Velvet Interrogation

I was walking a tightrope at the beginning, one I couldn't seem to get off. I looked at Nabil and saw all I could want a young man to be. And at night he completely satisfied my so-long-suppressed need to join freely in the sexual dance with another human being. He was an expert cocksman.

And it was quite a sexual dance. He was flexible and inventive and affectionate and uninhibited. And very early he used the word love-or at least he made love rather than performed sex in bed, except for those times we were both in heat for raw sex. And I was desperate to be loved, and to be wildly in love with him. And he made me believe it was mutual. I was floating in a sea of bliss those few months we were together in Beirut.

Then because of the frequent bombings in Beirut, our arrangement ended. I had to go and live in the embassy's residential compound and there was no way he could go with me. He wasn't documented as my dependent, and it would have brought on too much attention for me to try to get that done. He went to live at the university. And without him there all the time, the illusion began to fall apart.

I didn't like to visit Nabil in the university, the small room, the hurried quiet sex, meant we had to go to a hotel, and our affair took on a tired and furtive edge. And seeing him there with all the Arab and Palestinian students, I wondered again if he was some young radical who just wanted to get to America to blow something up. I was alone and lonely again and drifting away from Nabil, and I remembered that I wanted to go somewhere with my career, as it was all I had. And to do that, I knew I needed a suitable wife. Much as I resented admitting it, my wife's career, and her long-standing affair, had shaped my own less-exciting career, and without her I was a loose end.

I knew it was time I made the break, and I looked about for a possible wife. I found the attractive American widow of a Lebanese businessman, who was frequently invited to embassy parties, who had become a political hostess in her own right, and who was quickly becoming established as a powerbroker in Beirut. She was quite a bit younger than I was, but she was vibrant and sophisticated and presented herself as much more world savvy than would be expected at her age.

I had been seeing her for several weeks when I decided it was time to tell Nabil it was over between us and went to the university during the day when I knew he had no classes. And I discovered it was a good time to make the break. The door to his room was not completely closed, and he was on his bed fucking some other man. I left, devastated, but also knowing it was right for him to be with someone younger, and vowing never to return.

The next afternoon Nabil caught up with me as I was arriving at the gates of the residential compound and pulled me aside, "It's over," I said, trying to pull away, "I'm sorry."

Nabil visibly balked.

The guard at the gate started to come out of his sentry box and picked up his mobile phone to call in assistance, but I waved him aside and smiled as convincingly as I could, telling him that the young man was the son of a colleague and there was no problem.

"I love you, Chet. There is no one else," Nabil whispered to me as we moved to the wall at the side of the gate. "It was a mistake. He was an old friend from the camps, and it was not what you think." Nabil was getting teary and giving me that almost irresistible big-eyed pleading look. "It was not what you think; it was a mistake, I love you, Chet, but . . . he was an old friend. He'd lost his whole family and he is in despair here in Beirut and may lose his position at the university. I was comforting him, and it just got out of hand. He was a childhood lover. It just got out of hand."

He insisted it had "just happened" and the friend was gone now, but I brushed him off and refused to go to a hotel with him. I actually felt some relief and wasn't as upset as I sounded. He had given me an excuse to break it off—and that's what I'd gone to the dormitory to tell him anyway.

Only a day later I was called into the ambassador's office. "Chet, I hear you have been seeing Mariam Garfeh."

"Yes. She is a lovely woman."

"We'd rather you stopped," he said. "I can't say any more than that."

I looked at him in confusion, "Oh. I thought . . . she's at all the parties . . . her father was an influential U.S. senator."

"Just better you stop seeing her," he said, smiling sympathetically. And I was dismissed.

And that was the end of that. I knew a direct order when I heard it, no matter how diplomatically or veiled it was. I assumed that I didn't pass muster with Mariam's powerful family back in New York, and the State Department was just playing the heavy for them. I didn't mourn the loss too much; she would have been a great catch, a perfect cover for whatever else I wanted to do, but I saw no reason to risk my career by balking. I knew they were looking for someone to go to the Sudan, and I said I was interested. I needed to get away from Beirut—and from the desperate temptation to return to Nabil and . . . everything. But I weakened. I ached for him. I wanted him and no one else. I finally went to the university a week or so later and found him in his room, studying.

"Chet," he said smiling as soon as he opened the door. He pulled me inside, embracing me and kissing me and pulling me to him.

"So, you do study," I said nervously, wanting him to want me but sure that I was a fool to be there.

"Chet, Chet," was all he said, looking at me as if I had hurt him, not the other way around, and then it was me who fell on him.

"Nabil, I missed you. Nabil," I murmured. "Nabil," I whispered, on and on, as I kissed his face and neck and pulled his shirt from him, my mouth moving across his shoulders and down his chest, my teeth finding the hair that was suddenly growing there. Lost in the scent and feel of him, wanting him, wanting him. Him struggling to unbutton my pants and push them down as I bent to kiss his flat belly and pushed his jeans down off him, letting his growing cock spring free. A cock I was glad to see wanted me. And I wrapped my mouth about and sucked it as he moved his hips and moaned, "Chet, Chet, yes, yes."

Soon he pulled me up and roughly pushed me on to the bed on my belly and lay full length beside me, moving himself against me in a mild frenzy as we kissed. Demanding, strong kisses, his tongue invading my mouth and possessing it as he tore my clothes off me. I quivered and parted my legs and moaned as his lubed fingers found my asshole and lubed and briefly opened me to him. Then he made love to me. Rough, almost desperate love. OK, not love—sex. We fucked. Grunting, wonderful, animal sex. He entered me fast and rough, and I would have cried out if his mouth had still not held mine. I moaned instead and raised my buttocks to meet his powerful thrusts, wanting the wild joining of our reunion, wondering later as we lay together in the afterglow how I could ever have imagined settling for anything less.

I came quickly, and he carried on plowing me, past the first fever, until I hardened up again and we came together. And as I liked, he didn't pull out—his cock remained inside me going flaccid, but as I knew, not for long. There was nothing better than to sense it stirring inside my channel, feel it grow and stretch me, till it began to move again. And while I waited, Nabil whispered to me how much he had missed me and how much he never wanted us to be apart for so long again.

We were lovers again. We found Nabil a small apartment, and most days I'd go there in the evening and we'd fuck and then lay there, our bodies pressed together, talking in whispers about life and everything, and kissing. Perfect lovers. But shortly, much too shortly, my posting to Sudan came up.

"You can come with me," I said to him, "There is no compound there; I would be given a separate house, and we could be together. People here accepted that we were related. It will be even easier to establish that there. You can go to the university there, too. We can say you are perfecting your language skills, your Arabic skills now." But he looked horrified, and I wondered how much he really did care for me—and how much was just because I was useful to him.

A relationship can't go on that way, and I was again suddenly desperate to end it. But he picked me up from the embassy the next day and said, "I will go with you. But it will have to be secret. No one can know where I have gone, do you understand?" I went cold, sure he was involved with some terrorist organization. And knowing how impossible they were to escape, I was overcome with emotion. He looked pale and unhappy. "I want to be with you Chet. I'd rather it wasn't the Sudan, but . . ."

He was willing to risk his life for me, I thought, and I was lost to him then. We made love, and he begged me to fuck him. This was a turn in our relationship. Now it was he who wanted me to take control—to be the one fucking him. I was overwhelmed and took him gently, feeling joined to him in a new way as I moved inside him, hearing his moans and sighs and kissing his neck and melting to him. I never tried to escape from his hold over me again, because I was sure it was mutual. That for some mad reason he was as much bound to me as I to him. I floated on a sea of bliss again briefly as we made secret plans for him to go to the Sudan and meet me there.

Then there was the bombing that injured me slightly, and the public exposure as a U.S. intelligence agent—ridiculous and denied, but of course denials of such things never mattered. I have always wondered if Nabil organized it, if he never intended we would get to the Sudan. But I don't blame him. I have seen what he has done with his life, and the Sudan would have been a living death for him. And my injuries were very minor and led to a few more years of having him in my bed each night. So I have nothing to say but "thank you" to whoever planted that bomb.

I soon returned to America, alone, to a desk in Washington until I could wrap my affairs up for early retirement. Once identified as an intelligence officer, one's career was pretty much over. When I was home again, I did everything possible to speed up Nabil's arrival.

"Chet why don't you get a job at the university; then we can be together more," he wrote, just before saying, "I hope you have a very strong bed. Because when I arrive, I may tie you to it so I can take my pleasure with you all night, I have missed you so much."

I burned the letter, anxious that our liaison remain a secret. As we had discussed, he became the son of the family related to me on my mother's side who had died in Lebanon, and I would be hosting him while he was in the United States. Everything was respectable. Nabil always planned ahead and thought of everything. He always knew where he was going.

And with that letter, it was as if he had read my mind. Work was dull, and I had accepted that my career was on the road to nowhere. All I needed was a push, and an invitation to guest lecture for a semester in Middle East politics came at almost the same time as his letter to me arrived.

"I'll try being a professor for a year, and I'll get an extra-strong bed, with a headboard that restraints can be tied to," I wrote to him. That was all it took for him to reassert his control over me. He had only fucked me bound like that once before. But the memory of that sent me over the edge again. I could deny him nothing. I could hardly wait for him to join me. It was that easy for him to cause me to give up my government career altogether.

To the University of Virginia I wrote, "Thank you very much for the honor of being invited to lecture at your venerable institution. I accept with gratitude—and I look forward to the possibility of making a permanent arrangement of this."

Chapter Five: Chet

Nabil started at the University of Virginia at the same time I took up tenure-track teaching duties there, and it was strangely exciting to leave home together and both enter New Cabell Hall, where he was matriculating as a graduate student in linguistics and I was beginning as an associate professor of international relations in the Middle East Studies Program. If I had ever wanted anything else in life, I don't know what it was, and I doubt I was ever happier than the years I spent at UVa.

In those first weeks a part of me still occasionally stood back and wondered if now that he was in America Nabil would leave me. If now some wild terrorist plan would take control of his life or that he'd disappear to meld into American society, having gotten what he wanted out of me—passage to the States. But he didn't change, and he didn't leave—at least initially. Quite the opposite. He included me in some of his activities and made a point of inviting friends to our home. We had weekend BBQs for serious, rich, young Palestinian and Arab students. It was soon obvious that he avoided the more religious ones and the poorer ones.

He began to work out at the University gym and encouraged me too also. He deliberately lost his almost-too-young look and physically matured. And he got involved in the various Arab and Lebanese student youth groups and other such organizations on the grounds, settling finally on two or three political and debating associations he obviously thought would be useful to him. He also encouraged me to get involved in things.

"But Nabil, I am happy to take it easy. I have lost my ambition."

"Chet. I need you to get involved, to support my activities," he said.

"Why?" I asked. "Why? You are involved, they are your interests, not mine anymore. Why do you need me?"

"Chet. I cannot do this alone," he said, looking at me with those big dark eyes of his. "I want to be someone when I return to Lebanon. I want to go back as a man with a future, and I don't have many years to achieve that. You know people in Washington; you get invited to conferences, to dinners. You are still consulted on Mideast policies and events. You know how things work. You can get me introduced to people and into places. I can do the rest, but I need those introductions, the knowledge of how Washington works."

"What is it you want to achieve, Nabil?" I asked, feeling I was in something way over my head.

"Two generations, three even, have been lost, Chet. Three generations of the brightest young Palestinians and Lebanese have been lost. They have become radicals or moved to the West to escape the country of their birth. I want to change that, I want to go back to Lebanon able to work for my people legitimately, in cooperation with the West, with America. It's the only way we can ever get anywhere, the only way to find peace."

I sat there looking at him, seeing someone new, but not new, seeing him as he really was—or how I thought he really was at the time. Seeing him as serious in his ambitions and that all the things he did were planned and that I had somehow come to be an important part of that plan. I felt scared but proud. And grateful, grateful to be helping him. Convinced too that all that determination and intelligence could succeed if he had the luck to be in the right place at the right time.

I could not have denied him anything after that; his goal was my goal. I had lived in Lebanon, I wanted it to have a better future too. From that moment we were partners in every way. I wasn't even resentful in what else we came to share in common. I understood. I knew what she could do for him, and I no longer had a right to be interested in her. And, after all, I was the one who introduced them to each other.

Chapter Six: Nabil

"About Nabil's wife."

My head snapped up—but not any quicker than Chet's did on the other side of the glass. I was gripping the rail under the window so tightly that I was surprised it didn't disintegrate. I felt Joseph, standing next to me, moving his eyes from Chet to me. What was it Chet knew? Surely he couldn't have known. The question must have come from Joseph. What did he think Chet knew?

"Yes, what about her?" Chet was saying in the interview room. I leaned in closer to the glass, touching the cooling surface with my forehead for relief, willing Chet to maintain his cool as well. Thanking Jehovah that even he didn't know the full truth—that surely he couldn't know the full truth. I saw the tick of his eye, and knowing him as I did, I knew he was on the edge. I hadn't sensed Joseph to be as attentive as now. Did Chet know it all? If he did, would we even be here?

"Weren't you yourself engaged to her at one point?" The question was smooth. I knew that Moorhead was asking something that Chet's life hung on—but he was smiling his friendly smile, not revealing just how important this was, just adding texture and interest to an interview.

"Mariam. Mariam Garfeh at the time," Chet said slowly. I knew he was regrouping. Trying to maintain his composure. "Yes, I knew her when I was at the embassy in Beirut. We didn't quite get to the engagement stage. But you're really asking about Nabil and Mariam. But as far as I can tell, Nabil didn't know her at all then. I introduced them here. Nabil wanted to meet politically connected people here—astute and powerful here and interested in Lebanon. They only met here and married. But it's quite understandable, I think. Both with connections in Lebanon, and Nabil moving into the Washington circles that Mariam traveled in as well when she returned to the States. It was almost inevitable that they would meet, even if I hadn't introduced them. Of course I wasn't interested in Mariam in that way anymore myself. I'm happy for him that they did marry, actually. Nabil is a born leader, and Mariam had all of the important political connections—both in Beirut and here. It was a fortuitous union for Lebanon. Nabil probably wouldn't have risen so far and fast when he returned to Lebanon if he hadn't married Mariam in Washington. She was still well remembered in Lebanon. It was a perfect union."

"And your engagement to her. It was . . .?"

"Over nearly as soon as it began," Chet broke in, a bit of irritation showing in his voice. He'd already covered this. "I really wasn't ready for marriage again—having rather recently been divorced. And Mariam herself was recently widowed. We were just both on the rebound and thrown together in a flurry of embassy cocktail parties. We both quickly decided there was no lasting relationship there. I couldn't be happier for both Mariam and Nabil that they found each other."

"Yes . . . well . . ."

I drew in my breath. This was it, the apex of the interview. I had no idea where it would go from here. I was sure Joseph didn't know. But if he did, he had prepared Moorhead for this moment and this would be where the ax fell—for Chet certainly, but maybe for me as well. I couldn't believe that Joseph would give up the possibility that I could become president. But who knew where I fit into the overall operations—whether there was something even larger than me in play and at risk.

I had been so careful at the time—and so smug about how intelligent I was. I'd gotten to Beirut without Joseph and his cadre. I had thought I was smarter than he was. I had matured and realized the craziness of that later, of course. What if I wasn't smarter than he was then at all. But surely I would not have been permitted to get this far if he had known—if he had known that I had slipped the information to the American embassy in Beirut that Mariam Garfeh was a foreign agent—that she was targeting several of the embassy officers, including Chet. That she worked for Joseph. I hadn't implicated him specifically, but I'd leaked enough to the Americans that they knew where the threat was coming from and how serious it was.

That had been why the embassy had directed Chet to cut off his relationship with her. I'm sure even Chet hadn't specifically been told she was a foreign spy. If he had, I think I would have been warned by him, or seen it in his demeanor toward her when I hooked up with her in Washington.