile again. Rogers wondered if he was a lunatic after all.

“But those were just the basics,” continued Amin. “We moved on to real explosives: gelignite and melignite and plastique. The Bombmaker said the simplest way to get these fancy explosives was to steal them from the military. He said that tons of explosives disappear from NATO stocks every year, and if we wanted some, we should bribe an American soldier in Europe who would steal what we wanted. If we didn’t need the high-quality military explosive, the Bombmaker said we should just buy dynamite from the people who sell it to construction companies. All we would need to make it legal was a construction license! The Bombmaker also told us about another way, but he said it was very dangerous.”

“What was that?”

“To buy explosives from the Palestinians.”

“What?” asked Rogers, unsure that he had heard correctly. “Why would the Palestinians sell explosives to the Christians?”

“I don’t know,” said Amin. “That’s just what the Bombmaker told us.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“He taught us how to make remote-control detonators. That was really the most interesting part.”

“How do you make a remote-control detonator?” asked Rogers. He felt his stomach beginning to tighten.

“You start by buying a simple radio-control kit, like the kind that children use for model airplanes or boats. You can buy them in any big toy store. The Bombmaker warned us that we should buy only one kit in each store. Otherwise, people would get suspicious.”

“How do they work?” asked Rogers.

“In each kit, there is an emitting device and a receiving device. One for the ground controller, if it’s a toy airplane, and one in the plane itself. Mind you, when you use the kits to make detonators, you must change the frequency and select a new one that isn’t used by model builders or amateur radio operators. Otherwise, the bomb might explode in your hands because of a child who is playing with a model airplane nearby and sets it off by mistake!”

Rogers nodded.

“The kits usually have two frequencies, one to regulate the speed of the toy plane and one to control its direction. That’s the kind that you want, because it gives you two keys on the detonator. A simple electronic transmission on the first frequency opens one key; an audio signal-a voice, let’s say-opens the second key.”

“And then?”

“Then, BOOM! Remote-control detonator.”

“Amin,” said Rogers softly. “What were these bombs and detonators to be used for?”

Amin ignored the question. “Would you like me to tell you the most frightening part of the training?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Rogers.

“It was connecting the electric battery to the detonator. And do you know why? Because of static electricity! Sparks can jump from the battery to the detonator, even when the switch is off. Then, BOOM! The Bombmaker taught me a safety trick. Before you get the battery wires near the detonator, touch them together and make them spark. That removes the static electricity.”

Rogers nodded. Who is mad, he wondered, this poor man or his country?

“I hated attaching the battery,” said Amin with a shudder. “The Bombmaker made me do it over and over, and my hands trembled and shook. But he said it was necessary. Everyone had to do it.”

Remembering the experience, Amin trembled once again.

“The rest of the receiving device was easy,” he continued. “You just attach the detonator to the aerial.”

“The aerial?”

“Yes. The car aerial.”

“Amin!” said Rogers loudly. “Why did they need an aerial? What were they going to use the remote-controlled bombs for?”

“Don’t you know?” said Amin, tilting his head. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No,” said Rogers.

“Car bombs!”

Rogers felt sick. He could not ask the next question.

“Why did your group need car bombs?” asked Fares.

“Because the other side had them. The Palestinians.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because the Bombmaker told us.”

“Yes, but how did he know?”

“He knew because…” Amin began to laugh. “It’s sort of funny, really.”

“How did he know?”

“He knew because a few months before he came to us, he had been working for the Palestinians. Teaching them how to make bombs. That was his job, you see. Teaching people how to make bombs!”

The young Lebanese continued to laugh. It was a nervous giggle-like the sound of a frayed nerve vibrating-that masked emotions Amin could not express.

“And who were the targets?”

“What?”

“Who were the targets?”

The question produced another stutter of laughter from Amin. Then there was silence, and a look of pain and exhaustion that distorted his face.

“That was what bothered me,” said the boy, his face frozen. “The Bombmaker told us that it didn’t matter! We could decide about all that later. He said it would be easy. With car bombs, we wouldn’t need specific targets!”

“Why not?” asked Rogers, almost in a whisper.

“Because we would only need an address.”

“An address?”

“Yes. A street address. Where to park the car.”

The apprentice terrorist looked at Rogers. He put his head in his hands. Was he crying? Was he laughing? It didn’t matter. Fares embraced the boy.

“Do you have any more training sessions scheduled with the Bombmaker?” asked Rogers.

“Yes,” said Amin. “One more.”

“Good boy,” said Rogers. “You are very brave to have come here and talked with us. Go to your next session. Behave normally. And don’t be frightened. We will make sure that no harm comes to you.”

The young Lebanese nodded. Fares escorted him to the door, speaking gently to him in Arabic. Rogers watched him walk out the door, into the Christian heartland of Kesrouan, and then turned to Fares.

“Follow him,” said the American.