The Blood of Lambs: A Former Terrorist's Memoir of Death and Redemption (21 page)

1

In early 1977, I took a taxi to Beirut’s embassy row, a collection of concierge-style buildings in an upscale part of the city, to follow up on my visa application. The
autostrad
, a wide four-lane divided street, ran through the area, and the taxi dropped me off in front of a building that housed the Swedish consulate and a couple of others.

I had applied for my work visa with a labor official named Gunnar Viggo, a tall Swede with white-blond hair and eyes the color of a Scandinavian lake. After signing in with the building concierge, I took an elevator to Viggo’s office. But when I walked in, another man was sitting in the Swede’s massive leather desk chair. Behind him, through an enormous window, I could see the rooftops of West Beirut stretching all the way to the sea.

The man in Viggo’s chair did not rise or even move, but only sat back and appraised me with his eyes. He held a cigarette between the first two fingers of his right hand and gazed at me through the curling smoke. His thin, long face and slicked-back hair reminded me of Humphrey Bogart in a movie I had once seen.

I stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. “I am here to see Gunnar Viggo,” I finally said. “Is he in?”

“No,” the man said coolly. His accent was American. “What’s your business with Mr. Viggo?”

“I am following up on a work visa to Sweden.”

“I’m filling in for Mr. Viggo today. I’m Edward Redding.” He flicked his eyes toward the smaller leather chair opposite him across the desk. I sat down.

Redding took a pull from his cigarette, his eyes never leaving mine. “Why do you want to go to Sweden?”

“I want to get out of Lebanon,” I said. “I am a good plumber. I want to make a new life.”

“Are you Sunni or Shia?” Redding asked.

What difference does that make?

“Sunni,” I said.

With his left hand, Redding drew a pen from his right breast pocket and made a note in an open folder lying on the desk in front of him. I hadn’t noticed it before. Had he known I was coming?

“Tell me about your family,” Redding said.

“My father is a blacksmith, my brothers and uncles are plumbers. My mother is a devout Muslim woman.”

Redding drew on his cigarette again and exhaled slowly, not in a hurry to fill the silence. Then: “You’re not giving me enough information. You need to tell me more.”

Information?
His questions and his steady gaze were beginning to make me squirm. He kept a poker face, but one like a gangster. I felt he was watching my hands move, my lips as I spoke. I did not know this man’s game. What did these questions have to do with a work visa? Was he an American agent testing to see if I was a radical? If he concluded that, my visa was dead.

His next question seemed to answer mine: “What do you think of this war?” he said.

Now I warmed to the game. I was used to being both screened and recruited. I returned his volley. “This country has always been one with both Christians and Muslims,” I said, shaking my head sadly. “It’s a shame they are fighting each other.”

Redding stubbed out his cigarette in a green glass ashtray and stood. “The Swedish consulate has temporarily closed,” he said. “I am with the
American embassy. We’re filling in. The only way you can go to Sweden is through France. But as no visas are available for you, our business is concluded here.”

His abruptness shook me. Redding had known from the moment I walked in that my visa application was dead. Why the questions? Why the game? A nervous flush rose in my collar. I remembered the armed guards posted around the building. Would I be arrested on my way out?

Redding walked around the desk, and I waited for him to pull a gun or a badge. Instead, he extended his right hand and took mine. We shook, but Redding did not let go. He peered into my eyes, never smiling, just—
knowing.

I pulled my hand free and hurried out. I had not thought myself easily intimidated, but this man rattled me. I grabbed the first available elevator and rode it down to the lobby, where I signed out and then emerged through the glass doors into the sun. My anxiety now fused into anger. Why had Redding wasted my time with all his questions when he knew he was only going to send me away?

A taxi, a charcoal gray Mercedes 180, was already parked at the curb, the right rear seat empty. I was walking over to speak with the driver when the right rear door swung open. From inside came a voice: “Kamal. Come and share the taxi with me.”

Cigarette smoke curled out onto the sidewalk. From the left rear seat a face leaned into view.

It was Redding.

My mind reeled, flashing from the office down through the elevators and the lobby, trying to mentally trace out his path to the street.
How did he get here before me!

“I’m going to the American embassy,” Redding said evenly. “Come ride with me if you want to talk.”

There was no way I was getting into a taxi with this man. Except for the driver, he was alone in the car. For all I knew, he and the driver were both American agents recruiting informers from the PLO. It had happened before. If I were seen and suspected by my brothers, my life would not be worth a
kroosh.

“I am going home,” I said firmly. “It is in a different direction.”

He patted the seat beside him. “Come, Kamal. I’ll pay your taxi fare back home.”

He had a confidence that shook me. I did not know what game he was playing, and I did not want to know.

“I have another engagement,” I lied. “I cannot break it.”

“I understand,” Redding said. He sat up and his face disappeared.

I shut the taxi door, crossed the
autostrad,
and hurried south. I walked for a full minute looking straight ahead. When I got to the first corner, I glanced back. The taxi had not moved.

2

Two weeks later, I visited the Hamra district, a melting pot of sex, liquor, and intrigue. In the Hamra, there were no rules. You might go into a place and order a pizza, but the shop was really only a front for a gambling operation. Even ordinary-looking people sitting in the sidewalk cafés might actually be there for a rendezvous, not an espresso. I was there just blowing off steam, still plotting a way out of Lebanon, out of the dead end of this war. As I wandered down the streets, women in doorways beckoned with their eyes. Some spoke in low, smoky voices wanting to know if I was looking for a date. I was not in the mood for that.

I came to a stairway that led to an underground arcade, which was attached to a bar. I wasn’t interested in the bar, but mindless diversion seemed attractive. I went down the stairs. The glow of pinball and slot machines lit my way as I wove through the darkness. Coins jingled as someone won on a nickel slot. A Rocky Balboa pinball machine caught my eye, then a gambling contraption I hadn’t seen before: beneath glass was a movable sheet of glossy wood with variously sized holes in it. Each hole had a money value printed underneath. Using handles at the end of the machine, the player was to tip and rock the wood sheet this
way and that, guiding a large ball bearing toward the big-money holes. I had just dropped in a coin when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Fascinating machine, isn’t it?” a man said. “The kind of machine that will take your money and give you nothing in return.”

Redding.
How did he find me?

Slowly I turned to face him, recovering enough to smile. “Yes, it is a waste of time and money. But it
is
entertaining.”

Redding took a long pull from a cigarette, his eyes amused, confident. “There are a lot of games where you can be entertained and also make a lot of money.”

In the Swedish embassy, Redding’s off-kilter questioning had knocked me off balance. There, I had worried about the guards, about who he was, really. Now, though, he was on my turf, in my country. He knew I wanted to leave Lebanon, and he had searched me out. I decided to play along.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“How would you like a job where you can make some real money?”

“I’m still listening.”

“It would require some travel.”

“I like travel.”

“I thought you would. If you’re interested, meet me tomorrow at Marroush. We’ll have lunch.”

Marroush is a café in Beirut, famous not only for its sumptuous food but for the many deals made there. After Redding approached me in the arcade, I spent the evening wondering what he wanted with me. Did he want me to spy for the Americans?

When I arrived the next day, Redding was seated at a patio table covered in a white linen table cloth. He had already ordered for us, roast lamb.

He began with a question. “Kamal, what’s the most money you’ve ever made?”

“Six hundred dollars a month,” I said.

It was a complete fabrication. Redding knew it instantly and burst out laughing. It was the first time I had seen any other side to him than cool. “Kamal, I’ve been checking,” he said. “I know that you have worked
odd jobs most of your life. Let me tell you what I do. I work for a large American company that builds recreational villas and hospitals all over the world. Some of our biggest contracts are in Saudi Arabia, and our customers are Saudi sheikhs and generals. I know that many Lebanese work in Saudi. I also know that you are well-connected with people who have reason to dislike the Saudis.”

Redding reached for a wedge of pita, dipped into a saucer of olive oil and herbs, and took a strangely small bite, chewing as he continued. “I think you would do well in my company as someone who hosts my Saudi customers, who gets to know them. Who gains their trust.”

Redding was right that my faction disliked the Saudis, whom we felt were the enemies of true Islam. They controlled the black gold and could have leveraged it to conquer land after land for Allah. Instead they had sold out to the American infidels, even allowing the infidel army to occupy and operate from Muslim territory. Redding had piqued my interest. I nodded, indicating that he should go on.

“If you’re interested, we’d like to train you to be a translator and interpreter for us. You would be in charge of one of our recreational villages in Riyadh. You would have your own apartment, lavish benefits, and your own car. The salary is between $16,000 and $18,000 a year, tax-free.”

The number shocked me. In 1977, a $20,000 salary was like $100,000 today. Only engineers or professors could aspire to such an amount. I actually felt dizzy. This could be my way out! The way to escape this war and recommit my life to serving Allah and not the factions.

“Your job would be taking care of the customers at the villa, who are mainly from the Saudi upper class,” Redding went on. “They have certain—preferences. They do not trust Americans to see to those things.”

Redding swirled his pita in the oil again, took another nibble, and leveled his eyes across the table. “But they would trust you.”

3

Redding set me up in a deluxe apartment in Riyadh. Every day, his company sent me private tutors, two American and one Egyptian. I learned conversational English. I learned etiquette, how to behave around the royal family, around generals, around international executives. I was tall and muscular, so I learned how to minimize my presence with my body language. Then there were the details: the American teachers taught me the finer points of Arabic as it was spoken in Saudi so that I could better pick up on the nuances of a meeting. Also, I learned how to listen carefully to conversations to record time, dates, numbers, dollars, fuel.

When my training was complete, my work began. At first, it was low-level industrial espionage. I was to combine my inborn expertise in Middle Eastern culture with my new training—all under the guise of being an errand boy to the high-powered executives. Redding met almost weekly with Saudi officials to negotiate new contracts and nurse contracts already underway. I slipped in and out of ornate conference rooms with polished tables the length of boats, discreetly refilling the sheikhs’ water pitchers, replenishing wide bowls of figs and dates, spiriting in fresh paper and pens, making copies of documents. All the while, I pretended that my English was poor, and my Arabic of the Lebanese variety only.

Soon the sheikhs and generals regarded me as furniture and spoke freely in front of me when Redding visited the restroom—which he sometimes did on purpose. I listened to every word and passed it all to the Americans.

At the recreation villas, my job was much different. Originally the villas were built for international travelers coming to do business or work on projects with Redding’s company. As general manager, my official job was to oversee the service staff. My unofficial job was to arrange unimagined pleasures for the Saudi sheikhs and generals. Many nurses, technicians, teachers, clerks, engineers, and other professionals applied to work in Saudi. But many of them, once they arrived, practiced their true professions: pool girl, escort, dancer, dominatrix. The
company set them up at the villas with good Muslim family men who had never dreamed of women who looked like this, women of many talents from all over the world—Belgium, Denmark, Britain, Sweden, Egypt, America. For good Muslim men who were supposed to remain sexually pure, America provided every sexual favor and flavor, including young men.

The purpose? To buy influence. For commercial contracts. For military contracts. For royal contracts. And even to influence Saudi-American relations. That was Redding’s purpose, anyway. But I quickly found another purpose: extortion.

Every room in the villa was fitted with hidden cameras. And each day, I visited a nearby mosque bearing photographs. My contacts from the PLO took them back to Arafat, who used them to finance the Palestinian cause with oil money extorted from guilty Arab sheikhs. I had left Lebanon, but was back in the business of
jihad.

4

By 1978, I had quit Redding’s company and was living and moving through the United Arab Emirates, Europe, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon raising money for
jihad
from Arab sheikhs. Some of my connections were willing donors I had met at the villas. Others knew I had pictures. Whatever the source, I funneled huge sums back to the PLO. Though I bounced around the Middle East, Saudi Arabia was, from a financial standpoint, unquestionably a terrorist’s paradise. Oil was the new gold, and prices had shot into distant galaxies. During the 1970s, the Saudi royal family and anyone with ties to the nation’s petroleum industry saw their wealth double, triple, then explode by nearly 2,000 percent.