The Only Café

by Linden MacIntyre

  They’d spent six years together and Pierre had learned to read Hobeika’s mind, read every nuance of expression in the face, the voice. It was not an unpleasant face, not the face of an evil man, if there is such a thing. He understood Hobeika, understood his motivation. In the beginning, vengeance for Damour. They had that in common. The murder of their loved ones. Whenever he felt doubt, he would remember Damour and the need to satisfy the spirits of the dead, to give them peace.

  Hobeika was persuasive. Zghorta was to be another holy mission to avenge Damour but Pierre had doubts. So many incidents like Zghorta. He was surprised, thinking back. Had the taste of vengeance begun to sicken him as soon as that? After Zghorta, remorse had lasted, became toxic, inescapable. June 1978, more than four years before the final breach. What could Ari know about it? He would know what Charon knew. Pierre, alone in semi-darkness, in Toronto, almost thirty years later, laughed out loud. Ariel. Charon.

  He had purged HK from his mind, purged the flashbacks. Hobeika was dead. But he had seen Hobeika’s ghost in that unlikely place. The Only Café. Ari had reminded him that the past is never dead as long as there is memory. Memory is the afterlife, both hell and heaven.

  He retrieved a notepad from his desk drawer: Memo to self—find Brussels lawyer who pursued the 2002 war crimes case alleging Ariel Sharon’s complicity in Beirut camp massacres 16/09/82–18/09/82. Ref E. Hobeika who had agreed to testify. Assassinated in 2002. Had he been pre-interviewed? Affidavits? Documentary proof?

  He studied the note, then added: What year did Ari come to Canada? Five years ago = 2002.

  He laughed aloud.

  He entered “Zghorta-Ehden” into the search box on his laptop and was almost instantly rewarded by photographs from the paradise it seemed to have become—lush vegetation, mountain snows, villas and resorts. Prosperity and peace. The miracle of commercial propaganda. Then, further down the menu: Ehden massacre.

  June 13, 1978. It was cold for June but there was no wind. The journey by sea to Tripoli was calm. The chill might have been from nerves or hunger or dread. He had been uneasy since the briefing. The mission was to send a message to the Syrians and their collaborators in the north. A message about Lebanon’s unity, integrity, determination to be whole and independent. The message would be delivered to a powerful family of northern Christians who had recently been allies but were now traitors because of their continuing affection for the Syrians.

  Until that night Pierre had been sustained by the sense of satisfaction that comes from growth and purpose. His association with HK had made him privy to the strategies, the vision, the planning and the intrigues of the inner circle. He had dined with Sheikh Pierre, been drunk with the son, Bashir, who would succeed him, who would expel the aliens—Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians—the interfering lot of them. He would unify the country. But now, this sending of messages? To what end?

  There would be resistance, HK had warned. Expect it. Maybe a hundred people who were blindly loyal to the traitor, who would die to keep HK from his goal. This was the reality they faced.

  Who is the traitor?

  They will speak to him. They will persuade him by their strength, their ability to penetrate the north, that he is dangerously misguided. And they will then withdraw, their objective having been achieved. Lebanon’s integrity secured.

  Who is the enemy?

  Syria.

  And that was all they had to know, they who were at the sharp end of the stick. A year ago Tony Frangieh was an ally. Today he is a traitor, but he will understand his folly.

  Pierre was cold now in the early morning mountain air. His friend Bashir, the schoolteacher, was silent, always deep within himself at the beginning of an operation; this disturbed Elias, the extrovert, and he complained to Pierre and to HK that Bashir’s palpable apprehension was damaging to morale. No one dared to use the word “afraid” for they were all, in a deep and private way, afraid.

  They were the vanguard. Bashir was carrying one of the three grenade launchers. Their first objective was to disable vehicles to deter escape.

  The cars and trucks exploding launched the main assault.

  An almost instant cacophony of automatic weapons. Early morning darkness, lit by flashes, the lightning of the RPG, flaming vehicles. Shadows flitting. Howls of madness, cries of sudden pain and terror. Lights briefly in the windows of the villa. Then gone.

  Elias slapped his shoulder, pointed toward an entrance. The fusillade was now a roaring continuum, a shield. There was, for the moment, hardly any response from within the mansion. It was still dark enough to move forward without being immediately noticed. Bashir launched a grenade toward the entrance but it exploded against a stone wall. They were running now, and Elias barely paused to lift his boot. The door flew open and he was in the doorway, firing blindly into the room. Pierre squeezed past him and in the dim light inside could see a small thing shuddering against a wall, sprouting small rosettes, disintegrating. Elias paused, changed magazines. Now there was a bundle of bloody rags quivering on the floor. And there was screaming.

  The woman seemed to be flying through the air. She landed awkwardly on the bloody pile of rags, hysterically howling, dishevelled, nightgown asunder revealing bare white legs, bare behind. Elias appeared to have frozen momentarily, or wanted to extend the moment of her living horror for a beat, two beats. Three. And then he opened fire again.

  Through a doorway from another room a man ran ludicrously wearing only underpants and brandishing a knife, but Elias, intently emptying his magazine into the senseless jerking body of the woman on the floor, couldn’t see him coming. Pierre’s shout was lost in the din of shooting.

  He pointed his Kalashnikov toward body mass, and fired. The man stumbled, turned toward Pierre, pitching forward. Lost. The confused expression on his face seemed to say, Oh shit…I didn’t see you there…

  Pierre swung his weapon toward Elias, aware now that he was screaming: stop, stop, stop, stop, but was instantly jerked off his feet, swung round, propelled toward the door. And out into the blue-black dawn.

  He stumbled, foot and ankle tangled, was lifted bodily, and hurled to the ground. Bashir was standing over him, panting, gasping. “Not today,” he heard him say. “Not today…there will be another time.” His face was wet from his exertions. They were now lost in the crowd surging toward the house, Hobeika leading them.

  Pierre woke at his desk. He checked his watch. Four thirty. There was whisky in his glass. He quickly swallowed it. He picked up the writing pad, focused. Brussels. 2002. Hobeika.

  What could Hobeika have possibly disclosed in Brussels that the world did not already know about the camps? There had been inquiries, one in Israel. The Kahan Commission had all the forensic detail, much of which it published, about the roles of Begin, Sharon, senior IDF commanders, IDF intelligence, Mossad. Fadi Frem. And of course, HK himself. Did HK claim that he had new evidence about the camps? Was there more about Sharon? Was there proof?

  Or might he have had other war crimes on his mind, crimes attributed to him and the Phalange alone? Countless crimes in which he knew, as Pierre knows, the Phalange were but accomplices, rough cudgels in the hands of someone infinitely stronger.

  Hobeika’s face was close enough that he could feel the spittle of righteous indignation, smell the reek of garlic. “Do NOT fucking speak to me about the blood of innocents. Remember who you’re talking to.” After the fury came the calm, an arm across his shoulder: “For thirty bodyguards I feel badly. For their families, yes. They were like us, working people. Zghorta was not supposed to be that way. The child. Vera. Even Tony. We were there to talk to him, not to kill him, not to kill his family. It was not the plan. But in the dark, and the confusion…” He shrugged and stepped away.

  “To talk? With rocket launchers?”

  “You are tired, my friend.”

  “I am not tired.”

  “Take time. There are things you do not know, should not know. You don’t have to know. But believe me
when I tell you—this operation was not in our control. Its execution and the outcome were determined elsewhere. This you must understand.”

  “Where, this elsewhere?”

  “This is irrelevant. The only constant in our history is what happens elsewhere. Now go, take time. Have you ever been to Paris?”

  “No.”

  “It can be arranged.”

  “I do not want to go to Paris, I want to go home.”

  “You are forgetting. We have no home.”

  27.

  The Brussels lawyer took his number and said he’d call him back to make sure he was who he said he was. Five minutes later, the phone rang on his desk.

  Pierre was brief and the lawyer listened carefully.

  “As you know I am a Canadian lawyer. I understand you had an interest in Elie Hobeika.”

  The listener on the other end said nothing.

  “I am Lebanese by birth. I spent six years with Hobeika.”

  “What six years?”

  “1976 to 1982.”

  “When in 1982?”

  “Until mid-September.”

  “And then you were no longer with him?”

  “Correct.”

  “Was there a falling-out?”

  “I would say so. He wouldn’t disagree if he could speak.”

  “This falling-out? Was it over what happened in the camps in September?”

  “It was over many things.”

  “But you were in the camps, during the atrocities.”

  “At the end.”

  “At the end?”

  “Saturday morning. I was there to make sure that all our people were gone.”

  “Interesting. How can I be sure whom I’m talking to?”

  “Does it really matter anymore?”

  “You have a point.”

  “I was in the forward command post of the IDF the night of the sixteenth. I was beside Hobeika when he got the call from inside the camp, about what to do with the women and children. I heard what he said.”

  “Everybody knows that story. The famous words, ‘You know exactly what to do,’ etcetera.”

  “I know who he was talking to.”

  “Interesting. You have a name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you know—just out of curiosity—how to contact this person?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “You seem certain of that.”

  “I am.”

  “I see.”

  Then Pierre asked the questions. How had Hobeika become a potential witness? He had approached the Belgian legal team when he’d heard about the possibility of prosecuting Ariel Sharon, then the prime minister of Israel.

  What was he prepared to tell them? He’d been cautious, but he’d assured them that what he had to say would be explosive.

  What had they expected from him? Not much. They knew that he would want to deflect blame; he would minimize the involvement of the Phalangists by perhaps inflating the Israeli role. What he planned to say would undoubtedly have been fascinating. Unfortunately, he took it with him to the grave.

  Pierre asked what the Belgians had hoped to achieve by prosecuting Sharon.

  Clarity, the lawyer said. Finality. “The Kahan report stated categorically that there was no direct Israeli involvement in the killings. Perhaps Hobeika could have challenged that by substantiating rumours that the IDF had people in the camps, actively participating. On the other hand, maybe he had nothing. We’ll never know.”

  “Who killed Hobeika?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess.”

  “The Israelis had a reason.”

  “Many people had a reason. It would have been risky for the Israelis, knowing that the finger of suspicion would inevitably point to them.”

  “The finger of suspicion never seems to bother them. If they did have something to hide, and he was planning to reveal it, the damage would have been greater than the speculation over who might have silenced him and why.”

  Pierre could hear the deep sigh on the other end of the phone line.

  “In any case, the prosecution failed before it started, as you know.”

  “Why did it not proceed?” Pierre asked. “Was it because of what happened to Hobeika?”

  “That was problematic. Yes.”

  “What if there was an actual document, a record from another source?”

  “It would be interesting but no longer from a legal viewpoint.”

  “There is no statute of limitations for war crimes.”

  “No. No. But there has to be the political will to pursue such things. We had it for a while in Belgium. We had a law permitting extra-territorial prosecution of war crimes. No matter who, or where. But the law was repealed. So that was that.”

  “And your case against Sharon?”

  “Stillborn.”

  “A pity.”

  “Yes. We spent a lot of time, of course, trying to substantiate a motive for the assassination of your friend. There were so many. It might have been very revealing if we’d had time to follow up on at least the more interesting ones. For example, a rumour circulated in Beirut that offered a possible identity of Hobeika’s killer.”

  “Oh?”

  “Allegedly, a mysterious bomb-maker who has been implicated in a number of explosions in the Middle East.”

  “Was there a name?”

  “Benarik.”

  “Israeli?”

  “By nationality, but believed to be a freelance.”

  “Benarik?”

  “Yes. It seems he got the name because of a physical resemblance to Sharon.”

  “No other name?”

  “I’ve heard that he was also known as ‘Charon.’ You’d know the name from mythology, I presume.”

  “Yes…”

  “Appropriate, in the circumstances. Yes?”

  Pierre sat for a long time staring at the silent telephone. Then he picked it up and rang Kennedy’s extension.

  “You did criminal law before you switched over?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I want to contact somebody in the police.”

  “My contacts were mostly Metro.”

  “It might be a place to start.”

  “The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back…” Who wrote that? Gibran? Khayyam? An Arab to be sure. The irrevocable nature of words, written or spoken. Once out they acquire the same potential for consequences as any deed. Zhgorta, the camps, Hobeika were history. Even Ariel Sharon, felled by a stroke, inert, without a voice. But words endure, for all witnesses, for all time.

  Pierre knew that it was imperative that he be cautious with his words. The detective suggested that he drop by the College Street headquarters at his convenience. Ask for Det. Sgt. Angus Brown.

  Pierre had the feeling that the call was mostly courtesy, because he worked at a large company on Bay Street and was a well-connected lawyer. But he had to follow through.

  The officer on the front desk checked his business card, then his driver’s licence, handed him a visitor’s badge, directed him toward the elevators.

  Detective Brown listened carefully, making notes. Pierre realized that he was probably too young to recognize the significance of specific details in the background he was laying out. The cop appeared to be in his mid-thirties and to have no knowledge of, or very little interest in, politics.

  “This man you worked for…how do you spell it, H-O-V…”

  “H-O-B-E-I-K-A. He had a nickname. HK.”

  “Aha. What would the K be for. H would be Hobema?”

  “Hobeika. No. HK was for Heckler Koch…”

  “Jeez…”

  “It was his weapon of choice.”

  “Heckler Koch. That was the rifle the crazy dude in Alberta used to kill the Mounties two years back.”

  “I read that.”

  The policeman, now engaged, had many questions. But Pierre, anticipating how the conversation would concl
ude, kept the answers general and, where necessary, vague.

  “What I really want to discuss,” he said at last, “is an individual I met recently in Toronto who might have been involved in the assassination of this man, Hobeika.”

  The policeman looked up, startled. “Why didn’t you say that?”

  “I just did.”

  “What do you mean…assassinated?”

  Pierre paused, realizing that he was now on the brink. He took a deep breath.

  “I believe the man, Hobeika, was preparing to give evidence in a war crimes investigation. And he was killed because of that.”

  “What kind of war crimes are we talking about?”

  “The murder of innocent civilians, including women and children.”

  “Okay. This individual you believe might have been involved in taking out this…other guy? You have a name?”

  “I’d rather not give a name just yet.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m here seeking guidance.”

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

  “Not right now.”

  The policeman closed his notebook. “I’m going to have to take this up the line.” He stood up. “I’m pretty sure that someone will be getting in touch.”

  He walked around his desk, shook Pierre’s hand. “Thanks for coming in. I’m going to have to do a bit of research but you’ve given me a good place to start.”

  Pierre thanked him for his time.

  “Just sit tight. I’m sure someone will be contacting you.”

  And it wasn’t long before someone did. Pierre smiled at the cleverness of the acronym on the business card: INSET. Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. Two officers in suits. The older one was tall, had close-cropped grey hair and a four-day stubble. Inspector Nicholson.

  “People call me Ron. We’re, as the card says, an integrated service. RCMP. Provincial cops. Metro. Andy here is intelligence. CSIS. You know about them.” Nicholson smiled broadly and Andy seemed to blush.

  “So, anyway, tell us a bit about yourself before we get to the nitty-gritty.”