would be a good CIA officer. My personal standard in recommending someone is whether I would like to work with that person in the field. I thought you met that standard.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” Where was this going? She had a feeling Bob was taking her on a different track. She was losing control.
Bob moved his glass revealing a wet ring on the table. “I recommended you, because I thought you had all of the basic qualities I look for in a team member.” He paused again for a second. “In other words, someone I can trust with my life, because that’s what we do when we work together. Someone who will have the common sense to know the right thing to do, even during a fast-moving, unscripted situation. You also convinced me you are serious about wanting to work with us. Are you?”
Um suddenly felt under pressure. She sat forward in her chair, tense. This was like taking an oral exam. “Wait a minute. I am only applying for a translator position.” It was no longer as easy as Ahmed said it would be. She was beginning to think he was not as smart as he pretended to be. Now she felt far from the beach, in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight and no compass. She gave Bob a tentatively flirtatious smile to try to get back on familiar territory.
“That’s true, but with your foreign background and languages, I want you to consider an operations-officer position. Unfortunately, John, your polygraph operator yesterday, thinks we should turn you down, because you’re not telling us everything. If you want this application to go forward—and I’m on your side on this—you need to open up. I don’t know what you’re hiding. It might only be a trivial thing.”
I am not hiding anything. I have broken no American law.“What do you want to do? You can walk out right now. Or I can ask John to come back in the room.
“Or you can talk to me.”
I have broken no American laws. I have broken no American laws, the voice kept repeating in her head. Um felt confused. She wanted to walk out, but that would make her seem guilty. Perhaps she had broken some law after all. Did Ahmed know what he was talking about? The Malik she had visited in Montréal was different from the Malik with whom she had grown up. He had let his beard grow, and he had become an outspoken supporter of radical Muslim clerics. Ahmed had stayed with him only for a few days before going back to Yemen. At least, she assumed he was back there, but their only communications were by telephone, and she couldn’t be sure where he was. Why had he mentioned her mother on the phone yesterday?
“How is your mother?” Bob asked.
Um brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry. “What? My mother? Is she all right?”
Bob suddenly stood giving Um the impression the interview had reached a new phase. Um wondered what she had said that seemed to give Bob the information he needed to go forward.
He pushed a folded newspaper aside and, placing his elbows lightly on his desk, he leaned forward.
“I’m asking because you’re obviously concerned about her. Why?”
Um looked to the side toward an imaginary window. “Well, she is in Beirut. Wouldn’t you be concerned?”
“Yes, of course. But I sense there’s more to your worry than you are telling me.”
Um looked away again without replying, but Bob waited. “All I want is to live a normal life,” finally burst from her. “We pretended our life in Iraq was normal. Then my father was killed by Saddam Hussein’s soldiers. And we pretended our life in Beirut was normal in the middle of the daily violence from the Hizballah, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Palestinians, the Christians, the Druze, the Israelis...”
She stopped herself. Sitting back in her seat, she seemed more relaxed than she had been, almost relieved. “But I didn’t know what normal meant until I came to America. Frankly, my goal is to earn enough money to bring my mother here. I want to get her away from the violence.”
“I understand and that’s what I would want also. Do you think your mother is in danger now?”
“I don’t know.” She looked to the side again.
“Is there a special threat, other than living in Beirut, which is relatively quiet these days?”
Um did not reply.
“Tell me about Ahmed. He sent you here.” Bob said, gentle as a confessor.
“I don’t know how you know. He is my brother’s friend.”
Bob took a sip of water. “Ahmed Baghdadi is a Jihadist operative responsible for recruitment in North America. He is responsible for continuing the violence in the Middle East by recruiting people who don’t look Arab. Some will be trained as fighters and go to Yemen, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Some will become human bombs in San Francisco and Boston. His job basically is to spread violence and terror. Our job is to try to stop the killing. Do you think that is worth doing?”
“Ahmed is a militant? I don’t believe it,” she said without conviction. “Why don’t you arrest him then?” She had suspected there was more to Ahmed than she knew or wanted to know. She did not believe Ahmed would harm anyone even if he believed in the cause.
“Do you want to end the violence? You can start by joining us, which is what Ahmed wants you to do, and by helping us learn more about his plans. We know what his goal is: to restore the Islamic Caliphate through jihad. That was a paraphrase. Here’s a direct quote.” He opened the file on the desk and read, “I am acutely aware body parts must be torn apart, skulls must be crushed, and blood must be spilled for our goals to be fulfilled.”
Um touched the gold bracelet that adorned her left wrist. “What about the American violence?”
“Don’t equate terrorism, the targeted killing of innocent civilians, with American military operations that are often canceled for fear of hurting noncombatants. Our job is to stop terrorist operations before they occur. We need to know what people like Ahmed are planning. You applied to the CIA to help him, but helping him only continues this conflict and means more innocent people will get killed. Instead, you can help us to save lives.”
“What about my mother?”
Bob explained the terms of their agreement. A few minutes later, he invited John back in the room. This time the polygraph cleared up the remaining issues.
Bob watched from an upstairs window, as Um drove the red Mustang out of the parking lot. He picked up the newspaper he had been reading before the meeting and studied an article on the front page, below the fold: “Iran hangs CIA spy.” He understood that, with the acquisition of a new double-agent, also came the responsibility to keep her alive.
“It’s a start,” he said to himself and, in his mind, he started to compose the cable he would be sending to the agency’s Beirut station.
3. CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Pushing a four-wheeled walker, in a slightly hunched-over stance that decreased his six-foot height by a couple of inches, Marshall Church, wearing a green retiree badge, stepped out of the elevator on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters. He proceeded past a glass wall, on the other side of which four burly bodyguards watched him warily, and went down the corridor toward the director’s conference room. Thérèse LaFont, the agency’s new director, stepped out of the double doors to greet him.
“Marshall,”
