Dynamite Fishermen (36 page)

As soon as the Renault was around the bend and out of the line of fire, Prosser disengaged the clutch and pulled the steering wheel around sharply to bring the car’s rear end skidding across the road with the front end pointed uphill. The instant the change of direction was complete, he shifted into first gear and shot back up rue Bliss with another screech of burning rubber. He didn’t slow down until they passed the Saudi embassy, where he turned left under the silent gaze of the contract guards lounging on the embassy’s front steps. The driverless taxi that had blocked access to rue Maislin a minute or two before was gone.

“We’re in the clear now,” he announced. “You can come up for air.”

Rima sat up without speaking. She saw that they had just passed the West German embassy and were scarcely a block from the Hobeiche police station. “Are we going to report to the police?” she asked, still disoriented.

“No, the bloody police can screw themselves. We’re getting the hell away from here.”

“What happened?”

“It was a roadblock. Only the sentries didn’t wear Red Fursan uniforms, and they didn’t look like they wanted to check our identification.”

“They weren’t Fursan?”

“I don’t think so. Perhaps off-duty Fursan aiming to steal the car for pocket money, but it looked to me more like somebody who told the Fursan to disappear for a while so they could set up for a kidnapping or an assassination. Whatever it was, I decided our chances were better dodging bullets at one hundred meters than sticking around to face them point-blank.”

“But it happened so fast! I didn’t even see them!” Rima blurted out, near tears.

“I wouldn’t have either if I didn’t go down that hill three or four times every day and could spot the difference. If they had set up a little farther around the bend, they probably would have had us.” Prosser felt a surge of exhilaration at having escaped the trap and let out a self-conscious laugh.

“Where are we going now?” Rima interrupted. “To your embassy?”

“Yes, but I’m taking you back to the YWCA first. I’ll sleep on the couch in my office. By morning everything should be back to normal. I’ll figure out what it all means tomorrow.”

“Will I see you tomorrow afternoon, then, as we planned?”

“Damn, I forgot to tell you. I have to work tomorrow afternoon. Can we make it Friday instead?”

“If we must,” she answered with a note of resignation.

“Good. Come by anytime after two, and I’ll take off the rest of the day.”

“And will you also be free in the evening, or will you have to work then also?” She looked down at the tiny black evening bag she held in her lap, and her mouth turned down at the corners.

“I may have to go out again for an hour before dinner. But that’s it.”

“Must you?”

“I promised someone. But it won’t take long. Come on, we’ve been through this before. You know how my work is.”

“Do I? All I know is that you go out nearly every evening. I see you two nights, at most three nights, a week. That is all I know about your work.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the best I can do.”

The car stopped across the street from the YWCA before she could reply. She gave him a searching look; then she reached over and drew her soft palm across his cheek. Without saying another word, she kissed him gently on the lips, picked up her purse, and closed the car door behind her.

Prosser put the car into gear and drove away, dazed and confused by the evening’s events. He would see Rima again on Friday, to be sure. But whatever they might do or say on Friday, he sensed that his romantic relationship with Rima would not recover. Just as having enlisted Ulla Hamawi the year before to lease the safe house on rue de Baalbek had irrevocably altered that relationship, Prosser realized, his decision to pursue Rima’s brother had driven a wedge between himself and Rima.

Indeed, now he could see with uncommon clarity that whenever he had injected his business into a personal relationship in Beirut, the business had come to dominate. It had not always been so with him, but he sensed that something in him had changed while in Lebanon and that, unlike his hasty retreat up rue Bliss, his personal life had already passed the point of no return.

* * *

A few hours after dropping Rima at the YWCA residence, Prosser opened his eyes in the darkness of his office. Although he sensed that he had been in a deep sleep, he felt intensely alert. As he looked around the small room, trying to think of what could have aroused him, he saw faint flashes of red light reflecting diffusely against the stucco wall through the open French door. A moment later he heard the repeated booms of outgoing artillery shells and rose to investigate. Scanning the moonlit sea from the balcony, he spotted a string of white lights hung in an almost festive manner from the mast of a gunboat several kilometers offshore and immediately thought of the impetuous Scotsman from the
Manchester Guardian
and his rumor of a seaborne landing at Damour.

As he strained his vision to get a better look at the vessel, a nearby shore defense battery fired four more rounds out to sea, illuminating the low-lying clouds with each muzzle flash. Although the projectiles’ incendiary material burned out before tracing its full trajectory, it was clear that the outgoing rounds would fall well short of their seaborne target. This was predictable enough—the Israeli gunboat captain must have been keenly aware of how close he could approach to the shore batteries without coming within their range.

The guns unleashed three more salvoes—three rounds, four rounds, three rounds each. They traced brilliant red arcs out to sea but always fell short. Prosser found himself entranced by the graceful flight of the projectiles into the void, the trailing echoes of the big guns, and the totality of the silence that followed. The red arcs etched themselves into his mind’s eye and made him eager for the show to go on.

Standing at the rail, he was suddenly seized by the idea that the gunboat might decide to return the shore battery’s fire. The guns were located only a few hundred meters from where he sat in the U.S. embassy, and because of the position of the gunboat, a poorly aimed incoming round might easily land close enough to send shrapnel his way. He removed the cushions from the leather sofa and spread them out on the tiled floor of the balcony. Then he lay across the leather cushions with his head propped up on his forearms and waited for the firing to resume.

But there were no more flashes from the gunboat and none from the shore guns either. The vessel continued on its path to the northeast and soon was out of range. He waited for the artillerymen stationed along the downtown confrontation lines to test their aim against the gaudily lit target, but they did not rise to the bait. He watched the gunboat until it was nearly out of sight, then raised himself to his feet, put the cushions back in place on the sofa, and fell exhausted onto the couch to resume a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter 24

Thursday
 

Looking out from his office balcony in the dull light of dawn, Prosser could detect no traces of the shelling from the night before. Traffic was normal on the Corniche, and nothing seemed out of place in the vicinity of the embassy, except perhaps that the troops quartered in the old Artisanat Building had risen unusually early this morning to fill sandbags. He pulled on his trousers and scanned the floor at the foot of the sofa for his shoes. It was time to return to his apartment for his morning run, shower, and breakfast.

Prosser was ten minutes behind schedule when he emerged from the lobby of the Hala Building to start his daily run. Still tired after a night of fitful sleep, he decided to render the task a bit easier by putting the steep descent of rue Henry Ford at the beginning of his circuit and reserving the long uphill grade of rue Ardati for last. He trotted out into the parking lot and followed rue Californie past the rear of the Saudi embassy and its ever present truck-mounted machine gun before turning downhill toward the sea.

The slope had already begun to level out when he rounded the curve opposite the Mimosa Building and noticed something strange about the gray Peugeot sedan approaching from the Corniche. A glint of reflected light drew his eye to the driver’s side of the car, where windows were being hastily lowered. The Peugeot slowed as it drew nearer and then veered across the centerline onto Prosser’s side of the street. In the last moment as the car closed in on him, he saw a thin black rod with a triangular tip protrude from the back window and immediately recognized it as a rifle muzzle.

Prosser dashed for the opening of the alley a few meters ahead of him and vaulted over a waist-high wall into an olive grove overgrown with weeds. The moment he left the car’s line of sight, he heard shots and saw twigs with spindly gray-green leaves fall from a squat olive tree ten meters away.

Burrs tugged at his socks and stung his legs as he waded frantically through tall grass toward the shelter of a dilapidated stone hut some twenty meters ahead. He was halfway there when he heard a screech of rubber as the Peugeot attempted a sharp right turn to enter the alley, as if pursuing him. Instantly another burst of automatic rifle fire rang out behind him, the bullets cracking like whips as they passed overhead.

Prosser dropped onto his belly and scrambled as fast as he could through the weeds toward a woodpile in front of the hut. All at once, from somewhere high in the PSP’s half-built concrete apartment tower, he heard the heart-stopping staccato of a .50-caliber machine gun. A moment later its jackhammer beat was joined by a second .50-caliber gun located lower down and farther to the front of the PSP compound. As soon as the heavy machine guns stopped firing, automatic rifle fire took their place, but he could not be sure whether the rifles were being fired by the gunmen in the Peugeot or by the PSP militiamen.

Then the pounding of the two heavy guns resumed for two or three more seconds, followed by a gut-wrenching crash of glass and metal. When it was over he heard nothing but the forlorn clatter of a lone hubcap glancing off the cinder-block wall and careening down the pavement toward the Corniche.

Realizing that the PSP’s fire must have been directed not at him but at the gunmen in the Peugeot, Prosser summoned the nerve to raise his head and look around. Peering behind him, he saw that the assassins’ car had missed the entrance to the alley and knocked down part of the wall he had jumped. When its engine stalled from the impact, the inert vehicle had been riddled by scores of .50-caliber slugs.

Prosser counted slowly to ten and stood up, hands over his head, hoping desperately that the PSP fighters would not mistake him for an enemy. But there were no militiamen in sight. He looked up at the PSP tower and to his further surprise saw that the stone hut and the olive trees completely obstructed the line of vision between him and the tower’s machine-gun nests.

Prosser grasped at once that the PSP machine gunners could not see him, but if he wanted to evade the attention of the PSP footsoldiers who would soon converge on the scene, he would have to move quickly. He crawled on elbows and knees toward the north wall of the olive grove under cover from a row of trees, and then he climbed over the wall onto the hood of a derelict Mercedes taxi suspended on cinder blocks in the adjacent alley. He jumped from there to the ground, brushed the dirt from his T-shirt and shorts, and wiped away the blood oozing from the scratches on his bare arms and legs. Then he stepped out onto rue Henry Ford as if nothing had happened.

Nonetheless, his heart pounded and sweat dripped from his face as he made his way at a slow jog back to the Corniche. The shooting had been over for a minute or two now, and the sidewalk leading to the seaside promenade was deserted. Suddenly he heard the fall of heavy footsteps. Before he could bring himself to a stop, three PSP militiamen rounded the corner, barreling toward him at a dead run. His limbs froze and his heart stopped, but the gunmen passed by without so much as a glance his way and charged up the hill toward the Peugeot. They had ignored him because he was a foreigner, a jogger, a noncombatant, someone who played no role whatsoever in the everyday gunplay between rival militias. He was grateful for their neglect.

Not far ahead, a knot of curious onlookers emerged from the Sunrise Hotel’s seaside café to gaze in morbid fascination upon the destroyed Peugeot. Three of the car’s four doors lay wide open. The two riflemen on the passenger side slumped forward, still in their seats, while the driver sprawled facedown on the pavement a few feet away in a pool of crimson blood.

At the corner Prosser turned left onto the Corniche and resumed his run, ignoring the stares of coffee drinkers still seated in the café. Their eyes followed him to the end of the block, where he vanished onto a dead-end street to return to his apartment via a footpath up the steep bluff. Only when he reached the end of the street did he begin to feel the strength drain from his legs and the blackness close in around the periphery of his vision. At that moment, when his hands began to shake uncontrollably, he knew that if he did not sit at once, he would black out.

Chapter 25

Husayn al Fayyad saw the fork in the Damascus Highway looming in the distance. The right branch, he knew, led past the seventh-century Umayyad ruins of Anjar and continued east to the Syrian frontier, while the left branch led north to the provincial market town of Shtaura, the seat of the Syrian army’s headquarters in Lebanon.