Bride of a Bygone War (14 page)

The sun was already below the horizon, and the purple glow in the western sky was rapidly fading to gray. The trickle of automobile traffic at the Sodeco crossing had dwindled to only one or two per minute, and in a short while the crossing between the city’s eastern and western sectors would be closed until morning.

Lukash watched another taxi, this one a battered white Peugeot station wagon, pull to the curb at the near side of the no-man’s-land and disgorge a single passenger, who was impossible to identify as a man or woman in the semidarkness. The lone figure approached the Phalange checkpoint without haste, apparently unaware that snipers often harassed the final hour of the checkpoint’s operation.

Lukash squinted in an effort to identify the figure that had arrived from West Beirut. At last he discerned a hemline just below the knee, then the side-to-side swaying of an oversize shoulder bag. The woman stopped to show her papers at the sentry bunker, and in the same moment, the Peugeot’s driver turned toward Lukash as if aware of being watched from somewhere in the darkness. A brief exchange of words followed between driver and woman, the woman paid her fare, and the driver returned to his Peugeot. The woman continued through the checkpoint to where Lukash waited just outside the illuminated semicircle of a street lamp.

“Walter, is that you?” came a soft voice with a lilting Irish accent.

“I’m here, Lorraine,” Lukash answered.

Lorraine Ellis emerged from the darkness.

“You’ve cut your hair,” he said, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.

She looked at him with tolerant affection, as if she had known all along that he would say something as unromantic and mundane as this, yet forgave him for it. “Do you like it?” she asked.

“It makes you look nineteen again.” He stretched his arms out toward her and she grasped him tightly around the neck. The fervor of her embrace surprised him, as if they had been separated for two years rather than a mere two weeks.

“I missed you,” she half whispered in his ear, still clinging to his neck.

“I missed you, too, Lorraine, but for God’s sake, whatever possessed you to come? There’s a war going on over here. I thought I told you to stay put till I got back in touch.”

She let her arms slip away from his shoulders. “Please don’t start in on that,” she chided him, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been in Beirut for nearly four days, and if I’ve heard that ‘there’s a war on’ line once, I’ve heard it a dozen times. Aren’t you going to ask me how long I’ll be staying?”

“I already know. Ten weeks.”

“My, aren’t we clever?” she mocked. “If you knew that, then you must have known where I’ve been lodging. You could have called me, you know.”

“I didn’t arrive till last night. Connie Prosser called me this morning to tell me that you were here. I must say, for someone who dropped into Beirut out of the blue, you managed to find me awfully quickly.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a rapid kiss, then he steered her around toward the side street where his BMW was parked. But after inserting the key in the door, he hesitated. “Listen, Lorraine,” he began as they crossed the darkened street. “Your coming here really wasn’t such a good idea. Beirut isn’t like Amman. You could get hurt.”

“Why would anybody want to hurt me? I’m Irish. You don’t know of anyone here who has any grudge against Ireland, do you?”

“Come on, Lorraine. Do you really think the trigger-happy kids who man the roadblocks in this town care whether you’re Irish or Iranian? When the place heats up, anyone and everyone is fair game.”

“All right, Walter. I get your point.”

Lukash turned the key in the passenger door, opened it for her, and then went around the rear of the car to the driver’s side. “I booked a table for us at eight o’clock. A Lebanese I work with suggested a place not far from here.” He looked at her skirt and plain white cotton blouse. “The only problem is that it’s rather fancy. Would you prefer we try a bistro instead, or maybe a garden restaurant?”

“Not at all. I have everything I need right here. You don’t think I would come all the way across town without a little black dress, do you?” Lorraine patted her black leather shoulder bag confidently. “All I need is fifteen minutes to create the effect.”

“In that case, maybe we should stop off at my flat first. We’ll have an apéritif while you work your magic.” Lukash drew his fingertips slowly from her knee up the inside of her thigh.

She took the hand and pressed it against her soft flesh. “Can’t you make this car go any faster?” she asked.

* * *

Lorraine Ellis raised herself onto one elbow and watched Walter Lukash as he lay naked on his back beside her. She reached out and stroked his cheek.
 

Lukash felt the gentle touch of her fingertips and wondered if she had been surprised by his new growth of beard. “How do you like my new look?” he inquired lazily. “Do you think I could pass for a Phalangist fighter?”

His hands were clasped behind his head and his ankles crossed, the bed sheet pulled to just above his waist. He turned his head to look at Lorraine lying beside him, her dark hair spilling over one shoulder and hiding her diminutive breasts.

She was thirty-two but still had a luminous creamy complexion and firmness of skin tone that few women retained beyond their early twenties. He watched her examine him with what appeared to be a mixture of curiosity and suspicion, as if she thought he was concealing something from her that she might be able to discover by a sufficiently thorough study of his demeanor.

“Frankly, a beard always makes me wonder what a man is trying to hide,” she observed.

“An intriguing concept, Lorraine, but it won’t get you very far in Beirut. Two-thirds of the men over here have taken to letting their whiskers grow. Don’t ask me why. As for mine, I just thought a beard would be a useful way for me to blend into the landscape.”

“Walter, you seem to come equipped with a plausible cover story for every conceivable thing you do. But, knowing you, dear, I’m not convinced.”

“Fine, then, don’t believe me. But if I’m hiding something, what could it possibly be? I’ve hardly been here more than twenty-four hours, for heaven’s sake.”

“I don’t know exactly what it is,” she answered, wrinkling her brow. “But I just get a feeling that you’re holding something back. I hate to disappoint you, darling, but you’re not nearly as enigmatic as you think.”

* * *

Lukash stopped the BMW opposite the entrance to L’Olivier, allowed the restaurant’s doorman to open Lorraine’s door, and then turned over the keys to a white-jacketed parking attendant. He slipped each a ten-lira note and led Lorraine across the sidewalk into the dimly lit restaurant.

Lukash had been told five years earlier that L’Olivier was one of the better French restaurants in Beirut. Now it was the only French restaurant he knew on the city’s East Side, and that only because the headwaiter, Boulos, had mentioned it at lunch. He let the door close behind him and approached the maître d’s stand with Lorraine on his arm. Boulos was busy scribbling but after a moment lifted his eyes and recognized Lukash instantly. He wore the same threadbare black dinner jacket that he had worn at La Chasse during lunch, but it had been freshly pressed and a white carnation was pinned to the lapel. His chest seemed to swell with pride at seeing the two foreign guests.

“What a happy surprise to see you again so soon, Mr. Walter! And how lovely mademoiselle looks tonight. Voila! I have reserved one of our best tables for you, in a corner—very quiet and very secure. You may be interested to know that the walls of this restaurant are made of limestone, nearly a meter in thickness. You need not be concerned about shells or stray bullets; such things have never troubled us at L’Olivier, even at the worst of times. Follow me, if you please.”

They followed the headwaiter down a long, narrow room past a dozen candlelit tables set with gold-rimmed Limoges china and white linen. Only two tables were occupied. At one sat a pair of stout Lebanese merchants in blue serge suits who eyed greedily the bottle of Burgundy that the wine steward was preparing to open before them. At the other sat an elderly Lebanese couple, elegantly dressed, together with a fiftyish woman, possibly their daughter, and a handsome silver-haired Lebanese in his mid-fifties, whom Lukash guessed to be the woman’s husband. Three of the four were too busy spreading liver paté on toast and passing around a bottle of white Bordeaux to notice the newcomers.

The silver-haired Lebanese, however, appeared to give a start upon seeing Lukash as he passed by. Despite the low light, Lukash, too, found something disturbingly familiar about the man’s face. It was a common enough type in Beirut, yet there was a certain distinctiveness about the jutting jaw, prominent widow’s peak, and thin, hard line of his mouth that Lukash felt he had come across before.

Lukash and Lorraine took their seats and Boulos returned with a wine list. When he looked at the Lebanese again, the man’s back was turned to him.
 

“Whether it’s any good or not, I insist on having a bottle of Ksara Blanc de Blancs,” Lukash said. “It was my favorite before the Events.”

“It is still available, I am happy to say,” the headwaiter answered. “The fighting has not affected the region around Jdita. The harvests go on as before.” Boulos gave a perfunctory bow and left them, informing the wine steward of their selection on his way back to his lectern by the door.

“Your enthusiasm over the wine is the liveliest response you’ve shown all evening,” Lorraine began with characteristic directness. “Are you still sulking over having been assigned here, or are you unhappy that I came?”

Lukash did his best not to change expression. Still, he knew Lorraine would spot the guardedness in his unblinking gray eyes that generally signified his unwillingness to tell the whole truth. “Let’s put it this way,” he began. “Since I have no choice about being in Lebanon for the moment, I’d rather have you here than not here. You’re about the only person I can vent to without getting myself in hot water. In Amman they promised me I would be here for a two-month TDY. Now they expect me to stay for a full two-year tour. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I can last here that long, Lorraine. I’m tired. I’ve been in the field for eight straight years. I’ve had enough.”

“Can’t you tell them that you’re only willing to stay for two months, as you originally agreed? Surely they can find someone qualified to replace you. I should think there would be a surplus of ambitious young men in Washington eager to prove themselves at a posting like Beirut.”

“Not as many as you might think,” he answered while glancing again toward the table with the two Lebanese couples. “Besides, when you’re offered an overseas assignment, you’re expected to accept it unconditionally. When I entered the organization, I signed a pledge that I’d be available for service anywhere in the world. And at the moment, Headquarters wants a journeyman-level case officer who has served in Lebanon before, speaks Arabic fluently, and has experience in both liaison and paramilitary operations. There simply aren’t that many guys out there who fit that profile, and if any of them had been available, I rather doubt that Headquarters would have turned to me. So if they tell me it’s Lebanon, basically it’s Lebanon or nothing.”

Lorraine’s eyes flashed with irritation. Lukash knew what she was thinking: that he was knuckling under without a struggle—and, even worse, without being willing to discuss it with her.

“So what are you going to do, Walter? Salute the flag and tell them you’ll stay the two years with the greatest of pleasure?”

“I don’t know, Lorraine,” he answered dully. “I need time to think.”

“In that case,” she responded, “I have the same question I put to you two months ago, long before anyone even mentioned Beirut: What about us, Walter? What about Washington?”

“I haven’t forgotten, Lorraine. We’ll still get to Washington, believe me.”

“Yes, I’ll be there in ten weeks, as soon as my contract here expires. Let there be no doubt about that. But what about you, Walter? When? Two years? Two and a half if there’s a problem in replacing you? Don’t you see, if you’re as serious about leaving the Agency as you say, time is running short. At thirty-four you could still study for an MBA or a law degree and start a new job at thirty-six.

“There are plenty of opportunities in the Gulf for someone who speaks Arabic and knows his way around. If you have any doubt of that, I know several people you could talk to. Any American oil company or defense contractor would be fortunate to have someone like you to help them handle the Arabs. The American businessmen I knew in Jeddah and Riyadh didn’t know a tenth of what you know about how to get on with the Saudis.”

Lukash set down the salad fork he had been toying with and leaned back in his chair. He had heard the argument before and suspected there was a good deal more to selling American aircraft, tanks, and missiles to the Arabs than met Lorraine’s untrained eye. As for his own qualifications, he was neither a trained engineer nor a military man, nor did he have any experience in business, despite having once claimed to be a refrigeration salesman.

“I’d prefer that we not get into the MBA scenario again, Lorraine,” he said. “I’d be crazy to quit the government and blow my savings on a graduate degree just so I could spend my days drinking tea in some raghead prince’s outer office waiting for an audience that might never materialize. Hell, fifteen years from now I can retire with a full pension. That’s not so far off. Let’s say I have to spend the rest of the year here. After that there will be two or three years keeping a desk warm at Headquarters, then a couple more tours overseas, then back to Headquarters again, and I’ll be ready for my farewell tour.”