“Well, whoever was behind it,” Harry continued, “what gets my back up is that they’re dropping off the damned things right here in Ras Beirut. We could all be blown to shreds just strolling down rue Bliss minding our own goddamned business.”
Prosser reached into his rear trouser pocket, withdrew a three-by-five index card, and handed it to Harry. “Sorry to change the subject, but I have a favor to ask.”
“Shoot,” Harry replied with a vaudeville wink.
Prosser groaned and went on. “Do you remember the time I came to your office about five or six weeks ago while you were grilling a Palestinian kid about his forged police clearance? As I recall, his first name was Radi or Rami or something like that. Could you dig up his visa application and make a photocopy for me?”
“I think I remember the one you’re talking about. Sure, I can probably fish it out.”
“Good. Favor number two is this: I need to know whether you’ve ever had a visa application from either of the other two men listed on this card.”
“Jamal al Ghawshah. Pretty common name, but I’ll try. Maarouf Abdel-Latif Zuhayri. Zuhayri,” he repeated to himself. “Say, isn’t that the same Zuhayri who caused the stir at my party awhile back?”
“That’s him.”
“What a piece of work that guy was. I’m still not sure who let him in.”
“Come on, Harry. You told me yourself that Layla brought him. They were tight back then, don’t you remember?”
“Suppose I do remember. What of it?”
“Nothing much. I just thought you might want to keep in mind who her friends are.”
“Look, Con, I hardly know Zuhayri. If I saw him around town, I’d say hello, and that would be it. It’s my job to be friendly to everybody.”
“Well, Zuhayri’s not exactly a friend of Uncle Sam. First, he’s been putting money into Fatah’s special operations for five or six years now. What he’s getting in return, we don’t know, but bankrolling those thugs is definitely not the moral equivalent of giving to the United Way. Second, since the Iraqis blacklisted him this winter, Zuhayri has been in contact with Syrian military intelligence on several occasions, and also with an outfit called the Eagles of the Revolution that appears to be a Syrian-sponsored terrorist outfit of some kind. Judge a man by the company he keeps, Harry.”
“I never heard that Zuhayri was blacklisted in Iraq. I thought he made his money selling used construction equipment to the Iraqi war ministry. That’s what Layla has been saying anyway.”
“What else does Layla say about Zuhayri?”
“For one thing, she says he couldn’t care less about politics. She says he just cultivates political types to help him make money.”
“Do you always believe what she tells you?”
Harry bristled. “Come on, Con. Don’t be a shit.”
“A shit? Is that what I am when I warn you to watch out for yourself? Can you honestly say to me that you know what Layla’s relationship is with Zuhayri? Don’t you suppose it’s conceivable that he could have directed Layla to get close to you because his friends in Fatah or Saiqa told him to?”
“What a rotten thing to suggest, Con! Why should I give a rat’s ass about Layla’s old boyfriends? She broke up with Zuhayri months ago, before she went to the States, and last week she told me she hasn’t seen him since. That’s good enough for me.”
“I’m not trying to impugn your manhood or your powerful appeal to women, Harry, but Uncle Sam does have a certain interest in knowing whether somebody might be trying to use someone like Layla against the embassy. All I’m suggesting is that you might want to find out more about her relationship with Zuhayri. Nobody can force you to, but if you don’t, it’s only a matter of time before Ed will have to tell the ambassador about his concerns.”
“And since when do you and Ed Pirelli have the authority to tell Foreign Service officers who they may and may not associate with?”
“As I said, nobody’s telling you what to do, Harry. But if you won’t hear it from me now, you’ll be hearing it from the department later, and when you do, the message will go straight into your security file.”
“I suppose you’ve checked out Rima, too? And you’d be prepared to drop her if Ed Pirelli took a dislike to any of her friends?”
“I’d try to talk him out of it, but it would be his call.”
Harry seemed appalled. “I’m not sure I heard you right, Con. You’d drop Rima, just like that?”
Prosser said nothing.
“I don’t suppose you realize that Rima has fallen in love with you.”
“She’s a big girl,” Prosser said. “I’m sure she can handle it.”
Harry shook his head in bewilderment. “You really don’t understand, do you? Rima is crazy about you. She probably thinks she even has a fighting chance of marrying you someday if she can hang on long enough. Although I’m beginning to wonder why on God’s earth she’d want to.”
“Marry? Rima?” Prosser asked sharply.
“Is that such a foreign word to you? She wants to be your wife, you jerk! She’s seen other American diplomats with foreign wives, so she thinks why not her?”
“I’ll tell you why not, Harry. Because the day I broke news of the engagement, I’d be out of a job, that’s why. The chances of Rima getting a security clearance are about as great as mine of being elected to the senate.”
“And how the hell is she supposed to know that? State doesn’t have that kind of rule against marrying foreigners. Only you people—”
“Well, I can’t exactly inform her about it,” Prosser interrupted. “It’s classified.”
“But you don’t seem to have a problem letting her dream on, do you?”
“How did we get on this subject anyway, Harry? It’s becoming quite tedious.”
Harry opened his mouth to reply but thought better of it.
Without a word, Prosser rose, picked up the thermos jug and carried it to the edge of the roof. There he slowly poured its remaining contents over the wall and watched the liquid fall while Harry finished dressing.
* * *
Harry’s Polish Fiat hung close behind the Renault as the two cars sped eastward along rue Ibn Sina through the darkened former nightlife area of Phoenicia Street and past the looming hulk of the Holiday Inn. At the next block they turned off the seaside road and wended their way up a potholed side street for three blocks before coming to a stop opposite a massive pre–World War II apartment building. No light issued from its wrought-iron door or through its shuttered windows. Nor could the long-dead streetlamps shed any light on the enamel number plate fastened to the wall beside the door.
Layla and Harry remained in the Fiat with the doors locked and windows rolled up. When Prosser and Rima approached the building on foot, Harry lowered his window a few centimeters.
“Cover us; we’re going in,” Prosser deadpanned.
“Are you sure it’s open?” Harry asked.
“Sure I’m sure. See those parked cars at the corner? They wouldn’t be there if it were closed. Come on, let’s go in.”
Prosser pushed open the heavy wrought-iron door and groped along the wall of the darkened lobby for the light switch. At last he found it: a timer button that gave thirty seconds of light each time it was pressed. Harry rapped the elevator call button and started the antique wooden cabin on its descent from the fourth floor. His relief was evident when he saw the hand-painted sign attached to the outer elevator door: “Chez Jean-Paul, 4 étage.”
Prosser was ready to swing the massive lobby door shut when he heard an old man’s voice calling insistently from across the street.
“Yaa, siidi! Yaa, siidi!”
Prosser and Harry stepped outside and saw a long-bearded Arab man in flowing black pantaloons and a black-and-white-checkered Arab headdress approach them from the vacant lot across the street with arms gesticulating wildly.
“Forbidden! Forbidden!” the old man repeated breathlessly in Arabic as he crossed the street. “I
nterdit, verboten!”
“What is forbidden, Uncle?” Prosser answered in Arabic.
The Arab pointed to the pavement, where a line of bricks defined a no-parking zone outside the apartment building’s entrance. Prosser had disregarded a similar line of bricks in taking up his parking spot across the street. Such informal parking restrictions had sprung up outside thousands of buildings throughout the country as the fear of car bombs had spread.
“Security, siidi—parking is forbidden here. You must move your car at once.” The old man’s face bore an expression of simple earnestness, and when he saw that Prosser was not angry about being asked to move, it relaxed into a tentative smile.
Prosser took out his diplomatic identity card and held it up to the old man’s view. “Don’t worry, Uncle, I am a diplomat, not a terrorist. I promise you I am carrying no bombs in my car tonight. Would you like me to show you?”
He smiled and circled around to the rear of the car to open the trunk for the old man’s inspection and then gave him a copy of his business card with his name written on the back in Arabic. The Arab man nodded perfunctorily at the empty trunk and glanced at the card without any sign of comprehension.
Prosser turned to leave, then as an afterthought pressed a ten-lira note in the old man’s hand. The Arab man smiled in appreciation, exposing a mouthful of crooked teeth. “If you need us, Uncle,” Prosser said, “we will be upstairs in the restaurant.”
When the elevator door opened at the fourth floor, they stepped into a remarkably authentic replica of a French country restaurant, complete with oak paneling, lace curtains, stuffed antelope heads, and a stone fireplace at the far end of the room. The proprietor, a stout, hirsute Frenchman in shirtsleeves with a colossal hooked nose, showed them to their table and called for a waiter to bring baguettes and butter and a wine list.
Prosser looked around the room. Aside from two well-dressed Lebanese couples in their sixties, the only other patrons that evening consisted of a party of Europeans readily identifiable as journalists by their overstuffed shoulder bags and rumpled safari suits. Prosser recognized the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent first through a gray cloud of cigar smoke. Then he picked out others from the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the New York Times—along with Prosser’s neighbor, Simon Grandy of the Sunday Times.
The journalists appeared to have finished their meal, but not their wine or cigars, as six empty bottles of Ksara Blanc des Blancs huddled together at the center of the table, and a fresh bottle circulated from hand to hand. The reporters were embroiled in a heated discussion of Middle Eastern politics, from which Prosser could pick out only the names of King Fahd and King Hussein and the phrase “Camp David Accords.” The Lebanese barkeep looked on with satisfaction as he stripped the foil from around the neck of another Ksara bottle.
The two American diplomats and their companions had scarcely occupied their table and ordered the wine when Prosser noticed Simon Grandy squinting intently at them from across the room. Prosser waved to him and after a few seconds drew a startled wave in reply. Grandy pushed his chair back and rose unsteadily to his feet.
Prosser crossed the distance between them before the Briton could take two steps from the table. “Simon, it’s good to see you again after so long. How have you been?”
“Actually, I would be a damned sight better if I hadn’t spent the last two weeks in Basra covering the Iran-Iraq War. But how about you, Prosser? Have the Lebs been keeping you on your toes?”
“Not as much as they might. So far we’ve had a quiet summer. I was in Cyprus last week for a little R and R, but otherwise it’s been the same old routine.”
A hint of apprehension appeared at the edges of the Englishman’s smile, and he took another step away from the table, even though there was little chance of their being overheard. “Let’s have a pint together soon, shall we?” he said, looking over his shoulder self-consciously.
“Sure, Simon. Will you be at home over the weekend?”
“Yes, but if you don’t mind terribly, could we make it a bit sooner than the weekend? I’ve learned something about Graham’s death that I believe you should hear. Could you meet me at, say, five o’clock tomorrow at the Duke of Wellington Pub?”
Prosser nodded. “I’ll look for you at the bar.”
“Wait a moment,” Simon broke in. “How rude of me. I forgot to introduce you to my colleagues. Come along, it will only take a moment.”
Simon Grandy led him back to his table. “Do you know Wolf and John and Andrew and Mary?” he asked, nodding toward each one in turn.
The journalists interrupted their discussion to salute Prosser with coolly polite smiles and muttered greetings. Despite their unimposing appearance, these foreign correspondents clearly considered themselves several degrees above any breed of civil servant.
“You might be interested to know that Andrew here has just received word from the Guardian’s local office that Israeli gunboats have attempted a seaborne landing of troops at Damour. He’s been trying for the past half hour to convince us to run off there with him,” Simon explained, nodding toward the youngest member of his party, a short, red-haired Scot in his early thirties with a freckled face made even more florid by an ample ration of wine.
“Radio Palestine reports such landings every second night, and not one of them is to be believed,” the German correspondent scoffed. “It would be a complete waste of time to go there, I assure you.”
“My driver is picking me up in five minutes,” the Scotsman announced, undaunted. “Sten is coming, so that leaves room for two more. Who will it be?”
“Not me,” the Daily Mail correspondent replied wearily. “The Palestinians probably just overreacted to one of the Israeli gunboats offshore. It happens all the time.”
“I’m game,” the New York Times correspondent offered. “But I left my passport at the Commodore Hotel. Can we swing by on our way out?”
“We won’t need passports. You brought your press card, didn’t you?” interjected Mary, a veteran Time correspondent in her mid-thirties.
“Mary’s right; the press card will be enough,” Andrew declared. “My driver can talk us through any roadblock we meet. He’s been on the staff for years and is an absolute wizard at dealing with the Syrians and Palestinians.”
“Do you have the number of the American embassy in case you need help?” Prosser inquired politely of the woman from Time.
“Of course I have it,” she answered curtly. “But I rather doubt it would be of much use. I’ve been told you embassy people never set foot outside the Beirut city limits.”
“Then you’ve been misinformed. But I suppose a rumor like that would be rather difficult for you to check out.”
The Time correspondent turned her back on Prosser and took another puff from her cigarette.
Prosser wrote a telephone number on his business card and handed it across the table to a slender, balding, grayish-complexioned man who was the chief New York Times correspondent for Lebanon. “The number on the back belongs to the vice consul sitting right over there,” Prosser told him, pointing at Harry. “He’ll be home by midnight. I suggest you call him if you need help. And if you can’t reach him, feel free to call me.”
As Prosser took leave of Simon and returned to his own table, he heard Andrew order two bottles of Ksara rosé for the road.
After returning to his own table, Prosser recounted the journalists’ plans for their nocturnal excursion to Damour.
“You must be joking,” Rima replied. “Surely foreign journalists could not be so stupid.”
“Never mind, Rima; the Syrians will turn them back before they go very far,” Layla replied blithely.
“I heard you tell them to call me,” Harry interjected. “Thanks a bundle.”
“A couple of them are American citizens, Harry. Helping Americans in distress is part of your job, isn’t it?”
“So is repatriating their remains. You should have dissuaded them from
going.”
“They’re big boys and girls. Screw them,” Prosser declared, reaching for a baguette.
At that moment the wine steward brought their bottle of Pouilly-Fumé to the table. In his wake arrived the headwaiter with individual terrines ofpâté.
“Anyway,” Prosser continued with a benevolent smile, “I told them you wouldn’t be home until after midnight. That means we still have time for a nightcap downtown before you have to be on hand to receive their S.O.S.”
“All I can say is if I’m up all night because of these jokers, you owe me big.”
“And if they write you up as a hero for bailing them out, remember who brokered the introduction.”
* * *
Hamra Street was deserted for its entire garbage-strewn length, its few functioning streetlamps casting a dim yellow glow down narrow alleys choked with the parked cars of apartment dwellers. Deep in these alleys, scattered neon lights showed the way to some of West Beirut’s trendier bars.
If the Hamra Cellar was such a trés chic destination among Beirut’s fashionable people, Prosser asked himself, why had he never heard of it? And where were the other patrons? He saw no signs of movement anywhere, and he wondered if the Hamra Cellar, like the Stork Club, was one of those ghost institutions so far in decline since 1975 that they did little more than remind one of how far the city had deteriorated since its prewar heyday.
Rima signaled for him to turn off rue Hamra at rue Jeanne d’Arc and park wherever he could find a spot. Once the car was parked, she led him another two blocks on foot into a brightly lit passage where, over the door to a one-story, windowless cinder-block building, a red neon sign advertised the single word “Cellar.”
Two bearded young men in olive drab fatigues and web pistol belts leaned against the wall to the left of the entrance, M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders. They paid no attention to Prosser as he escorted Rima through the door. These were Beirut-style doormen, hired from whatever militia happened to control the neighborhood for the purpose of keeping the other troublemakers away.
Dynamite Fishermen (Beriut Trilogy 1) Page 25
