The Triple Agent

Baitullah could barely read and spoke little Arabic and thus could scarcely appreciate the Jordanian’s writerly gifts. But Baitullah was a man who lived according to his instincts, and they had pronounced the young physician trustworthy after their first meeting. The two had a mutual acquaintance—one of Baitullah’s Arab supporters knew Balawi from his days as a Web site moderator and had vouched for him—and the Taliban commander had been impressed by Balawi’s tale of being pressed into service by Jordan’s intelligence agency. Balawi’s training as a physician held immense appeal to Baitullah, who was afflicted with diabetes and leg ailments and desperately short of medical care for his sick and wounded fighters. Any lingering doubts were resolved when Balawi pulled out a large wad of bills, travel money given to him by the Mukhabarat.

But not everyone was ready to believe in Balawi. In the Mehsud camp, Baitullah’s opinions were often contested by his own kinsmen, particularly his cousin Qari Hussain Mehsud. Just six months earlier, Qari had beheaded a kidnapped Polish geologist in a grisly, videotaped execution, in defiance of Baitullah’s orders. The killing had strained relations between the cousins for months. Now Qari was eyeing the Jordanian suspiciously.

Outside the Mehsud clan, other groups also were openly suspicious of Balawi. Certain that he was a spy, Sirajuddin Haqqani joined al-Qaeda commanders in refusing to meet Balawi or even be in the same building with him. If Baitullah Mehsud were to suddenly disappear, Balawi might well share the same fate as the Polish geologist.

That is, if the Americans didn’t kill him first. The unrelenting threat of death from a missile strike had begun to gnaw at Balawi, just as it did others in the tribal belt. The low buzzing of the CIA drones was nearly constant now, and it so unnerved Balawi that he often had trouble sleeping. There had been eight Predator strikes in North or South Waziristan since early June, including two in the village, Makeen, where Balawi and a small entourage of Mehsud fighters had been bedding in different houses, moving every few days for security. They traveled in groups of two or three and avoided cars when possible.

Feeling safer outdoors, Balawi sometimes moved his pallet into the courtyard. He stared into a black sky thick with humidity and unseen threats, the interviewer’s question still flicking at his addled brain: Who are you?

The seed had been planted by Balawi himself. I could go to FATA, he told Ali bin Zeid one day. FATA is the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the strip of mountainous country in northwestern Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. The very name is a synonym for rugged, ungovernable, backward, extreme. It is al-Qaeda country. And Balawi was saying he had contacts there.

Bin Zeid was listening.

It had happened in February, during one of their dinners in Amman. The two had spent several evenings together, and the conversations had become relaxed. Doctor and spy had even found a few common interests, such as a mutual dislike for Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, the formerly radical Sunni Islamic movement that had cut a deal with the monarchy that allowed it to become a legitimate political party. Balawi had attended a few of the Brotherhood’s mansaf dinners, named after the rice and lamb dish that is a national favorite in Jordan and a popular choice at fund-raising banquets.

“The people of mansaf,” bin Zeid said mockingly. “They eat mansaf and talk about jihad without actually doing anything.”

Perhaps sensing an interest, bin Zeid also began to slowly pull back the curtain on the world of the Mukhabarat. The spy service’s reach is vast, he said, and many of its greatest achievements have never been publicly acknowledged. Bin Zeid explained how he himself had set up sting operations in which volunteers for holy war in Iraq were lured to a pickup point near the border, only to find the Mukhabarat waiting for them, he said.

Balawi respectfully nodded his approval.