Dynamite Fishermen (Beriut Trilogy 1)

by Fleming, Preston

  “While I’m here, Ed, do you mind my asking if you’ve released the ‘Immediate’ cable I wrote first thing this morning about the car bombings on the East Side? It’s from Abu Ramzi, and I think Headquarters should have it right away.”

  “I haven’t released it, because I don’t like the restricted distribution you gave it. I’m afraid we’re going to have to clear it for passage to the Israelis and the Lebanese G-2. They’re eager for anything we can give them on these damned car bombs, and Headquarters will want us to pass it to them.”

  Lebanese military intelligence, known as the Deuxiéme Bureau or G-2, was the least incompetent of the Lebanese central government’s several security organs, although it was riddled with leaks. Consistent with supporting Lebanese sovereignty, the station occasionally passed information to the G-2 as part of an official liaison relationship.

  “Come on, Ed. How many times do we have to go through this? If we pass this to G-2, it will be just like taking out an ad in the next morning’s edition of An-Nahar. It will leak to the Phalange the same day, and within a week it will get back to the Syrians and the PLO. Is that what Headquarters wants? Agents like Abu Ramzi are pretty tough to replace.”

  “Believe me, Con, I don’t want to compromise Abu Ramzi any more than you do. But when we have a lead like this, we’ve got to give the G-2 and the Phalange a fair shot at it. I’m not denying there are risks to the agent, but we’re just going to have to take our chances.”

  “You mean Abu Ramzi’s going to have to take his chances. Listen, it’s bad enough giving the information to Lebanese G-2. Fortunately, they’re too inept to do anything with it. But if the Phalangists get lucky and happen to catch whoever is smuggling those bombs into East Beirut, the Syrians will turn West Beirut upside down looking for the leak. And we’ll have no way of protecting Abu Ramzi if the trail leads back to him. If you insist on tipping off the Phalange about the Naaman brothers, at least leave out the item about the new explosives expert. Each item alone is dangerous enough, but both of them together make the odds go way up that the information will be traced back to Abu Ramzi.”

  “Sorry, Con, but I disagree. If we pass the first item, it seems to me we ought to pass the second so that the Lebs have a better chance of wiping out the whole network at once. Besides, once the Naaman brothers are rolled up, the PLO and the Syrians will assume the brothers spilled their guts about the explosive expert while they were under interrogation.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” Prosser replied. “If they go after the Naamans and the explosives guy at the same time, it will be obvious that someone tipped them off about both.”

  Pirelli glared back at him but said nothing.

  Prosser heaved a sigh. “All right, I see that there’s no sense in my arguing the point. I just hope the Naamans are guilty as hell, Ed, because I shudder to think of the misery they’ll be facing when they fall into the Phalange’s meat grinder.”

  Pirelli ignored Prosser’s comment and picked up another unedited draft from his in-box. He laid it neatly on the desk blotter in front of him and then looked up with an air of finality. “I’m planning to pass the information this afternoon when I go over to the East Side,” he said. “If you need me for anything, I’ll be back by six.”

  * * *

  Hollywood’s latest releases no longer filled the screen at the Strand Cinema on Hamra Street. A double bill of Indian detective movies was playing there now, judging from the posters plastered on either side of the box office. Homeless women and children and men crippled by war took shelter under its sagging marquee, content to sit or lie out of the hot sun’s reach, oblivious to the scowls of the brilliantined Indian sleuths who peered out from the posters above their heads. Meanwhile, in the adjacent lot, platoons of bulldozers and dump trucks raised clouds of dust as they excavated the foundation for a new office block.

  As he approached the cinema, Prosser tightened his grip on the plastic grocery bag clutched in his hand. Although the bag appeared to contain nothing more than a box of assorted Arab pastries, concealed beneath the pastries was a manila envelope stuffed with English translations of agent reports. Once a week he brought a sheaf of the handwritten Arabic reports to the retired Lebanese American grain merchant who served as the station’s translator; once a week he brought back the man’s output.

  As Prosser came abreast of the cinema, a trio of ragged shoeshine boys ran out from the shade of the building to intercept him. They shouted, waved their blackened hands in his face, and did everything short of tackling him around the waist to make him stop for a shine, but Prosser ignored them. One by one they gave up and peeled off.

  Farther on, a reclining beggar with trousers rolled up past his knees revealed hideously burned legs and held out a cupped hand in supplication, but Prosser ignored him as well. A moment later he saw a pudgy teenage girl in a black embroidered Palestinian tribal dress rise from the shadows and start after him with an infant under her arm, but by the time she got up he was too far away to be overtaken. It was not that he had no sympathy, Prosser assured himself, but when he was on his way to or from an agent meeting he could not allow himself to be distracted.

  At the edge of the construction site just beyond the cinema he stepped gingerly along the narrow passage between the stalled lanes of traffic and untidy piles of planks and reinforcing bars stockpiled on the sidewalk. It was early afternoon, and the streets were filled with shoppers and workers going home for their midday meal and nap. Women in sleeveless summer dresses and French designer sunglasses shared the sidewalk with Muslim schoolgirls wearing dreary gray headscarves and matching overgarments to cover their ankles and wrists. Wealthy businessmen immaculately attired in crisp ivory-hued summer suits likewise rubbed shoulders with militiamen in starched fatigues and high-heeled flamenco boots.

  Prosser stopped to buy a copy of Monday Morning magazine from a sidewalk news vendor, only to be told that the local English-language weekly had already been sold out. As he turned around to try the vendor a few doors back, he caught a glimpse of a clean-cut Arab youth in jeans and a pink polo shirt disappearing around the corner just a bit too quickly. There was something familiar about the young man; he racked his brain to recall the connection but failed in the attempt.

  Prosser continued to move through the crowd in no apparent hurry, stopping from time to time to study window displays, remaining alert to any face, mannerism, or garment that he had seen since setting out from the embassy. At rue Abdel Baki he turned left, staying close to the wall to avoid the heat of the sun. Halfway down the sloping street he disappeared into the lower level of the Étoile Center shopping arcade. It was five minutes before two.

  The center was an excellent place to wait unobserved. Although its main entrance and shopping area faced onto rue Hamra, it also had a lower level that could be reached by elevator, stairway, or street-level entrances at the building’s side and rear. None of these entrances was controlled by a concierge, and the center’s shops and cinema gave ample excuse for lingering at almost any time of day.

  Prosser stared at the display window of a shoe salon opposite a bank of elevators on the center’s lower level. At the same time, a bronzed Lebanese businessman in his mid-forties wearing dark glasses and a perfectly tailored beige suit pressed the elevator call button. He fidgeted with the strap of a thin leather purse while he waited.

  As soon as the sliding door opened, Prosser looked up casually from the display window and started toward the elevator. He entered behind the Lebanese businessman and pressed the button of the highest floor in the building. The moment the elevator began its ascent, the two passengers stepped back from the door and turned toward each other with relieved smiles.

  “Thanks for coming, Maroun,” Prosser said. “I hope you had no trouble finding the place.”

  “Not at all. I had an engagement here on the West Side for lunch today and had no difficulty coming a few minutes early.”

  “Sorry for the short notice, but I wouldn’t hav
e asked you to come if it weren’t important. On Wednesday you asked for our help in stopping the car-bombing campaign. Well, later this afternoon the embassy will be giving the Deuxiéme Bureau some important new information about the people behind the car bombs, and I expect that Phalange intelligence will be given the same information very soon afterward. I want you to find out what the Phalange does with the information—in particular, I’d like to know of any arrests they make or any retaliation they decide to carry out. And one more thing: if anyone is arrested, please try to get copies of the interrogation reports. Can you do it?”

  “Give me five days,” Maroun replied confidently. “There will be a meeting of the war council next week. I may be able to learn something then.”

  “How about Wednesday morning at nine thirty, at your brother-in-law’s apartment in Antélias? He’ll still be in South America for another few months, won’t he?”

  Maroun nodded. “Yes, the apartment will be empty through the summer at least. But just in case, look for me in the window before you enter. I will be standing at the southeast corner of the building if it is safe for you to come up.”

  He took a folded wad of onionskin typing paper from his handbag and gave it to Prosser. The pages were blank. “Here is something for you,” he said as he handed over the papers. “I wrote this using the new secret-writing technique you showed me. It discusses Bashir’s new reserve training and mobilization scheme for the planned blitzkrieg against West Beirut.”

  At that moment the elevator stopped at the building’s top floor, and the door opened onto a deserted hallway. Prosser pressed the button for the rue Hamra level and resumed speaking as soon as the door closed again. “Good. We can use it,” he said.

  He inspected the top two sheets quickly, refolded them, and put them in the breast pocket of his jacket. He then took a sealed envelope from the other breast pocket, tore open one end, and handed his companion a thick wad of Lebanese currency.

  “Your salary is in there for this month, plus the extra amount you requested for your son’s spring tuition. I’m sorry it took so long, but we hadn’t budgeted for it.”

  Maroun’s face brightened. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “You have solved a very big worry for me.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Prosser replied. “Uh-oh, we’re almost there. Quick, do you have anything else before the doors open?”

  Maroun shook his head.

  “Then I’ll see you again on Wednesday. When they open, get out without me; I’m going on to the lower level.”

  “Ma’assalama, Peter.”

  The door opened and the Lebanese left the elevator without looking back.

  * * *

  Prosser was barely a block away when he noticed a crowd of people gathered outside the Cinema Colisée on rue du Caire. The crowd watched impassively as four young men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles stood, weapons at the alert, flanking a white Range Rover and a silver Volvo sedan. While Prosser approached, the four men opened the doors to the cars and jumped in. An instant later the two cars began to pull away slowly from the curb.

  Prosser’s attention was drawn to a distraught-looking middle-age woman in a shapeless blue housedress and white headscarf who lunged at the Volvo, reaching through its open rear window as if to bring the car to a halt. A woman some twenty years younger, possibly her daughter, seized a door handle of the Range Rover trying to run alongside while crying some urgent but unintelligible appeal to the driver. She kept up the chase for twenty or thirty paces until a hairy fist brandishing a shining nickel-plated revolver reached out of the opposite side of the sedan and fired two shots in the air. The woman released her grip and came to a halt in the middle of the street, her chest heaving from the exertion. Then, as the vehicles turned the corner and disappeared from view, she collapsed onto her knees. From an upper-story window nearby came the piercing trill of keening, that distinctive noise Middle Eastern women have made from time immemorial when in the throes of intense joy or grief.

  As Prosser moved closer to the gathering outside the Cinema Colisée, it dispersed quickly as if nothing had happened. Shoppers resumed their rounds with downcast eyes, storekeepers withdrew shamefacedly into their shops, and elderly neighbors clad in housecoats and pajamas returned to their chores while trying to avoid eye contact with those around them. Not until Prosser was within ten paces of the spot where the Range Rover had stood did he notice a slender young woman with dark, shoulder-length hair standing motionless under the cinema marqee. Something about the way she clutched her handbag with both hands looked familiar to him, and as she turned toward him he saw that the woman was Rima al Fayyad.

  “Rima?” he asked, unsure whether she had noticed him.

  She recoiled for an instant as if startled and then smiled weakly. He grinned in return, pleased to see her again so soon. At breakfast and during the ride to her apartment that morning, she had seemed withdrawn and moody. Twice during the day, when he had tried to phone her at the Ministry of Housing, a coworker had told him she was away from her desk. He had intended to call the YWCA later in the afternoon.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said softly. “You startled me.”

  Her chin quivered slightly and her lower lip formed a fleeting pout. Then she threw her head back and shook it vigorously as if to erase the aftereffects of what she had witnessed moments before. A delicate hand brushed a wisp of hair away from her forehead.

  “Are you all right?” Prosser asked. “You look a shade pale.”

  “It’s nothing, really. I was upset for a moment. It will pass.”

  “What happened? All I could see was those two women trying to keep the gunmen from getting away. Did you see what they were up to?”

  “I saw it all,” she answered in a way that made it clear she wished it otherwise. “I was stopping to look at the cinema posters when two boys carrying rifles jumped out from the door directly in front of me, dragging an old man in pajamas with his arms tied behind his back with electrical cord. While one held a gun to his head, two others opened the trunk, stuffed him inside, and slammed the lid. He looked so terrified, Conrad! He was moaning and sobbing, and he looked so weak he could hardly stand. By Allah, it was horrible!” She pursed her lips as if to keep from sobbing. Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Try to put it out of your mind,” Prosser replied softly. “There’s not much anyone can do for him now. Come, I’ll walk you to wherever you’re going.”

  “My car is parked in the next street.”

  They walked in silence past the shining chrome-and-glass-fronted Al Ajami restaurant, still crowded with lunch customers, then turned east past a row of expensive men’s clothing boutiques stretching to the end of the block.

  “Feeling better?” he asked as she stopped opposite a red Peugeot and unlocked the passenger door.

  “I think so. But the old man’s face won’t leave my mind. I see him being stuffed into the trunk of that Volvo over and over again.” She hesitated, as if suddenly remembering something else. “Conrad, I heard one of the boys who brought him outside calling the old man an American agent.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Prosser replied. “The militias say that about anyone they don’t like. It gives them an excuse to kidnap each other.”

  Rima shook her head. “No, habibi, you have not been here long enough to understand. For you, such kidnappings appear to be an absurd game played out among our parties and militias. Of course, they almost never kidnap foreigners—only Lebanese. But for the rest of us, being kidnapped is the worst thing that can happen…worse than a sniper’s bullet or even a car bomb. To be falsely denounced by an anonymous enemy, arrested and tortured, in most cases without even knowing the reason—that is one of the darkest hells that anyone can face.”

  “But why should you fear being kidnapped, Rima? You aren’t involved in politics.”

  “No, but it is possible they could mistake me for someone else. And there is Husayn. I fear for him more than for myself.”
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  “And why would Husayn be kidnapped? He’s been away for nearly six years. He’s way out of the loop.”

  Rima shook her head gravely. “There are men who still consider Husayn their enemy for what he did before he left for Germany.”

  “People he fought against during the civil war?”

  She shook her head. “They were on the same side as Husayn. Some even claim to be his friends. But it is better that I say no more about this. Husayn would be angry if he heard me talking this way.”

  “Don’t fret about it, Rima. I won’t tell anyone. Besides, maybe I can do something to help.”

  “I do not believe there is anything you can do for him…unless, of course, you could persuade him to return to Germany. But Husayn refuses to leave until he has collected my father’s debts. He has become completely irrational about it.”

  “If it’s simply a matter of collecting bad debts, maybe there is something I can do for him. American businessmen visit the embassy all the time with this kind of problem. Have him see me. Or, better yet, bring him along when we drive up to Byblos tomorrow.”

  Prosser was eager for an opportunity to learn more from Husayn about his role in the Lebanese civil war, and from what Rima was saying, perhaps Husayn might be in a position to make some useful introductions.

  “I will speak to him about it,” Rima said. “Perhaps an excursion outside the city would be good for him.”

  “One request, though,” said Prosser. “Please don’t tell anyone besides your brother that I offered to help him, will you? Technically, you know, we’re not supposed to take sides in business disputes that don’t involve Americans.” He gave her a conspiratorial smile.

  “D’accord,” she assented. “And I think Husayn would prefer it that way as well.”

  Prosser put an arm around her shoulder. “Now, don’t you worry about a thing. And tell Husayn how much I am looking forward to his joining us tomorrow.”