An Accidental American: A Novel (24 page)

The engines whined, and the Gulfstream eased its belly down onto the runway, then rolled to a stop on the outskirts of the airfield, near an empty hangar. In the distance, Morrow could see the orange lights of the Queen Alia Airport, the low-slung terminal building with its humped windows and hulking control tower. Closer, near the open mouth of the hangar, a single black SUV was parked on the tarmac: Morrow’s welcoming committee.

The SUV’s driver door opened, and a figure emerged from behind the tinted windows, a young man in light pants and a white oxford shirt. It was Charlie Fairweather, but for a moment, seeing his blond hair and easy gait, his quarterback’s physicality, Morrow was again reminded of Andy Sproul and of his father’s words:
They’re all here.

The copilot emerged from the cabin and opened the hatch. Warm night air filled the plane, the smells of jet fuel and baked asphalt. Morrow gathered his briefcase and bag and made his way through the cabin and down the folding stairs to where Fairweather was waiting to meet him.

“Welcome to Amman, sir,” the young man said, extending his hand for Morrow’s overnight bag, hefting it easily. “There’s a room ready for you at the InterContinental, if you’d like to get some rest.”

But Morrow shook his head. “I want to see Kanj.”

“What’s going on?” Graça asked as we ducked out of the rain and into the underground parking garage on the southern edge of the Praça dos Restauradores. The concrete steps were slick beneath our feet, the landing off the square flooded with a good inch of rainwater.

I stopped beneath the lip of the garage’s first level and caught my breath. “Is there somewhere you can go?” I asked. “Somewhere safe?”

Graça thought. “I have an aunt and uncle,” she said, “on Madeira.”

I shook my head. “No relatives. Somewhere no one would think to look.”

“What’s going on?” she asked again, scared now. She was shivering slightly, her long hair soaked, her coat steaming in the sudden warmth of the garage.

“You’re going to have to disappear for a while,” I said. “We’re both going to have to disappear. We’ll go to France first, to my house. I can make us documents there. Passports. Papers. Do you understand?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Good. Now, do you have a place?”

“Yes—”

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “It’s better that way.”

She nodded again.

“And money?” I asked. “You’re going to need money.”

“In my grandfather’s safe. Back at the house.”

I shook my head. We wouldn’t be going back to Morais’s. “I’ll take care of it,” I told her. I started forward into the garage, heading down toward where I’d left the Renault.

Y
OU KNOW,” CHARLIE FAIRWEATHER REMARKED
,
motioning tour-guide fashion to the claustrophobic darkness outside the windows of the SUV, “Lawrence holed up out here during the Arab revolt.”

They’d been driving for a good two hours. East through the steppe, with its sad, stunted attempts at flora, toward the black basalt desert and the Saudi Arabian border. There was nothing to see but what their headlights illuminated— the road before them and a relentless hail of bugs swirling toward their deaths.

Morrow had been here once before, years earlier, on a bizarre courtesy trip to which he’d been subjected for unknown reasons. A pair of obsequious Jordanians from the ministry of culture had taken him to the Azraq Oasis, which had been nothing but mud and stink at the time, and then to the crumbling basalt fortress Fairweather had alluded to, the one made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. But this was not where they were headed tonight.

As if out of nowhere, a dirt road appeared on their left. Fairweather slowed the giant SUV, then turned onto the pocked and rutted track. In the distance— it was impossible to tell how far— Morrow could see a single yellow light.

“We’ll go in together, sir,” Fairweather said. “He should be pretty talkative by now.” The qualities that made the young man handsome, cut jaw and square features, deep-set eyes, were ugly in the unearthly light of the dash, exaggerated so that they verged on macabre.

“No,” Morrow told him. “I’ll talk to Kanj alone.”

Fairweather paused, and Morrow could tell he was torn, wondering whether to contradict him or not. In the end, he didn’t object.

It took them a good twenty minutes to reach the light. For some time it seemed to grow no closer, but then they were upon it, the headlights washing in through the walls of a courtyard, across a squat and windowless building. Fairweather cut the engine and drew his key from the ignition, then popped the door and climbed out, his city shoes raising clouds of powdery dust.

Lunar, Morrow thought, climbing out himself, taking a breath of the dry air, its odor not even a smell but an utter absence of smell. No trees, no grass, just the desert stretching for miles around them. Morrow felt a desperate and primal urge to stay with the SUV, as if leaving it would mean relinquishing his one thin connection to the living world. But Fairweather was ahead of him, already halfway across the courtyard, and Morrow forced himself to follow.

There was no one there to greet them. They entered the building through a single steel door, then descended a narrow concrete staircase into the desert earth. Underground, the interior seemed boundless, a dizzying, bunkerlike maze of subterranean corridors and empty rooms.

In a big, open room off one of the hallways, a half-dozen men in plain clothes were playing cards around a rickety folding table. Mukhabarat, Morrow thought as he followed Fairweather inside. The men looked up, bored Jordanian secret police. They were unshaven and dirty, the arms of their shirts discolored by old sweat stains. In the far corner was an old propane stove, the remnants of a meal. Half-eaten flatbread and something that looked like meat stew. Grimy glasses with the dregs of mint tea.

“We’re here to see Kanj,” Fairweather announced ridiculously. As if there could be some other purpose for their visit.

One of the men grunted and said something in Arabic. Fairweather nodded and turned back into the corridor, motioning for Morrow to follow.

They continued on for a few yards, then stopped in front of a windowless door. Morrow knocked, and eventually a man cracked the door and glared out at them. He was dressed like the others, yet Morrow could tell at once that he was in charge. After a moment of appraisal, he ushered them inside, where a second, shirtless man was seated in a metal chair, smoking.

There was a famous picture of Sabri Kanj, taken in Afghanistan, during his time with the mujahideen. By all accounts, it was the last picture made of Kanj, and it was this image that Morrow had harbored all these years. Kanj in a flak jacket and bandolier, like a modern-day Zapata, his beard nearly obscuring his dark face, his eyes staring angrily at the camera.

It had not occurred to Morrow that Sabri Kanj might have changed; it had not crossed his mind to think of Kanj in any other way. Looking at the gray-haired man in the chair in front of him, Morrow didn’t recognize him at first, just as, more and more often, he failed to recognize himself in the mirror in the morning. Then the man dropped his cigarette to the floor and looked up, and suddenly Morrow understood.

“Leave us,” Morrow said to Fairweather and the Jordanian.

Fairweather nodded reluctantly. “I’ll be in the corridor, sir.”

“Go,” Morrow snapped. He waited for the two men to leave and the door to close, then took a step toward Kanj. “What do you want?” he asked.

Kanj smiled, showing a mouthful of broken teeth. The Jordanians had cleaned him up some, and he looked almost relaxed, sure of himself. Morrow didn’t understand why, didn’t quite see what Kanj thought he had to gain. Surely Kanj knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave here alive, not knowing what he knew. Perhaps it was relief, then.

“Justice,” Kanj said.

Morrow laughed despite himself, but Kanj was not amused. Painfully, he spread his swollen hands out on his knees and regarded them.

“I don’t know what you think I can do for you,” Morrow said. “But we’re not the only ones involved here. There are the Israelis, for instance.”

Kanj shook his head. “Don’t underestimate yourself,” he said. “Everyone knows that there is very little you can’t do. But I’m not asking for your help.”

“No?” Morrow observed. It was hard to say whether Kanj was bluffing or not.

“What is it you like to say?” Kanj asked. “Something about the truth setting you free?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Morrow said.

Kanj looked down at his hands again, then back at Morrow. “You didn’t spend much time in Beirut, did you?” he asked wearily.

Morrow didn’t move. He met Kanj’s gaze and held it. “What do you want?”

Kanj sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, as if conjuring a mental picture of the past. “You recall, of course, that one of your agents had a man in Amal during the early years of the civil war.”

Morrow nodded. The asset in Amal had been John Valsamis’s greatest coup, a case that, all these years later, was still taught to rookie agents.

“I believe his name for me was Hassan,” Kanj said. His gaze was on Morrow’s face, his eyes carefully taking in the other man’s reaction to this piece of information.

All these years and Valsamis had never revealed the man’s identity. Now Morrow understood why. It was Kanj who had been Valsamis’s contact in Amal.

“I heard Valsamis bought you cheap,” Morrow said. It was a lie. “Hassan” had been the kind of asset agents dreamed about. To Morrow’s knowledge, there had been no money involved in the cooperation.

Kanj shrugged off the comment. “You must have known that in the months following the Israeli invasion, there were people within the movement who believed the time had come to do more to advance our cause.”

Morrow nodded. He knew all about the schism within Amal out of which Hezbollah had emerged.

“In the summer of 1982,” Kanj continued, “there were rumors that the Syrians had brought an American to meet with some of these people.”

“I’ve heard the rumors,” Morrow conceded, his right hand tensing involuntarily.

“At the time we didn’t understand what this meant.” Kanj coughed, and his whole body flinched with the pain. “We went to Valsamis,” he announced when he’d recovered himself. “Two days before the embassy bombing, we went to Valsamis.” Kanj looked up at Morrow, waiting for him to follow. “He knew,” he said insistently. “Don’t you see? He knew the day, the time, even. And yet he did nothing.”

Yes, Morrow thought, I do see. Valsamis was the mole Kanj was fingering. Kanj was telling him that Valsamis was the American who’d gone to Hezbollah. That Valsamis had had a hand in the embassy bombing. It made sense, since Valsamis was the only member of the Mid-East contingent to have missed the meeting that day, the only one to have survived.

“Who else knows this?” Morrow asked.

Kanj shook his head. “There was a woman in Beirut, an old friend of mine, a Christian. It was through her that I communicated with Valsamis. She knew everything I did.”

“She had a name?” Morrow asked.

Kanj shifted in his chair.

All these years, Morrow thought, and the man still felt an urge to protect her. They would have been more than just friends.

“Mina LeClerc,” Kanj said finally.

“She’s still in Beirut?” Morrow asked. The name was familiar, though he couldn’t quite remember how.

Kanj shook his head. “She was killed by a car bomb. Two days after the embassy bombing.”

Morrow saw why Kanj had asked for him and what he’d meant earlier. Kanj thought Valsamis had killed Mina LeClerc, that he’d arranged for the car bomb to cover up his own role in the embassy bombing. All these years, Kanj had been waiting to see Valsamis brought to justice.

Morrow was struck by a deep sense of pity for Kanj, for all he thought he knew yet didn’t. “So you are the only one who knows, then,” he said.

A second passed and then another, the silence ticking off around them. Morrow could hear Kanj breathing, his lungs wheezing like rusty bellows, his body laboring against what had been done to it.

Kanj looked up at Morrow and shook his head. “There are letters,” he said.