Betrayals

by Brian Freemantle

  On the last possible pontoon, three berths along, Janet saw a blue-and-white-hulled boat listing Latakia as its home port. The name, Sea Mist, was picked out in Arabic script below the title in Roman print, which Janet presumed was required by some international maritime agreement.

  The sails were stowed but there was a man in the stern, hunched over what appeared to be an engine flap. He was balding and a sagging stomach hung over his belt, straining the T-shirt to contain it.

  “Marhaba,” said Janet.

  The glance was barely perceptible but Janet knew he had seen her. He gave no response. Her dismissal as a woman, Janet recognized. She said: “Hather illak?”

  Without bothering to look up, the workman said: “No, it belongs to someone else.”

  “Heloo.”

  “It is adequate. How did a Western woman learn Arabic?” He looked up at last, curiosity winning, blatantly studying her body.

  “I teach,” she replied, in English also.

  “But not Arab ways,” he said, dismissive again. He moved to go back over the engine cowling.

  “Syrian registered?” said Janet, stopping him.

  “So?”

  “Do you sail there often?”

  “Of course.” He was leaning against the flap but not bothering with the engine now.

  “I am told it is dangerous.”

  “Not the Syrian coast.”

  “Lebanon then?”

  “Awaih, bas meen fara’a ma-oh Lubnan?” he said, testing her by reverting to Arabic.

  “Some care about the Lebanon,” Janet answered him at once.

  “Not enough.”

  “Do you ever sail there?”

  The man lounged inside the yacht, looking at her for several moments, but not replying. Then he said: “The Lebanon, you mean?”

  Janet nodded.

  Again there was a hesitation. The pontoon heaved beneath her feet and she saw that the T-shirt was stained, not just with engine oil but with sweat-marks under the arms. With intentional awkwardness the man said: “I wouldn’t know.”

  Bastard, decided Janet. She thought of the word in Arabic, too, wondering how he would react if she openly called him a’krout. She said: “Some must”

  “I suppose.”

  “You worked this dock long?”

  There was a shoulder lift, the only response.

  Janet could feel the perspiration making its own pathway down her back: a lot of it was not because of the sun. Trying to stir his obvious chauvinism, Janet said: “It would take a brave man, to risk sailing there.”

  “Or a fool,” he said, not responding to the taunt, either.

  “Do you know such people?” demanded Janet, direct once more.

  The exaggerated shrug came again. He was playing with her, Janet decided: acting out his own strange charade. “Perhaps you know where such people gather?” persisted Janet.

  The man looked beyond her, generally towards the town. “Around,” he said.

  It was time to be even more direct, Janet guessed: she had nothing to lose. She said: “I have £50, in sterling. I would give £50 to learn the names of places where such people gather.”

  The man’s lips parted, in a smile made unpleasant by two teeth missing in the front. “I have heard things,” he allowed.

  “Like what?”

  “You said £50?”

  Janet took the money, two £20 notes and one £10, from her shoulder bag and folded them to make the amount look thicker. She did not offer the small bundle to the man.

  He held out his hand.

  “The names,” Janet insisted, keeping hers by her side.

  The man said nothing, remaining with his palm outstretched. Janet peeled one £20 note from the remainder and passed it over the sliver of water separating them. The man just stopped himself snatching at it.

  “There’s the Marina Pub,” he said, jerking his head back towards Athens Street. “A place called the Rainbow, on Kitieus Street. I’ve heard another meeting place is the Archontissa restaurant, although at night, not during the day. And at night there’s the Byzantium restaurant … it has a nightclub, too … and the Sanacosta. Mostly around the center of town although the Byzantium is out a bit, along Artemis Avenue.”

  “I can find them,” said Janet, eagerly. She was about to pass over the rest of the money and then hesitated. “What about the name of a person?” she asked. “Do you know anyone?”

  The man made a beckoning movement with his hand, for the other £30. As Janet gave it to him, there was a head shake of refusal. “Don’t know any people,” he said.

  “Thank you for the places, at least,” said Janet. It was actually working, she thought excitedly as she climbed from the marina. At last it was working, and she was getting somewhere! Not just one place but several. Surely from all the names she had she was going to be able to find somebody!

  Because it was the nearest, Janet went first to the Marina Pub at the end of the pier. It was just past mid-day when she got there. It was already jostled with a combination of sun-pink tourists and weather-tanned occupants of the marina. Through the expansive windows, Janet could make out the yacht of the hostile Englishwoman, although she was no longer on the air mattress. The workman on the Sea Mist was back at the engine hatch.

  Janet got a seat near one of the windows and ordered kokkineli rosé, gazing around. She wanted someone who was resident, on the marina at least, and Janet realized at once that at this time of the day the place was too crowded to make any guesses and certainly not any approaches. She made the wine last, finally ordering another, and—although she was not really hungry—justified her lingering occupation of the table by choosing a sandwich of spitted lamb, in an envelope of pita bread. It was almost three o’clock before the clientele thinned. She attempted to get into conversation with a group at the bar whom she overheard talking in both French and Arabic but was rebuffed. She got a friendlier reception from two men and a woman talking French but after half an hour of conversation discovered they were cruising from Cannes, had never been to the Lebanon and had no intention of attempting to do so.

  Her hopes soared on her third approach. Almost at once the couple talked of being Lebanese, actually residents of Beirut. Eagerly—although not showing it—she let them lead the conversation, only occasionally risking the intrusion of a question, not wanting to hear the story that gradually emerged and even more unwilling as it did so to confront the gradual descent of her hopes. The man had been a high-rise store owner whose premises had been situated literally between the Maronite Christians and Sunni Moslems when the war broke out with those first shots in April, 1975, in the civil war which was not a civil war any longer because no one knew what it was any more. He had been cautious—a half-boastful smile at this stage of the history—although he had never imagined (“who could?”) it would degenerate into what it had now become. But they’d been able to get out so little of their capital: far too little. They’d already had their yacht (“good fortune when there was so little”) which was now their home. Their livelihood—the high-rise in the most desirable district of Beirut—they’d seen destroyed by the successive exchange of gunfire and mortar and artillery, until it had been cut from its multi-million (“multi-million in any currency you like”) size as if some giant hand had been slicing pieces off a special cake. They’d fled before the anarchy, of course: risked just one return. The formerly proud skyscraper had been a disappointing bump of concrete and steel, the girders and the rusting frames appropriately like the bones of something long dead and picked clean, like things were picked clean by vultures. They had two souvenirs: the front door key, and a fish mold the vultures had somehow, inexplicably, missed in the rubble. The woman said she’d never been able to use the mold again: how could she? Both smiled and accepted Janet’s offer of more drinks, the woman kokkineli like Janet was drinking, the man ouzo which he milked white, with water, with obvious nostalgia.

  Janet clung to the fact that she was establishing contact wi
th Lebanese, and obstinately refused to accept the encounter as a failure. She was met with shrugs when she asked if they maintained contacts with anyone in Beirut. Still, deciding her sad story matched their sad story, she volunteered an account of herself and Sheridan.

  Exiles know everything about the country—and the city—from which they were exiled, and the couple immediately recognized Sheridan’s name. The woman clutched Janet’s hand and said she was so sorry. Janet smiled her gratitude, as if it were the first time anyone had ever expressed regret.

  “It won’t work, what you’re trying to do,” warned the man.

  “I need guidance: a name,” cut off Janet, unwilling to get back on to the carousel.

  “The only people who go back and forth are smugglers,” said the man. “There are a lot of shortages in Beirut: things people need. And for which they are willing to pay.”

  “I’m looking for an intermediary, someone who knows. Not a priest.”

  “I paid a man, once,” conceded the Lebanese. “It was before we went back ourselves. I wanted to know how badly damaged my block was …” He sniggered an unamused laugh. “Actually had thoughts of going back and trying to run it again! Can you believe that!”

  “What man? Where?” demanded Janet, disinterested in rhetoric.

  “Nicos,” said the man. “He called himself Nicos.

  “What family name!” said Janet, with intense urgency.

  The Lebanese shook his head. “Just Nicos. Nothing more than Nicos. He’s careful, you see.”

  “Where?” persisted Janet.

  The Lebanese gestured behind him, towards Athens Street. “There is a hotel, the Four Lanterns,” he said. “At night there is a discothèque. He is often there.”

  Practically on Zenon Square, remembered Janet: on one of the side roads, leading towards the sea. “Will you take me to him?”

  Uncertain looks passed between the couple. The man said: “It is not good: I don’t think we should get involved.”

  “Just an introduction!” pleaded Janet. “Not even that: just point him out to me!”

  Looks were exchanged again. The woman said: “Why not?”

  “We’ll point him out,” conceded the man.

  “Thank you,” said Janet, swallowing. She felt full-up, ballooned, with satisfaction.

  Janet offered more drinks but they chose coffee instead: Janet joined the woman with glykos, the sweetest of the Turkish preparations, but the man took sketos, without sugar. Janet sat patiently through the production of photographs, admiring the skycraper before its destruction and pictures of the couple’s summer home, in the Lebanese mountains. The lack of formal introduction between them appeared to register at the same time. With some small ceremony the man took a card from his wallet identifying himself as Mohammed Kholi and Janet repeated her name, apologizing for not carrying cards: Kholi said he remembered her name, from the accounts of herself and Sheridan. At Kholi’s suggestion they left the Marina bar and wandered along the harbor. Janet asked about their yacht and Kholi pointed to one of the furthest arms of the marina and said it was blue, with a white superstructure, and could she see it? The boats seemed to be predominantly blue but Janet thought she isolated it. Politely she said it looked very nice.

  “So completely different from what I’ve always been accustomed,” complained Mrs. Kholi. “Like living in a box. I hate it.”

  “You’d better become accustomed to it,” remarked Kholi, realistically.

  Kholi said they were too early for the discotheque and invited Janet to be their guest for the rest of the afternoon, and although she did not want to drink or eat anything more she said she’d be delighted to accept. Kholi bundled the two women into a taxi and sat beside the driver before giving a destination that Janet did not hear. They drove away from town, with the sea to their right, and at the junction with Timayia Avenue Janet saw the direction to Dhekelia.

  “Best hotel in Larnaca,” assured Kholi, when they arrived at the Palm Beach. The man chose their seats in the covered balcony overlooking the sea and insisted upon a bottle of Arsinoe white wine. Janet sipped it and said it was excellent, managing to control any facial reaction to its sweetness. On the second glass, Kholi pressed Janet upon what she hoped to achieve. Janet replied, honestly, that she was not sure.

  “Just information,” she said. “Anything more than the sort of silence—the not knowing—that there is now.”

  “Don’t expect too much from this man Nicos,” warned Kholi. “All he had to do in my case was walk along a street and look at a building, to see how badly damaged it was.”

  “I won’t expect too much,” promised Janet.

  Kholi offered dinner but Janet refused, anxious to get to the club, and the other woman said she was not hungry either. Kholi said it was a pity, because he thought the Palm Beach did the best lamb on the island.

  It was eight before they moved and Janet thought abruptly—wondering why it had taken so long—that she was still wearing the same jeans and flat shoes in which she’d left Nicosia that morning, and she had not even washed her face or repaired her minimal makeup since then. There was nothing she could do about it now, apart perhaps from rinsing her face in the lavatory. But that would mean making up again. So why bother?

  Janet recognized the route on the return journey, deciding she had oriented Larnaca in her mind now. Kholi stopped the cab near the Sun Hall Hotel, waving away Janet’s offer to settle the fare, and led them protectively into the nightclub entrance of the Four Lanterns, where again he insisted on paying.

  It catered very much to tourists, realized Janet, the moment she entered. There was a disc jockey booth alongside a deserted stage. In front was a circular dance area over which hung the sort of multi-faceted revolving glass dome that reflects light from variously aimed and colored spotlights. There were oases of tables, illuminated by candles in round pots and hedged by tub seats; and around the wall, which dipped and undulated into the room, were bench seats that met other tables around each of which, on the room side, were more tub seats. The bar was the brightest area in the discotheque, with more lights and more multifaceted reflecting glass. Behind the barmen bottles were racked directly in front of long, highly polished sheets of further reflecting glass. Kholi led the way to the bar and three adjoining stools. Janet examined herself in the bar mirror and decided that in this light the fact that she had been away from a wash basin and a makeup bag all day was not as noticeable as she had feared it would be.

  Janet declined any more alcohol, grateful at seeing Perrier but wishing it had been iced when it was served. The club was only half full, but the music was stridently loud, more to attract waverers outside in the street than for the immediate enjoyment of those who’d already paid their entrance fee. Janet and the Kholis attempted conversation but the volume defeated them and eventually they abandoned the effort, remaining side by side and out-of-place in their surroundings. Janet felt distinctly uncomfortable.

  It was ten o’clock when Kholi nudged and gestured towards the far end of the bar, nearest the door. The man standing there was young, not much older than twenty, Janet guessed, and very aware of himself, preening to the mirror’s reflection. The deep and even suntan was accentuated by the way he was dressed, tight yellow shirt smooth around his flat waist, white trousers matchingly tight around hips moving in time to the music. His hair was very long and curled low over his neck, around which was looped a thin gold chain. When he gestured for a drink—Perrier, Janet noticed—the light struck off a stone in a ring on his left hand. The smile of thanks flashed almost as much as the ring stone.

  “Nicos,” whispered Kholi unnecessarily.

  “Introduce me?” urged Janet, despite their earlier agreement.

  The Lebanese hesitated, looking for guidance to his wife, who grimaced with the corners of her mouth down, in a “so-what” expression.

  Kholi moved, cupping Janet’s arm to move her with him. She followed the man around the crush of the bar and saw Nicos turn and
look without any recognition at Kholi’s touch to his arm. The man’s face remained empty despite Kholi’s mouth-to-ear explanation, only opening in recollection when Kholi took the earlier department store photograph from his pocket and offered it to the man.

  “She wants something out of Beirut, too,” said Kholi, indicating Janet.

  For the first time Nicos looked at her. Janet’s impression of being mentally undressed was strong. Closer, the self-assured smile was even brighter.

  “What?” demanded the man.

  “Somewhere quieter,” Janet said.

  The smile widened. “Sounds interesting.”

  Janet felt herself sweating with the sort of discomfort she’d known talking to the arrogant crewman. “You interested in a business deal?”

  An explosion of music kept the answer from her. Realizing she had not heard, Nicos repeated: “I’m interested in everything.”

  “Business,” Janet repeated, in further insistence.

  “There’s a quieter bar upstairs, in the hotel,” the man suggested. “We can get a return ticket for here.”

  “I shan’t be coming back,” said Janet.

  14

  Nicos led the way into the upstairs bar and to a table overlooking the now-darkened sea and announced: “I will take zivania.”

  Janet order the brandy for him and another Perrier for herself, conscious of his changed attitude. There had been a swagger when he had left the downstairs club but here, without an audience, there was no pretense. She was glad.

  As if in confirmation of her thoughts he said, seriously: “What is it, this business in Beirut?”

  Janet talked intently, alert for his reaction. He sat with his hands around his glass but not drinking and not looking directly back at her, either, his eyes down to the table as if he were deep in thought. When she finished he did not speak immediately.