Dynamite Fishermen (25 page)

The second soldier spoke up. He had one stripe less than the sergeant and appeared to be several years younger, but his eyes held a noticeable spark of intelligence. “Oh, that,” he said with a deprecatory gesture toward the warehouse. “That is nothing. What you see is Phalangist snipers harassing the Palestinians who occupy the tall building there in the distance.”

He raised his arm and pointed to an eight-story office building with a granite façade located two blocks west of the warehouse; then he directed their attention to the high wall of containers that blocked their line of sight to the southeast.

“You see, it is a long and difficult shot for them; sometimes the rounds fall short and hit the warehouse as they are doing now. But their fire is aimed much too high to hit anyone down here behind the barriers.” He pointed again, this time to the barrier that sheltered the road leading into the port crossing.

At this the sergeant became agitated and grabbed the outstretched arm of his young partner. “Don’t point, you idiot!” he exclaimed. “They’ll see you!”

Prosser stared at the two soldiers for a moment in confused disbelief and then laughed at the absurdity of the situation. “So it’s safe to go forward, eh? As long as we don’t point to whoever is trying to kill us...”

The sergeant shrugged off the remark. “If you do not wish to go ahead, do as you please. Return the way you came, if you like. The choice is yours.”

While Prosser considered the options, two oncoming taxis passed through the checkpoint from the east. The sergeant waved them through without objection. Prosser looked across at Rima, whose eyes were still trained on the warehouse as if to spot any new puffs of concrete dust that might appear.

“Well, shall we try it?” he asked her. “If they made it through, so can we.”

“Why not,” she replied, gamely attempting to conceal her anxiety.

He put the Renault in gear and launched it forward with an unholy screech of burning rubber. The car was in second gear before making the first turn. He kept accelerating along the straightaway past the port’s first basin, with its graveyard of half-submerged merchant ships, then braked momentarily as he burst into the doorless shell of the warehouse at the end of the first basin.

He accelerated again as he emerged out the other side and darted around the customs building into the commercial port’s main plaza. Once across the square, he reduced his speed and cruised through the eastern half of the port, where the road was no longer within the line of sight of snipers to the west.

Rima had not said a word during the frenzied dash through the deserted harbor complex, but Prosser’s attention had been too focused on driving to note her reaction. As they drove out the port’s eastern gate toward the Qarantina Highway, their eyes met at last.

“Tell me something, b
atta
,” she ventured. “Have you even once turned back when you thought the road too dangerous?”

He pondered the question. “Sure I have. Plenty of times. Why?”

“It is just that sometimes I wish you were more careful.”

“But I am careful. Unfortunately, conditions around here have a way of changing, and safe places don’t always stay safe. When that happens, as it did a minute ago, often the best choice is to put your head down and keep on moving.”

“No, I think you have a different reason for what you do,” she ventured. “To some men, retreat is hateful, more hateful than anything—even dying, perhaps.”

“Of course it’s hateful, Rima, and often it’s a hell of a lot riskier than going forward to face the enemy. If I have to die, I’d rather do it with my boots on. Not that I expect to die anytime soon, mind you.”

“Tell me,
habibi
, what do you see in your future? Do you have a dream? Something you must stay alive for?”

“For me, the future is no further than June of next year, when my tour of duty here is over. My dream is to still be here when June comes. Beyond that I have no time for dreams.”

“So you are like us Lebanese; you live only for the present,” she concluded softly.

“If you say so. I enjoy what I do, and they say it’s useful to my country. That, and going out at night for fun sometimes, and seeing a bit of the countryside on weekends, is all I need. At least for now. Why do you ask? Are your dreams so very different?”

“If you had asked me even a few weeks ago, I would have said no. Since the events I have done nothing but live for the present. But now my present seems to have come to an end. For me Lebanon is finished. I must have something more to live for than an end to the fighting. That is why I have been giving thought to returning to France and finishing my
doctorat
. And if I do, I must leave by the end of summer.” She gave Prosser a searching look.

“That’s not very far off,” he said, showing the degree of concern that he sensed she expected of him. “I was hoping we would have more time to get to know each other.”

“I would also like that,” she replied evenly. “But it seems that your work keeps you too busy for such things. The weekends do not offer us much time if we are to know each other well before August.”

“I don’t work all the time, you know. We could meet for dinner once or twice a week. Would that help?”

“It would please me to see you more often than I do now,” she offered.

“I’m free tomorrow night. Why don’t we reserve a table at the Coral Beach? Perhaps Husayn would like to bring a date and join us.”

“But I don’t want to see Husayn. I want to see you.”

He could see that this was not the time and place to arrange a meeting with Rima’s brother. If he pushed too hard, he might spook them both. His approach to Husayn would have to wait.

“Then how about the Myrtom House? A table for two in the corner?”

She nodded but still appeared to be waiting for him to address some unspoken issue.

“Are you sure there isn’t something else bothering you?” he asked.

She pressed her lips together tightly as she translated the right words from Arabic into English. “How shall I say this,
batta
? It is simply that you have a certain…reputation. What am I to think on those nights when you are not with me? I have met others from your embassy. Not one of them works at night as you do. Huda tells me that her Gregory comes home by half past five every day.”

“Greg is an administrative officer, Rima. His job is at his desk. My work is outside the embassy, meeting people and trying to find out what’s going on in this country. You just can’t compare the two.”

“And Don? I know for certain he returns to his apartment by six o’clock every night, because Salwa always has dinner ready for him by then.”

“Don Davenport is a security officer, Rima, not a political officer. And, frankly, he ought to know better than to have Salwa living with him. It’s against department rules, and he happens to be the one responsible for enforcing them.”

Rima was not persuaded.

Prosser reached across and took her hand. “Listen, I’m sorry if it seems unreasonable to you that I spend so much time at my work,” he said. “But it’s not as if I’m out chasing after other women when I’m not with you.”

“Oh, batta, that was not what I meant. I just want to be with you more of the time.” She took his hand in both of hers and held it tightly.

“I’m doing my best,” he replied after another moment’s silence. “Let’s take it one step at a time, all right? August is still a long way off.”

Prosser thought of Colonel Hisham and his Eagles of the Revolution and wondered whether he would still be here a week from now, not to mention two months later. Then he thought of Husayn al Fayyad, who knew the colonel and had reason to hate him and thus might be willing to talk. The choice was clear. He had to reach Husayn quickly—with Rima’s help or without it. If the approach to Husayn offended her, it might bring their personal relationship to an unhappy end, but that was the risk one always took in using one’s friends to spot and develop new agent prospects. After all, that’s why the Agency had sent him here. If he was going to succeed in Lebanon, he knew, he would have to recruit an agent very soon. And right now Husayn al Fayyad looked like the best shot he had.

Chapter 19

Prosser watched Rima’s red Peugeot turn right off the Qarantina Highway and descend along the sweeping curve of the access road toward the port’s eastern gate. He then broke off and circled back to the east. After twenty minutes of nerve-racking driving through the congested commercial districts of Dora and Mar Youssef, he crossed the coastal autostrade and made for the hills east of suburban Jdaide to check for surveillance. Within a few minutes of having begun his ascent, the temperature dropped at least ten degrees, and in place of prickly pears and scrub he noticed tall pines appearing in thin stands along the side of the road.

As he surveyed the city below, it occurred to Prosser that this must have been how Beirut had looked before the Lebanese civil war. The city appeared so prosperous and peaceful from these hills that one could easily mistake the view for one of southern France or the Italian Riviera. Only when approaching sea level did one see the ugly scars left by shells, bullets, decay, and neglect.

Prosser remembered the first time he had driven along this road for one of his early car meetings with Maroun. Nearby, the agent had told him, was a ravine where nearly every night during the darkest months of the civil war, Phalange security men had arrived in dump trucks to dispose of the bodies of Palestinian and Lebanese Muslim civilians abducted at random around East Beirut. Most of the victims had been rounded up in groups of ten to twenty, solely on the basis of their religious and ethnic background, then executed with production-line efficiency in retaliation for Christians similarly kidnapped and murdered in West Beirut.

Although every morning the central government’s gendarmes would comb the ravine for new bodies to take back to the morgues, the government had no power to stop the butchery. Now, in the summer of 1981, such random abductions were rare, but the central government was still powerless to intervene. Prosser scanned the depths of the ravine and could not help wondering when the last corpse might have been dumped there and how many bleached bones remained scattered among the rocks.

Having detected no sign that anyone was following him, Prosser came back out of the hills by a different road to rejoin the northbound autostrade. A few kilometers farther along, in the coastal suburb of Antélias, he left the autostrade for the main shopping street and found a parking space two blocks from the high-rise apartment block where Maroun Ghaffour’s brother-in-law lived. Through the open car window he counted ten stories up from the ground level and instantly recognized Maroun’s profile behind the sliding glass doors where he’d said he would be.

Prosser entered the building through the rear entrance, took an elevator to the eighth floor, walked the remaining two stories, and pressed the doorbell of the first apartment on the left. Maroun ushered him into the apartment with a whispered greeting.

“Peter, we have a small problem. My wife insisted on coming with me this morning—she is in the kitchen at this very moment. Can you come again the day after tomorrow? I am very sorry, but I had no way of keeping her away, since it is, after all, her brother’s apartment. To tell the truth, Peter, I think she suspected me of having a rendezvous with a woman.” He chuckled and looked back over his shoulder with a conspiratorial air. “You know how wives are.”

“Don’t give it another thought, Maroun,” Prosser replied. “The day after tomorrow will be fine. Same time, same place.”

“Very good. But before you go you must take this. In it is a complete report on the arrests of the car bomb smugglers.”

He handed over a sealed envelope that Prosser slipped into his breast pocket without opening.

“Did any of the prisoners mention a Palestinian named Colonel Hisham?”

Maroun’s face darkened. “He was the expert who fabricated their bombs,” he answered. “One of our agents tells us that this Colonel Hisham is now in West Beirut, working on even larger ones.”

“Against whom, Maroun?”

“We do not know. But Bashir has already relayed to the Israelis everything we know about the colonel and the places he is known to frequent. I believe they have something special in mind for him.”

“Can you get me a copy of what was passed to the Israelis?”

“If you wish. But won’t Bashir, as a matter of course, present a copy to your superiors at the American embassy? After all, it was they who provided the information that led to the arrests.”

Prosser tilted his head back, rolled his eyes, and made a sound resembling “tsk” that in the Levant means, “No way.”

“Bashir can be relied upon to give us the absolute minimum he can get away with,” Prosser explained, “which is probably a glass of mint tea and a pat on the back. He’ll be offering a good deal more to the Israelis, because he knows they’re horse traders and he wants them to back his assault against West Beirut.”

“Then I will bring a copy for you when we meet on Friday.”

“Thanks, Maroun. Now I’d better get out of here before your wife catches sight of me. Is there anything you need from me on Friday?”

The Lebanese shook his head.

“Then
ma’assalama, habibi
.”