Throughout the day, Taleb was the quietest of the men, reluctant to offer even the smallest glimpse into his past. The only time he ever really spoke at length stemmed from someone else getting a detail wrong in a story.
Jed was telling us the story of a nighttime raid on the apartment of a terrorist named Abdul al-Gazari in Ramadi, Iraq. Jed, being a bomb expert, lingered on the details of the improvised explosive devices he found on the roof of the building after rappelling in from a helicopter.
"Al-Gazari had that roof wired, man. The explosives could be triggered by any one of six different sensors. There was a motion detector, four or five pressure plates, a microphone trigger that would go off if it heard something al-Gazari wouldn't like, a radio trigger for remote detonation, and, my personal favorite, a light detector inside the processing unit itself.”
Volodya asked, “Why a light detector?”
“First thing a bomb technician is going to do when he opens the processing unit is shine a light inside to see the wiring. The light detector detonates the bomb when it detects a bright light on the inside of the device. A real asshole move, that detector. Took out a couple of our best guys when the Hajjis started using it.”
Jed continued, "Anyway, luckily, I had been seen al-Gazari's bombs before. I knew the central processing unit would be somewhere nearby. And al-Gazari had a little habit: he'd always put some litter over the processor to conceal it, and it was always an M&M's bag."
I asked, "Why an M&M's bag?"
Jed smiled. "He didn't like the M&M's ads, the ones where the female M&M talked about taking off her candy shell. Thought it violated the Quran. So he always liked blowing up the bags."
Taleb, who had not expressed an emotion as long as any of us had known him, broke down laughing. He laughed so hard tears started coming out of his eyes. When he finished, he said, "What rubbish."
Jed asked, "What do you mean?"
"Al-Gazari didn't leave the candy bag as a religious statement. He just needed litter for the device and was always eating those damn M&M's. He would eat them all day long, every day. It's a miracle he had any teeth left."
Annoyed, Jed asked, "And how would you know that, Taleb?"
"I worked with al-Gazari. He had spent four years in the Iraqi insurgency when the tribes started collaborating with the Americans and the insurgency collapsed. We at Fatah took him in straight away."
Jed demanded, "Were you helping him build the bombs I defused?"
Taken shook his head. "I didn't join Fatah until 2013, well past the time he was in Iraq. If you were there recently for a raid on his apartment, you either received false intelligence about his location or he went back to Iraq after…"
Taleb abruptly stopped himself. I said, "After what?"
Taleb cleared his throat and replied neutrally, "After the Iran-Israel War. After I left Fatah."
Jed asked, "Weren't the Palestinians allied with Iran?"
Taleb spat. "The Shia Iranian mullahs wanted us Sunnis dead even more than the Jews."
"Then why does Hamas work with them?"
"Hamas whores itself out to anyone who hates Israel, anyone who can get them Chinese weapons. They were the ones who actively wanted to collaborate with the Iranians."
With Taleb talking so much, I wanted as much information as possible while the getting was good. "And what did Fatah do during the war?"
Taleb grimaced. "Fatah assisted the Iranians as well, though somewhat less willingly."
Jed asked, "What do you mean?"
"Our chairman was afraid of the Iranians. He knew the Iranians intended to use chemical and nuclear weapons against Israel and that many Palestinians would die in the attacks. Actually, the Jews would have fared much better than us because they had the money and infrastructure for real bunkers, masks, and treatment.
"But Iran, well, if we resisted them, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guard would declare war on us. They would relentlessly target the chairman. So, he chose to remain neutral to save his own skin at the expense of his people."
I asked, "And what did you do in Fatah before the war?"
"I was… well, not exactly an intelligence officer. That was my title, but it would be more honest to say I was an assassin. I was never much good as a spy."
"Where did you operate?"
"At first, only against the Israelis. Setting up ambushes of IDF patrols, providing security for our leadership, that sort of thing. Once I'd proven myself in that grunt work, my superiors said I was talented enough to carry out sensitive missions. I worked in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt."
"Why did you join Fatah?"
Taleb considered the question. "Imagine you are a gifted child in a society where the same problem is in the background of every person's mind. Your loving parents get you an elite, expensive education. Is it not your duty to put your talent to the highest and best use to solve the common problem afflicting everyone you know?"
Jed said, "And the problem was Israel."
"The problem was that Palestine was not free. That was mostly, though not entirely, Israel's fault. Of course, when I joined, my thinking was not so nuanced.
"I joined Fatah as a cocky teenager, full of anger toward Israel and brimming with ideas on how to take the fight to the Zionists."
I asked, "And when the Iran-Israel War started, where were you?"
"I had just returned from a mission in Egypt. I was staying with my parents, when Iran made its stealth cruise missile attack. Our people were abuzz; this would be the best chance since the 1973 war to crush Israel. I received an urgent call to rendezvous with my commander. My mother sent me off with tears of pride. My father said, 'You have become a man, son. Make me proud.'
"When I met up with my commander, he told me that the Iranians, through Hezbollah, had requested our help. The Iranians had obtained chemical weapons, VX gas to be specific.
"They wanted our help with delivery of the weapons, which were too bulky to fit in a rocket. They needed to be brought into the country through our tunnels. Our chairman had agreed out of fear of the Iranians. My commander instructed me to bring a Hezbollah team into Israel with the weapons.
"We had, of course, looked into chemical weapons before and decided against using them. They were a greater threat to Palestinians than Israelis."
Jed interrupted the narrative. "Wouldn't it be worth many Palestinian deaths to destroy Israel?"
Anger flashed in Taleb's eyes. "Even the dumbest suicide bomber knows that it is immoral to volunteer your countrymen to die for your cause. When you were in the American military, would you have sacrificed New York to destroy al-Qaeda? No? Then don't ask foolish questions."
Douglas prompted, "Alright, you were asked to help Hezbollah deliver chemical weapons."
"I asked my commander why we would help the Iranians hurt us. He hung his head in shame and merely repeated, 'It will hurt the Zionists.' He knew that the chairman was acting out of fear instead of reason. Not just fear of the Iranians, though that was surely a major factor. No, the chairman was afraid of siding with the Israelis, ever, about anything. Such an action would be anathema to a large section of our movement, an unforgivable offense."
I asked, "So what did you do?
Taleb's expression hardened. "I was sent to meet a Hezbollah team in Egypt and bring their weapon into Israel. Knowing that the weapon would kill mostly Palestinians, I decided to prevent the attack. I told my fiancee to leave the country as soon as she could for whatever foreign country she could reach."
I immediately looked to Douglas, who appeared just as surprised as the rest of us by the revelation that Taleb had been engaged.
Taleb continued, "Before crossing the border, I contacted Colonel Douglas and told him what was happening."
Douglas asked, "Why did you contact me? You've never explained that."