Dynamite Fishermen (19 page)

Prosser seated himself on a chair across from Harry’s desk. “Listen, I don’t want to take up much of your time, Harry, but I have a few names I’d like you to run through your visa refusal files. Can you do it?”

Harry glanced at his watch. “Sure, what the hell. We’ve had a relatively light load this morning compared to what we geared up for. Should I have one of the girls look up the names, or is it something you’d like me to handle personally?”

“There’s no problem with letting the locals handle it. Just do me a favor and write the names and biographic data in your own handwriting. Then wait fifteen or twenty minutes before you give the names to them so that they won’t assume right away that I’m the one who’s asking. You know the routine. What I’m looking for here is home addresses, telephone numbers, employers, references, and any other information you might be able to get from their applications. If you get a hit on any of the names, just give me a photocopy of the application and any supporting documents. I’ll take it from there.”

“Sure thing,” Harry replied. “I’ll bring the information up myself. It’ll give me an excuse to escape this nuthouse for a while.”

“Thanks, Harry; you’re a pal.” Prosser leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “So what else is going on with you these days,? Did you do anything new and exciting this weekend? No more off-limits exploring, I hope.”

“As a matter of fact, I drove down to Sidon yesterday for lunch. For months I’ve been itching to tour the Sea Castle. Sidon’s still a fascinating town, Con. When you enter the souk, you feel like you’re walking right back into the Middle Ages. You’d love it. And the beaches are fantastic: beautiful white sand, palm trees, and hardly a soul around. Not a bit like the overcrowded, polluted, rocky shitholes that pass for beaches up here.”

“As long as you don’t mind barbed wire and landmines.”

“Well, there weren’t any where we went. The beach where we swam was as safe as anything you’d find in Beirut or Jouniyé—probably safer. A Fatah captain runs it, and he won’t stand for any nonsense from the
shabab
that might drive customers away.”

“How was the Sea Castle? Were you able to get in?”

“It’s a controlled area now. I think the PLO has installed antiaircraft guns or SAM missiles or something like that. Damned shame. They wouldn’t even let us out on the causeway.”

“How did you get as far as Sidon in the first place? The last I heard, the ambassador wouldn’t let anybody set foot farther south than Khaldé. Wasn’t the consul’s car stoned near one of the refugee camps down there last year?”

“Not exactly. It was the DCM’s car, with the consul riding in it. The refugees took one look at that big black nasty Imperial with the American flag flying from the bumper and assumed it had to be Reagan himself. They weren’t about to let an opportunity like that slip between their fingers, so they let loose with every brick and stone they could lay their hands on. At least I have sense enough not to enter Fatah-land in a dip-plated car.”

“So what car did you use? A taxi?”

“Give me a little credit, will you? I rode down with one of our interpreters. She has a room down the street at the Charles Hotel and visits her parents in Sidon once a month. She invited me to her family’s house for their big Sunday dinner, no doubt to butter me up for something that hasn’t been sprung on me yet. Afterward she introduced me to twenty or so of her relatives. As I expected, they all hit me up for visas before the day was out. But apart from that I’m sure you would have enjoyed it.”

“I would have. If you take another trip down there, keep me in mind. I love scouting up new contacts in the provinces.”

“I’ll bet you do, Con, although it’s not just political contacts you’re after, I suspect. I saw you hustling Husayn al Fayyad’s sister the other night at the Pagoda. And, speaking of new contacts, have you noticed our new talent right here in the consular section? Personnel gave us three new girls last week to fill our secretarial openings. Two are out on the visa line learning to interpret for visa interviews, and one of them just escorted you in here. What do you think?”

“She’s a good-looking girl.”

“Her name is Ghada. She just graduated from AUB and moved into a room at one of the women’s residential hotels near the Charles. Her family is from some village up in the mountains along the Damascus Highway.”

“She looks like a live one. Too bad she’s so young. I don’t think I’d know what to do with her.”

“I’ll bet,” Harry replied with a leer. “I’ve watched you since you broke up with Ulla. You must go through two or three women a month.”

“I didn’t realize anyone was keeping score.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s hard not noticing things from time to time. Take Ulla, for instance. She’s a knockout, Con, but I never saw her as your type. Too quiet, if you ask me, and too much the clinging vine.”

“And what is my type, Harry, if I may be so bold?”

“Younger, definitely younger. Very bright—bordering on intellectual, but not too much the egghead. And, for lack of a better word, rambunctious. Exactly like Husayn al Fayyad’s sister,. She wouldn’t happen to be the next in line, would she?”

“I couldn’t really say, old sport. But thanks for the word of advice, all the same.”

“Variety is the spice, amigo.”

Harry got up from his desk to show Prosser to the door, but as he did a sudden inspiration seemed to take hold of him.

“Say, Con, before you leave, take a look at this.” Harry handed his guest an official-looking certificate with an assortment of seals and stamps across its bottom that resembled in every respect a Lebanese Sûreté Générale certificate of good conduct. When Prosser finished inspecting it, Harry looked up with an amused expression on his face.

“It’s bogus, isn’t it? Where did you find it?” Prosser inquired.

“There’s a punk sitting right outside who palmed it off on me to try to get an immigrant visa. His brother went to California illegally ten years ago and adjusted his status in L.A. Now he’s sending for his little brother, but the trouble is that our boy is about to run afoul of Section 212(a)(19) of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Come on, stay a minute and watch.”

Harry picked up the telephone and told his secretary to bring in the immigration applicant. She brought in a slender youth of about twenty with dark eyes, closely cropped hair, sparse black mustache, and the trace of a smirk on his lips. He wore a forest green polo shirt and pressed jeans; there was something about him that Prosser found oddly familiar.

“Welcome and good morning,” Harry greeted the young man. He pointed to the wooden straight-backed chair to the left of where Prosser was seated and invited the youth to sit down. “How are you feeling this morning, Rami?”

“I am very well, praise Allah,” he answered confidently in an accent that Prosser had come to recognize as Palestinian rather than Lebanese. “How are you, Mr. Harry?”

“Oh, I’m just fine, too,” Harry answered in a tone that bordered on patronizing. “Rami, I’d like you to meet my colleague, Mr. Prosser. He’s reviewing a few immigrant visa applications with me this morning.”

“Good morning,” the young man greeted Prosser.

Rami’s smile faded momentarily, and Prosser wondered if the young man did not recognize him, too, from some earlier acquaintance. Prosser ran quickly through a list of possible occasions for such a meeting, but remained at a loss to place the youth’s face.

“The reason I called you here this morning,” Harry went on, “is that I forgot to ask you a few questions the last time you were here. Now, these are routine questions that we’re required to go through as a matter of record. You don’t mind answering a few more, do you?”

“
Maalesh
, you may ask and I will answer,” the youth replied.

“Good,” Harry continued, glancing at Prosser as he prepared to begin his interrogation. “First, may I ask whether you have ever applied for an American visa before?”

“As I have told you before, no.”

“You never applied for any kind of visa to America before, not even a tourist visa or a student visa?”

Rami shook his head slowly and deliberately. “No, this is the first time.”

“Okay, then, Rami. Have you ever been arrested or convicted of a major crime in Lebanon? You know what I mean: have the police ever arrested you and put you in jail?”

The youth’s eyes narrowed. “I was never in jail. Me…never.”

“You never even went to the police station?”

“Never once.”

Harry leaned back and smiled. “But surely, Rami, you must have gone to the police station to get this police certificate, didn’t you?” He held up the police certificate.

“I did not go to the police station. My brother got the paper for me.”

“He got it from the police?”

“Yes. It says I never did anything wrong here. You can read what it says.”

Harry propped his elbows up on the desk and leaned over to look the young man squarely in the face. “You say it and this paper says it, Rami, but I know and you know that it’s a lie. This paper is not from the police. Your brother Khalid bought it in the souk, didn’t he?”

Rami turned pale and became absolutely still.

“Rami, I want you to tell me where you and your brother got this piece of paper, and I want the name of the person who sold it to you and how much you paid him.”

“I do not know what you are talking about. Khalid took the paper from the Raouché police station. If you want a different paper, I will get a different one!”

Harry leaned back and folded his hands across his stomach, looking calmly across the desk at the young man, whose forehead and nose were breaking out in tiny beads of perspiration.

“Let’s not waste our time, Rami. The problem here is that you don’t have a police certificate, at least not anymore.” The vice consul tore it slowly in half, then in quarters, then in eighths, and dropped it into his wastepaper basket with a theatrical flourish. “Face it, without a new police certificate, you can’t go to the United States. Not now, not ever. If you tell me who sold that one to you, and you write it all on a sheet of paper and sign it, then maybe we can start all over again and I might be in a position to help you. But if you keep denying what’s been done, then I’m sorry to say you may never get to visit America. Ever. Is that clear?”

An expression of utter panic seized the young man’s face when Harry destroyed the police certificate. Rami looked at Harry, then at the wastebasket, and then at Prosser, his mouth agape. “But you cannot do this! You cannot destroy my papers! It is forbidden for the consul to destroy papers!”

“You are missing the point, Rami. I just did it. The document was no good, so I tore it up. Now, if you want me to help you out of the mess you’ve put yourself in, then go outside into the waiting room and write down exactly how you obtained the paper. You can give what you write to my secretary and she will translate it into English. Then I’ll read it and see what we should do next. But, Rami, without a written statement from you, I can do nothing more here.”

The young Palestinian, now livid with anger, rose and glared at Harry across the desk as if he were contemplating a leap at the vice consul’s throat. Then, casting a sidelong glance at Prosser, he hesitated. Suddenly the anger in his face subsided into a sort of stony resolution. An instant later he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room without another word.

Rami’s reaction left Prosser with an uneasy feeling. Perhaps the young Arab was simply proud, but it seemed more as if Prosser’s presence had been a reminder to Rami that there might be something more important to him than pressing his case for an immigrant visa. In view of the cosmic importance that most prospective immigrants attached to a U.S. immigrant visa, this seemed difficult to understand. More than ever Prosser felt that he had seen Rami somewhere before and ought to have remembered him.

“My God, Harry,” Prosser said, shaking his head with simulated disapproval. “I’m shocked! Shocked!”

“You think I was high-handed. Is that it?”

“One might say that, but I wouldn’t dream of telling you how to do your job. I do have a question, though. How can you write Rami up for a 212(a)(19) after you’ve destroyed the evidence?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Harry answered, clearly pleased with himself. “You see, it’s come to the point these days where proof of phony documents alone isn’t enough anymore to back up a 212(a)(19) case. What you need is a signed confession from the applicant saying he intended to obtain his visa by fraud. If young Rami gives me that, his goose is cooked. If not, all I can do is blacklist him. That will only be effective for a couple years, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You don’t really expect him to give you a confession after you’ve humiliated him like that, do you?”

“Well, you’d be surprised at how many do.”

Prosser let out an exaggerated sigh. “You know, Harry, sometimes I really miss consular work. I stamped visas for two years in Jeddah and had myself a hell of a time. If I ever get canned from my present line of work, would you recommend me for a consular slot?”

“It’s never too late, amigo. Anytime you feel like changing careers, roll up your sleeves and come on down. We’ll clear a place for you on the visa line.”

Harry picked up Rami’s file, and as he stood up the phone rang. He answered the phone with a few clipped sentences and hung up.