Real-life bodice ripper enhances the aura of Shawkat

Asef Shawkat, who's implicated in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, began his climb to power by eloping with then-President Haffez Assad's daughter, against the president's wishes.

"Anyone who could go into the home of Hafez Assad and take his daughter away without his permission has the power to do anything," said a television newscaster in Syria who has met Mr. Shawkat several times. The newscaster, who originally spoke on the record, called back later, agitated, and asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.

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Mr. Shawkat's rise to the inner circle was far from smooth, and for a long time he was treated as an outsider. No one seems to know exactly when or how he met his wife, but it is common knowledge here that her oldest brother, Basil, who was being groomed to take over the leadership of the country, and her father were bitterly opposed to the marriage.

After Basil, the family enforcer, died in a car crash in 1994, the two eloped. Eventually the father sanctioned the marriage, Mr. Shawkat was welcomed in and he built a close relationship with one of the three surviving Assad brothers - Bashar.

In 1999, Mr. Shawkat was shot in the stomach and taken to France. According to an article that appeared in the Paris newspaper Libération in November of that year, Mr. Shawkat was shot by his brother-in-law Maher al-Assad, who at the time was a captain in the presidential guard.

It is impossible to verify the details of what happened that day, when the family was alone and Maher reportedly pulled a gun, but since then Mr. Shawkat has managed to consolidate his power with the help of his wife and the president.