Hunt the Fox

Chapter Two

Holly had warned him. She had argued with him not to go. Dangerous missions not only risked his life, they also challenged the longevity of their marriage.

“I love you, Tom,” she had said. “I really do. But I don’t think I can take this anymore.”

Holly meant his serving as a top-tier clandestine commando and the leader of Black Cell. Her words were drenched in sadness and regret. The corners of her mouth seemed to pull her entire face down into a tragic mask. Christ, he loved her. He didn’t want this. He’d always seen them as two stalwart warriors, adoring each other and protecting their country. But life had changed her. Nasty shit had happened that neither of them had anticipated.

“Take what?” the family therapist had asked about Holly’s comment. The therapist was a tall woman with straight, dark, shoulder-length hair, straight bangs, and dark-rimmed glasses. Dr. Stephanie Mathews. Dead serious and academic.

She’ll never understand.

“The insanity of it all,” Holly answered. “The constant danger and the not knowing.”

He understood what she meant. CIA regulations prevented him from telling her where he deployed. He couldn’t help that. And he never knew how long he’d be gone.

She knew the rules of the game. She’d lived by them and accepted them. Until now. She’d yearned for the same excitement he had. Until now.

Oh, Holly…

He hated seeing her this way-the doubt etched in fine lines across her forehead, the brightness in her beautiful blue eyes diminished, slumped in a chair, hands clutched in her lap.

Dr. Mathews had been recommended by the ST-6 psychologist, Dr. Petrovian, when, as a result of Crocker’s last mission, cartel assassins had burned down the couple’s house, injured him and Holly, and killed his daughter’s friend Leslie Ames.

“Do you understand why Holly feels this way?” Dr. Mathews asked as she sat across from him with a pad on her lap and her legs crossed.

“Is that a serious question? Yes. Of course I do.”

“But you aren’t willing to change jobs.”

“I’ve considered it. I have, but…”

“What?”

He wanted to explain to her that the attack on their house had only added to the determination burning in his stomach. It confirmed his belief that there were evil motherfuckers in the world-wolves like the cartel leader and his killers-who wanted to do serious harm to other people. And unsuspecting, trusting decent individuals like Dr. Mathews, Leslie Ames, and others, whom Crocker likened to sheep. It was his job as a sheepdog to protect them. He had failed, and that pissed him off.

He would do better next time; he’d be better prepared, he hoped. The world was much more dangerous than people like Dr. Mathews could imagine.

“How do you feel about what happened to your home, and Leslie’s death?” Dr. Mathews asked.

Crocker lowered his head for a moment and looked across the hardwood floor to her ankle. Tattooed there were three little black lizards that looked as if they were crawling up her leg. On the credenza behind her a picture showed her standing next to a look-alike daughter.

“Terrible,” Crocker answered, thinking, What a stupid fucking question. “Very, very angry.” He told himself to calm down.

“Angry?”

“Yes, angry.”

“What about guilt?”

“Yes, of course.” He had offered to do anything he could for Leslie’s parents-a thoughtful physician and soft-spoken librarian-but they refused to meet with him, or even answer the phone when he called. He understood. Losing a daughter had to be hell to deal with. He felt awful that he hadn’t prevented it.

“Do you blame yourself?” Dr. Mathews asked, staring at him with big, dark eyes.

“Somewhat. Yes. The cartel assassins wouldn’t have attacked my house if I hadn’t gone on the mission. It was my job. I understand my job and the risks I take. I never expected blowback like that. Never in a million years. I should have. That’s on me. My failure. But there’s a high level of tunnel vision that kicks in on missions like that.”

“You mean, you didn’t anticipate that the cartel leader would attack your family?” she asked.

“That’s correct, yes. I didn’t see it coming. They killed my colleague’s brother, too.”

“Paul Mancini.” Paul was Joe Mancini’s brother. Mancini was Crocker’s right-hand man.

“Do you feel responsible in any way?”

“Yes. Absolutely. Like I said…I should have considered it. I should have known it was a possibility that the cartel leader would go after our families. I was so focused on what I was doing, it didn’t cross my mind.”

It hadn’t crossed the minds of his superiors at HQ, either. But he didn’t mention that.

He parked the bike outside the hotel, waited a minute to see if anyone was following, then passed through the carpeted lobby, trying not to drip blood on the white marble patches. Sundry quick impressions registered in his head-stately, old world, regal, sophisticated, a faint smell of jasmine. White filigreed ceilings, blown-glass chandeliers.

He stood at the rear of the elevator, trying not to draw attention. A man in his condition didn’t belong here.

He waited another thirty seconds for anyone to enter the lobby, then pushed the button for the sixth floor. A young European couple hurried from inside the hotel and entered just as the doors were closing. He looked them over carefully and relaxed when he realized they were too soft and distracted to be agents or operatives.

As the elevator ascended they spoke to each another in French, complaining about the size of their bed.

Enjoy your life while you have it. Forget the size of the bed, and make love on the floor.

He smiled at them briefly, exited at the sixth floor, found the stairway, and climbed to seven. Waited at the stairway door to see whether the elevator stopped there. It didn’t.

Stood for several seconds listening outside room 732, wondering if it was unwise to even be here. Maybe he was still in shock. He punched the buzzer.

Jim Anders answered, wearing a blue oxford shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, looking fit and rested. Early forties, medium height, clean-cut with a bodybuilder’s physique. A shorter, younger, brown-haired woman in a blue business suit stood behind him.

“Welcome, Crocker. This is Janice Bloom. Janice is a targeter and analyst working on the Syrian account…Jesus-you okay?” he asked, seeing the blood on Crocker’s white shirt. “What happened?”

“Hi, Janice,” Crocker said. He turned to Anders. “We need to talk in private.”

Anders shut the door and flipped the lock behind him. “Talk? Are you aware that you’re bleeding?”

“Yes.”

They were in a suite with a big living room containing a table and four chairs set in front of the window. Dark hardwood floors, maroon brocade curtains. A big bed was visible through a door to the right. Classy in an old-world way.

“Point me toward the bathroom and I’ll clean up,” Crocker said.

“Here?”

“Yeah.” He grabbed Anders by the elbow. “Come with me.”

“Okay. Janice, wait here. Call a doctor.”

“No,” Crocker said. “No need.”

Anders pulled his cell out of his pocket. “You’re bleeding, Crocker. For Christ’s sake.”

“It’s a flesh wound,” countered Crocker. “Janice, please call downstairs for some towels, hydrogen peroxide, bandages, and tape, and I’ll do this myself.”

Anders pointed to the bathroom by the front door. “Jesus, Crocker, what happened?”

Crocker closed the door behind him.

“Two punks on a Kawasaki,” he said in a low voice. “I was with Jared.” Then he remembered. “Fuck…”

They stood in the white marble bathroom. Anders’s face reflected in the mirror looked alarmed. “What? Is he injured, too? Where is he? He’s supposed to be here.”

“Jared’s dead.”

Crocker pulled two shards of glass out of his right forearm as the news sunk in. When he looked up into the mirror he saw Anders hold his chest as though he’d been shot.

“What?”

“Jared’s dead. I left him lying on the street with his brains spilled out.”

“What the hell are you-Jared, the young case officer?”

Crocker held his forearm under warm water, wrapped it tightly in a towel, and waited for the bleeding to stop.

“They were attempting to kidnap him. There was a struggle. Someone pushed him in front of a bus. He fell. Crushed his head on the street.”

Anders shook his head as if he couldn’t quite comprehend. “What the hell are you saying? This is awful. Who attacked him?”

“Don’t know. At least four, maybe five young punks. Middle Eastern-looking. I checked the pockets of one of them. Found no ID. It was a planned op. Orchestrated.”

“Where?”

“On Torun, just around the corner from the Arasta Bazaar. A crowded street, broad daylight. They attacked Jared, then came after me.” Crocker pointed to his back. “Help me pull off this shirt.”

The bloody fabric on the back stuck to his skin. Anders helped him peel it up slowly.

“Broad daylight…”

“Yeah, with people everywhere. Bold motherfuckers.”

“Jared was one of our best operatives,” Anders said sadly. “You sure he’s dead?”

When the hem reached his neck, Crocker pulled it over his head. “He’s dead, Anders. He’s dead. Yes.”

Anders looked as if he was tearing up. “It’s hard to believe. Poor Jared. I…I…That’s a real nasty gash.”

“I was lucky.”

Anders shook his head. “Don’t say anything to Janice. Please don’t. She and Jared were close. They trained together at the Farm; maybe they dated, hooked up, whatever. I’d better notify the Station.”

Anders retreated to the bedroom, spoke in a low voice on the phone, and returned ten minutes later and closed the bathroom door.

“They follow you here? Were you able to ID them? They say anything to you? They identify themselves in any way?”

“No. No. No. No,” Crocker answered. “I told you that already.”

“So you saw nothing that could help us identify them?”

“I saw four of them. Two on a motorcycle; two in a van. All young guys, trained, tough.”

The front door buzzer sounded.

“Who’s that?” Crocker asked, getting ready to defend himself.

Janice answered it. A minute later she knocked on the bathroom door cradling towels, a bottle of peroxide, bandages, medical tape.

“You absolutely sure you don’t need a doctor?” she asked.

“No, I can handle this myself. Thanks.” She was pretty, with straight hair to her shoulders.

“Are we still doing this?” he asked Anders.

“What?”

“The meeting. The meeting you called us to. My colleague Akil is supposed to be here, too.”

An alarm sounded in a far corner of his brain.

“That…uh, I don’t know.” Anders quickly looked at his watch. The news had clearly thrown him off his game.

Crocker said, “Maybe we should do it later.”

Anders frowned and shook his head. “No, no, can’t. Our source is bringing us critical information. Important evidence. My understanding is that he returns to Damascus right after this.”

“Okay, then. I’ll get ready.”

“This is so goddamn disturbing,” Anders continued. “I just spoke to Jared this morning. He was scheduled to go on R &R after the mission.” His face was beet red, and he looked like he wanted to scream.

“What mission?”

“You’ll soon find out.”

“Seemed like a great guy.”

“Dynamic, yeah. Smart, fun. A huge, huge loss.”

As Anders was heating up, Crocker started to calm down.

“All right,” he said. “If we’re going through with the meeting, I’m going to have to borrow a shirt.”

“The timing sucks, I know. But I’ve been led to believe that our source is bringing intelligence that needs to be acted on immediately.”

“The darker the better. The shirt, I mean.” Crocker’s wardrobe leaned toward black, but this time he had a reason that went beyond convenience. A dark color would hide the blood from his back if it leaked through.

“Right.”

Anders finished helping Crocker clean his back and secure the bandages. He looked at his watch again when they were done. “They’re scheduled to arrive in fifteen minutes. I’d better tell Janice to order the drinks and snacks.”

“They?”

“A Syrian businessman and his assistant.”

“Go ahead. I’ll wait.” He thought of something and grabbed Anders’s wrist. “What are you going to tell them about Jared?”

“Jared? Good question. I don’t know if they’re expecting him. I’ll wait for him to ask.”

“What’s his name?”

“Manshir Talab. He’s a friend of ours.”

“You mean he’s a source.”

Anders nodded.

“Do we have any friends in this part of the world?” Crocker asked.

“Good question.”

“I mean people we can trust with our lives?”

“I can’t answer that definitively. I’d better go.”

He left. Crocker had no appetite, but he was thirsty. So he twisted open the bottle of Evian he found near the sink and sat on the edge of the tub drinking and remembering his Black Cell/SEAL colleague Akil, who had arrived with him yesterday.

He should be here by now, Crocker thought as he checked his damaged cell.

He punched out a text to Akil. “Do a SDR. Where r u?”

Anders returned with a white T-shirt and a light-blue oxford that was almost identical to the one he was wearing. He didn’t look rested and relaxed anymore. “This is the best I could find,” he said, as if the weight of the world had fallen on his broad shoulders.

Not dark or black, but it would do. “Did you inform Akil about the meeting?” asked Crocker.

“Akil?”

“My colleague Akil. The big Egyptian-American guy. You asked me to bring him because of his language skills. Remember?”

“Yes, of course,” Anders answered. “I texted him about forty minutes ago.”

“He respond?”

“Yes. He’s on his way.”

As Crocker buttoned the shirt, he worried. What if whatever organization that attacked me and Jared is lying in wait for Akil, too?

He turned to Anders and asked, “How do I look?”

“The same, except maybe a little more buttoned-up than usual.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why?”

Crocker pushed past him. “No reason. I think I’ll wait for Akil downstairs.”

“Why?” Dr. Mathews had asked him during their second counseling session.

“Why what?”

He wanted to dislike her but couldn’t. She had a gentle manner and didn’t come across as judgmental. In the photos of her with her daughter, she appeared to be a kind, loving mother. No man in any of them.

“You’ve chosen a very unique and extreme way to make a living,” she said. “I’m sure you know that.”

“I do.”

“Have you ever asked yourself why you chose to become a SEAL?” she asked. That’s all they had told her. She didn’t know that he was a member of ST-6 or about the existence of Black Cell. Only a handful of people in the CIA and the White House did.

Crocker looked at Holly, to his left, who lowered her head and wouldn’t meet his eyes. He wanted to say that he resented being here and the doctor’s last question. He wasn’t the type of person who liked to dwell on psychological motivations. He did what he did, and understood why.

Instead of snarling back, he answered evenly, “I was a very energetic kid. I’ve always been drawn to adventure and danger. The town where I grew up in Massachusetts was full of motorcycle gangs and drugs. My young friends and I were drifting into that life. I started working out and running, and joined the navy at eighteen. From the navy, I passed the test to get onto SEAL teams. It turned out to suit me perfectly. I’m very grateful for the life it’s provided me. And I love what I do.”

Dr. Mathews nodded. “It’s enormously satisfying to find a profession that suits you and gives you a sense of purpose, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” he said, liking her even better.

Now he sat in one of the big, silk-covered armchairs in the lobby, wondering about Jared’s family and how they would take the news about their son. Death, especially when it happened to someone he knew and liked, always affected him profoundly, drawing him deep inside himself.

That’s where he was now, considering the unfathomable mystery of life and death, and how someone so vital and intelligent could vanish in a second, leaving behind an emotional vacuum and a lifeless shell.

Crocker was thinking about the sacrifice Jared had made for his country, while most young people his age were playing video games and couldn’t find Syria on a map, when a tall, dapper-looking man strode through the lobby with a very attractive young woman by his side. She was dark-eyed and put together. His eyes followed her to the elevator. She walked as if she expected to be watched, the fabric of her dark skirt pulled tight against her full behind.

Realizing that he still hadn’t heard from Akil, he reached for his burner cell phone and called him again. The call went directly to voice mail; he left a message: “Call me, knucklehead!”

Two minutes later his cell pinged with a text from Anders: “They’re here! Soon as u return, we’ll start.”

“Waiting for A,” he punched back.

“Do we need him?” came Anders’s reply.

The question annoyed him. “Want 2 make sure he’s ok. B there in 5.”

Crocker called Akil’s burner cell again. No answer.

He was getting anxious. The loss of another teammate would be too much. Looking again at his watch, he started to think that he’d been around so much death and destruction in the past year that maybe he was cursed. His teammate Ritchie had died in a helo crash near the Golan Heights. He’d been working with four FBI and DEA agents who were beheaded in Mexico. His teammate Mancini’s brother was shot through the front door by cartel assassins-the same ones who had killed his daughter’s friend Leslie. Now Jared. A lousy track record, for sure.

Another ten minutes passed before his cell pinged again.

It was Anders asking, “WTF are you?”

“I’m still waiting for A. Hold on.”

“This is getting awkward,” texted back Anders. “Maybe we should start without him.”

Crocker got up and started pacing in front of the window that overlooked the entrance. His loyalty to the guys on his team was immense. Losing Ritchie had been like losing a brother. How many times since then had he dreamt of Ritchie running through the woods beside him, or imagining him with that mischievous grin on his face?

A white Mini Cooper with a red stripe down the roof and hood pulled to the curb. Through the window he saw a long-haired blonde at the wheel. She looked like a Scandinavian model. Gorgeous, but too boney and bloodless to be his type. Still, she caught his attention. He started to wonder why she was stopping in front of the hotel, and what she was doing in Istanbul. Suddenly a smiling, seemingly carefree Akil came into the picture, emerging from the passenger’s side, bounding over to the driver’s open window, and kissing her, long and hard.

WTF!

She pulled him close. Akil whispered something in the young blonde’s ear that made her blush. She waved, put the little car in gear, and sped off in what might have been a scene from a James Bond movie.

Fucking Akil, Crocker said to himself, half relieved, half pissed. His teammate amused him, even when he was totally friggin’ exasperating. Like now.

He stood waiting as the burly, good-natured SEAL hurried through the glass doors, winking at the doorman and pulling on the blue blazer he’d been carrying on his shoulder.

“You’re late,” Crocker barked.

“Sorry, boss. Something wrong? You look stressed.”

They knew each other so well that they could read the other’s mood.

“Yeah, I’m stressed, because you don’t answer your fucking cell phone. You got it on you? It work?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was stuck in traffic. No signal,” Akil explained with a pat on Crocker’s back and a smile. “What’s up? The powwow canceled?”

“I texted you five fucking times.”

“Ease up, boss. I’m present and accounted for. Sorry I’m a few minutes behind schedule, but I had to take care of something.”

“I saw. Let’s go.”

Crocker’s irritation didn’t dim in the elevator, even though he wanted it to. It didn’t help that Akil quipped, “Nice shirt. When did you start shopping at Brooks Brothers?”

“Fuck off.”

“Looks like somebody got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.”

“No. Actually, I slept fine. It’s what happened since that’s got me annoyed.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll tell you later. No more bimbos, understand? No more fucking around. I need you to be present and alert. We got eyes on us. Killers.”

“She’s not a bimbo,” offered Akil. “She’s a visiting fellow at the archeological museum. Looks, brains, personality, and a fabulous tush all rolled into one.”

“Stop screwing around.”

“Okay. But honestly, how often in life do you find all three in one package?”

Crocker stopped in front of 732 and lowered his voice. “I’m serious, Akil. Cut the bullshit. I’m glad you met someone you like. Now forget her and focus.”

“I got it, boss,” Akil whispered back. “I figure we’re about to get into the shit, right? So I wanted to have some fun first.”

“We’re in it already, deeper than you think.”

“Have you experienced issues with PTSD yourself?” Dr. Mathews had asked two weeks ago.

Crocker twisted in the metal chair. He assumed that she already knew the answer, because he saw his carefully redacted psychological file on the table by her side, provided by Dr. Petrovian.

He nodded.

It contained the results of a recent personality test, which revealed him to be a combination of an aggressive and introverted intuitive personality type. That meant he liked to command and exercise power, but also tried to stay in the background until he felt the need to take over. He was active, adventurous, and someone who relied primarily on his instincts. Others with his unique slate of characteristics included Al Capone, Fidel Castro, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

The Al Capone part was a hoot. But the Castro and Dahmer associations were harder to swallow.

“Do you think your PTSD issues have anything to do with why you want to continue doing what you’re doing?” Dr. Mathews asked.

He lied. “No, ma’am. Not at all.”

The “ma’am” was a tell. He caught that. Warned himself not to use it again.

“Because research shows that PTSD is often triggered by guilt.”

She’d hit the bull’s-eye again. He flashed to the image of Ritchie’s bisected body lying on the ground inside the Syrian border, and a cold flash blew through his body.

“I’ve heard that,” he answered, shivering and quickly straightening his back. “But in my case, it’s a nonissue. The reason I continue has more to do with service to my country and loyalty to my teammates. They’re critical to me, Doc.”

Holly sighed loudly. She’d been uncommunicative so far during this session. Lost in her head.

“More important than saving your marriage?” Dr. Mathews asked.

“No, ma’am. I didn’t say that.”

He had a hard time keeping his eyes off her. Mr. Talab’s secretary had been introduced to him as Fatima. She sat by Talab’s side, almost directly across from Crocker, in a tight black skirt and matching jacket with a white blouse underneath. Red lipstick on full lips, contrasted with her caramel-colored skin and sparkling dark eyes.

He could feel the heat coming off her body, and had to resist the impulse to take her in his arms and rip her clothes off right there. He imagined himself pushing over the chair and taking her from behind, while reaching under her shirt and grabbing her breasts.

Hard and fast.

He stopped and asked himself, What the hell’s wrong with me? This is an operational meeting. I need to pay attention. Maybe it was this morning’s brush with death that made him preoccupied with sex.

She dabbed her lips with a napkin, caught him looking, and shot him a quick and intense glance dense with history and emotion. It traveled like an electric spark to his groin.

His burner cell phone vibrated, and he glanced at it in his lap.

“Stop eyeballing F like a t-bone steak!”

Akil, forty-five degrees to his right, grinned out of the side of his mouth. Crocker resisted the impulse to text something back.

He made an effort to ignore her, but her magnetic pull was strong. They were in the tub together; they were furiously making love on the carpet; she was screaming in ecstasy and covered with sweat.

Stop!

Anders, to his immediate left, continued to talk with Mr. Talab informally about his background. Crocker learned that he came from a prominent Lebanese-Syrian family that owned hotels throughout the Middle East. Educated in France, he maintained residences in Beirut, London, and Dubai, where his wife and two daughters lived. A sophisticated, well-traveled man, who spoke several languages.

Crocker immediately had questions and suspicions. Why is a guy like him working for us? He doesn’t seem to need the money. So what does he want?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fatima recross her legs, a hint of silk and black garters.

He focused on Anders and Talab so hard that it almost hurt.

Anders asked if he still owned a small interest in the professional soccer team Al Ahli Club that played in the UAE League.

“Oh yes,” Mr. Talab boasted. “We won the President’s Cup last year. The Brazilian striker Grafite scored the winning goal.”

He wished Jared was present to give him the skinny on these two. Anders, though highly intelligent, clearly didn’t know them that well and operated more on a need-to-know basis.

Janice passed a silver tray with cookies. She had a thin gold bracelet on her wrist with a name engraved on it that he couldn’t make out.

Crocker handed the cookies across to Fatima, who selected a round shortbread with raspberry jam in the middle. She craned her long neck left toward Talab, bit into it, and smiled.

He caught a whiff of her rosewater-scented perfume and wondered what her real relationship to Talab was. He knew that the role of women in this part of the world was fraught with compromise and religious restriction. The ones he had encountered in his many travels throughout the region almost never made eye contact with men they weren’t related to.

This lady knew her way around and understood her effect on men.

Anders mentioned the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines 777 over the Indian Ocean and the continuing search for wreckage.

Mr. Talab, who claimed to have a great deal of knowledge about flying Boeing aircraft, said he believed that the autopilot on the plane had been interrupted via satellite signal from a foreign government. He noted that this system had been installed in all advanced Boeing passenger aircraft after 9/11 to foil terrorists should they gain control of the flight deck.

He came across as a consummate businessman-confident, prosperous, and pleased with himself. Crocker thought his theory about Flight 370 was wack.

Anders cleared his throat and, pointing to Crocker and Akil, said, “Mr. Talab, these are two of the men from our special ops team. Perhaps you’d like to tell them a little about the situation inside Syria.”

As Crocker sat up he felt Fatima’s warm eyes looking him over.

“Yes.” Talab shifted his long frame in the chair and recrossed his legs. “I can tell you that my family is part Lebanese, part Syrian, and we have done business in Syria for years. Damascus was my father’s favorite city. We have investments there and many friends, which is why I travel there often.”

Anders turned to Crocker and said, “Mr. Talab and President Bashar al-Assad went to school together.”

They had Crocker’s full attention.

“Yes. Yes, we did,” Mr. Talab responded. “For two years we were classmates at the al-Hurriya School in Damascus. Bashar went on to study medicine. In those days he wanted to be an ophthalmologist. I traveled to London to get a business degree.”

Crocker noted the familiar tone in which he talked about Assad.

“Interesting,” Janice said. “How well do you know him?”

“Well, we don’t travel in the same circles, but anybody who does business in Syria has to deal with the Assad family.”

“I would imagine. Yes,” Janice responded.

“They can be extremely charming one minute and cutthroat and brutal the next, especially when you cross them. It’s also a family with a history of mental problems.”

“I’ve heard.”

The muscles around Talab’s jaw tightened as he continued. “My younger brother Hamid found this out when he entered into a dispute with the president’s cousin Fawwaz al-Assad over the ownership of a horse ranch outside Damascus. Fawwaz is an avowed thug, who later founded the death squads known as the Shabiha, who hunt down and kill opponents of the regime. He wanted the farm, but my brother didn’t want to sell it.”

Crocker had heard of the notorious Shabiha and wondered if they ever operated outside the borders of Syria. Maybe they were the assassins he had encountered earlier.

“What happened?” Janice asked.

“A week after my brother turned down Fawwaz’s offer, he was pulled out of his bed one night, tortured, and brutally murdered. This happened in September 2009.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“I say all this, my friends, so you and your people understand my motivation, which is pure and simple-revenge. I hate the Assad dictatorship and deplore its arrogance and brutality, which now all the world can see.”

Makes sense, Crocker thought, though he wasn’t completely buying it.

“So do we,” Anders said.

“That gives us the same goal.”

Like other urbane, educated Middle Eastern men Crocker had met, Talab was hard to read, and Crocker wondered whether his motivation really was that simple.

Again he was momentarily distracted by Fatima, who sipped her tea quietly and listened. She seemed to have a personal agenda, too, which she was keeping to herself.

“I waited,” Mr. Talab continued. “When anti-Assad demonstrations started in early 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, I saw little chance that they would succeed. But we have a large Sunni Muslim majority in our country that has been oppressed by the small Alawite Shiite elite for many years. Some small groups of these men took up arms. The Assad regime responded with customary brutality. Rebels were soon joined by thousands of defectors from the Syrian military.”

“That happened at the end of 2011,” Anders said.

“Yes. The rebels formed what is called the Free Syrian Army. By early 2012, they boasted twenty thousand members. That’s when the civil war really began.”

Anders nodded. “Yes.”

Crocker remembered. The Arab Spring had come as a sudden outburst of anger, frustration, and hope sweeping across North Africa into the Middle East. It caught everyone by surprise, including the United States, which had seemed unsure how to respond.

“The FSA captured territory and the Assad military responded with cluster bombings, artillery, and rocket attacks,” continued Talab. “Civilians fled to the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. And other Sunni governments in the area started to take notice. They hated the Assad regime, too, so they wanted to help the FSA. Because of my connections inside Syria, I was approached by some of their intel services. I started to pass money and arms to rebel leaders. I also started to raise money myself.”

If Talab had done half of what he claimed, he was playing a very dangerous game. The Assad regime had a terrifying reputation for dealing with dissidents and enemies. Its military intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, was aggressive and deadly, trained and supported by Russia’s SVR.

“Throughout 2012, the expectation was that the U.S. and its European allies would establish a no-fly zone in Syria and aid the FSA, which would bring about the fall of the Assad regime,” Talab continued. “But we waited, and it never happened. For whatever reason, your president was more concerned with Afghanistan.”

“True,” Anders added with a bitter note in his voice.

“Absent U.S. leadership, different Arab governments started to act on their own,” Talab continued. “They supported various leaders from various rebel groups. Also, other foreign terrorist organizations saw an opportunity to extend their influence. These included al-Qaeda-linked groups like Ahrar ash-Sham, the Suquor al-Sham Brigade, the al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Their stated goal is to impose a government in Syria based on Sharia law.”

Crocker knew that ISIS had become a major concern of the Turkish government because of its control of territory near that country’s southern border. Just last week ISIS insurgents had surrounded the Suleyman Shah tomb, just fifteen miles from Turkey.

Maybe it was ISIS that had ordered the hit on Jared. Given the complicated rivalries within Syria, it was hard to tell.

“As you know, by the beginning of 2013, the Assad regime seemed about to fall, despite the support it was getting from Russia, China, and Hezbollah,” Talab continued. “That’s when its main ally, Iran, jumped into the ring.”

They had done so full-scale, according to the intel reports Crocker had read. The Iranian security and intelligence services were not only advising and assisting the Syrian military, they had also deployed Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) ground forces, the Qods Force, intelligence services, and law enforcement forces to fight the anti-Assad rebels. Major General Qassem Suleimani-the leader of Qods Force and a man Crocker and his team had tried to kill in early 2013-was personally leading and directing the Iranian military effort in Syria. Crocker thought that he’d love to run into him and silence the bastard once and for all.

“Now the situation is a mess, with all sides and groups controlling different parts of the country,” Mr. Talab continued. “If I were to predict an outcome, I would say that Syria will eventually split into fiefdoms-Iran controlling the south, radical Sunni groups like ISIS sharing territory and towns to the north and west with more moderate FSA militias, and Assad and his Alawite allies keeping Damascus and the territory to the east.”

The horror of all this, of course, was the impact on the Syrian people. Rockets, cluster bombs, even chemical weapons had killed almost one hundred thousand of them so far. Another million or so had become refugees.

“This is a regime armed with chemical and possibly nuclear weapons,” Janice pointed out. “They’re heavily armed, desperate and dangerous. What’s even more alarming is the danger of some of the more advanced weapons falling into other undesirables’ hands.”

“Yes.” Talab nodded.

“I know the Russians have promised to monitor the WMDs. But they can’t be trusted. Besides, the Assads listen to no one.”

“No, they don’t.”

Anders, who seemed to have grown uneasy with the direction of the conversation, cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mr. Talab. I know you’ve got something to leave with us and must go shortly. So we won’t waste any more of your time.”

Talab nodded to Fatima, who snapped open the black briefcase by her high-heeled shoe. “I leave you this, gentlemen,” Mr. Talab said. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate its dire importance. I thank you for your time and wish you good fortune.”

Fatima handed him a DVD disk in a plastic case. Talab stood, flattened the hem of his jacket, and passed it to Anders.

“Thank you, Mr. Talab. We greatly appreciate all you’ve done.”

At the door, Crocker saw Anders hand Talab a white envelope stuffed with what he assumed were U.S. dollars. Under circumstances like these, where the American side had very limited access, intel could be worth a lot of money.

Money, he reminded himself, invited treachery. And treachery, he understood, often resulted in death.