"A Marine? Does the Agency employ servicemen now?"

"A Marine Corps captain. At least he was. He's now on detached duty with us. He served in the Multinational Peacekeeping Force. Before his Beirut duty, he'd studied Arabic. He became indispensible for our contacts with the fundamentalist Muslim groups, the various Shia gangs."

"What is his ethnic background?"

"Texas."

"Would I know his family? Are they prominent in society?"

The Agency officer laughed. "I doubt it! He's just a shack-town kid who made good in the Marine Corps."

"He's a negro? Is that why he relates to those Mohammedans?"

"No, he's white..."

"Strange."

"He had two years of college on his own before he enlisted. Then he worked hard and scored well on all tests and finally got into officer's training school through the backdoor. Learned passable Arabic somehow. And French. He proved himself in a difficult situation we had in California. Then he volunteered for the Beirut duty. He proved to be a remarkably effective liaison officer."

"How did he survive the attack?"

"He was in the third car. Clayton and the others were in the first and second. Powell saw the ambush and simply drove away."

"Leaving the others to die?"

"Exactly. When he returns to Washington, we'll question him very closely."

"What do you know about his links to Muslim gangs?"

"I know that he's our best man in Beirut, so far as the Shits go — as I call the Shutes. In fact, dismissing him will cost you the single most productive source of street-level information the State Department has in West Beirut. He knows every fundamentalist chieftain and every officer on the staffs of the raghead militias, which proved invaluable during the stationing of the Marine Beirut Force..."