"But which is of negligible value now." The State Department officer looked at his watch. "We really don't want anything to do with those groups. Not on a diplomatic level. For counterterrorism, yes. But his reports don't focus on that, if my memory is correct."
"No, his reports certainly don't. He almost seems to be pleading their case sometimes. Telling us of neocolonialist privileges and discrimination and institutionalized inequality..."
"As if we don't know the realities of demographics and politics there. Should we continue this over lunch?"
"Why? Until we've interrogated him, we'll know nothing more."
"A very unfortunate turn of events."
"True. Mr. Clayton had a promising future with the Agency. We'll miss the loss of his talents. But we will not miss the questionable talents — and the lectures on democracy — of Captain Powell."
4
Powell emptied the drawers of his desk into a cardboard box. The pens, the .45 ACP cartridges, the jagged crescent of shrapnel, the bundle of paperback Korans — all the tools and mementos of his short and difficult career with the Central Intelligence Agency went into a box with Arabic scrawl and the picture of a peach.
Outside the Plexiglas windows of the Agency's East Beirut annex, 155mm artillery shells screamed through the gray morning. Explosions came from the port. Seconds later, the booms of the guns firing came from the Shuf Mountains above Beirut. Both the Phalangists and the Lebanese army had headquarters at the port. Powell went to the window of the west-facing office and tried to look to the northwest. But he couldn't see the target of the shelling.
"Your friends are murdering Christians again," Fisher said from the door. A blond pink-faced man of forty, Fisher had relayed the cable from Washington. "Guess it's a going-away bang for you."