(2013) Collateral Damage (18 page)
'But what is the point of all this deception? Why not kill Koller
yourselves?'
'Some of my people might think it too high a price to pay even
for peace among brothers. It would look bad. The only people who will know about
it in the Front will be the people training him and they are going to be commanded
by somebody who has my total trust.'
The lawyer seriously doubted the existence of such a creature,
but said nothing. Instead he asked, 'And you think Koller is a traitor? That he
made up this story of the old fascists, the Circle?'
'My dear friend,' said Abu Kamal, 'I neither know nor care. When
Koller joined our organisation he told me he was willing to die for it. Now it's
necessary that he does so. Surely it's immaterial who fires the bullet?'
Abu Kamal had taken off his steel-rimmed glasses and was polishing
them with a piece of tissue. He might, thought the lawyer, be talking about the
price of oranges. Not for the first time he wondered: where do we get such people?
But he pretended indifference to the other's cynicism, changed the subject. 'And
how are you going to convince Dove that you are the Realists?'
'I thought you might help
me there.'
'How?'
'By lending me your publishing friend.'
'You ask a lot.'
'I know.'
'It's going to be difficult to persuade him out here, especially
to see you. After all, one of your men just tried to kill him.'
'But now you know why.'
'That's his story.' He was careful not to say 'your story'.
'He would be here under my protection. Nothing will happen to
him. I guarantee that.'
'If anything did happen there would be no hope of
a reconciliation
between us. No more talks ...only the gun.'
'I realise this,' said Abu Kamal.
'Then I will see what I can do.'
As he was being driven back to Beirut in the early hours of the
morning, passing through the Christian ruins of Damour, its rubble now haunted by
Palestinian survivors of the siege at Tal Al Zaatar, the lawyer reflected on the
devious mind of Abu Kamal. It was hard not to admire such duplicity. He stretched
out, undid the knot of his expensive tie,
allowed
his eyelids
to dose. Just before he gave way to the soporific combination of brandy and darkened
car the lawyer again asked himself the question: can I trust Abu Kamal? He decided
to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Dove was scared. He had thought that his rage had banished fear,
but now it was with him all the time, turning his stomach to water, shrinking his
testicles, and making his mind race until it was crammed with blurred images like
views collected from a fast train. Emma, Koller, colleagues from the common room,
Ruth with her bloody face and torn shirt, reporters from the Admiral, made repeated
exits and entrances on a carousel spinning out of control. His fear pumped adrenalin,
denied him sleep, and brought on a peculiar, dry-mouthed alertness: he did not feel
tired.
It was the beginning of his third day in the cell. The daytime
was measured by the meals they brought him on a tray, mostly hommos with bread and
goat's cheese. But the interminable night vigil, waiting for dawn to break to rough
the barred ceiling grille and begin its zebra shadowplay on the floor, had no milestones.
It was like the purgatory on a long aircraft journey when time seemed to have stood
still until minutes before the actual landing. He thought he must have catnapped
sometimes, but he could not recall waking from a single minute's sleep. He had sat
on the filthy blanket they had given him, his back to the cold concrete, listening
to the noises above of doors slamming, people moving, cars starting. One of these
sounds, he promised himself, must spell release; then he would punish his optimism
with the reminder that it was possible for things to get much worse.
It had started with a trip to the port area, where the local
architecture had been so well ventilated during the civil war that it could have
been sculpted out of gruyere cheese. A taxi-driver had told him that there was a
bar there where he might find the sort of people he was looking for. He went in
mid-afternoon, the journalists having warned him not to visit that district any
later in the day. The furnishings were chrome and leather, and the lighting just
strong enough for a sober man to avoid collision with the tables and chairs arranged
in a pit before the high bar. Around the walls alcoves offered a degree of privacy.
As if to emphasize its nocturnal aspirations the juke-box was playing 'Strangers
in the Night'. At first Dove thought the place deserted apart from the barman, a
moustached young Lebanese in a short-sleeved sports shirt who served him a beer.
Then he saw Emma.
She was sitting at the end of the counter and must have appeared
while he was ordering his drink - he was certain she had not been there when he
entered. Her cropped hair was slightly blonder than he remembered it, but it was
Emma all right: the slim, boyish body in cord jeans and a well-opened shirt; the
slightly retrousse nose, and when she became aware of his transfixed stare and turned
to face him, the familiar sardonic smile. 'Hello,' she said, 'anything I can do
for you, luv?' Her accent was English North Country, Manchester he guessed.
'No,' faltered Dove.
'I'm sorry, you
reminded me of somebody - that's all.'
'Anybody nice?'
'Somebody I once knew - she's dead.'
'Thought you saw a ghost, did you? All flesh and blood I am.'
She smiled again; 'Mind if I join you?' Before he could reply
she had picked up her cigarettes and
a gold
lighter and
moved next to him. Her perfume arrived before she did, as overpowering as nerve-gas.
'I'm Tina,' she said, holding out a cold hand for a formal introduction.
Dove, amused, touched it and she briefly dosed around his fingers
before letting go. 'Stephen,' he said.
'Pleased to meet you, Stephen.
It's
nice to hear an English voice.
You staying
in this shit-hole
long?'
'A few days.'
'Lucky you.
Like to
buy me a drink and tell me all about it?'
Closer to, Dove
saw that she was coarser than Emma - heavier face, thicker body.
'What would you like?' Why not, he thought? It would make him
less conspicuous than a man sitting alone if anybody interesting came into the place.
She waved at the barman and he gave her a glass that might have
contained whisky. 'Tell me about it then. Who was this person?'
'What person?' He had already almost forgotten; the resemblance
had faded as soon as she opened her mouth.
'The person you knew?'
'My wife.'
'Oh. How did it happen?'
Dove paused. 'Car crash,' he said eventually.
'It must have been terrible.'
'Yes. What brings you to a dump like this?' He knew of course,
but he wanted to indicate that some matters were not up for discussion. He thought
he detected a look of relief on her face.
'I'm in the import-export business,' she grinned. The grin suddenly
reminded him of Emma again; a waif's grin. She took out a cigarette and waited for
him to reach over for her lighter. 'Funny,' said Dove, '
You
don't look the type.'
'Yes,' said Tina. 'Import-export - that's me. I import my body
and I export cash.' She looked at him levelly and then blew smoke out of the corner
of her mouth, mocking, pleased with her joke.
'Wouldn't have thought there's all that much cash around here
nowadays,' Dove said, sipping his beer.
'Oh, it's not too bad. There's always the UN. The French are
bastards, but the rest of them are OK.
Especially the Norwegians.
They're a good laff they are. They're not proper soldiers really.
Territorials or summit.
Big straw-haired boys.'
She looked at Dove. 'You're not such a tich yourself.' She allowed a hand to rest
lightly on his lap and, despite
himself,
Dove was no longer
quite as indifferent as he had been. It had been a long time, and she did look a
bit like Emma. 'Don't you find it hot in here?
',
she said,
and undid another button on her shirt.
'You'll have us arrested,' said Dove, surveying a considerable
cleavage. He slid his hand over hers and ordered some more drinks.
Later, much later than he intended to be, he was sitting in one
of the alcoves with her, drinking something she called champagne for about the price
of a ticket to the Vienna opera. The bar was filling up. Two more 'hostesses' had
arrived, plump little Egyptians clipping Syrian officers who lunged to refill their
glasses with the speed of men saving children from drowning. A few people were drinking
at the bar. One of them, a lean young man with hair that covered his ears, occasionally
seemed to glance in Dove's direction. There was nobody in the place remotely resembling
Koller. Tina couldn't remember meeting any Germans. 'Oh, we get all sorts down here,'
she said when he asked her. The only people who appeared to have registered with
her were the young Vikings of the Norwegian contingent. 'Lovely fellahs,' she giggled.
'Generous, too.'
Later still, having negotiated a price, he was lying naked on
a bed in a nearby apartment house watching her undress. 'I don't usually do consoomation,'
she had explained.
'Only if I really like a fellah.
I'm
just there to get you to buy drinks, really.'
'For what I've spent it ought to be love at first sight,' said
Dove. But he was sufficiently drunk not to care. Within earshot the Syrians and
the Christian militias were exchanging the first shells of the evening. Neither
of them had mentioned it.
The room was lit by a single orange bulb in a bedside lamp and,
to Dove's
eyes,
there was a cosy, almost fireside glow
to it. He had removed the Webley from his waistband while she visited the bathroom
- 'got to open the bank,' she said - and placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket
which was slung over a chair near the bed. Now he studied her through half-closed
eyes as she removed her shirt, a half-cup bra and, to his surprise, a panti-girdle.
When she turned to him he noticed she was a little flabby about the thighs. It didn't
matter. Drink and soft lighting helped sustain the fantasy. Just for a little while
she could be Emma. She came and sat next to him and stroked him until he was fully
aroused. He
lay
back, his eyes closed, until he heard a
tearing sound. She was opening a sealed condom. 'Don't know what you've been up
to, do I, luv,' she said, deftly rolling it on him like a deck-hand preparing a
diver against the perils of the deep.
Dove grunted. She was ruining it. She wasn't being Emma. She
wasn't being anybody he bloody well wanted. She was being a whore with a heart of
oak. Under the lubricated plastic detumescence set in. Yet he was loath to let the
fantasy slip away. He grabbed her, pulled her towards him,
tried
to kiss her. She turned her head away. 'Don't kiss me.'
'Why the hell not?' he exploded.
'Kissing's for private,' she said. 'You can do anything else.'
'For Christ's sake kiss
me, you bitch,' and grabbing her hard by the hair he pulled her down on to the bed.
At first she tried to make a joke of it. 'I want nourishment
not punishment,' she pleaded. Then she started to fight back in earnest: scratching,
biting,
trying
to get her knees to his groin. 'Gerroff
me, you bastard,' she groaned. 'Fuck off, you bloody animal.'
They fought in hard sweaty silence. The bedside lamp went flying
to land on the floor intact, its unshaded bulb casting crazy shadows. Dove was determined,
but careful not to hurt her badly. He pinioned her, he slapped her,
he
crushed her with his weight until she slowly relaxed, and
the hand at the back of his head was no longer pulling his hair, and her lips were
not biting but brushing his. When they kissed they melted together like true lovers
and, to his surprise, when she allowed him to open her legs, he found she was moist
below. 'It takes all kinds,' thought Dove.
Afterwards, when she was making noisy use of the bidet next door,
he realised that during their exertions the condom had come off.
He dressed quickly and left, declining her offer of a drink and
leaving a large tip, suddenly sober and contrite. Emma would understand, he told
himself. It didn't help very much. In the lift he took the little revolver out of
his pocket and put it back in his waistband.
Outside, he had taken perhaps twenty steps when an old Chevrolet
pulled up alongside him, a figure in the back gesticulating as if he wanted to know
the way somewhere. The door opened; Dove recalled slight apprehension as he walked
up to it, the distant jangling of alarm bells. Later, it came to him that when people
wanted to ask directions they usually wound down the window.
There had been three of them: the driver, the man in the back
of the car and a third who came up from behind and bundled him into the car with
a gun in his back. They had taken the Webley then. The one who had been behind him,
the lean, long-haired young man who had watched him in the bar, held it up by its
hexagonal barrel, like an object of archaeological interest. 'Some piece,' he said.
'Who'd you get this off?
Billy the Kid?'
To Dove's amazement he
spoke English with a heavy American accent. Conversation ceased after that. When
the Englishman started to ask questions he snapped: 'Shut up or we'll barbecue your
ass.'
