Even so, there were failures. In early 2005, a colleague in the office, Hisham Minyawi, recruited a high-ranking official in the Libyan embassy named Yousef Rahim, using a double ploy of bribe and blackmail. There was a night of celebration in the office—cookies and tea for everyone—but it turned sour when, three days later, Rahim was recalled to Tripoli and summarily executed.
A few weeks after that incident, while Ali Busiri and his personal assistant, Rashid el-Sawy, were on a trip to Damascus to discuss new cooperation initiatives, Omar received a call in the office. A young man had been picked up on the Libyan border, hungry and dehydrated, without documents. He’d spoken to the border guards in Libyan Arabic, calling himself Akram Haddad. No one believed it, but since he refused to say more they e-mailed a well-lit photograph to Cairo, and each of the section heads was contacted by the fifth floor to help identify the stranger. Omar gazed at the image from the internal server, and in the features of that vacant face he recognized Jibril Aziz.
He had Sayyid drive him nearly eight hours to the border, where the guards—Bedouins, mostly, for they were the only ones who could take the climate—cleared out a communal dining room for the conversation. Their prisoner sat at the center table, a bowl of soup in front of him. Omar took the seat opposite and laid his fingertips on the edge of the table. In English, he said, “Hello, Jibril.”
To his credit, the young man didn’t react, only stared into his untouched soup. Only twenty-seven, but he had the skill set of an older man. Or maybe he was just in shock.
Omar continued in English. “There is no need for you to play this game. I am not going to take you away in chains.” He patted his pockets, coming up with cigarettes. Back then he never went anywhere without his Winstons. He offered the pack to Jibril, but the young man shook his head. Omar lit one and spoke quietly. “We have been watching your progress for over two years. You are really very talented—that it has taken this long for you to find serious trouble in the Brother Leader’s kingdom is a great feat. I know of good men who lasted less than a week before being returned in body bags.” He was stretching the truth, but it didn’t matter. “Can you look at me?”
Jibril did so. He was thin and too pale, his eyes still bloodshot; the man needed sleep. The border guards had told him that Jibril had appeared with dried blood smeared across his neck, but by then it had been cleaned off, revealing vertical scratches from his ear down to his collarbone. He needed a shave.
Omar said, “If you didn’t tell them anything, then your networks are safe. I will not be able to tell them anything because I am not going to ask about your networks. Of course, I would be happy to accept any intelligence you want to share, but I don’t want you to think that this is a prerequisite. We are going to give you a shave, some food, and get you back to Harry Wolcott once you’re clean and rested.”
Silence followed, and Jibril’s dark eyes bored into him. He had the eyes of a refugee, as full of mistrust as they were of desperate hope.
“Come,” Omar said, standing and making his decision quickly. “I am going to take you home.”
Had Busiri been in town, he would have called in for instructions, but this wasn’t the case. If he brought Jibril into the office, he would have no choice but to admit everything to Busiri later, and he wanted to keep his options open.
Sayyid drove them back while Jibril dozed in the backseat, and they reached Cairo by early morning. Sayyid helped their American guest to the door of Omar’s building in Giza. Omar took the stairs first, climbing to the fifth floor and letting himself in and telling Fouada that they had a guest. “Why didn’t you call me?” she demanded, suddenly in a panic, looking around their roomy home for things out of order.
“Because he won’t be here. You’ll never tell anyone that he was here. Do you understand?”
She did, though she didn’t like it, least of all when she saw the squalid condition of the man Sayyid was helping through the door.
They gave him the guest room, the blinds closed, and the planned twenty-four-hour stay turned into three days. By the first evening Fouada had warmed to him. It wasn’t so much Jibril she had warmed to, but the sudden presence of someone who, unlike her husband, was in dire need of her care. She washed him with wet towels and fed him soup the way a mother would feed a baby, or at least the way she imagined mothers fed their babies. On the second evening, Omar found her in the guest room singing a lullaby as Jibril slept.
In between these ministrations, Omar would sit with Jibril and talk, but never about work. He admitted to knowing of Jibril’s father, the great general Mustafa Aziz. “His death, and the deaths of the others, was an abomination. One of these days, Libya will be free of that man, and it will be because of men like your father, who sowed the seeds of change.”
Jibril looked at him, as if judging his honesty. “I’m not sure that’s true,” he said finally. “I don’t think anyone’s having an effect.”
“That’s because you have just had a grand failure. To you, all is destruction and woe. Give it a week, a month, a year. You will be optimistic again, and you will see that your work, as well as your father’s, is chipping away at the foundations.”
It turned out that Jibril’s employers saw it differently. After Jibril had been quietly returned to Harold Wolcott, orders came through from Langley. Jibril was blown, and therefore he was being recalled to Virginia. Before leaving, however, he stopped by and had tea with Fouada until Omar returned home from work. The two men went to the guest room and talked in English in case Fouada was listening, Omar smoking his Winstons. Jibril was less dejected than he had been before, but he had bad news. “Half my network is still in place,” he told Omar. “I got word from one of my Bedouins.”
“The other half?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how I lost them.”
“It happens,” Omar said. “Even to the best. How many?”
“Eleven,” said Jibril.
After a moment of silence to mourn the losses, Jibril said, “What would you think of working with me?”
“With Harry Wolcott, you mean.”
“I mean me. I’m being moved to operation planning. Sometimes I may need help with details. We’re not as all-knowing as we want people to think.”
Omar grinned.
“It’s not volunteer work,” Jibril said quickly. “I’m talking about exchanges of information.”
“Could you get clearance for such a thing?”
Jibril shrugged. “Asking for clearance might be a mistake.”
“I see what you mean,” Omar said, warming to the idea. “But I would be under no obligations, you understand? If I am uncomfortable—”
“Then it’s silence,” Jibril finished.
Though their business was taken care of, Jibril stayed for dinner at Fouada’s insistence, and over a platter of grilled lamb Omar watched how his wife fawned with the attentiveness of an adoring mother over this skinny little Libyan American.
2
The section blossomed under Ali Busiri’s firm hand. Largely ignored before, they now had a reputation in the ministry, for Busiri had become the go-to man for embassy intrigue. Visitors from the Military Intelligence Services appeared in his office with begging cups in hand. Most Thursdays, GIS chief Omar Suleiman could be found laughing with Busiri over tea. Busiri’s greatest pride came when he heard the timid knocks on the door from officers of the SSI—his onetime bosses had come to sit at his knee.