* * *
NOW THE TRUCKS are idling in the courtyard—big, camouflage-green Syrian Army flatbeds with canvas back covers. Their engines turn over with a sluggish rhythmic rotation like the panting of beasts. There are two trucks and a jeep and a military personnel carrier. The trucks are loaded with 15,000 pounds, seven and a half tons, all Number One, Zahara, and Double Zahara—redolent in resin-stained white canvas sacks, graded and stamped with the Flower of Bekaa seal, packed in thick burlap duffel bags. There are also fifty gallons of honey oil included in the load, sticky, amber-colored essence of cannabis resin worth twenty thousand a gallon. A $15 million shipment wholesale, worth upwards of fifty million in the marketplace. My end alone is five million. All that remains is to get the hash safely from the Bekaa to Beirut, pack it with the dates, put the whole shipment in containers loaded on a freighter headed for New Jersey. Then I can go home.
Home? Wherever that is. I’m a fugitive, I have no home. That is the nature of being a fugitive: one has no place to call home. I live in the wind. Abu Ali’s villa outside Baalbek is my home—for now. The penthouse apartment in West Beirut is my home—for the immediate future. The farm in Maine, put up to secure my bond, is subject to forfeiture by the government. The ranch in Texas is under the cloud of an IRS investigation. Besides, I can’t go there, I’ll be arrested. Where I go from here will be decided when the time comes. In the meantime: Play it by ear, travel light and leave no trail, be ready to drop everything and split at a moment’s notice. Run… and keep on running.
The trucks are ready, the small convoy is under way before dawn. The Syrian army is transporting our load. How cool is that? I ride ahead with Abu Ali in his Land Rover. He assures me that there is nothing to worry about, everyone along the road from Baalbek to Beirut at the two dozen plus checkpoints has been greased with baksheesh. Fifty thousand dollars worth. Money, in fact, is Abu Ali’s only concern—though, he admits, in Lebanon in these chaotic times, one never knows. Some new militia or some faction of an established militia or a renegade crew could materialize and try to shake us down. Abu Ali says he is broke. He needs money. He won’t go into it with me, not now. That is something we must discuss with Mohammed once the shipment is safely delivered to the port.
We keep the convoy in view. Abu Ali tells me that nearly everyone understands contraband is being transported. The smell alone gives it away. I could smell hash fifteen feet from the trucks. He says no one will question the shipment because it appears to be done with the sanction and blessing of the powers that be, such as they are at any given moment. If there is a problem, he says, he will drive back to the checkpoint and straighten it out. But there will not be a problem, he assures me. We have Syrian soldiers on the trucks guarding our load. Nobody messes with the Syrian army. We are official. Hashish is the lifeblood of Lebanon. Still, I am nervous for the entire trip. There is a lot riding in those trucks. Anything can happen. We could be hit with a bomb or a rocket. This is like a military excursion in the middle of a land where there are no clearly drawn battle lines. My stomach tightens at the approach of each new roadblock.
Abu Ali and I separate from the convoy on the outskirts of the city, before we reach the Green Line. The load is entrusted to some bearded, machine gun-toting men dressed in military fatigues, who will escort the trucks to the port in East Beirut, unload the cargo, and stay to guard the warehouse. By noon, Abu Ali and I are at the penthouse apartment waiting for Mohammed and Nasif. I take a cold shower. This is like coming home for me: my books, my music, my new wardrobe, the family Saad, even the haunted elephant’s graveyard and the gouges in the bedroom walls give me comfort. Much as I loved the beauty and tranquility of the Bekaa, I felt as though I were in a state of suspended animation. Now it’s back to real life.
And I sense—by virtue of the fact that the load is at the port, ready to be hidden among the dates and then shipped to New Jersey—there has been a definite shift in the power dynamic of this endeavor. To some degree, I am calling the shots now. Soon the Arabs will need me more than I need them. Mohammed is cool to me when he and Nasif and Saad arrive at the penthouse. They go immediately into an intense conference with Abu Ali. I surmise by how agitated Mohammed is that there has been no word from America, no money and no delivery of multi-kilos of cocaine from Colombia. The worry beads are out and clicking furiously. Mohammed defends his position vociferously. He shrugs, scowls, his jowls turn a purple shade of blue. I sit there comprehending only the tenor of what is being said. I hear Tamer’s name mentioned more than once.
Money. It all comes down to money. Abu Ali wants money. He has put up money out of his own pocket to pay to have the load brought down from the Bekaa. Mohammed wants money. He must grease a dozen or two dozen palms to get the load safely aboard a ship and headed for port in the United States. They both look at me.
Then suddenly the mood shifts as food and alcohol are served. Everyone is more or less happy. Relieved. It really feels like we are under way. We have the load, and it is good. All good and even very good. Abu Ali drinks only tea. He chain-smokes Marlboros even while eating. The meal is sumptuous, as always. I learn that Mrs. Saad and Abu Ali are related, first cousins. The war, everyone agrees, has reached the point where something decisive must happen soon or Beirut will be destroyed and Lebanon will not survive as a sovereign state. Beirutis with the means are fleeing the city in droves. It is no better in the countryside, particularly in the south. Uprooted, impoverished refugees are flocking to the city and squatting in abandoned homes and buildings, camping in the parks. Israel’s formidable army is rallying at the southern frontier. There is the sense everywhere one turns that life in Beirut is bought and paid for moment to moment. One’s honor, value, integrity, self-worth are like pennies tossed in the street to groveling urchins. They mean nothing but a hope to survive.
The meal goes on for hours. Abu Ali leaves with handshakes and kisses. Then the imbroglio simmering all afternoon boils over into the front room. By this time I am several glasses of Johnny Walker past caring what Mohammed thinks of me. Besides, I know, beneath all his bluster and recriminations he understands he created this mess.
Why, he asks through his firstborn, did I tell Abu Ali that I had nothing to do with the business with Pierre?
“Because it’s the truth,” I say. “And your father knows it. You know it! Don’t even try this shit with me, Nasif. Why did your father, why did you allow him to make this business? After what I told you? I told you months ago when you called me in New York that this guy was a thief. And after what happened in the restaurant? It makes no sense.”
“Mister Richard, you must understand. It was my father’s decision. I cannot go against my father.”
“So ask him: Why did he make this business when I told him not to do it?”
Mohammed erupts, he yells at me as Nasif translates. It is none of my business! he shouts in Arabic.
“Then why am I being held responsible?”
Nasif translates. Because you are American, Pierre is American. He used your name. It is assumed you are partners.
“No fucking way I am taking responsibility for that load, Nasif. I told you not to do anything with this man. Of course he was going to rip you off. What did you expect?”
I’m yelling now, which serves to quiet Mohammed. There is a time to hold your peace; there is a time to yell.
Mohammed answers and Nasif translates. “He had money.” Two hundred and fifty grand, Nasif tells me, not the million plus he bragged about. And a promise to send cocaine from Colombia, which has not materialized. “And never will,” I say.
Glum silence. Mohammed is still seething, but he seems at last to have grasped the concept that this is his problem and not my responsibility. Do I have Pierre’s phone number or an address in America? they ask for the tenth time. Nasif confirms there has been no contact with him since the load left Beirut. The number he gave them turned out to be an answering service. He has not responded to repeated messages.
&nbs
p; “It’s not my problem,” I insist.
“Help us find him.”
I shrug. “I’ll do what I can. For now, let’s make this business a success. Then we’ll worry about Pierre.”
But Mohammed is not ready to move on. His dark, heavy-jowled face flushes mauve, and his anger flares once more. Perhaps if I hadn’t insulted Pierre and humiliated the man by slapping him across the face, he would have honored his end of the business, Mohammed sputters. Perhaps he ripped them off because he wishes to humiliate me as I humiliated him, he accuses me through his number-one son and storms out of the room.
Nasif shakes his head, smiles. “See you later,” he says. “He’ll calm down. It’s all good now, yes, Mr. Richard?”
“Yes, Nasif. We have a good load. That’s what matters.”
Nasif follows his father out through the elephant boneyard.
* * *
RELATIONS BETWEEN MOHAMMED and me remain tense. Try as we both do to put the Wizard incident behind us, with his sophistic logic, Mohammed still holds me responsible because: I know Pierre. I allowed him to steal my briefcase. I never should have had Mohammed’s numbers where someone could get them. Whatever the reasoning, he insists I owe it to them to do everything I can to help them locate Pierre when I get back to the States and make him pay. Or at least have him killed.
And he touches that guilty nerve. Again, through Nasif, Mohammed broaches the subject of allowing them to include ten kilos of heroin in with the load of hashish and use the profits to repay Abu Ali and the other growers for the stolen hash. I explain I have already rejected this proposal. They just won’t let it go. Murder. Heroin trafficking. Kidnapping. Take your pick. Days pass. Another week goes by. My refusal to take the junk remains adamant. I begin to worry they may just hide ten kilos of heroin in with the dates and hash without my knowing.
Finally Mohammed reveals what he has been angling toward all along: more money. “Fifty thousand,” Nasif tells me.
I lie. “I don’t have fifty thousand.”
“My father says you must call New York and have Biff bring fifty thousand or we cannot make this business.”
Anticipating this, knowing it was coming all along, I have been in touch with Val, told her to reach out for Sammy, Rosie in Toronto, dig into the money stash, do whatever she has to do and find as much cash as she can. I was worried Mohammed would demand more like two hundred fifty thousand. I’m relieved it is only another fifty. That will bring our initial investment up to around three hundred grand plus expenses. Not a bad investment for a potential multimillion dollar payday. Still, these guys are Lebanese, they won’t respect me if I don’t haggle and play out the hand.
“There’s no way I can get another fifty thousand. It could take weeks. Tell him to forget it.”
Mohammed broods as Nasif translates. “Fifty thousand by next week or he says he will sell the load to the Dutch.”
I shake my head. “He can’t do that. It’s my load. Besides, it would take the Dutch six years to sell that much hash.”
“Not so long. They have American buyers, British…”
Now I am the one getting angry. “What about the money we already have invested? Is your father going to pay me back?” I stand and walk toward the balcony. “I’m finished, Nasif! I’m going back to New York. No more business! And tell your father, he can worry about paying Abu Ali and the others for the load Pierre stole.”
Nasif jumps up and cuts me off before I step out onto the balcony. “Don’t go out there!” he exclaims. “It’s too dangerous! The snipers! Please, Mr. Richard, another fifty thousand and you will be rich. We want to make this business with you. But we must move quickly, before the war is too bad and they close the port.”
This gets to me. The mounting chaos and threat of an Israeli invasion are real. “Fifty thousand,” I say and go back inside, embrace and kiss father and son. “Not a penny more.”
Mohammed shakes his head, chuckles. “Ah, Mr. Richard…” and says something in Arabic.
Nasif laughs and translates. “He says, now you are really Lebanese.”
“Swamp Yankee,” I say.
“What is this?”
“Never mind. Take me to the telephone office.”
TWO DAYS LATER Val arrives on a flight from Zurich. She picked up money from Rosie in Toronto, seventy-five grand Canadian. Deeply tanned from weeks of lounging on the beach in Maui, she looks like she could be Moroccan, with big, gold hoop earrings and dark shades. She’s traveling on a Canadian passport. Mohammed whisks her through immigration with no Lebanese stamps in her brief. I offered to have Nasif meet her in Cyprus and pick up the money. Or have Biff bring it. But she wanted to come, said she needed to see me. Sometimes I think she is as attracted to life on the edge as I am. “I’m so horny,” she whispers when we are in the back of Mohammed’s Mercedes on the way to the apartment. “I can’t wait to fuck you.”
That’s encouraging. I give fifty thousand to Mohammed and hold on to twenty-five in case we have to make a hasty escape. The airport closes two days after Val arrives. The Falange are bombarding the Palestinians. The Syrians are massing troops and antiquated Soviet weaponry in the lower Bekaa, rattling their sabers at the Israelis. The Druze and the Maronites are battling it out in the Chuf. I can’t keep track of who is on which side in this war anymore. The United Nations troops seem utterly impotent. Everyone fears an Israeli invasion. It is not safe for us to leave the apartment.
At first Val is fine with the enforced confinement. She fits right in with the Saad women, she wants to learn how to prepare the Lebanese dishes, she talks to the girls about life in America, and they are teaching her to belly dance. There is something vaguely Middle Eastern about Val to begin with—the olive skin, the Semitic nose and high cheekbones—and temperamentally, though she would never admit it, she’s like some nomadic Bedouin. Her ancestry is vague. Probably Eastern European on her father’s side. Her mother is half Sicilian, half Irish, and all crazy, been in and out of institutions for the insane. Val is a California girl. Dresses like a rich gypsy. Long skirts. Demure blouses. String bikini underwear. She knows how to make herself and those around her feel comfortable and could be accepted almost anywhere. She has spent time in Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Mexico, Colombia. She has the worldly aplomb of an experienced smuggler. And not yet thirty, she loves to fuck.
Still, I feel fear quivering in her thighs as she lies beneath me or sits on my face and throws her head back and moans to the rumbling of far-off artillery fire. She flinches when the rockets land closer. As bombs hit nearby and the neighborhood trembles, she clings to my side and buries her face under my arm. I look at her sleeping fitfully in the morning light after a night of desperate love. Our future feels as hopeless as the Palestinians.
“Why did you come?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I felt sad. I was beginning to think I would never see you again.”
“You happy now?”
“If I’m with you, I’m happy,” she says, yet I don’t feel it. “I want to have your baby,” she announces.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really. Knock me up. Send me home preggers,” she says. And then, “I bought a house… in Maui. You’re gonna love it. It’s on the side of the volcano with a beautiful view. It’s so quiet there, the nearest neighbor is half a mile away. I wanna fill it with kids and good food we grow in our own garden. You’re gonna be happy there.”
“How long do you think it would be before the Feds found me?”
“People have been living over there on the lam for years. Including me. The property is in a company name. No connection to me. Or you. No way they’ll find you there.”
It’s something to think about. “C’mon,” she says and reaches for my cock. “Come inside me.”
* * *
AS THE DAYS turn into weeks we are both feeling the strain of this bizarre, luxurious captivity. Val’s birthday comes and goes with muted celebration, and all you can eat and drink. We make love sometimes t
wo, three times a day. Val looks at me, I look back at her, she cocks her head toward the bedroom with the gray gouges in the concrete walls, winks a big brown eye. If she’s not knocked up now, she never will be. Insane as it may be to think of bringing a child into the world at present, two fugitive parents both facing prison sentences, there is something about the idea that seems right to me. An affirmation of life. And the sex is so good, so real and chancy. We have all the time in the exploding, ever-expanding universe. There is no such thing as death. I am already dead. I can smother my face in her sex and hide from the world crumbling outside.
Mohammed and Nasif come to the apartment late each afternoon for the endless evening meal. “When?” I ask them.
“Soon, Mr. Richard. Soon. Everything is being prepared.”
Same answer, different day. The Holiday Inn has been reduced to a blown-out shell and massive rubble heap. The streets of what was once known as the Paris of the Middle East are a battleground stinking of death and something alive—fear.
Val and I get it on and lie in each other’s arms sweating. “I want to go home,” she says.
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