Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2)

by Fleming, Preston

  Prosser walked softly along the carpeted hallway to its end and turned left into César’s windowless study. He switched on the overhead lamp and scanned, one by one, the titles of the books on the uppermost shelf above César’s desk. Near the middle of the shelf he found a dog-eared copy of Camille Chamoun’s Crise au Liban and took it down to examine it. Inside the front cover he found three blank sheets of white paper, each marred by countless tracings of handwriting, like a sheet of carbon paper that has been used to copy dozens of handwritten letters. The sheets were, in fact, a particular form of carbon paper, impregnated with specialized chemicals of the kind used to prepare the invisible writing of spies. Prosser took the sheets, folded them twice, and slipped them under the waistband of his underpants.

  He crossed the hall to César’s bedroom and surveyed its contents: an elaborately carved wardrobe, an overstuffed velvet settee, a matching pair of straight-backed rosewood chairs, a teak writing desk, a lacquered nightstand, and a black leatherette hassock resting on tiny plastic casters. César had been correct: the hassock was clearly out of place among the other furniture. Prosser wasted no time in dragging it out into the middle of the floor, flipping it onto its back, and unscrewing the four fasteners that held the hassock’s Masonite bottom in place.

  He pulled the Masonite out, twisted a pair of metal fasteners, and lifted out a false bottom to reveal a cavity that held a textbook-size digitally tuned radio, an ultralight headset, a flexible whip antenna, a spare set of batteries, and a tiny code book smaller than a deck of playing cards. Prosser removed each item in turn from its padded niche and arranged them in his Samsonite briefcase so that there was just enough room for the briefcase to latch shut. Then he reassembled the hassock concealment device and replaced it between the chair and the nightstand.

  Having no further materials to recover, Prosser had started back down the corridor toward the door when he heard the deadbolt tumblers turn and the door open. The clatter of a woman’s heels on the parquet floor gave away Muna’s presence. Prosser remained where he stood and waited for the door to slam shut and the bolt to click into place. The click of her heels became louder.

  Prosser stood motionless, briefcase in hand.

  The clatter of heels began again and suddenly stopped. Muna gasped, letting the oversize leather art portfolio slip out from under her left arm as she raised both hands to cover her mouth.

  “Excuse me, Muna,” Prosser said evenly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Your father had given me a key, in case...” A view of César’s lifeless corpse flashed before his eyes and he caught himself in mid-sentence as the aftershock of the massacre gripped him. He swallowed hard and resumed what he had planned to say. “…In case anything happened to him and I had to remove some special materials of ours from his study.”

  “Do you mean to say that my father....”

  “I came directly from the Libramarine Club. Your father and I met there before.”

  Muna’s face turned a chalky white and she seemed ready to crumble at the knees.

  He took her arm and helped her to the velvet settee.

  “Then the news…the radio…?”

  “Yes, I was there,” Prosser answered gently. He bit his lower lip and continued. “Your father and I met briefly before the gunmen arrived. I was inside the hotel and found a place to hide before the shooting started. Your father was eating lunch by the pool. They shot everyone in sight, Muna—women and children included. No one at the pool was spared. I saw your father’s body before the civil defense ambulance took it away; there is no question of his death, Muna. The Public Security Forces are taking all the bodies to the hospital in Jounié. You can find him there.”

  Muna buried her face in her hands while her chest heaved in silent wracking sobs. First her husband’s disappearance, then her mother and her young child killed by a bomb, and now her father murdered. All she had now was extended family, her work, her apartment, and the deeds to a pair of worthless buildings in the no-man’s-land of downtown Beirut. Muna was young, beautiful, intelligent, and strong; yet at this moment she could not think of a single reason why she would not trade the rest of her life for just a single day with her father if she could only bring him back to life.

  “The men who shot my father, they were Phalangists?” she inquired.

  “They wore no markings on their uniforms, Muna, but I heard them talk to each other. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Just yesterday we received a report that an operation was being planned against high-ranking Chamounists. I warned your father about it, and he was planning to take you to the mountains for a few days as soon as he came home this afternoon.”

  “Are you saying that I might be in danger?” she asked calmly.

  “I don’t know. Once a purge like this starts, it’s rather hard to predict when and where it will stop. If I were you, Muna, I would leave the city for a while. Maybe visit your relatives in Beït Meri for a few days. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll let you know if it’s safe to come back or if you should consider moving abroad. Watch for the emergency signals your father and I taught you this winter. Do you have enough cash to buy a plane ticket if you need to?”

  “Yes. There are a few thousand dollars that we keep hidden for an emergency.”

  “Good,” Prosser replied. “I can get you more in a day or two. Your father also had some back pay coming to him, along with a retirement annuity and some life insurance he bought through us. They’re yours now. And we ought to hear within another week or two whether your husband left anything when he disappeared. If he did, most likely that will be yours, too.”

  Muna looked up at him and pressed her lips together angrily as if he had just insulted her.

  “Excuse me, Muna. César asked me last week to confirm once and for all whether Bill Conklin is dead or alive and to find out whether he left any kind of estate. If he did, you might be entitled to something.”

  “My father never forgave Bill for leaving me,” she said with lowered eyes. “I think he and my uncle Victor would have killed him if they had thought he were still alive.”

  “And you? Do you think he is still alive somewhere?”

  “I have always believed it. He is my husband. I must believe it.”

  Prosser picked up his briefcase to leave. “Will I be able to find you at your grandmother’s house if I need to see you in the next few days?”

  She nodded. “But the telephone there does not work. You must call the neighbor, Mrs. Khaal. Her number is—”

  “I have it in the file. I’ll call you no later than Friday. Just get out of here as soon as you can, and don’t come back until I give the all-clear.”

  Part II

  Chapter 11

  The Egyptian teaboy Muhammad poured the dark, syrupy tea into a child-sized tumbler, added a sprig of mint, and set it on the corner of the gray sheet-metal desk at Lukash’s side. It was nearly six in the evening and Colonel Faris Nader’s secretary had already gone home, but the red light on the secretary’s telephone was still lit to show that the Phalange intelligence director was on the line in the next office.

  Lukash picked up a copy of Monday’s L’Orient-Le Jour newspaper and tried to make sense of a front-page article about the weekend fighting between two Shiite Muslim factions in Beirut’s southern slums. He was struggling with the lead sentence of the second paragraph and had begun to search the bookshelves for a French-English or French-Arabic dictionary when the outer door opened and Major Elie Musallam entered the room.

  The major slammed the door behind him without so much as a glance at Lukash and was a step away from entering the colonel’s inner office when Lukash spoke.

  “He’s on the line with somebody at the war council, Elie. His secretary asked me to wait until he was finished, but you go on ahead.”

  Major Elie’s cheeks were flushed with anger. “There’s been a clash with the Chamounists at the Libramarine Club. Twenty or more dead. We have reports of fighting breaking out afterward in Aïn el
Rummaneh and Baskinta as well. Something must be done at once to stop this madness, or the Syrians will be sure find a way to use it against us.”

  Lukash nodded. “Yep, sounds like you’d better go in.”

  “Do you know who the colonel is speaking to at the war council?”

  Lukash shook his head.

  Elie appeared distracted, as if torn between two competing imperatives. “Do you still plan to accompany me to the mountains tomorrow to inspect the transmitters?” he asked Lukash.

  “Of course, if you still plan to go. I’m expecting you at my place tomorrow morning at eight.”

  “My driver will pick you up. If I am delayed, please go with him; I will meet you on the mountain.” Elie looked at his watch, then at the colonel’s closed door. “Wali, a close friend of mine is missing. He may have been at the Libramarine. I must find him for his family’s sake.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Lukash offered.

  “I think not. I will tell you more tomorrow on the mountain. Did you remember to rent some skis and boots?”

  Lukash grinned. “First thing this morning.”

  Major Elie smiled back, gave one more glance at the red light on the secretary’s telephone, and opened the door to the colonel’s inner office.

  * * *

  A soft sea breeze blew at Lukash’s back as he left Jouniyé’s yacht harbor and crossed the quayside road on his way to the town’s restaurant district. Makeshift sidewalk cafés with flimsy folding chairs lined the two-lane street, each café lit from above by a string of colored lights that resembled out-of-season Christmas decorations. For the Lebanese, who, like most Mediterranean races, seldom dined before nine or ten o’clock, it was not yet the dinner hour, but the sidewalk cafés were already filling with small groups of men swilling pastis from short, thick glasses and couples sharing a carafe of local rosé before dinner.

  As he rounded the bend, Lukash’s eyes fell at once upon the familiar forest-green corduroy sports jacket with leather elbow patches that was Ed Pirelli’s uniform when not wearing one of his drip-dry suits. Although the distinctively foreign outfit might contribute to Pirelli’s safety, since the Lebanese tended to leave foreigners outside their feuds, Lukash questioned how safe it was for Pirelli’s Lebanese agents to be seen with someone so easily identifiable as a foreigner. Now that he himself was trying to avoid attention, Lukash felt the apparent contradiction more keenly. He walked past the chief of station without greeting him and continued at a leisurely pace toward the commercial district.

  He had covered nearly two blocks before he stopped to look in a store window and saw Pirelli trailing him on foot at a distance of some fifty meters. He crossed the street and unlocked his BMW. A few moments later, Pirelli caught up and took a place in the passenger seat while Lukash put the car in gear and headed toward the coastal highway.

  “How did it go?” Pirelli asked as soon as they were under way. “Were you able to slip the thing in?”

  “I never made it in to see him. I could have taken apart and reassembled every stick of furniture in his secretary’s office while I was waiting, but I never got inside the colonel’s office. I’ll have to try again on Monday.”

  “You do that. And take some time over the weekend to make sure the listening post is set up right. There’s no point in taking the risk to slip a bug into the chief of intelligence’s desk unless you can pick up a clear signal of what’s being transmitted.”

  “Is there any particular reason why we’re in such a hurry to do this?” Lukash inquired. “I thought you wanted me to make some sketches first, and to run a couple of tests from my own office to make sure the range is right.”

  “We don’t have time for that anymore,” Pirelli replied. “Reports have been coming in that the Phalange has some kind of scheme afoot to drag the U.S. into a confrontation with Syria, and that Colonel Faris is in on it. Once we can listen in on the colonel’s conversations, maybe we’ll find out what they have in mind.”

  “Do you suppose this business with the Syrian dissidents might figure into it?” Lukash proposed. “If Damascus thought we were arming an opposition movement, they might take the news rather badly.”

  “That’s exactly what the ambassador is worried about. When he heard that Connie sat down in the embassy with somebody from the Syrian Free Officers’ Movement, he nearly went through the roof. From now on, nobody from the embassy is allowed to so much as give the time of day to a Syrian dissident. Tell me, Walt, are you sure the Phalangists are talking to these Free Officers?”

  “No doubt about it,” Lukash affirmed. “Major Elie has a meeting set with them in a couple days to make a shopping list of what they want. Since most of what the Phalange intends to give them comes directly from us, I could probably arrange to sit in on the meeting if you’d like me to.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple anymore. If I told you to participate and it ever got back to the ambassador, there might be hell to pay. On the other hand, if the Phalangists decide to help the Free Officers, we’re hardly in a position to forbid it, are we? The important thing is to stay informed about whatever aid the Phalangists actually give them.” He paused. “Walt, do you think you could get the major to talk out of school and tell us what happens in his meeting with the Free Officers?”

  “Maybe. I’m nowhere near ready to try a recruitment pitch, but I think I might induce him to open up a bit.”

  “Then do it,” the station chief ordered. “Do you think he’s recruitable?

  “Don’t know yet. At this point he doesn’t seem to have the usual vulnerabilities. He’s not an egotist, or venal, or obviously disaffected. But there is one thing that might work in our favor: Elie didn’t come up though the ranks as a Phalangist—he started out fighting for the Chamounists. I heard about the purge at the Libramarine Club yesterday, and Elie mentioned that one of his NLP friends may have been among the casualties. Something like that might give us leverage with him.”

  “Then take him aside and probe him a bit,” Pirelli suggested. “If he’s sensitive about it, see how far you can take him toward saying something disloyal. For all we know, he may feel vulnerable about his Chamounist background and want to hedge his bets. Sure, it’s early to be plotting a recruitment scenario, but a revenge motive often doesn’t take long to gel.”

  “I’ll get started tomorrow,” Lukash said. “In the morning the two of us are going off into the mountains together to check some Phalangist listening posts and transmitters not far from the ski slopes at Qanat Bakiche. While we’re there, I’ll try to draw him out.”

  “Do what you can. And don’t forget about the Free Officers. I have a feeling that Colonel Faris has some interesting plans for that outfit.”

  “He most certainly does,” Lukash agreed, “which is why I still think the best way to find out what’s going on between the Phalange and the Free Officers would be for me to go along to their meeting. I’m pretty sure I could persuade the colonel to let me attend as an observer. I’d wear a Phalange uniform, of course, and keep my mouth shut. I really don’t see how the Syrians would know the difference.”

  “The ambassador would never stand for it, Walt. Forget it.”

  “What if the colonel insisted on having me along for technical reasons? After all, our equipment is at the head of the agenda.”

  “Now, that might be a little different,” Pirelli answered cautiously.

  “Then screw the ambassador, Ed. Headquarters would want me to attend, and you know it.”

  “I hear you. Go ahead and talk to the colonel about it. Just don’t quote me. And for God’s sake, don’t let anything get back to the ambassador.”

  The BMW approached a T-intersection and turned right. They were out of the congested town center now and passed rows of glass greenhouses that hugged the sandy bluff between the highway and the sea. Lukash accelerated and shifted into fourth gear.

  “By the way, Walt, I met a friend of yours at a party the other night,” Pirelli
mentioned casually. “ An old friend of yours from Amman…and Jeddah.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Lukash replied wearily. “I can guess.”

  “Really? Were you expecting her so soon?”

  “Come off it, Ed.”

  “She told me that you were looking forward to working with me again, like in the old days,” Pirelli added mockingly. “Excuse me, Walt, but I thought we were both supposed to be operating under cover over here.”

  “I haven’t told Lorraine any of your secrets, Ed, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “It’s not my secrets or yours we’re talking about here, Walt. They’re the government’s secrets, and Lorraine Ellis isn’t cleared for any of them. Have you drafted the cable yet that Tom Twombley wants from you—the one where you agree to drop her?”

  Lukash shook his head and awaited further scolding.

  “You realize, don’t you, that it’s going to look a hell of a lot worse for you now that she’s shown up over here? She’s not living with you again, is she?”

  “Look, Ed,” Lukash protested. “I told her not to follow me and she promised me she wouldn’t. I had absolutely no idea she would come anyway.”

  “Don’t bother with the excuses,” Pirelli said. “Just put it all in a cable to Headquarters. And this time make it perfectly clear that you’re cutting her off—unequivocally, absolutely, and once and for all. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “A try isn’t enough, Wally boy. I need a cable this time. On my desk, by the close of business on Friday. No excuses.”

  “It’s not quite that simple,” Lukash objected. “Lorraine and I—”

  Pirelli held up his hand. “No, not to me—to Twombley. By Friday.”