The Devil's Light (37 page)

“Why?” the unarmed man bleated in protest.

Silent, Al Zaroor shot him through the heart.

Hussein fell at once. Groaning, Azid writhed in the dirt. Al Zaroor knelt and put a bullet through his temple. A spray of blood dampened his hand.

He permitted himself a brief moment to feel the weight of his choice. Though a hireling, Hussein's playacting might have saved him; without Azid's allegiance, his willingness to risk all, the bomb could not have crossed this police state. But that was the problem—if arrested and tortured, either or both could have described Al Zaroor and his cargo. The Syrians would surmise its nature, and act to protect themselves and Hezbollah, exposing Bin Laden's warning to America as a ruse. Had the two men at his feet known they were transporting a bomb, they never would have helped. Now they were corpses.

In the distance, from the hills above him, headlights flashed and vanished. He waited by the bodies.

Moments later, the van found him.

Four men emerged, of varied shapes and sizes. When they were close enough to be seen, three were young, the fourth a gaunt man with seams of experience marking hooded eyes as he stared down at the bodies. In the phlegmy voice of a smoker, Rasul Jefaar said, “What do we do with these?”

“Make them disappear.”

The man nodded. His three underlings loaded the crate into the van, then threw the bodies in beside it. “The keys are in the truck,” Al Zaroor said and pointed. “You'll find it in that direction.”

One of the underlings began walking. His job, easy enough for such men, was to conceal the truck. Al Zaroor got into the van with the others and began his clandestine journey into the mountains.

Still weary after a long day following a sleepless night, Dr. Laura Reynolds studied the faces on her computer screen. Hastily, she printed the photographs. Then she slid them into her purse, slipped out of her room, and drove to the Sunni enclave of Shawtarwah.

Parking on a street of modest storefronts, she entered a place that said “Internet Café” in English and Arabic. Inside were metal tables at which a few men sat staring at computers, some with cups of coffee.

It was a long shot, she knew. But in the Bekaa Valley, predominately Shia, there were few places where Sunni men gathered or where strangers felt at ease. Though a man or two looked up at her, perhaps surprised to see a woman, the owner gave her a friendly nod from behind the coffee bar. She had come here before; knowing such places was important to her work.

She bought a cup of black coffee, exchanging greetings in Arabic with the grizzled proprietor. Selecting a corner station, she began sipping coffee and tapping out emails to friends from graduate school.

A few other men, arriving, noted and dismissed her. Now and then, she stretched in her chair, casting an idle glance around the room. Though she committed them to memory, no faces matched the photographs. But the exercise was crucial. In place after place, she had learned to type strangers on sight, distinguish Shia from Sunni or Lebanese from outsiders, spot Republican Guards from Iran who had filtered in to meet with Hezbollah—just as, when younger, she had learned to separate Mississippians
from Californians before they spoke. Tonight, it seemed, no men of interest would oblige her by walking in.

She sent another few emails, waiting for the customers to thin. Then she went to the bar and ordered another coffee. “Business is good?” she asked the proprietor.

He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers. “So-so.”

She took a sip of coffee. “I was hoping to meet friends here,” she said. “Visitors from Beirut. Perhaps they misunderstood.”

He gave her an upward glance. “Perhaps. Tonight I've seen no strangers.”

She took the photographs from her purse, placing them on the counter. “These are my friends. Have you seen any of them in the last few days?”

The owner scrutinized them closely, placing a finger on one. “This man, I think, maybe yesterday. I knew he was not from here.” He looked up at Laura, asking quietly, “If I see him again, shall I say you were looking?”

“That's all right. I'm sure we'll find each other.”

Settling her bill, she slid money across the counter for more than she owed him for the coffee.

A
little after nine, Brooke met Bashir Jameel and his wife, Janine, at Mayrig, a lively Armenian restaurant in downtown Beirut. With them was her sister Raina, a dark-eyed beauty in a sleek black dress that, on some other night, might have provoked in Brooke an imaginative leap or two. Over drinks, he discovered that the exotic Raina was studying to be a surgeon. Glancing at her in a way intended, and accepted, as an expression of humor, Brooke said with a smile, “Only in Beirut.”

Raina laughed. “What is your business?” she inquired wryly. “Bashir has told me so little about you.”

“Nothing that interesting. I give commercial and political advice to anxious Americans looking to invest abroad. In that way, like Bashir, I'm a collector of information. But the stakes are only money, and not even mine at that.”

She gave him an amused but skeptical look. No doubt she, like Brooke, was conscious of the guards parked outside, the security men stationed at a nearby table. But dinner went on like that, pleasant chatter with an attractive woman and a bright and amiable couple, enjoyable but for Brooke's sense of foreboding, the image of a man in the last moments of his life. Washing down meze and lamb with earthy Lebanese wine, Brooke fought to repress the imprint of Farad's smoldering car.

“You look pensive,” Raina said.

Brooke forced another smile. “I travel a lot, and often I see great privation—the Palestinians here, for one example. The next moment I'm enjoying nights like this. Sometimes my life seems unreal.”

Raina nodded her understanding. “On nights like this, I try to accept that. As a doctor, one can see a week's worth of misery in an hour. But that is my calling.”

Brooke touched his glass to hers. “Good luck.”

She held out her hand, steady after several glasses. “Luck has nothing to do with it,” she said with a touch of pride. “I have the nerves of a surgeon.”

Smiling fondly at Raina, Janine gave the presumptive Adam Chase a speculative look. Americans had fallen in love with Lebanon before.

“The night is in its infancy,” Jameel announced cheerfully. “I have a table at the Music Hall.”

A cavernous nightclub, the Music Hall featured an eclectic parade of acts that went deep into the night. Plush couches surrounded lacquered tables offering Perrier, Veuve Clicquot, Jack Daniel's, arrack, nuts, cigarettes, and cigars. The crowd was sophisticated and almost wholly Christian, the women in low-cut blouses and blue jeans or short skirts or dresses. Between acts, recorded rock music pulsed through the smoke-filled air.

Brooke and Raina drank champagne; Bashir and Janine, arrack. In swift succession they saw a Lebanese vocalist backed by electric ouds; a sexy young Frenchwoman performing cabaret-style; a folksinger covering Dylan's “Knocking on Heaven's Door”; an Arab tenor who billed himself as Saddam Hussein's son; and a bearded group in tribal garb called the “Rockin' Taliban.” Twenty minutes away, Brooke reflected, Grand Ayatollah al-Mahdi lived in ethereal quiet, surrounded by pious men, women in cover, and Hezbollah militia. He expressed this to Raina.

“We're a country of contradictions,” she said, “often poised on the edge of catastrophe, either through our own divisions or as the ‘gift' of outsiders. This is a place where Christians come to enjoy their privilege, to believe for a moment that they can define their own world.” Frowning, she added quietly, “Most of all, to forget that our power is slipping, that our compatriots are emigrating out of insecurity or fear, that the next tragedy may only be days away. Even Bashir does this.”

As though on cue, Jameel leaned across the table. “Forgive us for a moment,” he asked of Raina. “I've some business to discuss with Adam.”

Prompted by Janine, the sisters went off to dance to the piped-in beat.
Nodding toward his sister-in-law, Jameel murmured, “She's a prize, that one,” and then his social veneer vanished utterly. “I have more information,” he said bluntly. “The suicide bomber who killed Farad was from Fatah al-Islam. You could be next.”

Though chilled, Brooke managed to shrug. “No surprise there.”

“No. But the photographs tell us more. We've gone over the security tapes from Ayn Al-Hilweh. Those three men left six days ago, we don't know for where.” Jameel looked at him intently. “We surmise that one or more were among those who tried to kill you in 2009, and perhaps killed Khalid Hassan.”

Brooke found himself staring at his flute of champagne. “You might look for them in the Bekaa Valley.”

“If we could, we would.” Jameel glanced around them, then added quickly, “We also have a tip from Hassan Adallah, courtesy of his ‘friends' in Syria. The missing security man still has not been found. There is some concern about his loyalty.”

“They need to find him.”

“Of course. But it seems he was with a second man, also dressed as a security officer. No one knows who this other man is, or what their business was—not running guns to Hezbollah, it seems clear.”

Assuming a pose of casual conversation, Brooke scanned the crowd. “If they're headed for the Bekaa, they'll need help.”

Jameel smiled for whoever might be watching. “Hezbollah may control the valley, but it's not hermetically sealed. There are Sunni pockets here and there which have no love for Shia. Also, in the mountains, the Jefaars. They know paths no one else does, well enough to move at night.”

“If al Qaeda were moving this weapon, would they trust a clan of smugglers?”

“One might wonder. But whom else to trust? The Jefaars run their business with a thief's perverse sense of honor. If you assume the Bekaa is a desirable destination, and the mountains an optimal place to hide, you'd need them.”

“Do you have sources within the clan?”

“Sources, yes. Good ones?” Jameel answered himself with a shrug. “All this is probably nothing. Perhaps Washington will say as much. But you might tell your Zionist friends to watch their border. As for me, I'll worry for my country.”
Brooke nodded. After a moment he said, “Thanks, Bashir. For everything.”

Jameel gave him an ironic look. “Such as it is. Or appears to be.”

The women returned. “Done?” Janine inquired. “You seem so serious.”

“Only me,” Brooke answered. “I have a text message. It seems I have to go.”

Janine made a pouty face. Gallantly, Brooke kissed her on both cheeks. “I'll see you out,” Raina told him.

They walked together toward the exit. Brooke paused at the door; he did not want her seen with him on the sidewalk. “I enjoyed tonight,” he told her. “Very much.”

She looked into his eyes. “So did I. I hope I see you again.”

“If I'm lucky.”

But Brooke knew that he would not be—Raina did not fit with the life he led. He hoped he lived to regret this.

Alone, he stepped out into the night. He walked several blocks, then turned into an alley. The cab he had arranged was waiting.

Lying on his bed, Brooke called Langley at once. But it was ten minutes until Brustein patched in Carter Grey, another ten before Brooke explained what he had learned in the hours since Farad's murder.

“Worrisome,” Brustein said bluntly. “As is what's happening here. The FBI has come to the president with information it believes is credible—domestic sources, provocative phone chatter. They believe that bomb is in D.C.”

Brooke gazed up at the chandelier, the reflection in its crystal shards distorting pieces of the room. “Are they sure this isn't an al Qaeda plant?”

“No. But that's the problem, isn't it? Who wants to assume it is?” Brustein spoke soberly. “You've developed enough to give your theory credence. But you can imagine what Alex Coll will say with our capital on the line. That your bits and pieces are circumstantial. That Palestinians leave refugee camps all the time, and kill each other copiously. That acts of smuggling in Lebanon occur many times a day. That governmental officials are bribed, including in Syria, several times an hour. That all this is probably nothing, or at least different than you think it is. And that Israel's security is, first and foremost, Israel's responsibility.”

Brooke felt his frustration spilling over. “Guess I'm lucky to be in Lebanon, out of harm's way. You might intimate to Coll that if al Qaeda destroys Israel, protecting his reputation won't be too high on my list.”

“Calm down,” Grey admonished. “We're all under strain, doing the best we can within well-defined priorities. The problem is that Tel Aviv is someone else's capital.”

“I'm aware of that,” Brooke retorted. “Sure would hate to lose it, though.”

“So would I,” Grey said softly. “I'm sorry about Farad, Brooke.”

Brooke felt his anger dissipate. “I'll be sorrier if his death was pointless.”

“We have two items for you,” Brustein said at length. “The first is vague information from within the Jefaar clan suggesting that an unspecified ‘important shipment' was coming into the Bekaa. The second is more recent. Two nights ago, one of the men in Farad's photographs may have been spotted in Shawtarwah.”

“According to whom?”

“I don't know, specifically. I just told you what I could.”

“Then I need to go to the Bekaa.” Sensing skepticism, Brooke added, “I have a Shia friend who has lived there all his life. There's no one he doesn't know.”

“That's all you've got to go on?”

“Until and unless I can approach Hezbollah.” Brooke's voice became firm. “Maybe this threat about September 11 is subterfuge. But four days from now we'll know.”