Given the sparse evidence above, there are two possibilities:
a. Agreements. An under-the-table agreement has been reached between the various exile groups (FLO, ADLF, LU), and they are either mobilizing for a united public relations front or are preparing to enter Libya itself.
b. Agency Presence. While Stumbler was officially rejected in 2009, there remains the possibility that our own agency, or a section working independently, has decided that with the emergence of a viable active opposition within Libya the time is right to put the plan into action, beginning with the covert assembly of these primary exile figures.
Given the historic animosity between the groups mentioned above, “Agreements” is unlikely. While all three organizations share a desire for the end of Gadhafi’s rule, their visions of a post-Gadhafi Libya keep them at odds, split apart by ideological rifts. Yet this would be the preferred scenario.
“Agency Presence,” while potentially more likely, would be disastrous in this analyst’s opinion. Stumbler began life in this office, but it was a product of a particular time, and with the emergence of an Arab Spring that time has passed. The practical objections brought up to the original plan remain, and now, with reports of Libyans dying in Benghazi in order to oust their dictator, any incursion by the United States (either by American soldiers or leaders handpicked by the U.S. from the exile population) would be rightly viewed as a hijacking of Libya’s revolution, giving increased credibility to the Gadhafi regime and delegitimizing any pro-West government that would follow.
Jibril Aziz
OCSA
Jake Copeland leaned back, hoping to relieve a backache that had been troubling him for nearly a week. Backaches and hemorrhoids—that was how he described his job at parties when his friends asked with arched brows what life in intelligence was like. He’d sat at this desk for two years, riding in with the new administration, and had during that time watched many researchers run into his office with wild, unsubstantiated theories. Jibril was no more levelheaded than any of them, but he was smart and committed, and unlike most OCSA researchers he had Agency field experience. Yet as the child of Libyan exiles Jibril also had a personal stake in the region and sometimes couldn’t see past his emotions. And now this. “Stumbler, huh?”
“What have I been saying? They’re putting Stumbler into motion.”
“And when you say they—”
“I mean we. And it’s morally abhorrent.”
“It was your plan, Jibril.”
“And two years ago it would have been the right thing to do. Not now. Not anymore.”
Copeland liked Jibril. The man was obsessed; he was short-sighted. Yet his plans and schemes usually contained a nugget of glory, and it was Copeland’s job to dig it out. Working with Jibril Aziz was seldom boring.
“If, as you suggest, we are behind this, then why are you bringing it to me?”
“So you can stop them. Stop us.”
“You really think I have that kind of pull?”
The younger man hesitated. “Then send me in.”
“Into Libya? No way. No war zones for you.”
Jibril was rash, but he wasn’t stupid. “You’re right, Jake. I don’t have anything here. Nothing solid. But there’s something. You agree?”
“Certainly there’s something. I’m not saying there isn’t. But if—”
“So I need to look into it.”
Copeland chewed his lower lip, shifting to relieve his back of a sudden shooting pain. “Go on.”
“I’ll need authorization to travel.”
“You’re not flying into Tripoli.”
“Budapest.”
“Budapest?”
Jibril nodded. “Just an interview. A quick talk, and then I’ll tell you one way or the other.”
“Can I ask who you’re interviewing?”
“Our deputy consul, Emmett Kohl.”
“I’m afraid to ask how he connects to this.”
“Don’t you trust me, Jake?”
Copeland trusted Jibril, but he also knew when his employees were trying to manipulate him. So he listened with a wary ear as Jibril stepped back into time, bringing them back to Stumbler and the route it had taken through embassies and government offices before being returned to them, rejected. Jibril was stretching to find connections, but he was doing it for Copeland’s benefit, to make his acquiescence more bureaucratically defensible. It was, as Jibril put it more than once, just another research trip. Jake approved those on a daily basis. Finally, Copeland said, “Okay. I’ll write out an authorization and ask Travel for a ticket.”
“I’d rather take care of that myself.”
“Don’t trust Travel?”
Jibril scratched at the side of his nose. “Travel will put it in my file. There’s no reason for that, not at this point. I’d like a week off. Maybe more, depending on what I find.”
“You’re paying for this out of your own pocket?”
“I’ll save my receipts. Research can reimburse me later.”
“If you’re lucky,” Copeland said as it occurred to him that this wasn’t merely a way to keep his trip secret; it was yet another way to make his deal entirely acceptable. If Jibril caused trouble, he was just a wayward employee on vacation. Copeland remained blameless.
So he agreed to the time off, beginning in two days, and wrote out a memo to this effect for Jibril to pass on to his secretary. “Thank you, sir,” Jibril said, and Copeland wondered when he’d last heard “sir” from this man’s lips. Ever?
He saw Jibril again that afternoon, the young man’s coat folded over a forearm as he headed out to the parking lot. They nodded at each other, just a nod, but he could see that Jibril was walking on air. He was on the move again. Not all researchers felt this way, but Jibril had once known the dirt and grime of fieldwork; unlike many of his colleagues, he’d cut his teeth by seducing foreign nationals into betraying their own countries. Once you’ve learned how to do that to people, you develop a taste for deception, and drab office walls, carpeted cubicle dividers, and pulsing computer monitors feel like a poor substitute for living. So does honesty.
PART I
A DISLOYAL WIFE
Sophie
1
Twenty years ago, before their trips became political, Sophie and Emmett honeymooned in Eastern Europe. Their parents questioned this choice, but Harvard had taught them to care about what happened on the other side of the planet, and from the TV rooms in their dorms they’d watched the crumbling of the USSR with the kind of excitement that hadn’t really been their due. They had watched with the erroneous feeling that they, along with Ronald Reagan, had chipped away at the foundations of the corrupt Soviet monolith. By the time they married in 1991, both only twenty-two, it felt like time for a victory lap.
Unlike Emmett, Sophie had never been to Europe, and she’d longed to see those Left Bank Paris cafés she’d read so much about. “But this is where history’s happening,” Emmett told her. “It’s the less traveled road.” From early on in their relationship, Sophie had learned that life was more interesting when she took on Emmett’s enthusiasms, so she didn’t bother resisting.
They waited until September to avoid the August tourist crush, gingerly beginning their trip with four days in Vienna, that arid city of wedding-cake buildings and museums. Cool but polite Austrians filled the streets, heading down broad avenues and cobblestone walkways, all preoccupied by things more important than gawking American tourists. Dutifully, Sophie lugged her Lonely Planet as they visited the Stephansdom and Hofburg, the Kunsthalle, and the cafés Central and Sacher, Emmett talking of Graham Greene and the filming of The Third Man, which he’d apparently researched just before their trip. “Can you imagine how this place looked just after the war?” he asked at the Sacher on their final Viennese afternoon. He was clutching a foot-tall beer, gazing out the café window. “They were decimated. Living like rats. Disease and starvation.”