Dynamite Fishermen (11 page)

“Not at all. I had an engagement here on the West Side for lunch today and had no difficulty coming a few minutes early.”

“Sorry for the short notice, but I wouldn’t have asked you to come if it weren’t important. On Wednesday you asked for our help in stopping the car-bombing campaign. Well, later this afternoon the embassy will be giving the Deuxiéme Bureau some important new information about the people behind the car bombs, and I expect that Phalange intelligence will be given the same information very soon afterward. I want you to find out what the Phalange does with the information—in particular, I’d like to know of any arrests they make or any retaliation they decide to carry out. And one more thing: if anyone is arrested, please try to get copies of the interrogation reports. Can you do it?”

“Give me five days,” Maroun replied confidently. “There will be a meeting of the war council next week. I may be able to learn something then.”

“How about Wednesday morning at nine thirty, at your brother-in-law’s apartment in Antélias? He’ll still be in South America for another few months, won’t he?”

Maroun nodded. “Yes, the apartment will be empty through the summer at least. But just in case, look for me in the window before you enter. I will be standing at the southeast corner of the building if it is safe for you to come up.”

He took a folded wad of onionskin typing paper from his handbag and gave it to Prosser. The pages were blank. “Here is something for you,” he said as he handed over the papers. “I wrote this using the new secret-writing technique you showed me. It discusses Bashir’s new reserve training and mobilization scheme for the planned blitzkrieg against West Beirut.”

At that moment the elevator stopped at the building’s top floor, and the door opened onto a deserted hallway. Prosser pressed the button for the rue Hamra level and resumed speaking as soon as the door closed again. “Good. We can use it,” he said.

He inspected the top two sheets quickly, refolded them, and put them in the breast pocket of his jacket. He then took a sealed envelope from the other breast pocket, tore open one end, and handed his companion a thick wad of Lebanese currency.

“Your salary is in there for this month, plus the extra amount you requested for your son’s spring tuition. I’m sorry it took so long, but we hadn’t budgeted for it.”

Maroun’s face brightened. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “You have solved a very big worry for me.”

“Don’t mention it,” Prosser replied. “Uh-oh, we’re almost there. Quick, do you have anything else before the doors open?”

Maroun shook his head.

“Then I’ll see you again on Wednesday. When they open, get out without me; I’m going on to the lower level.”

“
Ma’assalama
, Peter.”

The door opened and the Lebanese left the elevator without looking back.

* * *

Prosser was barely a block away when he noticed a crowd of people gathered outside the Cinema Colisée on rue du Caire. The crowd watched impassively as four young men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles stood, weapons at the alert, flanking a white Range Rover and a silver Volvo sedan. While Prosser approached, the four men opened the doors to the cars and jumped in. An instant later the two cars began to pull away slowly from the curb.

Prosser’s attention was drawn to a distraught-looking middle-age woman in a shapeless blue housedress and white headscarf who lunged at the Volvo, reaching through its open rear window as if to bring the car to a halt. A woman some twenty years younger, possibly her daughter, seized a door handle of the Range Rover trying to run alongside while crying some urgent but unintelligible appeal to the driver. She kept up the chase for twenty or thirty paces until a hairy fist brandishing a shining nickel-plated revolver reached out of the opposite side of the sedan and fired two shots in the air. The woman released her grip and came to a halt in the middle of the street, her chest heaving from the exertion. Then, as the vehicles turned the corner and disappeared from view, she collapsed onto her knees. From an upper-story window nearby came the piercing trill of keening, that distinctive noise Middle Eastern women have made from time immemorial when in the throes of intense joy or grief.

As Prosser moved closer to the gathering outside the Cinema Colisée, it dispersed quickly as if nothing had happened. Shoppers resumed their rounds with downcast eyes, storekeepers withdrew shamefacedly into their shops, and elderly neighbors clad in housecoats and pajamas returned to their chores while trying to avoid eye contact with those around them. Not until Prosser was within ten paces of the spot where the Range Rover had stood did he notice a slender young woman with dark, shoulder-length hair standing motionless under the cinema marqee. Something about the way she clutched her handbag with both hands looked familiar to him, and as she turned toward him he saw that the woman was Rima al Fayyad.

“Rima?” he asked, unsure whether she had noticed him.

She recoiled for an instant as if startled and then smiled weakly. He grinned in return, pleased to see her again so soon. At breakfast and during the ride to her apartment that morning, she had seemed withdrawn and moody. Twice during the day, when he had tried to phone her at the Ministry of Housing, a coworker had told him she was away from her desk. He had intended to call the YWCA later in the afternoon.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said softly. “You startled me.”

Her chin quivered slightly and her lower lip formed a fleeting pout. Then she threw her head back and shook it vigorously as if to erase the aftereffects of what she had witnessed moments before. A delicate hand brushed a wisp of hair away from her forehead.

“Are you all right?” Prosser asked. “You look a shade pale.”

“It’s nothing, really. I was upset for a moment. It will pass.”

“What happened? All I could see was those two women trying to keep the gunmen from getting away. Did you see what they were up to?”

“I saw it all,” she answered in a way that made it clear she wished it otherwise. “I was stopping to look at the cinema posters when two boys carrying rifles jumped out from the door directly in front of me, dragging an old man in pajamas with his arms tied behind his back with electrical cord. While one held a gun to his head, two others opened the trunk, stuffed him inside, and slammed the lid. He looked so terrified, Conrad! He was moaning and sobbing, and he looked so weak he could hardly stand. By Allah, it was horrible!” She pursed her lips as if to keep from sobbing. Her eyes welled with tears.

“Try to put it out of your mind,” Prosser replied softly. “There’s not much anyone can do for him now. Come, I’ll walk you to wherever you’re going.”

“My car is parked in the next street.”

They walked in silence past the shining chrome-and-glass-fronted Al Ajami restaurant, still crowded with lunch customers, then turned east past a row of expensive men’s clothing boutiques stretching to the end of the block.

“Feeling better?” he asked as she stopped opposite a red Peugeot and unlocked the passenger door.

“I think so. But the old man’s face won’t leave my mind. I see him being stuffed into the trunk of that Volvo over and over again.” She hesitated, as if suddenly remembering something else. “Conrad, I heard one of the boys who brought him outside calling the old man an American agent.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Prosser replied. “The militias say that about anyone they don’t like. It gives them an excuse to kidnap each other.”

Rima shook her head. “No,
habibi
, you have not been here long enough to understand. For you, such kidnappings appear to be an absurd game played out among our parties and militias. Of course, they almost never kidnap foreigners—only Lebanese. But for the rest of us, being kidnapped is the worst thing that can happen…worse than a sniper’s bullet or even a car bomb. To be falsely denounced by an anonymous enemy, arrested and tortured, in most cases without even knowing the reason—that is one of the darkest hells that anyone can face.”

“But why should you fear being kidnapped, Rima? You aren’t involved in politics.”

“No, but it is possible they could mistake me for someone else. And there is Husayn. I fear for him more than for myself.”

“And why would Husayn be kidnapped? He’s been away for nearly six years. He’s way out of the loop.”

Rima shook her head gravely. “There are men who still consider Husayn their enemy for what he did before he left for Germany.”

“People he fought against during the civil war?”

She shook her head. “They were on the same side as Husayn. Some even claim to be his friends. But it is better that I say no more about this. Husayn would be angry if he heard me talking this way.”

“Don’t fret about it, Rima. I won’t tell anyone. Besides, maybe I can do something to help.”

“I do not believe there is anything you can do for him…unless, of course, you could persuade him to return to Germany. But Husayn refuses to leave until he has collected my father’s debts. He has become completely irrational about it.”

“If it’s simply a matter of collecting bad debts, maybe there is something I can do for him. American businessmen visit the embassy all the time with this kind of problem. Have him see me. Or, better yet, bring him along when we drive up to Byblos tomorrow.”

Prosser was eager for an opportunity to learn more from Husayn about his role in the Lebanese civil war, and from what Rima was saying, perhaps Husayn might be in a position to make some useful introductions.

“I will speak to him about it,” Rima said. “Perhaps an excursion outside the city would be good for him.”

“One request, though,” said Prosser. “Please don’t tell anyone besides your brother that I offered to help him, will you? Technically, you know, we’re not supposed to take sides in business disputes that don’t involve Americans.” He gave her a conspiratorial smile.

“
D’accord
,” she assented. “And I think Husayn would prefer it that way as well.”

Prosser put an arm around her shoulder. “Now, don’t you worry about a thing. And tell Husayn how much I am looking forward to his joining us tomorrow.”

Chapter 7

Humid night air bearing a faint scent of jasmine blew into Conrad Prosser’s face as he drove along the Corniche with all four car windows rolled down, tiny droplets condensing against a bare elbow stuck idly out the window. He made a left turn into the dead-end side street just beyond the Riviera Hotel and parked the Renault opposite an apartment building where he knew a handful of U.S. embassy employees lived. After locking his briefcase and jacket in the trunk, he set off down an unlit alley past a row of decrepit, one-story, whitewashed shacks that seemed out of place among the luxury hotels and apartment buildings that had grown up around them.

Having rushed from one agent meeting to another for most of the afternoon and early evening, Prosser was tired, hungry, and out of temper by the time he arrived for his final rendezvous of the day. His previous meeting had ended only twenty minutes earlier, and he had come directly from Ramlet el Baida without performing more than a perfunctory surveillance-detection run. When he entered the alley, only five minutes remained before he was due at the contact site.

Until that morning, he had been unaware that the meeting would even take place. On his way to work he had spotted a Pepsi-Cola advertising sticker the size of a beer coaster affixed to a lamppost fifty meters west of the Hotel Mediterranée. The sticker was one of two he had given Abu Khalil some six months earlier with instructions to fix it to the lamppost before eight o’clock on any weekday morning if he wanted to call an emergency meeting for the same evening. Since Abu Khalil was not the most energetic of agents, Prosser’s curiosity was piqued as to why he had called for the rendezvous. Most likely, he thought, Abu Khalil needed money.

Abu Khalil held the rank of major in the regular infantry forces of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist PLO faction that was categorized as rejectionist in the West because it would not accept a negotiated peace with Israel. By local standards, however, the DFLP was considered moderate. Time after time when disputes arose among the PLO’s member factions, the DFLP aligned itself with Yasir Arafat’s mainstream Fatah against the more doctrinaire Popular Front, Saiqa, Popular Front–General Command, and other die-hard rejectionists.

Abu Khalil was neither a rejectionist nor a Marxist. He happened to join the DFLP because his elder brothers and cousins had joined the group before him, just as they had preceded him into the Syrian army in the days before the PLO was founded. Indeed, Prosser was not entirely sure that Abu Khalil had any political ideology at all. He probably would have been just as much at home politically in Fatah, Saiqa, or the Popular Front as in the DFLP and had close friends in all of them. For the most part, Abu Khalil seemed to follow personal loyalties when choosing sides in the continuous infighting among the Palestinian and Lebanese militias.

Abu Khalil had formed his secret association with the American government long before Prosser arrived in Lebanon. One summer day in 1977, when the Lebanese civil war had been over for nearly a year and the Lebanese were beginning to believe that their long national nightmare might at last be near an end, Abu Khalil approached an American military attaché outside the officer’s apartment and told him that he wanted to speak privately to an intelligence officer.