![]() The book was the latest by Gérard de Villiers, an 83-year-old Frenchman who has been turning out the S.A.S. “It really gave you a sense of the atmosphere inside the regime, of the way these people operate, in a way I hadn’t seen before.” “It was prophetic,” I was told by one veteran Middle East analyst who knows Syria well and preferred to remain nameless. ![]() And most striking of all, it described an attack on one of the Syrian regime’s command centers, near the presidential palace in Damascus, a month before an attack in the same place killed several of the regime’s top figures. It detailed a botched coup attempt secretly supported by the American and Israeli intelligence agencies. ![]() ![]() Set in the midst of Syria’s civil war, the book offered vivid character sketches of that country’s embattled ruler, Bashar al-Assad, and his brother Maher, along with several little-known lieutenants and allies. Unlike most paperbacks, though, this one attracted the attention of intelligence officers and diplomats on three continents. Last June, a pulp-fiction thriller was published in Paris under the title “Le Chemin de Damas.” Its lurid green-and-black cover featured a busty woman clutching a pistol, and its plot included the requisite car chases, explosions and sexual conquests. ![]()
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