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Arabs?” McGee asked.
“There are always Arabs,” Shafiq answered. “Egyptians. Bedou. But none of the al-Qa’ida—the ones from Yemen or Saudi Arabia. I have not seen them.”
McGee began to think he was getting the runaround. But he pressed on, tasking Shafiq to track down the rumors about personnel from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—Iran’s Seppah-e Pasdaran.
The subject was obviously touchy because Shafiq had gotten nervous the moment McGee said the magic words. Shafiq hemmed and hawed as only Palestinians under pressure can hem and haw. Finally, after an excruciating series of serpentine wavering, flip-flops, vacillations, and equivocations, he whispered that he thought yes, maybe, perhaps, it was possibly possible the Seppah might have a man in Gaza.
McGee’s antenna focused. “What makes you think that?” “This one man, he came maybe two weeks ago or so, Mr. Jim.” McGee nodded. Inside, he was seething. Why the blankety-blank had Shafiq waited so long to tell him. McGee controlled his emotions and his breathing. He waited for the Palestinian to continue.
Shafiq took his time. He lit a cigarette. Inhaled deeply. Blew smoke out through both nostrils and his mouth simultaneously. Finally, he took the cigarette out of his mouth. “This one man, he’s different. He moves around constantly. He has his own bodyguards—some are Lebanese from their accents; others speak in a dialect I do not know—and we’re not allowed to bring weapons into his compounds.”
“Compounds?”
“He moves every day and every night. Often twice. They say that sometimes he dresses as a woman.”
“Have you seen him like that with your own eyes?”
Shafiq’s own eyes focused on the ceiling.
“Shafiq—”
The Palestinian dropped his gaze to the floor of the dusty three-room flat just south of the Erez industrial zone McGee used as a safe house and drew a circle with the toe of his shoe. “I saw him only once, Mr. Jim. Only once.” “Where?”
Shafiq flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the floor, ground it out, pulled a pack of Marlboros and a Bic from his shirt pocket, lighted a new one, and exhaled noisily. “In Gaza City. Coming out of a house on Mustafa Hafez Street behind the Islamic University.” The Palestinian found something else on the floor to focus on. “I was assigned to guard the end of the street for three days,” he mumbled. “That’s why I couldn’t make the last meeting.”
McGee’s tone hardened. “You didn’t tell me.”
The kid’s eyes finally shifted past McGee’s face. “You didn’t ask.” “All right, Shafiq,” McGee nodded. “Go on.”
“I saw him when he came through the gate and got into the car.” “What does he look like?”
“It was dark. The windows of the car had curtains.”
“Then how do you know it was him?”
Shafiq shrugged. McGee edged his chair closer to Shafiq’s and stared coldly at the Palestinian. Quickly, Shafiq looked away. It was a cultural thing with Arabs. They detested being stared at; scrutinized. McGee knew it and was instinctively using body language to keep his agent off balance. It was, he’d discovered, an effective way of asserting control. McGee waited the kid out. Finally, Shafiq said, “I did see him, Mr. Jim.”
“Feyn—where?”
“On Mustafa Hafez Street when I was a part of the security detail. I did see him get into the car.”
“And?”
“He is shorter than you with dark hair.”
That wasn’t much help. “His face—round? Long? Square?”
Shafiq thought about it. “Round. But angular. A prominent nose, but not too big. Heavy eyebrows—like one big eyebrow.”
“Beard?” Most of the Seppah had facial hair.
“No.” Shafiq rubbed his index finger back and forth under his nose as if stifling a sneeze. “But a mustache like Saddam Hussein.”
“How did he dress?”
“Dark trousers, white shirt with no collar, I think. Dark leather jacket.”
The guy dressed more like a Hezbollah car bomber from Beirut’s southern