Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2)

by Fleming, Preston

  “Do you suppose the minister knows the difference between a Red Indian and the other kind?”

  “Don’t be silly. Hollywood Westerns are as popular over here as they are in Kansas City or Pittsburgh. John Wayne is practically canonized among the Maronites, and Clint Eastwood is box office gold on both sides of town. But come along, now, Conrad, have a seat. The show is only an hour long and you’ve already missed the first two numbers.”

  The dancers were very much as Prosser imagined they would be, draped in buffalo hide and decorated with war paint and dancing a samba-like step inside a circle of five chanting elders. He soon lost interest and let his eyes wander around the room. At Ed Pirelli’s urging, the ambassador had promised to add to the guest list the names of three or four junior Arab diplomats for station officers to meet and, if possible, invite to lunch or drinks to assess them as possible recruitment targets.

  Prosser spotted a few younger Arabs in dark suits who looked like the ones he was after and etched their facial features in his memory so that he could approach them during dessert after the show. As he scanned the faces in the crowd, he also kept his eyes open for good-looking women. Such an occasion was not to be entirely wasted on business.

  “The next dance in our program tells the story of two tribes.” One of the dancers was speaking now, a tall, imposing young man with high cheekbones, a hawkish nose, and shoulder-length straight black hair tied loosely behind his neck with a rawhide thong. Yet as Prosser watched him speak, the prominent nose seemed less Native American than Semitic and his accent less Great Plains than White Plains.

  “The two tribes summered for many generations on opposite sides of a Great River that produced an abundance of fish and attracted great herds of buffalo, flocks of waterfowl, and more than enough game for ten tribes. Still, from time to time, each tribe would send raiding parties against the other to steal horses, food, and women. As a result, those on both sides of the river who had lost family members or valuable property became accustomed to taking their revenge. And so the raids became ever larger and more frequent, until at last it came to war.

  “Summer after summer the fighting continued, ceasing only in the winter when the tribes went to their separate retreats. At last the chief of the first tribe called upon the Great Spirit to bring a scourge upon the other and to remove it forever from the banks of the Great River. Soon the chief’s prayer was answered, and the White Man made war on the second tribe and drove it from the opposite side of the river to a place many days’ ride to the south. At this the chief ordered a feast of thanks to the Great Spirit, but no sooner did the first tribe sit down to its feast than the White Man’s army returned and massacred the gathering down to the last man, woman, and child.”

  The young Indian, if that is really what he was, paused and scanned the faces of his audience as if he were telling the story for the first time and had found a particularly sympathetic listener.

  “I see that your city has a river. They tell me that fighting often rages between tribes to the east and west of the river and that revenge has taken root in many hearts. I counsel you: remember the story of our ancestors and learn from our errors.”

  He abruptly broke off his speech, gave a nod to the drummers, and took up a monotonous wailing chant. The Lebanese government officials and foreign diplomats in the room exchanged meaningful glances with their wives and colleagues.

  The River Dance was a sluggish, swaying affair, and the river that it conjured up in Prosser’s mind was shallow and murky, with malodorous marshes along both banks. His attention wandered and he caught sight of a slender, frizzy-haired brunette in a green silk dress, obviously not an Arab, four rows ahead and to his right. There was something about her that he recognized even from behind, and he wished she would turn around even slightly so that he could see her in full profile.

  All at once Prosser became aware of a low rumble coming from the open French doors in the foyer. It rose rapidly into an insistent roar that mounted and fell in waves and from time to time resembled the crackle of radio static. A few heads in the rows ahead of him glanced nervously behind them, as if to determine whether anyone else had noticed that Beirut’s monthlong East-West cease-fire had just collapsed.

  Prosser let his mind wander during the remaining dance number, pondering first whether tonight’s battle in the commercial district would stand in the way of his plans to cross the Green Line early the next morning. Having decided it probably would not, he went on to size up which of the young Arab diplomats in the room looked most approachable. If he could elicit from just one of them his date and place of birth, previous postings, current areas of responsibility, and a few trivial bits of personal background, he would have enough for a name-trace request that would create for Headquarters the illusion of movement on the agent-recruiting front.

  At last the drums of the Great Plains Indians fell silent and the dancers’ shuffling feet ceased to stir. They took their final bow and disappeared into the guest quarters of the residence to change out of their costumes and join the audience for dessert and coffee. Prosser tried to imagine a conversation between a Plains Indian, born and raised on a parched reservation somewhere in Oklahoma or South Dakota, and a Lebanese plutocrat whose time was divided evenly between Beirut, Paris, Cannes, and Mégève.

  “Have you seen the ambassador?” He felt a gentle tug at his elbow and found a pale and jittery Muriel Benson at his side. She was at the head of the milling crowd that had begun to file past him toward the dining room, where cake, cookies, and coffee were being served.

  Prosser shook his head. “Would you like me to look for him?”

  “Would you mind terribly? Tell him Raymond needs him in the kitchen right away,” she whispered. “There’s a problem with the cake.”

  “The cake? Golly, I’ll let him know right away, Muriel. I’m sure he’ll want to drop whatever he’s doing.”

  Muriel ignored the sarcasm. “You are such a dear, Conrad.”

  Prosser let the crowd file by. The ambassador was nowhere in sight. At last he followed the other guests into the dining room and lined up at the bar behind an impeccably suited Arab with a Vandyke beard whom he recognized from Pirelli’s description as the first secretary of the Saudi Arabian embassy. The Saudis had made themselves particularly scarce in Beirut since a carload of pro-Iranian fanatics had winged one of their economic attachés during a recent kidnap attempt. With their own civil war temporarily in abatement, the Lebanese had felt compelled to take on the conflict of their distant neighbors, Iran and Iraq.

  Prosser watched with keen interest to see whether the Saudi, whose culture demanded strict adherence to the strictures of Islam, ordered fruit juice or scotch at the bar. If the latter, he resolved to pursue him for all he was worth. If the former, he would make a beeline for the Egyptian in the corner swirling a snifter of cognac.

  But before the outcome was clear, Prosser’s attention was drawn to the sight of Raymond, the ambassador’s moon-faced Lebanese chef, entering the room with a gigantic sheet cake decorated as Old Glory. The ambassador followed him into the room with his customary pomp, two steps back, with Muriel at his heels. No sooner did he pass through the door, however, than he stopped short. His face grew crimson, and it became apparent that the chief of mission was seething with some suppressed rage. At the same time, Muriel’s usual bright-eyed, capable air seemed to have deserted her. A titter of embarrassed laughter arose from among the guests standing around the dining room table as the cake was laid to rest.

  Prosser peered over the shoulders of a pair of overdressed Lebanese matrons loading their plates with petit fours and saw at once what had so disturbed the ambassador: a wag in the bakery had substituted six-pointed Stars of David for the five-pointed stars in Old Glory’s field of blue. By so doing, the prankster had deftly called attention to the U.S. government’s hypocrisy in professing to uphold Lebanon’s territorial integrity against the Syrian occupation while turning a blind eye to the Israeli-occupied secu
rity zone in South Lebanon. It was the ambassador’s job to present the U.S. position as a single consistent fabric—yet here was an irksome thread dangling before everyone’s eyes.

  “What would monsieur like to drink?” the white-jacketed bartender asked as soon as the tittering died down.

  Prosser noticed the bearded Saudi carrying away an orange juice and cursed under his breath. “Remy Martin, please, neat,” he replied. He took his drink and backed away from the table, intending to pursue the Egyptian in the corner. A trio of giggling college-age girls in strapless cocktail dresses now occupied the spot where the Egyptian had been. An elderly Lebanese couple directly ahead of him disappeared around a corner into the foyer, and Prosser decided to follow them onto the terrace.

  As he passed through the French doors, he heard the low rumble of faraway shelling and realized that what had drawn so many guests outdoors was not the cool night air but the spectacle of tracer fire leaping back and forth across the Green Line. From the port in the city’s north down through the Forêt des Pins to Hazmiyé in the south, even from a distance of seven or eight kilometers the arcs of brilliant light pouring into the no-man’s-land held the onlookers entranced.

  Two or three minutes passed and the battle’s hypnotic effect began to wear off. Prosser turned his back once more on the city, and almost at once he spotted the missing Egyptian, waving his snifter in one hand and a panatella in the other, driving home a point to Eric Alleyn, a quick-witted young political officer from the British embassy. Prosser sensed that Alleyn would welcome having someone take the Egyptian off his hands, so he set off to join them.

  “Guido? Is that really you, my dear? Guido Novara?”

  An oddly familiar woman’s voice called out from only a few steps away, but because she was backlit, Prosser did not recognize her until she was directly upon him. Then he remembered the name on the Italian passport he had borrowed some two years ago in Jeddah.

  “Guido! Yes, it is you, Guido! I could have sworn I saw you during the show, but I wanted to be certain before I made a complete fool of myself. You do remember, don’t you? Tullia Novara? Jeddah airport? After all, we were husband and wife, Guido, if only for an evening.”

  “My God, Lorraine!” Prosser exclaimed. “What in God’s name are you doing in Beirut? I thought you had gone back to London or Dublin or someplace civilized.”

  He laughed and she joined in. Her laughter had a gay music to it, and the way she threw her head back gave the impression that nothing could disturb her sense of well-being. Even on the night two years before in Saudi Arabia, when she faced the prospect of a brutal interrogation by Saudi security forces and a lengthy sojourn in a Saudi women’s prison, her laugh still held the magical power of somehow making it all go away, at least for a few shining moments.

  “I’m flying again, with Middle East Airlines. I’ve gone back to what I did when I first came out to the Middle East. Ghassan insisted that I quit when we were married. But once all that was behind me and I found myself back in London without a job, it seemed the best thing for me was to go back to the work I’ve always loved doing.”

  “But for heaven’s sake, Lorraine, why Beirut? The airport here is closed nearly as many days as it’s open. MEA can barely meet its payroll.”

  “Oh, it’s only a ten-week contract. They need an in-flight services trainer for their new class of air hostess trainees. As soon as Walter’s TDY is finished, we’ll go back to Washington and I’ll find a job flying out of Dulles.”

  Lorraine must have seen the cloud of confusion pass across his face. In the moment before she held her hand up to silence him, her green eyes took on an expression that passed quickly from doubt to understanding to resignation.

  “Don’t tell me. I already know what you’re thinking, Guido. You see, the reason Walter didn’t say anything to you about my coming is that he didn’t know about it. I’ve been in London these past four weeks seeing old friends and working out the details of my return. I haven’t breathed a word of it yet to Walter. He has arrived by now, hasn’t he?”

  Prosser felt himself redden. Suddenly beads of perspiration began forming on his upper lip despite the cool offshore breeze. He drew in a deep breath. “Lorraine, I don’t exactly relish being a shit, but I can’t talk to you about what Walt may or may not be doing. If he told you anything, that’s his business. But whatever he said, I can’t confirm or deny it.”

  “That sounds so very official of you, Guido. Certainly you can let Walter know I’m here, can’t you?”

  “If I said I could, I’d be confirming to you that he’s in-country. Didn’t he leave you a forwarding address or give you some kind of contact instructions?”

  Lorraine let out a deep sigh, and within an instant all of her innate charm and buoyancy seemed to escape her. “You know how unreliable Walter can be. Before I left Amman, he said he’d meet me in London on his way back to the States. But after a week I grew tired of waiting.”

  Prosser avoided her gaze. There was something troubling about a woman who felt compelled to follow a man to a country in the midst of a civil war when he hadn’t even given her the courtesy of a forwarding address. “So how long have the two of you been together?” he asked in an effort to break the silence. “You left Saudi Arabia at the end of ’77, wasn’t it?”

  “January 4, 1978, to be precise. I went back to work for British Airways in London in mid-January, and ten weeks later I looked up Walt on my first flight to Amman. When the airline refused to base me in Amman, I quit and got a job flying for Royal Jordanian. Walter and I have been together ever since.”

  Prosser cast a quick glance toward the dining room and its cake with six-pointed stars. “Listen, Lorraine. The party is winding down. Let me take you back to town and we can catch up on what’s been happening. You’re staying in West Beirut, aren’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Hotel?”

  “The Riviera, on the Corniche.”

  “That’s only a couple of blocks from my apartment. Come on. When we get back, I’ll buy you a drink and we’ll see what we can do about straightening out old Walt.”

  At the mention of Walt’s name, the magical smile lit up Lorraine’s face, and she took Prosser’s arm as he led her toward the door.

  * * *

  “Do you suppose they intend to carry on like this all night?” Lorraine inquired, turning away from the red glow of tracer fire as Prosser rejoined her on the balcony of his fourth-floor flat and gazed out over the Mediterranean. The din held steady but was not overpowering; rather, it was as if a thunderstorm was passing somewhere offshore.

  He handed her a fresh gin and tonic and settled into the wicker armchair beside her. “The shelling generally tapers off before dawn, around four or five in the morning. But don’t worry. After a few days, you won’t even notice it unless it comes within a couple blocks of you.”

  “Don’t shells ever land in this part of the city?”

  “Not many since I’ve been here. Where you’re sitting right now is quite safe. You see, incoming rounds almost always arrive from the southeast, from along the Green Line. There’s a hell of a lot of bricks and mortar between us and the southeast side of the building. Unfortunately, the Riviera Hotel isn’t quite as well shielded as this building, but unless you’re in an eastward-facing room, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

  Lorraine stood up to inhale the fragrant blossoms of the potted frangipani tree at her side. She didn’t look reassured. “You have a lovely apartment, Conrad. Did you find it yourself?”

  Prosser leaned back in his wicker chair and took another sip of bourbon. “The embassy has it under a long-term lease. My predecessor lived in it, and so did his predecessor, and the fellow before that, most probably. Not ideal from a security standpoint. But you couldn’t find a better view of the Corniche anywhere in West Beirut.”

  “Conrad, please tell me if what I’m about to ask would create a problem for you or embarrass you in any way. But would you mind terri
bly if I spent the night on your lovely American sofa?”

  Prosser laughed and reached out to take her hand. “Of course not, Lorraine. But why don’t you take my bedroom and I’ll stay on the sofa? I rather like sleeping out here in the salt air from time to time.”

  “I wouldn’t hear of it. But I will accept your offer of the sofa. I simply can’t bear another night in that hotel. There are only three of us on the entire floor, and the other two give me gooseflesh. Thank God Muriel has invited me to stay with her for the next week until Walter arrives.”

  Prosser let the reference to Lukash pass without comment. “I’ll fetch you a towel and washcloth and some fresh bed linens. If you need a toothbrush or anything, help yourself to what you can find in the medicine cabinet.”

  * * *

  Prosser had not quite passed from twilight consciousness into a deep sleep when he heard the latch on his door click open. Through half-open eyes he saw a silvery glow spread across the wall opposite the partially open door. A slender figure in an oversize white terry robe approached from the moonlit corridor and entered the bedroom.

  “Conrad? Are you awake?”

  “Yes. Is anything wrong?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “The shelling?”

  “I don’t think so.” She fell silent, as if weighing her words, and sat at the edge of the bed. “Conrad, have I ever asked you whether you’re married?”

  It was his turn to be silent. He rolled over onto his side and faced her. “I can’t recall if you did or not,” he answered at last. “Anyway, I’m not. I was once but not anymore. My divorce decree arrived here shortly after I did.”