Bride of a Bygone War (15 page)

“Now I’ve heard everything,” Lorraine replied, casting her eyes at the ceiling. “Fifteen years until retirement. Retirement, you say! If you truly can’t abide spying, Walter, why should you want to spend fifteen bloody more years doing it? And if you won’t go back for another degree, why not talk to your friends in the State Department about a job in the consular corps? I’ve heard you say scores of times that you’ve never enjoyed a job more than the one you had running the visa section in Delhi. Why not write to Jack Tate? Or Nick Latigan—I’m sure either of them would be more than pleased to help you.”

This was not the first or even the second time Lorraine had made the suggestion. Lukash had never openly rejected it, but he knew in his heart that it wouldn’t work. Once having known the thrills of agent meetings, planting listening devices in hostile embassies, and running paramilitary operations behind enemy lines, he knew he could not issue tourist visas for the rest of his working life. As much as some aspects of his job repelled him, there were other parts of it that he could not imagine living without.

The wine steward arrived with a bottle of Ksara in a stainless steel ice bucket. He cut the lead cap from around the neck and removed the cork, then he poured enough to cover the bottom of Lukash’s glass. It was full-bodied and fruity but otherwise without much character. How memories deceived, Lukash thought. He smiled at the wine steward and beckoned him to fill the two glasses.

“Ten weeks,” he announced, raising his glass. “Let’s make the most of them.”

Lorraine touched her glass gently to his and drank. Her eyes were moist with tears.

“Okay, okay, I’ll talk to the chief about it,” Lukash relented. “He won’t want me to leave short of a full tour, but he knows how much of a stink I could make if I set my mind to it. Maybe we can reach a compromise.”

Lorraine nodded and then abruptly snatched up her purse. “I’ll be back in a few moments. If the waiter comes, order me a
salade Niçoise
and some broiled fish. Whatever looks good.” With that she sped off toward the back of the restaurant, asked a busboy for directions to the ladies room, and disappeared.

As if on cue, Boulos approached Lukash’s table with a tray densely packed with whole fish and crustaceans: sea bass, grouper, swordfish, tiny
sultan brahim
, shrimp, and a lobster in the center. Under his arm were tucked two folio-size menus, each bound in hand-tooled Egyptian red leather.

“Would you like to make a selection of fish tonight, monsieur?” he asked, lowering the tray from his shoulder and inclining it toward Lukash to afford him the best possible view.

“Which do you recommend for broiling? Mademoiselle prefers broiled.”

Boulos set the tray on the table and withdrew a thick swordfish steak from the mass, then he laid a slender filet alongside it. “This one is for mademoiselle—
grillé
. But for you, monsieur, I recommend this one, sautéed in butter and garlic.”

“Both will be fine, Boulos. Bring them with a hearts of palm salad for me and a
salade Niçoise
for her.”

“Anything else, monsieur? Some mineral water, perhaps?”

“Yes, whatever you have, as long as it’s
gazeuse
.” Lukash paused a moment, looked at the foursome across the room, and added in a low voice. “One more thing, Boulos. Do you happen to know the name of the man sitting with his back to me at the table by the kitchen door? I feel I’ve met him somewhere before.”

Boulos seemed to hesitate before answering. “His name is Victor Hammouche. A civil engineer. He lives in Kuwait since the Events.”

“Hammouche,” Lukash repeated, then bit his lip. “And is that his wife sitting next to him?”

“No, his sister. His wife took ill tonight.” Boulos spoke slowly now and seemed to focus on Lukash’s reaction to his words. “For some years his wife taught Arabic and French at the American embassy. Claudette Hammouche—perhaps you have met her. Claudette knew all the Americans in Beirut in those days.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lukash replied coolly, lowering his wine glass to the table to stop his hand from trembling. “I didn’t go to the American embassy very often then.”
 

For a fleeting moment, Lukash remembered himself seated at a crowded table along the edge of the dance floor in the Phoenicia Hotel’s penthouse nightclub, a twenty-piece Egyptian orchestra playing at full volume only a few meters away. On that night the matronly Claudette Hammouche had winked at William Conklin across the table before raising her fluted champagne glass in a toast. Victor Hammouche used the moment to seize the bottle of Lanson Brut from the cooler by its linen-draped neck and filled his niece’s glass until the bubbly foam cascaded down the side and over her delicate fingers. César Khalifé discreetly raised a manicured hand to signal the need for a fresh bottle.

“Your flight does not leave until tomorrow afternoon. There is more than enough time for another bottle,” César had assured him.

“But this is our last night together, Papa,” Muna protested with a demure laugh. She was wearing the white sleeveless dress he had bought for her in Athens, and it took all his self-control not to reach out and bury his face in her perfumed hair where her shoulder met the base of her neck.

Suddenly Boulos loomed once more beside Lukash in his timeless black dinner jacket, watching him closely as if he had guessed that his guest’s thoughts had been somewhere else.

“You still remember, don’t you, Boulos? The woman you said I brought to your restaurant five years ago for
mezzé
. You not only know her; you know her family, don’t you?”

The maître d’hôtel remained expressionless.

“Please, Boulos, don’t say anything to them. For once, pretend that damned photographic memory of yours failed you. Believe me, it will be better for everybody.”

Chapter 7

Harry Landers stood before his office door like a nervous watchdog whose ears have already detected a suspicious rustling somewhere in the bushes. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Conrad Prosser approaching. “He’s been here nearly a half hour, Con. He insists on talking to the military attaché. I told him Colonel Ross isn’t available but I’d find somebody else he could talk to. Pirelli said to call you.”

“Who is he?”

“He has a Syrian passport in the name of Mazen Barghouti. Date and place of birth: 1954, Aleppo. Occupation: engineer. Religion: Sunni Muslim. Passport is genuine, but it was issued last week, so it’s hard to say much more. He insists he has important information for us, but that’s as far as he’ll go.”

“He’s been frisked?”

“Twice. Once when he came into the visa area and once again before coming up here. Do you want me to call a marine to stand outside the door?”

“When you get a chance. Meanwhile, I’ll go in and hear him out. Don’t stray too far; when we’re finished, you’ll need to show our visitor out the back way.”

Prosser entered the office and closed the door behind him. At the far end of Harry Landers’s leather sofa sat a tall and very lean Arab in his mid- to late twenties, legs crossed, blowing rings into a billowing haze of bluish-gray cigarette smoke. His long face had an intense, almost ascetic look that seemed oddly inconsistent with his ultrashort military haircut and the brown tweed suit that appeared to have been made for someone ten or fifteen pounds heavier.

Without apparent nervousness or haste, the Syrian parked the cigarette in an ashtray on the low table before him and stood to face Prosser. His dark eyes met the American’s and left an immediate impression of intelligent self-assurance.

“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Barghouti,” Prosser began in Arabic as he took the opposite end of the sofa and scribbled a few words along the margin of his legal pad. “My name is Bill Armstrong. I hope you will excuse me for having kept you waiting.” He offered his hand and the Arab took it long enough for a single up-and-down movement.

“As Harry probably told you, I work closely with the American military attaché. I understand you have some information you would like to share with the attaché.”

“Yes, but I wish to speak to him directly.”

“I understand that. But, unfortunately, Colonel Ross is not in the building this morning. If you will tell me what you would like to discuss with him, perhaps I can arrange for you to meet him another time.”

“You are in the American army, then—or in the
mukhabarat
.”

“I am with American intelligence. Whatever you say to me will be passed on to the proper person in the American government. But first I need to know a few things about you. For example, is Barghouti your real name?”

The Arab shook his head.

“I didn’t think so.” Prosser went on. “Your government doesn’t issue passports to men on active military duty, so if you are who you say you are, the passport couldn’t be yours. What branch are you in: army, air force, defense companies?”

“I am a flight lieutenant in the air force. The passport was issued to my cousin, who resembles me but is still a student.”

“Then you have taken some risks to come here, haven’t you, Mazen? You can call me Bill, by the way. Bill isn’t my name any more than yours is Mazen, but there’s no harm in that. So tell me, was coming to the American embassy your own idea, or did you come on behalf of your organization?”

A wry smile began to form at the corners of Mazen’s mouth and spread slowly across his face. “I was opposed to coming here. The others insisted that I do it. They said that without help from the Americans or the Phalangists, we would all be captured and killed over the course of time without achieving any of our goals.”

“What others? And what are the goals that you want us to help you achieve?”

“We are a secret organization of young officers, mostly in the air force and army, and we call ourselves the Syrian Free Officers’ Movement. Our objective is to overthrow the criminal Hafez al-Asad and his band of Alawite gangsters. We ask your government for no money or weapons, only defensive materials: radios, medical supplies, and some specialized equipment that we need to help us carry out our activities.” The Syrian stopped and looked expectantly at Prosser, as if awaiting a decision from him at that very moment.

“Why don’t you tell me some more about this movement of yours, Mazen? How many members does it have, and what are their ranks and unit affiliations? What operations have you carried out so far?”

“I am prepared to tell you everything you may wish to know about us, but only after you agree to help us.”

Prosser let out a short laugh. “I think you may be putting the cart before the horse, Mazen. The people who will be deciding whether to help you are in Washington, not here. And before they can decide to do anything for you, they will want to know every possible detail about you. That’s why I’m here to help you. I will write it all down, send it by satellite to Washington, and let you know their answer as soon as it comes in.” He flashed the Syrian his friendliest all-American smile.

“If I reveal these details to you and you decide not to help us, how can we be certain that what I have told you will not somehow find its way into the hands of Hafez al-Asad’s security organs?”

“Listen, Mazen,” Prosser continued amiably. “The United States is not at war with Syria. We have our embassy in Damascus, and Syria has its embassy in Washington. Friendly governments simply do not go around giving material support to insurgent groups aiming to overthrow each other. Besides, how do I know that you haven’t been sent from Damascus to find out whether the American embassy in Beirut is arming Syrian opposition movements? If you have been, and I offer to help you, it seems likely to me that somebody in Damascus might just arrange to have me assassinated as a warning to others not to arm Syrian oppositionists. See what I mean? All I can promise you is that I will relay your information to Washington and that we will keep it a strict secret. You have my word on that. The rest is up to Washington.”

The Arab smiled weakly at Prosser’s suggestion that he might be an agent provocateur and then seemed to weigh his alternatives. “There are not yet many of us, and we lack experience in these matters. Yet we cannot succeed without your help. Tell me again what you wish to know about us and I will answer what I can.”

Chapter 8

“Hey, Connie, get on over here,” Harry Landers bellowed in a voice that could have been heard by the street peddlers on the Corniche eight floors below. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Prosser stopped his progress toward the dining room, where he had caught a glimpse of their host, Muriel Benson, supervising her Lebanese steward as the youth gingerly lowered a heaping platter of curried lamb onto the sideboard. Harry’s voice had come from the balcony. Prosser turned that way and was amused to find the burly vice consul backed against the iron railing by a middle-aged Lebanese couple whose cross-examination appeared to have him on the ropes.

The husband had a jutting jaw, bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows, a matching mustache, and a head of thick, silver-gray hair with a prominent widow’s peak. Something about the man’s thin-lipped slit of a mouth, however, put Prosser on his guard. At the same time, the man’s wife, a full-bosomed woman dressed in an expensive-looking dress of dark blue silk chiffon, to all appearances seemed a warm and good-humored soul, ready to cajole where her husband appeared intent upon intimidation.