#KillAydaKhoury

Don't Trust Jasper

Farah Azran

Hariri Airport

Beirut, Lebanon

As soon as I turn on my phone on the runway at Rafic Hariri Airport, named for a political legend the Hezbollah killed, my screen floods with warnings from Ayda.

Hezbollah knows. Don't trust Jasper, he sold you out for Kavir oil.

In spy movies, the heroine always runs at this point, making a mad dash through the airport and maybe a martial arts montage. I wonder how far I'd get. The temptation never leaves, when you know you're burned, the impulse that says run, and fight when something stands in your way. In reality, it's a good way to get arrested. I start resetting my phone to factory and wait calmly to be let out of the plane cabin.

A security officer, blatantly wearing the yellow armband so I know what's coming, winds his way through the crowded aisle. With people crowded ahead of and behind me in the aisle, there's nowhere to go.

He holds out his hand, palm up. "Passport please."

"A little early for passport control," I say. "Thanks for keeping the Islamic State off our backs; no one would dare fly into this place otherwise."

He does not smile. I hand him the American passport, in my real name. North Ridge Consulting got it from Jasper's service as part of my sign-on package. It's a good fake, as good as any the CIA's officers carry, but my real passport is Israeli still. I told North Ridge I'd naturalize. I was lying, but I'll think about it if I can just get home. Israel doesn't recognize the expatriation America would make me swear for its citizenship.

The hezbollahi examines the passport too closely. "This is a forgery."

"It shouldn't be; I waited long enough for it." Commiserating. Bureaucracy is excruciating everywhere.

"Your Arabic is very good," he says.

"I worked in Palestine back when our allies were talking to Arafat."

He does not give me back my passport. "Come with me, please."

I've been through this before. It's as frightening as the first time. I smile and follow after him and wonder how I'm supposed to pull a fast recruitment on a Party member.

I hate Beirut. I love everywhere I've ever been except Beirut. I was here on my IDF tour for the invasion and the long occupation. I learned to dance cumbia and salsa here, in a fake touristy Mexican cantina near Bliss Street, when I was back here again for Mossad, after Hezbollah started shelling us and we came to give intelligence support to the IDF's Operation Grapes of Wrath.

I was here with Jasper for Buckley and Jenco, when we helped end the American Beirut hostage crisis. In 2006, I was pulled from a cozy station in Ankara to give support for the war that spilled over into the Golan Heights.

Nothing good ever happens in Beirut.

Airport security in plainclothes and some kind of intelligence resident in a suit come to escort me to the little room that every airport has. It smells of stale coffee and fear sweat. Here bribes are taken, deals are struck, intelligence agents are detained awaiting deportation to places with no sunlight.

There's an art to this. You will talk, so you talk immediately, you tell them exactly what you intend to, and you make a point of failing to tell them exactly what you want them to believe. I've done it all before. It's a recruitment dance. Maybe one day I'll lose a step and die like Buckley.

Airport security waits outside, flanking the door. The intelligence resident grudgingly lets the hezbollahi official join us. The hezbollahi leans on the wall behind me so the resident can see him and I can't. The resident seats me across the table from himself, under lights that make a loud fluorescent buzz that must be part of the presentation. No yellow armband for the intelligence resident. No cross; a silver band on his wedding finger, not gold. Muslim. Sunni or Shia? What party is he with?

"What do I call you?" I ask him.

Please give me something obvious. Hussein. Ali. One of those sectarian names no one can get wrong.

He examines my passport. "Sir. What's your real name, Farah?"

"I get this a lot, sir." Flatter him. Remind him he's part of your community— "You know how it goes when you travel declared. My name is really Farah Azran, I really am a CIA contractor, and I travel on my own passport. North Ridge sent me to Lebanon after the terrorist Ayda Khoury. Does this count as my courtesy call?"

I have no diplomatic cover here. They could call North Ridge and verify, promising my release, and use the verification as proof when they try me for espionage.

Jasper trades. Sell your MICE pitch with everything you've got, but don't forget Jasper trades.

I can only hope Mossad gave Dov permission to operate in Lebanon. He had better get my agent back.