Prosser rested his injured left hand on Abu Ramzi’s shoulder. “I’m flattered that you think so highly of me, Abu Ramzi, but it wouldn’t work. Besides, I’m sure that anyone they send to replace me will be a fine, experienced officer. You’ll have no problems with him.”
Prosser removed his hand and looked out over the bluff toward the moonlit Mediterranean, as if watching a distant ship at sea. At last he brought a folded envelope out of his trouser pocket.
“I brought you the next two months’ salary in case there is a delay before your next meeting with us. If so, the alternate meeting times will be on the second Friday of every month, at the same time and place as before.”
He left the envelope on the dashboard and Abu Ramzi pocketed the banknotes without counting them. He signed the handwritten receipt and handed it over.
Prosser picked up the empty envelope, folded it in half, and stuffed it in his back pocket. “Have you brought any documents tonight?” he asked without enthusiasm.
The Arab officer pulled out a folded wad of onionskin paper from the glove compartment.
“Whatever happens,” Prosser continued, slipping the paper into the pocket from which the money had come, “you’ll know the answer at the next scheduled meeting, three weeks from tonight. Either I’ll be back, or you’ll be working with someone else.”
“And am I to deal with him in every respect just as I deal with you?” Abu Ramzi asked hesitantly.
“Hold nothing back. There is no difference between us.” Prosser turned to face the Palestinian and lowered his voice. “Except for one thing: I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention the photo I gave you or what I told you about Colonel Hisham and the Iraqi diplomats.”
Abu Ramzi stopped the BMW under a broken streetlamp on rue Bahrain, fifty meters from the Hotel Mediterranée. Both men sat in silence, neither of them pleased at the prospect of parting. Suddenly the two turned at once and embraced, kissing each other on both cheeks in farewell.
“May Allah protect you,” Prosser offered, grasping Abu Ramzi’s hand tightly in a final handshake.
“Ma’assalama,” the Arab man replied. But before releasing his grip, he took the maroon beret with its silver eagle pin from the dashboard and thrust it into Prosser’s hand. The American accepted it with a look of surprise, tucked it into his waistband as he stepped from the car, and disappeared back down the hill carrying his sacks of liquor.
* * *
Prosser’s taxi pulled into the parking lot of the Hala Building and barely made it through the gate before an olive Range Rover with darkened headlights cut in front of it. A second Range Rover blocked it from behind. Prosser heard car doors slamming and the clatter of boots as four maroon-uniformed Fursan militiamen surrounded the car. He thought of his handwritten notes, of Abu Ramzi’s Arabic reports, and of the maroon beret with the silver eagle. Realizing that there was no escape, his heart sank to the pit of his stomach. Anticipating the inevitable order to get out of the car, he raised his hands over his head and waited for the gunmen to approach. The driver did the same.
A familiar face with a bushy mustache and a deeply receding hairline peered through the rolled-down window, and Prosser recognized it as the face of Commander Nasib’s chief driver, the one who had seized Rami from the parked Volvo barely a week before and presided over his beating.
“Masaa’ al khair, Mr. Cone-rod,” the portly Fursan called out in an uncharacteristically friendly voice. “We have been waiting for you. Please to come.”
“What do you want from me?” Prosser replied warily.
The driver opened the door and slung his Kalashnikov over his shoulder. The three others did likewise, as if on cue.
“Please to come,” the Fursan repeated, beckoning him to approach the first Rover.
As they neared it, one of the gunmen swung the tailgate open while the others stood by. At that moment Prosser had a flashback of an elderly Lebanese man in his pajamas being forced into the trunk of a car in front of the Cinema Colisée. He recalled the two women who screamed and ran after the car and wondered if anyone would see or hear him when he was taken away.
He stood stiffly, waiting for a poking of the rifle muzzle in the small of his back, when the chief driver reached into the cargo area and brought out a plastic shopping bag that sagged and stretched from its heavy load. Still grinning, the Fursan held the sack out to him at arm’s length.
“For you. Cadeau—gift,” he explained. “For you. From our leader, Commander Nasib.”
Peering into the bag, he recognized the silver-blue label of a five-hundred-gram tin of Russian beluga caviar alongside a magnum of Louis Roederer Cristal champagne.
“The commander thanks you for stopping the attack against him on Saturday, and he wishes that your wounds will heal quickly. From that day, he says, you are one of us: a Red Fursan.”
Prosser grinned at the driver, then at the other Fursan fighters smiling back at him, and suppressed the urge to laugh. “Such an honor is out of proportion to the small service I did for Commander Nasib. Give the commander my thanks, and tell him I hope to call on him in person when I return from holiday in a few weeks.”
The driver beamed with satisfaction at Prosser’s unexpected fluency in Arabic. “Please, please,” he replied, ushering the American toward the lobby of the Hala Building.
“Thank you, but I’m a bit concerned about my taxi driver,” Prosser answered in Arabic, resisting the gentle tugs at his sleeve. “I haven’t paid him for the ride.”
The chief driver barked out an order in Syrian dialect, and two of the Fursan militiamen climbed back into the pair of Range Rovers to clear the way for the embassy driver to leave. A third, a swarthy fellow of about twenty-five with the upper body of a gymnast, retrieved Prosser’s bottles of liquor from the backseat of the taxi, paid the driver and followed Prosser into the lobby. He waited outside the steel door while the American entered the stairwell.
“Thanks, but I’ll carry the bottles the rest of the way,” he told the obliging Fursan as he pressed the elevator call button.
The militiaman handed over the parcels, saluted, and closed the massive door behind him. The hardened steel clanged shut with a finality that made Prosser wonder whether he would ever pass this way again. In the morning he would be on his way back to Washington, and if his tour of duty were curtailed, the officer sent to replace him would take over his office, apartment, his string of agents and even many of his social contacts. The station, the embassy, the fighting and ordinary life in the city would go on as if he had never been there.
Chapter 35
Prosser awoke from a restless sleep to the muffled bursts of underwater explosions not far offshore. His mouth was parched, and his head ached from the painkillers and whiskey he had taken the night before. And the moment he felt the weight of the white plaster cast on his arm, a throbbing pain took hold of him. Then the fog lifted from his brain and he realized the telephone was ringing.
He swung his feet to the floor and sat up on the sofa, where he had spent the night in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. A moist breeze wafted in through the open French doors separating the living room from the terrace. Outside he could see the street vendors setting up their espresso machines and citrus presses at the backs of decrepit vans parked along the Corniche. Though the sun was barely above the horizon, its rays felt warm and soothing against his skin.
He drew a deep breath and walked across the room to the telephone. It was the concierge, Abu Ali.
“Siidi, forgive me for disturbing you so early, but a woman is here and insists on speaking with you.”
Prosser looked at his watch. “By Allah, Abu Ali, it’s barely seven o’clock. Ask her to come back at nine or, better, at ten.”
“She says it’s important, siidi. She needs to see you now,” the concierge replied.
“All right, then, put her on the line.”
He recognized Rima’s voice immediately, and it did not take long for his head to clear.
; Rima’s voice was cool and unrevealing. “I heard you are leaving today. I would like to see you.”
“All right,” he replied calmly, the wheels spinning rapidly inside his brain. “Would you like to come up, or shall I come down?”
“Actually I had not intended to come here. I tried to phone you but no one answered.”
“Sorry, Rima, but the pain killers—”
“If you don’t mind,” she interrupted, “I would prefer not to meet here. Could you come to the end of rue Henry Ford, by the Corniche, at half past seven? I must cross to the East Side soon after. We can take espresso from one of the street vendors.”
“Certainly. At seven thirty I’ll be at the corner of rue Henry Ford and the Corniche.”
Prosser washed, dressed, and rode the elevator to the lobby. The walk past the Saudi embassy, down the stone stairs, and along rue Henry Ford to the Corniche was a short one, but to check for surveillance he took a roundabout route via rue Bliss.
Along the way his mind raced in an attempt to uncover Rima’s motives for asking to meet him. She had ample reason to hate him and had confessed to working for Colonel Hisham. She had even been implicated in the murder of a British journalist. From her words and her tone of voice, it did not seem that she had come to do him any harm, but might she be leading him into some sort of a trap? He stopped to look into a shop window and saw no one on the street in either direction.
Perhaps he had misjudged her. He had reviewed the facts again and again and still could not find clear evidence that she had betrayed him. Even in approaching Colonel Hisham, her motive had apparently been to protect her brother. In the moments before they had seen Husayn’s body dragged through the streets of Fakhani, she had been trying to say that she had never reported against him. In all the time he had known her, Rima had been loyal to him and had consistently shown more character than most of the people he had met in Beirut, including most of his fellow Americans. He felt like a fool and a cad for the way he had treated her, behaving as if all she was suitable for was a temporary fling with the added roles of social broker, language tutor, and tourist guide.
When he reached the Corniche he spotted a Peugeot approaching from the direction of the Bain Militaire and the Fursan encampment. The car pulled up to the curb and Rima opened the passenger door. Prosser hopped in.
“You are surprised to see me?” she asked as the Peugeot pulled forward.
“Of course I am,” he replied warily. “After the way we parted, I doubted I would ever see you again. Rima, there are a few things I’ve wanted to...”
She shook her head gently, her eyes half closed, as if to cut off whatever he was going to say. “Please, batta, do not say it. That is not why I came.”
Rima shifted into third gear as she passed the PSP military compound. Prosser noticed that she was without her usual lipstick and eye makeup, and though her hair was tied behind her head with a bright blue ribbon, it seemed dull and disheveled.
“I might not have come at all, except that I had to know...” At this she bit her lower lip and gripped the steering wheel more tightly. She began to speak again, at first barely audibly, as if to herself, then with a calm voice, devoid of emotion.
“Do you think I am so simple-minded not to know why you took an interest in me? It is no secret that you are a spy, batta. I knew it from the day I met you. Everyone knows. My friends warned me that your interest in me would last only as long as I was useful to you in meeting new people. But that did not matter to me. Life in Beirut is uncertain, and when I was with you, I felt I lived more fully than I had for a long time.
“But why did you have to use Husayn? He was so naïve; he had no defenses against someone like you. If you had stayed away from him, I might have kept him away from Hisham and the others. I saw you with him the night we were at the Hamra Cellar. While I was dancing I watched the two of you talking seriously. After you drove me home, I phoned Husayn to ask what you had told him, but he refused to discuss it. He said he had to rise early the next day and would call me when he returned.”
She leaned forward, and in her eyes there was a grim resolve. “Why did Husayn go to see Hisham? Was it his own idea, or did you push him?”
“If you’re so certain I’m a spy,” Prosser replied evenly, “then you ought to appreciate that whatever Husayn and I discussed was confidential between us. I promised not to tell anyone, not even you.”
“But Husayn is dead!” Rima exclaimed. “What does it matter now what you told him or what you or he promised? It matters only to me and to my mother and to our family. Husayn came back to Lebanon only because he felt responsible for us. We loved him, and if you had never met him, I believe he would still be alive.”
Prosser gazed out the window at the red-tiled roofs of the American University campus in the distance overlooking the Corniche. “It was Husayn’s idea to go,” he replied. “Nothing I could have said would have stopped him.” He paused, and when Rima remained silent he went on. “He thought he had some kind of influence over Colonel Hisham that would help him collect the debt from Zuhayri. I told him he was crazy, but his mind was made up.”
“Then it was Hisham who killed my brother?” she asked.
“Hisham or the Syrians. Or Fatah, perhaps. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”
“We may not,” she replied. “And I accept that Husayn is responsible for his own actions. But you, too, must accept some responsibility. Were it not for you, I believe, my brother might not have gone to see Hisham.”
Prosser let out a deep breath. “Maybe he wouldn’t,” he answered. “And that will always be a burden on my conscience. But you must believe me, Rima, I don’t relish reaching into someone’s life to persuade him to do things that might get him hurt or killed. I know you think that’s what I’m paid to do, but deep down I’ve never accepted that. If that’s what’s really required of me, my heart is not in it. Maybe I picked the wrong profession...”
“I sensed it from the beginning, batta. I could never understand how someone like you could be a spy. But then when I saw how you seduced Husayn to work for you…”
“Rima, please...”
She waved away his objection, but to his surprise he no longer saw anger in her eyes.
“Never mind, batta. It is in the past now. What you did or did not do with Husayn no longer matters. Husayn is gone.”
She looked at him but did not appear to seek an answer. At that moment the Peugeot approached the outermost checkpoint of the American embassy. Rima swung a wide left turn around the median strip and headed west again.
“What will you do now?” Prosser asked.
“I must now make my own choices, as Husayn did. But you see, my brother always had goals and ideals to lead him. He believed in an independent Lebanon where people lived in freedom and settled their differences peacefully. I lost such ideals years ago. Since then I have lived only for the present.
“Now I understand that I, too, need ideals and principles just as much as Husayn did. And not just for me, but for the sake of those who have died for those ideals and for the sake of those who will come after us. Like those dirty children we saw robbing the car in Shiyah and the boy who sold you the prickly pears. How will things be different for them unless we change them?”
“Just what sort of action do you have in mind?” Prosser asked.
“I mean to do what Husayn agreed to do. To spy for the Americans.”
Prosser drew a sharp breath. “Pull over, right here.”
The Peugeot stopped and Rima turned off the ignition.
“Okay, now you’ve got me completely confused,” Prosser admitted. “What could you possibly hope to accomplish by working for American intelligence? What kind of information would you report?”
“I would gather information about people like Colonel Hisham and Maarouf Zuhayri and those who conspire with the Syrians to keep Lebanon enslaved…”
“Zuhayri is dead and Hisham…Hisham appears to have gone missing. So who else do
you know well enough to report on?”
“I know many officers in the Lebanese and Palestinian militias. Some were friends of Husayn. But I have met others on my own. You might be surprised how many, batta.”
“Spying isn’t what you think it is, Rima. Besides, have you considered what could happen to you if those people even suspected you of being a spy?”
“Enough, Conrad—I have come to ask for your help. Will you give it or not?”
Prosser met Rima’s gaze head-on and then hesitated before speaking. “Rima, I’m leaving for Washington tomorrow. I may not be coming back. You were supposed to be leaving for Lyon this week. Have you given up returning to finish your thesis?”
“I can delay returning. What I ask of you is more important.”
“And exactly what are you asking? What would be the next step?”
She handed him a folded sheet of note paper. He opened it. It was a handwritten résumé. It included her full name, date and place of birth, university degrees, and her addresses and phone numbers in Beirut, Lyon, and Tripoli. “If you depart today, then I ask that you present my application to your superiors before you leave,” she said.
Rima’s gaze was fixed upon him and he found it momentarily difficult to think. He looked out across the Corniche into the sun rising over the Mediterranean and then turned to face her.
“All right,” he responded briskly, folding the notepaper twice and slipping it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll do what I can. But here’s what I want from you. Look, it’s too dangerous for any of our people based in Beirut to be seen with you right now. What I want you to do is go back to Lyon and wait for contact there. It may take a few weeks for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn, so you might as well get going on that thesis of yours while you’re waiting for someone to approach you. Besides, that doctorat may be useful later. When you’re contacted, you’ll know it’s one of us if he asks you where he can buy some fresh prickly pears.”
Dynamite Fishermen (Beriut Trilogy 1) Page 35