Dynamite Fishermen (37 page)

Husayn took the left branch and within a few short minutes found himself on the town’s dusty main street, surrounded by amply stocked fruit and vegetable stalls and shops overflowing with kitchen appliances, electronic gadgets, toys, shoes, men’s and women’s fashions, and every kind of portable consumer product.

He noticed at once that many of the vehicles parked along the main street bore Syrian license plates and that most also had rooftop carriers heaped with cardboard packing boxes and burlap produce bags. Shtaura, he thought, was to Socialist Syria as Hong Kong was to Communist China. For those allowed the privilege of travel to neighboring Lebanon, Shtaura was where one went to procure what was missing from the shops and bazaars of Damascus.

Husayn pulled off the road opposite the three-story Umayyad Hotel and parked his sister Rima’s hatchback Peugeot at the curb. He had been instructed to present himself in the hotel restaurant at ten o’clock and to wait there until someone addressed him by name. It was already five minutes past the hour.

He entered the lobby, which was no more than an unfurnished vestibule running past the front desk, and interrupted the bearded clerk’s preparation for mid-morning prayers. “Is the restaurant open?” he asked.

The desk clerk knelt on his prayer rug in the cramped floor space behind the counter and pointed a finger silently toward the back of the hotel.

Husayn followed the corridor past the foot of a narrow wooden staircase to an airy room containing eight or ten simple wooden tables, each of which was draped with red-and-white-checkered oilcloth. Matching straight-back chairs had been upended and placed seat-down on every table except for the one at the back of the room, where a young man of twenty or twenty-one read a newspaper while a glass of mint tea cooled on a saucer in front of him. Husayn cleared a table at the opposite end of the room and sat with his back toward the other man.

“Husayn al Fayyad?” called a voice behind him.

Husayn turned around. The young man now stood directly behind him with folded newspaper in hand. Husayn was surprised to see that the youth’s chin and left cheek were badly bruised and his nose bandaged, as if he had been on the losing side of a brawl. In his pressed blue jeans, white Italian slip-ons, and pink polo shirt, he did not resemble either a local merchant or a shopper from across the eastern border.

“You are Husayn al Fayyad?” he asked a second time.

“Yes. Are you with the colonel?”

The younger man gave a cool nod. “My car is parked behind the hotel. Please follow me.”

Husayn followed him through the kitchen to the Umayyad Hotel’s service exit, where the younger man opened the rear passenger door of a silver Volvo sedan and beckoned for Husayn to lie across the floor behind the front bench seat.

They drove through the unpaved side streets of Shtaura in what seemed like circles for twenty minutes when at last the Volvo headed into the hills. Several times Husayn tried to engage his driver in conversation, but each time he received no reply. With the sun high overhead, it was impossible to know the direction they were taking except for the fact that the only hills near Shtaura were north of town.

Another ten minutes of driving went by, and motion sickness was beginning to dominate Husayn’s thoughts when at last he heard the Volvo turn off the main road onto a gravel path. It climbed a steep grade for what he supposed was another three or four hundred meters before stopping.

The door opened behind him and he crawled out feetfirst into the daylight. The first thing he noticed was that the Volvo was parked between a steep, gravel-covered hillside and a half-finished, two-story cinder-block villa. For the few moments before the villa’s back door opened and he was ushered inside, all he could see of the surrounding landscape was rocky slopes and a narrow strip of sky.

Husayn followed the young driver up a flight of unfinished concrete stairs into a dimly lit, windowless room where the only furnishings were a Formica kitchen table and a pair of folding metal chairs. He ran his hand over the tabletop and looked at the thick coat of grayish-white cement dust covering his hand. He did not expect Jamal—now Colonel Hisham—to give him a head of state’s welcome, but so far his reception resembled a kidnapping more than a business meeting between erstwhile fellow officers. He recalled Prosser’s request that he prepare a map and sketches to enable the Americans to find the colonel’s workplace and wondered how he would collect enough information to help them.

He heard the door open behind him and turned around in time to see a man walk slowly into the room, limping badly and leaning on a wooden cane. Perhaps because of his bad leg, baldness, and the flecks of gray in his two-day growth of beard, the man appeared to be in his mid-forties. Husayn recognized the brooding dark eyes instantly as those of his former commanding officer.

“
Salaam alaikum
, Jamal,” Husayn began. “I hope I did not cause you any inconvenience by asking to meet you here in the countryside instead of Beirut.”

“Not at all,” Colonel Hisham replied. “I spend little time in Beirut, in any event. And today it happens that my schedule is clear until lunch. Please excuse the disarray. We have been removing furniture and papers all week. There is scarcely another pair of chairs to sit upon in the entire villa.” He gestured toward the table and chairs. “Please, sit.”

Husayn dusted off one of the chairs and sat. “Do you have an idea of why I asked to see you, Jamal?”

The Palestinian nodded. “I understand that my friend Maarouf owes you money. It is regrettable how so many now share your situation.”

“The others are none of my concern. We both know Zuhayri has money in Europe. Perhaps not enough to pay all his debts, but doubtless enough to pay the three hundred thousand lira he borrowed from my father, with interest.”

“Such a thing is not for me to judge,” the Palestinian answered with indifference. “So far I remain at a loss to see how your business with Maarouf affects me.”

“I want you to persuade him to pay me.”

Colonel Hisham examined Husayn’s face closely, as if uncertain whether his guest possessed a peculiar wit or had lost his grip on reality. “And if I am not mistaken, you believe I should do such a thing because I am somehow obliged to you?” he asked indulgently.

“Only if you believe so, Jamal.”

Colonel Hisham laughed in a way that caught Husayn completely off guard. In place of the malice and distrust he expected to see in the colonel’s eyes, he saw only relaxed self-assurance.

“Perhaps you are right, Husayn,” the colonel said. “Perhaps I owe a great deal to you. If you had not reported against me that night when we captured the Holiday Inn, perhaps I would still be a poor infantry officer in Fatah risking my life for Yasir Arafat and his clique of Gazans. Or perhaps I would be dead—my old battalion has fought many battles since 1975.

“You see, you and the brigadier helped me to realize that my future was not as in infantry officer but as a businessman. I perform certain services for which my sponsors pay me very well. There are risks, of course, as in any business, and they pay me only when I deliver the desired results, but I am quite skilled at producing the results my sponsors desire. If you or anyone else had asked me to imagine five years ago that I would have villas in Rome and Damascus and a flat in the rue Verdun, I would have thought you mad.”

Husayn was momentarily at a loss to respond. “Then you don’t blame me for reporting what happened on the roof of the Holiday Inn?”

“That was long ago, Lieutenant. It angered me then, but it means nothing now.”

“I said nothing to the brigadier about your absences during the early stages of the campaign. I have told no one of that.” Husayn spoke quickly now.

“Ah, yes, my absences,” the Palestinian said, his eyes growing cold again. “You still think me a coward, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

“I never judged you. Every one of us has needed a push or a kick to move forward during one battle or the next.”

“Oh, but you do judge me. Your very presence here is a judgment. You had me removed from command because you judged me a murderer and a coward, and later you turned your back on the war itself because you judged all of us who continued to fight to be bloodthirsty killers. You cursed us all from the rooftop of the Holiday Inn and went to live among the virtuous Europeans. Now you have come back, still holding your nose against the stench and thinking how superior you are to all of us who remained here to battle Israel and the Phalange.”

“That’s not true, Jamal. I don’t consider myself superior at all. If anything, perhaps I am the coward for having gone.”

“Spare me your patronizing speeches, Lieutenant. They bore me. You came to ask me a favor, and I intend to grant it. Maarouf will pay you, even if I have to repay him the three hundred thousand myself.”

Husayn’s jaw dropped. He took in a deep breath and was thinking of how to respond when the Palestinian cut him off.

“But I am nonetheless a businessman. I expect a favor for a favor. I find myself without a driver for a certain shipment of car parts that must be delivered to West Beirut by this afternoon. You will be my driver.”

Husayn shook his head. “I know what kind of shipments you send to Beirut, Jamal. Surely you don’t expect me to deliver one of your car bombs for you.”

“There. You do it again, Lieutenant—insulting me with your judgments. If I were not so badly in need of a driver, I might withdraw my offer to repay Maarouf’s loan.”

“Then withdraw it. I will not murder innocent civilians for money.”

“I don’t think you’re in a position to tell me what you will or won’t do. Do you recognize this picture?” Colonel Hisham tossed a photocopy of a government identity card onto the table.

Husayn picked it up. It was Rima’s Ministry of Housing employee identity card. “Where did you get this?” he asked, barely able to suppress his rage.

“Your sister gave it to me. She works for my organization.” He pulled a sheaf of handwritten reports from the inside breast pocket of his blazer and pushed them across the tabletop toward Husayn. “Here is a sample of her work. Very resourceful, your sister.”

Colonel Hisham tapped his cane on the floor, and the young driver in the polo shirt appeared in the doorway with a Kalashnikov held at his hip. The colonel rose stiffly and took a step back from the table.

“Rami will prepare the car. You are to drive it directly to West Beirut and leave it at the intersection of rue Bliss and rue Abdel-Aziz, opposite the entrance to the American University. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the car until you reach your destination. Rami and one or two of my men will follow you at a short distance. If you deliver the car as you are instructed, you will go free and will have your money from Maarouf within a week. If you violate any of my instructions, I will feed your sister to the fishes.”

* * *

Someone untied the electrical cord behind Husayn’s hands and pulled the blindfold from his eyes. “Take a piss if you have to. It’s a long drive to Beirut,” Rami suggested as Husayn once again slowly raised himself from the floor of the Volvo.

He found himself outside a derelict cinder-block outbuilding about the size of a two-car garage somewhere in the hills near Shtaura. Alongside the Volvo was a late-model white Peugeot 504, one of the two or three automobiles found most often on Lebanese highways. It bore a Lebanese civilian license plate, had a set of olive-wood worry beads hanging from the rearview mirror, and in every other respect appeared unexceptional. Hidden inside, however, were anywhere from ten to fifty kilograms of plastic explosives, Husayn guessed.

Rami had already described for Husayn the route he was to take into Beirut via the Damascus Highway, the Galerie Semaan checkpoint, and the coastal road, and Husayn had already recited it back to him twice at his direction, along with the ground rules for the trip. Rami nonetheless held him by the elbow for one final briefing.

“We will follow you at a short distance all of the way. From time to time we will overtake you to pass through security checkpoints ahead of you. Do not be alarmed—this is to ensure that you will not have to undergo inspections. Remember, you must remain in your seat at all times until you reach the destination. If we see a door open, we will shoot.”

* * *

Husayn al Fayyad had just begun the descent from the mountain resorts of Bhamdoun and Aley toward Baabda and the outskirts of Beirut when he decided to turn on the radio. From the moment of his arrival at the villa in Shtaura, a profusion of conflicting thoughts had been racing through his mind faster than he could sort them out. He knew that the moment to make a heroic stand had passed. He did not want to die or risk his sister’s life by refusing to submit. Yet he also knew he could not leave the booby-trapped Peugeot where Major Jamal had directed him to leave it, at one of the busiest intersections in Ras Beirut. But he did not understand how he could do anything else, short of stopping the car in the middle of the highway, stepping out the door, and being shot to death.

Husayn turned on the radio and spun the dial. Radio Monte Carlo came in clearly, but the thought of disco music repelled him. He worked his way up the dial through a half-dozen newscasts until he heard the soothing voice of Julio Iglésiàs. He took his hand off the dial and settled back to try and clear his head.