Dynamite Fishermen (20 page)

“Sorry, Con, but the troops need me back in the trenches. Come back in an hour or two, and we’ll have those names for you.”

Chapter 14

“Stop just ahead, by the fruit seller,” Prosser ordered. He leaned over the front seat of the taxi and pointed to the brightly lit fruit stand near the top of the hill. The driver, a surly, stubble-bearded Lebanese of indeterminate middle age, brought the battered Mercedes to a halt just short of the stand, opposite a mound of discarded and rotting produce. Prosser handed over fifteen lira, left the cab, and waited at the curb for the dilapidated vehicle to move on.

Ten meters beyond, a fraying canvas canopy spread out over pyramidal displays of fresh fruits and vegetables trucked in from all parts of the country. There were cherries and apricots from mountain orchards; tomatoes, eggplants, onions, and salad greens from the Bekaa Valley; and citrus fruits and bananas from the plantations of the southern coastal plain near the biblical city of Tyre.

Prosser stuffed several handfuls of cherries into a plastic bag and dropped the bag onto an antiquated brass scale. The sunken-cheeked Kurdish proprietor rose from an upended wooden crate and deposited various brass weights on opposite ends of the device until a rough balance was achieved. Tinny Arab instrumental music issued from a portable radio beside the scales.

“Please also give me a kilo of bananas plus two kilos of carrots without the tops,” Prosser said.

“As you like,
siidi
,” replied the listless old man as he seized a rusty knife with a short curved blade to cut off a bunch of the undersized but remarkably tasty local bananas.

“How much?” Prosser asked as soon as all had been weighed.

“Sixteen lira.” The Kurd held out the three plastic sacks and received the money in his gnarled hand.

“Good night, Uncle,” Prosser said.

The old man deposited his money in the long slit pocket of his
jalabiyya
and lowered himself onto his crate without replying.

Prosser surveyed the deserted sidewalks as he walked back down the hill. Across the street a pair of middle-age men in striped cotton pajamas and plaid flannel bathrobes played backgammon in the doorway of a five-story residential building while a third man dressed in a gray suit over a striped rugby shirt looked on. In the café next door, four tables of card players drank mint tea and smoked their water pipes. Farther down the hill, a smartly dressed couple stepped out from the Lighthouse Pharmacy into a chauffeur-driven black Jaguar that waited for them at the curb.

It was five minutes before nine, and most of the residents of rue Ardati were already settled in for the night behind bolted doors. Few cared what went on outside anymore after dark, so long as it did not affect them directly. Of those who bothered to look out their windows, not one saw the tall foreigner with three plastic sacks turn the corner and vanish into the shadows of rue Tannoukhiyine.

Prosser’s eyes were already well adjusted to the dark when he spotted the unlit marquee of the Cinema Versailles looming a block ahead and the two-seater Mercedes parked across the street from it. As soon as he did, his heart beat faster. This was not the car that was supposed to be waiting for him.

He reached nervously into the kangaroo pouch of his nylon windbreaker to confirm that the twin bundles of hundred-lira notes were still inside and then felt for the pen, notepad, and index cards in his shirt pocket. One of the cards contained a list of questions in Arabic. The other was a handwritten receipt for ten thousand Lebanese lira. Everything was in place except for the man he had come to meet.

When he had come within fifty meters of the Mercedes, he could see a figure in the driver’s seat. Twenty meters farther on, he watched the figure strike a match and hold it steady to light a cigarette. Prosser heaved a sigh of relief; the match was his recognition signal and the face was Abu Ramzi’s.

As soon as Prosser came abreast of the car, Abu Ramzi opened the passenger door. The sudden glare of the car’s interior dome light froze Prosser in his tracks, but he recovered quickly, pulling the door shut behind him to extinguish the light. Then he reset the switch so that the dome light would not light again. It was a small thing, but if Abu Ramzi wasn’t more careful, a detail like this might kill him one day.

“Good evening,
habibi
,” Prosser greeted him. “I’m pleased to see you again so soon.”

“The pleasure is mine, as always, Wally,” the Arab replied, turning on the headlights and starting the engine.

Prosser looked around at the interior of the Mercedes and nodded his approval. “Congratulations on your new car. I didn’t know you were such a wealthy man, Abu Ramzi.”

The Palestinian accepted the remark with a hearty laugh, his even white teeth gleaming brightly in the glow of the dashboard. Abu Ramzi was a tall man and, even without his uniform beret, had to slouch to create headroom in the low-slung sportster. Prosser noted that his olive drab fatigues bore no markings of unit or rank, and that instead of wearing an officer’s holster, he had tucked a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol into his nylon web belt. Across his lap lay a paratrooper’s Kalashnikov rifle with a folding metal stock.

“You like the car? I borrowed it for the evening from Brother Abd al Rahim.”

Prosser let out a low whistle. “You mean Abd al Rahim Ahmad, your chief?”

The Arab laughed. “Yes. Brother Abd al Rahim is very pleased with me lately. Just two days ago he said he would recommend me to Yasir Arafat for a seat on the Higher Security Committee. This would be very good for our work together, no? I could take away some very interesting papers in such a job.”

“Indeed you could. But isn’t that a jump in rank for you? The Higher Security Committee controls all of West Beirut. Don’t you have to be at least a full colonel to serve?”

“You misunderstand me, Wally. I would not be on the committee that controls all of Beirut, only the committee for the city’s southern sector. Last week a colonel from Fatah was removed, and his place is to be given to someone from the Arab Front.”

Prosser recalled that since the Iran-Iraq War had broken out the previous September, the Iraqi-supported Arab Front for the Liberation of Palestine had begun to align itself much more closely with Arafat’s Fatah, the dominant faction of the PLO, in order to improve Iraqi relations with the Palestinian movement. It was not surprising that Arafat would return the favor by granting the Arab Front additional patronage posts among those controlled by the PLO.

“Then congratulations are in order, Abu Ramzi,” Prosser said. “When will your appointment be announced?”

“I do not know. Perhaps after two weeks, perhaps longer.”

“Well, I’d like you to do whatever you can to get make sure it happens. If there’s anything we can do to help you, let me know.”

Tires screeched as the Mercedes made a sweeping left turn onto rue Ardati and then a tight right turn onto rue Bliss. A pair of Lebanese gendarmes seated behind the locked gate of the Saudi Arabian embassy watched the car pass before returning to the delicate task of lighting two cigarettes from the fire of a single match.

“What other news do you have for me tonight, Abu Ramzi?”

“There is much that will interest you. I have written the answers to all the questions you gave me and have also brought copies of some reports prepared by the Arab Front’s intelligence section. But it is all explained in my report.”

“How about the car bombings? Have you heard anything else?”

Abu Ramzi took his eyes off the road for a moment and glanced across at Prosser significantly. “Yes,” he answered. “In fact, just this afternoon a Fatah brigadier who is close to several high-ranking officers at Syrian army headquarters in Shtaura visited my office. He told me that Syrian intelligence officials learned two days ago that the Phalangists have arrested the Naaman brothers. The Syrians told the Fatah brigadier that the Phalange war council sent a message to the commander of the Syrian Deterrent Forces early on Saturday afternoon warning that if the Syrians sent any additional car bombs into Phalange territory, the shelling of the Corniche beaches on Saturday morning would be merely a foretaste of what they would do to West Beirut.

“More than that, the brigadier said that Syrian intelligence does not accept the idea that the Phalangists could have discovered the Naaman brothers without help from the Americans or the Israelis.”

Abu Ramzi slowed the car and again fixed his gaze on his passenger. Prosser knew what was coming.

“
Habibi
,” Abu Ramzi began, “last Thursday you and I spoke about the Naaman brothers. On Friday morning they were arrested. On Saturday the Phalangists shelled the beaches along the north shore of Ras Beirut. Tell me, in the name of Allah, did you pass the information I gave you about the Naaman brothers to the Phalange?”

The moment of truth had come and Prosser would have to lie his way out of it. “I thought you might ask me about this, Abu Ramzi,” he said, “and I can tell you in clear conscience that the answer is no. I know how you must feel, since you gave me the information in good faith, but I assure you that the timing of the arrests was purely a coincidence. The Phalangists haven’t told us how they knew about the Naaman brothers, but you can imagine that if you knew about them, others did also. Phalange intelligence has probably been following them for a long time.”

Abu Ramzi turned to Prosser with a look of disbelief. “You said the same thing when the Israeli air force attacked the bases I described to you some months ago. I believed you then, Wally, and I want to believe you now, but the next time I think that I will not believe you. The information I give to you is for President Reagan, not for Ariel Sharon and Bashir Gemayel. Believe me, Wally, if Brother Abd al Rahim or Yasir Arafat ever suspect that I am working for the Americans, before they can catch up with me, I will catch up with you. I love you like a brother, Wally, but if I am to die for my country, I will make sure that you also die for yours.

“One more thing, Wally. The brigadier also said that because the Syrians suspect the Americans were behind the arrests, they plan to strike a blow against the Americans as soon as possible.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Prosser asked sharply. “What sort of blow?”

“By Allah, the Fatah brigadier did not say more than that. But if the Syrians wish to respond quickly, the most effective action would be to assassinate an American official, either in Lebanon or elsewhere in the region. An assassination could be carried out quickly and with little risk of retaliation.”

“That’s not true, Abu Ramzi. Surely you don’t believe that Washington would sit on its hands if a foreign power brazenly assassinated one of our officials. Of course we would retaliate.”

“Syrian intelligence was behind the assassination of your ambassador and economic counselor here in 1975. What was done about it? The Iranian regime holds your entire embassy hostage in Tehran. Has Iran suffered for it? Make no mistake about it, Wally, America may be a superpower, but its atomic bombs are of no use in the Middle East.”

The car came to the bottom of the hill where rue Bliss met the Corniche and continued east. Here the seaside promenade was devoid of pedestrians, and only a handful of cars were visible on the sea road in either direction.

“All right, here’s another question for you,” Prosser said. “Did your friend the brigadier know whether the Phalangists were able to arrest the Palestinian explosives expert along with the others?”

“Nothing was said about an explosives expert.”

“Tell me, then, have you ever heard of a Palestinian from Jaffa with the war name Colonel Hisham?”

“Colonel Hisham? There are many Colonel Hishams. I know three in Fatah alone and one in the Popular Front.”

“This one lives in Damascus.”

The Palestinian rubbed the side of his head with the heel of his hand while he paused to think. “I met such a man some months ago at a training camp in the Bekaa,” he volunteered after a moment’s consideration. “The man I met was working for the Syrians, preparing assassinations against members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had fled to West Germany. The operation was run by an apparatus whose name I had not heard before. They call themselves the Revolutionary Eagles or some such name.”

“What else do you know about this Hisham? What is his real name, and where is he operating now?”

“If your Hisham is the same one I met, he is from the al Ghawshah family of Jaffa, and his given name is Jamal. They fled Palestine in 1948 and then moved to Cairo during the time of Abdel Nasser. I believe that Jamal and his sister came to Beirut while both were still students. I met Jamal before the Events and several times later when he fought with Fatah against the Phalange. But he fought poorly and was disciplined for it. Later he deserted when the Syrian army entered the war against us. and joined the traitors in Saiqa who fought for Damascus. As for where he lives now, I cannot say—perhaps the Bekaa, perhaps in Syria.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He has an unusual face, with fair skin but very dark eyes. Indeed, he does not look like an Arab—more like a Turk, perhaps, or a Circassian.”

“How old would you say he is, Abu Ramzi?”

“My age, or maybe a year or two older.”

“How tall?”

“About one hundred seventy-five centimeters. And perhaps eighty-five kilos, although he is not fat.”