Authors: David Ignatius
Hoffman spoke in a low, raspy voice. He looked down at his desk rather than directly at Ferris. "I could apologize, but that would be bullshit. Nonetheless, I should have warned you in advance that the shit was about to come down on your head with Mustafa Karami. That was a mistake."
Ferris was startled. "What do you mean? You knew that Karami was dead? Before I saw Hani?"
"Yup. I heard it from the Spanish, at the same time they told the Jordanians. That's how we managed to get Amary out. We had a head start."
"Shit. You know what, Ed? You're right. You should have told me. Why didn't you?" Ferris was furious. He thought the situation couldn't get worse, and it just had.
"Because you would have told the Jordanians. Nothing wrong with that. I would have told them, too, in your place. But I couldn't risk that. And don't start sulking. I told you I was sorry."
"Actually, Ed, I think you said apologizing was bullshit. But it doesn't matter."
"Why doesn't it matter? Everything matters."
"Because Hani won't talk to me. I thought he was going to kill me when he realized what we had done to him. He was furious. I'm dead out there."
"Don't be too sure. He likes you. And you're a better bet than the next guy we'd send. So maybe he'll wise up. And for the record, I apologize." Hoffman puckered up his tired, beat-up face and made a kissing noise. Then he gave Ferris the finger.
Ferris laughed, despite himself. It was weirdly reassuring that Hoffman could still act like an adolescent after a disaster like this. He decided to let his anger go.
"You really think they'll let me back in Jordan?" Back to Alice's place, Ferris's place.
"Not entirely impossible. Let's wait and see."
"Hani is worth the trouble, Ed, if we can get past this flap. Not that you need my opinion, but I watched him break the man who shot Karami. It was the damnedest thing. The guy confessed everything--the hit, the fact they knew we were running Amary--without Hani ever touching him. He's good."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. He's a superstar. And we fucked him over. Et cetera. I'm sorry you had to be there and take his anger. I'm sure that wasn't fun. He called me up and screamed at me, too, for what it's worth. I told him to calm down. Bad things happen in war sometimes. Friendly fire. Get over it."
"Did he calm down?"
"Not really. But he shut up. I asked him to take you back, but he seemed to be off in another world, thinking about something. Long pauses, very strange. But he'll come around. He's a pro."
Ferris looked at his boss, wondering if he should say any more. "That's what bothered me, to be honest. Hani
is
a pro. He worked hard on that operation. Set it up, pitched the guy. And we were establishing a little trust, him and me. That's the one thing I've learned with the Arabs--it's all or nothing, total trust or zero. But we lost that. We became...nothing." He trailed off.
Hoffman put his ruined face in his hands and rubbed his sleepless eyes. When he spoke again, there was an edge of anger in his voice. "Okay. We did screw the guy. It was in a good cause, but if I were Hani, I would be pissed off. And if I were you, I would be pissed off. You had misgivings. You told me. Okay? We're all clear on that."
The division chief stood up. His bulky form loomed for a moment above his chair, and then in an impulsive burst of frustration, he pounded his fist down against his desk.
"But I am
not
Hani, goddamn it! And I am not you. I am
me
, and I have a job to do. And I am not going to guilt-trip myself into dropping the ball. We are at war, for chrissake. These shitheads are setting off a new bomb almost every day, while we jerk off. We've got things going you don't have a clue about, and you know what? They're not working, either. The president asked the director at the briefing today whether the CIA had taken a permanent vacation.
"Jesus Christ," Hoffman muttered as he shook his head. "These people are trying to kill us, and we are running out of tricks to stop them. This Amary thing took me as long to set up as Hani's little operation did, and now it's all pissed away. So I'm going to worry about that, thank you very much, and not about how much we fucked over our Jordanian pals."
S
ILENCE SETTLED
on the room. Ferris waited for another thunderclap from Hoffman, but he was sullen and withdrawn. His boss was losing it. They all were losing it. Hoffman was right. They were running out of tricks. They were waiting to get hit again, hoping they could find somebody in one of the networks and beat the crap out of him in time to disrupt the next attack. That wasn't a strategy; it was slow-motion defeat. Hoffman was still silent, and it occurred to Ferris that he was waiting for a suggestion. Ferris turned over in his mind the idea that had been forming on that long gloomy flight back to Washington. He thought of Hani's word--
taqiyya.
When the truth isn't working, you lie. When you're losing on one field of play, you create another.
"I have an idea," said Ferris. His words fell into a pit of silence. "Maybe it's crazy."
"Say what?" asked Hoffman. He wasn't used to Ferris making operational proposals.
"I said that I have an idea. It came to me on the plane. I'd been thinking about it before, but it seemed too weird. Now, maybe not. Want to hear?"
"Yeah, sure. What have we got to lose? Other than the whole fucking country."
"Okay. We have to get to Suleiman. If we don't, he's going to eat us alive. Just look at us. We're a mess. We have to get something going. Am I right?"
"Obviously. What's the idea?"
"It's something Hani said to me before I left. At the very end, before he threw me out. He talked about this Muslim thing called
taqiyya.
It's the lie you tell to get what you want. And I was thinking, suppose we just lie. Suppose we make Suleiman think we've already done it--that we're already inside the tent. We know we're failing, but he doesn't. For all he knows, we're sleeping under his bed, waiting for the right time. We lie, that's basically it. We pretend that we have him by the balls. And then we exploit his fear. Does that make any sense?"
"Maybe," said Hoffman. "If I knew what you were talking about."
"I'm talking about deception.
Taqiyya
is the only way we're going to penetrate Suleiman's network. We've been trying, and we haven't gotten anywhere. We could keep on trying. We could dangle people at every Salafist mosque in the world, and wait for someone, somewhere to take the bait. And maybe it would work, eventually. But we are running out of time. So if we don't have time to recruit a real agent, then let's pretend we've recruited one--and run him as a virtual agent. It won't be a real penetration of Al Qaeda, but a virtual penetration. But what's the
difference
, right? If we don't have the cards, let's pretend we have the cards. Let's bluff the guy--make him think we're inside, that we're running an agent. Hell, if we wanted to, we could pretend we've recruited Suleiman. We can pretend anything we want. If we're brazen enough, it will work."
Hoffman shook his head. He was smiling again. The gloomy thunderhead had lifted. "You know, I am going to have to revise my opinion of you. I had no idea you were this devious. This puts you in a whole new category in Eddie's book."
"I'm desperate," said Ferris. "So are you."
"That's a fact. So how do you propose we begin this razzle-dazzle? Assuming I was interested."
"That's what came to me on the plane. I was reading this book about a British deception operation in World War II, when they really, totally needed to snooker the Germans. And I thought, maybe we could play that game, too."
"Okay, Mr. Peabody. What's the book?"
"
The Man Who Never Was
."
Hoffman closed his eyes and let it sink in. He saw it instantly--the dead body, the false message, the layering of lies. He went to his bookshelf and took down a dog-eared copy of the book Ferris had just mentioned.
"Operation Mincement. That's what the British called it, right? I must be getting old and stupid, that I didn't think of this myself."
"Just old," said Ferris.
"You know what? I like you, Ferris. You're a pisser. You really are."
"Thank you."
"To do this right, we would have to plug you into a new circuit. I have some people doing some pretty unusual stuff already. I tried to get you to join that shop after you got wounded in Iraq, but you blew me off. We can still make a fit, if you're really game. But don't raise your hand on this one too quickly. This isn't the Clandestine Service Trainee bullshit from the Farm. You sure about this?"
Ferris didn't think before he answered. We never do, when we make the decisions that change our lives.
"We have to get to Suleiman. This could do it."
"
Taqiyya,
" said Hoffman, still savoring Ferris's suggestion. He laid one of his big hands on the younger man's forearm. "You said it a long time ago, Roger. This has to work. We cannot lose. If we can't break Suleiman's network, a lot more people are going to die." He relaxed his grip on Ferris's arm and told him his secretary would call in a few days to set up another meeting. He had to make some arrangements, do some rewiring, before he could plug Ferris into that new circuit.
12
WASHINGTON
F
ERRIS SLEPT IN A HOTEL
his first night back in Washington. It was a rickety little inn off Dupont Circle that reminded him of the places where he had lived before he joined the CIA. And he needed to be alone, away from anyone he knew. He didn't want to see Gretchen until he had figured out what he wanted to say. She had a way of overruling his plans, or simply ignoring them. This time he wanted to set his own course. He called her at six-thirty the next morning, which he knew would be just after the shower, just before the makeup.
"Hi, Gretchen."
"Roger?" She was surprised, but happy.
"I'm back home," he said.
"No, you're not. You are certainly not home.
I
am home. You're somewhere else. Where are you?"
"In a hotel."
"What on earth are you doing there?"
"I'll explain. Can we meet for dinner?"
"Don't be ridiculous, darling. Come home, to your apartment and your wife. I have to work today, but I'll be home at seven. You have a key. I mean, of course you have a key. It's your apartment. So let yourself in. And get some rest. You're going to need it tonight."
Ferris wanted to caution her that it wasn't that kind of visit, but she was in a rush to get ready for work and hung up, telling him that she loved him and was
so
happy he was back. And she meant it. There wouldn't be any way to make this easy. He just had to tell her and get away.
The apartment was in a white-glove building in Kalorama, just off Connecticut Avenue. It suited Gretchen's sense of style. Rich people lived nearby, people with old money and social connections. Gretchen was like another daughter. She got to know the neighbors, visited them when they were sick, brought them little gifts from her trips. She had decorated the apartment lavishly; when they had lived together, she would always be dragging Ferris off to auctions and antique shops to add new bits of finery. When they invited the neighbors in for cocktails, the men always seemed to know what Ferris really did for a living, without asking him.
Gretchen was a self-taught aristocrat. That was what pleased the older neighbors, that this bright young thing was making an effort to join their world. Her father had sold insurance in Indiana, and he was a good, solid citizen, but not a man who had ever dreamed his daughter would join the Sulgrave Club. She had an older brother who had stayed in Indiana and worked as a regional sales executive for John Deere. That wasn't for Gretchen. She had put on her rocket pack at the age of eighteen, headed off to Columbia and created a new life. Ferris could admire her act of self-creation, but he no longer enjoyed being around it.
Ferris said hello to the doorman, who looked surprised to see him. He took the elevator upstairs and warily opened the door. In the entrance hall was a new writing credenza, he noticed, a fussy French thing with curvy legs that wouldn't be much use for actual writing. The apartment was tidy; traces of any other life she had been living while he was away had been removed. He went into the bedroom. Silver framed photos sat on the two bedside tables. He studied the picture of himself, looking rakish and still vaguely like a journalist, taken before they were married. There was no dust on the frame. Had she been polishing it, or taken it out of storage?
What he noticed, as he walked the apartment, was that the artifacts of his own real life had disappeared. There was no beer in the refrigerator; his subscription to
Sports Illustrated
had evidently been canceled; the clothes he had left behind had been removed from the closet to make more room for hers. Maybe this would be easier than he had expected. He was gone already.
Gretchen called just before six-thirty to say that she had been delayed at work but would be home at seven-thirty, and then once more at seven-thirty to say that she was just leaving. She finally returned home a few minutes before nine. She pushed open the door and said, "Hi, honey, I'm home," as if he had never been away. She was sorry to be so late, but it couldn't be helped. The attorney general had a crash project to finish, and she couldn't escape. Tried to, but it was impossible. It wasn't an apology so much as an assertion of a higher calling.
Ferris examined her. She looked the same as before, only more so: The lustrous black hair surrounding her face, in the style of an Italian movie star. The big bust, which was the first thing most people noticed about her, men and women, and which she used to intimidate or seduce, depending on the needs of the moment. The stylish suit, with the silk blouse cut low enough to show some cleavage.
She was waiting for a hug and a kiss, but when Ferris delayed she moved in and hugged him, pressing herself against him. He hugged back, but without much feeling. She knew something bad was happening, but tried to downplay it, hoping it would go away.