‘Is this where you meet your friend?’ asked Sarah, as the Syrian opened the door for her. She could not have said why, but she felt suddenly depressed and let down, as though the day had dwindled into an anticlimax.
‘My friend? Yes, my friend and colleague.’
‘Another Syrian?’
‘You must go now.’ He spoke impatiently and his eyes flickered watchfully up and down the street, never coming to rest upon her face. ‘Please.’
‘Well, goodbye.’ She held out her hand. It was several seconds before he even noticed it. A car, ignoring the one–way traffic sign, entered the street from the other end and he looked at this and not into Sarah’s face.
‘Goodbye.’
There was nothing else to do but go. She drew her hand out of his and with a queer sense of hurt turned away. All that talk of helping her and paying debts. He wasn’t even going to make an attempt to see her again. Just talk as usual; give an Arab a chance and he’d talk his head off, but as for doing anything … Not that she wanted to see him again—a flashy Syrian. But she didn’t like to feel so damned unattractive. Perhaps he’s looking at me now, she thought, sorry to have let me go without saying something. Shall I glance back and see? And let an arrogant Syrian see I’m interested … Well why not?
She looked back and saw him turn and stagger, as the man in the car opened fire.
Bullets spattered along the wall and the pavement; puffs of white dust spouted up only a few yards from Sarah’s feet. The Syrian lurched toward the open gateway, the gun chattered again, he halted and flung out his arms. He seemed hung, poised in a wonderfully graceful attitude, and then slipped to his knees. Sarah had just time to glimpse the muzzle of the gun drawn back from the taxi window and a man’s swarthy face. She turned and ran back.
C H A P T E R 4
He was kneeling on the pavement, both hands hugged to his breast. As she crouched beside him, he raised his face to her with a look of agony.
‘Oh, my God! You’re hurt! Put your arm around me.’
Then he opened his lips and said, ‘Ain Houssaine,’ and fainted.
Running footsteps stopped behind her. Someone grabbed hold of her and hauled her to her feet. She struggled. ‘Let me go!’
‘You little fool! They’re coming back!’
‘He’s dying!’ But the strength had gone out of her. Her legs felt like rubber and would not support her.
‘He’s dead!’ said the man who was half-carrying, half-dragging her down the street.
She did not resist but looked back. The taxi raced past again and opened fire. The Syrian’s body lurched and the taxi skidded round the corner into the main road. The Syrian lay huddled and still. Blood stained his shoulder and his thigh.
Everyone in the street, the children on the heap of rubble, the shopkeepers, the fat man behind the leban bowls, had disappeared. Only the old man who had crouched in terror by the wall was sitting on the pavement trying to disentangle his feet from the hem of his nightgown.
They had reached the end of Rue Zahle; opposite, across the road, was a travel agency, posters and photographs in its window. A young woman with short curly black hair and a pretty, vacant, doll-like face ran out to meet them. Taking Sarah’s other arm, she helped to lead her into the office and sit her down in an armchair.
Sarah immediately tried to struggle to her feet, but the chair was so low and her body so numb with shock, she found she could not get up. Faces bent over her; the young woman fluttered about, as soft and ineffectual as a butterfly; a fat, unshaven man breathed garlic in her face; other faces crowded around, peering. The place seemed to be full of people. Sarah saw them, as in a nightmare.
Then someone called out authoritatively in French. ‘Get back, please! Please get out of here! She may be hurt.’ There was a confused murmur and shuffle of feet. ‘I’m sorry sir, you’d better come back tomorrow. Georgette, please shut the door.’
Sarah heard the door slam. The man who had brought her there, the girl with the curly hair, alone remained. The man came towards her—a sunburnt face with earnest grey eyes leaned over her. She stared up at him stupidly. ‘What is Ain Houssaine?’ she said.
He did not reply, but looked puzzled and sympathetic.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a place.’
A place? Of course. But what place? Somewhere she had heard of it. Marcel, she connected the name with Marcel. But what could it have to do with him? She tried to think. She looked around her vacantly at the photographs on the walls: Baalbek, with its famous six columns, the high slopes of Mt Hermon, the palace at Beit ed Din, the source of the Adonis River in a wild gorge by the sacred grove of Aphrodite.
‘Georgette, is there any brandy?’
They poured her brandy. They made her drink it.
‘Thank you,’ said Sarah, and began to cry. The girl called Georgette hovered over her, patting her hand. The man stood back, looking worried and grave.
‘What’s happening?’ Sarah gasped. ‘Is he dead?’
‘I’ll see.’ He left them. The girl went too and stood in the doorway talking to the fat man who smelt of garlic.
Sarah, left to herself, stopped crying and began to tremble. She felt overcome, shaken to her bones with revulsion and anger. She wanted to cry out against—she did not know what—against the shooting down of defenceless people in the street; against the shouting and bloodshed of the Arab world. It seemed to her that his murder was only one of many, a mere incident; that already that morning three people had died. But when she tried to remember who they were, she could only think of the Syrian.
She looked through the big windows and saw that the scene outside had changed. A siren sounded and a police car swerved around into Rue Zahle. People ran after it. Others came out of the shops opposite. The man who had at last managed to extricate his feet from the folds of his nightgown stood around him and then began to hobble towards the little throng of people that had gathered about the Syrian. It seemed terrible to Sarah that even this frail, unsteady figure should respond to the lure of violence.
The man from the travel agency came back. ‘The police have come. They won’t let me near him.’
‘Is he dead?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Some say yes. Some say no. This is yours, isn’t it? It was lying on the footpath.’ And he held out the bag that the Syrian had given her.
Georgette come back, her eyes shining with excitement.
‘Alan! He is King Saud’s brother!’
‘Who told you that?’
She pointed at the fat man outside. ‘The man from the fruit stall. He saw him go past. His brother used to work as a waiter in the Palace Hotel. It’s always full of Saudis.’ She turned to Sarah. ‘You saw him better. Was it King Saud’s brother?’
‘I don’t know what King Saud’s brother looks like,’ said Sarah, trying to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘Hasn’t he got a lot of brothers? This man was a Syrian.’
The man called Alan took off his jacket and put it over her shoulders. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know.’ She was angry now, which was a better proposition than outrage and self-reproach.
‘Georgette, will you make some coffee please?’ He turned to Sarah. ‘You’ve had a nasty experience, but it’s not the end of the world. He probably came to Beirut for asylum. Some political squabble or sand hill dispute. These things are happening all the time. They have nothing to do with you.’ He was trying to calm her by minimising the event, but Sarah was enraged and burst out.
‘Nothing to do with me! A man drops down at my feet. Is that nothing to do with me? If I’d stayed with him they would never have shot him a second time. They knew he wasn’t dead. That’s why they came back. And I knew that was why they came back. He would be alive now if I hadn’t left him. They would never have shot him again. They wouldn’t dare. Why the hell did you have to interfere?’
Alan made no reply. What could he reply to the gi
bberish of a hysterical girl? Instead he pulled up his jacket that was falling off her shoulder.
‘Don’t touch me! Leave me alone! You cost that man his life.’
This accusation angered Alan, but he kept his temper. Her body that had trembled under his hand made claim for some indulgence. Hysterical she might be. She was also deeply distressed. More distressed than she ought to have been; for she was no innocent, he guessed, she was tough and experienced. Even her beauty could not disguise her worldliness.
‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that you have not lived in the Middle East as long as I.’
Choosing to hear condescension in his voice, she cried, ‘Do you mean because you’ve been here for years with your eyes half shut, that you understand more than I? Has anyone tried to shoot you? Has anyone thrown a bomb at you?’
Alan said gently, ‘The two men in the taxi killed him. You mustn’t take this on yourself or pass it on to me.’
Sarah bowed her head and after a moment said in a low voice, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t been fair to you. You didn’t know. How would you? I should never have left him. I should have stayed with him.’
Georgette, her brow rumpled, her face concerned, handed her a cup of coffee.
Sarah drank it quickly, swallowing a mouthful of sediment and burning her tongue. But she had stopped trembling, and her mind was clear; guilty or not, she was deeply implicated. The Syrian had fallen victim to circumstances that she was not equipped to understand. But Death, working towards the capture of his life, had unscrupulously used her. If anything remained to be done, any protest to be made, who was there to do it or make it if not Sarah herself?
Out in the street the old man in the striped nightgown was talking to two policemen. She saw him raise his hand and point towards the travel agency.
The two policemen crossed the street; the crowd that had gathered on the pavement parted to let them in through the door and as many as could followed them.
They were youngish men and, like most Lebanese policemen, dark and handsome. The elder of the two spoke French. ‘Is this your office?’ he asked.
‘Yes—at least I am part owner. My name’s Alan Crawe. My partner isn’t here at the moment. This is his sister, Mademoiselle Qazzaz.’
He ignored Sarah, and she wondered if he was deliberately directing attention away from her. The police received his information in a friendly way. Everyone shook hands, and the elder man introduced himself as Inspector Malouf. The onlookers, who had pressed forwards into a close circle around them, seemed pleased to see that everything was going well and nodded to each other, and smiled.
Sarah’s attention wandered. She tried to look through the doorway to see if the Syrian was still lying on the pavement, but there were too many people in the way. The man who smelt of garlic had returned and stared at her foolishly over Inspector Malouf’s shoulder. There was so much talk among the onlookers it was difficult to hear what Alan Crawe was saying. Something about someone called Ishmael. The police seemed interested in this Ishmael person and asked some questions about him. But what did it all have to do with the Syrian, lying dead out there on the road? Who cared about him and the people who had shot him? Were they just going to get off scot-free? Sarah felt she could have screamed with rage.
Suddenly everyone laughed at something that had been said. My God! What a chummy little party!
‘Is he dead?’ she burst out. ‘Or aren’t you interested?’
Everyone looked at her. Inspector Malouf frowned. ‘It is we who are asking questions,’ he said. ‘What is your name?’
‘Sarah Lane. I’m English.’
‘Your passport please.’ Sarah stared up at him, her eyes wide with guilty surprise.
Until that moment she had forgotten about her passport. Now, fleetingly, she recalled the circumstances of its loss and a premonition touched her of impending awkwardness.
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘You must have one, Miss,’ said the Inspector in clumsy English. ‘You must have a passport. You cannot enter the country without a visa.’
Children, anxious to get a look at Sarah, had wriggled into the front row. She recognised a brat with red hair usually to be seen hanging about the gates of the American University, selling chewing gum. ‘Please send these people away,’ she cried angrily. ‘I can hardly breathe.’
But no Lebanese policeman minds an audience, and though a good deal of talk burst out in response to Sarah’s demand, neither officer seemed disposed to do anything about it.
‘Miss, I have asked you for your passport,’ cried Inspector Malouf over the din of Arabic. ‘It is not for you to give orders, please.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.’
Alan Crawe cleared the room and shut the door.
‘Now, if the silence is to your taste,’ began the Inspector sarcastically.
‘I’ve told you, I haven’t got a passport. I lost it today in the suk and my air ticket and thirty pounds.’
Inspector Malouf was angry with Alan for putting the people out. He knew that he should have done this himself. But so often when he ordered people around they just laughed, or argued with him, or took no notice, which made him look a fool; so as a rule he interfered with them as little as possible. Now he felt humiliated and so revenged himself on Sarah. ‘An air ticket to where?’ he said sternly, reverting to French, a language which, he perceived, gave him an advantage over her. ‘You think you are going away?’
‘I was going to London today. I was on my way to the airways office to book my seat.’
‘You cannot leave.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ said Sarah sulkily.
‘Excuse me, Inspector—’ Alan Crawe spoke with tactful diffidence. ‘I don’t want to interfere with your investigation, but Miss Lane has suffered a bad shock. This man was shot down under her very eyes. You can see by the way she’s trembling—’
‘This is terror, I think.’
‘It’s shock. There’s no need to put her through all this. She was only a bystander. I saw it all through the window. She was walking along the pavement. The man was behind her, getting out of his car. He was shot down by some men in a taxi. She only went to help him.’
‘But that’s not true,’ said Sarah. ‘I was with him. I was in his car too.’
The inspector turned angrily to Alan. ‘You are lying to protect her!’
‘He’s not lying! You impute to us too much guile, Inspector, we are only blunt English deficient in subtlety. He didn’t see me get out of the car, but I did. I was with that man all morning.’
There was a long silence while everyone adjusted their ideas to this information. Sarah, looking from Alan Crawe’s grey eyes to Inspector Malouf’s dark brown ones, read in both volumes of interested supposition and felt, to her extreme annoyance, the beginning of a blush touching her cheeks. The younger policeman had seated himself at a desk and taken out a notebook as though anticipating that from this point the interview would be worth recording.
‘In that case, Mademoiselle,’ said Inspector Malouf softly, ‘you will be able to tell us his name.’
‘I don’t know who he was. If you’ll only let me—’
Inspector Malouf held up his hand. ‘Pardon, Mademoiselle, if the question is a little delicate, but this man whom you say you were with, seriez-vous par hasard sa petite amie?’
‘I was not,’ she said coldly. ‘If you will let me explain. I was walking in the French suk when a bomb went off.’
‘Another assassination perhaps.’
But Sarah paid no heed to this irony. The chaotic scene in the suk came back to her with startling clarity: the white lilies trampled under foot, the shouting, the old man kneeling in a pool of blood. She shuddered, and said, ‘There was blood in the gutter.’
‘More blood, and yet we, the police, hear nothing of these crimes.’ He turned and said something in Arabic to the policeman at the desk, who reached out for the telephone.
Sarah put her hands over her face
. I must be suffering from shock. How strange, I feel quite stupid. She could see the Syrian’s face, looking up at her.
‘No, in Dhat Rhas, in the butcher’s shop. They had killed a cow.’
‘Another bomb in Dhat Rhas,’ cried Inspector Malouf, flinging up his arms in a gesture of despair.
Sarah saw Alan Crawe looking at her; she was glad he was there. She remembered the brandy and the coat over her shoulders and the way he had tried to keep them from questioning her. ‘If you’ll just let me tell you what happened: I came down from Dhat Rhas with my ticket to book a seat on a plane. I was in the suk. A bomb went off. I don’t know whether anyone was killed or not. I didn’t have time to see. Someone knocked me over on the pavement. I dropped my bag, or perhaps someone snatched it from me, I don’t remember. Then this man who said he was a Syrian picked me up in his car and drove away. I told him to go back because I’d dropped my bag, but he said it was dangerous; everyone was fighting.’
‘But you have your bag.’ She was clutching it in her lap.
‘He bought me this one because I lost the other. There’s nothing in it.’
The inspector clicked his tongue admonishingly, and Alan Crawe looked away as though it pained him to see a pretty young woman telling such feeble lies.
‘How long were you with him?’
‘I don’t know. About an hour and a half, I think.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Drinking coffee in a café,’ said Sarah sulkily. ‘And don’t ask me which café because I don’t know and I couldn’t take you there either. I never look where I’m going.’ It seemed useless and undignified striving for plausibility; but oddly enough, this, the bit about the coffee, was the only part of her story that the inspector found acceptable. One drank coffee on every occasion; it was the most likely thing to have done.
Arms for Adonis Page 4
