Agents of Innocence

41

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 amp; 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.”

“Hinkle?”

“Correct. Chuck Hinkle. Which means I am close to power but have very little of it myself.”

“Who is this guy Hinkle, anyway?” asked Hoffman.

“He’s a friend of the president. He ran his campaign in California. Years ago he was briefly with the agency under commercial cover, posing as an overseas rep for one of the airlines, so he thinks he knows everything about the business. He’s not a bad guy. A little skittish sometimes. Spends too much time lecturing us about management by objectives and other gems of wisdom from the corporate world. But he’s learning.”

“So what’s his game?”

“Technology,” said Rogers. “That’s everybody’s game these days. People are sick of running agents. It’s too much work, and if you’re not careful you end up in trouble with Congress. People nowadays figure why take the risks. Machines are so nice and clean. They listen in on conversations. They look inside buildings. They take pictures from the sky and then study them and tell you if anything has changed on the ground since the last time they made a pass. You don’t have to recruit them, run them, hold their hands when they get nervous. You just turn them on. That’s what I spend most of my time on, actually. Technical collection.”

“What a waste,” said Hoffman, “if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I still keep my hand in,” said Rogers. “I get to Beirut every year or so for a walk-on with some of our old friends. But I’m basically out of it.”

“How’s old donkey dick?” asked Hoffman.

“Who?”

“The Palestinian.”

“Oh. He’s fine. In fact, he has been invaluable to us the last few years.”

“Is he still getting as much pussy?” asked Hoffman.

“He’s married now,” said Rogers.

“So?”

“Seriously,” said Rogers. “The guy has been a lifesaver for us since the Lebanese civil war began. We had a bad spell before that. Black September killed two of our diplomats in Khartoum in 1973, and to this day nobody is sure whether our man knew what was going on. But these days he’s a hero. You remember the evacuation of the Beirut embassy in 1976? Well, he managed the security for it. He’s everybody’s buddy now. Even the Christians like dealing with him.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Hoffman. “But is he still banging the German girl with the big bazoooms?”

“His secret,” continued Rogers, ignoring his former boss, “is that he has built Fatah intelligence up into an outfit that has something to trade.”

“You’re kidding me. Those guys couldn’t pour piss from a boot if the directions were written on the heel.”

“Times have changed,” said Rogers. “In the last five years, Fatah intelligence has helped save the lives of the leaders of Egypt, Morocco, and Jordan. They trade information with everybody in the Arab world now, and they know everything. They feed it all to our man, and he tells us. It’s a gold mine. When he gets information about a plot against one of our diplomats now, do you know what he does with it?”

“What?”

“He sends his own people to arrest the terrorists for violating Fatah policy.”

“Bullshit,” said Hoffman.

“It’s true,” said Rogers. “The guy is a hero back at Langley. The Director even invited him to come to Washington in 1976, after the civil war ended. It was in December, right after the election. Our boy met with the outgoing DCI and the incoming Secretary of State. Some very heavy hitters.”

“How did he do?”

“Smooth as silk,” said Rogers. “Mr. Reasonable. He made a lot of friends.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?” said Hoffman. “The person I remember was a wild-ass kid who had trouble keeping his pecker in his pants. The guy you’re talking about sounds like he graduated from Yale.”

“Same guy,” said Rogers. “Something happened to him after you left. He grew up.”

“I’ll tell you what happened to him. The Israelis scared the shit out of him. That son of a bitch is lucky to be alive. If he’s become such a sweetheart these days, maybe it’s because he thinks that snuggling up to Uncle Sam will keep him alive.”

“That’s ancient history,” said Rogers. “The Israelis aren’t still after him.”

“Don’t be so sure,” said Hoffman. “The Israelis have very long memories, my friend.”

The waiter was hovering near the table, waiting for Monsieur Hoffman and his guest to place their orders.

“I’ll have the filet of sole,” said Hoffman. “And a steak.”

The waiter’s eyeballs expanded as he wrote the order on his pad, but he said nothing.

“Just the steak for me,” said Rogers. “And a salad.”

“Do you have any chocolate sauce?” asked Hoffman.

“Of course,” said the waiter.

“I’ll have that for dessert,” said Hoffman. “No ice cream. Just chocolate sauce. Hot, please.”

The waiter smiled. He evidently regarded Hoffman as a culinary idiot savant.

Rogers had been mulling over a question during this interlude, and when the waiter left, he spoke up.

“There is one thing that confuses me,” he said.

“What’s that, my boy?” said Hoffman.

“I wonder sometimes whether the Israelis really did try to kill our man.”

“They say they did. They brag about it! How they killed twelve of the leaders of Black September. How they nailed Abu Nasir in his apartment. How they tried to kill our boy in Scandinavia and blew it. Just read Time magazine.”

“Then why did they fail?” said Rogers. “If they tried so hard to kill our man after Munich, why didn’t they succeed?”

“Maybe they’re not quite as brilliant as you think they are,” said Hoffman.

“Or maybe they’re even smarter.”

“Bullshit,” said Hoffman. “If you want my opinion, they’re overrated. They’re hot dogs. That’s what I tell my Saudi clients. They love to hear that.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Actually, no,” said Hoffman. “The Israelis run a nice little service. But they make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes.”

The first course arrived. The waiter deftly fileted the fish while Hoffman looked on approvingly.

“What about us?” asked Rogers when the waiter had left. “How do we look to you now that you’re out?”

“You really want to know the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Pathetic.”

“Why?”

“Let’s face it,” said Hoffman. “The United States, strictly speaking, doesn’t have an intelligence service any more. Once the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee and this committee and that committee are finished pulling on the yarn, there isn’t much sweater left. Honestly, now, would you entrust your life to an intelligence service that turned its secrets over to a bunch of fucking congressmen? These people must be insane.”

“So what are we, if we aren’t an intelligence service?”

“As near as I can tell, the agency today is a collection of lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, and bureaucrats. With a bunch of fancy hardware up in the sky. But when it comes to making things happen on the ground, there’s nothing left. It’s amateur hour. In my humble opinion.”

“That’s great,” said Rogers. “A real morale booster. Is that what your Saudi friends think?”

“They can’t understand what’s going on. They’re so mesmerized by America that they can’t believe we’re as incompetent as we look. Every time we fuck something up, they invent a new conspiracy theory to explain how it’s really a devious new American plot against the Arabs. Want to hear the latest conspiracy theory?”

“Definitely,” said Rogers. “Maybe it will cheer me up.”

“The Saudis think we’re behind the rise of Khomeini in Iran.”

“But that’s silly,” said Rogers. “Why would we threaten our own client?”

“Think about it. Maybe it’s not so crazy.”

“Frank,” said Rogers. “You’ve been out in the desert too long. You’re beginning to think like them.”

“Maybe so,” said Hoffman. “Maybe so. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m very glad I am not, in fact, one of them. Yessiree. I thank my lucky stars every night that I am not a reasonable, pro-Western Arab trying to keep it together. And do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because if I was, I’d have to depend on the United States for help. And that, my friend, is a losing proposition these days.”