Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2)

by Fleming, Preston

  Strickland swallowed hard.

  “And as fate would have it, Headquarters postponed my trip to Washington until after the planned wedding date. I had outmaneuvered myself. I couldn’t think of a way out, so I went through with the wedding and we flew off to Corfu for our honeymoon. It seems completely unreal to me now, like a dream from long ago. I remember the scenes, but it’s difficult to believe that I was really there.”

  “What about your family or stateside friends? Weren’t any of them at the wedding?”

  Lukash shook his head. “My parents are divorced. My dad would never have come to Beirut, and my mom wouldn’t have been able to afford it even if she had wanted to. So I punted and didn’t tell either of them—or my brother or any of my friends. And especially nobody from the embassy.”

  “Jesus,” Strickland murmured. “So what happened when you finally got back to Headquarters? What did they do when you told them you had married a foreign national without getting it cleared in advance?”

  “I never got to Headquarters. The day I was scheduled to leave, I said good-bye to Muna and her parents, left my car at my apartment, took a taxi to the embassy, and went up to the station to pick up my plane ticket and any last-minute instructions from my inside contact, who happened to be none other than Ed Pirelli.” Lukash downed the remaining bourbon in his glass and refilled it hastily. His eyes took on a dreamy, watery look.

  “I was taken completely by surprise by what Ed had to say. He said the division had changed its plans for me. Changed its plans. Such a simple thing…for them.” Lukash pressed his lips together for a few seconds and went on.

  “He said there was a covert action program going on in the Saudi desert and that it needed a trained Arabist. It would be a joint effort with the Saudis, so I could go back to working under my true name and carrying an official passport and being attached to the embassy. And if I could stand living in the desert for a year or so and didn’t screw up, I could probably count on an early promotion.”

  “And what did Pirelli say when you told him you were married?” Strickland asked expectantly.

  “I didn’t,” Lukash replied flatly “I started to explain that I had become attached to a Lebanese girl—‘attached’ was the word I used, just like being attached to the embassy at Jeddah—but Ed cut me off. He said that the Agency had paid me well to take the year off to learn a foreign language and now it was payback time. He reminded me that availability to serve anywhere in the world was a condition of my employment and that my only options were yes or no. ‘Yes’ meant a promising future in the Agency, and ‘no’ meant a one-way ticket to some menial job at Headquarters and eventual dismissal.”

  “Okay, so you went,” Strickland broke in. “What then? Did you contact your wife after you got there? What happened when your work in Saudi was finished?”

  “I arrived in Saudi in 1976, when the Lebanese civil war was still at its worst. The embassy in Beirut had been evacuated. They never would have given me approval to go back there.”

  “How about when the war was over?”

  “Lebanon has been a state of civil unrest ever since,” Lukash replied. “I would have needed Headquarters approval even to set foot here, and they would never have given it except on official business.”

  “Did you write to her, or try to send her a message through a friend?” Strickland pressed. “Even if you couldn’t get in, she could have traveled out to meet you, couldn’t she?”

  “I thought about it many times, Bud, believe me. But I never knew quite what to say. What possible reason could I have given for disappearing the way I did? So I said nothing. And after a while I decided she was better off thinking I was dead and moving on with her life.”

  “And is she? Have you been able to find her and ask?”

  “As for her being better off, I can’t say,” Lukash concluded. “All I know is that she’s living in East Beirut and that she’s apparently still waiting for me to come back. So I’ve decided to go see her. I don’t know what I’ll say, and I have no idea how she’ll react to seeing me. But whatever it is she may want from me, I feel I owe it to her. I know I’ll never be able to set things straight again, but I do need to try.

  “The first step is to stop imagining that Muna and I occupy separate worlds. It’s like those married guys who go away on road trips and fool around, thinking that as soon as they leave their hometown they enter some parallel universe and can do whatever suits them, and then return to their home world refreshed and ready to greet their wives and children. There’s only one universe, Bud, and whatever you do in one corner affects what happens in the rest of it.”

  Strickland reached out and held Lukash’s wrist. “I’m not going to tell you I understand, because I don’t believe that any man can truly understand another. But I know a fair bit about that parallel universe you’re talking about. Hell, I entered it every time I left Dulles Airport on a TDY. Then one day my wife found out about it, divorced me and took the kids with her. Now I’m stuck over here in this universe and don’t have the old one to go back to.”

  “The Agency has become your world, Bud, and Agency people have become your neighbors, friends, and relatives, all rolled into one,” Lukash answered. “Wherever you go, the station is your home away from home. I used to see it that way, too. But I don’t anymore. For me, the Agency has become like one of those weird religious cults you read about on the West Coast. There’s a system to those cults, you know. First they round up a bunch of lonely people with a need to belong, and then they give them heaps of praise, a clear set of rules, and an endless supply of work to do. And once they’re hooked, the cult leaders demand that they give up everything they have to remain part of the group—not just their worldly possessions and the fruits of their labors, but their initiative, their personal identity, and their values.

  “I used to be one of those people. I used to feel that if I left the Agency, nothing could make up for the loss. It would be like being banished from paradise or descending the mountain from Shangri-La and never being able to find it again. But now I feel like I have to leave if I’m ever going to find my own way. If that means giving up the secrecy, the intrigue, the special perks, and all the self-glorification of being a spy, I’m ready. What’s more important is who I am and what I’ve accomplished, and those are things that nobody can take away from me. All the rest—the diplomatic passport, the big house overseas, the car, the servants—they’re all just government-issue and someday I’ll have to turn them in anyway.”

  “So where does this leave your friend Lorraine? Have you told her what you’ve told me?”

  Lukash shook his head. “But I plan to, once I’ve talked to Muna.”

  “Which means that if Muna wants you back, Lorraine will be out of luck?”

  “I don’t see any other way, Bud, if we’re all living the in the same universe. Avoiding tough choices is what got me into trouble in the first place. But if Muna decides she doesn’t want Bill Conklin back after all, perhaps Lorraine and I could start over. In Washington or maybe somewhere else. Whether the Agency gives her a security clearance or not. Beyond that, I just don’t know.”

  Chapter 14

  The air was cool and crisp as Lukash and Lorraine walked arm in arm past the sandbagged entrance of the Embassy Supermarket and continued past the shuttered shops of rue Sioufi toward Place Sassine. Although it was only six o’clock and the evening sky still glowed in the west like a distant bonfire, the shopkeepers had heard the sporadic artillery fire in the commercial district and were closing their doors early, unwilling to risk catching a stray bullet or shell fragment for the sake of selling one last loaf of bread or carton of milk.

  “We could find a shawarma stand somewhere and buy some sandwiches to take away,” Lorraine suggested, fastening the topmost button of her gray woolen coat against the damp.

  “No, they always bring me shawarma for lunch, and I’m sick of it.”

  “I’m afraid that doesn’t leave us much choice
. Nothing else seems to be open tonight.”

  They had already walked by at least three other restaurants and each was closed. When they reached Place Sassine, the normally bustling traffic was so sparse that Lukash concluded the restaurants on the square had all taken the same cue.

  Then he saw the lights at La Chasse. After his previous encounters with Boulos there and at L’Olivier, he had not intended to return, but Lorraine suddenly began walking briskly ahead of him toward the lights. Now she peered through a window and raised her arms in a mock victory salute.

  “Success!” she called out to him, holding the door open for him to follow her inside.

  He tried to think quickly of a reason to veto her choice, but as soon as he stepped through the door, a familiar voice sounded from the shadows beyond the headwaiter’s station.

  “Bon soir, Monsieur Walter. Two for dinner?”

  A stout figure in a new black dinner jacket with a vast expanse of satin lapel emerged from the shadows to greet them. It was the ever-present Boulos, but his greeting seemed measurably cooler than when they had seen him at L’Olivier the week before. Lukash wondered if the headwaiter had further refreshed his memory about the dinner with Muna in West Beirut five years ago.

  “Well, hello there, Boulos. What a nice surprise. I thought you would be at L’Olivier by now.”

  The headwaiter laughed as if he had caught Lukash in an attempt to deceive. “Oh, I will be there soon enough. My work there begins in earnest in about an hour. But I can see that you are both already very hungry. Would you like to sit by a window, or away from one?”

  “Away, please. And on the eastern side, if you have something there.”

  “Of course. This way, please.”

  He led them to a table along the dining room’s eastern wall and then excused himself to tend to the next guests, a foursome of bearded young men with closely cropped hair who seemed to belong in uniform. As he left, however, Lukash noticed the headwaiter’s eyes dwell just a moment too long on Lorraine’s hands, as if he were scanning them for a wedding or engagement ring.

  Lorraine waited until he was halfway across the room before speaking. “There’s something creepy about that old man. He has the look of an informant, like he’s waiting for you to let some secret drop so he can snatch it up and offer it immediately for sale. Do you know him well?”

  “Not really,” Lukash replied misleadingly “He’s a friend of a Phalangist officer I work with sometimes. I think he sees me as an old friend because I ate in his restaurant once before the war, when he owned a place downtown.”

  Lukash glanced toward the door and unexpectedly caught Boulos looking directly at him while talking in a low voice over the telephone. The coolness of the headwaiter’s greeting, the lingering glance at her hands, Lorraine’s intuition of distrust, and now this whispering over the telephone unnerved him. Lukash realized that it was a bad mistake to have come here. But as he considered whether to stand up and leave, a curly-haired waiter of about eighteen with a simpleminded expression brought menus and a plate of pickles and raw vegetables. It was too late to leave without making a scene.

  Lukash ordered a basic mezzé for two and a plate of shish kebab without opening the menu. “And a couple of bottles of Almaza beer,” he added. “Unless you would prefer wine,” he added as an afterthought, turning to Lorraine.

  She shook her head and he could sense that the evening was going to be tense. Something was weighing on her mind, and it appeared to be more than the distant gunfire or Boulos’s odd manner. Lukash considered quickly whether it was better to precipitate the discussion now or wait until they were back at his apartment. Whatever happened, there was no prospect of her returning to West Beirut tonight. The artillery fire made it certain that all the East-West checkpoints would be closed at least until morning.

  “How are things shaping up at the airline?” he asked blandly, finding a well-ripened tomato among the heap of raw vegetables and cutting it into wedges. “Are you running training sessions every day, or do you get to do some flying from time to time?”

  “I’ve only had two flights so far. One to Riyadh and one to Paris two days ago. Oh, by the way, while I was there, I phoned my old roommate, Claire. She said to give you a big kiss. You know, Claire always had a soft spot for you, Walter. You never went to bed with her, did you?”

  “Lorraine! What made you come up with a question like that? I scarcely said more than ‘Hello, how are you’ to Claire the whole time I knew her. Besides, you two only roomed together for a couple of weeks before you moved in with me.”

  “But she stayed in Amman for another six months before taking the job with Air France.” She continued to fix Lukash with a determined look.

  “If you must know, the answer is no. Of course, if I had known then that Claire was hot for me, I might have been tempted,” he added, merely to provoke her. “But, alas for me, I wasn’t clever enough to figure it out in time to act on it. Next question?”

  “Do you think it’s so odd that I don’t completely trust you, Walter? When you drive off nearly every night after dinner for an hour or two and the only word of explanation you ever give is that you’ve been to see a ‘friend’? Or when you fly off to Beirut for two months and tell me not to visit you or even phone you? And now, when you plan to fly off again to Washington and don’t even tell me you’re going?”

  The young waiter returned and swiftly unloaded Arab bread, hummus, mutabbal, tabboulé, and a plate of grilled shish kebab from his tray. A moment later he returned with two bottles of chilled Almaza beer and retreated promptly to the kitchen.

  “What ever gave you the idea that I’m going to Washington?” Lukash asked, relieved that the premise of her last question, unlike her first two, was unfounded.

  “Then you deny that you’re going?”

  Lukash gave a hearty laugh. She had so much with which to reproach him, he thought, yet when at last she chose to confront him with an accusation, she picked one without any basis in fact.

  “If I am, nobody has told me about it. But I’m more than ready to go. Then at least I’d have a fair chance of convincing Headquarters to let me out of here before two years are up.”

  “And if you did convince them?” Lorraine pursued.

  “You would be the first person I’d come to with the news, believe me,” Lukash replied, scooping up some tabboulé with a piece of bread. “But what makes you think I’m going to Washington in the first place? Since when has Ed Pirelli been letting you read his cable traffic?”

  “I know I shouldn’t be telling you this—and the only reason I’m doing it is because I know you won’t say anything to anyone—but I heard it from Muriel. She saw a memo from Ed Pirelli to Ambassador Ravenel saying that your division chief is bringing you back for consultations and that it’s not clear when you will be coming back, if at all.”

  “If Muriel Benson is leaking classified information like that, I’ll see to it that she’s sent back to Washington before I am,” Lukash snapped, furious that the ambassador’s secretary would reveal the contents of a classified personnel memo about him.

  Lorraine ignored his anger. “But why would they call you back now? You’ve just arrived.”

  “Frankly, I have no goddamned idea,” he lied. “I just wish they had never sent me here in the first place.” For a moment he considered telling her about the cable that Tom Twombley had ordered him to write pledging to sever contact with her, but he decided against it.

  She sensed his hesitation. “Walter,” she began, “before you left Amman, you told me you wanted us to be together in Washington. We even talked about getting married. Now you’re acting as if none of that ever happened. Tell me truthfully, have you changed your mind?”

  “Of course not,” he answered, facing her straight-on. “But as I’ve said before, we can’t get married until you have a security clearance, and for that we need to lay the proper groundwork. Remember, Headquarters still has a notion that you’re mixed up with a bunch
of crazy Islamic terrorists. And it may take some time to convince them otherwise, despite the fact that you were never part of Ghassan’s cell and haven’t seen any of them since the Saudis threw them in jail. Once you’re in the States, the security screws may eventually come to realize that you were never involved with any of Ghassan’s troublemaking. And again, as I’ve said before, after spending six months or a year in D.C., they might be inclined to make a reassessment and give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “But why can’t we apply for the security clearance right away?” she persisted. “Wouldn’t it be better to get the process started first and find out what’s necessary to speed up the approval?”

  Lukash felt a mounting urge to change the subject. But he knew that once the matter was on the floor for discussion, Lorraine would never let it rest until a decision had been reached.

  “Only if we’re prepared for me to lose my job,” he answered bluntly. “Remember, Lorraine, along with my official request for clearance to marry a foreigner, I’ll have to submit a signed resignation. If they clear you, they’ll tear up my resignation and forget about it. If they don’t clear you, they’ll accept the resignation and I’m out on the street. And Washington is a very expensive place to be an unemployed former civil servant.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand why you sound so different on this subject now than you did a month ago, Walter. Then you said you weren’t sure you wanted to stay in the Agency. You said that if you were going to start a new career, now was the time to do it, while you were still in your middle thirties and before you had children and a mortgage to worry about. You talked about finding a job representing an American company and selling their products in the Middle East. You said that’s what you’ve wanted to do ever since you learned Arabic. Have you changed your mind about all that, too? I need to know, Walter, because before I uproot my own way of life, I have to know what you’re planning to do with yours.”

  “Damn it, Lorraine,” Lukash shot back. “It’s just not as simple as you make it out to be. Sure, I feel burnt out. And, sure, I think I could do better for myself on the outside. But remember, I’ve been an overseas case officer for more than eight years. I’ve paid my dues now. When I go back to Headquarters, I’ll be part of management; they’ll give me a country desk to run. The next time I go overseas I’ll be a deputy COS for sure, and maybe chief at a smaller post. But if I quit, it’s permanent. I could never get back in. I wouldn’t carry a diplomatic passport anymore, I wouldn’t have a top-secret security clearance, my old friends would treat me like a stranger, and my résumé would read as if I was a complete washout as a Foreign Service officer. I’d have to start all over again. I just don’t know if I could do it.”