Agents of Innocence

39

Beirut; October-November 1972

The dinner party that night for the Director and his wife went ahead according to schedule. It was hosted by Ambassador and Mrs. Wigg, who swallowed their pride and decided to ignore the rebuke at the airport. There was a lengthy guest list: Frank and Gladys Hoffman; Tom and Jane Rogers; Youssef Majnoun, the head of the Lebanese Deuxieme Bureau, and his wife Brigitte; the recently appointed deputy chief of the Deuxieme Bureau, Samir Fares, and his wife Hoda; Edward Stone, who was accompanying the Director; and as an extra woman to make the table come out right, Solange Jezzine, the estranged wife of the former head of the Deuxieme Bureau.

It was a pleasant enough evening. The American men seemed a bit tired, especially Frank Hoffman. The chief of the Deuxieme Bureau, Majnoun, was so intent on impressing the Director that he made a nuisance of himself. Samir Fares and his wife were clever and witty and made a favorable impression on everyone, most of all the American intelligence officers at the table, who had been paying Fares a generous stipend the last several years.

What the Director himself seemed to enjoy most was his conversation in the drawing room after dinner with the charming extra woman, Madame Jezzine. She was radiant: dressed in a stunning low-cut gown that showed off her figure, and wearing her hair up off her shoulders in a way that highlighted her long neck and cheekbones. She looked, the Director remarked to Mrs. Wigg, like an Arab princess.

Solange flirted elegantly with the Director, asking him about his athletic interests, expressing astonishment about his age. Jane Rogers, deep in conversation with Edward Stone about life in Beirut, couldn’t help overhearing the conversation and admiring the wiles and beauty of her friend Solange. The Director himself seemed ready enough to spend the rest of the evening with the Lebanese beauty. So he was dismayed when, after twenty minutes of conversation, Solange Jezzine excused herself and strolled out toward the garden, where Tom Rogers was talking to Samir Fares.

“Am I interrupting anything?” asked Madame Jezzine.

“Oh no,” said Fares. “I was just telling Mr. Rogers about the village where I was born. He must be very bored hearing about Lebanese villages. Why don’t you rescue him?”

“Happily,” said Solange.

“Would you like another drink, Tom?” asked Fares.

“No thanks,” said Rogers. “We have to be leaving soon.”

Fares walked inside, leaving the two of them alone in the garden.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” asked Solange. She asked the question like a spoiled little girl, her lips pouting.

“I haven’t,” said Rogers.

“Yes you have, and you shouldn’t!” said Solange. She had slipped her arm through Rogers’s and was walking him slowly down a gravel path in the garden, away from the house and the light.

Rogers felt his heart beating. He felt dreamy and light-headed. It was pleasant, for once, to be in the power of someone else’s personality. Solange leaned her head a little closer to his as they walked along the path. He could smell the perfume behind her ear.

Solange stopped. She turned her head up toward Rogers and spoke in a whisper.

“I’m on fire,” she said.

She kissed him on the mouth. Or he kissed her. It was impossible to know which. As they kissed, Solange put her arm around Rogers’s neck and gently stroked the hair at the nape of his neck. Rogers felt himself becoming aroused, which embarrassed him. Solange pressed tighter against him for a moment, as if to say, Yes, I feel it. I want it. Then she pulled away, smiling coyly and regally.

“You must visit me,” she said. She kissed him gently on the cheek and walked alone back toward the house.

Rogers composed himself. When he returned to the drawing room, the party was breaking up. The Director, deprived of Madame Jezzine’s company, had suddenly become tired and was saying his goodbyes to the Wiggs.

Jane Rogers was still rapt in conversation with Stone. It turned out that Stone had known Jane’s father, the Colonel, in London during the war. Jane was explaining, in a low voice, the volunteer work she had been doing with Palestinian women at the Makassed Hospital, which Stone heartily approved. The two of them were hoisting a second glass of brandy when Rogers walked over and mentioned that it was getting late. Jane gave Stone a kiss, said goodnight, and went upstairs to get her coat.

“Marvellous woman,” said Stone to Rogers. “I knew her father in the war.”

What a wonderful evening it was, said Jane as they were driving home. What a fine man Mr. Stone was.

“He saved my job today, I think,” said Rogers. Jane waited for him to explain, and when he didn’t she assumed that it was one of those things that her husband would tell her, if he could.

A week after the Director’s visit, Hoffman left on a trip to Saudi Arabia. The trip had come up suddenly, he said. He would be back in a few days. Rogers felt uneasy. Hoffman had kept to himself since the meeting with the Director and Stone, and whenever Rogers had tried to draw him out, Hoffman had made a crude joke or otherwise evaded Rogers’s queries.

Hoffman looked ebullient when he returned. He stopped by Rogers’s office on his way back from the airport and Rogers thought at first that it was a practical joke. Hoffman was wearing a well-cut silk suit and smoking a fat Cuban cigar.

“How do I look?” asked Hoffman. “Like a million dollars, right?”

“You look great,” said Rogers. “What happened in Riyadh? Did you hit the daily double at the camel races?”

“Better than that,” said Hoffman. “Much better than that.”

“What’s better than money?” asked Rogers.

“Even more money!” said Hoffman. “And that’s what you’re looking at!”

“Maybe you should explain what’s going on,” said Rogers.

“Gladly,” said Hoffman. And with a flourish, he withdrew a business card from his coat pocket and handed it to Rogers.

“Arab-American Security Consultants, Inc.,” read the card. “Frank Hoffman, President.”

“Oh shit!” said Rogers.

“You don’t like the name?” said Hoffman. “I was going to call it ‘AA-Arab-American Security Consultants,’ so it would be first in the telephone book. But then I realized that the Arabs don’t have telephone books, so what would be the use?”

“I’m not talking about the card,” said Rogers. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re quitting the agency. I can’t believe it.”

“Oh that,” said Hoffman. “You’ll get used to it.”

“No I won’t,” said Rogers.

“Have it your way,” said Hoffman. He was relighting his cigar.

“What happened? When did you do it? I thought everything had been settled between you and the Director.”

“Let’s face it,” said Hoffman. “I had to quit. I mean, really, how could I stay after what happened? I had no business talking to the Director like that. In an outfit like ours, you obey orders or you quit. It’s that simple. The Director should have fired me for insubordination. I decided to save him the trouble.”

“Wait a minute,” said Rogers. “Aren’t you being a little easy on the Director?”

“Maybe,” said Hoffman. “But I’ll tell you the truth. The Director may have been out of line the other day. But it isn’t really his fault. The truth is that this is a rotten business. You do terrible things and usually you don’t think about it. And then one day, you just get sick of it. You decide you just don’t want to eat another bite of the shit sandwich.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Security! Didn’t you read the card?”

“Yeah. But what does it mean?”

“For starters,” said Hoffman, “it means taking very large amounts of money from Saudi princes who are terrified that their Arab brethren are going to cut their throats. I intend to sell these gutless bastards the latest in security technology. Whatever will help them continue whoring and drinking in reasonable safety. Bodyguards, bullet-proof limousines, alarm systems. How the fuck should I know? I’ve only been in this business a few days.”

“So that’s why you went to Saudi Arabia.”

“We call it client development, in my new line of work,” said Hoffman. “And I’ll tell you, the Saudis are ready to be developed. The way I figure things, the richer they get, the more scared they’ll get, which means more money for yours truly. After just one trip, I have already lined up contracts worth nearly a million bucks. How does that grab you, junior?”

“Frank, there is nobody in the world I would rather see get rich than you.”

“Don’t suppose you’d like to join me in this raid on the Saudi treasury? I could use a partner.”

“I don’t think so,” said Rogers. “I’m not quite ready to pack it in here.”

“Go fuck yourself then.”

“Have you told the front office yet?”

“Of course I have,” said Hoffman indignantly. “Just because I’ve become a businessman doesn’t mean I’ve become dishonest. I told the Director and Stone ten days ago, just before they left Beirut.”

“They certainly kept it to themselves,” said Rogers.

“They’re that way, if you hadn’t noticed. They don’t tell the troops any more than they have to.”

Rogers looked at Hoffman, resplendent in his new suit, a silk handkerchief in his pocket, a pair of expensive alligator shoes on his feet. Rogers shook his head. There was something he didn’t quite understand.

“You know, Frank, somehow I never imagined you as a businessman. In fact, it never really occurred to me that you were all that interested in making money.”

“Life is full of surprises, kid,” said Hoffman. “Sometimes we do things for no reason other than the simple fact that we fucking well feel like it. And do you know what? It feels good.”

With that, Hoffman headed off to his own office, a bouquet of flowers in his hand to give to his secretary, Miss Pugh. Rogers looked at the card in his hand, bearing the imprint of Arab-American Security Consultants, and laughed from deep in his gut, for what seemed like the first time in a very long while.

Several days after Hoffman’s announcement that he was quitting, Rogers travelled to the mountains east of Beirut to meet with Samir Fares of the Deuxieme Bureau. It was a routine meeting, intended partly to reassure Fares and his colleagues in the Lebanese intelligence service that Hoffman’s departure didn’t imply any change in agency policy toward Lebanon or the Middle East.

On his way back, Rogers did something that, for him, was very unusual. He acted on impulse.

He was driving along the road looking at the scenery when it occurred to him that he was near the village where the Jezzines lived. And he decided, without really thinking about it very much, without considering the consequences for his marriage or his life or anything else, to stop and pay a visit to Solange Jezzine. He had dreamed often enough about having an affair with her, in a casual sort of way. But his idle fantasizing had very little to do with the deliberate, impulsive decision that day to turn the wheel of the car hard to the right, head down a different road in the Lebanese mountains, and step on the gas pedal. It had less to do, at that moment, with sexual desire than with curiosity, an impulse to do something different, whose outcome wasn’t predictable or even under his control.

As Rogers drove the car up the cedar-lined drive toward the Jezzines’ house, he felt his heart racing. Gone were the tough-looking young men with automatic weapons who used to police the grounds in the old days, when General Jezzine ran the Deuxieme Bureau. Manning the front gate instead was an older man who looked like a gardener.

Rogers gave his name to the gatekeeper, who phoned to the big house on an intercom and then waved Rogers through. Rogers parked his car in front of the great stone mansion. There was no sign of the general, or of anyone else, for that matter. As Rogers stepped out of the car, he saw a woman’s face peering down at him from an upstairs window.

He rang the bell. A maid answered the door and escorted him to the living room, where she asked him to wait. There was a great stack of European fashion magazines on the coffee table. Rogers admired the pictures. Many of the women, he thought, had the same radiant and exotic look as Solange. He turned the pages. His palms were moist. The maid returned after five minutes carrying a vellum envelope on a silver tray. It was like the letter she had sent Rogers many months ago. Crisp and creamy and tied with a red ribbon. Inside the envelope was a note: “My darling. You have come to me at last. In a few minutes, I am yours.”

The seduction began as Rogers sat there on the couch, the vellum notepaper in his hand, imagining Solange. He could see her body. The long curves of her legs, the gentle slope of her thighs, the fullness of her breasts, the radiance of her face. The scent of her body, not just the perfume bought in Paris, but the fragrance of olive and jasmine on her skin. The look of her eyes, so deep and dark, inviting pleasure and seduction.

There was a sound on the stairs. Rogers turned and saw her walking toward him, dressed in a silk robe, even more beautiful than he had imagined. Her lips were open in the shape of a kiss. She walked toward Rogers silently, took his hand in hers, and led him to a room that had once been the library, but had now been made over into a kind of harem chamber. There were no couches, only large pillows on the floor. A broad shaft of light streamed through the filmy curtains that covered the windows, and there was a slight breeze blowing.

Solange closed the door and locked it. Rogers moved toward her hungrily, but she held up a finger, bidding him to stop. I will take you, her eyes said. She took his hand and led him to one of the large pillows and bade him sit down. She took his shoes off, one by one. Then his socks. She unbuttoned his shirt, one button at a time, then gently unfastened his trousers. She was a courtesan now, kneeling gracefully on the floor before Rogers. As she leaned toward him, Rogers glimpsed through her silk robe the curve of her breasts. She was all softness.

When Rogers was naked, Solange rose from the floor and stood silently before him. She slid the silk robe off her shoulders so that it clung briefly to her breasts and then fell gently to the floor. She was perfectly naked except for a gold chain around her waist, hanging low on the curve of her belly.

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.