THE GREAT
SATAN
Roger sits in the bar
in the King David Hotel, drinking from a tall glass of second-rate
lemonade and sweating in spite of the air-conditioning. He’s dizzy
and disoriented from jet lag, the gut cramps have only let him come
down from his room in the past hour, and he has another two hours
to go before he can try to place a call to Andrea. They had another
blazing row before he flew out here; she doesn’t understand why he
keeps having to visit odd corners of the globe. She only knows that
his son is growing up thinking a father is a voice that phones at
odd times of day.
Roger is mildly
depressed, despite the buzz of doing business at this level. He
spends a lot of time worrying about what will happen if they’re
found out—what Andrea will do, or Jason for that matter, Jason
whose father is a phone call away all the time—if Roger is led away
in handcuffs beneath the glare of flashbulbs. If the colonel sings,
if the shy bald admiral is browbeaten into spilling the beans to
Congress, who will look after them then?
Roger has no
illusions about what kills black operations: there are too many
people in the loop, too many elaborate front corporations and
numbered bank accounts and shady Middle Eastern arms dealers.
Sooner or later, someone will find a reason to talk, and Roger is
in too deep. He isn’t just the company liaison officer anymore:
he’s become the colonel’s bagman, his shadow, the guy with the
diplomatic passport and the bulging briefcase full of heroin and
end-user certificates.
At least the ship
will sink from the top down, he thinks. There are people
very high up who want the colonel to
succeed. When the shit hits the fan and is sprayed across the front
page of the Washington Post, it will
likely take down cabinet members and secretaries of state: the
president himself will have to take the witness stand and deny
everything. The republic will question itself.
A hand descends on
his shoulder, sharply cutting off his reverie. “Howdy, Roger!
Whatcha worrying about now?”
Jourgensen looks up
wearily. “Stuff,” he says gloomily. “Have a seat.” The redneck from
the embassy—Mike Hamilton, some kind of junior attaché for embassy
protocol by cover—pulls out a chair and crashes down on it like a
friendly car wreck. He’s not really a redneck, Roger knows—rednecks
don’t come with doctorates in foreign relations from Yale—but he
likes people to think he’s a bumpkin when he needs to get something
from them.
“He’s early,” says
Hamilton, looking past Roger’s ear, voice suddenly all business.
“Play the agenda, I’m your dim, but friendly, good cop. Got the
background? Deniables ready?”
Roger nods, then
glances round and sees Mehmet (family name unknown) approaching
from the other side of the room. Mehmet is impeccably manicured and
tailored, wearing a suit from Jermyn Street that costs more than
Roger earns in a month. He has a neatly trimmed beard and moustache
and talks with a pronounced English accent. Mehmet is a Turkish
name, not a Persian one: pseudonym, of course. To look at him you
would think he was a westernized Turkish businessman—certainly not
an Iranian revolutionary with heavy links to Hezbollah and (whisper
this) Old Man Ruholla himself, the hermit of Qom. Never in a
thousand years the unofficial Iranian ambassador to the Little
Satan in Tel Aviv.
Mehmet strides over.
A brief exchange of pleasantries masks the essential formality of
their meeting: he’s early, a deliberate move to put them
off-balance. He’s outnumbered, too, and that’s also a move to put
them on the defensive, because the first rule of diplomacy is never
to put yourself in a negotiating situation where the other side can
assert any kind of moral authority, and sheer weight of numbers is
a powerful psychological tool.
“Roger, my dear
fellow.” He smiles at Jourgensen. “And the charming Dr. Hamilton, I
see.” The smile broadens. “I take it the good colonel is desirous
of news of his friends?”
Jourgensen nods.
“That is indeed the case.”
Mehmet stops smiling.
For a moment he looks ten years older. “I visited them,” he says
shortly. “No, I was taken to see them.
It is indeed grave, my friends. They are in the hands of very
dangerous men, men who have nothing to lose and are filled with
hatred.”
Roger speaks. “There
is a debt between us—”
Mehmet holds up a
hand. “Peace, my friend. We will come to that. These are men of
violence, men who have seen their homes destroyed and families
subjected to indignities, and their hearts are full of anger. It
will take a large display of repentance, a high blood price, to buy
their acquiescence. That is part of our law, you understand? The
family of the bereaved may demand blood price of the transgressor,
and how else might the world be? They see it in these terms: that
you must repent of your evils and assist them in waging holy war
against those who would defile the will of Allah.”
Roger sighs. “We do
what we can,” he says. “We’re shipping them arms. We’re fighting
the Soviets every way we can without provoking the big one. What
more do they want? The hostages—that’s not playing well in DC.
There’s got to be some give-and-take. If Hezbollah doesn’t release
them soon, they’ll just convince everyone that they’re not serious
about negotiating. And that’ll be an end to it. The colonel
wants to help you, but he’s got to have
something to show the man at the top, right?”
Mehmet nods. “You and
I are men of the world and understand that this keeping of hostages
is not rational, but they look to you for defense against the other
Great Satan that assails them, and their blood burns with anger
that your nation, for all its fine words, takes no action. The
Great Satan rampages in Afghanistan, taking whole villages by
night, and what is done? The United States turns its back. And they
are not the only ones who feel betrayed. Our Ba’athist foes from
Iraq . . . In Basra the unholy brotherhood of Tikrit and their
servants the Mukhabarat hold nightly sacrifice upon the altar of
Yair-Suthot; the fountains of blood in Tehran testify to their
effect. If the richest, most powerful nation on Earth refuses to
fight, these men of violence from the Bekaa think, how may we
unstopper the ears of that nation? And they are not sophisticates
like you or I.”
He looks at Roger,
who hunches his shoulders uneasily. “We can’t move against the Soviets openly! They must
understand that it would be the end of far more than their little
war. If the Tali ban want American help against the Russians, it
cannot be delivered openly.”
“It is not the
Russians that we quarrel with,” Mehmet says quietly, “but their
choice in allies. They believe themselves to be infidel atheists,
but by their deeds they shall be known; the icy spoor of Leng is
upon them, their tools are those described in the Kitab Al Azif. We
have proof that they have violated the terms of the Dresden
Agreement. The accursed and unhallowed stalk the frozen passes of
the Himalayas by night, taking all whose path they cross. And will
you stopper your ears even as the Russians grow in misplaced
confidence, sure that their dominance of these forces of evil is
complete? The gates are opening everywhere, as it was prophesied.
Last week we flew an F-14C with a camera relay pod through one of
them. The pilot and weapons operator are in paradise now, but we
have glanced into hell and have the film and radar plots to prove
it.”
The Iranian
ambassador fixes the redneck from the embassy with an icy gaze.
“Tell your ambassador that we have opened preliminary discussions
with Mossad, with a view to purchasing the produce of a factory at
Dimona, in the Negev. Past insults may be set aside, for the
present danger imperils all of us. They
are receptive to our arguments, even if you are not: his holiness
the Ayatollah has declared in private that any warrior who carries
a nuclear device into the abode of the eater of souls will
certainly achieve paradise. There will be an end to the followers
of the ancient abominations on this Earth, Dr. Hamilton, even if we
have to push the nuclear bombs down their throats with our own
hands!”