by Damien Lewis
An hour out from Ramkine Island Smithy leaned across to Kilbride. He had to yell to make himself heard above the smacking of the hull against the waves.
‘Why you doing this, boss? It’s not as if you need the bloody money.’
‘How so?’ Kilbride replied, his teeth showing white in the darkness.
‘Your family’s bloody loaded. That’s what everyone says.’
‘Not to the tune of five million dollars they aren’t.’
‘But they ain’t short of a bob or two, are they?’
‘I’m doing it for the craic, as that mad Irishman Moynihan would say. I’m doing it because it’s there. Because we can. For the rush. And ’cause it’s terrorist fucking gold. You?’
Smithy grinned. ‘I’m doing it because it’s your bloody idea and you’re the boss.’
‘Bollocks you are.’
‘All right, then, I’m doing it to shut the missus up. I’m tired of hearing her – “When are we ever going to have any money? Blah, blah, blah … You care more about that bloody Regiment than you do about me.” I’m doing it so there won’t be any more nasty, dirty little wars with the wife. She’s always said I’ll never amount to anything. This’ll learn her.’
‘I’ve never asked – how long have you been married?’
‘Five years. Feels like a bloody life sentence.’
‘Why no children? You strike me as the sort who’d make a good dad.’
‘I’d like them, but the missus won’t go for it – not as long as I stay in The Regiment and keep fucking off to foreign parts with the likes of you.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I reckon this might just swing it, though. I’ve been rehearsing what I’m going to say to her. Listen, love, here’s a cool million – no strings attached. All I want is for us to have some kids and me keep doing what I’m doing. Deal? She’s got to go for it, hasn’t she, boss?’
‘What woman wouldn’t? But what about the other four and a half million?’
‘Ah, now that’s what I bloody well keep for myself – in reserve, like.’
The two men lapsed into silence as the boat powered onwards. Like many in The Regiment, Kilbride didn’t talk about his family background much. It was something the men tended to keep to themselves, and in Kilbride’s case he had more than the usual reasons to do so. The men attracted to the SAS generally tended to be independent and spirited and questioning of organised religion. Rather than God binding The Regiment as one, it was the bonds between men that were the glue that held things together. They fought for each other, for their mates in their troop. Kilbride’s great secret was that his father was a priest, and that he had been expected to follow him into the priesthood.
Kilbride’s dad had been the vicar at Bryanston, a minor public school in Dorset, and that was where Kilbride had himself been educated. From his earliest years Kilbride’s father had groomed his eldest son for a career in the Church. But Kilbride had had different ideas. He had always found himself inspired less by his father’s pious ways and more by those of his grandfather George, a twice-knighted general and one of the best commanders the British army had ever had. Kilbride shared his grandfather’s dark good looks, and his boyhood games had been full of bloody woodland skirmishes, with half the village boys acting as the German enemy.
It had been the last straw for his father when Kilbride had openly declared his ambition to follow his grandfather into the military. His choice of the SAS had been inspired by a visit of the Commanding Officer (CO) of The Regiment to inspect the school’s Combined Cadet Force. As an adolescent boy standing in rank in his khaki uniform, with a .303 Lee Enfield rifle held in the present-arms position, Kilbride had been awed by the man’s easy good nature and his stylish uniform. Having no idea what it might mean, Kilbride had asked the CO how he might get to wear the same beige beret and winged-dagger cap badge.
‘Ah, well, sonny, that’s the SAS,’ the CO had responded. ‘I’ll set you a little challenge: if you can find out any more about us, and where we’re headquartered, come and see about joining.’
The more Kilbride had learned about the SAS the more he had been drawn to the unit, rising to the challenge to do the impossible. Ever since then he had found himself driven by that same maverick desire to achieve the unachievable. And it was that which lay behind the present mission. The fact that it was terrorist money added a touch of moral conviction, but the driving force behind Operation Cobra Gold was the sheer bloody-minded challenge that it posed.
True, an SAS trooper’s wage was less than £2,500 a year. And the gold in that bank vault was worth a fortune beyond their wildest dreams. But it wasn’t money that drove Kilbride: if it had been he’d never have joined the SAS. Back at home he drove a knackered Austin Princess, and he didn’t have a mortgage or a family to support. Falling off the wagon when he was a kid had made him even more determined to succeed. But he would do so in his own way, facing the challenges he chose – like the present mission to rob the Imperial Bank of Beirut of fifty million dollars in gold bullion.
As they approached Beirut from the open sea Kilbride felt his pulse quicken. It was an unearthly sight. The high-rise section of the city clustered along the shoreline – fine hotels, casinos and restaurants – but all of it was lying in darkness, the humped silhouettes of a dying city whose people were at war with themselves. Here and there a window was aglow with the flickering light of a gas flame, but even these were shuttered and blanketed, as if to keep the city’s bloodlust and hatred barricaded outside in the dark. During the long night of Beirut’s civil war, light had come to mean death for the city’s inhabitants – Muslim and Christian alike. It brought a sniper’s bullet, the fiery trail of an RPG, or the thump of the killer’s boots on the stairs.
Kilbride had done his research and knew all this. He was expecting it. But the sight of a whole city like this – eyeless and entombed and dark as the grave – was deeply unsettling. He raked the skyline with his eyes, searching for a landmark that would point out the location of the Beirut River estuary, their entrance into a city peopled by ghosts. Kilbride searched to the east and could just make out a long, low silhouette rising barely above the sea – the breakwater that sheltered the Beirut port area. Two kilometres to the east of that lay a sprawling oil terminal, which marked the entrance to the Beirut River.
Kilbride scanned along the faint phosphorescence of the shoreline for the cylindrical fat black shapes of the giant oil tanks. But it was Ward who spotted them first.
‘There!’ he hissed, stretching out an arm across the dark water.
Ward readjusted the trim of the RIB until she was heading for a point just to the west of the oil depot, the mouth of the Beirut River. Kilbride glanced behind him and was relieved to see the squat forms of the other boats falling in line behind. Ward throttled back to dead slow and they crept past the oil depot, some hundred yards distant off the port beam. Gradually, the mud banks of the estuary closed in on them. Kilbride glanced at his watch: it was 1 a.m. – they had entered the Beirut River and were bang on schedule.
Smithy broke out one of the night-vision units. The technology was still in its infancy, and the device was unwieldy, being some twelve inches long and over two pounds in weight. He crawled forward to the prow of the boat and began to scan the waters ahead for any hidden obstructions. Every now and then he used a hand signal to steer Ward to the right or left of the central line of the river.
As they crept into the city, Kilbride kept watch on the banks to either side of him. There was a temporary ceasefire and it was eerily quiet. Over the past year there had been several such truces, but none had lasted. Within days the hatred had always proved too strong, the city’s desire to devour itself too insatiable. A dog barked on the right-hand bank – once, twice, three times, and then there came the muffled cursing of the owner. Kilbride doubted that the dog had heard them: the boat engines were all but inaudible, and not a word was being spoken by the men. Since entering the river estuary they had been o
n silent routine, and the roar of the swollen river beneath the boats was louder than any noise from their passing.
Kilbride was convinced that the dog couldn’t have smelled them, either. The stench from the putrid water was overpowering, in spite of it being January and the river being in full flood. They passed by the rectangular bulk of the Karantina slaughterhouse, and Kilbride was hit by the smell of decomposing animal carcasses. It mingled with the reek of raw sewage, the overall effect being doubly sickening. Whatever else the inhabitants of this cursed city might have stopped doing – partying, holding tidy neighbourhood competitions, tolerating each other and living in peace – shitting certainly wasn’t one of them. Knotty had been right: the Beirut River was a festering sewer.
They passed under a small road bridge. From there on the Beirut River was channelled through a massive concrete culvert some three hundred yards wide as it flowed through the normally busy suburbs of Ashrafieh, Burj Hammoud and Sin El Fil. Despite having to navigate a series of semi-submerged obstructions, Kilbride reckoned they were making a good five knots – which meant that they would be at their destination in under twenty minutes. He settled back in the RIB to enjoy the ride.
The riverside market of Souk el Ahad was one of the few Beirut institutions that seemed to have survived the war. It was held every Sunday on a derelict section of the river bank, itself part of this forgotten and poisoned artery of the city. Where the market reached down to the water, a series of decrepit wooden jetties groped out into the current. Over the years most had been washed away by the winter floods, but a few were stubbornly holding on. It was on one of these that Emile Abdeen was waiting. He gazed out over the river, an extinguished torch in his right hand. At any time now he was expecting to see the three British boats round the bend below him, at which time he would signal them in to land.
He glanced across at the makeshift bed that lay beneath the wooden jetty. It was made up of an old door, propped up at one end by a desk, at the other by an upturned fridge. On top of the bed was a battered length of foam, an old blanket and some tattered clothes. Until the war had come to this ancient city, Beirut had been a magnet for casual workers from Syria and further afield. The bed would belong to one of them, Emile reflected. And maybe he still slept there, scratching a perilous living from the Souk. Emile wrinkled his nose: it certainly smelled as if he was still around and that his toilet was somewhere nearby.
As he stared out over the water Emile reflected on what he was doing here. The son of a French Catholic mother and a Lebanese Muslim father, his was an unhappy union of the two sides of hatred that were tearing this city apart. It made him a loner and a refugee in his own country, and a misfit in these hate-filled times. He had been conceived in a moment of hopeless optimism, thirty-three years earlier, and the marriage between his liberal parents had failed to last. Since then he’d been educated at a top Beirut school, grown up an atheist, and had no allegiance to either side in the war.
Emile could see what religion was doing to his country – who couldn’t? The orgy of fighting – all in the name of religion. The massacres of the women and children – all in the name of religion. The looting of this once beautiful city – all in the name of religion. And if the British were happy to pay him well for his services, then so be it. It was a damn sight less dangerous than some of the alternatives – like joining one of the militias, or working in the souks, like his absent Syrian bedfellow. And working for the British somehow made Emile feel like he belonged. The British were outsiders, just like him. In spite of his mongrel roots, they seemed to have had little trouble accepting him.
They also seemed to have little shortage of funds. They certainly paid him well enough, but it was in the spin-offs from his activities that Emile was making real money. Of course, it had been necessary to bribe the guards at the Red Cross compound to let the vehicles go missing for a long weekend. And of course, the British had been happy to pay the bribes. And the difference between what the British had given Emile and what he had paid the guards was his cut, his share of the deal. It was always like this doing business in Beirut, and Emile saw no reason why it should be different with his own dealings. Soon he would have enough money to leave this blighted city. Maybe he would take his family and head for a new life in London, where he would have no problem melting into the crowd.
Kilbride glanced to his right: something had caught his attention. He scanned the rooftops, and then, as the RIB shifted in the current, he spotted a figure silhouetted in a spray of light. He brought his M16 into the aim, bracing the weapon on the black rubber side of the RIB. He watched as the light behind the dark figure shifted slightly, and then there was the throaty roar of a powerful engine, thick fumes drifting into the pool of light, tingeing it a ghostly blue. Only the militia would be moving around this city at night. As he scrutinised the backlit figure, it struck a contorted pose: it was staring out over the river, totally unmoving, with something thrust skywards from its right hand.
As the RIB drew level with the bizarre scene, Kilbride recognised the figure for what it was: a body carved from stone, an ancient statue of some sort suspended on a Roman column high above the mass of the city. The history of the Lebanon stretched back some seven thousand years, and the country was crammed full of Roman, Phoenician and more ancient ruins. Smaller figures clustered around the base of the Roman statue, but these ones were alive and were dressed in a motley collection of military fatigues.
To the rear of the statue, an army truck cut its engine. A figure jumped down from the cab and strode through the headlights, a guitar clutched in one hand. Kalashnikov assault rifles were propped against the base of the statue as a bottle was passed around. The militia were having a street party, and by the looks of her shapely figure and the hair spilling out from under her khaki cap, Kilbride could tell that at least one of the fighters was a woman.
Kilbride rolled away from the side of the RIB and lowered his weapon. But as he did so there was a sudden burst of gunfire. He tensed for a second, bracing for an attack, before realising that it was one of the partygoers loosing off a salvo of rounds into the night sky in a fit of high spirits. What they had to celebrate in this blackened urban wasteland Kilbride couldn’t imagine. Maybe it was the fact that they had finished the killing for the day.
They pressed onwards upriver. Twice Ward had to throttle the boat’s speed back to zero as he and Kilbride leaned over the stern to cut an obstruction free from the propeller. But eventually they reached the intricate latticework of the iron railway bridge beyond which lay Souk el Ahad. So far, so good, Kilbride told himself: very soon they would be meeting their contact and setting foot in the dead city.
He swivelled his eyes to the right and began searching the river bank. It was dark and empty here where the city’s only green space groped its way down to the flanks of the sick river. A point of red light blinked just ahead – once, twice, three times. Kilbride watched intently: there it was again. He pulled a small torch out of his camo smock and gave the answering signal. Kilbride glanced behind him as Ward brought the craft around, and slowly the RIB felt its way in towards the river bank. As it did so, a skeletal wooden structure reared out of the water. This was the jetty on which they would rendezvous with their Lebanese fixer.
Kilbride and Emile greeted each other wordlessly, with a rough handshake. The boats were drawn in under the jetty and hidden beneath its rusted galvanised sides. The men hoisted their weapons and gear and walked up the grassy bank. Emile led them to a metal door in a high brick wall. He unlocked a padlock, pushed it open and they disappeared inside.
By the faint light of the night sky that filtered into the compound Kilbride could tell that the safe house had seen better days. The windows on the ground and first floors were secured with iron bars, and most were glazed only with polythene. Kilbride wondered if the glass had been shot out during the war, or deliberately removed to prevent damage from flying shards. They rounded a corner of the house and his gaze was drawn to a g
roup of vehicles parked towards the centre of the compound. There were two Toyota Land Cruisers and a large Bedford truck. All displayed the distinctive colours of the Red Cross: clear white, with a large red cross symbol painted onto doors, bonnets and roofs.
Emile led Kilbride inside the house. He gestured to a bare concrete-floored room with a few battered armchairs lying around. ‘Welcome.’
‘It’s Emile, right? I’m the boss. Quick introductions,’ said Kilbride, deliberately opting to use the men’s nicknames. ‘This is Bronco, Smithy, Paddy, Jock, Bushman, Nightly, Johno and Shagger.’
Emile nodded a greeting at Kilbride’s men. He pointed to a couple of cardboard boxes lying on the floor. ‘Your uniforms. I hope I have your correct sizes.’ He glanced at McKierran and Berger. ‘We Lebanese often tend to forget how large of build you English can be.’
‘Hey – I’m no goddamn Brit, I’m an American,’ Bill Berger remarked, with a grin. ‘And they make everything big where I come from – even the goddamn noses.’
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Emile countered, with a smile.
‘And if ye want to know what they make that’s extra large in the glens, check under my kilt,’ McKierran added.
There was a ripple of laughter.
‘Right, lads, it’s two-fifteen a.m., so we’re ahead of schedule,’ Kilbride announced. ‘We’ve got to make like doctors and nurses and load up the vehicles. Let’s try to be on the road by, say, an hour from now – so three-fifteen a.m. Okay by you, Emile?’
‘Okay,’ Emile confirmed. ‘There is just one checkpoint, manned by the Lebanese Forces militia, on the route that we will be using. They see the Red Cross as being their ambulance service, whilst the Muslims on the west of the city see the Red Crescent as being theirs. So you will have little trouble. Riad al-Solh is your intended destination?’
‘It is,’ Kilbride confirmed, giving nothing away.
‘Just checking …’ Emile replied. ‘If anyone asks, tell them you are taking medical supplies to the Red Cross centre in Ein-el-Helweh. It is some distance south-east of the city and in Christian territory. They will like you all the more for it. There is little point in saying that we are carrying wounded as there is at present a ceasefire. It won’t last, of course. They never do. But ferrying medical supplies is our best cover story … Where exactly in Riad al-Solh are we headed?’
