Blood Rules

by John Trenhaile

  Actually, the bananas had done rather well; as had the tomatoes, avocados, oranges, and lemons into which Ibrahim had diversified, in his usual muddled kind of way. He had been an impulse buyer all his life, and almost alone among Lebanese businessmen his impulses had made him rich.

  As they drew up in front of the beach house, Celestine wondered whether her late husband hadn’t, in fact, been a good deal less disorganized than he looked. But she didn’t like to think about that, because it implied that he knew what he was doing when he bankrolled the Palestinians, thereby courting the death that took him away from her, along with reasons for living.

  Hassan pattered into the house, leaving the driver to bring their bags. Nothing much had changed, Celestine discovered as she mounted the steps to the terrace, with its view of the bay, sand left in untidy piles in corners, and the beach umbrella with the hole in the canvas propped up against one wall. The house was a simple, one-story structure of concrete blocks and wood, but it was big. She’d stipulated it must be big before Ibrahim had it built, because she knew it was going to be the most spectacular venue for her parties. So there were plenty of bedrooms, although walking through now she could see signs of damp and decay everywhere she looked and the sight pained her. Today was cloudy and humid; depression hovered like black thunderclouds over the Mediterranean on a sultry October evening.

  “How long are we here for?” she asked Hassan. “You can pour me one of those.”

  Hassan was, with habitual temerity, helping himself to whisky from a cupboard that in her day had been kept locked. Now, looking over his shoulder, she saw that this menial, this worm, possessed the key. Celestine had never understood what her son saw in this unpleasant little man. It was typical of Feisal to appoint Hassan her prison governor.

  “Until the unhappy business in Yemen is resolved,” he said, rising with a glass in either hand, “we shall stay. There is radio.” Hassan flicked dust off the old set and turned it on, producing a blare of pop music. Celestine told him to switch it off, but Hassan was jiggling about with an idiotic grin, snapping his fingers. She stormed over to the set. He got there ahead of her. The hand on her wrist was like a steel brace. She struggled, but his grin merely intensified.

  As she threw herself onto the dust-sheeted sofa she knew that tears were very close. She wasn’t crying for herself. Every second she spent cooped up here was a second nearer death for Robbie and Colin. She yearned to be on the outside, doing something, anything … such frustration! She rummaged in her handbag for a tissue.

  Her hand made contact with her perfume sprayer, fiddled with it absently. She was running low on Blue Grass; best to save it.

  From far away, through the plantation, came the noise of a car. Celestine was old but her hearing remained acute, better than Hassan’s anyway, for he showed no sign of having noticed anything and continued to dance around the room, swigging whisky. She knew he was enjoying this. Hassan had always hated her ever since, years ago, she’d put up a fight with Feisal, his master, and so earned permanent exile to Yarze. She’d crossed her son once too often without having settled his hash, lacking the courage of her convictions in a society where the only discipline that counted was a good sharp dose of death.

  Funny, she’d never been able to have another child after Feisal, only a series of miscarriages. There was something satanic about that: the devil child, having fought his way into the world, would not countenance a rival. She should have strangled him at birth, long before he’d had a chance to sire Halib and Leila. No, how could she think such a thing? Feisal had been a lovely child, so pretty

  Celestine stood up and began to wander around the room. The noise of the car had faded away, but she couldn’t get it out of her mind. The engine had sounded so … so homely, that was the word. A part of her recognized it, deep down inside, without being able to give it a name.

  She heard Hassan click his teeth behind her and turned around to find him shaking his head reprovingly. “

  Thinking to escape?”

  Celestine had unconsciously gravitated to the front door.

  “Please, do not.” Hassan’s smile revealed a mouth full of old steel-gray fillings. “Emil will wake up and then who knows? Eh?”

  Emil, she remembered, was the driver. She’d not seen him before, but he looked a brute: vicious and unintelligent. Who knew, indeed?

  “Is the water still connected?” she snapped.

  When he merely shrugged she went through to the bathroom without asking permission. Underneath the washbasin she found a plastic bucket full of cloudy water. There was no towel, no soap. The shower curtain crawled with mold, and it stank. Slugs and spiders occupied every vacant crevice. Celestine opened the lid of the toilet and immediately shut it again, but not quickly enough to trap all the flies that lived in there or to avoid a reek of what they lived on.

  The square window above the toilet seat was too small to allow an adult to pass through. She gazed up at it with a sinking heart. Damn!

  Someone had left a half-full bottle of bleach by the tub. Celestine lugged the orange bucket over to the toilet, sloshing water everywhere. She was just nerving herself to whip open the toilet for long enough to rinse it out with a mix of water and bleach when she heard something.

  She raised her head. That noise had come from outside the house. Not Hassan: she could hear him bouncing to the music again. Emil must have wandered around to the back to take a piss.

  But it didn’t sound like a man. Shushing noises, as if branches were being trodden underfoot, only very lightly … an animal?

  Celestine climbed up onto the toilet seat and cautiously peered out. The glass was so encaked with dirt that she could see nothing except the green of trees outside. She fiddled with the catch and jerked the window open.

  As the panel swung outward it made sharp contact with something; Celestine heard a muffled cry and leaned out to see Azizza below her, one hand held to her temple. Sensing someone above her she looked up, and for an instant the two old women merely gazed at each other, speechless.

  “Oh, Izza!” Celestine was first to recover. She spoke in a loud whisper, praying that Hassan would stay wrapped up in his stupid pop music. “How did you get here? Oh, of course! That was the car I heard!”

  “Yes.”

  “But how did you know I was here?”

  “I guessed. I knew he couldn’t keep you a prisoner in his own house, there’s too many visitors, and the apartment in town’s not safe. He kept you there last night, though. 1 couldn’t do anything while you were there, it’s crawling with his scum.” Azizza looked anxiously to right and left. “Can you squeeze through the window?”

  “Not a chance,” Celestine hissed.

  “And no back door.” Azizza cogitated. “How many inside?”

  “Just Hassan.”

  Hearing the name, Azizza made a face. “And only the one in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s snoring, don’t worry about him.” “

  But Hassan …”

  “I don’t know … you have to find a way of overpowering him.”

  “How?” Celestine waxed indignant. “You expect an old lady to barge in with a club, perhaps?”

  “You always used to carry a gun in that handbag of yours.”

  Celestine opened her mouth to protest that she hadn’t carried a gun in years when the reference to her handbag triggered something in her mind.

  “Listen,” she said, after a pause. “I’ve got an idea…. ”

  A few moments later, Hassan was startled to hear a scream high-pitched enough to rise above even Radio Liban’s raucous output.

  “My eye!” Celestine staggered into the room, clutching her handbag to her chest. “For the love of God, Hassan, look in my eye, see what it is!”

  He kept his distance while he examined her closely, suspecting a trap. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

  “Something in it. In the water, oh, mon Dieu, but it’s bleeding!” she cried out. The radio
could scarcely compete, though Hassan switched it off anyway with an ill-tempered sweep of his hand and advanced toward Celestine.

  “Sit down,” he growled, as he pushed her onto the sofa. “And be quiet!”

  But his words only caused her to keen more loudly. Hassan, hearing steps on the veranda, looked up in irritation to find that Emil, the driver, had come in to see what all the fuss was about. “Here,” Hassan said to him. “You hold her down while I look.”

  Emil went around to the back of the settee and grasped Celestine’s shoulders while Hassan lowered his head until he could peer into her eye. Neither man noticed what she was doing with her hands. Celestine silently removed the scent sprayer from her handbag. She raised it and felt Emil’s hands tighten on her shoulders as he saw, too late, what she was about to do.

  She injected a mixture of bleach and water straight into Hassan’s eyes.

  He staggered back, screaming. Celestine half rose while she attempted to twist around and aim her spray at Emil’s face, but her reflexes weren’t fast enough and his hand released her right shoulder, flying to seize the wrist instead. The rubber bulb gave under pressure, evicting a small puff of vapor, and both of them turned away their heads, but the struggle went on. Celestine, acting from instinct, leaned forward, trying to pinch Emil’s hands into her waist and neutralize him; but now he moved his left hand to her brow and began to force her head back. She wasn’t strong enough to fight him for long. By now his other hand was gripping the spray bottle’s neck.

  That was when Azizza ran through the door. She paused opposite Hassan, who was still reeling around with his hands to his eyes, drew an almighty deep breath, and butted him in the chest. He careened backward against one of the radio’s sharp upper corners. Azizza jumped onto Emil’s back and clung there like the Old Man of the Sea, thumping the top of his head with her fist.

  Emil dropped Celestine. Realizing that this new assailant was a woman and lightweight, he thought to roll forward, pitching her over his shoulders onto the floor and, with any luck, breaking her back. But before he could act Celestine sat up, aimed her spray, and scored a direct hit on his face. He shut his eyes, flailing free of both women. Azizza went crashing against the wall. Emil, confident that he’d seen her off for the moment, turned his attention to Celestine. He launched a backhander at her chin with all the force he could summon, but he dared open his eyes only a crack and could not see to aim properly; the blow went wide by a foot or more, causing him to lose his balance. As he went down on one knee Azizza came at him, brandishing the whisky bottle. It landed on top of his crown. The bottle did not break, as in the movies, so she hit him again, and a third time, until the deep, dark red fountaining up through his hair signaled that she had won. Emil fell forward onto the floor with a thud that made Celestine grit her teeth.

  Azizza held a hand over her heart. She was wheezing, her face had turned white, and for a fearful moment Celestine thought she might faint.

  “Out,” she cried. “Out now!”

  But Hassan stood between them and the doorway. He had a gun in his hand. He was waving it around in a series of uncontrolled loops while he blindly sought the safety catch. Celestine caught a glimpse of his eyes, and she gasped: two orbs of off-white mucus with no pupils visible; she had done that, yes, she had blinded a man; her legs trembled, she reached out for something to support her … but when he fired, sending a bullet through the ceiling, that broke the spell. She grabbed Azizza’s hand and rushed straight at Hassan with her arm rigid and her free fist outstretched like a battering ram. It contacted with his Adam’s apple. He went down with a wet gurgle that made her think of eyeballs dissolving in acid, and she cried aloud, but she cried in freedom. There was warm salty air on her skin, the sound of waves in the distance, she was out, she was running. Azizza had concealed her old Citroën Dyane behind a clump of banana trees, not far from the beach house, the same sky-blue Dyane, My God, this car is ten years old; it was rusty, it was battered rather than dented, its hood had gone, but when Azizza turned the key it started the fourth time and when she put it into gear it moved off, sedately, and there they were, two old biddies in an old junker, going for a spin. Unworthy of anyone’s attention. Of no interest to Shiite gunmen or Phalange militia. Free.

  Feisal Hanif arrived an hour later.

  He rode in the back of a stretched-body silver Mercedes with green-tinted glass, and when a bodyguard opened the rear door for him his face was cruel. He had been trying to raise Hassan on the shortwave radio that was never more than a meter away from him wherever he went, and the failure to make contact boded no good for those whose job it was to carry out his orders.

  Despite the heat and the humidity of this overcast day he was wearing a pale gray double-breasted suit of sober cut, and the sternest fashion commentator could have found no fault with the knot of his tie or the smooth, uncreased appearance of his shirt. He was in his mid-fifties but he had the body of a thirty-year-old: tall, upright stature, lean flesh, well-exercised muscles. His skin was exceptionally fine: very dark, the color of rich Christmas cake, and as moist. He allowed his body and the simple clothes with which he covered it to speak for themselves: not for him the flash of gold at the cuffs, the diamond tie pin or designer sunglasses. Indeed, he regarded the last as the hallmark of the truly unremarkable and refused to wear them.

  People meeting him for the first time—especially women—would come away swearing that this man must have sold his soul to the devil, for there was no other way of combining health, looks, wealth, and charm. Somehow, nobody ever attributed his sterling collection of plus points to God and the angels. He had quite extraordinary presence: even when he was not speaking, one always felt a touch stifled, a little deaf.

  Feisal picked his way across Emil’s unconscious form while he surveyed the wreckage, piecing the story together in his mind. Hassan sat outside on the terrace propped up against the wall, caterwauling still, but more quietly now, and Feisal’s two bodyguards stood with their hands clasped in front of them, the way he liked it. At last he turned to one of them and he said, “Fahim, would you please be kind enough to stop that noise?”

  The man addressed as Fahim came briefly to attention before leaving the house. Feisal listened to the sounds of a brief scuffle on the veranda, followed by silence. The silence went on for a long time, but Feisal continued to stand there with his head ever so slightly off vertical, as if he were still listening, until two distant shots put an end to his contemplation.

  “Do you think you can wake him up?” he murmured. The second bodyguard shook Emil. After a few minutes he managed to return to a semblance of consciousness, so that by the time Fahim returned to the house there was almost a coherent conversation in progress.

  “Where did they go?” Feisal was asking as Fahim entered. “Which direction did they take?”

  Emil shook his head. “I don’t know. I am sorry.”

  Feisal had been squatting down beside him; now he rose slowly to his feet and stood in thought for a moment more. The two bodyguards never took their eyes off him. In a moment he would tell them what needed to be done and they would do it. Things were always thus.

  “Two women,” he said at last. “Two elderly, unarmed women against you and Hassan.” Feisal heaved a long sigh. “I find a delicate element of comedy in all this, Emil, but the fact remains that when my mother offended me, and believe me it was for the last time, you let her go.”

  The driver did not look at Feisal. A tic appeared at the side of his mouth.

  “You are discharged from my service, Emil. They will take your identity card and turn you loose on the airport road. If you make it as far as your home in Mousseitbe, you will be safe.”

  Sentence of death had never been pronounced with greater dignity.

  22 JULY: LUNCHTIME: BAHRAIN

  Andrew Nunn arrived to find them all hunched around a TV set in the back room of the Lloyds agency, trying to make the video player work. A phone was ringing. No one answered it. After
a while the ringing degenerated into a kind of intermittent death rattle and stopped of its own accord. Andrew tiptoed across the room and unplugged this phone, substituting his portable fax machine’s plug in the wall jack.

  The machine was a Japanese prototype, not yet on general sale, but it had proved itself time and time again to the point where Nunn would not travel without it. Although aware of Selman Shehabi examining him through critical eyes, he ignored the Iraqi while he adjusted the settings. Only when he was satisfied did he look up and murmur, “Anything your end?”

  “There are no Israelis on board that plane. No Israeli passports, anyhow.”

  Andrew understood the distinction. At this stage he did not think it worthwhile disturbing Shehabi with the rumors of Tel Aviv hit teams that had begun to circulate uneasily through the international insurance community. Nunn had got word of this through a contact in Alexander & Alexander’s New York intelligence section, backed up by London War Risks Reinsurers: reliable enough sources, in ordinary circumstances. But Shehabi did not need to know about rumors. He was perfectly capable of manufacturing his own.

  “We have found out how the arms were put aboard the plane,” the Iraqi went on. “They used a bus driver with access to the airport apron. The man identified Halib Hanif, Leila’s brother, as the man who approached him. A cleaner took over once the arms were within the airport perimeter, but he’s run away.”

  “What’s new with the plane?”

  “Baghdad is monitoring transmissions from Teheran,” Shehabi replied, with a nod toward the TV. “That’s where the videotapes ended up.”

  Nunn glanced at the disorganized TV screen, politely saying nothing.

  “You bring your fax with you. You are expecting developments?”

  Actually, Nunn thought, my gee’s running in the two-thirty at Newmarket, and I’ve got a lot of money riding on a place. Also, things are hotting up in Jak, those ten million Swiss francs are that much nearer finding their way into my pocket, but only if I keep my delicate hand on the tiller. And since I’ll never know, never be allowed to understand my role in all this hijack nonsense, I don’t see why I shouldn’t let my attention wander a little.