by Chuck Holton
Liz couldn’t believe his rudeness, his coldheartedness. His mother would be mortified.
When Liz didn’t move, he looked up, first at her, then at the door, his meaning more than obvious.
Two week’s worth of tension, fear, and sorrow broke Liz’s composure. “What is wrong with you? This is Khalil’s wife we’re talking about.”
He shrugged.
“Surely out of honor for your brother you want to see her safe.”
He shifted uncomfortably, and she thought she had scored a hit. Still, he sniffed disdainfully. “She is an American.”
“That is hardly her doing.”
Bashir gave her a fierce look; Liz met his with one of her own. He blinked first.
“She shouldn’t be here to begin with,” he said. “Americans belong in America, not Lebanon.”
Give me a break! “Bashir! For heaven’s sake. She’s the daughter of parents who are teaching and working in Lebanon to give the people of the Middle East the best opportunity to accomplish whatever they want in life. She’s the wife of a Lebanese who educated himself and worked to better the region economically. She supports the Palestinian cause. Who cares where she was born?”
One look at his face and it was obvious that he cared, and deeply.
“Americans are prejudiced,” he finally said in a voice filled with contempt.
“Americans are prejudiced?” Can you say pot calling the kettle?
“They are anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab.”
“As you well know, it’s not so much that we Americans are anti-Palestinian as we are anti-violence as a way to solve problems. We have this little difficulty with taking innocent lives as a way to make a statement.”
“They had no recourse but the Intifada. Their lands were stolen by the Zionists who kill them, and it is American money that supports the Zionists.”
“I don’t want to debate you over this, Bashir, but Israel is over fifty years old.”
He looked at her blankly. He didn’t see her point. Or he wouldn’t.
“The country is here to stay.” As a nation, Israel was politically organized, militarily strong, and the people had a sense of nationalism that more than matched the Palestinians. From its very inception at the declaration of the United Nations, Israel had the strongest of allies in the United States and Russia.
It struck Liz as never before how the ramifications of the stories of Isaac and Ishmael were felt right into the present day. Each man’s descendents saw the other’s in terms of enemy, if not on a personal, one-to-one basis, certainly in the larger political and communal sense. Palestinians saw the Jews as people who came to steal their land, land the Jews saw as rightly theirs, given to them by God millennia ago.
Could such opposing views ever reconcile?
But Liz knew that many of the Palestinians who had been part of the first Intifada back in 1987, largely a civil disobedience movement rather than a violent one as recently, had become pragmatic about the presence of Israel. The general Lebanese population felt a similar weariness with the constant fighting. Bashir’s own parents were good examples.
“Bashir,” Liz said, the anger suddenly draining. “Today it doesn’t matter what I think or you think about politics or terrorism or coexistence.” Tears sat in her eyes. “Today Julie is all that matters.”
Bashir stared at her, his eyes hot. “What do you expect me to do?”
God, please! Melt his resistance. If he doesn’t help, I don’t know what I’ll do!
Liz shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Bashir, it’s not a family secret that you have contact with some of the more militant Palestinians.”
He didn’t deny her statement but said in that cold voice, “And?”
“I’m not judging you. I’m stating a fact, okay? I know that your position here at the paper requires that you know all sorts of people.”
He nodded. “Many readers see me as espousing violence. I’m not; I am trying to explain it.”
Good luck on that one. But Liz nodded.
Bashir smiled thinly. “You must understand that I am not altering my stance, even for Julie. Even in Khalil’s memory.”
“I’m not trying to change your mind. In fact, I agree with you that something needs to be done to make life better in the camps. But all that’s secondary now. I want to find Julie.”
He glanced at his computer screen and began to type. She knew he wasn’t looking for information to help her but was ignoring her.
Liz took a deep breath and soldiered on in spite of his antipathy. “I have learned two things. One, she was taken the night of the fire by three men, one of whom wore a Palestinian kaffiyeh and drove a black Mercedes. I have also learned that a blond woman is being held by Ansar Inshallah in the Sainiq camp near Sidon.”
“How—?”
Liz shook her head and grinned slightly at his amazement. She bet very little caught him by surprise. She cleared her throat and stood as straight as she could. Time to look the very picture of determination in spite of how much she was shaking inside.
“I want you to help me pinpoint where she’s being held so I can go into the camp and rescue her.”
For once, Bashir, outspoken man of letters, relentless advocate for the underdog, and fierce defender of causes, was at a loss for words. But not for long. “Even you cannot be that foolish.”
Tell me how you really feel, Bashir. “If you do not help me, I will go to your father. Because of his mercy trips to the camps, he may be able to provide the information I need.”
Bashir leaped to his feet and leaned forward, planting his hands on his desk. “You will leave my father alone. He has more than enough to deal with right now.”
“Has sympathy for a potential source ever held you back, Bashir?”
He looked at her like a Newfoundland might look at a miniature poodle that had just bitten him.
She tried not to look too smug. “It’s your choice.”
Approaching Beirut
“AHHH. BEIRUT! The city that never dies.” The Lebanese operative raised his voice over the drone of the airplane.
John turned from the window to look at him across the cramped aisle. The man who had introduced himself as Zothgar directed a toothy smile back at him in the dim light of the cabin’s interior.
The operative was a wisp of a man, gnarled in a way that spoke of too many years smoking cigarettes, as he was doing now. John frequently wished that the rest of the world was as smokeless as America had become, but as the pungent smoke filled the cabin, he sighed. Not today.
Zothgar was probably in his midforties, though the outdated European suit made him look somewhat older. But it was the flatness of his intense cobalt eyes that told John this was not someone he’d want working against him.
“This is your first visit to our beautiful country, yes?”
John forced a smile and merely nodded rather than shout. The nine-passenger DeHavilland Dove was the best Lebanon had to offer in the way of VIP private transport, but it wasn’t exactly luxurious. With the six men of Task Force Valor, Zothgar, and the two pilots, the plane was maxed out, and the twin-turboprop engines seemed to be straining for all they were worth just to stay aloft. John didn’t feel much better when he read the placard above the bulkhead stating that the plane had been built in 1958.
Oh, well, if it’s been flying this long why should it stop today?
He refused to consider the several hundred possible answers to his question, from metal fatigue to engine failure. Instead, he turned and looked out at the bright lights of the city spreading out below him. It didn’t look like a war zone, which of course it wasn’t any longer. Still, he didn’t see the expected black patches amid the light, areas where there would be nothing but bullet-riddled ruins.
“Rebuilt,” Zothgar yelled.
John glanced back at him.
“Beirut,” Zothgar clarified. “Beautiful buildings downtown, strong and modern. In the Green Zone is much night life. Clubs, cafés, l
ife where there used to be death and destruction.”
John understood the Green Zone as the several block no-man’s-land that once divided Beirut between the warring Maronite Christians and Sunni and Shi’a Muslims, who in turn fought with each other as well as the Christians. When John was growing up, Beirut had been synonymous with destruction and chaos. He’d been eight when the suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 killed 241 men.
His father had been outraged, striding through the house as he ranted against those who killed our boys when they were only there to try and keep peace between the warring Lebanese factions. Then followed the years of civil strife complete with vivid TV coverage. Lebanon had not been a nice place at all.
Zothgar was shouting at him again. “Once we land, the plane will drop us at private hangar number twelve. There will be a car that will take us to the terminal. Don’t worry about customs—I have already arranged things. You have hotel reservations, yes? Just as I suggested?”
John nodded. “Yes, we do.”
“Good. Once we get through the airport safely, you will take a taxi to your hotel. I will meet you tomorrow afternoon at this café.” He passed John a business card. “It is not too far from your hotel, so you need not find a taxi. I will have made final arrangements by then for our trip to the camp. You and your men should be prepared to move shortly after we conclude our lunch there.”
Actually, Mary had made all of their Beirut arrangements. When they knocked on the door of her office, which occupied a bay in one of the portable barracks-type structures the men referred to as honeycombs, she’d been in the midst of printing their hotel reservations off of her computer. She’d set them up with a cover as a team of German road bikers, coming to Lebanon to compete in an upcoming race.
It was pure genius as far as John was concerned. Three of them spoke passable German, even if Hogan did so with a decided drawl, and they even looked passable once she’d outfitted them with matching navy blue under armor jerseys and baseball caps with Deutschland embroidered on them. She outdid that when she brought out a molded plastic, locking bicycle storage case for each of them, just big enough to hold their tactical gear.
“This way, no one will even have to ask you why you are coming to Beirut,” Mary said.
John didn’t bother to ask how or where she had secured these things on such short notice in the middle of the Jordanian desert. The resources available to the U.S. government never ceased to amaze him.
Mary also gave them German passports and documentation, complete with cancelled boarding passes from an Air France flight that would be arriving in Beirut from Paris at the same time this rattletrap plane sneaked them in from Jordan. Clever, clever girl.
Sweeney, who sat behind John listening to him and Zothgar shout at each other, leaned forward. “Hey, John, why do we need to go through the terminal at all? Why not just have the car drive us straight to the hotel?”
Zothgar gave him a somewhat chilly smile. “I wish that it could be that easy, my friend. But in Beirut, there are still many factions who, if not warring outright, are still doing so secretly. The government only has a few aircraft, and we know that Hezbollah and other groups are very interested to know who is flying on them. Leaving the airport without exiting in normal patterns would certainly make your story for biking here…how do you say…”
“Compromised,” John said.
Sweeney pushed back into his seat. “This is stupid. We should have HALOed in.”
Hogan, who was sitting behind Zothgar, spoke up. “We’re not actually gonna have to ride anywhere, are we? I ain’t been on a bike since I was in high school, and it wasn’t a good experience.”
John chuckled. “What happened?”
“Let’s just say that the crossbar wasn’t very friendly to me.”
Everyone laughed except Hogan and Zothgar, who apparently didn’t get it.
John peered out the window again; the plane was lining up on its final approach to the airfield.
From the back of the plane, Rip called out, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now beginning our descent into Beirut International Airport. Please fasten your tray tables and return your seat belts to the full upright and locked positions.”
Doc Kelly continued the fractured litany. “Please keep your hands and arms inside the aircraft at all times until we have come to a complete stop at the terminal.”
John looked at Zothgar as hoots of laughter echoed through the tiny cabin. The man was staring out the window with a sober look, puffing on another cigarette.
“Those things will kill you.” John motioned to the cigarette.
“No, my friend,” Zothgar said slowly through a cloud of smoke, his gaze not leaving the window. “Beirut will kill me long before the cigarettes do.”
Ten minutes later as the team was offloading its gear at hangar twelve, a white box van drove up. A rotund man in a dish-dasha emerged and threw open the rear doors. Zothgar spoke to him in rapid-fire Arabic as the men loaded their gear in the van.
Zothgar approached John. “We must hurry. The driver, Mohammed, will take you to the commercial side of the airport, where an Air France jet is now landing. He will open the door to the Jetway, and you will enter the terminal from there just before the doors are opened for the passengers to deplane. This way it will appear as if you are arriving from Paris.”
John tossed his duffel into the van. “Whatever you say.”
Zothgar smiled thinly. “Mohammed will usher you through customs and make arrangements for your passports and visas. He will also see to your transportation to your hotel. If for some reason I am not at that meeting tomorrow, consider the mission aborted and get out of the country as soon as possible.”
The men climbed into the cargo van and sat on their bags.
Zothgar leaned in. “Sleep well, and insh’allah I shall see you tomorrow.”
John expected to see the man tomorrow whether Allah willed it or not.
Mohammed closed the van doors and climbed into the driver’s seat. There was very little conversation on the short ride to their destination, and John used the time to check the Heckler and Koch MK 23 handgun in the hideaway holster at his waist, making sure it was loaded with the safety on.
Then he opened his duffel bag and checked that the clothing on top obscured the helmet, body armor, night-vision goggles, and ammunition from any casual inspection. His laptop case didn’t have a laptop in it. Instead, the XM-8 assault rifle, configured with the compact nine-inch barrel, fit nicely. If need be, he could fire the weapon without removing it from the case, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The longer barrel and buttstock were buried in the bottom of his duffel.
When the van pulled up under the Air France Jetway, the flight hadn’t yet arrived. As they waited, John decided that Sweeney was right. This was a dumb idea. Walking through an international airport with the amount of military hardware they had was like riding a Harley down the center aisle of the National Cathedral and expecting no one to notice.
Neither Mohammed nor any of the team spoke until the Air France 747 taxied slowly into position at the gate. Then Mohammed said, “Come.”
He climbed down from the driver’s seat as the team scrambled out. Shouldering their gear, they followed Mohammed up the outside stairs of the Jetway and then inside. He said a few words in Arabic to the gate agent, who was maneuvering the Jetway into place, and then turned and headed into the terminal with Valor in tow.
The concourse was surprisingly full of people given the late hour. Since they had no other luggage, Mohammed led them straight to customs. There he held out his hand. “Passports.”
As he collected them, he pointed to the wall on one side of the lines that were forming. “Wait there.” Then, papers in hand, he disappeared through a side door. Tension mounted as the minutes ticked by. John hated it when control of his mission was in another’s hands.
Mohammed returned and handed back the papers. “All okay. We go.” He then led them past the l
ines of people waiting to have their passports stamped and out of the airport where they were immediately set upon by honking, waving cab drivers. Some even walked up to the group and offered their services.
Mohammed shooed the most aggressive ones off and found a private minibus that would hold the men and their gear. That done, he came and shook hands with each team member, nodding profusely and saying “Welcome, welcome” over and over. Then he left.
The team loaded into the minibus. In his best German accent, he said, “Hotel Berkley, bitte.”
The driver started his meter and they drove away.
Mohammed nodded at the guard manning the checkpoint as he passed back through security into the terminal and received a similar gesture in reply. Before reaching the door that led downstairs to the tarmac and the white van, he stopped at a pay phone, deposited some coins, and spoke into the mouthpiece.
“Imad, Wisluu El Gharbiyeen.”
The Westerners have arrived.
Downtown Beirut
LIZ SAT AT A SMALL TABLE at an outdoor café on the cliffs beside the Corniche, waiting for Bashir. Yesterday when she left his office, she told him to meet her here with information that could help her. The issue wasn’t whether he could find the information. It was whether he was willing to pass it on to her. “Noon tomorrow,” she had said.
So here she was waiting, thirty hours of the seventy-two gone. No, make that thirty hours and fifteen minutes.
She closed her eyes in despair. When she opened them, Bashir stood across from her, his eyes hidden behind reflecting sunglasses so that when she looked at him, all she saw was her own squinting face. Not very reassuring.
He was dressed in a navy pinstriped business suit and looked cool and unruffled, totally in control. She, on the other hand, had a dry mouth and a sour stomach, to say nothing of a sun glare headache. In her anxiety over Julie and her hurry to meet Bashir, she’d forgotten her own dark glasses.
He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Please let me say that I am very disturbed about Julie and her danger.”
