Damascus Station E-Book

David McCloskey

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: Damascus Station
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 623

Beschreibung

'One of the best - and most authentic - spy thrillers in years' The Times ***THE TIMES THRILLER OF THE YEAR*** A CIA officer and his recruit arrive in Damascus to hunt for a killer CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad's recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy. But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad's spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet. PRAISE FOR DAMASCUS STATION: 'Simply marvellous storytelling...a stand-out thriller and essential reading for fans of the genre' - Financial Times 'The best spy novel I have ever read' - General David Petraeus, former director of the CIA 'For the most accurate fictional account of what life is like working in today's intelligence services, forget John Le Carré and read David McCloskey's thrilling Damascus Station' - Sir John Sawers, ex-Head of MI6 ___________ RAVE READER REVIEWS FOR DAMASCUS STATION 'Read this book… and order Moscow X' 'An intense, unforgettable tour de force that must be read' 'WOW! What an astonishing read' 'David McCloskey knows his stuff… an impressive page-turner' 'Genuinely original' 'Excellent, gritty espionage novel' 'A refreshingly credible, engaging and exciting spy thriller'

Leseprobe

‘Damascus Station is simply marvellous storytelling … a stand-out thriller and essential reading for fans of the genre’

Financial Times

‘From an exfiltration gone awry to a stunning endgame, Damascus Station takes the reader on a breathtaking journey in war-torn Syria. McCloskey delivers a thrilling page-turner that is marked by his exceptional understanding of the country and matched by his sophistication in the ways of CIA tradecraft’

DAN HOFFMAN, former Chief of CIA Middle East Operations and three-time Chief of Station

‘So staggeringly good, I nearly cannot believe it’s a debut novel. David McCloskey is a spectacular talent. Even this early in his career, he calls to mind Frederick Forsyth and Daniel Silva’

GREGG HURWITZ,New York Times-bestselling author of Orphan X

‘For an authentic representation of what it’s like to work in intelligence, look no further than Damascus Station. McCloskey has captured it all: the breathtaking close calls, the hand in glove of tech and ops, the heartbreaking disappointments, the thrill of a hard-won victory’

ALMA KATSU, author of Red Widow and former CIA and NSA analyst

‘Damascus Station tells the tragic story of Syria’s descent into chaos and the price paid by its people during the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown. The power of this book is that it tells this devastating story through the eyes of those who suffered and survived because of love, the human relationship, and the power of what makes life worth living’

LEON E. PANETTA, former Director of the CIA and former secretary of defence

‘Truly one of the finest entries into the modern spy thriller genre. In a field groaning with ludicrous plots, absurd characters, and laughable “espionage,” McCloskey – a former CIA analyst – has crafted a book that goes back to the roots of what makes a spy thriller great, the spying’

Diplomatic Courier

‘A gripping, well-written page turner that is part-thriller, part-love story, part-spy tale, and part-historical fiction concerning Syria and the Arab Spring. Any one of those elements on their own makes it well worth reading; the combination makes it compelling’

Foreign Policy

‘The nightmare of the Syrian civil war is vividly portrayed by David McCloskey in Damascus Station. He captures the places and people – and most of all, the sickening feeling in the gut – of this war that shattered poor Syria while America mostly watched. As a former CIA officer, McCloskey gets the details right – not just the little ones about mistimed clocks on the wall at headquarters but the big ones about trying to keep faith with people in a faithless business. This isn’t just a realistic spy novel, it’s real life’

DAVID IGNATIUS, author of The Paladin

‘A truly sensational read! David McCloskey experienced Syria first-hand as a CIA analyst, and he delivers a thrilling, graphic, gripping, and realistic – albeit fictional – portrayal of the CIA and the bloody, tragic Syrian uprising. I lived this extraordinarily frustrating episode in Agency history, and I could not put this book down’

GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS, US Army (Ret.), former director of the CIA, and former commander of the Surge in Iraq, US Central Command, and International and US Forces in Afghanistan

‘Damascus Station is simply intoxicating. A vortex of love, loyalty, murder and damn good espionage’

DON HEPBURN, former CIA Chief of Station

SWIFT PRESS

First published in the United States of America by W.W. Norton & Company 2021 First published in Great Britain by Swift Press 2023

Copyright © David McCloskey 2021

The right of David McCloskey to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Damascus map by World Sites Atlas

Damascus street data © OpenStreetMap contributors (openstreetmap.org)

Book design by Beth Steidle

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781800752696 eISBN: 9781800752702

For Abby, my love and co-conspirator And for Syria and her people, for a future brighter than the past

Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies.

—MARK TWAIN,THE INNOCENTS ABROAD, 1869

PART I

Murders

1

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SYRIAN UPRISING

Eight hours into his surveillance detection route Sam’s grip on the steering wheel loosened and his pulse began to slow. He’d made three stops in and around Damascus and executed the planned turns on the SDR, each time scanning for watchers, his eyes darting between the mirrors. At each stop he’d lingered, trying to draw out opposition surveillance. The heat burned through the windshield and the air conditioner struggled to keep up. His back hurt, and his shoulders felt permanently hunched over. He hit traffic and idled the car in an intersection mercifully shaded by palm and pine. Sam drummed his fingers on the wheel and checked the mirrors as the light lingered red, comparing each vehicle to a mental catalog of the cars he had seen earlier in the day. The light turned green. A mukhabarat officer in a leather jacket marched into the road with his hand up and gestured for the first car in line to stay in place. A car behind him honked. Another mukhabarat officer now dragged into the road a sawhorse emblazoned with stickers of President Bashar al-Assad and waved the first car forward. Someone yelled that it was a checkpoint.

Though it was the sixth of the day, Sam’s heartbeat picked up again. Nonofficial cover meant everything was on the line. There would be no diplomatic immunity if he was caught. There would be no trade. He would disappear into a basement prison. If you weren’t twitchy driving in a hostile country with no lifeline, you were probably a sociopath.

He slid the passport from his breast pocket and placed it on the dashboard. The document was Canadian, dark blue (tourist), and included a picture of a man named James Hansen. The photo was Sam’s, as was the birthday. He’d collected the document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service on a slushy spring day in Ottawa after touring the office spaces of the recently established yet nonexistent Orion Real Estate Investments, LLC. The cover was fully backstopped—humans would answer the phones and respond to emails—the Canadians only too happy to participate in exchange for a seat at the debriefing table once KOMODO was safe at Langley. For even friendly intelligence services do not share, they trade.

KOMODO was one of the most productive assets in Damascus Station’s stable. Middle-aged, lonely, a little creepy according to the ops cables, he was a mid-level scientist in Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, the SSRC, the organization responsible for Assad’s chemical weapons. The NSA believed that the Syrians had breached KOMODO’s covert communications system, and so over the course of a frenetic day Langley had built an exfiltration plan that involved Sam driving into Syria under commercial cover to get the asset out. CIA had also decided to bring home Val Owens, KOMODO’s handling officer. Sam and Val had served together in Iraq, her first tour, his third. They’d become close, like family. Val was a friend, an asset’s life was on the line, and when he thought of those two things his heart rate picked up again as a soldier waved him forward.

A young soldier with hard eyes and a wispy mustache approached the driver’s window and asked for documents. Sam held eye contact for a respectful second, then gave him the passport—already turned to the page with the ninety-day Syrian visa—and stared out the windshield toward the highway. The soldier flipped through the book, scanned around as if questioning whether to call his supervisor, then squinted at Sam.

“Why in Syria?” he said in heavily accented English.

“Business,” Sam said in Arabic.

The soldier nodded to one of his approaching comrades, their eyes nervously searching the parked cars and buildings. The regime controlled this part of the city, but rebels and jihadis sometimes hit the checkpoints. Suicide bombings, rocket-propelled grenades, the run-and-gun tactics like he’d seen during his tour in Baghdad—all of it was increasingly common in Damascus. The soldier set his jaw and smacked the passport into his own open palm.

“Open the trunk,” he told Sam.

Sam pressed the button to open the rear hatch. Another soldier opened the back and removed Sam’s suitcase, thunking it onto the pavement.

“Is it locked?” the soldier said.

“No,” Sam said. He heard unzippering and the muffled sound of clothes being tossed back into the car.

“Why is nothing folded?” the other soldier asked.

“Because I have already been through several checkpoints today,” Sam said.

“Rental?” the first soldier said, smacking the driver’s door with the butt of his AK-47.

Sam nodded.

“Papers.”

Sam opened the glove compartment and handed the soldier a set of papers indicating the car belonged to Rainbow Rentals of Amman, Jordan. As the soldier reviewed the papers, Sam shoved from his mind the image of an Amman Station mechanic using a mannequin precisely matching KOMODO’s height and weight (five-foot-five, 145 pounds) to illustrate how to fold a human into the specially fabricated trunk compartment.

The soldier handed back the papers. “What type of business, Mr. Hansen?”

“Real estate investment. Villas out here, maybe some homes in the Old City.”

“The villas are cheap now.”

“Yes.” Sam smiled. “Yes, they are.”

“The suitcase is fine,” said the man behind the car.

The soldier handed back the passport and grunted. “Move along.”

Clear of the checkpoint, he nosed the car onto the M1 highway and toward the Old City as the maghrib, the sunset call to prayer, rang from the muezzins of the mosques. The evening traffic was light. Syrians now rushed indoors at nightfall to avoid the mortars lobbed between the regime and the rebels.

As the sun dipped below the horizon behind him, his body now agreed with what his mind had already concluded: He was black. Free of surveillance. For a moment, he felt relief. Then the second-guessing began, an SDR ritual for every CIA case officer since the first training-wheels run at the Farm. This was the bitch of the Mission. The cold fact that you could never be sure, that it was always easier to abort when covered than to commit the operational act knowing you could be wrong.

So he let the questions flow.

Had he been made by the black Lexus with the scuffed passenger door in Yafour? Had he seen the dusty yellow cab now trailing him just after his second stop, at the tacky villa with the hourglass-shaped pool? Had the glint from an apartment building window during the last checkpoint been a fixed surveillance post? Sam popped a tab of spearmint gum in his mouth. He chewed slowly, staring through the weather-beaten windshield as Damascus neared. Vehicular SDRs made it maddeningly difficult to spot repeats. He wanted to get out onto the street but had no reason for the move. Suburban Damascus was now a war zone and Sam was James Hansen, real estate investor. James Hansen would not make random stops in a war zone. James Hansen would hustle to his rented house in the Old City and bed down for the night before returning to Amman.

He stopped the Land Cruiser two blocks from the safe house. He slapped a yellowed atlas on the roof and pretended to scour the winding alleys for his ultimate destination. This was the final chance to abort. Sam took in a deep breath and felt the cool night air on his skin. The hairs on his neck did not stand. He did not feel watched. He looked around, picking up the atlas like an idiot tourist in one last attempt to search for watchers in the night. He looked down the correct road and tossed the atlas into the passenger’s seat.

He pulled the Mercedes outside a house just off Bab Touma. The Canadians had picked an ideal location on the Old City’s outer rim: the ARCHIMEDES safe house had easy access to the winding alleys and narrow roads of the city center—perfect for surveillance detection— as well as the wider roads encircling it, making it accessible by car. The house was a three-story Ottoman-era palace that sprawled for what Sam judged was half a city block. Garages were uncommon in Damascus and considered unsightly in a grand old house like this. To achieve the functionality without sacrificing aesthetic, this owner—a Canadian support asset—had fashioned an elaborate door that appeared to be one of the home’s street-facing exterior walls.

Sam pressed a button tucked beside a gas lantern on the northern wall. It opened with a creak and he backed the car into the garage. Despite the villa’s size, the corridor set behind the garage was tight. At its end, the marble floor spilled into a set of double doors fifteen feet high, with iron latticework wrought into Quranic phrases forming dozens of intricate panes. Sam opened the doors into the inner courtyard. A fountain gurgled in its center, ringed by small clusters of orange and lemon trees. Unseen rooks squawked warnings as he entered. To the east a mortar volley kicked up, and he flinched instinctively before backing inside the hallway and closing the doors.

The Canadians had included a floor plan in the liaison traffic, so he had no trouble navigating the winding hallways to reach the kitchen. In a musty cabinet he found the items he’d requested: a pack of high-calorie granola bars, a baggie with ten two-milligram Xanax pills, a portable oxygen concentrator, a CamelBak hydration pack, and adult diapers. He filled the CamelBak with water and removed one diaper from the pack. He put everything into a black satchel and zippered it shut.

Returning to the garage, he opened the Land Cruiser’s rear hatch. He slid open the compartment tucked into the rear seats beneath the trunk space by turning a series of hidden dials in the precise order demonstrated in Amman. Sam ran his hand along the compartment’s thin lining. It was black silicon, transported from a Langley basement to Amman Station via diplomatic pouch and designed to absorb heat, rendering warm objects underneath invisible to infrared sensors. He tossed the satchel inside, wishing that CIA could tuck cyanide pills in these go-bags like the Russians did for their assets. A CIA asset caught in Syria could expect months of interrogation and torture. If Sam were in KOMODO’s shoes he’d want the pill.

TO WORK OUT THE STRESS Sam did rounds of push-ups and situps for thirty minutes. When he’d finished, he took a hot shower. Val was fifteen minutes late. He didn’t need to check clocks or watches anymore. Training at the Farm had seen to that.

He changed into a fresh white shirt and light gray suit and returned to the kitchen to see if he could find coffee. He located an old press coated in dust, along with an electric tea kettle and a tin of ground coffee. He didn’t check the expiration date because he didn’t care. He needed the caffeine.

Sam steeped the coffee, let the cup cool, then drank it in three gulps. He filled a second cup, gazing at the escaping steam. He called a memorized phone number and asked for an update on the Dubai acquisition. The voice on the other end, a Syrian support asset who did not know the true meaning of any of the prearranged codes, told Sam that the transaction was on hold. Sam asked him to confirm.

“It is on hold, Mr. Hansen.”

Sam finished the second cup of coffee in two gulps and shattered the empty mug on the floor.

THE PROSPECT OF KOMODO’S IMMINENT arrest and the deteriorating security situation in Syria meant CIA had to forgo the usual exfiltration playbook: spirit the asset between safe houses for weeks, let the heat simmer down, then smuggle them over the border. KOMODO had been under surveillance for weeks. All three would leave Syria from the safe house.

Sam lay on the bed in his suit, heart stampeding from the caffeine and the adrenaline. If the mukhabarat had snatched up KOMODO, they’d come for Val next. And all he could do was wait for Val. It was, more than anything, a business of waiting. The waiting, though, created a sharp edge that made him want to drink half a handle of whiskey or take a couple of KOMODO’s Xanax pills. Some officers tried to numb the edge with booze or drugs or women. It always led to the gutter, dismissal from the service, or worse. They’d found one of his Farm classmates—an officer under non-official cover, a NOC operating in Belarus—hanging from an exposed rafter in his Minsk apartment, pills and syringes and empty vodka bottles littering the floor.

The Mission could wear on you.

It was almost two in the morning. He heard a door creak somewhere in the house, then footfalls in a hallway.

He found Val in the kitchen, one foot tapping the floor, a shaky hand scooping coffee into the press. She spilled a spoonful of grounds and slammed her hands on the counter.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she yelled. “Three windows. He missed three pickup windows.”

Her taut frame swelled as she sucked in deep breaths, trying to calm herself. She flipped on the kettle and slid onto the floor, back against the cabinets. Sam sat down next to her. Both were silent as the kettle bubbled to life. She was sinewy and lean, very much the way he remembered her in Baghdad, but she’d let her blond hair grow out well past the shoulders. He put his arm around her. She slumped her head on his shoulder.

After a few minutes he stood and retrieved a red satchel from the Land Cruiser’s compartment. Returning to the kitchen, he tossed it to Val. It contained a Canadian passport that, like Sam’s, bore her own picture and a false name. She examined the disguises—wig, eyeglasses, foam gut to add twenty pounds—all bespoke to match the picture. “Dude, I look terrible as an overweight brunette,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I picked it.”

She smiled, then her face darkened. “We need to give him a few more hours to make the emergency signal. Then, if he’s still a no-show, we leave.”

THEY SAT ON THE KITCHEN floor waiting for a signal that KOMODO had reappeared, for daylight, for the mukhabarat to kick in the door. They each took turns keeping watch while the other slept, but neither managed sleep, and both now rubbed raw eyes as a metallic screech rang from the street. The protester working the megaphone yelled, Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh—Peaceful, peaceful—and the crowd’s murmurs reverberated inside the house.

“Friday protests starting,” Sam said.

“Abbassin Square is just a few blocks north,” she said groggily. “The big opposition committees and Facebook pages called for a demonstration today. They want to camp out until the regime falls. They are starting early today, though. We should leave soon.”

Sam now looked out one of the windows at the large crowd pouring through the street below.

“This is going to be the biggest protest so far in Damascus,” she said. “Could be bloody.” Val sat back down and folded her arms on the table. “I think he’s gone.”

“Probably,” Sam said as he stood. “But we talk about anything other than this busted op right now. We should go.”

She was opening her mouth to speak when the rooks squawked outside and the hairs on Sam’s neck shot up straight. Her mouth closed and Sam could see in Val’s widening eyes that she sensed the same disturbance.

Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh.

They both stood. Sam’s chair creaked against the floor in the sticky silence.

Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh. The home’s ancient door groaned as it splintered from its hinges.

2

ONLY AS A LITTLE GIRL HAD MARIAM SEEN CROWDS SO large in Syria. Pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with the protesters, she approached Abbassin Square with the chanting mass. They carried homemade signs, many had painted their faces, and some carried coolers as if preparing for a picnic. A burly man on her left lugged a folding chair and a small green, white, and black tristar flag, the symbol of the rebellion. Each time one of the protest leaders cried out on the megaphone, the man raised the flag above his head. A woman on Mariam’s right led a small girl by the hand, Freedom emblazoned on her little pink T-shirt. Mariam held the girl’s eyes as they moved quickly past. The girl flashed a V with her fingers before disappearing into the crowd. The square pulsed with energy, but Mariam felt only rising fear. She worked in the Palace, so she knew the government would not let this fester for long. In the meantime, she had work to do.

From the square, a megaphone shrieked, Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh.

At Abbassin’s southern rim Mariam saw that the square—really a traffic circle—had disappeared beneath the crowd. A mass of heads, shoulders, flags, and banners replaced the roads and pavement. She was here to protect Razan, her beloved cousin. Careless, carefree. Simple to follow. Draped in the flag of rebellion, probably a little high, Razan marched to Abbassin under cardboard signs demanding freedom, the end of the emergency law, and new elections. All reasonable. All treasonous, legally speaking. Mariam knew this and pressed on, fighting the urge to yell for her cousin to return home. Avoid the square, the protest. Let’s go get drunk. Like the old days. Razan kept marching into the heart of the square, toward a stage fashioned with scraps of wood and furniture borrowed from the homes of those friendly to the opposition. Mariam scanned for mukhabarat officers and set herself sufficiently away from the stage so she could claim to be an innocent passerby. I went out for pastries and only observed the traitorous demonstration, Officer, she shamefully practiced the words in silence. Always have a story for the mukhabarat donkeys, Razan liked to say.

Mariam stopped at a sweets shop just inside the square. The crowd’s sound was deafening now, a kind of revelry she’d never heard in Syria. Large gatherings had only been permitted for the staged, compulsory rallies the old President, the current President’s father, had held in the stadium just off the square. She had been a little girl immersed in the crowd, reciting a chant declaring him to be the country’s premier pharmacist. “Syria’s gallant knight!” the government officials had urged them to sing. “The Lion of Damascus!” Is he really a good pharmacist, the President? Mariam had asked her father afterward, old enough to understand one asked such questions in private, if ever. He’d just smiled, stroked her hair, looked around uneasily, and whispered in her ear: He is a good liar, habibti.

Two handsome, wiry boys took the stage. They demanded the President resign as the crowd cheered in approval. She saw a mukhabarat man in a leather jacket filming the masses. One of probably hundreds of such men. The crowd’s size, initially a comfort, now filled her with dread. Her eyes darted back to her cousin at the foot of the stage. A faceless protester handed Razan a megaphone. Mariam began to move. Time to rip this bint mbarih, this naïve bitch, from the stage before she gets herself killed.

As she stepped forward, a shadow appeared on the ground in front of her, like ink spilled into the dust.

Stopping, Mariam looked up and saw a man in black on the sweets shop roof. He had a scarf pulled over his nose and mouth and he held a large gun. He placed a hand to his head as if listening to an earpiece radio. He looked across the road to another rooftop, where a similarly clad man was mounting a gun on a tripod. One of the young men held a megaphone and cried for President Assad—her boss, technically—to legalize new political parties. But Mariam stayed behind the sweets shop. A sign passed in front of her: FREEDOM STARTS AT BIRTH. IN SYRIA IT STARTS AT DEATH. She saw a young couple kissing in the crowd, a pudgy woman with impossibly heavy breasts dancing in front of a sign that read ASSAD WAKE UP, YOUR TIME IS UP.

Mariam watched her cousin mount the stage with the megaphone. The crowd cheered. She looked up and could no longer see the men on the rooftops. Razan wore painted-on jeans and a T-shirt embroidered with the tristar flag. She raised a defiant hand, demanded freedom, declared that the people wanted the fall of the regime. Her cousin said, Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh, and the crowd echoed.

“He is a butcher, a tyrant,” Razan shrieked. “Assad must step down, he must resign.”

And now Mariam really tried to move—it seemed like her muscles were firing—but instead found herself hugging the wall of the sweets shop and soon felt the wind of mukhabarat foot soldiers rushing past. The insanity of what Razan had just screamed took hold and Mariam felt like she was outside herself, watching her own body scream a string of profanities at her stupid, brave cousin.

She saw a mukhabarat plant in the crowd whisper into his radio. Then a gunshot. Another. Another. One of the wiry boys on the stage collapsed in puffs of red and pink. Mariam plastered herself against the wall, her back cold though the stone was very hot. The air fell silent and banners began to collapse as people fled.

Then the mukhabarat guns began riddling the crowd, the shots sporadic and hesitant before settling into a rhythm as the shooters worked up the courage. A young woman in a white hijab held up her arms to block blows from a club. A mukhabarat man swung his club into another man’s head once, twice, three times until it opened. The man tried to stand, but his legs folded and the mukhabarat man pushed him down and swung his club again.

“Move, move, move,” Mariam yelled uselessly at Razan. But her cousin could not hear and would not have listened anyhow.

“Freedom,” Razan screamed. “Freedom! Freedom!”

Now the rooftop guns roared to life, the high-caliber bullets tearing through flesh and the signs and flags. Something sprayed on Mariam’s face and she looked downward, blinking, cursing her cousin, as she wiped it from her eyes. It was blood, but she did not know where it had come from. She felt her head, her legs, her chest. Everything was intact. The crowd fled past as the gunfire rattled. Razan defiantly commanded the stage, clutching the megaphone as the crowd stampeded like wildebeests.

A beefy mukhabarat man hopped onstage waving his club.

“Freedom,” Mariam heard her cousin scream through the megaphone. “We want freedom.” Then Razan set down the megaphone as the man approached. Her cousin looked into the sky, toward Qasioun Mountain, and closed her eyes. Then he brought down the club on Razan’s head.

3

“SAM, I DON’T FIT,” VAL HAD HISSED TO HIM. “I DON’T fit, man. KOMODO’s a midget and I’m six fucking feet tall.” Sam had had his hand on one of her hips, pushing down as Val tried to bend her legs into the Land Cruiser’s clandestine compartment. She cursed and winced as he folded her limbs like origami. He heard yelling in the house, the footsteps drawing close. They yelled her name as they cleared the rooms. They had come for her.

She gave that desperate laugh, the one he recognized from Baghdad that said, This has all gone to shit. She swung herself out of the compartment. He had a sick feeling about this, and asked again if she wanted to risk it, knowing the answer. “Maybe we just take you in the front seat?”

“You heard what they’re yelling in there, no way, man. I’ve got the dip passport. I’ve got immunity. I’ll be fine. You’re the one who’s screwed if we get caught.”

He nodded. He’d had to offer, but both were professionals and knew what had to be done. He kissed her on the cheek. She smiled thinly and pressed the button on the wall. The garage door slowly creaked open.

Drinks back home in a few weeks, she said, and went back inside the safe house.

[INAUDIBLE VOICES AND THE SOUND of papers shuffling]

Is this on? [Muffled response, noises]

Better? Okay. This is the second joint counterintelligence and security interview of Samuel Joseph, GS-12 operations officer, upon his return from Damascus. We are presently in Amman Station. It is the twenty-sixth of March, one p.m. local time. Reference draft cable 2345 for the first half of Mr. Joseph’s statement describing the exfiltration operation in Syria.

Interviewing officers Tim McManus from Counterintelligence and Lloyd—

[Coughing] Hand me . . . thanks. [Unknown sounds]

Lloyd Craig from Security. We’ll run through a set of questions based on our understanding of the operation.

Q.Please state your name for the record.

A.Samuel Joseph.

Q.Valerie Owens told you the asset, KOMODO, missed three pickup windows?

A.We discussed this earlier, Tim. Yes. She said he missed all three.

Q.And the SDR was one-way? She was going to leave Syria with you?

A.Tim, I feel like we’re going backwards.

[Shuffling papers, inaudible conversation]

Q.She didn’t talk about the SDR once she’d arrived at the safe house?

A.No.

Q.Is that unusual?

A.Not if it was successful. If Val thought she was covered, she wouldn’t have completed the SDR. She would have aborted and gone home.

Q.How do you know this?

A.I served with her before, in Baghdad. Shit, Lloyd, we’ve—

Q.Sam, we gotta go through the questions. Headquarters sent more an hour ago.

A.Fine. Fine. Val was an exceptional case officer. We got our deniedarea ops certs together. If she came to the safe house, she thought she was black.

Q.You knew her well?

A.Yes. We were close. [Hushed voices, coughing]

A.Just ask.

Q.It’s—uh— [Coughing]

A.Just ask, Tim.

Q.Were you at any point romantically involved with Ms. Owens?

A.No.

Q.Thanks. And you did not personally detect surveillance at any time while you were in Syria?

A.No.

Q. [Sound of paper shuffling] This is a floor plan of the safe house. Can you point and tell us where they breached the entrances?

A.They came in the front door. Here. They used a battering ram, I think. They also broke through at least one of the windows along the street. Here. Based on how quickly they got to the garage, I’d say a couple must have jumped one of the walls into the courtyard, but I’m not certain. They were swarming in. We ran for the car. Through this hallway, then out into the courtyard. That’s when I think I heard a few of them coming over the walls. We made it to the garage, and—

Q.Hold on, Sam, the headquarters folks had a specific question here. [Papers shuffling] Why not just drive away together with her in the front seat and bring her back home?

A.Val and I both speak Arabic fluently. We heard the mukhabarat team yelling the same phrase over and over as they cleared rooms: She’s not here. They used her name. They were coming for her, not me. We couldn’t risk being seen together.

Q.So then you try the Land Cruiser’s hidden compartment?

A.Yes. She didn’t fit.

Q.What did you do then?

A. We made a decision. She stays and takes the heat because she has diplomatic immunity. They’ll ask her questions, PNG her, then she comes home.

Q.And if you’re caught—

A.If I’m caught, I disappear forever into a Syrian dungeon owing to the tourist Canadian passport. It’s the right operational call and any Peer Review Board will back it up.

Q.We’re not disputing that, Sam. So, your suitcase is already in the car. What next?

A.She opens the garage door and I drive off and head for the border.

Q.The mukhabarat don’t see you?

A.They must not have known the house had a garage or an exit on that side. As far as I know they never even saw the car.

Q.You mentioned to Chief of Station Amman that you heard something as you drove off?

A.Yes.

Q.Can you tell us what you heard?

A.Val screaming.

SAM CLICKED STOP ON THE computer audio. Noticing his fingers drumming on the table, he folded his hands in his lap. Then he stared at the wall as Val’s scream rolled through his mind. Unlike those of most of his counterparts in the Directorate of Operations, C/NE Division Ed Bradley’s “Me Wall” was bare. On the back bookshelf sat a few gifts from special friends, including a half-folded Aussie digger hat and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s AK-47. But perched on a shelf was Bradley’s pride and joy—a neutralized missile system gifted for leading the Stinger Program against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Rumor had it the launcher had not been properly decommissioned. A visitor had once pulled the trigger, lighting it up like a Christmas tree. Downrange at Bradley’s office table sat Procter, Chief of Station Damascus, back at Langley to deal with the fallout from Val Owens’s capture.

Sam would decide after this first meeting that Artemis Aphrodite Procter, born to a father obsessed with Greek mythology, hewed to the spirit of her first name more than the middle.

Procter was many things, and one of them was short. She barely scratched five feet. Her black hair, exploding into curls as if she were plugged into an electrical socket, contrasted with her pale, freckled skin. Everything strained and stretched with muscle. Even under the blouse, Sam saw the outlines of the toned arms and the spread of her shoulders. Sam remembered what one of her case officers in Moscow had told him: “She’s a frazzled Energizer Bunny, man. They don’t call her he Proctologist for nothing. She’s intense. And if you slow down, she’ll eat you alive.” The officer had also told Sam about an ops plan he’d designed that Procter had called “dogshit” in a cable. “She literally sent that cable back to Russia House front office,” he had said, “and you know what, she was right. I learned a lot from her.”

Procter picked at her teeth. Bradley gripped Sam on the shoulder and collected a coffee thermos from his desk and sat down at the table. He was six-foot-two, a former linebacker at the University of Texas who had struggled—and eventually given up on—shaking the Lone Star drawl of his youth. The raw physical presence masked a finely tuned intuition for people and the savvy of an operational pro. But Bradley now shuttled between Middle Eastern crises, impatient political masters, and pompous overseers in Congress. His face bore the stress.

“The scream,” Procter said, breaking the silence. “What kind was it?”

“Pain. They beat the shit out of her.”

He looked away from the wall toward Procter. “Any leads?”

“One, actually,” said Procter. “Came in last night. We picked up an intercept that a mukhabarat agency called the Security Office recently arrested an American. Uncorroborated so far, but it seems credible.”

“I’ve never heard of the Security Office,” Sam said.

“Honestly we hadn’t, either,” Procter said. “But we did some research and found a couple mentions in stolen documents from late last year. Assad apparently wanted someone to keep tabs on the rest of the mukhabarat, so he put a general, Ali Hassan, in charge and vested him with a ton of power inside the Palace. Guy is a real son of the regime. His brother is Rustum Hassan, commander of the Republican Guard.”

“It would be good news if the Syrians had her,” Bradley said. “We can at least press them government-to-government.”

“We’ve warned Assad through back channels that we will hold the regime accountable if anything happens,” Procter said. “But they continue to deny that she is in custody. The White House and the douchebags on the Hill might be fine leaving our people in prison for weeks at a time, but I’m not. If I find Ali Hassan’s phone number, I’m calling him directly, Ed. Send him a message.”

“We’re not threatening them at all?” Sam asked. He fingered the knot of his tie, unconsciously loosening it. “That’s crap. She’s being held illegally.”

Bradley shot him a glare. “POTUS has a broader Syria policy to manage that extends beyond one of us, Sam. She has the dip passport. We will get her back soon.”

“And until then we’ll just keep warning them over and over without imposing consequences?” Sam said.

Bradley shrugged and poured more coffee from his thermos. “I agree with you, but it is the White House’s policy right now. We wait. We will get her back, it will just take time. The Syrians would have to be nuts to do anything other than put her in a cell and ask polite questions. Eventually they will turn her loose. And yes, Artemis, if NSA can find us his number, we should have a conversation with General Hassan.”

Bradley looked at the wall clock. “I gotta run to catch a car in a few minutes. A full afternoon of grilling down on the Hill.”

“SSCI?” Sam asked Bradley, pronouncing the acronym for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, appropriately, as Sissy.

“Yep. The Sissies themselves,” Bradley said, clenching and pumping his right fist. “Questions about Val.”

Sam shook hands with Procter and the Chief left. Sam dawdled, examining the Stinger launcher as Bradley packed up his lock bag for the Hill briefing.

“I’ve heard she’s a little nuts,” Sam said.

“Procter?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s something. By the way, you got dinner plans tonight?”

“I have a whole rotisserie chicken and a six-pack of beer in my otherwise empty fridge,” Sam said.

“Good. Bring the beer. Come out to the farm for dinner with me and Angela tonight? I’ve got something for you.”

“What’s that?”

“A distraction.”

SAM FOUGHT RUSH-HOUR TRAFFIC ON 267 and the Greenway for nearly two hours to reach the Bradley farm, an exhausting experience on par with his drive through wartime Damascus.

He pulled into the farmhouse’s gravel drive. The foothills of the Blue Ridge prickled the horizon, the sunset an orange ribbon receding behind them. Three horses chewed grass along the stone fence, and as he got out of the car he remembered he’d forgotten the beer. He was weighing whether to head to a store when Angela Bradley opened the front door. “Hey, Sam!” She greeted him with a hug and showed him into the kitchen. “Ed’s down in the Box”—her name for the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in the basement, which allowed him to take work calls and read cable traffic from home. Angela hated the Box. One of her conditions upon Ed taking the Near East Division job had been the horse farm on the rural edge of suburban Washington. It added an hour to Bradley’s commute, but when he had resisted, she said simply: “I don’t give a shit, Ed.”

Without asking, she opened a Coors Light and slid it across the counter to Sam. Then she opened one for herself, popped onto the counter like a schoolgirl, and started the interrogation.

“How is the family?”

“Good, everyone’s good.”

“Girlfriends?”

“None now.”

“I see. Too bad for you. Where next?”

“Powers that be working it out.”

“Ed needs to make a goddamn decision, huh?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Interrogation complete, Angela nodded, though at and for what Sam had no idea. She wiped her hands on a rag and announced that they were having steaks. The cast-iron pan soon sizzled and two fresh Coors were cracked open when they heard Ed’s footsteps on the stairs.

Angela tossed Ed a beer with one hand and flipped the meat with the other. He opened his mouth to speak, but Angela stopped him.

“Listen, boys, you know the rules,” Angela said. “I get thirty minutes without any shop talk.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sam, his best attempt at mimicking her drawl.

She gave a middle finger in return.

AS IT TURNED OUT, SHE got forty-five.

Then Sam and Ed cleared the table, cleaned the dishes, and, as was their custom, took six beers in a Styrofoam cooler onto the back deck. Mosquitoes whined around the porchlights.

They each drank half a can in silence. Then it was on to war stories from Cairo, the do-you-remembers of old friends drinking together.

Angela cracked open the screen door as Sam finished another beer. “I’m going to bed. Sam, you sleeping here tonight?”

“You mind?” he said.

“Course not,” Ed said. “We can caravan in tomorrow.”

“I figured,” Angela said. “You take the room next to the Box. Sheets and all that in the closet downstairs. Night, dear.” She planted a kiss on Bradley’s forehead and disappeared into the house.

Sam pulled the tab off his empty beer can and stared out at the shadowed mountains. He grabbed the final round from the cooler and tossed a can to Ed.

“I’ve got an errand I need you to run,” Bradley finally said. “Might cheer you up from this ugliness with Val.”

“What’s up?”

“Warm-pitch recruitment attempt in Paris. A Syrian Palace delegation is meeting with a few of the exiled oppositionists. Since Syrian government officials don’t leave Damascus much anymore, it’s worth a shot. You are the perfect candidate: a top recruiter in NE Division, fluent Arabic, you’ve recruited Syrians before. There are a number of Syrian officials traveling; you’ll need to determine the right one to pitch.” Sam knew before Bradley opened his mouth that he would say yes to whatever was proposed. But he wanted to sit in the warm buzz that had settled over his body, so he asked needless questions, all of which he knew the answers to already.

“Paris Station not interested?”

“We’re trying to keep the French out of this, so we don’t want to use local talent they may know about.”

“You never send me nice places. This will be a welcome change from the usual hellholes. Can I bring the BANDITOs? They know Paris and we’ll need countersurveillance.”

BANDITO was the cryptonym for the Kassab triplets: Elias, Yusuf, and Rami. All were CIA support assets. The brothers were Syrian-American dual citizens hailing from a wealthy Christian family that owned car dealerships throughout Syria and Lebanon. The family lived mostly in Beirut and Istanbul, preferring to manage the dealerships remotely. Sam had struck up a close friendship with the brothers, which eventually transformed into recruitment during his Istanbul tour. They secured cars, safe houses, and conducted basic surveillance for Beirut Station. Sam occasionally read the cable traffic and learned that they’d each passed a polygraph.

“Yes, bring them.” Bradley paused to swat at a mosquito. “And I’ve also taken the liberty of sequestering a few analyst resources for your use. They can get you up to speed on Syria and help prep for the pitch. Look, I’m gonna hit the sack—it’s been six days and I’m still jet-lagged from my Cairo trip.” Bradley stood and was about to open the door to the house when he stopped and looked back at Sam.

“Give the op some serious thought, okay? A Palace official would be a big fish. We’re basically flying blind inside Syria right now.”

“Of course,” Sam said. “And Ed, one more thing.” Bradley turned his head, still holding the door ajar. “My next tour. I have a proposal.”

“Yes?” Bradley said, closing the door to turn and face Sam.

“How about Damascus?”

Bradley smiled weakly and looked out to the mountains.

“You need good people there,” Sam continued. “It’s a hardship post now, no families. I don’t have that complication. I can help out there. I can help you and Procter.”

“Is this a revenge play or something? Get back at the Syrians for Val?”

“You tell me where else I could be more helpful. You said it yourself. We’re flying blind in Syria. My Levantine Arabic is pretty good, you don’t have to send me to language school in Rosslyn for a year, I’m ready now. Plus, if I put one of these Syrians in harness coming out of Paris I can work the case inside Damascus.”

“Procter is a hard-ass,” Bradley said.

“So?”

Bradley shrugged. “So, it could be miserable if you guys don’t get along.”

“There’s a civil war burning,” Sam said. “It’s not gonna be an easy one, Procter aside.”

Bradley smirked.

“Not joking, Ed. I want the post. And I never ask you for anything.”

“Fine. Done. Damascus it is. We’ll set it in motion tomorrow.” Bradley swung open the creaky swing door and disappeared into the house. Sam went to the fridge for another beer. He cracked it open on the porch and closed his eyes. Val’s scream again passed through his mind before it drifted off into the warm night air.

THE NEXT DAY SAM WALKED to the analysts’ spaces in the New Headquarters Building—a box of steel and glass facing the concrete of Original Headquarters. The Front Office Conference Room’s centerpiece was a faux-wood table ringed by government-issue swivel chairs: some new and ergonomic, while others’ creaks and moans suggested they had been procured during the Carter administration. On the wall hung four clocks showing the time in D.C., Rabat, Tel Aviv, Baghdad— the rough boundaries of the Middle East and North Africa analytics shop. Each clock was amusingly between four and seven minutes slow. The interior wall was a scattershot of random awards and plaques, many quite dated (“Meritorious Unit Citation—Camp David Accords,” “Team Chief of the Year—Erin Yazgall”), others weeny-ish and incomprehensible to the visiting operator (“World Intelligence Review Article of the Month —James Debman”).

Two analysts sat inside, bickering. They stood to greet Sam as he entered the room.

Zelda Zaydan was skinny and had a shoulder-length bob of jet-black hair. Her nose was beaky and Romanesque and she wore an ill-fitting black pantsuit with a pink scarf.

James Debman, on the other hand, was a butterball who wore a shortsleeved white dress shirt and garish orange bow tie. He offered a clammy hand to Sam, who had no choice but to accept, and beckoned him to sit. Zelda slid a giant stack of papers and binders across the table. “This is our team’s production over the past six months, you should read it,” Debman said. He sat back, picking at the flaking plastic cover securing the blue badge hanging around his neck. Zelda eyed him, then said: “We know you’ve done a bunch of tours in the Middle East but never Syria. What is most helpful to cover?”

“The typical briefing you give to case officers,” Sam said. He knew the country at a high level, mostly from his time in Iraq, but hadn’t paid much attention to the CIA analysis so far.

Debman’s eyes flickered with excitement. He slid his prepared talking points aside, mumbling overcoordinated and watered down in Zelda’s direction. He coughed, took a drink of water from a large bottle, and cracked his knuckles.

“Our story begins in 1930.”

Zelda rolled her eyes.

THIS WAS THE BIRTH YEAR of Hafez al-Assad, the current President’s father, and it was, Sam thought, a bit too early in the chronology.

Zelda agreed. “Goddammit, Debman, you always do this,” she said, her voice rising. “Let’s start with the war. The relevant stuff.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, wiping a forelock of hair from her face. “Syria prior to the war had become a brittle thing. Sure, it was stable”— Debman supplied air quotes as Zelda said the word—“but the state itself had hollowed. They don’t have oil, so Assad can’t grease the skids and pay off the population with cash. The patronage that did exist went to a smaller number of people, mostly members of the Assad family. This pissed people off. All the telecom operators are owned by the President’s cousin, for example. Big drought in the north and east that brought more than a million people west, to slums outside the big cities. Destabilizing. Security forces are brutal, absolutely ubiquitous: you need their approval to add a second story onto your house, to get married. Mundane stuff. Pissed everyone off.”

“Quotidian brutality,” Debman said. “Absolutely banal.” Zelda looked as though she wanted to strangle him with the chain holding his badge. Sam would have been satisfied with the orange bow tie.

Someone opened the door to the conference room, then ducked back out. “Where was I?” Zelda said. “Oh yeah.” She took a drink of water. “Tunisia and Egypt happen. Some Syrians think, Why not us? Kindling is bone-dry, we just need a spark. A few smallish protests occur in Damascus. Nothing. We get one in the south, random place called Daraa. Visited it once. Not a happy town. Mukhabarat tortures a few kids. Boom. Protest, killings, funerals, killings. Rinse and repeat. Protests blossom in other cities. It becomes a nationwide movement. Demonstrations get big, like really big. Tens of thousands one Friday in Hama. Satellite images are crazy. And the regime, they have no clue what to do. I mean, think about it. You could just go in guns blazing, mowing down the protesters. Like his old man did in Hama back in ’82, leveled most of the city to suppress a rebellion.”

“More than ten thousand dead, but no one can really agree on the number,” Debman added, making a distasteful slicing motion across his neck.

Zelda wrinkled her forehead. “What the hell, Debman? Behave yourself. Anyway, the regime does not do this. They waffle instead. They were restrained in some ways early on, despite all the press coverage saying the opposite. They give half-hearted political concessions that please no one. Sometimes they shoot protesters on purpose, sometimes it’s an accident, sometimes they don’t shoot at all and allow the protests. Then finally the regime shifted to a scorched-earth military campaign because they ran out of options. Kill them all.”

“Confusing, Sam, it was confusing,” said Debman, wiping his glasses on his shirt. “The regime eventually burned its bridges. No way back, fight on.” He took another drink and wiped his mouth with his hand.

“Now, what did this accomplish?” Zelda said rhetorically. Debman started to answer; she cut him off with a wave of her hand. “First, it did not suppress the opposition. It strengthened it, particularly the more radical Islamist and jihadi elements. The violence helped them make the case that they needed weapons to counter the regime. Second, it polarized the country along sectarian and ethnic lines. In general, it swung the minority groups—Christian, Alawi, Druze—toward the regime. The Sunni Arab majority against. The Assad family is Alawi, remember. Syria is really diverse, Sam. Christians and Alawis, for example, are each like ten percent of the total population. The regime has done a good job binding most of the minority groups—and many of the well-off Sunni Arabs, to be honest—into it. They don’t have other options. Third, it turned the government into a big, radicalized militia all its own.”

“Except instead of worshipping Allah, it worships Bashar,” Debman said.

“Huge chasm between the communities that support the opposition and the pro-regime side,” Zelda said.

Debman chuckled. “Yeah, for example, regime side has electricity and food, opposition doesn’t.”

“Policy makers are really interested in a few of Syria’s institutions,” Zelda said. “First, the Palace. It’s effectively Bashar’s personal office, includes his senior advisers and liaisons to all the big government agencies. For example, he just set up this thing called the Security Office to run his most sensitive mukhabarat errands. Ali Hassan is in charge. Bashar runs the country from the Palace. Second is the Republican Guard. Syria’s paramount military force, run by General Rustum Hassan, Ali’s brother. Rustum is the pointy tip of the military spear and acts as Bashar’s enforcing hand inside the Scientific Studies and Research Center, the SSRC. They’ve consolidated and centralized control because the institutions of state are weakening. Defections, rebel assassination campaigns. It’s all taking a toll.”

“So where do you see the fight going?” Sam asked.

Zelda stood now, hands behind her back, gazing out the window.

“The regime stands,” Zelda said. “Because it is a deeper thing than the Assad family, its Alawi community, or even its repressive apparatus. It so deeply co-opted the nation and the organs of state that it was stronger than we all thought. It has the resources, the loyalty, and the ruthlessness to do so. And as for what is coming. The protests, the hope, all that is gone. Shot to pieces. Negotiations are window dressing because there is no chance for a settlement. Both sides believe they must win.”

“And both sides believe they can,” said Debman. “The jihadists, who drive the rebellion on the ground, and the Assadists, the militia masquerading as a government. The bystanders, the people trying to get by, keeping their heads down, are faced with that choice.”

Someone else poked their head in and said in a squeaky, insistent voice that they had the room, you guys are already five minutes late.

“It’s a fight to the death,” Zelda said as they gathered the binders. “It’s the Octagon.”

THAT AFTERNOON ZELDA HELPED SAM run bio searches and conduct research on the Syrians traveling to Paris with the Palace delegation.

Trace results from the Syria Desk Staff Operations Officer came back late that night. Sam and Zelda ate hot dogs from the Hormel vending machine in the Original Headquarters Building. The CIA was the only place Sam had ever seen a hot dog vending machine. He’d always wanted to take a picture, but cameras were not allowed in the building.

Seated next to Zelda in the analyst cube farm, Sam took a bite of the hot dog and read the results for one of the officials, Mariam Haddad.

1.TRACE RESULTS (1 OF 2): REF SUBJECT SYRIAN NATIONAL IS PALACE POLITICAL COUNSELOR REPORTING TO PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER BOUTHAINA NAJJAR. REF A COLLATERAL INDICATES SUBJECT IS 32 YEARS OLD AND SYRIAN CHRISTIAN. REF B COLLATERAL INDICATES REGULAR CONTACT WITH SENIOR PALACE OFFICIALS, INCLUDING PRESIDENT ASSAD, AND COUNSELOR JAMIL ATIYAH.

2.TRACE RESULTS (2 OF 2): REF C INDICATES SUBJECT’S MOTHER WAS CHARGE D’AFFAIRES IN PARIS BEFORE RETIREMENT. SUBJECT’S FATHER, MAJOR GENERAL GEORGES HADDAD, COMMANDS THE SYRIAN ARMY III CORPS, CURRENTLY IN ALEPPO. REF D INDICATES SUBJECT’S PATERNAL UNCLE DAOUD HADDAD IS COLONEL IN SSRC BRANCH 450.

3.COUNTERINTELLIGENCE DIVISION SUPPORTS DEVELOPMENTAL CONTACT WITH SUBJECT PENDING NEAR EAST DIVISION CONCURRENCE.

“Well connected,” Sam said.

“A real daughter of the regime,” Zelda said, chewing a pen. “You need a family like that to get a job in the Palace.”

Sam swung around in his chair to face the analyst.

“Mariam could be interesting,” he said. “Mid-level officials typically have great access and are less invested in the regime. Plus, if she can even casually elicit information from her uncle we could tap into the chemical weapons program. Can you pull up the REF reports?”

Zelda nodded and started scrubbing the CIA’s galaxy of intelligence databases. All housed a mixture of overlapping and exclusive reporting like a shotgun blast of Venn diagrams. She pressed her face toward the screen as she typed.

“Found something,” she said after a few minutes. Sam swiveled behind her to look. It was a stolen mukhabarat report describing a protest in Damascus. Sam checked the date. March 25. The day they took Val. The report said the mukhabarat arrested a young woman named Razan Haddad. He stopped reading.

“It’s a common last name,” he said. “Like Smith.”

“I know, but check out the bottom of the report. A comment from the author.”

Sam read: Prisoner released following formal request traced back to Political Security officer attached to III Corps.

“Mariam’s father’s unit.”

“Yep. Can’t think of a good reason anyone else fighting in Aleppo would call a mukhabarat detachment in Damascus pleading for someone’s release.”

“Arrested family members are good fuel for recruitment,” Sam said. “I ran a guy in Saudi whose brother had been tortured. He kept his mouth shut but spied for us for more than fifteen years. Silent revenge.”

He finished the hot dog. “We found our girl.”

4

MARIAM STARED AT THE PICTURE OF FATIMAH WAEL clipped to the yellowed folder resting on the table. The mukhabarat photo, taken at the start of Fatimah’s last imprisonment, was now frayed. She ran her fingertips along its edges and met Fatimah’s haunted eyes. The eyes usually looked dead in these mukhabarat albums. But Fatimah bore the gaze of a woman who had taken a lifetime of beatings and still stood. Mariam put the photo aside and again reviewed the dossier contents as her boss spoke on the phone.

The first page: a summary of Fatimah’s arrests. Most fell under the decades-old emergency law, which gave the state expansive authority to prosecute vague crimes, including “Sedition” (Translation: participation in peaceful protest) and “Nefarious Cooperation with a Foreign Power” (Translation: political discussions with the French ambassador to Damascus). The file was at least five inches thick. It included every report filed on Fatimah dating back to the early 1990s, when, as a twenty-two-year-old, she unwisely submitted an article to a newspaper calling for the elder Assad’s resignation. Five years in prison from 2003 to 2008. Charge: Sedition. Now Fatimah was an exile, shuttling between France and Italy. A brave Syrian woman leading the foreign opposition, well respected by many of the fighting groups on the ground. A constant thorn in Assad’s side.

Mariam put down the file as her boss, the political counselor to the President, Bouthaina Najjar, ended her phone call. Bouthaina had placed Mariam in charge of the negotiations with foreign-based oppositionists, namely the National Council, the umbrella group claiming to represent the fighters on the ground. Mariam’s goal was simple: persuade them to renounce the Islamist fighters now leading the civil war, denounce their fellow exiles, then come home, where safety and pardon would be granted in exchange for silence. It was Mariam’s most important assignment yet, and it promised to be a stepping-stone to greater things.

Bouthaina joined Mariam at the table, opened her own file on Fatimah, and, as she always did when concentrating, began nibbling on her Gucci eyeglasses. “So, Mariam, what do you think about Fatimah? What angle should we take in Paris?”

Mariam smoothed her beige skirt and pulled a report from the file. “The Iranian signals intelligence covering Fatimah’s Paris apartment and the Tuscan villa were superb,” Mariam said. “And they make it clear she misses Syria. She is living well abroad, but Damascus is home. She will want to negotiate.” Mariam took a sip of coffee. “But the price should be high.”

She rifled through the stack of reports. Her thumb stopped on one she’d dog-eared the night before, cross-legged on her bed in a long T-shirt, preparing for this discussion. She’d been on her fourth cup of coffee.

“Here it is. Three reports from opposition sources: Paris, Rome, Istanbul. All allege corruption and misuse of funds. Here is an amusing one.” She slid it across to Bouthaina, who put on her eyeglasses to read.

“It is a bill the National Council tried to submit to the French Foreign Ministry for a block of rooms at the Hotel Bristol. A delegation arrived from Istanbul.”

“Only the best,” Bouthaina said, clicking her tongue.