Dynamite Fishermen (Beriut Trilogy 1)

by Fleming, Preston

  “Excuse me, don’t you work for the American embassy?” the man asked nervously. There were gray circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were drained of color. Stringy blond hair hung limp and disheveled over the collar of his khaki bush shirt, which looked as if it had not been changed for several days.

  “No point in denying it,” Prosser replied amiably. “And you’re the British journalist on the ninth floor, no?”

  “Eighth, actually,” he corrected. “Forgive me for asking, but would you do me a small favor? Would you mind terribly coming with me to open up my flat? I’ve had a frightfully bad night, and I would really prefer not to go in alone.”

  “No problem at all,” Prosser replied, though curious as to what the Englishman expected to find inside. He sent the concierge away and unlocked the steel door with his own key before following the journalist into the stairwell.

  “I’ve just come from a place I hope I never see again,” the journalist said as he pushed the elevator button for the eighth floor.

  “And where is that?”

  “The morgue. A colleague...” He paused, took in a deep breath, and left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

  “What happened?”

  “I was at home. The police found my card in his wallet and called me to identify the body.” He inhaled deeply. “Foul play, quite foul indeed.”

  The elevator stopped at the eighth floor and the two men got out. Prosser pressed the timer switch for the lights in the stairwell. “Oh, by the way, I’m Conrad Prosser,” he said when the light came on. He smiled and held out his hand.

  The journalist took it and then looked aside sheepishly. “How very rude of me…I haven’t even introduced myself. Simon Grandy. I write for the Financial Times.”

  “Fine newspaper. I wish I could say I’m a regular reader, but newspapers without photographs put me to sleep.”

  “I see. A matter of taste, I suppose.”

  “I suppose so,” Prosser replied, too tired to take offense.

  Grandy looked up and smiled weakly. His hands trembled as he lifted the sisal doormat and found the key in the dust underneath. The steel door clanged as it opened.

  “I suggest we go through the whole flat, back to front, just to be sure you don’t have company,” Prosser suggested, entering first. “I doubt anybody would have gotten past that steel vault door of yours—unless, of course, they happened to look under the mat.”

  He left the journalist in the foyer and started down the corridor toward the rear bedrooms. The layout of the flat was identical to his own. He turned on the lights in each room and looked into the closets, behind the doors, and under the beds. He checked the rear balcony, then returned to the foyer and inspected the living room, dining room, kitchen, and front balcony.

  “I suppose it was irrational of me to expect someone to be hiding behind the curtains,” Grandy admitted. “But I don’t really know what to expect anymore.”

  “That’s all right,” Prosser assured him. “What you need now is to pour yourself a stiff drink and watch a video, read a good book, or do something else to take your mind off the whole affair. In the morning you’ll be as good as new.”

  “Would you like to stay for a drink, Mr. Prosser?”

  “Call me Conrad, for heaven’s sake.”

  “What will you have, Conrad?”

  “I’ll take some of that single malt whiskey over there,” he said, pointing to a bottle of Glenlivet on the buffet. “On the rocks, please.”

  “Terribly sorry—no rocks tonight. Do you like it neat, or would you prefer something else?”

  “Neat is fine.”

  Grandy poured two tumblers halfway and handed one to his guest. “There you are.”

  The two men carried their drinks onto the balcony and sat down in a pair of unpainted wicker armchairs.

  “Bloody Lebanese,” Grandy cursed within seconds of taking his seat. “It’s not enough anymore for them to kill off each other; now they want to drag us foreigners into it. What’s the bloody purpose? I just don’t understand these bloody Arabs anymore.” His left hand was clenched tightly in his lap.

  “The Lebanese don’t need a reason to fight, Simon. They’ve been massacring each other for so many years that it comes naturally. If they didn’t have modern weapons, they’d go back to slitting throats.” Prosser had intended the comment as hyperbole, but he realized it was too close to the truth to be amusing.

  “Well, they’re bloody savages, and I’m sick of them all,” said Simon. “I’m sick of the suffering they bring on themselves and everyone else who’s stuck in their rotten country.”

  Prosser took another sip of whiskey and decided to try a change of subject. “So how long have you been stuck here?” he asked.

  The journalist let out a long whistling breath. “Three years last month. I came when the Syrians shelled Achrafiyé in 1978. After that my editors asked me to stay on for six more months, then for another six, and another six—and here I am. This is my fourth flat since I’ve been here. The first two were burned out.”

  “How much longer do you think you’ll stay?”

  “That’s rather iffy just now. My contract ends January next, and I haven’t decided yet whether to renew one last time. Lately I’ve been thinking I won’t.”

  “What about your friend, the one who was killed. How long was he here?”

  “Graham? Oh, I should say he had been here nearly as long as I have. I met him at the end of 1978. I didn’t know him terribly well, mind you. He and I tended to move in different circles.”

  “Do you mind my asking how he was killed?”

  “The doctors described it as multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Shot to a bloody pulp, if you ask me. There seems to have been a bit of a struggle before that, too. Although it’s odd: his notebook and cassette recorder were missing, but his wallet wasn’t even touched. Of course, the police have no idea at all why he was killed, much less who did it.” With an involuntary expression of disgust, Grandy shifted his gaze to the traffic on the Corniche below.

  “You don’t suppose there was a political angle to it…” Prosser suggested.

  “With Graham, anything is possible,” Grandy replied. “He was always chasing after the sexy story, digging up old dirt and going off to meet unsavory characters at odd hours. He was also quite the ladies’ man. That could have been it, too—jealous husband, jilted lover, that sort of thing.” He lifted his glass to take a drink but stopped short. He stared off into the distance with a thin smile on his lips, as if remembering an incident that illustrated his point.

  “Did he publish anything particularly provocative lately—say, about the Syrians or the Palestinians?” Prosser asked. “Something they might have taken a strong objection to? Quite a few Arab writers have been put on ice for that sort of thing.”

  “I suppose he might have, but I’m not aware that he did. You see, Graham had just come back from Damascus on Saturday. I recall that he had a theory about the Syrians being behind the car bombs and the sniping in the port, but he never wrote about it, as far as I know.”

  “Well, it’s a sad thing to have to say, Simon, but I doubt if we’ll ever find out who killed your friend. This kind of thing has happened practically every day since the war started, and not a single person has hanged for it yet. You might as well forget the police here; they’re hopeless.”

  Grandy took a long pull on his drink. The scotch had begun to loosen him up, and he suppressed a laugh. “The police! Even if you or I had airtight proof of who murdered poor Graham, the police wouldn’t bother to make the pinch. More likely than not, they’d race to sell the killer the tip that he was under suspicion.”

  The two men sat silently for a while longer, sipping their whiskey and looking out to sea. Despite the late hour a few street merchants remained along the Corniche selling espresso to motorists making their way home. Not far away a pair of uniformed sentries paced back and forth outside the front gate of the PSP militia compound.

&nb
sp; “I suppose you’ll be reporting your colleague’s death to the British embassy in the morning,” Prosser suggested. “He was British, wasn’t he?”

  Grandy nodded.

  “Well, if I hear anything, I’ll make sure it gets passed along to the British consul. When a journalist gets shot, it’s an ill omen for all of us.”

  Prosser finished his drink and stood up to leave. Grandy also rose.

  “Well, thanks again for the whiskey, Simon. I’d stay longer, but I have an early appointment tomorrow. Here’s my card. Let’s get together sometime.”

  “Yes, let’s do,” the Englishman answered without enthusiasm.

  They left the balcony and started across the living room.

  “Pardon me for not having a card of my own to give you,” Grandy apologized when they reached the door. “I ran out of them last week. Wait a moment and I’ll write down my telephone number.” He wrote it on a blank index card and handed it over.

  “This will do just fine,” Prosser said with a smile as he took the card. “To tell you the truth, Simon, I’m just as happy not to have one of your printed cards, considering what happened to the last guy who carried one around.”

  Grandy forced a smile and held on to it until the heavy door banged shut behind his visitor.

  Prosser walked down the four flights of stairs to his own apartment thinking about the murdered journalist and whether his death might signify that the time-honored taboo against murdering Western diplomats and journalists in Beirut had quietly lapsed. The fact that Graham’s notebook and cassette recorder were missing, and that he had suspected the Syrians of sponsoring the car bombings, pointed to a political murder. He wondered whether Abu Khalil could have been telling the truth when he reported that a foreign spy would soon be killed in West Beirut. If he was, could Graham have been the victim? Or was someone else, perhaps a real spy like himself, still being targeted for assassination?

  Prosser opened the door to his apartment and tossed his notebook, keys, wallet, and the rest of the contents of his pockets on to the vestibule table. The answers would have to wait till tomorrow, he told himself, and went to the sideboard to pour himself one last shot of scotch.

  Chapter 9

  Saturday

  Despite his well-muscled arms and shoulders, Conrad Prosser was not a long ball hitter. He had never been more than an average ballplayer as a boy and would probably have spent most innings warming the bench in any serious adult softball league back in the States. In Beirut’s fast-pitch softball league, however, he was one of the stronger members of the American embassy team. More often than not, he managed to get on base with a single, a double, or a walk and could hold his own as an infielder or catcher, which was his usual position.

  So far during this season, the American embassy team had enjoyed a winning record. It occasionally beat the Marine Security Guard team, usually prevailed over the American University of Beirut’s varsity and the Canadian embassy teams, and almost always defeated the AUB faculty and the American Community School teams. After four innings on a clear, hot Saturday morning, the embassy was leading the AUB varsity in its eleventh game of the season by a score of 3 to 0.

  The embassy pitcher, a balding man in his mid-fifties with bandy legs and a considerable paunch, had struck out the first batter and lured the second into swinging at an inside pitch and grounding out to the first baseman. The pitcher had struck out six batters so far and, in doing so, had displayed an impressive collection of fast balls, breaking curves, sinkers, and change-ups that might have given difficulty even to first-rate amateur ballplayers.

  The pitcher’s name was Tom Baldwin, and when not playing baseball he was the director of a Baptist parochial school in East Beirut. Aside from being a phenomenal pitcher, he was also a skillful hitter and fielded as well barehanded as most players did with mitts. No one on the team could deny that Baldwin was the main reason for the embassy’s strong standing in the league. The team might even have edged out the marines for first place had it not been for the games lost on Sundays, when Baldwin observed the Sabbath.

  At bat was one of the better AUB players, a pocket-sized Lebanese student named George, who was the offspring of a Lebanese father and an American mother. Although his powerful swing and careful eye easily made up for his diminutive stature, George felt it was necessary to compensate further by directing a constant stream of insults at members of the opposing team. As a result, he was decidedly unpopular among the embassy players, who now baited him mercilessly and urged him to end the inning by becoming Tom’s seventh strikeout victim.

  The count was 1-2 after George hit a long foul ball just wide of the third base line. Baldwin threw a trick pitch underneath his leg, which, to Prosser’s surprise, was nearly as fast as the man’s normal pitches. It landed square in the center of Prosser’s catcher’s mitt and stung his palm; it was too far outside for a strike. George flashed a smug grin back at his teammates to show that he was not so easily taken in.

  Prosser crowded close behind George and signaled for Baldwin to throw a fastball, high and inside. Baldwin nodded and aimed a sizzling fastball at the batter’s wrists. When George stepped back from the plate without swinging, the umpire called him out on strikes. Enraged by the call, the student heaved his bat against the backstop and hounded the official off the field, cursing him in gutter Arabic at every step.

  Prosser held the ball high in the air and trotted out toward the mound to greet Baldwin as he came in to the bench. “Perfect job, Tom!” he said.

  “We sure skunked him, didn’t we?” Baldwin replied, taking off his hat and wiping his forehead with a red bandanna. “George is a clever hitter, though. I don’t think he’ll fall for that trick again.”

  Baldwin lowered his bulky frame onto the bench while Prosser picked up a bat to make a few half-speed practice swings before the AUB students took the field. The first man in the batting order was Harry Landers, who carried himself well despite the extra inches around his waist. He swung on the first pitch, hitting a line-drive double directly over second base.

  Prosser stepped up to the plate. The infielders were playing him deep because of Harry’s line drive and because Prosser had hit a hard ground ball past the shortstop on his last turn at bat. He took a ball and then watched a strike go over the outside corner of the plate. On the third pitch he laid a bunt down the third base line. It took two limp bounces in the dust before rolling idly to a stop at the midpoint between third and home plate. Prosser reached first base just as the pitcher picked up the ball and realized he had no place to throw it. Harry advanced to third.

  The next batter was a black communications technician on temporary assignment to the embassy in Beirut. Prosser had met him only once and didn’t know whether he was a good hitter, but he was powerfully built and had a picture-perfect swing. Remembering the long fly ball that he had driven over the head of the center fielder on his first turn at bat, the outfielders moved back. On the second pitch the technician hit a flat line drive over the head of the shortstop that sent the center fielder running in toward the infield. Harry scored easily, with Prosser following closely behind. The technician held at third base.

  Within seconds after Prosser passed home plate and bent over double behind the backstop to catch his breath, a pair of artillery shells screamed overhead and exploded somewhere to the west. A moment later three more shells whistled over the playing field, falling scarcely more than a kilometer away, each one exploding with a sharp crack that reverberated among the stuccoed apartment houses nearby.

  Then, after a short pause, another two rounds flew past and landed at about the same distance away. After that, single shells appeared at random intervals—five seconds apart, three seconds, ten seconds. Prosser counted sixteen explosions in all.

  When the players and their fans heard the first pair of shells fly past, they lost no time in scrambling for cover in the lee of the soccer stadium some fifty meters behind the backstop. From the sound of the first few explosions,
Prosser guessed that the shells were high-explosive 155-millimeter rounds being fired from Phalange positions in Beirut’s eastern suburbs. The initial rounds, he surmised, had landed either in his own Minara neighborhood or along the public beaches south of the Bain Militaire.

  Although no shell fell closer to the ball field than five or six hundred meters, each of the last half dozen had appeared to land amid the crowded beaches and sidewalks at the western end of the Corniche. As usual on summer Saturdays, the seaside promenade was packed with working-class Muslims, many of them Shiite refugees from the city’s southern suburbs.

  Well before the last shell had fallen, a nauseating, panic-inspiring din of sirens, screams, and car horns arose from the Corniche and spread rapidly from west to east. Across the wrought-iron fence from center field, Prosser watched crazed men, women, and children scatter in all directions to seek cover. Mothers hastily packed up the picnic lunches they had spread out among the tall weeds of the median strip while fathers searched frantically for missing children. Bursts of automatic-rifle fire and the muffled pops of pistol shots punctuated the roar of the mob as drivers fired through open windows to bully their way forward in the snarled traffic. Militia vehicles beat them at this game, however, with their youthful riders hanging onto the post-mounted .50-caliber machine guns with both hands like water skiers, firing blindly into the air to clear a path for the ambulances following closely behind.

  Even in a city long inured to war and brutality, the deliberate shelling of civilian crowds on their day of rest seemed a particularly heinous act to Prosser and to the other Westerners now lined up against the wall of the soccer stadium. Prosser tried to make logical sense of it, recalling that the weekend before, a Syrian-backed militia had launched a salvo of Katyusha rockets across the Bay of Beirut to the beach clubs of Jouniyé. Although the rockets had fallen short of the beaches and had not harmed any Christian bathers, the local newspapers reported that the Phalange war council had vowed to retaliate.