Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2)

by Fleming, Preston

  “And one more item. Headquarters sent back traces on Major Elie Musallam, the guy you and Ed met on Thursday. They didn’t have much on him, except for name, date, place of birth, and the information he submitted on a tourist visa application back in ’77. What’s more interesting is that one of our unilateral agents is a good friend of this Major Elie of yours, and the major has been an unwitting subsource of several of his reports in the past few months. Do you know anything about PBSLEET?”

  “I’ve heard the cryptonym a couple of times, but that’s it.”

  “Ed Pirelli recruited SLEET himself in ’76 when he was deputy chief here during the fighting. SLEET was a fairly high-level officer in the Chamounist militia who had lost just about everything he owned when the fighting engulfed the commercial district: his business, apartment, even his wife, poor guy. Ed spotted SLEET when he came to the consular section with a missing persons inquiry. It seems his only daughter married an American just before the outbreak of fighting in ’75, and within a day or two after returning from the honeymoon, the husband disappeared without a trace. Never been heard from since.

  “That’s where Major Elie comes in. The major is apparently an old friend of the family and has had a thing for SLEET’s daughter since she was a teenager. SLEET wants to settle this business with the missing husband one way or another so that the way will be clear for the major to marry his daughter. Small world, eh?”

  Lukash’s face remained expressionless. “And SLEET has asked you to help him track down the missing husband?”

  “He’s given me every scrap of information he has on the guy. Of course, it’s no more than what he gave Ed five years ago, at the time he was recruited. But Headquarters has all kinds of new computer capabilities now, and there’s a good chance that the guy will have left some sort of paper trail. I’ve asked Headquarters to check with the passport office and the FBI, as well as their own files. If there is or ever has been a William F. Conklin who meets SLEET’s description, something is bound to turn up on him.”

  Chapter 10

  The turbaned Pakistani carwash wallah opened the car door even before Prosser had brought the Renault to a complete stop in the parking lot.

  “Lavage, monsieur? Lavage?” He was barely out of his teens, painfully thin, with a pencil-thin mustache setting off rows of gleaming white teeth. He wore a faded blue-and-white-checked shirt of the thinnest gingham, with a sort of skirt wrapped several times around his waist, and carried a tin pail half filled with murky gray water. Prosser guessed he might be one of the Pakistani stevedores from one of the illegal Phalangist ports trying to earn some extra pay between ships.

  “No, thanks, friend,” Prosser replied, tilting back his head and clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth in a poor imitation of the Lebanese gesture of dismissal.

  “Your car very dirty, siidi. Make car clean—ten pounds.”

  “Four pounds, and you fetch a fresh bucket of water first, eh?”

  “Eight pounds, siidi. Rice, ghee, tea…all very expensive here, siidi. This car very, very big one.” He stepped back from the four-door and swept it from front to back with a respectful eye as if it were an eighty-foot motor yacht.

  “Five pounds. If you do a good job, maybe more. But first, dump that filthy liquid right here where I can see it and go get some clean water.”

  The Pakistani bowed hastily and promptly overturned the bucket with the sole of his tire-tread sandal, narrowly missing Prosser’s khaki trousers with the gobs of mud that spread to either side of the toppled bucket. He picked it up again just as quickly and trotted off toward a palm-shaded garden, where an underground sprinkler system was watering a dense jasmine hedge.

  Prosser glanced at his watch. Ten minutes after one—still too early for most Lebanese to eat their big midday meal, although he could see through the Libramarine Swim Club’s massive iron gate that a dozen or more bathers had already abandoned their white terry-covered chaises longues for lunch tables sheltered under a cobalt-blue-and-white-striped awning.

  As he made his way toward the high-rise Libramarine condominium hotel, he stopped briefly to peer through the gate to the walled-in swim club and scanned the pool, the deck area, and the open-air café for a stout Lebanese of about fifty-five years with a bald spot on top of his head and curly ringlets of gray around the sides and back. Moments before he was ready to give up the effort, he found César Khalifé, aka PBSLEET, seated across from a man of approximately the same age whose back and arms were covered with a dense growth of curly gray and black hair.

  César had used his electronic signaling device the night before to summon Prosser to a meeting at the Libramarine Club at one thirty that afternoon. The club had long been agreed upon as their emergency meeting site but until now had never been used. Since the place was a favorite watering spot for wealthy backers of Camille Chamoun’s National Liberal Party, César often met his Liberal friends there for lunch to glean whatever he could about their rivals in the Phalange. Although the swimming pool and lunch area were open only to those who owned flats in the high-rise or who had paid a substantial fee to join the Libramarine Swim Club—as César had, at U.S. government expense—Prosser intended to spend the next quarter of an hour drinking a beer at the public bar just off the lobby, as if waiting to meet a member.

  To his discomfort, he found the barroom nearly empty and was relieved when at last he spotted the bartender, a dour little man with the belligerent expression of a diminutive Mussolini. Prosser ordered a bottled French beer and carried it back to a table near the window, where he could see César and his luncheon companion laughing uproariously over some witty remark one of them had unleashed.

  At twenty-three minutes past one, Prosser’s glass was still half full. When he saw César rise from his seat, slip on his shirt, and excuse himself from the table, Prosser downed the remains of his beer and laid eight Lebanese pounds on the table.

  The entrance to the men’s toilet was only a few steps from the door to the bar. Prosser entered and took up position in the middle of the three toilet stalls. Less than a minute later, he heard the door open, and then someone occupied the stall farthest from the bar.

  “Merde, no toilet paper again,” a voice complained in a patois of French and Arabic.

  “None here, either, brother,” Prosser answered in Arabic.

  “Then perhaps you would like to take some of this,” the voice replied. A hand reached under the partition to offer Prosser a rolled-up section of newspaper.

  He unrolled it quickly, removed a half-dozen sheets of onionskin stationery folded neatly three times, and slipped them into his rear trouser pocket. He handed the newspaper back to César Khalifé. “What do you have for me today?” Prosser whispered.

  “Several important pieces of news,” César replied in a low voice. I had coffee this morning with my second cousin, who is a member of the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies. The man loves to hear himself talk. There was so much to write that I did not have time to use the invisible writing technique you showed me. It seemed more important at the time to bring you the news quickly.

  “Anyway, he said that Bashir Gemayel has a plan to lure the United States into joining the Phalange in a conflict with Syria, and that Bashir’s intelligence chief is the one charged with carrying out the plan. No details, of course, but perhaps you may use this information to obtain details from other sources. My cousin also said that the Phalangists are plotting an operation against those of us who are still loyal to Camille Chamoun rather than the Gemayels. Something like what they did to Tony Franjiyé and his family. That is why I intend to leave Beirut this afternoon to spend the next few days in the mountains.”

  Shortly before dawn on a summer day nearly two years earlier, a platoon of Bashir Gemayel’s Phalangist shock troops had crept through the early morning stillness to attack the summer retreat of rival militia chieftain Tony Franjiyé. Despite a desperate defense by Franjiyé’s bodyguards, he and his wife, his three-year-old daughter,
their maid, chauffeur, and family dog were machine-gunned to death in the courtyard of the house while still in their bedclothes. When the shooting stopped, fourteen people lay dead.

  “You did exactly the right thing, César. Don’t worry about not using the secret writing this time. Your papers will be safely concealed when I cross the Green Line. Just send me a signal when you’re back in town and have something new for me to pick up.”

  “But of course,” César replied, proud for having transmitted his reporting so rapidly.

  “Now go, before somebody comes in. I’ll leave in a few minutes.”

  Prosser heard water rushing down the drainpipe and a moment later César’s stall door slammed shut. He considered opening the sheaf of onionskin papers to read while he waited, but thought better of the idea and resolved to wait calmly until he could be certain that César was clear of the lobby.

  At last he pulled up his trousers and took a position before one of three gaudy clamshell-shaped washbasins, whose faucet handles were crafted of glazed ceramic to resemble starfish. He washed his hands, splashed some cool water on his face, and looked around. To his left, beyond the toilet stalls, was a second exit. He opened it just far enough to see that it led to a darkened restaurant with a raised platform at the opposite end where musicians played on nights when the restaurant featured belly dancers.

  Prosser consulted his watch once more: nearly forty past one, time to leave if he was to beat the rush-hour traffic through the port crossing. He took a deep breath, pulled open the door to the lobby, and fixed his gaze upon the huddle of Pakistanis jabbering to one another on the blacktop just outside. He was already abreast of them when he heard a woman scream, and then another, from somewhere near the pool. A rifle shot, followed at once by a string of shots fired on full automatic, drew his attention to the parking lot.

  A hand suddenly seized his elbow and spun him around. “No, siidi, go back inside! They shoot now! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

  “What’s going on? Who is shooting?” he demanded upon recognizing the Pakistani who had offered to wash his Renault.

  “Men with—”

  At that moment the Pakistani’s eyes opened wide with horror and he dove for cover. Only then did Prosser realize that automatic rifle fire was converging rapidly on the Libramarine Club from three sides. He ducked back into the lobby, retraced his steps to the men’s toilet, and just as quickly dashed through the rear door into the darkened restaurant. Without waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he scanned the unlit room for a hiding place. The tables and chairs offered no real shelter. He tried a door, but it was locked. He tried another, a storage closet.

  Then his eyes stopped at the musicians’ platform and he thought of the crawl space between platform and floor. Dashing to the far side of the platform, he used his pocketknife to slit open the black vinyl that sealed off the crawl space then lay on his belly and backed into the darkness, feetfirst.

  He had maneuvered himself nearly to the center of the platform when three or four simultaneous bursts of automatic rifle fire shattered the silence. The shots blew out the row of high windows along the rear wall, knocked over several chairs, and blasted chunks of plaster that fell like hail onto the bare tabletops. He heard the scuffle of a half dozen pairs of boots as a squad of gunmen gave the room a cursory search. His heart nearly stopped when one of the gunmen leaped onto the platform and fired a three-round burst into the floor less than two meters from his head. When he opened his eyes again, feeble rays of light penetrated through the splintered holes.

  “Yalla, shabab, avance! Emile, a la cuisine! Les autres, suives-moi a la piscine!” a young voice shouted directly above him. Prosser’s first reaction was to wiggle his fingers and toes to verify that he had not been hit, and then to hold his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to stop them from ringing.

  Before another burst could be squeezed off, the squad leader jumped from the platform and followed the shooters out the same way they had come. Meanwhile, the background of rapid gunfire continued, punctuated by the muffled explosions that Prosser assumed were grenades being tossed into rooms and stairwells to stun their occupants before finishing them off with gunfire. Shrieks of terror and cries of pain carried through the open windows and blended into a hellish wail. Outside the rear wall of the dining room, a long howl ended with a sickening thud as someone jumped or was hurled from an upper-story window. The chaos dragged on for minute after minute while Prosser cowered motionless under the bandstand.

  At last the gunfire receded toward the south, spilled over into the parking lot, and then was mixed with the muffled roar of truck engines. Moments later, silence descended upon the place, but the calm lasted no longer than a few seconds before moans and murmured sobs rose from the pool deck and the open-air restaurant. A klaxon horn blared somewhere far off and grew nearer.

  At last Prosser crawled slowly toward the open end of the bandstand and peered out. The tabletops and floors were littered with plaster dust, broken glass, and brass shell casings. He stepped softly toward the lobby door, wincing at the loud crunching sounds made by his feet as they crushed lumps of plaster and shards of glass. He prayed silently that no Phalangist still lurked in the shadows.

  Prosser stopped just behind the frame of the door to the lobby and looked out. The body of an elderly Lebanese in what only minutes earlier had been an immaculate white terry robe lay dead at the foot of the registration desk, with three gaping exit wounds in back and a broad swath of crimson covering his left side from the waist to shoulder. Prosser had never seen a fresh corpse up close before, and certainly not one that had met a violent end. He had expected to have more of a visceral sensation, but it was as if some sensory overload switch had already been tripped, leaving only numbness. His nerves were refusing to respond to something as inconsequential to his own survival as another person’s mortal remains.

  He glanced around the corner into the bar and saw the heap of broken glass—all that remained of the shelved whiskey and apéritif bottles that had been arranged in such careful rows—and then he stepped back into the lobby. He peered behind the registration desk. Two more lifeless figures were piled in the corner, their backs facing him, with skulls so horribly smashed by rifle bullets that he felt compelled to turn away. His eyes fell on a five- or six-meter-long smear of still-moist blood that led to a turbaned corpse sprawled at the edge of the semicircular driveway. Prosser saw the mangled shoulder and the shattered thigh first and pressed two fingers against the young Pakistani’s neck to check for a pulse. He held his breath and waited five seconds, then a few more, before giving up and moving on.

  He turned back toward the swim club’s iron gate. The massive double doors had been forced half open. As he approached, the first thing he noticed was the color of the water in the pool, a dull, murky shade of pink that gathered and dispersed in swirling clouds. Only when he stepped to the edge did he realize that he was losing control. He felt his gorge rise, and his breakfast spilled out onto the deck in a gut-wrenching fit of vomiting.

  Yet he could not stop himself from looking again, for just beneath the surface of the pool, poised in a sort of jellyfish float, lay the facedown corpse of a tanned and athletic young woman in a lime-green string bikini, with delicate wisps of crimson still playing about the entry wounds in her lower back. As he stared at the drifting corpse, he caught sight of the hairy back and shoulders of a thickset figure in red bathing trunks—César Khalifé’s luncheon companion. Barely an arm’s length beyond that corpse, a barrel-chested body stretched its arms across the surface of the water, its gray ringlet-covered head bobbing and rolling like an apple on a loose tether of purplish muscle and sinew that was all that remained of a neck. He did not need to see the face to know it was César.

  A wave of horror, panic, and revulsion passed over Prosser, threatening to sweep all rational thought from his mind. He quickly looked away from the two dead men and then just as quickly forced himself to look again. Surrounding César on all si
des, and distributed randomly around the pool, lay some twenty or more other corpses, all suspended at various depths, their movement propelled with infinite slowness by minute underwater currents. Many wore bathing costumes; a few were fully clothed. Men outnumbered women; youth predominated over the aged, including at least a half dozen children. Many of them, he thought, were doubtless unrepentant Chamounists who had resisted the will of the Lebanese Christian community and rejected the infallible leadership of the Phalange Party. But to punish them like this…

  * * *

  Prosser remained at the Libramarine Club for a half hour or more to help find and tend to the survivors of the massacre while waiting for ambulances to arrive. In any event, he dared not leave the club so close on the heels of the departing gunmen, and with César dead there was no longer an agent’s secrecy to protect. Within a few minutes after the gunmen’s departure, a crescendo of sirens and klaxon horns rose in the distance.

  Prosser described for the first Public Security Forces officer to arrive on the scene what he had seen and heard, then exercised his privilege as an accredited diplomat in the Lebanese Republic to leave the Libramarine compound and to make any further statement at the American embassy. The officer, who as a representative of the rump central government of the Lebanese Republic was doubtless accustomed to cleaning up the bloody messes left by the country’s unregulated militias, reluctantly accepted the American’s business card and let him drive away.

  * * *

  Some forty minutes later Prosser unlocked the deadbolt on César Khalifé’s apartment door and entered, carrying a thick, brown Samsonite briefcase. He shut the door behind him and listened. There was no sound other than that of an air conditioner droning in the dining room, and the place generally looked as if it had not been disturbed since César had left that morning for the Libramarine Club.