Bride of a Bygone War (4 page)

“There are others in the administration, however, who share the views of certain Israeli leaders that a political solution in Lebanon has become impossible. This faction, if one can call it that, is convinced that the Phalange represents a solid core of pro-Western Lebanese who, if given the means to impose a new political order by force of arms, might be capable of inducing their former enemies to join in creating a new Lebanese state. Such a state, they predict, would be more sympathetic to Western—and, no doubt, Israeli—concerns than the existing Lebanese state while at the same time allowing for a gradual relinquishment of Christian political and military hegemony over time—again, in return for security guarantees. But under this scenario, the U.S. and Israel would play the major role in determining the shape and timing of the reforms. Both the Syrian occupation troops and the PLO military machine would be expelled, presumably by the Israeli Defense Forces, with assistance from the Phalange and possibly from other Lebanese elements.”

The ambassador paused to frown gravely and then continued on a lighter note. “Whether one subscribes to one or the other schools of thought—or neither of them, as I do—it is not difficult to comprehend why the national security advisor has proposed an exploratory effort to see whether expanded cooperation with the Phalange leadership might bear fruit. Increased intelligence cooperation is clearly the starting place. The points of contact already exist. As I understand, the Phalange leadership is enthusiastic about closer ties. And a modest amount of new funding would likely go a long way toward ingratiating the new administration to our Phalange counterparts—and, as I expect, to their Israeli principals. Furthermore, whatever intelligence might be extracted from the Phalange could be pointed to as an example of the benefits to be reaped if we expand the scale of cooperation.

“By this time, Walter, you will doubtless have deduced the sort of thing that is expected of you. You have been selected by your agency, on the advice of Mr. Pirelli here, to act as the United States government’s day-to-day intelligence representative to the Phalange. Your primary duty will be to arrange whatever intelligence support your Lebanese counterparts may request—subject, of course, to my prior approval and the prior approval of your agency’s leadership. Second, you are to encourage your Lebanese opposite numbers to believe that further American support—perhaps substantial amounts of it—will be contingent upon the letter and spirit of their cooperation. And, third, you are to report the results of their cooperation and any other information of intelligence value that you can glean.

“That, Walter, is what you will be doing for the next two years, or until the intelligence cooperation is terminated, whichever occurs first. Now, do you have any questions?” The ambassador leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap with a look of feline self-satisfaction.

“Well, at the risk of seeming backward,” Lukash began after a long moment’s hesitation, “I would like to confirm for the record that my temporary assignment has now been made into a full two-year tour of duty. You see, my orders are for a sixty-day TDY, and this is the first time I’ve heard anything different.” He paused again, his tone changing to good-natured resignation. “Odd as it may seem, after eight years in the field, I was rather looking forward to my month of home leave and a quiet year or two at a Headquarters desk.”

Lukash knew that the offhand tone and the mention of home leave was a mistake the moment it left his mouth. He could see the ambassador rearing back, waiting to knock the ball out of the park.

“I’m sure you appreciate that the needs of the government often must come before our personal plans,” Ambassador Ravenel began after casually uncrossing and recrossing his legs. “In this case, your agency has assured the Department of State—and the national security advisor, I should add—that you were identified as the best-qualified person for this rather sensitive position.” The ambassador paused, as if to add a few words of personal advice, and then seemed to change his mind. “But I see that your chief of station would like to put in a word.”

Pirelli had nodded solemnly at the end of each one of Ambassador Ravenel’s sentences, as if he were making a running tally in some concealed notebook. He had stopped nodding when Lukash spoke up, his earnest expression slowly changing into one of thinly concealed exasperation.

“As the ambassador said, Walt, the needs of the government definitely have to come first in this kind of situation. Now, you have the right to decline the assignment, but you ought to think long and hard before taking a step like that. The Agency’s entire personnel system is based on putting the right man in the right place at the right time, and Headquarters is not accustomed to hearing the word ‘no.’ If I know Tom Twombley—and I think I do—he’d likely take your rejection as a slap in the face.”

Lukash took a deep breath and prepared to deliver his response. As he had expected all along, he wasn’t being given any choice in the matter. If Headquarters wanted him in Beirut, they’d make his life miserable if he insisted on anything else. He opened his mouth to announce his capitulation. But before he could say a word, Pirelli cut him short.

“No, don’t give me your answer yet, Walt. Since you haven’t been given any notice of what will be expected of you here, I want to make sure that you’ve heard the whole story before you agree to it. You see, you’ll be getting a good deal of attention at a very high level in this assignment. But on the other hand, it’s not just Washington’s attention you’ll be getting. The Phalange will be over you like stink on shit. They’re clever bastards, and they’re going to look at you as if you were their key to the United States Treasury. You can bet your last Lebanese lira that since Twombley and I called on them this morning, they’ve come up with a wish list of American-made equipment as long as your arm. They’ll wine you and dine you, plead with you, cajole you, get you laid, threaten you, and try to compromise you seven ways to sundown to get what they want out of the U.S. government.

“What’s more, you’re going to be out there on Phalange turf all by yourself. Your phone will be tapped and your flat will be bugged. Nearly everybody you meet will be a Phalange loyalist or under Phalange control. Your neighbors will watch your comings and goings. Your Lebanese girlfriends will be brought in for questioning and forced to report against you. Anything you say, no matter who you say it to, will have the potential to get back to the ears of your liaison sidekicks. And once your presence at Phalange headquarters becomes known to the Syrians, they’ll keep an eye out for you at the Green Line checkpoints as well, in hopes of nabbing you. No doubt about it: you’ll be stuck over there on the East Side on Phalange turf for as long as you’re in-country.

“Now, having said all that, Headquarters is confident that you can handle that kind of situation—and so am I, or I wouldn’t have asked them to send you here. Prosser and I will be commuting over to the East Side several times a week, so it’s not as if you’ll be totally out of contact with the station. But if you have any doubts about your ability to stay the course, you ought to tell me now. If there’s a good reason why you’re just not up to it, there’s always the chance that Twombley will understand and won’t hold it against you.”

Lukash heard out the chief of station but said nothing. It had all happened too quickly for him to find a way out, and now he was stuck indeed. He let out a deep sigh.

“Good. Then it’s settled. Congratulations on your new assignment, Walt.” Pirelli turned next to Ambassador Ravenel. “Mr. Ambassador, do you have any other questions for Walter before he leaves us?”

“Just one,” the older man replied. “When you were here before as a language student, did they send you out under your true name?”

“No, I was out here as Bill Conklin in those days,” Lukash responded after a moment’s hesitation. “I was expecting an onward assignment to Egypt under the same nonofficial cover as soon as I finished Arabic training. Instead I received orders to report to Saudi Arabia.”

“Do you think it likely that anyone here will remember you as Bill Conklin?”

Lukash realized at once that this was his opening. While cover problems were sometimes brushed aside at Headquarters, the job of chief liaison officer to the Phalange was not one in which the Near East Division could tolerate a flap. He did indeed have a cover problem in the new assignment, but what possible justification could he give for it? He felt the blood drain from his face and both his hands turned cold.

When he had left Beirut in 1975, it was if an enormous fissure had opened in the earth, swallowing him up and filling in after him. He had left behind no forwarding address and remained in touch with no one he had met in Lebanon. But the problem remained. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he ransacked his memory for some acceptable justification for why Headquarters should break his new assignment. But it was of no use. After all, what difference would it make to the Phalange that he had used an alias five years earlier? To them, that was ancient history.

“A few people might remember me,” Lukash answered the ambassador at last. “But not many. My Arabic tutor would, I expect, but she moved to Kuwait with her husband the week before I was reassigned to Jeddah. And since I lived on the West Side back then, most of the locals I knew were Muslims and Palestinians. Even before the war they didn’t spend much time on the East Side. So I doubt that I’ll run into any of them over there now.”

Lukash’s attention strayed. He found himself staring at the rows of black-and-white glossy photographs on the wall above Ambassador Ravenel’s head. There was one of Ravenel as a middle-ranking diplomat shaking hands reverentially with JFK in a receiving line. Another showed a slightly older Ravenel seated next to a grinning Hubert Humphrey on an ornately carved oriental divan. A third had Ravenel in a dark overcoat and homburg waiting stiffly at the base of an airline passenger stairway while a grinning Richard Nixon descended toward the tarmac of some frozen airport in northern Europe. There were others, but the lamp on the table at Ambassador Ravenel’s elbow was not bright enough to illuminate all of them. Somehow Lukash managed to recapture his train of thought and continued speaking.

“By now, I suppose, many of the people who knew me back then will have emigrated, either to Europe or the Gulf. And as for the ones who stayed on through five years of civil war…I’d have to question how many of them would remember an American student named Bill Conklin.”

Pirelli flashed a confident look at the ambassador and then turned once more to Lukash. “Then it’s resolved. You made the right choice, Walt. Unless you have anything else to say, Mr. Ambassador, I’ll take Walt downstairs and show him around the communications center before we head across the Green Line to his new digs.”

Ambassador Ravenel rose slowly from his leather armchair and buttoned his suit jacket before extending his hand one last time to his newest subordinate. “This may well be our first and last meeting, Walter. As you may know, an ambassador’s term is served at the pleasure of the president. I submitted my resignation in January along with every other ambassador appointed by the outgoing president. I have a notion that our new chief executive will name my successor very soon.

“The new man will doubtless champion the project in which you are now taking part. In any event, you have my full support for as long as I remain chief of mission. And if you ever wish to reach me, I encourage you to do so through Mr. Pirelli.”
 

The ambassador released his hand and Lukash knew the interview was over. “Thank you, Ambassador Ravenel. You can count on me to do my level best.”

Pirelli indicated to Lukash by a nod that he wished to remain behind for a moment for a private word with the ambassador. Lukash pulled the heavy door shut and found himself alone in the darkened outer office, all the lights having been extinguished but for two brass sconces flanking the exit.

On an impulse he strode to the glass doors and watched the thinning crowds of Arab youths strolling idly along the Corniche below, drinking coffee and spitting sunflower seed husks onto the sidewalk. Then he stared across the Bay of Beirut toward the sparkling crescent of Antélias and the eastern Phalange-controlled suburbs. For a brief instant something about the view reminded him of Jeddah, as seen from the south along the Red Sea coast. But as he continued to look across the water, he knew there was little objective resemblance between the two cities. The only trait they had in common was that both looked their best at night and from a distance.

Suddenly Lukash wondered if the fourth-floor embassy offices were still arranged as they had been five years ago when Pirelli, then the deputy chief of station, had handed him his orders to Saudi Arabia. Then, as now, the change in assignment had come like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. He recalled sitting alone in Pirelli’s sparsely furnished, windowless office for nearly half an hour in sweaty indecision, pondering whether to accept the job or not while Pirelli met in another room with the chief of the political section.

The Saudi-Yemeni border was the last place on earth he had wanted to be. And why, in heaven’s name, a covert action program? He had absolutely no paramilitary experience then. In an instant the offer had upset every assumption he had cherished about his future in the Agency. He had been asked to take the assignment or leave it—no other alternative was offered. They needed an Arabic-speaking officer, and he was it. As the implications of the cable gradually rippled out to the far reaches of his mind, he had realized that there was to be no Cairo, no home leave, no Headquarters consultations, no opportunity to arrange his affairs, follow through with his plans, or honor his commitments.