Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2)

by Fleming, Preston

  “Walter, you seem to come equipped with a plausible cover story for every conceivable thing you do. But, knowing you, dear, I’m not convinced.”

  “Fine, then, don’t believe me. But if I’m hiding something, what could it possibly be? I’ve hardly been here more than twenty-four hours, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I don’t know exactly what it is,” she answered, wrinkling her brow. “But I just get a feeling that you’re holding something back. I hate to disappoint you, darling, but you’re not nearly as enigmatic as you think.”

  * * *

  Lukash stopped the BMW opposite the entrance to L’Olivier, allowed the restaurant’s doorman to open Lorraine’s door, and then turned over the keys to a white-jacketed parking attendant. He slipped each a ten-lira note and led Lorraine across the sidewalk into the dimly lit restaurant.

  Lukash had been told five years earlier that L’Olivier was one of the better French restaurants in Beirut. Now it was the only French restaurant he knew on the city’s East Side, and that only because the headwaiter, Boulos, had mentioned it at lunch. He let the door close behind him and approached the maître d’s stand with Lorraine on his arm. Boulos was busy scribbling but after a moment lifted his eyes and recognized Lukash instantly. He wore the same threadbare black dinner jacket that he had worn at La Chasse during lunch, but it had been freshly pressed and a white carnation was pinned to the lapel. His chest seemed to swell with pride at seeing the two foreign guests.

  “What a happy surprise to see you again so soon, Mr. Walter! And how lovely mademoiselle looks tonight. Voila! I have reserved one of our best tables for you, in a corner—very quiet and very secure. You may be interested to know that the walls of this restaurant are made of limestone, nearly a meter in thickness. You need not be concerned about shells or stray bullets; such things have never troubled us at L’Olivier, even at the worst of times. Follow me, if you please.”

  They followed the headwaiter down a long, narrow room past a dozen candlelit tables set with gold-rimmed Limoges china and white linen. Only two tables were occupied. At one sat a pair of stout Lebanese merchants in blue serge suits who eyed greedily the bottle of Burgundy that the wine steward was preparing to open before them. At the other sat an elderly Lebanese couple, elegantly dressed, together with a fiftyish woman, possibly their daughter, and a handsome silver-haired Lebanese in his mid-fifties, whom Lukash guessed to be the woman’s husband. Three of the four were too busy spreading liver paté on toast and passing around a bottle of white Bordeaux to notice the newcomers.

  The silver-haired Lebanese, however, appeared to give a start upon seeing Lukash as he passed by. Despite the low light, Lukash, too, found something disturbingly familiar about the man’s face. It was a common enough type in Beirut, yet there was a certain distinctiveness about the jutting jaw, prominent widow’s peak, and thin, hard line of his mouth that Lukash felt he had come across before.

  Lukash and Lorraine took their seats and Boulos returned with a wine list. When he looked at the Lebanese again, the man’s back was turned to him.

  “Whether it’s any good or not, I insist on having a bottle of Ksara Blanc de Blancs,” Lukash said. “It was my favorite before the Events.”

  “It is still available, I am happy to say,” the headwaiter answered. “The fighting has not affected the region around Jdita. The harvests go on as before.” Boulos gave a perfunctory bow and left them, informing the wine steward of their selection on his way back to his lectern by the door.

  “Your enthusiasm over the wine is the liveliest response you’ve shown all evening,” Lorraine began with characteristic directness. “Are you still sulking over having been assigned here, or are you unhappy that I came?”

  Lukash did his best not to change expression. Still, he knew Lorraine would spot the guardedness in his unblinking gray eyes that generally signified his unwillingness to tell the whole truth. “Let’s put it this way,” he began. “Since I have no choice about being in Lebanon for the moment, I’d rather have you here than not here. You’re about the only person I can vent to without getting myself in hot water. In Amman they promised me I would be here for a two-month TDY. Now they expect me to stay for a full two-year tour. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I can last here that long, Lorraine. I’m tired. I’ve been in the field for eight straight years. I’ve had enough.”

  “Can’t you tell them that you’re only willing to stay for two months, as you originally agreed? Surely they can find someone qualified to replace you. I should think there would be a surplus of ambitious young men in Washington eager to prove themselves at a posting like Beirut.”

  “Not as many as you might think,” he answered while glancing again toward the table with the two Lebanese couples. “Besides, when you’re offered an overseas assignment, you’re expected to accept it unconditionally. When I entered the organization, I signed a pledge that I’d be available for service anywhere in the world. And at the moment, Headquarters wants a journeyman-level case officer who has served in Lebanon before, speaks Arabic fluently, and has experience in both liaison and paramilitary operations. There simply aren’t that many guys out there who fit that profile, and if any of them had been available, I rather doubt that Headquarters would have turned to me. So if they tell me it’s Lebanon, basically it’s Lebanon or nothing.”

  Lorraine’s eyes flashed with irritation. Lukash knew what she was thinking: that he was knuckling under without a struggle—and, even worse, without being willing to discuss it with her.

  “So what are you going to do, Walter? Salute the flag and tell them you’ll stay the two years with the greatest of pleasure?”

  “I don’t know, Lorraine,” he answered dully. “I need time to think.”

  “In that case,” she responded, “I have the same question I put to you two months ago, long before anyone even mentioned Beirut: What about us, Walter? What about Washington?”

  “I haven’t forgotten, Lorraine. We’ll still get to Washington, believe me.”

  “Yes, I’ll be there in ten weeks, as soon as my contract here expires. Let there be no doubt about that. But what about you, Walter? When? Two years? Two and a half if there’s a problem in replacing you? Don’t you see, if you’re as serious about leaving the Agency as you say, time is running short. At thirty-four you could still study for an MBA or a law degree and start a new job at thirty-six.

  “There are plenty of opportunities in the Gulf for someone who speaks Arabic and knows his way around. If you have any doubt of that, I know several people you could talk to. Any American oil company or defense contractor would be fortunate to have someone like you to help them handle the Arabs. The American businessmen I knew in Jeddah and Riyadh didn’t know a tenth of what you know about how to get on with the Saudis.”

  Lukash set down the salad fork he had been toying with and leaned back in his chair. He had heard the argument before and suspected there was a good deal more to selling American aircraft, tanks, and missiles to the Arabs than met Lorraine’s untrained eye. As for his own qualifications, he was neither a trained engineer nor a military man, nor did he have any experience in business, despite having once claimed to be a refrigeration salesman.

  “I’d prefer that we not get into the MBA scenario again, Lorraine,” he said. “I’d be crazy to quit the government and blow my savings on a graduate degree just so I could spend my days drinking tea in some raghead prince’s outer office waiting for an audience that might never materialize. Hell, fifteen years from now I can retire with a full pension. That’s not so far off. Let’s say I have to spend the rest of the year here. After that there will be two or three years keeping a desk warm at Headquarters, then a couple more tours overseas, then back to Headquarters again, and I’ll be ready for my farewell tour.”

  “Now I’ve heard everything,” Lorraine replied, casting her eyes at the ceiling. “Fifteen years until retirement. Retirement, you say! If you truly can’t abide spying, Walter, why should you want to s
pend fifteen bloody more years doing it? And if you won’t go back for another degree, why not talk to your friends in the State Department about a job in the consular corps? I’ve heard you say scores of times that you’ve never enjoyed a job more than the one you had running the visa section in Delhi. Why not write to Jack Tate? Or Nick Latigan—I’m sure either of them would be more than pleased to help you.”

  This was not the first or even the second time Lorraine had made the suggestion. Lukash had never openly rejected it, but he knew in his heart that it wouldn’t work. Once having known the thrills of agent meetings, planting listening devices in hostile embassies, and running paramilitary operations behind enemy lines, he knew he could not issue tourist visas for the rest of his working life. As much as some aspects of his job repelled him, there were other parts of it that he could not imagine living without.

  The wine steward arrived with a bottle of Ksara in a stainless steel ice bucket. He cut the lead cap from around the neck and removed the cork, then he poured enough to cover the bottom of Lukash’s glass. It was full-bodied and fruity but otherwise without much character. How memories deceived, Lukash thought. He smiled at the wine steward and beckoned him to fill the two glasses.

  “Ten weeks,” he announced, raising his glass. “Let’s make the most of them.”

  Lorraine touched her glass gently to his and drank. Her eyes were moist with tears.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll talk to the chief about it,” Lukash relented. “He won’t want me to leave short of a full tour, but he knows how much of a stink I could make if I set my mind to it. Maybe we can reach a compromise.”

  Lorraine nodded and then abruptly snatched up her purse. “I’ll be back in a few moments. If the waiter comes, order me a salade Niçoise and some broiled fish. Whatever looks good.” With that she sped off toward the back of the restaurant, asked a busboy for directions to the ladies room, and disappeared.

  As if on cue, Boulos approached Lukash’s table with a tray densely packed with whole fish and crustaceans: sea bass, grouper, swordfish, tiny sultan brahim, shrimp, and a lobster in the center. Under his arm were tucked two folio-size menus, each bound in hand-tooled Egyptian red leather.

  “Would you like to make a selection of fish tonight, monsieur?” he asked, lowering the tray from his shoulder and inclining it toward Lukash to afford him the best possible view.

  “Which do you recommend for broiling? Mademoiselle prefers broiled.”

  Boulos set the tray on the table and withdrew a thick swordfish steak from the mass, then he laid a slender filet alongside it. “This one is for mademoiselle—grillé. But for you, monsieur, I recommend this one, sautéed in butter and garlic.”

  “Both will be fine, Boulos. Bring them with a hearts of palm salad for me and a salade Niçoise for her.”

  “Anything else, monsieur? Some mineral water, perhaps?”

  “Yes, whatever you have, as long as it’s gazeuse.” Lukash paused a moment, looked at the foursome across the room, and added in a low voice. “One more thing, Boulos. Do you happen to know the name of the man sitting with his back to me at the table by the kitchen door? I feel I’ve met him somewhere before.”

  Boulos seemed to hesitate before answering. “His name is Victor Hammouche. A civil engineer. He lives in Kuwait since the Events.”

  “Hammouche,” Lukash repeated, then bit his lip. “And is that his wife sitting next to him?”

  “No, his sister. His wife took ill tonight.” Boulos spoke slowly now and seemed to focus on Lukash’s reaction to his words. “For some years his wife taught Arabic and French at the American embassy. Claudette Hammouche—perhaps you have met her. Claudette knew all the Americans in Beirut in those days.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Lukash replied coolly, lowering his wine glass to the table to stop his hand from trembling. “I didn’t go to the American embassy very often then.”

  For a fleeting moment, Lukash remembered himself seated at a crowded table along the edge of the dance floor in the Phoenicia Hotel’s penthouse nightclub, a twenty-piece Egyptian orchestra playing at full volume only a few meters away. On that night the matronly Claudette Hammouche had winked at William Conklin across the table before raising her fluted champagne glass in a toast. Victor Hammouche used the moment to seize the bottle of Lanson Brut from the cooler by its linen-draped neck and filled his niece’s glass until the bubbly foam cascaded down the side and over her delicate fingers. César Khalifé discreetly raised a manicured hand to signal the need for a fresh bottle.

  “Your flight does not leave until tomorrow afternoon. There is more than enough time for another bottle,” César had assured him.

  “But this is our last night together, Papa,” Muna protested with a demure laugh. She was wearing the white sleeveless dress he had bought for her in Athens, and it took all his self-control not to reach out and bury his face in her perfumed hair where her shoulder met the base of her neck.

  Suddenly Boulos loomed once more beside Lukash in his timeless black dinner jacket, watching him closely as if he had guessed that his guest’s thoughts had been somewhere else.

  “You still remember, don’t you, Boulos? The woman you said I brought to your restaurant five years ago for mezzé. You not only know her; you know her family, don’t you?”

  The maître d’hôtel remained expressionless.

  “Please, Boulos, don’t say anything to them. For once, pretend that damned photographic memory of yours failed you. Believe me, it will be better for everybody.”

  Chapter 7

  Harry Landers stood before his office door like a nervous watchdog whose ears have already detected a suspicious rustling somewhere in the bushes. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Conrad Prosser approaching. “He’s been here nearly a half hour, Con. He insists on talking to the military attaché. I told him Colonel Ross isn’t available but I’d find somebody else he could talk to. Pirelli said to call you.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He has a Syrian passport in the name of Mazen Barghouti. Date and place of birth: 1954, Aleppo. Occupation: engineer. Religion: Sunni Muslim. Passport is genuine, but it was issued last week, so it’s hard to say much more. He insists he has important information for us, but that’s as far as he’ll go.”

  “He’s been frisked?”

  “Twice. Once when he came into the visa area and once again before coming up here. Do you want me to call a marine to stand outside the door?”

  “When you get a chance. Meanwhile, I’ll go in and hear him out. Don’t stray too far; when we’re finished, you’ll need to show our visitor out the back way.”

  Prosser entered the office and closed the door behind him. At the far end of Harry Landers’s leather sofa sat a tall and very lean Arab in his mid- to late twenties, legs crossed, blowing rings into a billowing haze of bluish-gray cigarette smoke. His long face had an intense, almost ascetic look that seemed oddly inconsistent with his ultrashort military haircut and the brown tweed suit that appeared to have been made for someone ten or fifteen pounds heavier.

  Without apparent nervousness or haste, the Syrian parked the cigarette in an ashtray on the low table before him and stood to face Prosser. His dark eyes met the American’s and left an immediate impression of intelligent self-assurance.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Barghouti,” Prosser began in Arabic as he took the opposite end of the sofa and scribbled a few words along the margin of his legal pad. “My name is Bill Armstrong. I hope you will excuse me for having kept you waiting.” He offered his hand and the Arab took it long enough for a single up-and-down movement.

  “As Harry probably told you, I work closely with the American military attaché. I understand you have some information you would like to share with the attaché.”

  “Yes, but I wish to speak to him directly.”

  “I understand that. But, unfortunately, Colonel Ross is not in the building this morning. If you will tell me what you would like to discuss with him, perhap
s I can arrange for you to meet him another time.”

  “You are in the American army, then—or in the mukhabarat.”

  “I am with American intelligence. Whatever you say to me will be passed on to the proper person in the American government. But first I need to know a few things about you. For example, is Barghouti your real name?”

  The Arab shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so.” Prosser went on. “Your government doesn’t issue passports to men on active military duty, so if you are who you say you are, the passport couldn’t be yours. What branch are you in: army, air force, defense companies?”

  “I am a flight lieutenant in the air force. The passport was issued to my cousin, who resembles me but is still a student.”

  “Then you have taken some risks to come here, haven’t you, Mazen? You can call me Bill, by the way. Bill isn’t my name any more than yours is Mazen, but there’s no harm in that. So tell me, was coming to the American embassy your own idea, or did you come on behalf of your organization?”

  A wry smile began to form at the corners of Mazen’s mouth and spread slowly across his face. “I was opposed to coming here. The others insisted that I do it. They said that without help from the Americans or the Phalangists, we would all be captured and killed over the course of time without achieving any of our goals.”

  “What others? And what are the goals that you want us to help you achieve?”

  “We are a secret organization of young officers, mostly in the air force and army, and we call ourselves the Syrian Free Officers’ Movement. Our objective is to overthrow the criminal Hafez al-Asad and his band of Alawite gangsters. We ask your government for no money or weapons, only defensive materials: radios, medical supplies, and some specialized equipment that we need to help us carry out our activities.” The Syrian stopped and looked expectantly at Prosser, as if awaiting a decision from him at that very moment.