Web of Spies

by Colin Smith

  5. Peace Talks

  ‘Rebecca’, the young woman in Cyprus who took Koller’s message, returned to Beirut the day after she received it - on the first available flight. She arrived at Khaldeh airport clutching a demi-john of cheap Cypriot brandy, ignored the small boys touting for taxis, and was picked up by a new black Buick with darkened windows. In the back of the Buick sat a middle-aged Arab with steel-rimmed spectacles, a cuddly, roly-poly figure wearing a black leather jacket over a white polo-necked sweater. This was Koller’s boss, Abu Kamal. He wasn’t normally disposed to meet people at airport and, partial to Cypriot brandy though he was, Rebecca was going to be in a lot of trouble if Koller’s message was not as important as she said it was.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ he said as she slid in besides him. ‘Come whisper your sibylline secrets.’

  As she talked the car sped south towards the old Phoenician port of Sidon, passing the places where scruffy Syrian soldiers were manning anti-aircraft guns dug in alongside the road, their muzzles pointing west over the Mediterranean. When she had finished Abu Kamal said that she had been right to come and asked if she was certain that Koller had said he did not know Dove. She said that she was.

  Shortly afterwards they arrived at a small, whitewashed villa, its walls trailing bougainvillea. It stood, facing the sea, about half a mile away from the nearest Palestinian refugee camp and was surrounded by a wire mesh fence, around the top of which ran three strands of barbed wire. As they approached the gate in this fence two lean and fit-looking young men in olive green uniforms and red chequered keffiyeh headscarves sprang out of a hole in the ground. They were carrying the paratroopers’ version of the Kalashnikov, the sort with the folding stock.

  The Buick stopped. The sentries peered into the vehicle and then sprang back into an approximation of ‘attention’ before opening the gate. As they went into the villa Abu Kamal lit his third cigarette in thirty minutes. He had difficulty in believing Koller’s story himself; now he had to make other people believe it.

  In the main reception room five men were seated around a low table, smoking and dropping lumps of sugar into glasses of strong tea. There was a full ash-tray on the table and although it was not yet dusk the curtains were drawn and the electric light was on. Posters covered the walls, among them a large coloured photograph of four long-haired young men with white even teeth standing chest high in a cornfield and gazing moodily between the stalks. They might have been a pop group, but their instruments were Kalashnikovs and a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher. Three of the men around the table belonged to the Realists, the movement the Palestinian publisher was connected with, and they had come to parley.

  A man who had been sitting in the front of the Buick next to the driver went into the room first, followed by Abu Kamal. The woman did not go in. As Abu Kamal entered, the men around the table rose and one by one went up to him, embraced, and kissed him on both cheeks. While they did this they were carefully watched by the other man from the car, a tall, handsome Palestinian in his mid-thirties who stood by the door with his arms clasped loosely together so that his right hand disappeared under the flap of his jacket. Like the youths in the poster, all killed in an attack on an Israeli settlement in Galilee, he wore his hair long - only in his case it was because during the events, as the civil war was called, somebody had removed most of his right ear.

  When Abu Kamal had taken his seat, sipped his tea, lit another cigarette, and a certain amount of small talk had been exchanged, he repeated most of what the woman from Cyprus had told him in the car. It was noticeable that he directed his story at a man of about his own age who sat opposite him across the table. He was wearing a well-cut suit with an Yves St Laurent tie, and with his greying sideboards and gold-rimmed glasses looked like the successful lawyer he had been until Saudi funds made politics of a sort a feasible career. Unlike the others he did not smoke, but constantly ran a string of worry beads through his right hand. After Abu Kamal had finished this man, who was a very senior member of the Realists, asked: ‘Do you believe this story? Do you believe what Koller is saying?’ His tone implied that he, for one, did not.

  ‘I see no reason why not to?’ said Abu Kamal quietly.

  The long-haired Palestinian at the door stared impassively at the man with the worry beads, never moving.

  ‘It seems to me,’ said the lawyer, ‘that this is just why these people do our cause more harm than good...’

  Abu Kamal let out a barely audible sigh, lit another cigarette and braced himself for the lecture to come.

  ‘They have no real motivation,’ the lawyer continued. ‘They are anarchists, nihilists. They will work for anyone who gives them money and a gun and when they are caught they tell everything they know. How do we know he is telling the truth? Who’s ever heard of these old fascists he talks about doing anything that mattered a damn? How do we know who he is really working for? He is not Palestinian, he is not...’, he was going to say ‘Moslem’, but changed it to ‘…one of us.’ Abu Kamal and his friends considered themselves to be Marxist; and, besides, there were many Christian Palestinians in both factions.

  ‘I will tell you what I do know,’ continued the lawyer. ‘I know he’s nearly caused bloodshed between brothers again. I know he almost killed a friend of mine in London, a man I love as dearly as my own brother. I know that he killed an Englishwoman and that Palestinians are made to look like murderers again. And now we have the woman’s husband here, this poor crazed Englishman who came to see me at the university the other day. What do we say to him? Do we tell him: "Oh, we’re very sorry your wife died, it wasn’t really our fault,’’ and try to persuade him to go home and be a good schoolteacher? Or do we kill him before he kills one of us? Or do we kill Koller and tell the world that the Palestinians no longer employ such people?’

  ‘My friend,’ said Abu Kamal, ‘I thought we came here to talk peace between brothers. Why do you talk so much of killing? Until we know differently Koller is our comrade. To harm him would be to harm one of us. As for the Englishman, he can be looked after.’

  ‘The English are to blame for everything,’ said one of Kamal’s aides at the table, a muscular young man in tight jeans and platform-soled shoes. He was confident; he knew that the one eared man by the door had the lawyer and his two companions covered. ‘They gave the Jews our land. One Englishwoman dies in London, but how many Palestinian women and children have died when the Zionists have bombed our camps? This Englishman must not think he can come here acting like a colonialist, carrying a gun and looking for revenge.’

  ‘How do you know he has a gun?’ This time it was one of the lawyer’s companions who spoke, also a younger man. It was like an ideal medieval battle: the knights had clashed, now it was the pikeman’s turn.

  ‘Because I bumped into him along Hamra and felt it,’ said Kamal’s man proudly. ‘It was a small pistol in his trousers.’ He had on the same jeans and sports shirt he was wearing when he collided with Dove. ‘I did it twice. Perhaps we all look alike to him.’

  ‘You are lucky he did not shoot you,’ said the other man. He did not bother to hide his contempt, and Dove’s shadow became angry, forgot himself.

  ‘He’s not a fedayeen,’ he snapped. ‘His gun is old and-’ Kamal frowned at him and he cut himself off, but it was too late.

  ‘Where’s the Englishman now?’ pounced the lawyer, addressing his question to Kamal as rank demanded. He had guessed the answer. He just wanted to see if he would confirm it.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Abu Kamal in his quiet voice. ‘He’s with us.’

  At the door the one-eared man moved his right hand slightly closer to his left hip. The lawyer pretended not to notice it. ‘Kiliing him is not going to help,’ he said.

  ‘I said he’s all right. Look, I think it’s time for us to talk alone if you agree.’ The lawyer nodded his assent and the others rose slowly and left the room. The one-eared man was the last to leave.

  Food was served by an elderly man
in a soiled khaki shirt and keffiyeh. Both Palestinians ate sparingly at first, mining modestly into the hommos and tehineh dips with their pitta bread, saving their hunger for the flat cakes of spiced meat and onions ground in wheat, known as kebbeh. They drank water with the meal, but afterwards the rough Cypriot brandy was produced, although the lawyer thought whisky would have been better for his liver. It was not until this stage that Kamal unfolded his plan. ‘You want Koller dead, don’t you?’ said Abu Kamal slowly.

  ‘That is your price for peace?’ The lawyer nodded.

  ‘We are willing to give you this - but on our terms.’

  ‘And these are?’

  ‘We will arrange for the Englishman to kill Koller.’

  The lawyer managed not to look shocked. All he did was raise a quizzical eyebrow and ask, ‘And how do you propose to do this? Recruit him into the Front?’

  Abu Kamal smiled. ‘No. With your permission we will recruit him into the, er, Realists.’

  The lawyer could no longer quite conceal his bewilderment. ‘Look, my friend,’ Abu Kamal continued, ‘it’s simple. Dove doesn’t know who is holding him. He thinks we are the Front, but he cannot be certain. If we tell him that we are you, that there was some misunderstanding, that his questions made us curious and that we had to hold him while we checked him out with friends in London, he’ll believe us.’

  ‘But what is the point of all this deception? Why not kill Koller yourselves?’

  ‘Some of my people might think it too high a price to pay even for peace among brothers. It would look bad. The only people who will know about it in the Front will be the people training him and they are going to be commanded by somebody who has my total trust.’

  The lawyer seriously doubted the existence of such a creature, but said nothing. Instead he asked, ‘And you think Koller is a traitor? That he made up this story of the old fascists, the Circle?’

  ‘My dear friend,’ said Abu Kamal, ‘I neither know nor care. When Koller joined our organisation he told me he was willing to die for it. Now it’s necessary that he does so. Surely it’s immaterial who fires the bullet?’

  Abu Kamal had taken off his steel-rimmed glasses and was polishing them with a piece of tissue. He might, thought the lawyer, be talking about the price of oranges. Not for the first time he wondered: where do we get such people? But he pretended indifference to the other’s cynicism, changed the subject. ‘And how are you going to convince Dove that you are the Realists?’

  ‘I thought you might help me there.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By lending me your publishing friend.’

  ‘You ask a lot.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s going to be difficult to persuade him out here, especially to see you. After all, one of your men just tried to kill him.’

  ‘But now you know why.’

  ‘That’s his story.’ He was careful not to say ‘your story’.

  ‘He would be here under my protection. Nothing will happen to him. I guarantee that.’

  ‘If anything did happen there would be no hope of a reconciliation between us. No more talks ...only the gun.’

  ‘I realise this,’ said Abu Kamal.

  ‘Then I will see what I can do.’

  As he was being driven back to Beirut in the early hours of the morning, passing through the Christian ruins of Damour, its rubble now haunted by Palestinian survivors of the siege at Tal Al Zaatar, the lawyer reflected on the devious mind of Abu Kamal. It was hard not to admire such duplicity. He stretched out, undid the knot of his expensive tie, allowed his eyelids to dose. Just before he gave way to the soporific combination of brandy and darkened car the lawyer again asked himself the question: can I trust Abu Kamal? He decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  6. Contact

  Dove was scared. He had thought that his rage had banished fear, but now it was with him all the time, turning his stomach to water, shrinking his testicles, and making his mind race until it was crammed with blurred images like views collected from a fast train. Emma, Koller, colleagues from the common room, Ruth with her bloody face and torn shirt, reporters from the Admiral, made repeated exits and entrances on a carousel spinning out of control. His fear pumped adrenalin, denied him sleep, and brought on a peculiar, dry-mouthed alertness: he did not feel tired.

  It was the beginning of his third day in the cell. The daytime was measured by the meals they brought him on a tray, mostly hommos with bread and goat’s cheese. But the interminable night vigil, waiting for dawn to break to rough the barred ceiling grille and begin its zebra shadowplay on the floor, had no milestones. It was like the purgatory on a long aircraft journey when time seemed to have stood still until minutes before the actual landing. He thought he must have catnapped sometimes, but he could not recall waking from a single minute’s sleep. He had sat on the filthy blanket they had given him, his back to the cold concrete, listening to the noises above of doors slamming, people moving, cars starting. One of these sounds, he promised himself, must spell release; then he would punish his optimism with the reminder that it was possible for things to get much worse.

  It had started with a trip to the port area, where the local architecture had been so well ventilated during the civil war that it could have been sculpted out of gruyere cheese. A taxi-driver had told him that there was a bar there where he might find the sort of people he was looking for. He went in mid-afternoon, the journalists having warned him not to visit that district any later in the day. The furnishings were chrome and leather, and the lighting just strong enough for a sober man to avoid collision with the tables and chairs arranged in a pit before the high bar. Around the walls alcoves offered a degree of privacy. As if to emphasize its nocturnal aspirations the juke-box was playing ‘Strangers in the Night’. At first Dove thought the place deserted apart from the barman, a moustached young Lebanese in a short-sleeved sports shirt who served him a beer. Then he saw Emma.

  She was sitting at the end of the counter and must have appeared while he was ordering his drink - he was certain she had not been there when he entered. Her cropped hair was slightly blonder than he remembered it, but it was Emma all right: the slim, boyish body in cord jeans and a well-opened shirt; the slightly retrousse nose, and when she became aware of his transfixed stare and turned to face him, the familiar sardonic smile. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘anything I can do for you, luv?’ Her accent was English North Country, Manchester he guessed.

  ‘No,’ faltered Dove. ‘I’m sorry, you reminded me of somebody - that’s all.’

  ‘Anybody nice?’

  ‘Somebody I once knew - she’s dead.’

  ‘Thought you saw a ghost, did you? All flesh and blood I am.’

  She smiled again; ‘Mind if I join you?’ Before he could reply she had picked up her cigarettes and a gold lighter and moved next to him. Her perfume arrived before she did, as overpowering as nerve-gas. ‘I’m Tina,’ she said, holding out a cold hand for a formal introduction.

  Dove, amused, touched it and she briefly dosed around his fingers before letting go. ‘Stephen,’ he said.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Stephen. It’s nice to hear an English voice. You staying in this shit-hole long?’

  ‘A few days.’

  ‘Lucky you. Like to buy me a drink and tell me all about it?’ Closer to, Dove saw that she was coarser than Emma - heavier face, thicker body.

  ‘What would you like?’ Why not, he thought? It would make him less conspicuous than a man sitting alone if anybody interesting came into the place.

  She waved at the barman and he gave her a glass that might have contained whisky. ‘Tell me about it then. Who was this person?’

  ‘What person?’ He had already almost forgotten; the resemblance had faded as soon as she opened her mouth.

  ‘The person you knew?’

  ‘My wife.’

  ‘Oh. How did it happen?’

  Dove paused. ‘Car crash,’ he said eventually.

 
; ‘It must have been terrible.’

  ‘Yes. What brings you to a dump like this?’ He knew of course, but he wanted to indicate that some matters were not up for discussion. He thought he detected a look of relief on her face.

  ‘I’m in the import-export business,’ she grinned. The grin suddenly reminded him of Emma again; a waif’s grin. She took out a cigarette and waited for him to reach over for her lighter. ‘Funny,’ said Dove, ‘You don’t look the type.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tina. ‘Import-export - that’s me. I import my body and I export cash.’ She looked at him levelly and then blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth, mocking, pleased with her joke.

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought there’s all that much cash around here nowadays,’ Dove said, sipping his beer.

  ‘Oh, it’s not too bad. There’s always the UN. The French are bastards, but the rest of them are OK. Especially the Norwegians. They’re a good laff they are. They’re not proper soldiers really. Territorials or summit. Big straw-haired boys.’ She looked at Dove. ‘You’re not such a tich yourself.’ She allowed a hand to rest lightly on his lap and, despite himself, Dove was no longer quite as indifferent as he had been. It had been a long time, and she did look a bit like Emma. ‘Don’t you find it hot in here?’, she said, and undid another button on her shirt.