by Mike Bond
“We have suffered too much,” Suley said.
“I am sorry for your suffering. We are one kin who have been torn apart, turned against each other.”
“By whom?”
“You know the answer to that. We've been their victim as much as you.”
“You'd give up, then?”
“Together we can gain more ground. Haven't we been divided by our enemies so they can more easily defeat us?”
“No.” Suley reached down and in a single motion pulled the knife from his boot. “You joined our enemies against us.”
Despite himself Mohammed glanced at the knife. He was a foot from it; Suley could kill him before he could jump back. “You know that's not true!”
Suley's arm shot out; the pain ripped apart Mohammed's gut and he grabbed Suley's wrist; something smashed him back and he heard the crash of guns and as he fell he saw Druze militiamen shoving into the room, their guns blazing.
The roar of guns grew very far away and it was cold, colder than the ice river that flows out of the mountain at Yammouné over the lintel of the Roman temple, colder than Mount Lebanon's winter snows, and he felt he was flying, could rise above the cold and snow and heartache up into the bright blue dome of Heaven.
Suley's men lined up Mohammed's mujihadeen and shot each one. Two of them still groveled, gasping with agony, on the wooden floor. Suley stepped across the other bodies and shot each in the head.
“You disgust me!” Rosa yelled. “Mohammed wasn't their fault. They were all brave, even this fool!” She nodded at Mohammed's dead captain, he with the sharp beard and narrow lips who had mocked her when she had first come to see Mohammed, who had not wanted her to go after the sniper in the Life Building. “You betrayed me!” she screamed, reaching for a militiaman's gun.
The man backed away. Suley bent to wipe his knife on Mohammed's robe. “No one could betray you.”
“These men did you no harm.”
“They were scum, Christian lovers. They had no place in the new Lebanon.”
“I pity, then, the new Lebanon.” Who had said that to her once?
“You'll never see it!” Suley yanked her long hair, her silver barrette flying; her fist smashed into his crotch as he pinned back her head and jammed the knife into her throat. She fell choking, writhing, across Mohammed. Grasping her throat in both hands she stumbled to her feet, raised her two bloody hands as if crucified and ran at Suley. He kicked her in the face and she toppled back, tripped over Mohammed, rolled to her knees, tried to stand, fell forward and lay still.
“Shit, boss,” one militiaman said, “she was a nice piece. We could have had her first.”
“She was a desert viper,” Suley wiped his knife again on Mohammed's gown, “that should be killed the instant it’s seen.”
63
“DYING’S EASY,” Neill said. “But it's poor expiation. Instead of wanting to die, why not try to bring more peace into the world? Like many who have suffered deeply, bring more happiness to others.”
“That's rot.”
Yes, Neill realized, almost everything I say is rot. “If you hadn't been down in that cellar with her, maybe they never would have found her.”
André turned on him. “Why don't you just shove it?”
There were many things he could say, Neill thought, none of them worth a damn. André's arrival had completely changed his own preoccupations, but he was just as likely not to live this out. He had his own fate to consider. He felt a flash of anger at André for coming in, breaking up his routine. It's that kind of selfishness, he told himself, that made you what you were. What good is understanding if you can only maintain it alone?
The muezzin's last call came and went but no dinner appeared. Neill felt displaced, hungry, angry. André felt too sorry for himself, he decided; we've all had sorrow. Look at me – I've overcome it.
At last the food was coming; the thump of boots in the corridor. The door flew open. It was a mujihadeen he'd never seen, three more behind him. His boot came up and smacked Neill against the wall. “Wait!” Neill yelled in Arabic, clasping his ribs. The others pushed into the room, kicking and hammering with rifle butts; there was not enough space and they moved back outside.
The first man remained. “Each of you tried to kill Mohammed. Now he's dead. In retribution, one of you will be hung at dawn. Slowly.” He gave Neill a last savage kick. “We leave it up to you to decide who.”
The door shut, the bar fell back across it; the boots clumped away. I'm still hungry, Neill thought. How can they mean, hang us? We're foreigners. Europeans. They can't just kill us.
“Cocksuckers,” André said. “I wish I had killed him.”
“They can't mean it.”
“Of course they do. They killed my brother and fifty other guys, more than three hundred fifty Americans –”
“But that was retribution for shelling all those villages!”
“So this is in retribution for killing that jerk. Somebody finally got him.”
“He wasn't a jerk. He wanted peace.”
“That's what I said: he was a jerk.”
Lost in memories of Mohammed, Neill barely heard. How had he died? Had it been Freeman again? Freeman who had put the transmitter in Neill's arm not to keep him safe but to track down Mohammed, to kill Mohammed? Who was Freeman? All along Freeman had implied he was MI6. By working for him, how many times had he said Neill was doing his adopted country a favor? But Neill had never verified it – how could he? Was Freeman truly MI6? Or Mossad, a drug dealer, the CIA, KGB? When did you ever know? Weren't they all the same?
“Don't worry,” André said. “I'll be the one.”
Still caught up in Mohammed and Freeman, Neill didn’t understand.
“Serendipity,” André said. “These fuckers want to shoot somebody, they can have me.”
Neill crawled to his feet. The sound frightened the sparrows, their wing beats clattering away. “If they're really going to do it –”
“You think this is some kind of game?”
Neill could feel his fine resolutions slipping away, the wisdom he’d gained in his weeks alone. “We'll draw for it.”
André snickered. How can you hate somebody so fast, Neill wondered. “Draw for it?” André mocked. “What is it you do in your country, play bingo? Shall we play bingo?”
Suddenly Neill stopped hating, felt only pain for André. “We each tried to kill him.”
“You didn't know. I wanted to.”
“Do you still?”
André said nothing. One by one the sparrows began to land outside the flue. “No,” André said. “I never want to kill anyone again. Except me.” He sat up, and Neill saw his face was freshly bloody from where the mujihadeen had just punched him. The blood running down both sides of his mouth made him look like a Japanese actor in a morality play. “I'm a soldier,” André said, “it's my fucking job to die.”
Neill felt washed by an incredible wave of tenderness. “I'm a journalist. If anybody goes, it should be me first.”
André flashed a smile garish with blood. “You can tell all about it. You can write a book.”
With his fingernails Neill pried loose a little flat rectangle of tin stapled to the side of the bed. He laid it on the floor and scraped one side of it with a sharp pebble. “This side is heads, the scraped side is tails.”
“Don't be silly.”
Neill stood over him. After his weeks of exercises and walking and running he felt strong, capable. “We're going to have an even chance.”
André snorted.
“We are,” Neill persisted.
The light, he realized, was dying. He tossed the piece of tin and caught it coming down. “Heads or tails?”
“I'm the one. You're wasting your time.”
�
�I pick tails.” Neill opened his hand. “Tails it is.” I'm going to die, he thought with a shock. It did not seem strange, only frightening.
André sat up. “You cheated. You saw it.”
“I did not. You had your chance to call.”
“You're serious, aren't you? A serious fool.” André took the piece of tin. “Best of three. Call it!”
The piece of tin flashed up into the flue's light, pinged down. “Heads,” Neill said.
“Heads it is.”
“That's one out of three.” Neill tossed it. “Call it!”
“Tails.”
It came down, bounced across the floor. “Heads it is.” Neill said. He covered it with his hand. “Guess it's me.” There was a hollowness in his shoulders, his voice too light. He felt incredibly alone.
“Sorry,” André said, “it doesn't count.”
“Sure it does.”
“I didn't see it before you grabbed it. I won't take that.”
Neill wanted to hit him. “Listen, you're off the hook. Go back to sleep!”
André got up; there wasn't enough room, standing, for them both. He shoved Neill backwards, surprisingly strong. “If you play with me, you play fair.” He snatched the piece of tin; it bent, cut Neill's hand. André straightened it on the floor, under his shoe. “I'm going to throw it thirteen times. Pick one side, now.”
“I already won.”
“Pick one side!”
Neill sucked at his bloody palm. “Tails.” He shook his hand. “But we still take turns, tossing it.”
“We let it land on the floor. No touching.”
Neill glanced up at the flue. “I can barely see.”
“Then give up now.”
“Toss it!”
It came down heads. “See?” André rasped “See?”
André tossed it. “Heads again! Give up now?”
Three more times it came up heads. “That's five to nothing,” André said. “Five out of thirteen.”
Neill realized he was beginning to hope. If it truly came out against André then he, Neill, would live, fairly. They'd each have had an even chance.
André took it from his hand and threw it so high it clinked off the ceiling. “Tails,” Neill whispered. “Five to one.”
“All I need,” André said, “is just two more –”
Neill tossed it and it bounced down heads. “Six to one,” André said, voice hollow. He laid it on his thumb and spun it upwards; it came down and bounced under the bed. “Heads,” he called, reaching under.
“Let me see!”
André slid back out and Neill crawled under. At first he could not see the piece of tin, then could not tell which side lay up. He pulled it out. “Liar!”
“You turned it over!”
“Six to two.”
“I won't take that, you turned it over.”
“I wouldn't cheat.”
“Sure you would. What guilt are you trying to get rid of?”
“We don't count it then. If it goes under the bed we don't count it.”
“All right. Six to one and I throw again.” André spun it upwards again and it came down and bounced across the floor and off the wall. “You won that one,” he said. “Six to two.”
Offhandedly Neill tossed it. This would be the end. “Six to three,” André said.
There was no way it would come up tails three more times, Neill reassured himself. He was still going to get off, it was going to be André who died.
Up it went, out of André's hand, down. Tails again. “Six to four,” Neill said. He did not trust his voice, had to whisper. He took the piece of tin. This was going to do it. He spun it extra hard; again it bounced off the ceiling, came down hitting his knee and rolled into the corner. “Six to bloody five.”
“You're screwing with it,” André said. “It's mine, I won already.”
“You bastard! You did not.” OK, Neill told himself. It's going to come up tails two more times and I'm going to be the one who gets hanged.
André flipped the piece of tin between his fingers, like an amateur gambler with a coin, showing off. “This is my seventh.” He tossed it high.
Neill leaned down to see the piece of tin in the faint light. No doubt about it. Tails.
“Six to goddamn six,” André said “You're screwing with it.”
“It's going to be mine,” Neill said, hoping it would not: the bastard wants to die, so let him. He took up the piece of tin. “My throw.”
“No putting it under the bed.”
“Screw you.” Neill tossed it nonchalantly, a low one. It plunked down fast, leaped up and turned over.
“You cocksucker,” André whispered. “You cheater.”
“I won fairly.” Neill felt like he was flying, out of touch with everything. “Three times I've won. All along, it's been my turn to die.”
64
NEILL sat with his back against the blue wall. Beside his head the tap dripped steadily into the sink, like a heartbeat; the mice rattled in the walls; the people and animals of the village settled into sleep. Once a plane went over, very high, its sound trailing northward, away from Lebanon, and he felt his heart go with it, came back a moment later to this tiny room with the crude Frenchman on his bed and the boot heels of the guards beyond the door.
He couldn't have let himself get talked into this when the Frenchman didn't want to live and he didn't want to die. Maybe it wasn't real, he kept telling himself, just a ghastly joke – let you fear all night then not kill you.
He was an internationally respected journalist for a famous British paper – they wouldn't kill somebody like that. He looked up to see if the Frenchman was sleeping – no, he never slept, just lay there looking at the ceiling. Thinking of this girl he'd blown up because he was trying to avenge his brother. Just the way the Lebanese War had started, back in 1975, Bloody Sunday, an eye for an eye. A virus that just needs to infect one or two people and see how fast it spreads. For the violence of Lebanon, the Bible says, shall cover thee.
He'd promised himself in the Damascus mosque he was going to change his life. Yet he'd gone out drinking with Mick the same evening, gone to the whorehouse down by the Gate of Deliverance, he and Mick smoking hash with four girls, two for each.
Even before that, in Bratislava, when he'd gone out with the girl from Hell and she turned out to be Freeman's agent, holding her gun to his head as he knelt before the headlights of her Lada on the hill above Bratislava, warning him that this was not the way to live, that if they had to, they'd kill him.
Now he was going to his death not even knowing who Freeman was, the man who had condemned him. No, he thought, I condemned myself. Freeman's just part of the faceless evil that surrounds us – call it MI6, the CIA or KGB. On every level I was warned.
Wasn't that what his failed marriage with Beverly had been also – a warning? That he was not living his life right?
How would they do it? he wondered. Stand him on a chair with the rope round his neck, hands tied behind his back, then kick the chair out from under him? That way he'd never fall enough to break his neck, just hang there choking.
Bev and the kids wouldn't really care he was dead. As she'd said, they'd prefer that he go rather than stay, how could he blame them?
“You awake?” he said.
André rolled over, looked at him. “Of course.”
“Do you know how they do it? Do they push you off a chair? Do you choke, or does your neck get broken?”
“They'll push you off a chair. Or they garrote you.”
“What's that?”
“Wrap a wire around your neck and twist.”
“Oh God...”
“Only takes a couple of minutes.”
Neill stood and unzipped his fly
to piss into the sink but nothing would come out. He kept having this terrible need to piss but each time there was nothing, or just a few drops.
“You should let me be the one,” André said.
Neill shivered. He wanted so badly to say yes, go ahead, you be the one to die. But tossing the piece of tin had been fair; three separate times he'd lost. If he were truly going to change his life, as he had begun when he'd been here alone, then he had to stick with what he'd said. Tossing the piece of tin had been fair; he could not go back on that, not without living the rest of his life in shame.
It's better to live in shame, he reminded himself, than not to live at all.
ABOVE THE GREEN LINE the flares and rockets made it light as day, even brighter, a titanium incandescence. The dog glanced once more behind it and dashed across the Line's smashed streets and buried buildings, the smell of death and cordite everywhere. It ran up the hill into East Beirut and through the streets loud with falling metal and singing bullets to André's hotel. The front door was closed; it settled down in the alley to wait. When someone came out of the door the dog raced into the lobby and up to André's door. There was a different smell there now, no sense of André. Confused and indecisive, the dog circled the corridor and ran back down the stairs. It looked around outside but could not find the Ford. Tail hanging, head low, it trotted back down to the Green Line and crossed again, panting with thirst, dizzy with hunger, and along Rue Basta and up Capucines to Anne-Marie's apartment, climbed to her floor and sat down to wait outside her door.
ANDRÉ WAS WORRYING about the dog. He’ taken on responsibility of the dog and but hadn’t fulfilled it because he’d been divided by too many other wants. Just as he’d taken on the responsibility of Anne-Marie and had destroyed her because he had not been centered on her, even though she was all he cared about. The thought of her made his body cringe, his heart congeal; he could not breathe, the pain choked him so badly.