Body of Lies (42 page)

"Okay, Hani. Have it your way. I am your agent. 'Objectively speaking.' Nobody will ever believe I wasn't. But now that I'm your man, you must give me a final mission."

"What is that, my dear Roger?" Hani had a smile of deep completion. In his mind, the play was over. It hadn't occurred to him that Ferris might want to write a final act.

"I want to destroy Suleiman's network," said Ferris.

Hani laughed. He thought Ferris must be teasing. "Do not be greedy, my friend. That is another American failing. We have Suleiman. Soon we will have many of his people. Isn't that enough? What more do we need?"

"We need to destroy his idea. We've captured him and some of his people, but they'll find others who are nearly as clever and angry. Hell, they have most of Iraq as a recruiting ground. We're not finished yet. When I was working with Hoffman, I wanted to create a poison that would destroy everything Suleiman had touched. Contaminate him, his ideas, his people. Make them radioactive for a hundred years. That's still what we need: a poison pill. And I can be the poison."

"What are you talking about, Roger? You are bandaged and infirm. You can barely walk."

"I can
think
. I can stop being so stupid and try to be smart. And you can help me, Hani Pasha. That's what I am asking, in return for what I've given you. I want to finish this."

Hani moved uneasily in his chair. It was clear now that Ferris was serious. "And Alice?" he asked.

"She will never love me unless this is over. That's why I have to end it."

"Very well. I am listening, my dear Roger. So long as you do not undo the good we have accomplished."

"I need to ask you one question: Did you find a video camera in Suleiman's safe house in Aleppo?"

"Yes, of course. It was in the room where you were interrogated, if that is the right word for what they did to you. My men brought it out of Aleppo, in case it had anything useful. It's in the other room, I think."

"Good. Then we're in business. Now listen,
ustaaz
Hani. You are the teacher, and I am the student. But I have an idea for you."

So Hani listened as Ferris talked. How could he not? Ferris thought out loud, stitching together a plan, gathering threads from Hoffman, from Hani, even from Suleiman himself, until he had something that sounded coherent. The Jordanian was wary. He wasn't a reckless gambler. He knew enough to pocket his winnings and walk away from the table. But in this casino, Ferris still had something big to play for. Hani didn't try to talk him out of his plan. He knew that Ferris would attempt it, no matter what Hani said. And in that sense, it was Ferris who had the power. He might be Hani's agent, "objectively speaking," but it was now Ferris's operation.

36

NICOSIA / DAMASCUS

S
ULEIMAN'S FACE WAS VISIBLE
through the thick glass plate on the door of his cell. There were bags under his eyes and the imprint of stress and sleeplessness. But even in captivity, in the secret prison in Cyprus where Hani had stashed him after the raid, he still looked like a man who was in control. They had taken away his immaculate knitted prayer cap and the fastidious robe he had worn in Aleppo. He was dressed in prison garb now--not an orange jump-suit, but the simple gray cotton of a Cypriot prisoner. He wore it with his own furious form of dignity. He would not be easy to break. They would have to torture him to blood and bones before he would talk, and even if Hani had been ready to do that, it would have eviscerated the part of the man who could actually tell them useful secrets. Hani was prepared to wait him out--long enough to find the psychological pins he could remove to produce the desired effect. But he would be a hard case.

"Let him break himself," Ferris had proposed back in Tripoli. In that moment, Hani realized that Ferris truly had become someone different. He understood that you cannot break a rock with another rock. It must crack along the fissures that are already there. Once you find them, you need apply only the gentlest pressure. Ferris in that respect had become a man of the East, using the tradecraft that was in his blood.

Hani and Ferris had come to Cyprus from Tripoli, taking the helicopter that first afternoon so they wouldn't lose any time. Hoffman was waiting in Amman, oblivious to what was happening, basking in his unearned credit. Alice was waiting in Lebanon. Ferris didn't want to see her until he was entirely hers and entirely free from his yoke of lies. It was just Ferris and Hani. They had come full circle from that dingy apartment in Berlin. Now they stood together outside their quarry's cell and outside his mind.

H
ANI LED
Ferris to an empty cell down the hall. The American was dressed in the dirty clothes he had worn to Hama: the rough trousers, the shirt rank with his sweat. There were red welts on his face; he had insisted that Hani's men rough him up as if he were a street informant gone bad. They had taken the bandage off his finger, too, so the raw red stump was visible, still oozing pus. Ferris told Hani he was ready to start the interrogation. But for the moment, it wasn't Suleiman who would be questioned. It was Roger Ferris.

Ferris sat down in a rough wooden chair and waited while Hani's men bound his hands and feet. The interrogation room was cramped and dank; the walls were dripping with condensed moisture from the rot of the place. Across from Ferris was Suleiman's video camera, resting on the same tripod as in Aleppo. Hani sat across from Ferris, wearing a black ski mask.

"Roll it," said Ferris. There was a pause while Hani turned on the camera, and then Ferris began to speak in the halting, guttural cadence of a man who had been beaten into submission.

"My name is Roger Ferris." The words sounded rough and misshapen, as if they had been pulled out of his gut. "I work for the Central Intelligence Agency."

Ferris stared at the floor. He cradled the stump of his finger in his good hand as if he feared someone were about to chop off another. Hani gruffly commanded Ferris to speak Arabic and finish with his story. Ferris started up again slowly in his weary, language-school Arabic.

"I am Roger Ferris. I work for the CIA. This is my confession. For many years, I have been part of an operation to penetrate Al Qaeda. We tried to trick the Muslim people into following our agent. We apologize to all the Muslim people."

Ferris stopped and looked fearfully away from the camera, toward Hani. At that, the Jordanian slapped Ferris hard on the cheek. Ferris groaned, and not simply for the camera. Hani had struck him with considerable force. His cheek was reddening from the stinging of the blow.

"Say the name," shouted Hani. "Who was your agent?"

Ferris struggled to find the words. His eyes darted back and forth. He put his mangled hand to his face.

"Our agent was a Syrian. His name is Karim al-Shams. He calls himself Suleiman the Magnificent. He pretended to be Al Qaeda's planner of operations. But all along, he was working for the CIA. We apologize to all the Muslim people. We do the work of the devil. We apologize to all the Muslim people."

The hand swept toward Ferris once more. This time, Hani hit him so hard he knocked Ferris from his chair to the floor. He lay there moaning until Hani turned off the video.

"Jesus," said Ferris, massaging the wound on his cheek after Hani had untied his wrists and sat him back in the chair. "That was pretty fucking good."

A C
YPRIOT
doctor was summoned to attend to Ferris. Hani insisted on it. He had understood the need for brutality on camera, but he was mortified that he had hit Ferris so hard he had drawn blood. He asked Ferris to take an hour to recover, and fed him kebabs and rice. He offered
arak
, too, but Ferris refused. The most important part of his plan was coming and he needed a clear head, however bruised.

Ferris changed into prison garb: simple gray trousers and tunic. He walked with Hani to a large interrogation room that had three chairs. Ferris sat down in one and waited while he was bound once again, hand and feet. Then he was left alone in the room. He couldn't see the video camera, but he knew it was there behind the two-way mirror, focused tight on the chair next to him.

Suleiman arrived ten minutes later, hobbling between two guards. He was cuffed and manacled, and the guards pushed him roughly into the chair next to Ferris. He didn't recognize the American at first, but when he saw who it was, he muttered an oath. Ferris looked up, his face far more battered than Suleiman's.

"You are Fares, the CIA man," said Suleiman. "What are you doing here, dog?"

Ferris stammered his words as if from the pain. He only needed to get a few sentences from Suleiman, just a few dozen phrases, and he would have it.

"You were wrong about me," he croaked. Then his head slumped down as if from exhaustion. He didn't speak, except for an occasional low moan, as he waited for Suleiman to draw him out. Thirty seconds passed, a minute. Ferris was beginning to worry that Suleiman wouldn't take the bait, but eventually he spoke again.

"Why are you here?" Suleiman repeated.

"They caught me," said Ferris. "They made me confess."

"So it is true? You are a Muslim? You were really working with us?"

"What?" Ferris strained, as if he could not hear, from the pain.

"You are a CIA man, but you were working with us?"

"Together?" Ferris groaned it as a question.

"Yes. Together. You were working with us, Fares?"

"Yes. All along."

"And all the CIA reports were true?"

"Yes, all true. You were inside the CIA."

"W'Allah!"
said Suleiman with a smile. "I was inside the CIA. That is a satisfaction to me. Thanks be to God."

"Thanks be to God," repeated Ferris.

"We could have done great things together, for the
umma.
So many things."

Ferris groaned, and let his head slump back toward his chest. He had enough now. He didn't want to overplay his hand. Suleiman asked him another question, but he just moaned.

Ten minutes later, Hani entered the room in his mask and took the third chair and shouted to Ferris and Suleiman to pay attention. Hani spoke a rough Arabic dialect, not his usual elegant voice, but in the manner an Al Qaeda operative might use in interrogating a former chief who has betrayed the cause.

"Look at me, Karim al-Shams. The great 'Suleiman.' Were you getting information from the CIA man Roger Ferris?"

Suleiman laughed. It was a show of independence. Hani slapped him, far harder than he had done with Ferris. Then he kicked him hard in the shin, and the knee and the thigh. The hidden camera caught Hani's arm and leg, but not his face.

"Did you receive information from the CIA man Roger Ferris?" Hani repeated.

"Yes," groaned Suleiman. "And I am glad of it. Thanks be to God. This was our victory."

"Why did you do this terrible thing?" snarled Hani.

"We are proud of it. We are proud of this operation with the American."

"You insult the Muslim people. I put my shoe in your mouth. You have brought shame to the
umma
."

"I am not ashamed. I am proud. It is a great thing we did for the Muslim people, this operation with the American. It shows we can do anything."

Hani punched Suleiman full in the face, as if he couldn't control his rage. Blood spurted from his nose. Hani cursed him and got up and left. Behind the two-way mirror, the cameraman clicked off the video. They had all they needed now.

One of Hani's men came to untie Ferris. When his arms and legs were free, he stood over Suleiman and smiled down at him. That was all it took for Suleiman to realize what had just happened. There was a look of utter despair on his face. He knew, suddenly.

"You lose," said Ferris.

Suleiman cried out in anguish, the howl of a broken spirit. They had him. He had worked with a CIA man. He was worse than dead.

F
ERRIS HIRED
a taxi in Beirut and told the driver he wanted to go to Damascus, three hours away over the crest of Mt. Lebanon. It was a Subaru, a comfortable enough car. He had wanted to take a
serveece
group taxi, but Hani had advised against it. It would seem odd for an American to be a passenger with Turkish laborers and Sudanese chambermaids. Ferris should find a good car and sit in the back, like a proper American. In truth, Hani hadn't wanted Ferris to go to Damascus at all. Let someone else deliver the tape to Al Jazeera. But Ferris had insisted. If there was trouble, he was the only one who could explain it. His presence certified the tape's provenance--he was the proof of its authenticity. Hani knew it was true, but still he protested. He offered to send a Special Forces team as bodyguards, but Ferris refused. That would make the trip more dangerous, not less. Hani agreed that Ferris was right, but he was unhappy. He did not want the bomb Ferris was carrying to explode in his hand.

The Subaru left the Beirut waterfront and began the steep climb through the hillside towns of Aley and Bhamdoun and up to the crest. There was deep snow atop Mt. Lebanon, and the roads near the summit were icy, even on this sunny day. They snaked up the highest ridge, past the Lebanese army checkpoints, and then rumbled down toward the town of Chtaura and the Bekaa Valley. Ferris began to feel a clutch of fear in his stomach as he neared the Syrian border. As long as he had been in the Middle East, he had dreaded this frontier. This was a point of no return. On the other side, you were at the mercy of hidden hands.

Hani had given him a Jordanian diplomatic passport. In theory, that should have made things easy. But the Syrians were curious. Why would this man "Fares" be traveling on behalf of Jordan? Their information systems were too primitive to do any serious search of another identity, but still, they were suspicious. They asked Ferris how long he would be in Syria, and Ferris answered that he expected it would be only a few hours. He had a delivery to make, and then he would be returning to Lebanon. That seemed to reassure the captain of the border police. Ferris might be trouble, but he wouldn't be trouble for long.