The Devil's Light (33 page)

But when Brooke stepped into his office, Sami Assad looked less angry than two years wearier. The burden of the camp had etched new lines around his sad eyes and full mouth and streaked his black, wiry hair with gray. Selected by the PLO as leader of Sabra and Shatilah, he was charged with ameliorating misery while animating the sixty-year-old dream of life in a better place—which, in too many minds and hearts, meant a return to the country all maps but theirs called Israel. Whatever Assad's doubts about Adam Chase—and they were no doubt grave—Adam and his consulting firm had been benefactors of the camp. “So,” Assad said with a trace of reserve, “you're back.”

Nodding, Brooke felt like a bird of ill omen—the death of Khalid Hassan hovered over the room. “As of yesterday,” he answered. “I came to see how you are.”

Courteously, Assad waved him to a chair, then sat behind his cluttered desk. “We are what we were,” he said with resignation. “The world's orphans. Most dream of returning to homes lost by their parents or grandparents, which they know only through the romance of other people's memories. Some are willing to settle for a new land of their own, the West Bank. But that alternate ‘homeland' is run by Israeli soldiers and infested with settlers determined to expel the Palestinians already there. Hope shrivels.”

For a moment, Brooke allowed himself to step outside his role. “I'm sorry.”

Assad nodded slowly. “It is remarkable to me, Adam, that so few in these camps channel their despair into violence. God knows the Zionists have a gift for breeding enemies, one generation on the other. Yet they believe they can stonewall until we settle like mangy dogs for whatever scrap of land they choose to throw us—if any. Someday the hatred they spawn will consume them.”

Once again, Brooke imagined Tel Aviv in ashes, a terrible turn of history's wheel. Evenly, he said, “As before, my company wants to make contributions to the school and clinic—books, medicines, whatever you might need.”

Assad's mouth twisted. “Can you give us a homeland, or the chance to work and live in dignity? Then we can care for ourselves.”

Suddenly and clearly, Brooke remembered Anit at the student forum.
Our only hope is to create a place where Palestinians have the joys and challenges of a normal life, and the ability to live it. Anything else is doomed.
“If I could buy you a homeland, instead of books, I would.”

Assad smiled slightly. “Forgive the flights of rhetoric. We have great need in the here and now.”

Brooke nodded. “I hear conditions are still worse at Ayn Al-Hilweh.”

Assad studied him. “More violent, certainly. You know of Fatah al-Islam. Two years ago they killed many PLO at Ayn Al-Hilweh. Now, it is said, our Sunni brothers in Lebanon provide them money, perhaps to keep trouble from their own door. Once again we are betrayed. We are not people, but playthings.”

And now there's me, Brooke thought. “Perhaps I can help with that, as well. But first I'll need information.”

Assad regarded him fixedly. “Of what kind?”

“Intelligence on Fatah al-Islam. Names, faces, who may be coming and going, who may have disappeared.”

Assad picked up some paper clips off the desk and put them in a bowl. Then he looked up at Brooke again. “There's a new head at Ayn Al-Hilweh, Ibrahim Farad. You may recall that the former head was killed.”

“Yes. I recall.” Brooke kept his manner calm. “Would a meeting with Farad be possible?”

“Should it be?” Assad pointedly inquired. “Your haste in coming here is worrisome. Were you that haunted by the thought of tattered schoolbooks?”

Brooke met his eyes. “Many things haunt me, Sami.”

“Perhaps they should. Now America itself is threatened. But there is a belief among many that America is not a grateful friend, but a lethal one. So often your embrace becomes deadly to others.”

The murder of Khalid was very close to the surface now. “That isn't my intention,” Brooke answered.

“Indifference,” Assad said coolly, “is deadly, too.”

“And so is inaction,” Brooke rejoined. “There's trouble coming that could consume many innocent people. As usual, your people are not exempt.”

Assad studied him awhile. “As always,” he said softly, “we appreciate your concern. Right now I can say no more.”

At three o'clock, Al Zaroor saw the smudged skyline of Baghdad.

When the bus entered, he felt the soot and chaos envelop them. As at the height of war, Baghdad was plagued by sectarian violence, the ethnicity of its victims classified by the manner of death—the Sunnis favored beheading; the Shia preferred power drills. In a city segmented by ethnic cleansing, he was condemned to stay among the Shia.

They let off the women at a hotel noted for its piety. But the quarters for Al Zaroor and Tariq were two rooms above a hardware store. Al Zaroor's room was dingy and ill furnished, with a worn chair, a mattress on the floor, and a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. This was fitting, he supposed—he had chosen an ascetic's life as a prelude to a martyr's death. It made the transition easier.

A cell phone waited under the mattress. Removing it, he placed a call.

“Yes,” the careful voice said.

Relieved but wary, Al Zaroor asked, “Is the trip still on?”

A moment's silence. Then the Syrian answered, “I'm honored to be your guide.”

From his room at the Albergo, Brooke phoned Brustein and Grey.

To start, he summarized his meetings with Bashir Jameel, Hassan Adallah, and Sami Assad. “So they don't like our foreign policy,” Grey responded sourly. “What a surprise. Sometimes I don't, either.”

Brooke glanced out at the lights of a city prone to late-night pleasures. “They're saying something else, Carter. That all roads go through Hezbollah.”

“Not yet,” Brustein admonished. “You're tugging at disparate threads—sources at Ayn Al-Hilweh, the whereabouts of this Pakistani nuclear technician, indirect lines into Syria's intelligence. I want more before considering whether we need Hezbollah.” His voice betrayed anxiety. “However, we've got something for you. According to the ISI, our missing Pakistani technician flew to Dubai, checked into a hotel, then vanished. If he's in Beirut, it surely elevates the pressure. He's the man who facilitates detonation.”

Brooke felt his sense of urgency quickening. “That's another reason for taking this to Jameel. If I'm right, this Pakistani is almost as important as the guy who's running this operation. I'd like to find him—fast.”

“And if you do?” Brustein asked.

“We interrogate him,” Brooke answered tersely. “Or, if I have to, kill him. Once he touches that bomb, it's operational.”

T
he next morning, through the intervention of Sami Assad, Brooke headed for the coastal city of Sidon to meet the PLO leader at Ayn Al-Hilweh.

The security measures were elaborate. Brooke ducked out a service entrance of the Albergo, took a cab to the airport, walked through a terminal, then caught another cab that drove him to the outskirts of Sidon. There he met a stranger in a blue shirt and sunglasses. The man drove him through crowded streets, dropping him in an alley where another Palestinian hurried him through a maze of streets before they entered a nondescript building with no signs or address. At any point, Brooke was prepared for danger: The last encounter between Brooke and Ibrahim Farad's predecessor, Khalid Hassan, had led to the attempted murder of one, the assassination of the other. Of the four men who had tried to ambush Brooke, he had killed only one—the others could identify him on sight. To go near Ayn Al-Hilweh increased the risk of his death or capture, just as it created dangers for Farad.

This was among the several reasons Brooke did not enter the camp itself. By Jameel's reckoning, it was the most dangerous place in Lebanon, ringed by army units prepared to subdue violence. To enter, Brooke would have required the permission of the American ambassador and the Ministry of Defense, drawing more attention than he wanted. But a single visit in 2009 had been sufficient. Within the walls of wire and concrete were jammed seventy thousand Palestinians, including members of Fatah al-Islam, living in a maze of alleys so narrow that Brooke
could touch the houses on either side. The alleys often doubled as open sewers; the electricity was so spasmodic that, at any hour, the camp could be plunged into darkness. Hassan had died in such an alley, no doubt betrayed by the men who guarded him. But he was one of many killed here, before and since—whether in gun battles between factions, or between the army and Fatah al-Islam, which could assault its enemies before vanishing in the maze. So Brooke preferred following a stranger up a back stairwell perfect for ambushes.

On the third floor an unmarked metal door with a peephole was guarded by another man, with a handgun in his belt. He patted Brooke down, then rapped sharply on the door. It was opened by a stout man with liquid eyes, a mustache, and the bearing of a man in charge. Nodding curtly to Brooke, he said in Arabic, “Come in.”

Brooke did so. Inside, the room was bare save for two chairs, a couch, a desk, a window with opaque glass, and a wall hanging of Yasser Arafat—a man as dead as his dreams. The door shut behind him, and the two men were alone.

With a peremptory gesture, Farad motioned Brooke to a chair, then sat across from him, his eyes unwelcoming and hard. “I'm told it's important that we talk.”

Brooke nodded. “I appreciate your precautions.”

“I do it for my people,” Farad responded mordantly. “Personally, I no longer fear death—I took up arms in 1967, was jailed three separate times, shot at more often than I can remember. But look at what we've accomplished for those who live at Ayn Al-Hilweh. What would they do without me?”

There was nothing Brooke could say. “Of course,” Farad continued, “a camp is less than a country. But in a mere forty-five years I've progressed from revolutionary to a salaried employee of the European Union, which helps fund the place that has served as a ‘homeland' for the two generations after mine. True, it's not the Galilee, my father's home, or even the West Bank—the Zionists who took our land do not allow us to live in either place. But it's only twenty years since the Jews promised us a country of our own. So the people I represent have every reason to be grateful—with luck, they'll simply get rid of us rather than strangle us in our beds.” Farad's lips curled in a bitter smile. “Of course, you care deeply about all this. Isn't that why you've come?”

Suddenly the room felt hot and close. “No,” Brooke said bluntly. “I'm here because men from Ayn Al-Hilweh may be involved in a very dangerous activity. They've already killed some of your own people—”

“Including my predecessor,” Farad interrupted with sudden softness. “Whom, I believe, you may have known.”

“I met him,” Brook responded blandly. “At the camp.”

Farad's eyes bored into Brooke's. “At least his son does well. That's very rare, you know. In the camp we have but two elementary schools, run in shifts. Only a handful go to college, knowing no jobs in Lebanon await them. But Khalid's son is in America, studying to be a doctor.” He paused, then added coolly, “Perhaps God, seeing the murder of a father, intervened on the son's behalf. How else to explain such luck? But I have no sons, Mr. Chase.”

The lethal remark put Brooke on edge. “You have seventy thousand ‘children,'” he replied. “The danger involves them all.”

Sitting back, Farad eyed him with disdain. “As to the camp, Fatah al-Islam is a relative handful. Maybe they're capable of killing me, should they find a reason. But they can't endanger seventy thousand people.”

“If they're a ‘relative handful,'” Brooke retorted, “and capable of killing you as they did Hassan, you've made it your business to know who they are.”

“And now you wish to know.” Farad's tone became clipped. “How many times, I wonder, will I play the fool for men like you. Two years ago a man from Lebanese intelligence, perhaps a friend of yours, asked for my help in rounding up Fatah al-Islam. In turn, he promised money for development within the camp—a clinic, a school. So I gave him names and the army came for them. I'm still waiting for my funding.”

“I'm not this man,” Brooke said simply. “Nor do I represent his government.”

“Oh, I know. You're American, and worried about al Qaeda. So you may prefer a story about the CIA. Perhaps, from time to time, you've dealt with them.”

Brooke said nothing. “As you suggest,” Farad continued, “we have our own sources of intelligence. Around the time of the Camp David negotiations we learned that al Qaeda was planning to bomb American University.” He nodded toward the portrait of Arafat. “Tell the Americans,
our leader said. President Clinton is trying to help us, so we will help his country.

“This was not an act of charity, but of hope. So we enabled the CIA to prevent a tragedy that would have harmed Americans and Lebanese alike. Then Clinton's term ended, and America supported Israel in whatever it did to us.” Farad's tone sharpened. “And now you're here. On whose behalf, I have to wonder.”

Brooke met his eyes. “I'm an American, as you see.”

“Don't play with me, Mr. Whoever-you-are. Nothing that happens at Ayn Al-Hilweh poses any threat to America—certainly not the danger promised by Bin Laden. You're here because the ‘dangerous activity' you mentioned involves our immediate neighborhood. Only my analytical genius allows me to guess the target.” Farad smiled grimly. “So let's consider the supposed threat to my people. Should I give you names, the army will enter our camp in force, spraying bullets right and left. They'll gun down fifteen innocents for every fighter from Fatah al-Islam.”

“I don't want soldiers to invade the camp,” Brooke rejoined. “I'm looking for men linked to al Qaeda who have left in the last two weeks. As for the rest, I want the army to keep them here.”