NICOSIA

“FORTY YEARS AGO I was supplying Stinger missiles to these guys, to help them fight the Soviets. Then, they were freedom loving patriots. After 9/11 they were mad dogs only good for putting down and so for the past twenty years I’ve been helping to hunt them to the ends of the earth. Now, they’re in command in Damascus, with at least our tacit approval and possibly even our assistance. Get the fuck out of here!”

Displaying the confusion which is said to be running up and down the CIA like a trapped animal, this old agent, now a contractor, sat in a cafe in Cyprus and just kept downing the alcohol from the bottle in front of him.

“They cut the heads off my people,” he added. “We have bounties out for these guys. Now they’re being hailed as liberators and talked of as a government in Syria.”

He drank some more.

“I give up. You know all the torture chamber stories that have been pouring out of Damascus for the past few days, that’s straight from our playbook when we change a regime. Our media people just lap it up and push it out. Shit, there isn’t a fucking country in the Middle East that doesn’t have some kind of torture chambers, including us. I know, because I ran some of them once upon a time. If we did this just to kick Moscow and Teheran in the balls, then I hope it doesn’t come back to bite ours. With any luck – for us anyway – Syria will just descend into further chaos.”