Ultimatum

by Antony Trew

  The Lebanese Minister pointed out that whoever might have disturbed them must have done so unwittingly, for no report of any sort had reached the port authorities or police.

  The Syrian Minister agreed that this was difficult to explain. He undertook to fly down a party of officers on the following day to take over the consignment and move it to Damascus by road.

  The Lebanese Minister told him that Shed 27 was now being guarded by police, reinforced by an army unit. Everything possible was being done to prevent a repetition of the events of earlier in the day.

  The two ministers agreed it was imperative to keep the news of the attack from the media for as long as possible, and to ensure that the contents of the packing cases should remain a closely-guarded secret. In the meantime, said the Syrian Minister, an urgent meeting of his cabinet would be called to consider the diplomatic action to be taken vis-à-vis the Israeli Government.

  6

  In an old junk yard in Sinn-el-Fil, a poorer quarter of Beirut, two men worked on the engine of a vintage Renault. But for occasional rubbish scavengers and children looking for a place to hide, few people came that way. No weapons could be seen but the men were armed.

  Inside the shed a single bulb on a worn flex hung from a roof-beam. In its uncertain light could be seen a big Leyland pantechnicon which took up one side of the shed. BADAGUI CO. SAL was lettered in black on its yellow sides. In the warm air of afternoon the atmosphere in the shed was pungent with the smell of diesel oil and tyres.

  Two grey packing cases stood on the dirt floor near the far end where a man was busy at a bench. He was working by the light of a camping torch. Not far from him three men and a girl were examining a large steel cone with the aid of an inspection lamp. It lay on a wooden trestle, near it a fork-lift truck. Beyond the yellow Leyland an armed man stood on guard.

  ‘One point seven-five metres,’ said the bearded man with the neck scar. ‘Heavier than it looks. Screening accounts for most of the weight.’

  ‘I thought it would be much bigger,’ said the girl, Jasmine Fawaz. ‘They are in pictures.’

  ‘The pictures show you the whole thing. This is the warhead – just one section. Each Pluton has four units. The warhead, the guidance package, fuel tank and rocket engine. I used to work on the final assembly. Putting the lot together.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it, Zeid?’ She looked at him with curious eyes.

  ‘It was very interesting. I suppose that’s always enjoyable But I was going to say – about size – when four sections are put together Pluton is seven-and-a-half metres long. All up weight 2350 kilograms. A lot of that is fuel. There were four Plutons in the Byblos consignment. More are coming in other ships.’

  ‘Fortunate we only needed a warhead,’ she said.

  Adel Khoury, a gloomy round-shouldered man, pointed to the grooved locking device in the base of the cone. ‘This is where the detonator is attached. When Kamel is ready we’ll fix it.’ Khoury had taken a degree in physics at the American University in Beirut. Later he’d gone to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and during vacations worked on nuclear reactors with General Electric.

  Ka’ed yawned. He’d had virtually no sleep for twenty-four hours. ‘Let’s have a look in the van.’

  They followed him over to the Leyland. He opened the loading doors and got in, trailing the lead of an inspection lamp. The others followed, ranging themselves round the stack of Bokharas and Kashans. The carpets were 2.75 X 1.85 m making a solid stack 1.5 m high.

  The men rolled back the upper layers to reveal a rectangular cavity in the centre of the stack. Its area was somewhat larger than the area of carpet remaining.

  Jasmine Fawaz shivered. To her it looked like a mass grave awaiting coffins. A latticed aluminium frame supported its four walls. In the centre, between the cross bracing, there was another aluminium frame. Ka’ed lifted the top half. ‘It’s shaped to hold the warhead firmly in position once it’s locked down,’ he said.

  The girl looked doubtful. ‘Is the bale strong enough with so much of the centre cut out?’

  ‘Yes.’ He took off his dark glasses, cleaned them with a tissue. ‘The whole bale’s reinforced laterally and transversally with aluminium rods. You can’t see them but they’re there. It’s a very strong structure.’

  ‘What about weight?’ said Abdu Hussein, thinking what wild eyes Ka’ed had.

  ‘Much the same as a standard bale of carpets of this size. The volume of material cut out is several times greater than the volume of the warhead. The weight of the warhead plus the aluminium reinforcing is only fifteen per cent more than the weight of the material cut out.’ He replaced the top half of the frame. ‘A tightly-compressed bale of carpets is a heavy item.’

  Jasmine said, ‘How many carpets are there?’

  ‘Eighty-five.’

  She shook her head. ‘And we mutilate most of them. How sad.’

  ‘They cost us nothing.’ Ka’ed shrugged his shoulders. ‘We took them.’

  ‘Like we take everything.’

  He went to the open doors of the pantechnicon. ‘Hey, Zeid,’ he called.

  The man at the bench answered, ‘What is it, Mahmoud?’

  ‘As soon as you and Kamel have finished, bring it across with the fork-lift.’ He turned to Tarik. ‘Got all the baling gear ready?’

  ‘Yes. Hessian, hooping bands, mechanical bander, marking materials, stencils. All okay.’

  ‘Good.’ Ka’ed climbed down from the Leyland and joined the man at the work-bench. For some time he watched in silence. At last he said, ‘Nearly finished, Assaf?’

  Assaf Kamel did not look up from what he was doing. His eyes were fixed on the tip of the soldering iron from which a whisp of vapour issued. ‘Not long now’, he said. ‘I’m annealing the leads for the timing gear and emergency detonator.’

  Ka’ed saw from his watch that it was close to six. The Leyland would take the bale out that night under cover of darkness. The sooner it was away from there the better.

  Zeid Barakat came to him. ‘Mahmoud,’ he said. ‘I’m still not happy about the morality of this.’

  Behind the dark glasses Ka’ed’s eyes narrowed, his voice hardened. ‘If you want to worry about morality, Zeid, worry about the morality of those who took our country from us.’ He put his hand on the bearded man’s shoulder. ‘I know how you feel, but you must get your priorities right. We are at war. We have to do things we don’t like doing. This morning we killed five Syrian officers. There are no greater supporters of an independent Palestine than the Syrians. War makes for terrible decisions.’

  Barakat smiled in a restrained, humourless way. ‘You are right, Mahmoud.’ He drew a hand across his eyes. ‘It’s a mood. It will pass.’

  ‘You are not alone with your conscience, Zeid. There is always a struggle in our minds. We mustn’t lose our resolve in weakness and sentiment.’

  The attacks on Shed 27 had taken place in the early hours of Wednesday, 6th October. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Lebanese authorities to keep the news from the media, the following morning’s edition of Beirut’s Al Hayat ran a headline: ISRAELI COMMANDO UNIT ATTACKS BEIRUT PORT? Beneath the double column headline with its mark of interrogation appeared the report of a clash between Lebanese units and an Israeli commando force – presumably seaborne – believed to have penetrated Beirut Port during the hours of darkness on October 5th/6th. It was rumoured said the paper guardedly, that the raiders had been driven off after a number of men had been killed.

  This sketchy, somewhat inaccurate account was enough to indicate that someone had talked. The Ministers of Defence and Transport were furious but the secret was out and during that day, smelling a sensational story, the media men began casting for a scent. One of them, Pierre Gamin, accredited to Le Monde, found it and went racing down the trail.

  It was after ten on the morning of Thursday, October 7th, when the yellow Leyland entered Beirut Port and proceeded to the berth where the Hellenic Mediterranean Lines’ s
hip Leros was lying. A vessel of medium size, she carried both passengers and cargo. The Blue Peter fluttering at her yardarm indicated that she was to sail that day. The journey would take her home to the Piraeus via Latakia, Famagusta and Iraklion.

  The driver of the Leyland backed it up against the loading platform behind the transit shed. The man accompanying him went into the office with the shipping documents. When he came back the doors of the Leyland were opened and dock labourers manhandled the big hessian-wrapped bale on to the platform where it was picked up by a fork-lift truck. The vehicle turned and purred its way back into the shed, looking like some primeval monster carrying its kill.

  The man with the shipping documents climbed in next to the driver. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ The Leyland travelled slowly down the service road between the sheds before turning left and disappearing from sight.

  The fork-lift truck carried the bale through the shed to the platform on the far side where stevedores were busy with cargo slings and nets feeding the cranes. The driver put his load down, turned the fork-lift and steered it back through the shed.

  The canvas labels sewn on to the bale showed that it was consigned to Dimitri Ionides & Co., 181 Pastropoulos Street, Athens, and included an injunction to ‘Stow in a Dry Place’. In due course, stevedores put slings round the bale and a crane transferred it to number 3 hold where it ended up in the Leros’s ’tween decks.

  One of the passengers who boarded the ship shortly before sailing that afternoon was the bearded, scarred man.

  About the time the Leyland was delivering its load in Beirut Port, a party of Syrian officers accompanied by paratroopers drove the Mahroutti Bros trucks out of Shed 27 and began their journey to Damascus, some 110 kilometres to the north. None of the Syrians was in uniform. They had left behind in the shed the formidable but discreetly hidden overnight guard supplied by the Lebanese Army.

  The trucks were preceded and followed by two black Citroëns. The civilians in these cars, which passers-by would not have associated with the trucks they were escorting, were security police. The Minister of Defence was not taking any more chances while the consignment was on Lebanese territory. The Citroëns would keep within reasonable distance of the trucks until the Syrian border was reached, and there would be discreet surveillance by the Syrian Air Force, overflying the Lebanon with the knowledge and consent of the government in Beirut.

  ‘Pernod. No water, much ice.’ The Frenchman slid his empty glass across the counter of the bar in the Hotel St George. Through the windows he could see over a wide arc of the Mediterranean. Ruffled by the wind, its cliché blue showed frills of old lace where incoming seas spilled against the shore. To the east lay the port with its array of masts and funnels. A skimmer buzzed across the harbour, leaping and bumping, its wake describing a foaming white line which faded slowly into the sea from which it had come.

  The barman poured the Pernod on to a mound of crushed ice, added a slice of lemon and pushed the glass back to the Frenchman. ‘Three twenty, m’sieu,’ he said impersonally, his eyes elsewhere in the manner of his kind. The Frenchman took a wad of Lebanese notes from his pocket, peeled off four and handed them across. Without waiting for the change he took the Pernod and walked through to the foyer. There he went to a phone booth. He lifted the instrument and the girl on the hotel switchboard answered.

  ‘Paris, France,’ he said. ‘Seven-five-zero-four-double-four.’

  ‘One moment, m’sieu.’

  He waited, arranging mentally the order of what he had to say. His thoughts were interrupted by the girl. ‘There is a delay, m’sieu. The lines are busy.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Thirty, perhaps forty, minutes.’

  ‘Tiens,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait in the bar. Call me there through the barman. Please don’t page me.’

  ‘Your name and room number, m’sieu.’

  ‘Pierre Gamin,’ he said. ‘Room two-three-nine.’

  The delay on the Paris call was longer than expected. An hour and twenty-seven minutes elapsed before the barman put down his phone, looked across to where Pierre Gamin was sitting and nodded. ‘Your call, m’sieu. Booth seven.’

  The Frenchman went through the foyer to the booth and lifted the phone. ‘Hullo,’ he said.

  ‘Hullo, Pierre. How are you?’

  He recognized the voice of Jules Boyer, doyen of the Middle East desk in the Paris office. ‘Fine, Jules. Listen. This is urgent. Duquesne Frères et Cie, Ouvry-sur-Maine, Department of the Seine. Got it?’

  ‘Yes. We’re taping it anyway. Carry on.’

  ‘Good, Jules. They make agricultural machinery?’

  ‘Yes. Big people.’

  ‘A consignment from them for D. B. Mahroutti Bros of Beirut arrived from Marseille in the Byblos two days ago. It was off-loaded at once and taken in two of Mahroutti’s trucks to Shed 27 of this port. Mahrouttis are important distributors of agricultural machinery in the Lebanon. Head office, Beirut.’

  ‘So where’s the story?’

  ‘Listen, Jules. For God’s sake don’t interrupt.’

  ‘Mahroutti’s trucks were locked in Shed 27 for the night with their load.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘This morning’s Al Hayat has a banner headline over two columns: quote, Israeli Commando Unit attacks Beirut Port interrogation mark, unquote. Below the headline they report rumours of a seaborne raid by an Israeli commando unit on the night of fifth/sixth October. Israelis believed to have penetrated the dock area but to have been repulsed after several had been killed.’

  ‘Have you checked the story?’

  ‘Yes. There seem to have been no witnesses of any fighting. But something did happen in Shed 27 that night.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There were armed guards in the shed with these trucks. They were found the next day. All were …’

  At that stage the call was cut off and the voice of the girl on the switchboard came through. ‘I am sorry, m’sieu. There is a fault on the line.’

  ‘Merde!’ said Gamin. ‘It should be now. Listen. Please get me that number again. As soon as you can. It is urgent. Please.’

  ‘I will try, m’sieu. But it will take time. The lines to Paris are very busy. Where shall I call you?’

  ‘As before. In the bar.’ He put down the phone and stepped out of the booth.

  Two men came up to him. One tall and thin with dark glasses, the other short and stocky with shadowed jowls.

  The thin man said, ‘Monsieur Pierre Gamin?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Frenchman.

  From an inside pocket the man produced a plastic-covered identity card. ‘Deuxième Bureau,’ he said. ‘Please come with us, m’sieu. They wish to talk to you at headquarters.’

  ‘Talk? About what?’

  The thin man shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have no idea, m’sieu.’

  Pierre Gamin was not as astonished as he tried to appear. He’d foreseen the possibility. That was why he’d given Réné St Clair of Paris Match a letter to Virginie, Gamin’s wife, for delivery that night in Paris. Inside the letter was a sealed envelope addressed to Jules Boyer.

  Réné St Clair had left Beirut on an Air France flight about the time Gamin’s first telephone call to Paris came through. The letter to Jules Boyer contained all that Pierre Gamin had intended to say in that call … and rather more.

  7

  At noon the two Benz trucks belonging to D. B. Mahroutti Bros shed the escorting Citroëns. Shortly afterwards they reached the border posts at Masnaa. There, having completed the necessary formalities, they were passed through. A few kilometres on they were joined by an escort of Syrian armoured cars. These kept sufficiently far from the trucks, two ahead and two following, to allay curiosity. It was, in any event, a road on which military activity was commonplace.

  Little more than an hour after leaving the border the motorcade arrived safely in Damascus.

  At eight o’clock that night the Lebanese Minister of Defence, at
home changing for an official dinner, received an urgent call from Damascus on a scrambler line. It was an awkward time for the Minister who was in his bath and already somewhat late, but since the caller was the Syrian Minister of Defence he at once went to the phone. In a somewhat agitated voice his caller informed him that the Mahroutti Bros’ trucks had arrived at the Military Ordinance Depot between one and two that afternoon. Later, when the packing cases were opened, it had been found that two of them contained scrap metal of the same weight as the equipment missing from them.

  The Lebanese Minister, having expressed astonishment and dismay, was quick to grasp the point. ‘So there has been substitution,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. It was evidently the purpose of the Israeli attack. Of the two packing cases that are missing one contained a warhead, the other the detonating component. I understand they are always kept apart until the weapon is assembled for operational purposes’

  ‘So they’ve got a warhead but no delivery vehicle.’ The Lebanese Minister paused. ‘I wonder if that’s what they wanted. After all, they have the Lance missiles.’

  ‘Yes. There’s no way of knowing. It may be they were interrupted, or they took the smaller packing cases because they were more easily transported.’

  The Lebanese Minister said, ‘How would the Israelis have known which contained the warheads and detonators?’

  ‘In the same way they learnt about the consignment,’ said the Syrian Minister. ‘Their intelligence service is highly efficient. Somehow, somewhere, there has been a leakage.’

  ‘Not at this end, I assure you,’ said the Lebanese Minister. ‘The nature of that consignment was known only to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Transport and myself.’

  ‘Of course, my dear Bakkal. We accept your assurances without question. The leakage could well have taken place at the French end. However, it is most unfortunate that the Israelis were able to reach Shed 27, kill all our people there and remove the packing cases without detection.’