“Listen, listen! They say the raid was a failure!” the old man shouted excitedly, still holding the radio out to Prosser. “The announcer says the bombs were intended for Yasir Arafat and the leaders of the Resistance, but they all escaped without harm! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”
“Allahu akbar, my ass,” Prosser replied under his breath, then moved on under the goad of car horns blaring behind him.
PART II
Chapter 20
Abu Khalil sipped his strong sweet Arabic coffee in the café near the corner of rue Tariq el Jedide and rue Sabra and waited for Lieutenant Fakhri to return from his reconnaissance. He already knew that Colonel Hisham’s office was on the second floor of the office building around the corner from where he sipped his coffee, but he wanted to know more about the structures surrounding it and the courtyard out back. Lieutenant Fakhri, who had once studied to be an architect, was good at this kind of work.
Abu Khalil rose from the table as soon as he saw his partner standing at the kiosk opposite the café and followed him into the alley a few meters away. “Is it suitable?” he asked the lieutenant.
“Perfect. Each room has a small balcony, and there are two exits to the rear of the courtyard.”
“And the security men?”
“I could see two at the entrance, but I believe there are no others except for those who work in the office. There is a tea boy, but he seems to serve the other tenants as well and is unarmed.”
“Good. Do you remember what you are to say?”
“Every word.”
“Then let us go,” Abu Khalil commanded. “I will enter from the opposite direction, a few steps behind you.”
Though both men had short, military-style haircuts and neatly trimmed mustaches, and both were dressed in dark trousers and open-necked tropical shirts worn loose around the waist, one would not have thought the bright-eyed and easygoing young lieutenant to be associated with the rough-hewn, hard-bitten Abu Khalil. Yet, ever since the two had fought side by side against the Israeli army during its three-month incursion into Lebanon in 1978, the younger man had been Abu Khalil’s most trusted aide and confidant.
The lieutenant, now nearing his twenty-fourth birthday, sometimes considered resuming his studies and leaving Palestine’s armed struggle to others, but after every clash and every looming threat to the Palestinian refugees who remained trapped without a future in Lebanon, he felt that dream slip further away. Abu Khalil treated him like a younger brother and had saved his life more times than he could count. Certainly as long as Abu Khalil needed him, Lieutenant Fakhri would stand by his commander and friend.
He stepped into the darkened foyer and then stood silently at the foot of the steps while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom and for Abu Khalil to follow. For several long seconds he ignored the demands of the two security men for his identity papers. Before their frustration rose to the level of anger, Abu Khalil entered the foyer behind his partner and slowly removed his dark glasses with an air of quiet authority.
“We are here to see the colonel,” he announced to the pair at the door, both lean, dark-skinned Gazans in their late twenties who looked like seasoned fighters, if not terribly astute security men. Each wore a mottled brown-and-tan camouflage uniform without insignia of rank or affiliation, and each wielded a Belgian FAL automatic rifle.
“Come, Abu Atef!” the taller guard called out to the tea boy while reaching out once again for the identity papers of his visitors.
“Hawiyyatak,” the guard insisted.
“Maa fiish,” Abu Khalil countered with a conclusive shake of his head. “The colonel is expecting us. Tell him Abu Khalil has come.”
The Egyptian tea boy, a lanky youth in his late teens, arrived and accepted the message for the colonel. He returned a short while later with an offer to escort the two visitors upstairs. As they followed him down the second-floor corridor past door after door that bore no number or marking, Lieutenant Fakhri leaned toward Abu Khalil so that he could be better heard.
“I don’t think any of these is occupied,” the lieutenant said in a low voice.
A barely perceptible smile formed on Abu Khalil’s face.
The tea boy knocked five times on the door before trying the handle. It was unlocked and he pushed open the door to let the two guests inside.
At the far end of the office sat Jamal al Ghawshah, alias Colonel Hisham, behind a gray sheet-metal desk, examining a set of maps spread out before him. The colonel was of average height and weight for a Levantine Arab, and as Abu Khalil had once told Prosser, his facial features were equally nondescript except for a thick black mustache and dark eyes of piercing intelligence that never seemed to blink. Like many Arabs nearing middle age, the crown of his head was nearly bald, but his hair was combed across the top to hide the bald spot. His white linen trousers, pale blue starched shirt, and lightweight navy blazer looked out of place in the untidy and sparsely furnished office.
The colonel was holding a magnifying glass over one of the maps when the tea boy ushered his guests inside. Upon their entering the room, he gathered the map sheets into a pile, turned the pile face down, and placed an electric fan on top before moving across the room to receive his visitors. Although the balcony door and casement windows behind the desk were both wide open, the small fan seemed wholly incapable of drawing fresh air into the enclosed space.
The three men greeted one another with the traditional kisses on both cheeks while the Egyptian tea boy gathered up empty glasses from around the room. Then the colonel invited his guests to sit on the sofa and ordered a new pot of mint tea with lemon slices. In the moment before the Egyptian closed the door behind him, Abu Khalil noticed the boy hesitate, as if waiting for further instructions, and saw the colonel signal by the faintest shake of his head that no other action need be taken.
The colonel leaned back and gazed straight into Abu Khalil’s eyes before speaking. “It is a pleasure to see you again so soon, Abu Khalil. Please excuse me if I sounded surprised when you called. It is just that I receive so few visitors when I am in Beirut.”
“On the contrary, we beg your pardon for interrupting your work,” Abu Khalil replied. “We would not have come here, except that it seemed a more suitable place to speak frankly with you than at my cousin’s house.”
“You need not apologize, Abu Khalil,” the colonel answered with an easy laugh. “You made the correct choice. In what way can I assist you and the lieutenant?”
“It is a somewhat delicate matter,” Abu Khalil began. “For some months we and others in the Democratic Front have become disturbed by the incorrect line taken by the the group’s leadership. It has aligned itself too closely with Fatah and Yasir Arafat and has taken far too lenient a stance toward the Phalange and the Lebanese authorities. At the same time, these leaders have not paid proper attention to the correct line being pursued by Syria. Frankly speaking, we no longer feel completely at home in such an organization.”
“I see,” the colonel acknowledged with a noncommittal nod. “What particular positions have led you to this conclusion?”
“One need not search far for them. There is the cease-fire with the Zionists in the south, and the prohibition against foreign operations against the Zionists and their Western sponsors, and the secret cooperation with the Phalange on security matters, and now the constant hints at compromising our national rights to win favor with the Americans. There is no other word for it than treason, and the armed struggle must reject such treachery.”
“I must agree with you, of course, Abu Khalil. Still, who is capable of carrying forward the armed struggle if Arafat and his kind do not? Who else has their material resources and their prestige before world opinion?”
“You are playing with me, I think, Colonel,” Abu Khalil replied. “Surely you know that Syria is willing to support certain elements who have are capable of carrying out, shall we say, direct action against our common enemies. That is why I chose to speak to you.”
“Not at all. I have come to offer you my support and that of the cadres who stand with me.”
The colonel drew back in his chair and straightened up. “I am honored by your offer, Abu Khalil. But as you may know, I am a specialist, and I have need for only a few men with special skills.”
“We have those skills. That is why I have brought Lieutenant Fakhri; he attended university for two years and studied demolitions in East Germany for six months last year. He has already trained many commandos for missions into the occupied territories. I have others like him.”
“Such skills might indeed be useful. But there is something I do not understand, Abu Khalil. Why would a man like you, after so many years in command of a fighting unit for the Democratic Front, give up that command to carry out special operations in the pay of the Syrians? Especially a man who fought in the mountains in 1976 to keep the Syrian army out of Lebanon?”
“For me the liberation of the occupied homeland has always come before all else,” Abu Khalil replied. “Everything I have done over these last years has been aimed at a single goal. Now that the leaders of the Democratic Front no longer seem to share this goal, I must seek other like-minded comrades. My guiding purpose remains the defeat of the Zionists and those who do their work, whether it be the Phalangists or the Americans.”
Colonel Hisham cocked an eyebrow. “The Americans? Why should they concern you? What have we ever gained by attacking American targets?”
“I do not suggest for a moment striking the Americans to the same extent as we do the Zionists. Only in Lebanon, where they aid the Phalange at every step, building up Bashir Gemayel to be the next dictator of the Lebanese state and conspiring against us with the central government. Everyone knows that Beirut is the center for American intelligence in the region. We must teach them to tread more carefully here.”
“And how would you propose to do it?”
“That is not for me to say. I expect that you will have some projects in mind. American officials roam freely about the city; they are not so difficult to find.”
“And so it is for this that you offer your help?” There was a note of final judgment in the colonel’s voice that alarmed Abu Khalil.
Colonel Hisham picked up the phone, and Abu Khalil cast a meaningful glance at Lieutenant Fakhri. Suddenly the colonel put down the receiver and gave a smile that did not look genuine. “The tea is late, as usual,” he said, “and Abu Atef’s line is not working. Excuse me, I will call for him down the hall.” He walked in carefully measured steps toward the door.
No sooner did Lieutenant Fakhri’s hand move toward his belt than Colonel Hisham bolted for the door. He was outside before the younger man could draw his Tokarev pistol and take aim. As Abu Khalil drew his own Colt automatic, he heard the colonel shouting for the guards.
“Kill him,” Abu Khalil ordered, expecting the guards to come into view at any moment with their assault rifles blazing on full automatic.
The lieutenant fired twice. Colonel Hisham pitched over sideways on the second shot; then he tried to rise and keep going until a third and fourth shot brought him down for good.
But Lieutenant Fakhri did not fire the second pair of shots fast enough to allow for a safe retreat back into the office. Five slugs from a burst of automatic fire let off by the first Gazan penetrated the lieutenant’s heart and lungs and left him dead before his knees hit the floor. Abu Khalil took advantage of that long burst of fire to put a .45-caliber slug through the first Gazan’s eye socket and to drop the second guard with a bullet through the lower spine before the latter squeezed off his first and only round.
Abu Khalil took a final look at the four fallen men and reentered the office, bolting the door behind him and walking with unhurried coolness to the desk. There he removed the maps from under the fan, folded them three times, and slipped them under his waistband. He searched the drawers as well, but found nothing worth taking—although he noted with interest the colonel’s nickel-plated Smith & Wesson revolver in the drawer by the telephone. On second thought he slipped it into his waistband as well.
With his hearing momentarily impaired from the gunplay, Abu Khalil might not have realized that reinforcements had already arrived, had it not been for a pistol shot outside the door that gave away their presence. He stepped out onto the balcony, sized up the situation, and considered his options: flee immediately and risk being shot in the back, or wait to ambush the reinforcements as they burst in. He moved away from the glass balcony door and took up position behind the exterior wall, his eyes and forehead barely protruding above the sill of the casement window.
A string of eight or nine shots from an assault rifle shattered the door and door frame where the lock and deadbolt had been. The door swung open and slammed against the rear wall. Then there was stillness.
Abu Khalil remained motionless at the window. Moments later another burst of gunfire rang out in the corridor. Suddenly the Egyptian tea boy leapt through the doorway, raking the wall above the desk with automatic fire and knocking the electric fan off the desk like a tenpin. He never saw Abu Khalil’s face in the window, and probably never felt the pair of .45-caliber slugs that ripped through his chest on either side of his heart.
Abu Khalil ejected the nearly empty magazine from his pistol and inserted a fresh one from his trouser pocket before replacing the pistol in his waistband. Then he swung his leg over the balcony railing and lowered himself so that his feet were no more than two meters above the ground. He landed awkwardly on his heels and fell backward, but arose unharmed and began running as quickly as he could out through the courtyard.
When Abu Khalil emerged onto rue Tariq el Jedide, he was surprised to find the usually crowded streets nearly deserted. Through the roaring and buzzing in his damaged ears, he picked out the sounds of air raid sirens amid the clamor of car horns and distant antiaircraft fire and recognized immediately that an Israeli air strike was under way.
He set out at a brisk trot down the middle of the street toward the spot where he had left his Toyota. But before he could reach it, the shock wave of an Israeli five-hundred-pound bomb falling little more than a block away upset his balance and sent him sprawling to the pavement. Estimating that he was probably in little danger of being pursued further by Colonel Hisham’s men, he stopped running and ducked into the empty lobby of a movie house that had just opened for the matinee.
Under normal circumstances, even in Beirut, Abu Khalil’s choice of sanctuary would have served him well, since not even the largest projectiles used in the city’s artillery duels were powerful enough to bring down an apartment block the size of the one where he had now taken refuge. That morning, however, Abu Khalil had not reckoned with American-made “smart bombs,” the sophisticated laser-guided projectiles that were specifically designed to penetrate several layers of concrete so that any explosive ordnance located inside the target building would be detonated in sympathy with the bomb’s blast.
Fortune was also not with Abu Khalil when he chose this particular building, for in the basement beneath where he stood were two hundred cases of mortar shells, more than a hundred cases of rocket-propelled grenades, some fifty cases of antipersonnel mines and a half million rounds of small arms ammunition, all property of his own Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The television-guided smart bomb entered the building through the western wall of a second-story apartment, crashed through the lobby where Abu Khalil had taken shelter, and came to rest in the basement, where it detonated. Abu Khalil barely had time to see the ceiling crashing down on his head before his own organization’s weapons erupted under his feet and buried him beneath hundreds of tons of bricks and concrete.
* * *
Some twenty minutes after Conrad Prosser cleared the Galerie Semaan crossing and turned north along the coastal road, workers of the Lebanese Civil Defense Forces, the Palestine Red Crescent, and a variet
y of local militia groups worked frantically to locate survivors underneath the rubble left by the air strike. The air was thick with the dust of crushed concrete and the acrid smoke of a thousand small fires. The mangled hulks of burned-out cars still smoldered in the streets. Victims of the raid wandered through the impact area in a state of physical and mental shock, searching for relatives, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.
One of the columns of smoke Prosser had noticed while on the road past the Sabra camp rose from the remains of an apartment building and cinema located near rue Tariq el Jedide. Civil defense workers ignored this building because its eight stories had collapsed like an accordian, leaving a pile of debris that was now compressed to less than two stories in height. The workers presumed, based on long experience, that all the building’s inhabitants had either met instant death or been buried without hope of rescue. Prosser slowed down to watch the smoke billow skyward, gave an involuntary shudder, and drove on.
Chapter 21
Tuesday, Eight Weeks Later
The long shadows of early morning grew shorter in the dusty heat of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The heat caused tiny beads of perspiration to form on the faces of the three mechanics as they labored to replace the door panels, fuel tank, and rear bulkhead of the twenty-year-old Mercedes. The three men, all Palestinians in their middle twenties who had trained as automobile mechanics in the Syrian army, worked with silent efficiency under the powerful floodlights that shone on them from all sides. Each was an expert in their common specialty, and each was capable of finding—or concealing—practically any amount of contraband in practically any model of Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, or Peugeot to be found on Middle Eastern roadways.
Their workshop was an abandoned cinder-block outbuilding no larger than a two-car garage nestled in the hills overlooking the market town of Shtaura, seat of the Syrian army’s headquarters in Lebanon. Since the outbuilding was not wired for electricity, a pair of portable gasoline-powered generators flanking its entrance provided the necessary current for the lights and power tools the men used in their work. The outbuilding had been selected because, apart from having a roof and swinging doors that still functioned, it stood far from the main highway amid a stand of evergreens that effectively shielded it from ground or aerial reconnaissance. To guard against intruders, a cordon of infantrymen from Saiqa, Syria’s controlled Palestinian militia, surrounded the building at a discreet distance of two hundred meters.
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