Dynamite Fishermen (10 page)

He quickly located them. “That’s an Israeli gunboat,” he replied. “They often come by here when the fighting gets hot downtown. I expect they listen in on the radio chatter of the militias.”

A youth on a motorbike shifted gears to negotiate the steep grade up rue Henry Ford, barely fifty yards from the Hala Building, but the whining of the engine sounded much farther away.

“Would you like a nightcap? I have some wonderful Armagnac…or would you prefer something lighter?”

“Do you have dry sherry?”

“On the rocks?”

Rima nodded.

“I’ll be right back.”

She was sitting on the sofa when he returned. “On nights like tonight it is very difficult to think of ever leaving Beirut,” she mused as she took the stemmed glass from his hand.

“Are you thinking of emigrating, like Husayn?”

She smiled wistfully. “No, only of returning to France to finish my thesis. I must complete it soon if I am to gain my
doctorat
in economics. And to do that I must conduct more research.”

“And after you have your doctorat, what then?”

She sighed. “If I return to my work at the Ministry of Housing, I suppose I will qualify for a higher position.”

“You don’t sound very excited by the prospect.”

“It is difficult to be excited about the future in Lebanon. When I left for Lyon during the Events in 1975, I was certain the fighting would be over long before I returned. In 1977 there was great hope that life could resume just as before. But in 1978 the fighting began once more, and the Syrians made it plain they did not intend to leave. Now every new security plan serves only as a cruel trick to dishearten those of us who still cling to hope.”

“So why don’t you settle in Lyon or move in with Husayn in Stuttgart?”

“As a Lebanese it is not so easy these days to secure permanent residence in France. Husayn is able to stay in Germany only because he is an engineer and the Germans need skilled engineers. My sister and her husband have temporary residence permits in Bahrain, but they will be leaving soon for Hong Kong.”

“Have you considered the United States?”

She cast a doubtful look at him. “Without family relations in America, I am told, it is nearly impossible to get a green card.”

“That’s generally true. But you could always study there and try to get a work visa afterward. It’s frowned upon, but people seem to do it all the time.”

“Can’t we discuss something else? Too much talk of the future makes my head ache.”

“Fine, what would you like to discuss?”

“You. Tell me about you.”

“All right. Where would you like me to begin?”

“Anywhere,” she said with a playful look. “Tell me about your tie.”

“Ah, you like my tie?” he answered, removing the thin gold tie bar and holding out the patterned silk for her to examine closely.

“It is a very pretty shade of blue.”

“Then it’s yours. I offer it,” he said in Arabic as he slid across the sofa toward her. “But if you want it, you’ll have to untie it yourself and take it.”

“
D’accord
,” she replied with a mischievous grin.

When she took the ends of the tie in her hands, he pulled her toward him and kissed her on the lips. She returned the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly and letting herself fall backward with his body on top of hers.

When she relaxed her grip, Prosser pulled off his tie and placed her fingers where they could go to work on the buttons of his shirtfront. He felt the warmth of her thighs as he ran an eager hand under her skirt and across her hip.

Pulling Prosser’s shirt apart and back from his shoulders, Rima tossed it to the floor and then arched her back to let him unzip the back of her dress. The moment he brought the zipper down, she pulled the dress over her head and flung it aside, pulling him off balance onto the carpeted floor below.

Chapter 6

Friday

Prosser pulled the last page out of his typewriter, stapled it to the others, and reread the entire report, pausing occasionally to make corrections in red ink. Satisfied with the results, he walked across the hall and knocked on Pirelli’s door. The station chief was also at work drafting a cable to Headquarters and seemed unaware that he was no longer alone.

“Excuse me, Chief, “Prosser said. “Do you have a minute to look this over?”

Pirelli looked up absently from the typewriter.

“It’s the final installment from yesterday’s meeting with Abu Ramzi.”

“Sure, Con, have a seat. Let’s see what you have.”

Prosser sat down on the leather sofa opposite the desk and leafed through a three-day-old
International Herald Tribune
while the chief perused the typewritten list of armaments unloaded in the port of Sidon during the month of June by the Palestinian Resistance and the Lebanese National Movement. Pirelli held his red pen poised over each page, prepared to strike any superfluous word; he did not touch pen to paper until the last page, where he wrote his initials to authorize the report’s release.

“Not much different from last month’s list,” Prosser commented when he saw that the cable had been approved. “Pretty dry stuff, but the analysts seem to like it.”

“As long as it keeps our reporting totals up, it’s terrific,” Pirelli replied absently, handing back the report.

“While I’m here, Ed, do you mind my asking if you’ve released the ‘Immediate’ cable I wrote first thing this morning about the car bombings on the East Side? It’s from Abu Ramzi, and I think Headquarters should have it right away.”

“I haven’t released it, because I don’t like the restricted distribution you gave it. I’m afraid we’re going to have to clear it for passage to the Israelis and the Lebanese G-2. They’re eager for anything we can give them on these damned car bombs, and Headquarters will want us to pass it to them.”

Lebanese military intelligence, known as the Deuxiéme Bureau or G-2, was the least incompetent of the Lebanese central government’s several security organs, although it was riddled with leaks. Consistent with supporting Lebanese sovereignty, the station occasionally passed information to the G-2 as part of an official liaison relationship.

“Come on, Ed. How many times do we have to go through this? If we pass this to G-2, it will be just like taking out an ad in the next morning’s edition of An-Nahar. It will leak to the Phalange the same day, and within a week it will get back to the Syrians and the PLO. Is that what Headquarters wants? Agents like Abu Ramzi are pretty tough to replace.”

“Believe me, Con, I don’t want to compromise Abu Ramzi any more than you do. But when we have a lead like this, we’ve got to give the G-2 and the Phalange a fair shot at it. I’m not denying there are risks to the agent, but we’re just going to have to take our chances.”

“You mean Abu Ramzi’s going to have to take his chances. Listen, it’s bad enough giving the information to Lebanese G-2. Fortunately, they’re too inept to do anything with it. But if the Phalangists get lucky and happen to catch whoever is smuggling those bombs into East Beirut, the Syrians will turn West Beirut upside down looking for the leak. And we’ll have no way of protecting Abu Ramzi if the trail leads back to him. If you insist on tipping off the Phalange about the Naaman brothers, at least leave out the item about the new explosives expert. Each item alone is dangerous enough, but both of them together make the odds go way up that the information will be traced back to Abu Ramzi.”

“Sorry, Con, but I disagree. If we pass the first item, it seems to me we ought to pass the second so that the Lebs have a better chance of wiping out the whole network at once. Besides, once the Naaman brothers are rolled up, the PLO and the Syrians will assume the brothers spilled their guts about the explosive expert while they were under interrogation.”

“That’s exactly my point,” Prosser replied. “If they go after the Naamans and the explosives guy at the same time, it will be obvious that someone tipped them off about both.”

Pirelli glared back at him but said nothing.

Prosser heaved a sigh. “All right, I see that there’s no sense in my arguing the point. I just hope the Naamans are guilty as hell, Ed, because I shudder to think of the misery they’ll be facing when they fall into the Phalange’s meat grinder.”

Pirelli ignored Prosser’s comment and picked up another unedited draft from his in-box. He laid it neatly on the desk blotter in front of him and then looked up with an air of finality. “I’m planning to pass the information this afternoon when I go over to the East Side,” he said. “If you need me for anything, I’ll be back by six.”

* * *

Hollywood’s latest releases no longer filled the screen at the Strand Cinema on Hamra Street. A double bill of Indian detective movies was playing there now, judging from the posters plastered on either side of the box office. Homeless women and children and men crippled by war took shelter under its sagging marquee, content to sit or lie out of the hot sun’s reach, oblivious to the scowls of the brilliantined Indian sleuths who peered out from the posters above their heads. Meanwhile, in the adjacent lot, platoons of bulldozers and dump trucks raised clouds of dust as they excavated the foundation for a new office block.

As he approached the cinema, Prosser tightened his grip on the plastic grocery bag clutched in his hand. Although the bag appeared to contain nothing more than a box of assorted Arab pastries, concealed beneath the pastries was a manila envelope stuffed with English translations of agent reports. Once a week he brought a sheaf of the handwritten Arabic reports to the retired Lebanese American grain merchant who served as the station’s translator; once a week he brought back the man’s output.

As Prosser came abreast of the cinema, a trio of ragged shoeshine boys ran out from the shade of the building to intercept him. They shouted, waved their blackened hands in his face, and did everything short of tackling him around the waist to make him stop for a shine, but Prosser ignored them. One by one they gave up and peeled off.

Farther on, a reclining beggar with trousers rolled up past his knees revealed hideously burned legs and held out a cupped hand in supplication, but Prosser ignored him as well. A moment later he saw a pudgy teenage girl in a black embroidered Palestinian tribal dress rise from the shadows and start after him with an infant under her arm, but by the time she got up he was too far away to be overtaken. It was not that he had no sympathy, Prosser assured himself, but when he was on his way to or from an agent meeting he could not allow himself to be distracted.

At the edge of the construction site just beyond the cinema he stepped gingerly along the narrow passage between the stalled lanes of traffic and untidy piles of planks and reinforcing bars stockpiled on the sidewalk. It was early afternoon, and the streets were filled with shoppers and workers going home for their midday meal and nap. Women in sleeveless summer dresses and French designer sunglasses shared the sidewalk with Muslim schoolgirls wearing dreary gray headscarves and matching overgarments to cover their ankles and wrists. Wealthy businessmen immaculately attired in crisp ivory-hued summer suits likewise rubbed shoulders with militiamen in starched fatigues and high-heeled flamenco boots.

Prosser stopped to buy a copy of
Monday Morning
magazine from a sidewalk news vendor, only to be told that the local English-language weekly had already been sold out. As he turned around to try the vendor a few doors back, he caught a glimpse of a clean-cut Arab youth in jeans and a pink polo shirt disappearing around the corner just a bit too quickly. There was something familiar about the young man; he racked his brain to recall the connection but failed in the attempt.

Prosser continued to move through the crowd in no apparent hurry, stopping from time to time to study window displays, remaining alert to any face, mannerism, or garment that he had seen since setting out from the embassy. At rue Abdel Baki he turned left, staying close to the wall to avoid the heat of the sun. Halfway down the sloping street he disappeared into the lower level of the Étoile Center shopping arcade. It was five minutes before two.

The center was an excellent place to wait unobserved. Although its main entrance and shopping area faced onto rue Hamra, it also had a lower level that could be reached by elevator, stairway, or street-level entrances at the building’s side and rear. None of these entrances was controlled by a concierge, and the center’s shops and cinema gave ample excuse for lingering at almost any time of day.

Prosser stared at the display window of a shoe salon opposite a bank of elevators on the center’s lower level. At the same time, a bronzed Lebanese businessman in his mid-forties wearing dark glasses and a perfectly tailored beige suit pressed the elevator call button. He fidgeted with the strap of a thin leather purse while he waited.

As soon as the sliding door opened, Prosser looked up casually from the display window and started toward the elevator. He entered behind the Lebanese businessman and pressed the button of the highest floor in the building. The moment the elevator began its ascent, the two passengers stepped back from the door and turned toward each other with relieved smiles.

“Thanks for coming, Maroun,” Prosser said. “I hope you had no trouble finding the place.”