The Sixteen (19 page)

‘Hang on, Geordie,’ Chalky said, running his hand around my back underneath the sash. ‘I think I’ve found it – it’s worked its way around to the back. Just a moment.’

He tried to push the needle back towards the front of my sash but it seemed to be stuck, so he took out his boot-knife and put a small nick into the belt to get at it and ease it out.

‘Right we’re laughing, I’ve got it so we don’t need to call the operation off!’ he joked and slapped me on the back.

I was so relieved: I thought that it might have dropped out when I fell onto the boat, even though I was sure that I’d put it in a secure place. Taking the small piece of wood out of my pocket, I fixed the needle to it and, holding the wooden handle in my hand, I hid it up my shirtsleeve.

We’d now reached the outskirts of Beirut; the place was a total shambles, like a shanty town. Gradually the number of buildings we saw began to increase, but they were mainly ramshackle affairs and badly in need of repair. The streets were full of old cars that had been stripped and burned out. I looked around me in amazement. Little kids ran around half clothed with nothing on their feet and women, mainly dressed in traditional clothes with their heads covered, carried large cardboard boxes and had loads balanced on top of their heads. Some of the older men wore long traditional garments and most of them had some kind of headgear but, in
general, they were dressed in more western-style clothes: suits or shirts and trousers. They didn’t seem to be doing very much, just sitting around.

Groups of young men hung about on every street corner, almost all of them carrying weapons of some sort, mainly pistols, but we saw others with Sten guns and old .303 Lee Enfield rifles. They were dressed in various types of pseudo-army gear and appeared to be stopping people, searching cars and vehicles.

‘Best to get off the main streets now, I think,’ Chalky said.

He turned down a stinking, filthy alleyway and we began to criss-cross through a maze of back streets and alleys, working our way towards our target area using a map of the city Chalky carried, which he told me they’d been studying for over a week. Lines of drab washing hung everywhere, litter and rubbish was piled up in corners with mangy dogs or cats rummaging through it. There seemed to be very little vegetation anywhere. The buildings were close together, tall blocks of flats with washing, clothes and rugs hanging from every balcony. Just about every street had water gushing across it: the sewage pipes must have been in a terrible state. People bustled around, there were cars and trucks, and vehicles of every description, the din was deafening.

Most of the shops were windowless with just long tables inside and at the front. Many of these had cloth-covered bundles of meat laid on them and strangely shaped and coloured poloni-type sausages hung from the ceilings. Other shops had tables on which stood pottery, lamps, bottles or small rugs. The air was filled with strong, strange, mostly nauseating smells: unusual foods being cooked, the stench of decaying sewage and poor drainage, and all of these were mixed together with the pall of exhaust fumes. We walked through it all, completely unnoticed. It felt so weird.

Gradually the streets began to widen and the tall buildings,
many of them now obviously office blocks, were clearly in a better state of repair. As we neared the main area of the city, the crush of people grew ever larger, the noise even louder and over everything hung an almost tangible feeling of tension. None of these people looked happy, none of them smiled.

Chalky indicated for us to casually group together outside a shop selling tobacco and cigarettes.

‘We’re almost at our target area, the building he works in is around here somewhere, I’m sure it’s at the end of this street,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I think it would be better if we split up into twos and worked our way down either side of the road.’

Spot nudged my arm and I followed him around the corner into a wide busy street.

‘Geordie, what do you feel like?’ he asked quietly.

‘I feel a bit strange but pretty excited,’ I whispered back. ‘What an awful miserable place though, and I thought Byker was a dump!’

‘And this is the posh bit!’ He grinned.

We pushed our way through the crowds, trying to keep up with Dynamo and Chalky on the other side of the road, without looking conspicuous. About halfway down the street Dynamo waved us over.

‘This is it lads,’ he said confidently, checking his watch. ‘We’re early so Chalky and I will check this place out. You two go that way and check the area out, see if there is any transport about we might be able to use – if all hell breaks loose we might need some quickly. Don’t go too far away though. We’ll meet back here in half an hour at 1100.’

Spot and I walked back to the other side of the street and looked around for a while. We needed to familiarise ourselves with the immediate area as part of our contingency plan, should I fail. We checked up some of the narrow side streets to see if they could be
used as exits in case something went wrong. There were cars and trucks everywhere but most of them were ancient.

‘There’s plenty of old bangers around, Spot, but I can’t see us speeding off in any of them,’ I remarked.

‘We could probably run faster than most of these,’ he agreed.

Returning to the main street, we saw four or five young guys coming straight towards us. Each of them was armed with a semi-automatic rifle hanging from a shoulder strap and they all carried a pistol in a holster at their waists. We both stopped and turned to look into the nearby shops. The guys stared blankly at us then walked straight past, their guns pointed down, their fingers in the straps.

Spot and I looked at one another and grinned then made our way to meet up with Dynamo and Chalky as arranged.

‘This is definitely it,’ Dynamo said quietly. ‘The café is about three hundred yards down the street from his office building.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said. ‘We spotted a shop selling rugs about a hundred yards before you get to the café on the same side. I’ll hang around there and hope he crosses the road before then. If he doesn’t I’ll just have to get him later when he comes back.’

‘He could be in there for ages,’ Spot pointed out.

‘Well, I’ll just have to wait and hope he doesn’t take too long for his lunch break.’

‘I’ll stand nearer the building and signal to you when he comes out, Geordie,’ Dynamo said. ‘Chalky, you stand across the road in front of me and Spot can wait near the café – I’ll follow him when he comes out.’

Dynamo went over to the building and Chalky moved off to the other side of the street as arranged, while Spot and I began walking along the road towards the café. The whole area was packed with people, the majority of them in traditional clothes, especially the
women, but to my surprise, there also appeared to be a lot of foreigners in the area, tourists I supposed. The majority of the younger men were dressed like us so we blended in relatively easily. Swarms of scruffy little kids hung around the tourists, begging.

We reached the carpet shop and Spot continued to walk on towards the café while I stopped. I could see Chalky still walking down the other side of the street. The idea was, that as the guy got closer to me the others would also move nearer just in case something went wrong and I needed backup.

I joined the crowd of people looking at the carpets, which the shop owner had stacked around his shop and laid out on a table in front of it. I was dripping with sweat as I concentrated hard on the rugs in front of me, pretending that I was interested in buying one while actually looking over towards Dynamo and waiting for his signal. My mind was racing as I tried to work out a way in which to distract the target while I jabbed him.

The owner of the shop was a toothless old guy, dressed traditionally, his skin deeply wrinkled and creased. He was babbling away at me, trying to get my attention, but as I couldn’t understand a word of what he said and didn’t want him to get a good look at my face in case he saw my blue eyes, I just kept shaking my head and waving him away with my hand.

I was growing impatient and looked at my watch: it was 1245, only minutes had gone by but it felt like hours to me.

Where is this guy, I thought? Why the hell hasn’t he come out yet?

The needle up my shirtsleeve was jabbing me in the arm and, although I wasn’t nervous, I just wanted to get this over with and get out of the place. I was still sweating profusely and unconsciously wiped my hand across my forehead to remove some of the drips of perspiration. The old man kept on staring and jabbering away to
me, pointing at his rugs and I now had the added problem of one of the beggar kids clinging to my trouser leg and shaking it to get my attention. I tried to push him away but he was a persistent little blighter. It was a nightmare. Eventually the kid realised he was getting nowhere with me and to my relief, transferred his attention to a woman tourist standing next to me.

Feeling something sticky on my fingertips, I looked down and saw to my horror the dark stain of my make-up and I realised that it must have come off when I wiped my forehead. There was a mirror behind the shopkeeper and I tried to look into it to see how much damage I’d done but the old guy kept getting in the way as he yammered on at me. I smiled at him and moved a few yards away – all the time glancing across at Dynamo.

However, as I looked back at the nearby rugs an idea began to formulate in my mind. I went back to the shop and began to pick them up. I realised that I could use one of them to ‘accidentally’ bump into the target and to cover up my action with the needle. I selected one about three feet long and not too heavy, it would be ideal. I had difficulty in hanging on to it as the old guy kept trying to take it from me to open it up and show me what it looked like and a woman tourist wanted to pick it up to buy.

Just then, I glanced across at Dynamo and saw him give me the thumbs-up signal – the target was out of the building at last and on the move. I stood on my tiptoes trying to see above the crush of people in the street and quickly spotted him. His armed escorts were slightly ahead of him, pushing people out of his way as he strode arrogantly through the crowds, dressed as we’d been informed he would be in a lightweight pale-coloured suit and wearing a white Panama hat. He was scowling and looked to me to be in a foul mood.

Suddenly he stepped out into the middle of the street and
began to cross it, leaving his two guards to catch him up, which meant that they were now behind him. Brilliant, I thought, he was coming straight for me. I could see Dynamo also slightly behind him; everything seemed to be going to plan. Then, just as suddenly as he’d crossed the street, the man changed direction again, turned up a side street and disappeared from view, closely followed by his escorts.

I threw the rug back on to the table and quickly began to walk towards the alleyway he’d gone into. The plan would have to change. I was about fifteen yards away from the alley when one of the guards came back out of the side street, quickly followed by the target and the other soldier and began to walk towards me. I immediately doubled back towards the carpet shop and grabbed up the rug. The first soldier was shoving people out of the way again and the target was very near. The old man was jabbering at me and I reached into my pocket and threw all of the Lebanese money I’d been given at him, hoping it was enough to shut him up. It went everywhere and he began to scramble about, collecting it up.

The first soldier pushed past me and I swung around to my right in between him and the target and pushed the rug up into the man’s face. Dropping his cigarette, he shot both of his hands up in front of him to get rid of the obstruction. Using the ‘Machine’ action that I’d practised so many times, in a flash I pierced his chest but didn’t feel a thing and thought I must have missed him, as the guy only stopped briefly, then pushed the carpet out of his face and strode off. Immediately, the guard behind him shoved me out of the way into the street and moved off too.

I looked down at the needle but couldn’t see anything on it. I saw Dynamo on the other side of the street staring over at me with both arms raised as though to say: ‘Well, what happened?’ I
shrugged my shoulders – I knew I’d hit the guy in the right place but he was still walking towards the café.

Next I turned to see what was happening but the street was crowded and I couldn’t see very much. The old guy was rabbiting away at me again, trying to give me some money – I’d obviously paid him too much for the rug. I shook my head and pushed his hand away. I still couldn’t see what was going on, so I stood on a pile of his rugs to look over the top of the people in the street. I could now see the target’s white hat as he reached the café, then suddenly he disappeared and I heard a loud crash as he fell. It had worked!

There was a huge commotion around the café, as everyone in the street seemed to dash over to it all at once. I turned to Dynamo and gave him the thumbs-up signal as the old guy yammered at me yet again pointing to his rugs, which I thought was a bit rich when I’d just overpaid him for one of the crummy things!

I quickly moved away, still carrying the small rug, and had started to walk across to the other side of the road towards Dynamo, when I spotted the little beggar kid sitting on the edge of the curb. I needed to dump the rug, so I shoved it into his arms as I passed. At first, he looked stunned, and then he stood up and began to struggle off with it. He was a skinny, little thing and the carpet was taller than he was; it probably weighed twice as much as him too!

Dynamo slapped me on the back, a huge grin on his face. ‘You did it, well done lad! You certainly hit the target! But I don’t think you should have been so generous, that poor little sod will probably get into trouble for nicking that rug!’ He laughed. ‘Come on let’s go, where’s Spot?’ he asked Chalky, who had just arrived behind me.

‘What on earth were you doing with that carpet, Geordie?’ Chalky wanted to know.

‘Let’s get away from here and I’ll tell you on the way,’ I said by way of an answer. I just wanted to get out of the place as quickly as possible. ‘Where is Spot?’