The Devil's Light (13 page)

“That might be true if al Qaeda was running it through the Punjab to Karachi. The Pakistanis have a functioning government there. But Baluchistan is filled with smugglers and Pashtun tribes who hate the government—the army barely goes there. So the smart move might be to smuggle the bomb through Baluchistan to the Makran coast, then head for open water.”

Brustein put a finger to his lips. “And then where?”

“Anywhere. You could fly it in, though that's complicated by distance and the need to keep refueling. Another means is through normal shipping channels. If you're going to America, you might put it in a cargo container and ship it from Dubai.” Grey turned to Sweder. “In an average year, how many cargo containers do we inspect once they reach Long Beach or New York?”

Sweder frowned. “About two percent.”

“Well,” Grey said philosophically, “at least they check my shoes at airports.”

Svitek emitted a mirthless laugh. “I think this bomb is coming to America. But a container also works for targets in the Middle East and Europe. If you're headed for the Mediterranean, you could go from Pakistan through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. There's too much traffic for any boat to stand out, and you can get to Israel or any port in Europe. The only choke point is the Suez Canal.”

Brooke leaned forward. “Why risk getting nailed at the Suez?”

“Depends on what the target is,” Svitek answered promptly. “If it's Tel Aviv, you'd go through the Suez to Gaza. Then you'd tunnel it into southern Israel and fly from there.”

“Risk upon risk,” Brooke shot back. “First the canal, then the Israelis. They'd carpet-bomb every tunnel in Gaza with the bunker busters they've been saving for Iran. After that they'd reoccupy every patch of earth.”

“So what's your alternative?” Svitek asked. “For al Qaeda, moving the bomb overland has too many problems. We could intercept the bomb in Afghanistan. The Iranians might take it for themselves. After that there's the Turks, our more or less ally that loathes Bin Laden.”

“What about a land-sea-land route?” Brooke got up, pointing toward the maps of Pakistan and the Middle East. “As Carter suggests, you run the bomb through Baluchistan to the Indian Ocean. Then you take a route far shorter than the Suez Canal: through the Persian Gulf straight to the southeast corner of Iraq.”

Glancing at the others, Brooke noted the skeptical looks of everyone but Grey. “I know you served there,” Brustein told him. “But I wouldn't have picked Iraq.”

“Still,” Brooke answered, “you know why I did. Our troops are drawing down and confined to certain areas. We're leaving behind one of the most corrupt countries on earth—a fragmented mess riddled with al Qaeda cells and crisscrossed with smuggling networks. You can run anything in or out of Iraq and never get caught. Even a nuclear bomb.”

Brustein studied the map. “My bigger problem is with what's next: Jordan or Syria. The Jordanians are our closest allies. Syria, like Iran, has a sophisticated intelligence service and a hatred for al Qaeda. Pick your poison.”

“I'd have to guess Syria. Because it's the path to Lebanon.”

Brustein gave him a long, considering look. “Iraq. Lebanon. Those are the places you were posted.”

Beneath Brustein's even tone, Brooke sensed an accusation: that he was recycling his own past, perhaps out of lingering resentment. Calmly, he said, “The boundary between Syria and Lebanon is a sieve. The Bekaa Valley is a smugglers' refuge, with clans who've been running contraband to and from Syria for hundreds of years. The Lebanese government has no presence there—”

“But Hezbollah does. They'd love to take the bomb. So would their patrons, the Iranians.”

“Hezbollah's all over,” Brooke conceded. “But they don't control every
inch of the Bekaa. The Anti-Lebanon Mountains are filled with places to hide.”

“But what then?” Brustein prodded. “Al Qaeda would have to smuggle the bomb across the border to Israel, which bristles with security.”

Brooke sat down again. “Not if they flew it in,” he answered.

Brustein shook his head emphatically. “A Lear taking off from Lebanon could never beat the Israeli air defenses. They're the best in the world.” He paused, softening his tone. “Your idea has arresting elements. But there are too many gaps, and our primary focus has to be on protecting America. Given that, our challenge is to choose where in the Middle East to concentrate our resources. They're not limitless, and neither are the field officers who know the region.”

“Especially in Lebanon,” Brooke rejoined. “Before my unplanned departure, I'd started disrupting jihadist cells. Since then, we've been searching for al Qaeda at diplomatic receptions. The work goes slowly.”

Brustein stared at him. “Maybe so,” he said at last. “But you can't build up an intelligence capacity overnight, or start turning Lebanese off the street into spies. Given what we know, Lebanon isn't a priority. Nothing you've said so far makes it one.”

Brooke stifled his frustration. “All I'm asking,” he responded in a milder tone, “is that we keep Lebanon on the agenda.”

No one answered. Brooke could hardly blame them. He had made mistakes before, notably the one in Beirut that had almost cost his life. Neither he nor his colleagues could know how this might affect his judgment now.

T
he rest of Brooke's day—a task force meeting, reviewing emails from the field, ad hoc debates with colleagues—bled well into the evening. Only after a last hour spent running at the CIA gym did he leave Langley. It was close to midnight before he poured a snifter of brandy and sat in his living room, too wired to sleep.

His usual solution was reading. His shelves were full of books; on his night table was the new translation of
War and Peace
and a volume of poetry in Arabic. But he could not stop sifting his thoughts, or asking himself the same questions in a different way. At length, he put on a favorite album from his past, a Brazilian female vocalist with a terrific jazz pianist.

The last time he had seen them live was with Anit. Eleven years later, his thoughts kept doubling back to her, and the country to which she had returned.

“The singer is amazing,” Brooke had promised her.

They were entering the Zinc Bar, a subterranean nightclub on Houston Street, the air already dense with cigarette smoke and the whiff of marijuana. Brooke and Anit got there early enough to snag a corner table near the stage, giving them time to talk before the music started. As they sat, Brooke caught their reflection in a mirror above the bar: Brooke blond and rangy; Anit dark and exotic in the way Israeli women often shared with their Arab sisters. Sitting across from him, she struck Brooke as compelling.

Quiet, she sipped white wine, studying his face in a way far more direct than he was accustomed to from American women. “So you like jazz?” she began.

“I like all kinds of music—jazz, rock, folk, classical. But opera is my favorite.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Even Wagner?”

Brooke shook his head. “Too much historic resonance. I hear all that atonal thunder and start thinking, ‘a little less bombast, and a bit more melody, and the Germans wouldn't have invaded Poland.' I prefer the Italians—their armies were worse, and the music better.”

Anit's expression mixed amusement and interest. “Perhaps I'm prejudiced. But I always thought people acquire a taste for opera when affluence meets middle age.”

“Not me. I came by it naturally—my father is on the board of the Metropolitan Opera. Even when I was young, my parents would take me to opening night.” Brooke smiled at the memory. “Unlike a lot of his peer group—captains of commerce dragged there by socially ambitious wives—Dad was in heaven. His rapture was contagious.”

Anit propped her chin on her hand. “So you're not merely good-looking,” she inquired wryly, “but wealthy? How nice for you.”

Her directness startled and amused him. “Since you ask, it's my mother who's wealthy—my grandfather Brooke founded an investment-banking business into which Dad married. In Mom's defense, she compensates for good fortune by being relentlessly liberal on every issue there is. What dead Italian composers are to Dad, Democratic politicians are to my mother: an object of charitable giving. Except that Mom can try to tell them what to do.”

Anit smiled at this. “Somehow I sense less excitement at her enthusiasms.”

Brooke sipped his Manhattan. “Less as an adult. I've decided that facts should inform my beliefs rather than beliefs dictate my choice of facts. A healthy bias for a would-be professor of Middle Eastern Studies.”

Anit looked curious. “Did your parents hope you'd enter the family business?”

“They don't mind that I'm not. But like most Americans, my parents' beliefs about the Middle East are derivative. This particular enthusiasm is my own.”

Briefly, Anit looked around them, her gaze keen and observant. In that moment, Brooke imagined her as an anthropologist, noting differences between this place and a nightclub in Tel Aviv. “I think you're right about Americans,” she remarked. “Too often they seem to believe what they wish. Including American Jews.”

Brooke nodded. “Some of my acquaintances are more discerning—my closest friend, in particular. But the survival of Israel is too visceral for easy detachment. There's no equivalent for Gentiles I can think of.”

“So how
did
you become interested in our benighted area of the world?”

“So many questions,” Brooke answered with a smile. “But I suppose I asked for this. You did threaten to find out if I were smart.”

To his surprise, Anit seemed disconcerted, then gave him a sideways grin. “People tell me I'm direct.”

“‘People' are right, and I don't mind. As to the Middle East, at first it was more of an intellectual interest. The turning point for me was a junior year at American University in Beirut.” Brooke took another sip of his drink. “I decided to travel anywhere there wasn't a war: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan. Also the West Bank and Gaza and, of course, Israel. There's nothing like actually seeing places to change the way you view them.”

Anit nodded her understanding. “I agree. So how did your travels help?”

“In several ways. There's no ‘Middle East,' I discovered, but a number of them. There are sclerotic autocracies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with the battle between modernism and fundamentalism roiling beneath. There's Lebanon, a magnet for every troublemaker there is, whose relationship to Israel became so poisoned by war that it spawned Hezbollah. To visit the border between Lebanon and Israel was instructive in itself: Shia badlands on one side, green Israeli farms on the other, separated by an electrified fence—”

“I know,” Anit interjected quietly. “I've spent time there. But tell me what you thought of Israel.”

Brooke paused to organize his thoughts. “I admired it,” he answered. “As a society, it's energetic and contentious, with a great strain of optimism. But I also felt a corrosive fear. You were right the other night: The occupation of the West Bank is a horror—checkpoints seething with hatred
between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians who are treated like cattle. I met students who spent three hours making a forty-minute trip from home to school.” He softened his tone. “I know why Israel feels stuck there. But you can't stay much longer, or else Palestinians not yet born will die hating Israel. Some will take Israelis with them.”

Anit waved wisps of smoke away from her face. “No doubt you're right,” she said evenly. “But it is we who have to live the problem. I'm not so sure that history will give us choices.”

Despite the mildness of her tone, Brooke felt a touch defensive. “I don't expect to live the problem,” he answered. “But that doesn't mean I don't care.”

“Believe me, I prefer that you do. And I'm sure you'll be a very good professor.” Seeing Brooke's smile, she answered with her own. “Was that too condescending?”

“Depends on how you define ‘too,'” he answered amiably. “But in other ways you're right. Life in academia is not a high-stakes enterprise. I'll have plenty of time to write and still lead a very pleasant life.”

She flicked back a strand of hair. “Listening to music?” she asked lightly.

“And competing. In high school and college, I played every sport I could. If I were a dog, I'd be the one who goes running after sticks. I can always bait my students, I suppose.”

The noise around them was thickening now, the slow build of anticipation in a crowd awaiting music. For his own liking, Brooke had learned far too little about Anit Rahal. “You spent time at the border,” he probed. “Was that part of your military service?”

Anit hesitated. “Almost all of it,” she said at length. “I wanted to serve in a combat unit, which was not allowed. So I became an officer in military intelligence, stationed along our borders with Lebanon or the West Bank.”

“What did that involve?”

“Internal security.” She finished her wine, her gaze more distant than before. “Much of our job was keeping terrorists from crossing into Israel. And killing the ones who did.”

Brooke stared at her. “You, personally?”

“Not unless you count giving the orders. But I saw enough of the dead—the Arabs killed by our soldiers.” She paused again, adding quietly,
“As for the Jews who died the time we failed—a suicide bombing at a café—I could only imagine them.”

For a moment she studied the table, as if parsing her own memories.

Mustering a dispassionate tone, Brooke said, “It's not easy for me to imagine any of it.”

Anit kept her eyes down. “In certain ways one grows hardened. Sometimes, usually at night, our soldiers would kill terrorists as they came in. The first lesson we learned was to pat down the bodies, to ensure they weren't booby-trapped with explosives. Otherwise we might die at the hands of a corpse.” Anit looked up at him. “Handling the dead isn't nice, nor were we nice to them. We'd roll the bodies up in a blanket and throw them on a truck to be buried in a wasteland reserved for Arabs. Some nights we stacked them up like firewood.”