Exile Hunter

by Preston Fleming

  Until today, the pit had never pulled him in during a nap, but only late at night when he could no longer stave off sleep or unconsciousness from drink. This worried him, for it meant that his naps could no longer be relied upon to restore his energy or peace of mind.

  Linder sat upright, picked up the phone a second time, and asked the clerk to connect him to the bar. In his best French, he asked the bartender to send up a bottle of local brandy.

  “Please forgive me,” the barkeep answered in English. “But our Lebanese brandy is not the very best. May I suggest a French cognac or an Armenian five star?”

  “Send up the Armenian, then,” Linder interrupted. “An ordinary grade will do. I’m on a budget.” He forced a laugh and the bartender joined him.

  Though Linder had done little but sit all day, he felt utterly exhausted. He could no longer deny it: his life had spun out of control. And while it left him frustrated and angry, he could blame no one but himself.

  At the age of thirty-eight, he was still ranked as a journeyman case officer. Not a Chief of Base, or a branch chief, or even a desk chief or a deputy. No, merely a highly efficient cog in the global search-and-destroy machine. The good news was that Headquarters continued to value his services and allowed him to enjoy the perks of an overseas posting rather than suffer a pauper’s life back in the nation’s capital.

  But at the same time, Linder was painfully aware that he had lately become a caricature of himself: often drunk, occasionally impotent, increasingly alone, bored, and belligerent. Chronic nightmares featuring the people he had targeted now plagued him several times a week. To avoid the side effects of sleeping pills, he had become dependent on alcohol to repel the troublesome visions. His usual drink of choice was a stiff whiskey cocktail like an Old-Fashioned or a Manhattan, but when traveling, he often resorted to a full-bodied brandy or aged rum that went down smoothly without ice or a mixer. At first, his hangovers had been moderate and could usually be dispelled with a morning run and a hot shower, but not any longer. Even worse, whenever he cut the dosage, his nightmares returned at full roar.

  The root of the problem, he realized, was that he had ridden the tiger too long. Each time he considered resigning from the Department, he rejected the idea out of fear that he was no longer qualified to do anything else. He held an M.B.A. from Columbia and had worked briefly in pharmaceutical sales, but he had devoted the last dozen years to honing his skills as a professional predator. Having done it so well for so long, he could not bring himself to let go without a push.

  At last, the scream of a police siren tore Linder’s attention free from his gloomy thoughts. He stood up, fetched a bathrobe from the closet, and set off for the shower. But before he could cross the room, a knock on the door stopped him in his tracks. He steeled himself to look in the keyhole and, to his relief, saw the bellman bearing a bottle of brandy, an ice bucket, and two glasses on a tray.

  Linder removed a banknote from his wallet and traded it for the brandy.

  “Charge it to my room. This is for you,” he told the bellman and waited for him to retreat before admiring the deep amber color of the aged spirit and examining the intricate Armenian writing on the label. He shook his head, put the bottle down, and withdrew to the shower.

  * * *

  On his way through the Hotel Cavalier’s marble-tiled lobby, Linder paused to peer into the lifeless tourist bar before exiting onto Rue Abdel-Baki toward the American University of Beirut.

  More than thirty-five years since the outbreak of Lebanon’s civil war, few signs of fighting remained: no mortar potholes in the blacktopped streets, no chunks of stucco blasted away from the walls of high-rises by machine-gun fire or fist-sized entry wounds from rocket-propelled grenades. Even in broad daylight, it was difficult to find signs of damage from the fifteen-year civil conflict and the intermittent clashes that lingered on well into the early twenty-first century.

  Meanwhile, America’s Civil War II had been over for nearly five years. The rebels had fled the battlefield and taken up exile in Europe, Latin America, and Australia. Yet, judging from the Department’s daily intelligence brief, there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of anti-Unionist insurgents, traitors, and saboteurs both at home and abroad. Linder wondered whether America’s civil conflict would last as long as Lebanon’s and, if so, whether he’d be alive to see it end.

  Lately he had come to doubt it and questioned whether his luck might be running out. He had posed as a rebel too many times, used too many aliases and disguises, and lured too many exiles to death or captivity not to have been noticed by the exile insurgent networks and the foreign intelligence services that supported them. Unless Headquarters gave him some time to cool off in another part of the world, he might fall victim to their retaliation. And even if the insurgents didn’t find him, the worsening climate of purges within the Department itself might pose no less a threat.

  While passing the AUB gate on the dimly lit Rue Clemenceau, Linder noticed headlights behind him. As they drew closer, a silver Renault slowed and pulled to the curb just ahead. The driver reached across the passenger seat to open the door and Linder stepped in.

  “You’re late. The Chief is waiting,” Denniston announced casually as the car began to move.

  “Why the rush?” Linder asked.

  “It’s Bob’s last week before home leave. He’s booked a table at a very swell night club to celebrate and doesn’t want to be late.”

  “Good heavens. Better step on it, then.”

  Denniston laughed before descending toward the seaside Corniche and the chief’s residence.

  As they wound to the east past the site of the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing, Linder saw no trace of the wreckage. In place of ruins were stately seaside high-rises and elegant boutiques and nightspots of the kind that Linder had not seen in the U.S. since before the Events. He found it difficult to comprehend how a tiny third-world country like Lebanon could have revived so quickly from the natural disasters, social upheaval, and global economic crises that had brought America to her knees less than a decade earlier. Lebanon possessed few natural resources, a negligible industrial base, and little capital of its own, and yet it functioned as a global banking center, commercial entrepot, and tourist hub for the entire Middle East. To Linder, it seemed a sort of cosmopolitan time capsule from the pre-Events world. Tonight, he decided, he would shake off his gloom, accept the world as it was, and receive what Beirut had to offer.

  Ten minutes later the Renault stopped outside a walled villa on a cul-de-sac a few hundred meters west of the former Green Line, the historic buffer zone dividing predominantly Muslim West Beirut from the Christian East Side. Having visited the villa years earlier when it had been the residence of the CIA’s Deputy Chief of Station, he inferred that it was now the residence of the DSS Base Chief. It seemed shabbier now and in serious need of repair, but the scent of night-flowering jasmine still saturated the moist night air from the thousands of white blossoms that spilled from the ancient vines overhanging the compound’s walls.

  Denniston pressed a button at the rusted iron gate, and a few moments later the latch buzzed open. They stepped into an untended garden that must have been magnificent once, its stately palms and ancient frangipani trees ringing the perimeter wall. Ceramic tiles swirled with intricate Arabesque patterns over the villa’s columned portico. The weathered teak door opened the moment they reached it.

  Standing in the threshold was a bull-necked man of about forty-five in white linen trousers and a loose-fitting batik shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest and bulging across an ample waist. The Base Chief’s florid face, neck, and arms were beaded with perspiration. In his hand, he held an oversized tumbler half-filled with ice and a pale amber liquid that Linder assumed was Scotch. The Chief’s eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “It’s been a long time,” Bob Bednarski began in a wary monotone as he offered Linder a fleshy hand with a band of scar tissue across the knuckles. The chief spoke with a thick Clev
eland twang reflecting his blue-collar origins. Linder recalled from past encounters that this vulgar bear of a man delighted in shocking subordinates with his crude and profane vocabulary, a relic of his combat tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and along the Great Lakes during CWII. His career largely rested on his achievements in the latter conflict, when he was DSS Base Chief for Northern Ohio during the Battle of Cleveland.

  “We’ve come a long way since Cleveland,” Linder responded with a genial smile.

  “Want a drink?” Bednarski offered, avoiding eye contact and taking a bold swig from the crystal tumbler. “I’ve been saving the last bottle of Glenlivet to celebrate the end of my tour. Just can’t get decent Scotch at home any more.”

  “Sure, I’ll have some,” Linder agreed.

  To Linder’s surprise, Denniston declined.

  “Come with me,” Bednarski said as he led them inside. “Ignore the mess.”

  The corridor leading from the front door into the library was choked with unopened boxes of luxury goods rarely seen on the shelves of America’s state-controlled retail stores. Even in voucher shops, open only to the Unionist Party nomenklatura, such a variety of Irish crystal, Swiss watches, French perfumes, English woolens, Italian leather, and other luxury items was rarely found. The wares stacked in the corridor must have cost tens of thousands of dollars, even at the discounts offered by Beirut’s shady dealers in pirated and smuggled goods. The chief’s salary certainly didn’t cover this kind of shopping spree.

  Bednarski led Linder and Denniston into the darkened library and closed the door behind them. Though its paneled walls were bare and its books were stacked in boxes, an obsolete American flag showing a full complement of fifty stars hung across the empty shelves. Bednarski filled a tumbler with ice from a silver tray on an antique sideboard and poured three fingers of Glenlivet before handing it to Linder. The cold glass sent a shiver up Linder’s arm. Without thinking, he discarded half the ice before taking his first sip.

  Denniston stood two paces behind the Base Chief, in deference to the older man. Though he, as a Branch Chief in the DSS’s Emigré Division, ranked a shade higher than his host, Denniston was careful not to pull rank on a man who had once been his commanding officer and who, by Department regulation, remained the senior DSS official in charge in Lebanon.

  “I want to make it clear that it wasn’t my idea to bring you here, Linder,” Bednarski began, giving his visitor a stern look. “Over the past year or so we’ve driven the expat insurgent network out of Beirut by handling things in our own quiet way. Instead of trying to infiltrate each of the rebel cells that operated here, we’ve focused on the money trail, persuading the Lebanese banks not to protect their secret bank accounts. And we haven’t lost a single agent or prompted a single diplomatic protest doing it.”

  “Good for you, Bob,” Linder answered with a sideways look. “If things are going so well around here, why did you send for me?”

  Linder recalled that, the last time he had served under Bednarski, the chief had blamed him for an embarrassing setback that Linder had warned him to avoid. Bednarski pursed his lips and eyed him warily.

  “Headquarters wants us to take one last crack at Philip Eaton before my replacement comes and, for whatever reason, they seem to think you’re the man for the job.”

  “Ah, now I get it,” Linder replied. “You guys couldn’t get your hands on Eaton’s money through the banks, so you want me to help you take it out of his hide some other way.” He fished the remaining ice from his glass with three fingers and dumped it onto the ice bucket’s polished silver tray.

  “Well, if you could persuade him to return to the States…” Denniston suggested.

  "Eaton? Repatriate? Not bloody likely," Linder shot back as he swirled the pale liquid in his glass.

  “All right, then, how about luring him somewhere we can snatch him? Greece, Cyprus, Italy, I couldn’t care less where he goes,” Bednarski replied, “so long as we get our hands on him and Uncle Sam claims his due. But you’d have to make it look voluntary. We wouldn’t want to spook our Lebanese hosts.”

  “Eaton is too cagey to fall for anything obvious. It could take months to gain his trust—if we succeed at all,” Linder said.

  “Fine. You have three days,” the chief declared. “Think of something.”

  "You can't be serious," Linder objected, setting down his whiskey glass.

  "Damned serious. Division Chief's orders," Bednarski answered.

  “What makes you think Eaton is even worth the trouble? How much money does he have left these days?”

  “Bank records show he transferred at least thirty or forty million of his own funds out of the country when the President took over,” Denniston reported. “Headquarters estimates that at one time he controlled five or ten times that in rebel funds looted from the downtown Cleveland banks. It’s a well-established fact that Eaton masterminded the operation and has served as a kind of trustee for the stolen money ever since.”

  “So I recall,” Linder agreed.

  “Then maybe you also recall Eaton’s new son-in-law, Roger Kendall,” Bednarski continued, watching closely for Linder’s reaction. “He’s been trying to put Eaton together with exile groups in the U.K. and Europe who need funding for their stateside operations. Did Neil brief you on your meeting with Kendall tomorrow?”

  “Got it covered, boss,” Denniston interrupted. “The plan is for me to be at his hotel tomorrow at ten sharp with a disguise technician.”

  Linder raised an eyebrow at Denniston. It seems the latter had not told him all he needed to know.

  “In that case,” Linder announced testily, “unless there’s more to discuss, I’d like to get some dinner and go to bed.”

  “Fine, then, let’s go,” the chief agreed, emptying his glass and leaving it on the sideboard.

  “Go where?” Linder asked.

  “The Lido. I reserved a table at eight. The belly dancers start at ten.”

  Linder shook his head in disbelief before making a silent appeal to Denniston.

  “I don’t know, Chief,” Denniston broke in. “We’ve got a long day ahead. Besides, it might not be such a good idea for the three of us to be seen together.”

  “Screw security,” Bednarski spat, waving broadly with drink in hand. “Hell, nobody knows you or Linder around here.”

  “It’s very nice of you to invite me,” Linder responded, still not stirring from the spot. “But, really, I ought to get some rest...”

  “Nonsense. You have to eat somewhere," Bednarski insisted. "Believe me, it’ll be the meal of a lifetime. Tonight is Nour Al-Said’s last performance in Beirut before she goes on tour in the Gulf. Hell, you can't miss that."

  And without another word, Bednarski put down his drink and headed for the door. The two younger men exchanged troubled glances, swallowed hard, and followed. Each knew that Bednarski could not be stopped, and neither wanted to pay the price for obstructing him.

  Bednarski drove them north in his classic 2012 Mercedes-Benz sedan through narrow lanes and alleys to Beirut’s legendary nightlife district on Phoenicia Street. Judging from the fawning attitude of the Lido’s parking attendant, Bednarski must have been a regular there. The maître confirmed this by leading the three Americans to a choice table close to the dais where the Egyptian orchestra was playing, and snapping his fingers at a team of liveried waiters to bring on the deluxe hundred-dish mezzé. By now, Linder’s appetite was whetted and the meal turned out to be every bit as delicious as the Chief of Base had promised. With the aid of some delicious Ksara Blanc de Blancs and Chateau Musar Reserve, the time before the start of the show slipped by far more agreeably than Linder had expected. That the ambient noise in the club was too loud to permit much conversation added to his pleasure.

  Though the headline dancer, Nour Al-Said, was well past her prime, her once legendary beauty remained evident behind heavy make-up while her ripe figure conveyed the deep sensuality of mature experience. Nour and the
three younger dancers who followed her danced to near-exhaustion, accompanied by a tireless twenty-piece Egyptian orchestra who played a continuous score of deep, brooding music that set Linder's mind wandering to far-off places and times. Each dancer began her routine on the dance floor directly before the dais, then roamed from table to table, making a lengthy pass at the Americans, where Bednarski, a married man with teenaged daughters, tucked many a twenty-dollar bill into bras and G-strings.

  Though a bachelor and no stranger to belly dance clubs, Linder kept his wallet in his pocket, not wanting to draw added attention. After the first two dancers, his mind wandered. Having worked under cover almost continuously since joining the CIA more than a decade ago, and transferring to the DSS after that, he had missed the usual range of opportunities to form lasting relationships with women. Those with whom he had paired off in brief casual relationships had come and gone from his life over the years. None had loved him; of that he was fairly certain. He could think of only one who might have, and that was so long ago that it hardly counted any more. He tried to recall her face, as he did now and again, but it receded into an alcoholic haze.

  At last, the final belly dancer left the floor at the Lido, yet Bednarski still refused to call it a night. Waving aside any security concerns or claims of fatigue, he insisted on dragging the younger men to two more watering holes along Phoenicia Street. Against his better judgment, Linder went along. Without Denniston’s support, he knew that escape was not yet a viable option and so he limited his alcohol intake by nursing his whiskey and ordering frequent mineral water chasers.

  By now, Linder had come to notice the exaggerated deference shown to their small party by the various touts and barkeeps they met along Phoenicia Street. Apparently, Bednarski was a regular everywhere, acting like a rich playboy on what Linder now suspected were the confiscated fortunes of captured rebel émigrés. Linder found the chief’s flashiness as dangerous as it was repellent, since it raised a host of fresh doubts about Bednarski’s judgment in the pending operation against Philip Eaton.