Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2)

by Fleming, Preston

  “Then why don’t you just come out and admit it? You have no intention of leaving the Agency, and probably never did. And it’s not because you love your work so bloody much; it’s because you don’t have the courage to try something different. And that’s something I never expected from you, Walter. When I first met you, you were so brave and optimistic and free of commonplace worries, it took my breath away.”

  “Those were the days, my friend…” he sang mockingly.

  “Walter,” she continued, ignoring him. “I know that you didn’t have to help me escape from Saudi Arabia. Far from it—you did it without any authority from your government. No, you helped me because you thought it was the right thing to do, and because Samir was your friend, and, by God, for the sheer sport of it! You had so much spirit then!

  “But from the day you received the cable ordering you to Beirut, something seems to have knocked that gallant spirit right out of you. Now you’ve become just like the Agency higher-ups you used to tell me were so lazy and complacent and corrupt. Lately I see you recreating yourself in their image, following in their footsteps, clawing your way up the ladder so you can be a chief of station someday just like them. But marrying a foreigner with a security problem puts all that at risk, doesn’t it? As long as you stay overseas, out of sight, you can have it both ways, living in the style that suits you and making your professional mark at the same time. But now you have to make a choice. And decisions have never been your strong point, have they, Walter?”

  Lukash listened intently while Lorraine spoke. When she finished there was no anger in his eyes, only sadness and a lingering irony that kept him from appearing completely deflated.

  “You know me too well, Lorraine,” he answered calmly. “No, I’m not very good at decisions. And I know that I’ve been unfair to you. But be patient just a little longer. I can’t tell you all the details yet, but I’m aware of where I’ve gone wrong and I’m doing my best to set things straight. I just need a little more time.”

  Lorraine made no reply.

  They ate in silence for a minute or more until Lukash poured the last of the beer into his glass and pushed his plate away. Lorraine set down her fork as well and wiped the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin. “I’m not very hungry, either,” she said softly.

  Lukash left some banknotes on the table and followed Lorraine toward the door. The young waiter, who was unloading an elaborate mezzé two tables away for a family with four young boys, squinted to make out the denominations of the bills that had been left for him.

  Lorraine was already out the door when Lukash heard a familiar voice call out somewhere behind him. “William. William Conklin—un moment, s’il vous plaît.”

  It was as if a powerful blast of wind had caught him full in the chest and thrown him back a step. Lukash stretched out his hand for the doorframe to steady himself, but before his fingers could close around it, a hand closed around his shoulder and held it firmly in place.

  “Monsieur. You will please excuse me, but a patron of ours insists on having a word with you.”

  It was Boulos. He released Lukash’s shoulder, but only after pulling him far enough around that Lukash noticed a portly Lebanese of about fifty-five years wearing a blue serge suit and a paisley bow tie standing with his back to the wall behind the headwaiter’s station. The man fixed him with a malevolent glare, and Lukash could see that it was Victor Hammouche.

  Victor rose slowly without taking his eyes from Lukash. “William,” he began, staring into Lukash’s eyes as if he half suspected the younger man might actually have risen from the dead. “Yes, it is you,” he said in French. “A bit heavier, perhaps, and older. But the eyes, the eyes are the same.”

  “Excuse me, but I think you have mistaken me for someone else. My name is Walter Lukash.”

  “What he says is correct, Victor,” Boulos interrupted, still in French. “I have seen it on his American Express card. Yaa, Allah, I should never have agreed to let you bother this poor man. You not only embarrass me, Victor, but you embarrass your niece. I tell you, Monsieur Walter is also a friend of Major Elie Musallam. He could not possibly be the same man as the William you talk about. If he were, it is inconceivable that Major Elie would not know of it.”

  The argument appeared to shake Victor’s confidence only slightly. “But Elie was in France in those days. He never met William Conklin.”

  “Surely he has seen photographs,” the headwaiter argued.

  “Perhaps. But see how this man has cut his hair and grown a beard to alter his appearance. If I had not sat down with him so many times...”

  Lorraine reentered the door and seemed confused by Lukash’s confrontation with the two Lebanese. “Is there some problem with the check, Walter?” she asked after an awkward silence on the part of the three men. “I have cash if you need it.”

  Lukash answered her with a brave smile. “No, it’s just a case of mistaken identity, as far as I can tell. This gentleman seems to think I’m somebody he used to know.”

  He turned to Boulos with an expression of ironclad self-assurance. “If your friend would like, I would be more than happy to answer any questions that might lay his concerns to rest. I wouldn’t want to leave here without setting this unfortunate thing straight.”

  Lorraine shrugged her shoulders. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to wait outside.” She turned on her heel and went back out the door.

  As she did, Lukash saw Boulos aim a baleful glare at Victor Hammouche, as if his old friend were a child who had misbehaved unforgivably in public. “Thank you, Monsieur Walter, but I believe Victor is quite finished. I’m sorry if he has disturbed you. He meant no harm.”

  “No harm, you say!” Victor exploded. “If César were alive, you would see what harm would be done to this man! Yes, this man, William Conklin, who married my niece and deserted her when she was carrying his child! Deny it if you will, but I am not so easily deceived. I know you, William Conklin, and the next time we meet you will answer for what you have done!”

  * * *

  Lukash unlocked the French doors of his flat and opened them for Lorraine to step onto the balcony. He followed her out and they stood at the rail surveying the view to the city’s commercial port, a broken canopy of tiled rooftops held up by cracked walls smudged with black soot. Lukash felt something hard under his instep and lifted his foot. A steel-jacketed machine-gun bullet lay on the marble floor, its sharp nose undamaged by the impact with which it had struck the stucco wall. He picked it up and presented it to Lorraine.

  “I’ve found more than a dozen of these since I moved in,” he remarked easily, as if the bullet were a seashell he had found on the beach after the latest storm at sea. “God knows how many of them are on the west balcony. Nobody’s been out there to look since the French doors were boarded up the month before I moved in. And I’ll board these doors over, too, if the glass ever breaks. No sense in throwing good money after bad.”

  “What did that man want at the restaurant?” Lorraine interrupted as she rolled the bullet absently between index finger and thumb.

  “Oh, he seemed to think I was somebody he knew named William. I told him I was perfectly content to remain a Walter.”

  “Wasn’t he the same man who kept staring at you last week when we ate at L’Olivier? Don’t you remember? The table by the entrance?”

  Lukash scowled at her, irritated that Lorraine had not only noticed the man but remembered him.

  “Walter, stop looking at me like that; you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. Why is he so interested in you? Did you know him when you were here before?”

  “How would I know?” Lukash evaded, tilting his head back derisively in the Lebanese manner. “It’s been five years; people change, memories fade. He could have been a neighbor of mine, or a shopkeeper downtown somewhere. You know how it is in the Third World. A Western diplomat is a sort of celebrity; someone you nod to on your way to work will turn up a month later to hit you up for
a visa.”

  “If you really had so very many Lebanese acquaintances when you were here before,” Lorraine pressed, “it seems odd that I’ve never heard you talk about them. After spending nearly a year here, I would think you would have known at least a few people well enough to want to look them up when you came back five years later.”

  “Oh, I had friends, but they were mostly a party crowd—not exactly the type who become faithful pen pals after you move away. In those days I used to do my Arabic tutorial in the morning, study all afternoon, then drop in at the Pickwick or the Charles for a drink or two and join a group to go out for dinner and a little dancing. I’d do that four or five nights a week sometimes, since I didn’t have any agents to meet up with after dark. By the time I left Lebanon, I had a list of phone numbers as long as your arm. But since then the telephone system has been reduced to utter ruin. I tried a few of the old phone numbers the first couple of days after I arrived here—couldn’t get through to a single one.”

  “But it’s just not like you to isolate yourself like this, Walter. In Amman you knew flocks of Jordanians and people at all the Western embassies. We always had somebody joining us for dinner. Here you live like a hermit. It’s as if you were hiding from something.”

  “My assignment here requires a low profile, Lorraine. If the Syrian army and the Palestinian Resistance knew what I was doing here, they might well take offense. I’d rather they didn’t find me.”

  “Yes,” Lorraine conceded, “but the way you’ve been acting still doesn’t add up. Until you were reassigned here, I can hardly recall you ever saying a kind word about working a country desk at Headquarters. Or staying in the Agency until retirement. You always said that the only part of the job that interested you was being a case officer overseas. Not being a station chief—you said that the title of chief simply entitled a person to do twice the work for half the fun, and that you didn’t like the kind of people you saw your friends turn into when they became chiefs of station.”

  “So maybe I’ve grown up just a little since then,” Lukash responded testily. “Maybe I don’t want to be a case officer knocking out reports on Syrian order of battle when I’m forty. It’s not that far away anymore. There are guys my age with a lot less experience than I have who are already being sent out as station chiefs in the Gulf. There’s no standing still in a big organization—either you move up the ladder, or you fall off and become a nobody.”

  “Oh, Walter, why has it become so difficult to talk to you? One day you say it’s too early to discuss a topic, and then the next day, without the slightest warning, you adopt a fixed position and won’t entertain a single contrary thought.”

  “And are you so different?” Lukash challenged. “This must be the ninth time I’ve heard you talk about going to live in Washington.”

  “Now you are just being mean. Is your memory so short that you don’t remember asking me to move back to Washington with you? We were going to find a little house to renovate somewhere along Reservoir Road, not far from Chain Bridge, so that you could drive in to Langley every morning—and we’d still be close to Georgetown. I would find a job flying the North Atlantic route out of Dulles Airport. You were so excited about it that I became excited, too. It was the one constant I could look forward to amid all the changes I’d been through. Well, this time I’ve made up my mind: I’m moving to Washington when my contract is finished here whether you come along or not. It started out being your idea. but, by God, I’m going to carry it through with you or without you.”

  “I envy your freedom, Lorraine,” Lukash answered with a weary smile.

  “You are free to do whatever you want, Walter. You just have to decide what is important to you.”

  She spoke forcefully, but Lukash could see that her anger toward him was mostly spent. Before he could think of a suitable reply, a flash lit up the sky to the west. A second later the distant report of a massive explosion drove the words back into his throat.

  “Their aim seems to be a bit off tonight. We’d better get inside,” he said, taking her by the elbow. He shut the double doors behind him and released the roll-down wooden slats that served as a storm shutter covering both doors.

  “Once again I didn’t think to bring home a movie for the video machine,” he said.

  “Never mind, I have a book,” she replied without looking at him.

  “Would you like a glass of white wine or some port while you read?”

  “Thank you, no. If I need anything, I know where to find it.”

  “I’m going to write a couple of letters in the bedroom,” he offered. “If you need anything, just let me know.”

  “You could get me a sheet and a blanket, if you wouldn’t mind. I think I would prefer to sleep on the sofa tonight, if that’s all right with you.”

  Lukash looked at her as if she had stung him deeply and then he assumed a resigned expression. “The beds are made up in two of the spare bedrooms. Take your pick. Or if you really do intend to sleep on the sofa, the linen closet is at the end of the hall.”

  “Thank you,” she replied without emotion. “And don’t worry about taking me back to the port crossing tomorrow morning. It’s not really on your way. I can phone a taxi.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Lorraine. This isn’t London. What time do you need to be at work?”

  “Half past eight.”

  “We’ll leave here at a quarter past seven.”

  Chapter 15

  A fine mist fell from a ceiling of slate-gray clouds that extended across the Mediterranean as far as Lukash could see from the hill overlooking the Port of Beirut. He fastened the top button of his raincoat and peered out over the quays, warehouses, cranes, and stacked shipping containers toward the no-man’s-land at the heart of the divided city. His attention was drawn at once to the morning’s first commuters who careened at top speed around the curve between the port’s second and third basins to evade any snipers who might not have gone to sleep after fighting all night along the Green Line.

  By now the taxi that had taken Lorraine westward from the port’s Phalange-controlled eastern gate would almost certainly have been waved through the western gate and was probably coming within view of the first Syrian checkpoint at rue Allenby. The Syrian sentries, similarly bleary-eyed and eager for the eight o’clock shift to arrive, could be expected to let the taxi continue on its way.

  Lukash knew from Lorraine’s silence as he drove her to the taxi stand just outside the port that she would not be coming back anytime soon. Her complaints of the night before had been made calmly and without the heat of sudden emotion. Her resentment against him, having gathered during their time together, had coalesced and precipitated as naturally as the soaking winter rain that now covered the morning landscape.

  He felt somehow lighter, as if freed from a burden he had carried long enough to have nearly ceased noticing it. Now that it was gone, his unconscious mind seemed to be taking the measure of his strength and looking ahead. What other unacknowledged burdens remained to be shed? At once the answer came back and burst through into his conscious mind with dazzling clarity. He knew what he needed to do.

  He stepped back into the BMW and turned once again onto Avenue Charles Helou. No one would expect him at the Phalange intelligence compound for at least an hour, maybe two. If he drove quickly, he could be in Anteliás by half past eight. That would be early enough. How long would he need? Maybe an hour, maybe less than a minute—it was impossible to know what he would face there. But once he was finished, he would be free in a way he had scarcely dared to imagine for the past five years.

  As he crossed the Beirut River at the Qarantina Bridge, he noticed the oncoming traffic becoming heavier, as if Radio Liban had given the all-clear signal and all the westbound commuters had left their driveways in Achrafiyé, Burj Hammoud, and Sinn el Fil at the same moment to form the queue now behind him at the port’s eastern gate.

  His breath came more quickly and his pulse stepped up its beat as he
muscled through the traffic circle at Dora and continued eastward toward the autostrade. He tried to imagine how the scene with Muna would play itself out: how he would feel, what he should do and say, how to know when the time had come to leave, and what would remain unsaid when it was all over. But the closer he came, the harder he found it to concentrate on anything beyond maintaining his resolve to go forward.

  He parked the BMW directly opposite the front door of the apartment block and looked at his watch. It was twenty-five past eight, ten minutes before the time he had observed her leaving for work a week earlier. He put his hand on the door handle and then took it away. What if he ran into her coming down the walk, or in the lobby? Would she recognize him? Should he stop her, or let her pass and come back another time? Set-piece encounters seldom ever played out according to plan, no matter how many moves had been plotted out in advance.

  He stepped outside the door, locked the car behind him, and advanced rapidly toward the building’s entrance, as if he feared someone might be following his movements from an upper-story window. To his relief, no concierge occupied the folding metal chair just inside the lobby door. He advanced toward the twin elevators, confirmed from the indicator lights over the doors that neither was in use, and then pressed the call button. The door on the right opened at once. He stepped in and pressed the button for the eighth floor.