That's how I feel.
Ah yes, murmured Tajar, adjusting his stiff painful legs in front of his chair. Just so, my friend, and may it always be so, insh'allah. God willing.
***
The patriot Halim, successful in the new world and absent from his native land since the age of three, found Damascus very much to his liking. The friends of the general were helpful and Halim decided to move to Damascus and establish an export-import business. In Europe he had already made some promising business contacts. He returned to Argentina to close out his affairs and to transfer his funds to Switzerland.
The general in Buenos Aires was pleased with his young friend's decision.
May I follow you soon, said the general, raising a toast at the farewell party he gave for Halim.
And for the good of our country, replied Halim, may it be very soon, insh'allah.
***
The general's faction was the Baath or Arab Renaissance party, which combined radical nationalism with a policy of social reform. It was influential in the Syrian army but still far from power.
So you mustn't be too closely identified with your friend the general, warned Tajar, when he met Yossi again in Europe. There's no way of knowing how the Baath will fare, and if the general loses out you don't want to lose out with him. In fact there's only one way for you to survive in a thieves' den like Damascus, Tajar went on, and that's not only to be incorruptible, but to be known as incorruptible. You're in business, you're a practical man and a patriot and you must never be associated with any political group. The Arab renaissance? Good. That's exactly what you want and you want nothing more and nothing for yourself. You're the conscience of the revolution and you live for an ideal and politics is for others. It's your country you serve, Syria, and of that there can be no doubt. Will it help Syria? That's the question you must always ask yourself, and them, when friends want you to do something or ask for advice or support or money. Is it in the cause of the Arab revolution? Does it serve the real Arab renaissance? And always at the same moment — is it right? Is it true? Is it the Arab way? A conscience, my friend, that's what you must be: strong and incorruptible. The rest is for the others who will come and go in Damascus, gaining power for a time and losing it as the captains become colonels and overthrow the generals and are overthrown in turn by new captains becoming colonels, the way it always is when the military schemes and runs things. But a conscience doesn't scheme. It feels. And that's how you will last in a den of thieves and connivers and money makers and power seekers. As a vision, an idea in the heart. Indefinable. Like our fathers, Yossi, with their dream of Zion and their vision of Jerusalem. And there's nothing foreign about that to any man. Secretly, all human beings dream. Even thieves and connivers have that hidden place in their hearts.
***
Halim set up his business in Damascus and began exporting leather goods and jewelry to Europe. Soon he added shesh-besh sets and tables, which became his most profitable product. His new friends in Damascus were helpful and he had good contacts in Europe, especially in Belgium. His business flourished and once or twice a year he traveled to Europe.
At home in Damascus, meanwhile, Halim continued to live quietly, an unassuming and charming and modest man, a patriot with a growing circle of acquaintances. In Syria it was a time of rampant instability as the country broke out of its union with Egypt. There was one coup d'etat after another and the Baath party gradually strengthened its hold on the army. Then in 1963 the Baath seized power outright and the new ruler of Syria was the general who had once been a military attaché in Buenos Aires, Halim's former shesh-besh partner.
FIVE
During that time the most important struggles over the Runner's fate didn't take place in Syria but in the headquarters of the Mossad, between Tajar and his superior, the only two men who knew the identity of the Runner and the details of the Runner operation. Their disagreements were fundamental and unresolvable and concerned the very nature of the operation. Tajar saw the Runner as a long-term asset who would acquire his worth only after years of being in place, while the chief of the Mossad felt there was more use to be made of the Runner now. Long-term and now were terms that constantly changed and their arguments took many forms.
The argument might have seemed to be simply the traditional one between an operations officer and the man above him who paid the bureaucratic bills: the operations officer wanted to protect his agent and keep him from danger, and his superior wanted more immediate results from investments made in time and money. But Tajar's great experience, and the fact that he himself had once briefly been chief of the Mossad, made the issue far more complex than that, as both men recognized. Not only careers and roles and self-respect were involved, but history and philosophies.
The son of the rabbi from the Ukraine who was the chief of the Mossad had acquired his intelligence experience inside Israel, unlike Tajar. Little Aharon, as he was called, was a short stocky man of immense energy who did nothing in life but work at his job. He had made his start as a policeman and become a counterintelligence expert for Shai during the British Mandate, later expanding this position to counterespionage against the Jewish Revisionists and their right-wing cells. After independence, on orders from the prime minister, he disarmed the right-wing Jewish underground and became even more powerful in the government. He was a brilliant, ruthless man who knew how to run an organization and get things done.
His first serious clash with Tajar over the Runner operation came when it was time for the Runner to take up residency in Damascus. Tajar insisted that the Runner shouldn't report by secret radio, which was standard procedure for agents then and also their greatest risk. Instead, Tajar wanted the Runner to use false bottoms in the shesh-besh tables he sent to Europe for his reports. An agent who didn't use a radio was in a different category, by definition, with different goals. Tajar won that round of long-term over now, as he won several others. But in 1963 when the Runner's former shesh-besh partner from Buenos Aires became the president of Syria, Little Aharon exploded.
This is preposterous, he shouted at Tajar. The Runner's in a position to tell us almost anything. Why won't you put him on the general and let him tell us what is going on?
But what happens when there's another coup? replied Tajar. Even if the Baath stays in power, it's almost certain the general won't. He's just the first man out of their pack. Who comes next?
And what if there's going to be a war tomorrow? shouted Little Aharon. The Runner can't even tell us. It's madness.
No, it's wisdom, replied Tajar. If there's going to be a war tomorrow someone else can tell us. We have other people for that. The Runner's time will come but it's not yet. I want him to last.
Little Aharon frowned. To last, he thought. Yes, of course you want him to last. He's your hope and your dream, all you've got.
Tajar sat facing him, adamant, using his hands to rearrange his crippled legs. In a way Little Aharon pitied Tajar, and Tajar knew that. Little Aharon, after all, had captured Eichmann in Argentina and obtained, for the West, Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing the crimes of the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. He had an international reputation in intelligence and was famous among the powerful. When professionals in other capitals thought of the Mossad, they thought of Little Aharon, who was the Mossad to them. Yet at the end of the war it was Tajar who had been the one with fame and power and promise. Why shouldn't Little Aharon give in to him now over one agent? One operation?