Bride of a Bygone War (28 page)

5. NOTWITHSTANDING ABOVE, STATION APPEARS HAVE MADE GREAT STRIDES RECENT WEEKS. NEW LEAD TO SYRIAN OPPOSITION GROUP PARTICULARLY ENCOURAGING. GIVE MY THANKS TO AMBASSADOR FOR HOSPITALITY ON RECENT SWING. HIGGINS.

Prosser did not need to have the cables referred to in the message in front of him in order to know that the Irish national in question was Lorraine Ellis and the Lebanese national was Muna Khalifé. The message was from division chief Twombley, whose pseudonym was Higgins. The Amman cable, he supposed, was probably a warning to Pirelli from the station chief in Amman about Lorraine’s impending arrival, while the Beirut cable was doubtless Prosser’s own message, sent two weeks earlier at César Khalifé’s request, seeking traces on William Conklin. Judging from the reference number of the director’s cable, it would almost certainly be found further down in the stack. Prosser thumbed through the messages until he found it.

CITE DIRECTOR 127841

SUBJECT: TRACES

REF: BEIRUT 68175

SUBJECT REF IS WALTER LUKASH. EVENTS DESCRIBED IN REF ARE SUBJECT OF SEPARATE CLOSED-CHANNEL MESSAGE. DO NOT REPEAT DO NOT DISCUSS CONTENTS OF REF OR OF THIS MESSAGE WITH LUKASH UNTIL DIRECTED FURTHER BY HEADQUARTERS.

As usual, the Headquarters trace results had come too late to be of much use. Prosser already knew who Bill Conklin was. More than that, he had already said far too much about Lukash to Lorraine Ellis. No doubt Walt would tell the division chief how Prosser had helped Lorraine find him, and then it would be Prosser’s turn to be called onto the carpet. Perhaps Lukash would leave Prosser out of it, but why should he?

Prosser pushed back his chair and had started toward the exit when he heard someone punch in the three-digit combination to the Simplex lock in the outside corridor. Suddenly the latch clicked and the door burst open. It was Pirelli, and judging by the scowl on his face, Prosser guessed that a visit to the ambassador’s office had been the cause for the chief’s tardiness. Behind him was Bud Strickland.

Prosser pointed out the three stacks of paper neatly arranged on the desk. “The cable traffic has already been sorted, Ed. Here, you can have the desk all to yourself. I was on my way to a meeting anyway.”

“Wait. Before you run off anywhere, I need to know your schedule for the rest of the day in case I have to reach you. I’m sending Bud over to Lukash’s apartment right now. If Lukash isn’t there, all three of us may have to drop everything and find him.”

Pirelli grabbed a yellow legal pad from atop the nearest four-drawer safe and took his place at the desk that Prosser had vacated. “Let me fill you in on what’s going on,” the chief began. “The ambassador read a report in this morning’s signals traffic indicating that somebody in Syrian military intelligence thinks we’re helping the Phalange to run anti-Asad dissidents over the border from Lebanon into Syria. The Syrians are sending a senior officer here to investigate, and if he decides that’s what we’re doing, he’s supposed to recommend some sort of ‘action on the ground’—you can imagine what that means—to make us stop.

“The ambassador practically foamed at the mouth when he talked about what he would do if he ever caught the Agency supporting Syrian opposition movements in Lebanon. I’ve never seen anything like it: eyes bulging, veins popping out all over, face as purple as a beet…and cursing like a gunny sergeant. Anyway, he’s scared to death that the Syrians will start blaming the Agency for the success of their dissident movements and may take out their frustration on the American embassy in Lebanon.”

Prosser and Strickland exchanged serious looks.

“What we have to do,” Pirelli continued, “is make sure that none of the equipment that we’ve already given the Phalange is passed along to any Syrian opposition group. Conrad, you remember the Syrian walk-in you talked to a week or two ago who said he represented a dissident officers’ movement? After we turned him away, he appears to have gone straight to the Phalange. And according to Lukash, the Phalangists are planning to give his outfit some of their own equipment as well as other gear that we’ve been giving the Phalange.

“What we have to do is come up with an excuse to recall our equipment from the Phalange until the ambassador can work something out at a higher level. Bud says that we can recall the secure-voice radios under the pretext of replacing the coding key input device. The radios are what the dissidents seem to want most of all. As for the rest, we’ll just have to think of something.”

“Roger that, sir,” Strickland replied.

“Connie, can you report back here at 1300 hours in case I have to send you over to find Lukash?”
 

“No problem,” Prosser replied.

“All right, then,” Pirelli went on. “Bud, hustle on over to Lukash’s apartment and work out some plan to get those radios back. Go with him to Phalange intel headquarters if you have to, but call me as soon as you know what you’ll be doing. If you’re able to make the recall, just say you’ve ‘found the technical problem and are bringing the faulty part back to the office’ or something like that. If you don’t have any success, say you ‘haven’t found the technical problem yet.’ In that case, I’ll call Colonel Faris for an appointment and try to work the recall from my end. Can you remember all that?”

Strickland cracked the knuckles of one hand and then the other. “Creating technical problems is never a problem, Chief,” he drawled. “Is there any other equipment over there you’d like to see break down?”

Pirelli smiled. “Just concentrate on those damned handhelds. Find them, and don’t let them out of your sight until you talk to me again.”

Strickland touched his eyebrow with his forefinger in a highly unmilitary salute and then winked at Prosser on his way out the door.

Pirelli immediately began sifting through the stack of signals intercept cables to find the report that had caused Ambassador Ravenel so much distress. It was only the second cable down, and he read it with intense concentration. At last he raised his head, still pensive.

Prosser interrupted him. “Excuse me, Ed, but I found an ‘Eyes Only’ in the pile that the communicator forgot to envelope, and I couldn’t help notice that it was about Walt. The cable says Twombley is recalling Walt for consultations over his ties to Lorraine Ellis; I’ll say no more about that. But the other reason has to do with César Khalifé’s daughter. Do you remember her? She’s the girl whose American husband disappeared five years ago at the start of the civil war.”

Pirelli said nothing, so Prosser continued.

“A couple of weeks ago, César asked me to do an updated name trace on the missing husband, just to make sure he hadn’t surfaced somewhere. Headquarters’ response arrived today. Brace yourself for this, Ed: it said the girl’s husband is none other than Walter Lukash.”

Prosser watch Pirelli’s expression closely. It did not change.

“So now Headquarters wants to know whether any of us knew about it,” Prosser began tentatively. “You were his supervisor in those days, Ed. Did you have any idea...?”

Pirelli’s face remained impassive, and for a moment Prosser thought that he hadn’t heard the question.

“That he married her? God, no,” the station chief replied sourly. “That they were seeing each other? Of course I knew. The girl was the niece of Claudette Hammouche. Claudette bragged to all of her language students about her niece’s dashing American boyfriend. Later, when the time came for Walt’s transfer out to Saudi Arabia, he seemed a shade too upset over the change in plans, so I asked him point-blank whether he might be leaving a girl behind. He denied it. But a few months after that, César told me about how his daughter’s husband had disappeared and it all came together for me. Still, by that time Walt was long gone and I thought the whole thing was behind us.”

“But what about when Walt was nominated to come back here for a second tour of duty?” Prosser persisted. “After all, César Khalifé was still our agent, and Walt was going to be operating right in his backyard. Did you really think Walt could spend two years here without running into somebody who used to know him as Bill Conklin? Or that the Phalange wouldn’t look into what he was doing here back in 1975?”

“When Walt’s name was first proposed, it was only supposed to be for two months, so I didn’t see a problem, especially since his orders called for him to keep a very low profile. Besides, I couldn’t very well object to something I hadn’t done anything to stop when I was his supervisor. So if Headquarters wanted Walt to go back to Beirut and Walt had the nerve to come, I wasn’t going to stand in their way.”

Prosser shook his head ruefully. “All right, then, read the ‘Eyes Only’ message and tell me what you want me to do. There may still be time to catch Bud on his way out if you want him to tell Walt to book passage home.”

Pirelli found the cable in the third stack of cables and read it quickly. When he raised his head, the scowl that he had brought into the room had returned. “Go find him,” he ordered Prosser. “The son of a bitch will never make it to Headquarters in time unless he catches tonight’s boat to Cyprus.”

* * *

“Finish your breakfast, Jabril. It’s time to go.”

The two boys stood on opposite sides of a red 250cc Kawasaki motorcycle, the long black leatherette seat serving as their makeshift dinner table. Two paper cups of orange soda remained balanced on the seat, and a pair of helmets dangled from the upswept handlebars.

“I’m still hungry,” said the younger, a curly-haired youth of about eighteen whose widely separated eyes, protruding ears, and thick nose gave him a distinctly simpleminded appearance. “Wait a second—I’m going back for a Mars bar.”

The older boy, perhaps nineteen or twenty, caught Jabril’s arm above the elbow to draw his attention and then released it. The former was tall and wiry, with broad, skinny shoulders, slender hips, and a skier’s tan that failed to reach all the way to the collar of his polo shirt.

“Come, on Jabril,” he wheedled the younger boy, poking him not so gently in the arm with his forefinger. “Did we make a deal or didn’t we? Huh? Huh?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” the curly-haired boy answered impatiently. “But what’s the hurry, Michel? I said you could ride with me as long as you want. I don’t have to show up at the restaurant to work for another two hours.”

“We agreed to start at seven thirty, Jabril,” Michel answered with a nervous glance at his stainless steel military watch. I had to wait for you nearly a half hour. Yalla. We’re late.”

“All right, all right,” the younger boy said. “But can I wear it now?”

“Not till we’re finished,” Michel answered. “That’s part of the deal we made, remember?”

The younger boy glared at his companion, then he snatched the plain white bubble helmet from the handlebars and pulled it onto his head. The other boy took the remaining helmet, a sleek, metallic-black racing job that extended past the chin.

“Are you sure you remember what you’re supposed to do?” Michel reminded.

“Follow him. And don’t let him see me,” Jabril answered.

“That’s right. And if you’re ever in doubt about what to do next, just don’t let him out of your sight. I’ll catch up to you on foot if I have to.”

Jabril boarded first and kicked the engine into life. His passenger raised his feet onto the rear foot pegs and held on with white knuckles as they set off at a high rate of speed through Achrafiyé toward Place Sassine.

“Stop! Stop right here! Do you hear me?” Michel rapped his knuckles against the hard white shell of Jabril’s helmet. The motorcycle stopped abruptly as a navy blue BMW sedan performed a U-turn in the rue Furn el Hayek and stopped at the curb five or six car lengths ahead. Suddenly the BMW’s brake lights grew dark and the driver’s door opened. A brawny figure in khaki slacks, running shoes, and a white polo shirt emerged, looking around as if he half expected to have been followed. He combed his long sandy hair carefully across from left to right to cover the bald spot at the crown.

“Is that him?” the passenger whispered fiercely into the white helmet in front of him.

“I think so. It looks like him. And that’s his BMW, isn’t it?”

“You tell me, Jabril. The paper said it was a gray BMW. This one is blue. And it said he had black hair, not brown. He looks like an American, all right, but is it him?”

“Yeah, it’s him,” Jabril affirmed.

“Then jump off and follow him, for God’s sake. And remember, if there’s any trouble, I’ll sound the horn three times and meet you at the
shawarma
stand by Sodeco.”

“And that’s when you’ll give me your racing helmet? Promise, Michel?”

“I promise. Now, go, and don’t let him out of your sight.”

The curly-haired Jabril left the motorcycle and his white helmet with his older companion and followed the American to the apartment block, pausing just inside the entrance. As soon as he heard the elevator doors open and shut and the whirr of the electric motors begin, he stepped into the lobby and watched the digital readout above the stainless doors advance slowly through the single digits and hold at six. Jabril started up the stairwell.

He had stopped to catch his breath on the landing between the third and fourth floors when the whirring began once more. Was the American descending, or had someone on a lower floor used the call button? What should he do now? If the American managed to escape, he would have failed this simplest of missions. On the other hand, if the elevator were descending empty, he would be able to pick up the American again in the lobby. The choice being clear to him, he raced down toward the lobby. But as he emerged onto the landing between the first and second floors, suddenly a sixtyish Lebanese in a gray gabardine work jacket held a push broom across his path.