After speaking with her family and recounting the events preceding Masud’s birth, she considered telling them simply to stay where they were and she would get to Cairo as soon as she and Masud could travel. Emily had made her decision. She was leaving both Beirut and her husband.
It was a few days before Ghulam visited her. While unusual for a new father to take so long, Emily was grateful for the delay. She simply did not want to see him. Emily was not afraid of him, but she was afraid of what might happen when she told him she was leaving. His response was predictable. He was in a black fury. She would not, he had screamed, take his child…his son...his life. She would not, he continued, now beating his fists against the wall, leave Lebanon. He would take her passport. She could not leave the country without his authority. This was not England. She would be subject to Islamic law.
She warned him not to try and stop her. He became increasingly louder, to the point that the Matron, an angry Mother Marie-Agnes arrived in a whirl of black linen, looking like a nun of the ancient school of Catholicism, brandishing her wooden rosary like a weapon and wisely accompanied by an armed guard. This was Lebanon after all. She had told him in no uncertain terms to leave and not return or she would have him arrested. She reminded him that until the elections, at least, this was not a fundamentalist Arab nation. Lebanon was, albeit perhaps a surprise to him, not the Yemen! Ghulam was escorted out of the door and did not return.
Emily contacted the British Embassy and spoke with Archie Beresford, whose instructions were quite clear. Tony Shallal arrived later that afternoon. In his hand he held her dark blue British passport in the name of Emily Desai with the notation that Mason Desai, her son, as shown in the photograph could travel with her with full protection of the realm. She then contacted her aunt, giving her the combination of the wall safe she had used at her home in Cairo and instructed her to bring the balance of her emergency funds, which amounted to several thousand pounds sterling as well as dollars and Deutche marks. Bring it along, she told her, and take it to the ambassadorial compound where they would be staying with Archie Beresford. She instructed Aunt Jack to go shopping in Cairo and get assorted clothing, particularly business suits. She reminded her aunt to get things with elastic waistbands and lots of nursing bras as well as the long flowing skirts and tunics she loved. She must look like a western tourist and not an Islamic wife. She added that her parents were to go to the nearest department store before leaving England and get western baby clothes, a carry-cot and a light weight baby stroller that could fit into a car and to send them to the embassy in care of Tony Shallal. She should also contact her landlady in Heidelberg so she could prepare the apartment for her arrival in a few weeks. The Benz should be overhauled as well as she would drive from England to Germany.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“Well, good morning to you. I’m Kate Quigley your physician. I hear, young lady, that you’ve been complaining that you’re fit and ready to leave. Now you need to understand something. I give the orders around here, not any of my patients. Your son is unable to travel until I say so. While he may be large for his age, he’s still a preemie and he is not ready to go anywhere just yet. As for you, Tilly Mint, you’ll stay your arse here. Even though your delivery was natural and without complications, you still had a rough time and need to rest. As I recall you had some other injuries which had nothing to do with childbirth.”
Doctor Quigley, I need to leave Beirut immediately.”
Her lilting Dublin brogue became more apparent as her temper became aroused. “You’re not fit to travel. Maybe in a week or so. Your son can’t leave for at least ten days anyway. I’ll not be putting the little fella at risk and that’s me final word. You might also want to consider that you’re safer in than out with that madman you’re married to lurking around! How in the hell did you meet up with that cracked bugger, if you’ll pardon me French?”
“It’s a long story Doc,” Emily replied more relaxed and at ease with this pleasant young woman.
“You’ve got time, don’t worry. How about getting up and walking to the dining room? The food is excellent and if you’re nice I might let you have some good old British Ribena from me own private cellar. I’ve got Marmite as well and Cadbury’s flakes. What d’you say to that then?”
“It’s a deal,” said Emily, already tasting the essentially British creature comforts in her mind.
Kate Quigley explained over roast lamb with mint sauce and steaming mugs of Tetley Tea that not only was she the physician here but she was also was on call to the British Embassy. “Small world isn’t it?” she added. “Moreover, I’m constantly back and forth as a consultant to the Home Office. They need to know what the health situation is around here.”
“I thought ‘Sacre Coeur’ was a French hospital,” Emily stated flatly.
“It is, but I am a private physician not in residence there. It is one of the best private clinics around. But let’s get to the point. Your husband has obviously beaten you up, which bothers me considerably because I was once in the same boat. That’s how I got here. One day I just packed a bag and left. I don’t need to know any more details other than what I see. You’re in a foreign country. You have no rights here other than superfluous ones. Go to the embassy and arrange to be repatriated.”
“Thanks for your help Kate, but I have a plan in the works and I’ll be fine.”
“I suppose you will, but if you need help at any time, come back here and readmit yourself. When you get inside explain you need to see me and I’ll take over from there. I’m part of a network that actually helps women who have problems like this resettle.”
“What do you know of my husband?”
“I hear on the grapevine only that he is part of a group of fundamentalists under the spell of a very charismatic cleric named Sheik Muhammad Abdel Haq, who is obsessed with the idea of a separate Muslim state and is encouraging all middle of the road Muslims who by virtue of their wealth would not usually be interested in this stuff to take a stand against western imperialism and back the Palestinians.”
“How did you find this out?”
“I’m a doctor. Most of my patients are women. Many of these women are wives of men involved in this upsurge of radicalism. I’m not saying that the principle is not well-founded. The Palestinians have a right to their share of the land, but what is happening now is going to result in wholesale slaughter down the road, and your husband,” she continued somewhat willfully now, “is up to his neck in radicals. As I see it, he’s about to be used by all sides and he doesn’t realize it.”
“How do you mean?” asked Emily.
“Your husband is well connected, Afghani, and speaks flawless Arabic. My private opinion is that he’s a woman-hating shirt-lifter who’s trying to look as macho as possible to avoid Muslim scrutiny, or he’s just plain bloody cracked.”
“A queer? Ghulam? I doubt it sincerely,” laughed Emily.
“Makes perfect sense to me dearie, let me tell you. But as far as the politics are concerned, at some point my political friends tell me that Russia, not content with being the only country in the world without oil resources, will invade Afghanistan. It mightn’t be any time soon, but it is inevitable. Afghanistan has a very fragile economy and a monarchy that is out of touch with the people. It is a country that is still immersed in tribal feuds and people who have been fighting each other for thousands of years. With them, it’s a blood feud, with everything based on tribal or family honor. They never, ever back down. They’re mountain fighters. Many of the suburbanites are rich, well-educated and well connected just like your Ghulam. But the complexities of the nation are enormous and the rich don’t represent the real people. The Pakistan border has always posed a threat to the west as the tribes who are the warring factions intermingle and fight and their roots run thick. Pakistan has a reputation to maintain as the bad boy on the block. If, and I predict it will happen within the next decade, the Russians who are broke decide to take over Afghanistan in order
to control the oil excavation that the region is in dire need of, exploiting it to survive, it will surely backfire on the rest of us. The resistance movement will grow and all Muslims, not just these radical Islamists will unite. They’ll have to. And most likely the free West will get involved, which will put us all in a dangerous situation. We will have to defeat the Russians at all costs. A sort of ‘let’s help them eliminate our biggest problem’ we’ll use the Afghani’s and they’ll end up fighting back one way or another.”
“And who will win?” asked Emily.
“Certainly not the women or children. They never do. Anymore than they win in Belfast. They’re all gangsters. That’s where my husband was from and a right bastard he was as well.”
“Where is he now?”
“He was killed.”
“By whom?”
“By me. It was self-defense. That’s how I got here. I had to leave or they’d have come after me too. He was valuable to someone in the IRA, I suppose. One day I’ll tell you all about it. In the interim get the hell out of Beirut. This place is about to explode and while I have a certain amount of influence and neutrality, you most certainly do not. If I can help you, I will. But Emily, please leave this place as soon as you are well enough to travel, which should be in about a week.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Tony Shallal visited Emily the following day. He was cordial, kind and came straight to the point. “I feel it is in your best interest to leave Beirut before the trouble begins. The upcoming election is going to present a great deal of problems for us all. There is no doubt that Sulayman Frangieh will win. He’s a northerner and will obviously promote his own tribe into powerful government positions. Rather like we do in Britain really, if you get my point. But when he does the chances are rather high that he will in error remove the wrong people and our intelligence seems to think that this will give Yasser Arafat’s chaps the green light. You know of course that Arafat has unsuccessfully attempted to topple King Hussein of Jordan. I suppose he didn’t reckon on Hussein being a brilliant soldier as well as a strategist. Hussein went to Harrow and Sandhurst you know. Brilliant chap! British wife too! She used to be a switchboard operator in Ipswich. Did you know his life was once saved from an assassin’s bullet by a medal given to him by his grandfather, who himself was assassinated? Amazing isn’t it? Did Arafat really believe he was dealing with a novice? Hussein was meant to rule. It was his destiny. The point is, Emily, now that Arafat has been trounced out of Jordan, they will reevaluate their situation here, and that means this country will be truly polarized and you will not be safe. Civil war is a certainty. It’s only a matter of time. But you do have an option. As a woman of Arab ancestry, you can work with a select group of us and do a lot for peace.”
“Me? I’m a nobody and I have a child.”
“Emily, we will eventually send you back to England, but we’d like you to cultivate your acquaintances in the border country, so to speak.”
“Which acquaintances?”
“The Baader-Meinhof Gang.”
“Tony, they’re in Jordan. They were leaving here for Jordan and then to Syria.”
“Wrong. They have returned. As we speak they’re somewhere in the middle of a mountain range dividing Lebanon and Syria. Actually, you gave me sufficient information to track their every move. They’re supposed to be hippies traveling in the Middle East to find God, and decent hashish or some such rubbish.”
“I suppose my safety and that of my son is contingent to this?”
“Not put like that. Your son will be with your aunt, a woman of considerable intelligence in more ways than one and your parents are essentially non-political, wealthy and well meaning but not of interest to the government. You will not be alone; you just won’t know who is surveilling you. I guarantee it will come as a bit of shock though. I will be there also, but not at the same site where you will be.”
“Where is Ghulam?”
“Where he can do no harm. He’s off to a place for Wahhabis intent on converting the world or claiming it for his version of Islam. He’ll be out of your hair for months if not years while continuing his search for God. When he’s finished our sources say he’ll go to a training camp himself and then on a recruitment mission. You know the sort of thing, ‘forward brothers to the revolution’. Didn’t you read Pasternak at school?”
“You’re making him sound like a cross between a Bolshevik and a fucking Mormon.”
“My dear, you really do have a foul mouth.”
“Yes, and I recall you did nothing to help the last time I used it. Give me one reason why I should observe and report, which is what you’re after, right?”
“Because terrorism is the biggest threat to world peace, Amina Desai, and you have made friends with terrorists who know more terrorists, who know more terrorists. Do I need a bloody paint brush?”
“You’re seriously asking me to leave my new born son and go off to play terrorist in Syria?”
“That pretty much sums it up, yes.”
“You’re on, mate...with a few conditions.”
“And they are?”
“Total immunity from prosecution should anything go wrong, continual protection from Ghulam for myself and my family, an arranged divorce acceptable in any country and finally, thirty thousand British pounds sterling to be paid into an account in Switzerland. The first half when I enter the camp and the last when I return home.”
“I’ll get back to you,” he said, not altogether surprised at her demands.
“Do that Tony,” she responded in kind, thinking to herself that her demands were such that they’d let her off the hook instantly and she could go home to Germany or England and forget them all.
She was very wrong.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Within two weeks, her son was hidden safely with Aunt Yacouta and her parents in Cairo. Emily learned that thirty thousand pounds sterling had been deposited into her Credito Commercial account. She remained sequestered at the Beirut British Embassy compound, receiving medical check-ups from Dr. Quigley and brushing up her Arabic, French and German with Wils de Crecy and Tony Shallal. It would be, she was told, de Crecy’s last foreign assignment for a while.
She was instructed in surveillance techniques and given target practice with basic weaponry, then taught how to create and use a “drop” for passing on information in public places, how to develop and recruit potential informants luring them with the understanding that this was nothing “really” special just a few reports every so often. She became adept at using classic “honey-trap” techniques similar to those commonly practiced by the Israeli intelligence mission, The Mossad, outside of the country itself. She was not surprised to find out that while Shallal and de Crecy had both been identified as potential candidates suitable for recruitment into Her Majesty’s Secret Service for MI5 or MI6 at their mutual private school Gordonstoun, the actual recruitment and contact itself was not initiated until they both entered Gaius College in Cambridge. It was there that they were both approached by Professor Clive Asquith, known as the greatest talent spotter of all time, and inducted into the security service. Shallal’s continuing education was by this time being sponsored by the government in the form of readily attainable grants with the long-term goal of utilizing his aptitude for languages, intellectual genius, ethnicity and surprisingly, his love of live theater and performing arts. Emily was astounded at Shallal’s gift of mimicry. Tony Shallal was able to assume not only the accent but the complete personality of whomever he chose. A performance which left the class of six specially chosen infiltrators into Palestinian training camps of which Emily was now a part, in fits of raucous laughter. Closing out one of his lectures to the group on Shia and Sunni extremists, his take off of Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath making unsavory overtures to the prim and proper Margaret Thatcher, having completely forgotten that she was now the new Cabinet Education Secretary and a formidable challenge to his party leadership, was nothing short of brilliant com
edy.
De Crecy’s contributions centered on the history of MI5 and MI6. He was a researcher and a blue-blood and provided insight into the roles of both services, discussing in great detail defectors Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, their motivation and the tragic consequences to the British Secret Service. For de Crecy, as he delighted in explaining to willing ears, it had been a foregone conclusion that he would enter some sort of Ministry of Defense government service, as it was in his blood. The ultimate snob, de Crecy would constantly brag about his illustrious ancestors and their military prowess, making the occasional lewd remark on the overall sexual concept of spying, the “James Bond Fuck” pattern, as he explained it. Emily, needless to say, found herself committed to reminding him of his total lack of sexual prowess based on her private theory that good lovers don’t have to brag and that he was neither Sean Connery nor James Bond. But de Crecy was constantly trying to get close to Emily. He would find her in the small cafeteria after lectures and wait for her to jog so that he could join her in the semi-darkness of the compound’s small athletic training area. When she exercised he was at her side, always too close, stopping only short of direct physical contact. He surveyed her with his eyes constantly. He took liberties, making fun of the occasional seepage through her maternity bra which, despite the strapping and the medications occasionally leaked. Unlike other women in this position, Emily wasn’t embarrassed about it; this was in the purist sense, the psychic connection between mother and child. She truly believed that her son at her aunt’s house in Cairo was hungry and her body recognized that message from a distance of hundreds of miles. It was always moments like this when she would catch Shallal looking at her with sadness in his eyes and she knew that he firmly believed that he alone was to blame for separating her from Masud, and he felt pangs of guilt as a result.
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