Beirut - An Explosive Thriller

by Alexander McNabb

  Lynch sat beside her. ‘Sure I do, but where’s the connection with Meier or the warheads?’

  ‘PIL has a facility, an oil terminal near Vlorë in southern Albania. Scerri’s phone records show a number of calls over the past month to numbers in Vlorë, including the International Hotel, PIL’s offices and two private numbers. The hotel holds a booking in Hoffmann’s name made by Scerri. We are working with RENEA in Albania, their counterterrorist army unit. They tell us both of the private residences are now under surveillance.’

  Lynch spoke haltingly. ‘You think the idea is to load these warheads onto the boat at this oil terminal?’

  Nathalie smiled at Lynch with what she hoped was the pitying smile a teacher would bestow upon her slowest pupil. ‘Michel Freij flew out of Beirut this morning to Tirana in his private jet. Once over Albanian airspace, his pilot put in a request to divert to Vlorë.’

  ‘And the boat? Where’s the boat?’

  ‘We don’t know.’ Nathalie looked embarrassed. ‘We cancelled the original satellite tracking request to the Americans and it’s apparently taking effort to convince them we are serious this time around.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Lynch rubbed his face in his hands. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’

  They sat at a table for two overlooking the rocks at Raouché. The great stone humps seemed to float on the moonlit sea. The lanterns hanging from the weathered wood rafters cast a warm orange glow over the red-checked tablecloths and Chianti bottle candlesticks. The wine Lynch ordered arrived, two large claret glasses poured with exaggerated panache by the white-aproned waiter.

  They touched glasses, Nathalie appreciating a sip of the expensive Vino Nobile. Lynch gulped.

  Nathalie surveyed the restaurant, empty in the early evening. The Lebanese eat late. ‘So what about you? What happened with Najimi? Enough holding out on me.’

  Lynch had insisted they go to eat before he would share his day with her and they strolled together down the street from Lynch’s apartment in Ain Mreisse towards the sea. He made laughing small talk all the way. He puzzled her, the way he was obviously under stress – the amount he was drinking testament to that alone – and yet he insisted on being flippant and irresponsible. At the same time, she sensed a burden had been lifted from him.

  ‘Najimi? Ah, sure, just a heap of shit an’ piss. He’s nothing. He reckons Falcon’s got a massive underground facility at Deir Na’ee in the northern mountains where it develops high-tech missile systems with American investment. It’s totally sealed off by the One Lebanon militia. Sure, nothing interestin’ about the man at all.’

  He grinned and she scanned his face, his blue eyes twinkling in his pale features. She gave up trying to make sense of his words, laughing. ‘Shit, Lynch, you are teasing me.’

  ‘Nope. He sang like a canary. We have everything we need.’

  ‘So what did he sing?’

  Lynch slid the silver-cased voice recorder across the checked tablecloth. ‘Here, put this in yer handbag and ye can listen to it later. He said all that and more. Freij is a hood, an honest-to-goodness employee of Uncle Sam’s defence industry, a joint venture partner with all sorts of big business interests. Selim’s the engineering brains, Freij is the frontman. They’ve got huge research and development, something like four hundred software engineers alone, hardware development in drones and tactical missile systems. It’s all sanctioned and signed off by the State Department, albeit hush-hush. Falcon isn’t allowed to sell to the home market without permission but they can sell outside their backyard. The whole shebang is up there in the mountains surrounded by Christian villages where nobody who doesn’t belong ever goes, hidden behind a disused fruit cannery and named for a nunnery that has been a ruin for more than a hundred years. Deir Na’ee, the lonely homeplace.’ Lynch sought her eyes. ‘And you know the best bit, Nathalie? The very best bit?’

  She shook her head.

  Lynch drained his glass and waved it at the waiter. ‘That was the last place Paul Stokes went before he was killed. He overflew Deir Na’ee with a rogue chopper pilot called Marwan Nimr, a real gun-for-hire type. He used to deal drugs, but got busted. Nimr was pals with Najimi. And Najimi was one of the bastards who kidnapped Paul Stokes. Would ye ever believe it?’

  Nathalie sipped at her wine, the candlelight glinting from the glass marked with her fingerprints. She wore red nail varnish that, together with her lipstick and her black hair, lent an air of fragile elegance.

  ‘You must hate him very much, this Najimi.’

  ‘No, no I don’t,’ said Lynch. ‘Not anymore.’

  Nathalie wondered quite what that meant but a glance at his face in the candlelight decided her against asking any more questions.

  It was late. Lynch sat outside his favourite late night café in Marmara, smoking apple shisha and drinking arak. Quite drunk by now, he was genial; well known to the locals who cheerily greeted the Ingleez among them. He sat back and smoked the sweetened tobacco, a little pasha or perhaps a caterpillar. The pile of charcoal brightened on top of the little ceramic cup every time he inhaled. He held the snaking pipe with its furry grip aside and blew the smoke up into the air.

  Lynch had left Nathalie back in the apartment, online with her teams of researchers and hackers working with the information he had provided them from the interrogation of the intellectual, moralist and murdering drug dealer Anthony Najimi, ‘Spike’ to his friends.

  They had returned from their early dinner that evening, Nathalie refusing Lynch’s offer of a drink with a shy smile and a half-lidded glance, waving the little silver voice recorder at him. ‘No, I’ll listen to this first. Work first, play later.’

  Lynch had wondered what play later meant, watching her swinging arse push against the black cotton dress as she sashayed to her room in her high heels. She had emerged from her room an hour later, ashen-faced, hurling the recorder at him as he sat smoking a cigar and drinking his whisky on the balcony.

  ‘You bastard.’

  He caught it neatly as it skittered off the white plastic table in front of him, laughing. ‘Steady, girl, you could have damaged it. That’s British government property, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘How could you have—’

  ‘Shut up.’ Lynch raised his hand to her, his pointing forefinger moist from the condensation on the glass he held. ‘I got the results. Your job is to use them.’

  ‘Don’t tell me my job.’

  ‘Fine. So don’t tell me mine.’

  The light caught the tears running down her cheeks as she glared at him. ‘You did not have to do it like that, not brutal like that. Not cruel like that.’

  Lynch was pure fire, ardent anger. ‘He killed her, Nathalie. He made his way into her fucking bed and then he injected her with a lethal dose of heroin because Michel Freij wanted him to. Paid him to.’ Lynch stumbled to his feet. ‘That part of his confession isn’t on the recording. Neither is his account of lifting Paul Stokes and imprisoning him before leaving him to the mercy of Freij’s drugged-up thugs.’

  She couldn’t hold his burning stare. She dropped her gaze.

  Lynch passed her as she stared frozen at the little recorder on the plastic table. He strode through the sliding door into the apartment and picked up his jacket from the sofa in the living room. He turned to her. ‘Don’t you dare judge me, Nathalie.’

  She was silent, her back to him.

  ‘Fine,’ he had said, as gently as he could. ‘I’m going out.’

  Tony Chalhoub pulled up a plastic chair. The sound brought Lynch from his reverie. He glanced up at Chalhoub then picked up his shisha pipe and took a toke. Chalhoub gestured at the waiter for a glass and poured himself an arak out of Lynch’s bottle.

  ‘Know anything about the dead druggie at Marcie’s?’

  Lynch’s pipe bubbled as he took a long drag, his baleful red-eyed gaze on Chalhoub. ‘Nope.’

  ‘Thought you might.’

  ‘Know anything about a flyboy called Marwan?’

>   ‘Christ.’ Chalhoub drank from his arak. ‘There’s a blast from the past. Marwan Nimr, he’s locked up in Roumieh Prison, unless he got time off for good behaviour. In which case he must have behaved like an angel because he was doing something like a twenty-stretch.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Jesus, Lynch, I’ve got a dead man on my hands and the hysterical madam of Beirut’s poshest brothel calling through her Swarovski-covered iPhone contact list and you’re asking me questions?’

  ‘Anthony Najimi, AKA ‘Spike’, on the staff roster at AUB.’

  Chalhoub noted down the name. ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘What did Nimr go down for?’

  Chalhoub sighed and slapped his notebook down on the table, looking to heaven for succour. ‘He got caught, Lynch. It’s why most hoods go to prison. Those that survive meeting members of Her Majesty’s Britannic Government, of course.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with him. He was in a hit-and-run accident.’ Lynch took a pull of his argileh. ‘Out of interest, how did he die?’

  ‘Heroin. Odd, that. The same way Leila died.’

  Lynch had the little plastic disposable mouthpiece of the argileh pipe between his lips, but he didn’t draw on it. His gaze on Chalhoub was impassive. ‘Leila who?’

  Chalhoub held Lynch’s eye, then gazed around the café. ‘Uncut laboratory grade. He took what would have been a normal dose of street stuff. How’d he get hyper-pure gear like that, do you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Tony. Sure, I’m just a jumped-up researcher in the commercial section, you know that. What did Nimr go down for?’

  ‘He used to fly for the big warlords, the drug runs. He’s good, the best. He made good money, bought some land and went into business for himself. The big boys didn’t particularly like that but he kept them sweet and they turned a blind eye. After the war, they had the sense to crystallise the profits, as it were, and leave the trade. Nimr kept flying.’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Where did Najimi score lab grade smack, Gerald?’

  ‘Must have been a mix-up with his dealer, ain’t that the truth?’

  Chalhoub returned Lynch’s stare, standing his ground against the pent-up violence in Lynch’s icy glare. Every word, every glance was imbued with a cold viciousness Chalhoub had never seen so naked in his old friend before. Lynch was very drunk and Chalhoub spoke to the tabletop to avoid the anger in Lynch’s eyes.

  ‘Marwan Nimr was traded in by one of the warlords. We’d got a little too close to some stuff that the big guy wanted to avoid having to answer to, so he gave us a few little gifts and the news that if we didn’t take the gifts, he’d start another war. One of the gifts was Nimr. We hesitated, then my boss got hit in the shoulder by a sniper on his way to the office. We took the gifts.’

  Lynch drained his glass, resting the shisha mouthpiece across the arm of his chair so that he could lean over and slosh arak into his and Chalhoub’s glasses. ‘Which warlord?’

  ‘You already know, Lynch.’ Chalhoub sighed. ‘Raymond Freij.’

  Lynch grunted and drank. ‘Anthony Najimi was a known associate of both Michel Freij and Selim Hussein. He knew them both as students and was an early employee of Falcon Dynamics. He was on their payroll for years, a highly talented programmer with a particular specialisation in security applications and encryption. Najimi crashed out with a nervous breakdown three years ago. He got the job at AUB thanks to an effusive reference and the personal intervention of Michel Freij with AUB’s board. Najimi was financially wealthy, held Falcon shares and had liquidated about four million dollars’ worth in the past year.’

  ‘So why kill him?’

  Lynch blinked slowly, surfacing to grin roguishly at Chalhoub, tipping the argileh mouthpiece at the policeman. ‘Naughty, Tony. Very naughty.’ He drank from his arak, putting the glass down too roughly, the sound of it smacking on the tabletop stopping conversations around them. People glanced across to see what was happening.

  Lynch sat back. ‘A good question, though. Why would someone want to kill Anthony Najimi, broken genius, brilliant lecturer and mature student activist? Why would someone think that it would be appropriate to kill a man who would never want for money again in his life and yet who chose to be a drug dealer, to peddle smack and dope as gaily as he peddled influence among the young people he preyed upon?’

  Chalhoub nodded. ‘And he killed Leila Medawar.’ Lynch’s face was impassive, he was weaving on his chair. Chalhoub tried not to sound desperate. ‘So who killed Najimi?’

  ‘Harry did, Tony. Harry killed Anthony Najimi.’

  With exaggerated care, Lynch rested the argileh mouthpiece on the little silver pan of the decorated pipe. He drained his arak and got to his feet, swaying to maintain his balance. He threw some notes down on the table, his voice sounding, Chalhoub noted for the first time since he’d known the man, slurred.

  ‘Gotta go, Tony. Good luck with the druggie files.’

  Chalhoub watched Lynch weave between the tables and then turn to pick his way back with studied care. Lynch leaned against a chair to ask, ‘By the way. Where would I find Nimr?’

  Chalhoub nodded, care in his voice. ‘He used to drink at the Red Lady in Monot.’ He leaned forwards. ‘Take care, Gerald. You know if I can help—’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Thanks, Tony.’

  Lynch left, consumed by the darkness. Chalhoub tossed back his arak. The night was cold and he shivered despite his heavy jacket.

  TWENTY-SIX

  It was cold and Lynch waited, huddled by the airstrip. Vlorë wasn’t the most important of Albania’s military bases, part of a network of facilities deemed critical in the cold war and still being decommissioned, stockpiles slowly being identified and destroyed, some disappearing into hands that would pass them to Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa. Hands like Peter Meier’s. Lynch scanned the tatty runway.

  Brian Channing had confounded Lynch’s plans to track down Marwan Nimr, the bent helicopter pilot. Lynch had left Tony Chalhoub and struck out for his apartment, arriving exhausted and very drunk at midnight. Channing’s call delivered the news Lynch was booked on the 4.30am flight to Albania. As usual, there were no direct flights. He’d have to route through Istanbul. Lynch just made the flight, was almost refused boarding and had to be shaken awake in Istanbul. He slept again on the light plane that took him down the Adriatic coast to Vlorë.

  Lynch was to meet up with Gabriel Lentini, the Maltese special forces officer who had planned the raid on the Arabian Princess in Malta and so knew the big yacht’s layout. Lentini’s brief was to liaise with the Albanian special forces, offering his expertise on the interior of the yacht. Tirana had been grateful for the help, according to Dubois, who had been in constant contact with his counterpart there since Nathalie had unravelled the PIL connection. Albania had immediately extended its fullest cooperation in the European-led operation against arms smugglers. Whilst eager to help, the Albanians had been mildly puzzled as to why anyone would want to smuggle arms into a country still in the process of destroying and decommissioning one of the greatest concentrations of weapons and military assets remaining in the post-cold war era. Dubois, his imperative as ever to keep international embarrassment and public panic to a minimum, hadn’t been too clear on precisely what cargo they were seeking. Dubois once again cautioned Lynch to go to all and any lengths to maintain that lack of clarity. It had led to a number of awkward conversations in Tirana and another set when he had arrived in Vlorë.

  Lynch had straightway disliked his assigned liaison officer when he arrived at the airbase. There was something oily about Lieutenant Colonel Adnan Meshkallah as he met Lynch from the plane, covering Lynch’s hands with both of his as he pumped them, an almost comical Oriental effusiveness about everything the man did. Like a Turkish pimp, Lynch thought.

  Meshkallah came into sight, scuttling across the crumbling concrete apron, leaving the low building next to the hangars behind him. Lynch returned his attention to the sky
above the northern end of the airfield, rewarded with the sight of an approaching aircraft’s lights resolving into a shiny little CASA C-212. One of the newer additions to the tiny Maltese Air Force, the light-blue liveried plane wavered in the coarse shear wind as it swooped down to meet the weed-whiskered concrete runway.

  The turboprop passed them by as Meshkallah reached Lynch. It slowed, its engines’ noisy buzz rose for the turn then lowered as the plane went around parallel to them. It drew to a halt, the engines cut. A few seconds later, Lynch watched Lentini’s uniformed bulk descend, the wind gusting so the big man had to hold down his cap as he approached them.

  From Lynch’s side, Meshkallah spoke, his voice filled with delight and camaraderie. ‘Very good. We have help from Malta. Now we may proceed together to solving this greatest mystery.’

  Meshkallah’s clipped military moustache, his oiled, dark hair and the ridiculous little baton he carried under his arm along with his peaked hat all made Lynch want to round on the toy soldier and demand a real officer to talk to. He breathed deeply and strode to greet Lentini.

  ‘Gabe. Great to see you.’

  Lentini grinned, his hard hand gripping Lynch’s, his castrato voice raised against the strong breeze. ‘Good to see you, too, Gerald. Paul Tomasi sends his regards and says you’re to get the bastards.’

  Meshkallah joined them and clapped them both on the back. ‘Welcome to Vlorë, gentlemen.’

  Lynch bit his tongue and forced a smile. ‘Thank you, Adnan. This is Captain Lentini. Gabe, this is our liaison here in Vlorë. Lieutenant Colonel Adnan Meshkallah is in charge of the operation against Peter Meier and his illegal shipment.’