"A standard surveillance operation. Absolutely no expectation of danger — other than the threat of random violence in that awful place, of course. Our man — his name was Clayton — and his assistants maintained strict procedural discipline. No one outside of the field unit knew of the assignment. Let me emphasize that — no one. If there was a breach of security, it came from someone within the group."

The State Department mandarin interrupted with a question. "Is there any chance your man simply drove into a firefight between rival militias? That he was an innocent bystander, in a sense?"

"Clayton had a good many years of experience in his work and he wouldn't have blundered into some crossfire between two ragtag gangs. The initial report indicates a carefully plotted ambush. The two cars received intense automatic-weapons fire and several hits from rocket-propelled grenades."

"Any indication of who supplied the weapons?"

"What?"

"The machine guns, the rockets. Who sponsored this? The Soviets? The Syrians? Or — perhaps this is an utterly Machiavellian thought — is it possible our Israeli friends decided to bloody our nose? With the intent of course of putting responsibility and therefore the blame on the Soviets and their allies?"

"We haven't had a chance to analyze the intent."

"When will you have the evidence from the scene? The forensic evidence?"

"We may never have that evidence. We simply do not have the manpower to send an investigative unit. And I don't know if the spent casings and bullets and whatever other evidence we could find would help us. Every weapon from every nation in the world shows up in Beirut. I think this situation requires interrogation of the personnel involved. To be exact, the Marine who survived."