We had driven the entire way from the Syrian border in silence but for the high-speed whoosh-whoosh of the windshield wipers, the crackle of lightning, and the bone-rattling claps of thunder in a storm that was only getting worse. Now, as we arrived at the hotel where Abdel had reserved a room for me to do my writing, Omar insisted I go upstairs and get started on my story while he went and broke the terrible news to Abdel’s family and to Fatima.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I’m going too.”
But Omar would not hear of it. He said he knew I was racked with guilt. He knew I thought it was my fault since I’d taken Abdel into Syria without authorization. But Abdel was a professional, he said. He knew the risks. He could have said no, but he didn’t. Abdel loved what he did, and he’d loved being with us.
“Abdel was my responsibility,” I protested. “I need to tell the family myself.”
But Omar was adamant. “For crying out loud, J. B.,” he nearly yelled at me. “You’ve got a major article to write. ISIS is about to launch a new war against the U.S. and Israel. You have two sources indicating they have chemical weapons. You don’t know when the attacks are coming, but the main commander on the ground in Syria says it’s soon. That’s it. That’s all you ought to be thinking about right now. You have to tell the world what you know. Lives are at stake. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent lives. That’s why we went there, because you smelled this story, and you were right. Now get it written and get it out. Because if the Ramzy story isn’t on the Times website by tonight, and isn’t on the front page of tomorrow’s paper, then Abdel Hamid died in vain. Is that what you want?”
It wasn’t, of course.
Omar grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
I knew exactly what he meant. I nodded dutifully. But as he pulled away from the hotel, I had no illusions I was going to be able to keep my promise.
The Mayflower had been a favorite of the international jet-setter crowd since the early 1960s, but this was my first time at the iconic hotel. Heading into the lobby, I checked in at the front desk. As the clerk made a photocopy of my passport and ran my credit card, I picked up one of the hotel’s brochures and began leafing through it. I had no desire to think about the story I had to write or any of what we had just been through. All I wanted at that moment was a hot shower, a hearty breakfast, and a large bottle of anything alcoholic. Preferably two. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew it was wrong. It had been exactly two years, three months, and four days since I’d had my last drink. But my willpower was shot. I was losing emotional altitude. What I needed just then was to drink heavily and without interruption.
Scanning the brochure, my eye was drawn to the picture of a beautifully appointed British watering hole. As the quintessential London pub, the Duke of Wellington conveys an air of timelessness, it read. Built in 1960, it has not changed over the decades. It is a treasure cave of obscure and amusing artifacts where you can genuinely enjoy a good pint with friends. Named after the first Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), the pub boasts a relaxed and cozy atmosphere. Every night, a happy mixture of local characters and loyal crowd comes to enjoy the friendly ambience, savory snacks, and fine spirits.
Perfect, I thought.
The problem was, the pub was closed. It might not open for hours. I didn’t have that long.
Bursting into my room, I threw my backpack on the queen-size four-poster bed and headed straight for the minibar. My hands quivered, and I fumbled with the keys, so it took me a moment to get the blasted thing open.
It was empty. I picked up the phone.
“Room service,” a young man at the other end of the line said with a slight British accent. “Would you like some breakfast this morning, Mr. Collins?”
“No; well, yes, but—never mind,” I said, practically tripping over my words. “Look, what I need right now is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but the bar is closed until happy hour.”
“Can’t you at least fill up my minibar?”
“I’m sorry, sir. We cannot do that until five o’clock.”
“But there’s nothing in there,” I protested. “No Cokes, no water, no candy bars, and certainly no alcohol.”
“I’m so sorry, sir. That is our policy.”
“Look, I’m paying good money for this room, and I’d like my minibar restocked immediately.”
“I do apologize. There’s nothing I can do.”
I slammed the phone down, then picked it up again and called the front desk. I demanded to speak to the manager. When he came on the line, I let fly like Mussolini from the balcony. After riding out my brief tirade, he told me there was nothing he could do. It was hotel policy not to serve alcohol until five in the afternoon.
“And frankly, sir, even if that were not the case, my staff and I are under strict orders not to serve you any drinks at all, Mr. Collins.”
I was rendered speechless for a moment. Strict orders?
“Why not?” I finally bellowed. “Orders from whom?”
“I’m afraid that is a matter for you and your company, sir,” the manager said. “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“You’re saying the New York Times won’t let me drink?”
“I’m saying they won’t pay for it.”
“Fine,” I said, finding the loophole. “Then I’ll pay for it all personally.”
But the manager would not budge. “Again, I’m sorry, sir,” he said calmly. “We do a lot of business with the Times. Many of your correspondents stay with us. I cannot risk our relationship with this fine client just for you, sir. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?”
I slammed down the phone again. I was seething, and I was more desperate for a drink than any time I could remember.
Then my phone beeped. I had received a text.
It was Omar. Take a shower. Get writing. And stop harassing the manager.
Omar knew me far too well.
18
Two hours later, Omar was still not back.
Avoiding the hotel’s public Wi-Fi, I plugged my satphone into my laptop and transmitted my two stories to Allen MacDonald. The first focused on the imminent threat of an ISIS attack against the U.S. and Israel and included the fact that sources in two intelligence services—one Western and one Arab—had evidence that ISIS had recently captured chemical weapons. It occurred to me that Ramzy had threatened my life if I wrote about the chemical weapons, but I dismissed the thought. This story was too important. For balance, I included Ramzy’s denial but incorporated extensive details from the material I’d been given on the ISIS coup near Aleppo. The second piece was a full profile of Ramzy, with biographical material and long excerpts from our interview. I also transmitted the digital recording of the interview so Allen could get it transcribed. He would likely run that, too, on one of the jump pages.
I caught a cab for the ten-minute ride to Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport, named after the former Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated by a car bomb in 2005, allegedly by Hezbollah operatives who some believed were working at the behest of the Syrian government. It was yet another reminder of the cruel and wanton violence of this crazy part of the world.
On the way, I checked my phone for the latest headlines. One in the Wall Street Journal particularly caught my eye:
Palestinian Leaders Warn Israel Must Agree to Divide Jerusalem or Peace Talks “As Good As Dead”
I also sent four texts. The first was to my mom. I let her know I was doing fine and heading back to the States. There was no reason to tell her anything else. She was an avid reader of everything I wrote for the Times. She’d know where I’d been soon enough.
The second text was to Robert Khachigian, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was Khachigian, now retired at seventy-three but still very much engaged with the intelligence world, who had first tipp
ed me off that ISIS had captured a cache of chemical weapons. He had pointed me to one source. I had found the other. Khachigian had always been a straight shooter with me, and I had come to trust him implicitly. Indeed, I had just included a quote from him in one of my articles, though not by name. I’d simply referred to “a former senior American intelligence official” who warned that “it would be a nightmare scenario if ISIS has acquired weapons of mass destruction, perhaps the most dangerous development of our age.” That said, I needed to look him in the eye and get his take on why Ramzy had flatly denied it all.
Need 2 talk ASAP, my text said.
The third message was to Ari Shalit, deputy director of the Mossad. At fifty-seven, Shalit was one of the most interesting operatives I’d ever met in the Middle East. Born and raised in Morocco, he looked and sounded like a full-blooded Arab to me, though he was actually fully Jewish on both his mother’s and father’s sides. He emigrated to Israel with his family when he was only fourteen, then joined the IDF and rose to become the commander of Israel’s most elite and secretive commando team, known collectively only as the Unit. Fluent in Hebrew, Arabic, French, and English, and not bad at Russian, he was quickly snatched up from the IDF by the Mossad and sent on some of the most dangerous and highly classified missions behind enemy lines in the history of the Israeli spy agency. I had met Shalit quite a few years earlier when I was trying to track down how the CIA and Western intel agencies had gone wrong on the Iraq WMD assessment. I’d used him as an unnamed source on a few stories about Iran’s nuclear program over the years. We’d stayed in touch on and off, but now I urgently needed his help.
Hearing ISIS has CW, I wrote. Want to compare notes. Can we talk?
The fourth text was for Ismail Tikriti, the forty-seven-year-old deputy director of Iraqi intelligence who, interestingly enough, was neither a Sunni nor Shia Muslim, and not an Arab either. Ethnically he was Chaldean. Religiously he was a Christian. Born and raised in Tikrit, the same town as Saddam Hussein, Ismail came from a military family that had been loyal to Saddam. But after the war, he had been recruited first by the Americans as a translator, then by the newly restructured Ministry of Defense as an operations specialist. He had impressed one supervisor after another and risen through the ranks. We had met while I’d been covering U.S. military operations in his country, beginning with the March 2003 invasion through the insurgency and the withdrawal of all American armed forces from Iraq in December 2011. A brilliant guy who spoke remarkably good English given that he’d never studied outside the country, Ismail Tikriti had his eyes and ears on everything that was happening. More important, he owed me a favor, and I was calling it in.
Found holy grail. Will trade for mtg w/ AK, I wrote, certain he would know I meant Abu Khalif.
With Shalit and Tikriti, I was chumming the waters. I needed both of them to bite to move the story forward. But I had no guarantees.
Once through airport security, I headed up to the terminal’s third level, where there was a Japanese seafood restaurant. I’d been there several times. But it was crowded. And I was alone. They said they didn’t have a table for one. But after slipping a twenty to one of the waitresses, I finally was offered a seat at the bar.
I hesitated. I was famished and still craved a round of good, stiff drinks. But Omar had been right. I needed to stay sober. I’d made it this far, more than two years without a drink, and I was scared how far I might fall if I didn’t stay on the wagon.
“Do you want the seat or not?” the waitress asked when she saw I wasn’t following her.
“Sure.” I shrugged. “Whatever’s available.”
The moment I said yes, I knew it was a mistake. Soon I was staring at shelves full of vodka and bourbon and rum and whiskey and all manner of spirits. The aroma of any one of them would have made my mouth water, but with the combination, I was in serious trouble. I felt my forehead break into a light sweat. Not enough that anyone would have noticed unless they were looking carefully. But I knew and winced. I also knew I should get out of there immediately, but I was so hungry, and my flight was leaving soon. If I was going to eat anything, it was going to be here. What choice did I have?
“What’ll it be?” said the young bartender, who looked like he was barely out of college, if he had even gone at all.
My name is James Bradley Collins—I’m an alcoholic, I said to myself.
I am powerless over alcohol—my life has become unmanageable.
Only a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.
“Perrier,” I said with all the discipline I could muster, “and some sushi, as quick as you can.”
The kid raised his eyebrows as if to ask, That’s it? But a moment later, he brought back a sushi menu and set a distinctive green bottle of French sparkling water in front of me with a clean glass, a slice of lemon, and a few cubes of ice. I poured half a glass and watched it bubble and fizz. Then I took a long, slow drink and closed my eyes.
One day at a time. One step at a time.
When I opened my eyes, Omar Fayez plunked down in the seat on my right.
“Looks like I found you just in time,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, startled by his presence.
“I’m going back with you,” he said, smelling my glass to make sure I had truly ordered Perrier.
“Absolutely not,” I protested. “You need to get back to your wife.”
“Who do you think told me to fly back with you?” he replied, pulling out his own satphone and hitting speed dial.
“What about Abdel’s family?” I pressed.
“All taken care of,” he replied. “I can tell you about it on the flight. But right now you’ve got a call to make.”
As soon as he handed me the phone, I winced. I knew full well he had dialed my editor, Allen MacDonald, at his home in McLean, Virginia. It wasn’t a call I was planning to make until I was out of Lebanon.
“You haven’t talked to him yet, have you?” he said.
“No.”
“You have to.”
“Not yet.”
“Now.”
Suddenly Allen was on the line. I sighed and began talking. He was not happy to hear from me for a host of reasons, not the least of which was because it was only five in the morning in the D.C. area.
“You’re going to need to rewrite your story,” he began.
“Why?”
“You need to take out the references to the WMD.”
“Why?” I asked, taken aback. “It’s a solid piece.”
“But Ramzy denied everything.”
“I quoted him,” I replied, a bit defensively.
“Why do you think he did that?”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“Did you push him?”
“You heard the interview.”
“I did.”
“He must not have authorization from Khalif.”
“Or maybe ISIS really doesn’t have the stuff.”
“They do, Allen,” I replied. “The story is solid.”
“But you wanted him to confirm it. You risked your life, and cost Abdel his, on the premise that he would confirm it.”
“I was wrong on that, but—”
He cut me off. “What if you’re being set up?”
“By Ramzy?”
“No, by your intel sources.”
“I saw the documents, Allen,” I protested. “I heard the tapes for myself. I have the transcripts.”
“Maybe you saw what someone wanted you to see.”
“I have two completely different sources—neither have ever steered me wrong.”
“What’s to say they weren’t coordinating with each other, planting the bait, hoping you’d be hooked by the prospect of a big scoop?”
“These two guys don’t even know each other—two different men, two different countries, two different agencies.”
“It’s not enough,” he said. “You need another source, from a third different country.?
??
“Allen, come on,” I said. “That’s impossible. I’m telling you, the story is solid. It’s a huge scoop. And we need to move on it before the Post or someone else gets it.”
“Forget it, Collins—I’m not going to be set up with another WMD story that turns out to be bogus,” he pushed back. “And don’t tell me this thing is a ‘slam dunk.’ Been there, done that. Get a third source and we’ll talk. In the meantime, rewrite both pieces ASAP. Take out the references to WMD in the Ramzy profile, and focus on the ‘new attacks coming’ angle in the ISIS story. That’s big enough news for now.”
“I’m about to catch a flight home.”
“Nonstop?”
“No, I have a layover in Istanbul.”
“Rewrite it on the first leg. Retransmit from Istanbul. And I’ll need an obit for Abdel by the time you touch down in D.C.”
I started to protest that I didn’t have the time, that it would be impossible to do the piece justice when I was flying across the Atlantic, but again MacDonald cut me off. He was in no mood for attitude. He said I owed it to Abdel and his family. He was right, of course, which made it all the more painful to hear. I said I’d call him again from Turkey, but I was fuming. I hung up and handed the phone back to Omar.
“I’ll do it,” Omar said without hesitation as he put the phone back in his briefcase.
“Do what?”
“Abdel’s obit,” Omar repeated. “I’ll write it on the way to Istanbul.”
“No, Allen’s right,” I conceded, ashamed at myself for having resisted the assignment even for a moment.
“Of course he’s right that we owe it to Abdel, but he’s not right that you can do all this on your own,” Omar insisted. “You rewrite the Ramzy piece. I’ll write the obit. Now let’s order before we run out of time.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly, unable to look Omar in the eye just then.
“Don’t mention it,” said the bear of a man sitting beside me. “I’ve got your back, J. B. Always have.”