“I could’ve done that.”
“What if it had blown up in your face?”
“Doubtful.”
“I’m supposed to keep you safe. If you do get killed, it better not be for something as stupid as this.”
During the drive toward Tubruq, weaving occasionally around stalled cars and children and goats that had broken loose, John said, “How long has it been?”
“What, been?”
“Since you were last here.” When he didn’t receive an answer, John said, “Langley isn’t sending in someone cold to chat with the opposition.” He hadn’t been told why Jibril was going into Libya, but with Libyan affairs the way they were, it didn’t take a foreign relations expert to figure it out.
Jibril thought a moment, maybe considering evasions, but said, “Six years.”
“Your contacts are still there?”
“Some, maybe.”
“Maybe? You’re taking one hell of a risk.”
Jibril sucked at his lower lip. “You’re with Global Security, right?”
John nodded.
“You get sent somewhere for a few weeks, maybe a year, and then you go home.”
“If I’m lucky.”
“But you’re never permanent.”
“I’m a temp. Sure.”
“Then you don’t know what it’s like to find a group of people and develop them and convince them, over years, to risk their lives simply so that you can get some information.”
As a contractor, John had spent a lot of his time being told by Agency employees what he couldn’t understand. “I do have imagination, Jibril. Why don’t you tell me what it’s like?”
“It wouldn’t make sense to you.”
“You owe them. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“Yeah, John. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“And Langley agreed to this?”
There was no reply at first, and John looked to see his passenger lost in thought, one hand gently stroking the barrel of the Kalashnikov. Finally Jibril said, “I think they trust me to make my own decisions.”
“That’s what they’ll say if it goes south. That you were making your own decisions.”
Jibril squinted ahead into the sinking sun. “Well, when you owe someone, you owe them. There’s no getting out of it. Not for me, at least.”
“Sounds like a quick way to get yourself killed.”
There were about four seconds of silence before Jibril snapped. “Fucking cynics like you ruin everything. It’s always easier to tear down than to build up, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” John asked, cynically.
“Try being constructive for once. You might break a sweat.”
There was no point answering that one, or answering anything. Harry Wolcott, the station chief, had made the assignment clear: Just get him to Ajdabiya. Alive. And keep your trap shut about it.
In silence, they passed a sign in Arabic that had been spray-painted over with WELCOME TO FREE LIBYA. Neither of them wondered aloud why it was written in English, but John believed they were both thinking it. He knew he was.
2
They took a turnoff before Tubruq, escaping the traffic and the Mediterranean and saying good-bye to the green of coastal foliage. The low, pale hills and long flat stretches were hypnotic and at times breathtaking. Occasionally cars blew past in the opposite direction, usually stuffed with men, one full of Bedouins with rifles. Some honked loud greetings. John kept the speedometer at about 70 miles per hour, watching out for boulders that might have rolled onto the road, or been pushed, and IEDs.
“Do you know what you’re doing once you get there?” he asked after the silence had grown tedious.
“I know who to look for,” Jibril said. “Some will still be around.”
“And you’ll be America’s ears in the heart of the revolution.”
“Hardly.” Jibril scratched his long nose. “This is bigger than me, John. It’s bigger than the Agency, no matter what Langley thinks. The Agency has a bad habit of doing the right thing at the wrong time, and that won’t happen here.”
“What does Langley think?”
There was a pause, and again John turned to look at Jibril, but his passenger was staring out the window at the desert creeping by. He heard Jibril say, “What Langley thinks is a drop in the ocean of history.”
John didn’t bother asking for an explanation.
Jibril finally turned back, his expression changed. “It’s all new. Geopolitics will never be the same. Remember the Green Revolution in Iran? The Arab Spring is Green two-point-oh, and this time they’re getting it right.”
Green, John thought.
“And until they invite us in,” Jibril continued, “we’ve got no business being here at all.”
“So why are you risking your life?”
He pinched his nose. “The point, John, is intelligence. Everything starts with a conversation. That’s how you show respect.”
He’d said that with an edge of disdain, but John was used to it. He’d been around long enough to know that most of the Agency viewed contractors as backwoods militia nuts, weekend soldiers disappointed by the drudgery of real life, by failed marriages and failed lives. Not that they were entirely wrong—it was just a point of prejudice with them. But Jibril Aziz was being opaque and contradictory. He certainly wasn’t the first Agency representative heading in to have a chat with the Libyan opposition—so what, really, was he going on about? He was acting as if he were the linchpin that would decide the fate of the entire nation.
“You get me there,” Jibril said. “That’s all you’ve got to worry about.”
“No, it isn’t. I’ve got to get out again.”
After passing a few tin buildings, they reached Al `Adam, a desert town on a limestone plateau. Had they continued to the southern end of town, they would have reached Gamal Abdul El Nasser Air Base, which had once launched Allied planes against the Nazis. But Jibril wasn’t interested in planes. He directed John to a small, dusty gas station—generic, no oil company logo on its sign—where they went inside and leaned against a counter, and Jibril held a conversation with the station manager. He ordered two Nescafés. As they were drinking, a tall, very dark Bedouin wearing sand-colored robes and an old pistol in his belt wandered into the station. John tensed. They’d left the Kalashnikov in the car. But Jibril stood, crying, “Salaam,” and the Bedouin strode briskly over. The two men embraced, even touching noses—they were old friends. The Bedouin broke out a huge smile, exposing a lost front tooth, and they walked outside, leaving John to the bad coffee. As he waited, gazing out the dirty windows at two children, no older than five, on the other side of the dusty road teasing a dog, the station manager returned to eyeball him, so John used hand signals to order some stale butter cookies with almonds the manager called ghrayba.
Jibril returned on his own, carrying a leather-bound book about a foot tall, then paid for the coffee, cookies, and gas. In the car, he put the book into the glove compartment, and they headed west into the chilly, open desert, the only landmark a long ridge of dunes in the distance. To reach Ajdabiya on the gulf, they were looking at three hours, minimum, along a road that was sometimes hidden by drifts of sand, but John at least understood why they were taking it. Jibril hadn’t been concerned about traffic along the coast; he’d just wanted to meet his contact in Al `Adam.