Body of Lies (44 page)

"You were part of it," he said.

"At the end, yes." She had stopped singing, but she kept stroking his hair. "I had been to Syria before. I knew what I was doing."

"For Hani?"

"Yes. He helped me stay in Jordan, so I helped him sometimes. But this last time, I did it for you. He said that you would be safe. And that otherwise you would never be free."

"Is there anything you need to tell me?"

She thought a long while. "No," she said. She touched his face and smiled, and after a time she fell asleep beside him.

T
HEY FLEW
back to Amman in Hani's private jet. Hoffman was waiting, and though he may have been angry, he didn't show it. He was taking credit for everything, just as Hani had predicted, even the video on Al Jazeera. Hoffman wanted a full debriefing, and Ferris gave it to him. He left out nothing, and the story took nearly three hours in the bubble, start to finish.

"I want to resign from the agency," Ferris said when he had finished the story. Hoffman didn't try to talk him out of it. He mumbled something about how he understood entirely. Obviously he was relieved. Ferris was the only American who knew all the facts. In that respect, he was the last person Hoffman would have wanted to see at the CIA.

Hoffman offered Ferris a generous farewell package, not quite a golden handshake but at least silver-plated. There would be lifetime disability payments, plus a special early retirement deal because he had been wounded on duty, plus a special award from the director's unvouchered "Performance Fund," plus accumulated back pay for all the vacation hours Ferris had never used, and overtime and hazardous-duty pay he hadn't collected. It wasn't a fortune, but it was handsome. Hoffman said they wanted to give Ferris a medal, in secret, and asked if he would come back to Headquarters so the director could present it. But Ferris said no, they could keep the medal for him in a lockbox, next to the one from Iraq.

R
OGER
F
ARES
and Alice Melville were married in Amman that June. He had disguised his appearance a bit, let his hair grow and worn a beard. Alice said he looked even handsomer. It was a simple ceremony. Ferris hadn't become a Muslim, but there was a Sunni sheik at the wedding, along with the Episcopal priest who said the vows. Alice's family flew out, along with Ferris's mother. He wasn't going to have a best man and then decided to ask Hani, who exulted in this confirmation that he had been forgiven for his manipulation. After the wedding, Alice continued her work with Palestinian refugee children. Ferris joined her, and the people in the camps were happy to have him. He spoke their language, and he listened to what they said. They worked happily through the fall, settling into Alice's apartment in the old quarter and teaching each other to cook.

One day in September, just over a year after they had met, they had a visit from Hani. He asked at first to talk to Ferris alone, but Ferris refused a private conversation, saying that was all over. So Hani told them both: He'd had an inquiry from a British journalist from the
Sunday Times
about a shoot-out in Aleppo involving a recently retired American diplomat based in Amman named Roger Ferris. Hani said he could turn the story off--he had enough friends in London, and in Beirut, Paris and Tel Aviv, too, for that matter, if that's where the leak had begun. But the word was out. That meant Ferris and Alice were no longer safe in Amman. Hani would protect them, but he wanted them to know.

They moved in early October to another city in the Arab world, where there was a relief agency that needed volunteers. They didn't tell even their friends where they were going. Before they left Amman, Alice learned that she was pregnant. The child was born in the Arab world, and in that sense, Roger and Alice had gone into the land itself, been penetrated by it, bled into its veins. They could not escape the enchanting, afflicted culture that had drawn them into its arms, and they did not want to. So they lived.