The Devil's Light (34 page)

It was less than true, Brooke knew: a third possibility, arrest and interrogation, might involve some risk to others, and Fatah al-Islam might kill anyone linked to Adam Chase. From Farad's silent stare, all this was obvious. “If these men are so dangerous,” he said dismissively, “I should be happy to see them go. Then I really would be safe.” His tone assumed the same chill quiet. “A sixth sense has allowed me to survive. It tells me that the greatest danger is sitting three feet away.”

And yet I'm still here, Brooke thought. “If that were true,” he answered, “we'd all be better off. But it's not.”

“No? You're asking me to collaborate with Israel. Protecting Jews is not my job, nor any way to secure my safety.”

“Then let me pose a hypothetical,” Brooke said calmly. “Suppose that men from Ayn Al-Hilweh help al Qaeda turn the Galilee into a nuclear wasteland.”

After a telling silence, Farad summoned a derisive smile. “Perhaps the Jews will give it back to us. But more likely they will carpet-bomb our
camp, killing noncombatants on a scale dwarfing Sabra and Shatilah. If I provide corroboration for your theory, real or imagined, it will serve as a pretext for a mass murder from the air.”

“What if al Qaeda succeeds,” Brooke prodded, “and some of the plotters are from Ayn Al-Hilweh? In Israel's place, you'd carpet-bomb this camp into oblivion. That leaves one question for you to answer. Do you believe that men in Ayn Al-Hilweh could be part of a plot to detonate a nuclear weapon over Israel?”

Farad's face and body became still, as though the intensity of thought were consuming all his energy. “I've survived by knowing who to watch,” he said at length, “whether agents of Fatah al-Islam or a stranger from America who once knew Khalid Hassan. For the moment, that's all I choose to say.”

Brooke gave him the business card for Adam Chase. “Call me,” he advised. “You don't have much time.”

At midday, Brooke returned to the Albergo. When he turned the key in the lock, his room's door was chained from the inside.

Half-expecting a bullet through the crack, Brooke slid sideways. Quiet laughter followed him. “I thought this prudent,” a familiar voice said. “You might have killed me before noticing who I was.”

Opening the door with a gesture of mock hospitality, Jameel ushered Brooke into the room. “How did you get in?” Brooke asked.

“I took the precaution of obtaining a passkey. Let's hope your enemies aren't as resourceful.” Jameel's lean, handsome face was filled with concern. “I apologize for giving you a start. But I have something I didn't want to say on the phone, or anywhere we might be overheard.”

Which meant that Jameel feared his phone and office might be bugged, his movements followed. Brooke did not bother wondering by whom—it could be the Syrians, Hezbollah, the Sunnis, or the Saudis. “About the Pakistani?” he asked.

Jameel took an envelope from his suit coat. “You're looking for someone with certain technical abilities. This photograph is from a security film taken at Beirut airport six days ago.”

Surprised, Brooke removed the picture of a man appearing to hurry past the camera. Though his image was imperfect, he resembled the technician
whose photograph Brooke had already seen. “Do you know where he is now?” he asked.

“No. As you know, the Pakistani who surfaced in Dubai has disappeared. A day later this man entered Beirut on a passport from the UAE with a different name altogether. He also seems to have vanished.” Reading the worry in Brooke's eyes, Jameel added, “He could just be touring. But we can't find him, and the UAE claims to have no record of such a passport being issued. Except for a modest beard, he resembles your missing technician.”

Brooke's sense of alarm quickened. “What are you doing to find him?”

“As much as possible—alerted the police and army, sent inquiries by email to hundreds of hotels.” Jameel paused. “You know the problem. There are areas of Lebanon we don't control, including in the south and the Bekaa Valley—that's Hezbollah, of course. But if he's still within our reach, and part of a conspiracy, he's only as free of a trail as whoever he meets up with.”

Brooke thought of his meeting with Farad. “That may depend,” he answered, “on who has left Ayn Al-Hilweh.”

A
fter Jameel had left, Brooke began weighing his choices.

He started with two suppositions—that the Pakistani technician had entered Lebanon, and that the al Qaeda operative would try to move the bomb through Iraq, then Syria. The question was where they would meet.

It made no sense for al Qaeda to bring the bomb anywhere near Beirut—every mile it traveled increased the risk of detection. The same risks, Brooke believed, would discourage an effort to smuggle it into Israel across Lebanon's southern border, patrolled by UN peacekeepers. So the optimal base of operations remained the mountainous edge of the Bekaa Valley, where Hezbollah was the only source of intelligence. In Brooke's surmise, that was where the operative planned to meet the technician, along with anyone else involved in the plot.

If he were right, only Israel's bitter enemy, Hezbollah, could help prevent al Qaeda from trying to destroy the Jewish state. But approaching Hezbollah would blow whatever cover he had left, make him their hostage, and—quite possibly—facilitate their acquisition of a nuclear weapon. The sparse facts Brooke knew would not persuade Brustein and Grey to run such risks. Which left him to decide how far he could go without seeking their approval.

He pondered this for an hour. Then, with grave misgivings, he called the leader of the Druze, Hassan Adallah.

* * *

In the late afternoon, after hours of hot and uneventful travel, Al Zaroor's bus deposited its Shia pilgrims in Mosul.

Watching them shuffle off the bus, Al Zaroor felt relief mingle with apprehension. In his soul he was happy to be rid of them. But their witless innocence offered perfect cover. Only the shrewdest mind would imagine them sitting atop a bomb.

Now Tariq and Al Zaroor were alone. The fighter drove on, wordless, his worry showing in the tense hunch of his shoulders, the tightness around his eyes as he pushed the bus harder. The terrain flew past, flat and dry and featureless save for the biblical cities they passed—Nimrod, the walled city of Nineveh. Al Zaroor welcomed the embrace of dusk, shrouding the distant mountains of Kurdistan.

Near the border town of Zakho, he issued his first instruction.

Turning off the headlights, Tariq left the road. For endless minutes, they drove across sun-baked earth toward a slice of the Tigris between Iraq and Syria. Al Zaroor felt his apprehension growing, a knot in his gut he despised but could not control. Syria would be the most dangerous part of a journey based on calculated risk, an eighteen-hour trip through a country run by a ruthless regime that saw al Qaeda as a threat to its survival. He could succeed only by adopting its coloration.

At last they reached the river, in silver moonlight as black as a ribbon of spilled ink. Al Zaroor stood on the bank. A light appeared on the water, its movement toward them accompanied by the chopping of an outboard motor.

Al Zaroor remained still. As its motor cut off, the boat hit the edge of land. The outline of a man ascended the sloping riverbank. When he became visible, he wore the uniform of a Syrian intelligence officer, his gun aimed at Al Zaroor's head. His face was young and hard and wary.

“I've come to arrest you,” he said.

Heart still racing, Al Zaroor nodded.

In twilight, Brooke took a taxi to southern Beirut, the domain of Hezbollah, to meet Grand Ayatollah al-Mahdi.

The Shia section was even poorer than that dominated by the Sunni, its Middle Eastern character so absolute that Brooke could not square it with the upscale Western luxuries of Achrafieh and Gemmayze. Since
Israel's bombing campaigns against the rural south of Lebanon, a Hezbollah redoubt, Shia farmers had crowded into what they called “the belt of misery,” raising its population to almost a million people. There were no road maps or street signs; makeshift buildings defied all laws of architecture or safety; a tangle of cables ran from structure to structure, providing makeshift power. In the endless web of alleyways, the smoke of smoldering garbage mingled with the aroma of roasted chicken and skewers of lamb kebobs, and carts of fruits and vegetables clogged arteries already crowded by motorcycles, cars, covered women, men in shabby clothing, and Hezbollah militia struggling to avert gridlock. The Lebanese government held no sway here, nor did the Sunnis. But what most distinguished this from Sunni Beirut was not the posters of Hezbollah martyrs, but the blocks of bombed-out buildings destroyed by the Israelis in 2006, rubble amid reconstruction projects financed by Iran. More than a thousand people had died here. Among the survivors were Grand Ayatollah al-Mahdi and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, whose homes were leveled by targeted air strikes. But with respect to possible assassins from Ayn Al-Hilweh, Brooke was probably safer here than in Achrafieh.

On a crowded corner that looked no different from any other, a man in a sport coat signaled Brooke's cab to stop. Up close, the man was fortyish, with a graying beard and a firm handshake. Casually, he said, “So you're visiting from America,” and led Brooke through the knot of pedestrians to a Volkswagen minibus.

Once the door closed behind Brooke and his escort, Salim, the driver negotiated a series of twists and turns designed to confuse Brooke as to where they were. He gave up on following this—he had entered al-Mahdi's world. Even while chatting with Salim, the most amiable of men, Brooke reviewed what he knew about the spiritual leader of the Shia.

Even for Lebanon, the portrait was complex and contradictory. Beyond doubt al-Mahdi was—with Sistani of Iraq and Khameini of Iran—one of the three most revered clerics in the Shia world, and the greatest figure among them: a theologian who had written extensively on Islam's dialogue with other religions, an authority on Islamic law, a poet of considerable skill, and the founder and patron of charities funded in part by a pristine restaurant where Brooke had once taken Michelle Adjani. He was also believed by the CIA to have given religious sanction,
thirty years before, to the suicide bombings of the Marine Corps barracks, the American embassy, and the Israeli military headquarters at Tyre. For this, many believed, while head of the CIA, William Casey had tried to have al-Mahdi killed. Despite this, al-Mahdi had severely condemned the al Qaeda attacks on 9/11. But to the State Department, al-Mahdi remained what he had been for three decades—a murderous cleric with whom American officials were barred from meeting.

None of this troubled Brooke at all. His concerns were practical—whether, by meeting al-Mahdi, he was exposing himself to Hezbollah, exceeding his orders and jeopardizing his life. But time had forced his hand. Seven days remained until September 11, and the risks of failure dwarfed any risk to Brooke.

At length, the bus reached an iron gate at the end of the alleyway, behind which trees partially concealed a one-story building that, transplanted to a modest American suburb, might have housed the local accountant, insurance agent, or divorce lawyer. “Not precisely the Vatican,” Brooke remarked to Salim.

“It's true, alas. But no one bombs the pope.”

Inside the building, Brooke passed through a metal detector, giving up his watch and, with greater reluctance, his cell phone. Then he was led to a large interior room with parquet floors, sumptuous carpets, and two severe black chairs. Facing them was Grand Ayatollah al-Mahdi.

A man in his midseventies, al-Mahdi was dressed in a white tunic, a yellow-gold robe, and the black turban reserved for descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. He had a long, steel-gray beard, and his eyes were grave and penetrating. But what struck Brooke was his utter stillness and serenity, an aura of peace so profound that he seemed to repose in his own illumination. Brooke looked for a trick of lighting, and found none.

Salim introduced Brooke in Arabic as a visitor from the United States, familiar with the commercial and political circles of its capital, who had come under the auspices of Hassan Adallah to seek the grand ayatollah's observations on issues of mutual concern. Throughout this nonsense, al-Mahdi regarded him with a look so calm yet piercing that, from someone less beatific, Brooke might have perceived a threat. As with Hassan Adallah, Brooke had no doubt that this man knew exactly what he was—a member of the agency that, al-Mahdi believed, had tried to kill him. When Salim had finished, al-Mahdi continued appraising him for a silent
moment, then waved him to a chair with a slight but graceful gesture of his hand. As Brooke sat, a smile played on al-Mahdi's lips.

“Aside from Jimmy Carter,” the grand ayatollah remarked in a deep but mild voice, “you're that rarest of visitors, an American. It seems that I'm on a list of ‘terrorists' with whom officials of your government are forbidden to speak. How fortunate for me that you do not work for them.”

Repressing his own smile, Brooke nodded gravely. “And for me, Your Holiness. I would regret missing the chance to hear your thoughts.”

“And to what purpose, I wonder.” Although still quiet, al-Mahdi's tone gained intensity and force. “I have said that Saddam Hussein was evil. I do not support the tactics of the Taliban. I condemn al Qaeda and its works as contrary to Islam. I seek no clash of civilizations. Yet again and again your military—in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan—creates misery and chaos, just as the Zionists did here. Your leaders embrace ‘democracy,' then send aid to kings and dictators across the Islamic world. And after all that, your government deems us unfit for one moment of conversation.”

“I didn't compose the terrorist list,” Brooke answered simply. “But it's based on more than differences in viewpoint.”