Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (33 page)

He cried with
relief when he reached the little bag. With a last effort, he
propped himself up to sit against the wall, his head lolling as he
struggled to fight off the wave of tiredness enveloping
him.

Najimi woke
with a start, the blessed relief of sleep replaced by the shrieking
of his jangling nerves. For a second he gazed around the room
unseeing, trying to gain his sense of place. The pain and the
sharpness of his need brought him back to the little
bag.

Licking his
dry lips, he opened it. It was a neat and complete works, a spoon,
cotton wool and a vial of alcohol, a tiny clip-seal bag of fine,
off-white powder and a lighter. It even had a little metal stirrer.
His hands shook so much he had to stop several times. He burned a
small pile of powder on the spoon, adding a splash of the bottled
water and stirred it up to mix the powder in. He pulled the plastic
covering off the syringe and pushed it into a tiny wad of cotton
wool in the middle of the liquid so there were no lumps in it as he
drew up the plunger. He tied his arm with his belt, swabbed the
bulging vein with alcohol and then slid the needle in, a moment
that always caused a slight rise in his trousers, a penetration
that he always wanted to see under a microscope so he could better
appreciate its shiny metal perfection against the warm embrace of
his skin and blood. He pressed the plunger slowly, withdrawing the
needle and pressing the swab to the tiny welling of blood, the belt
falling to the floor.

He prepared
to receive it, his eyes rolling back as his heart pumped and the
first waves of the rush tumbled over each other like the tide
coming in. The waves started to crash like a tsunami and his eyes
snapped open with ecstasy and burgeoning fear. It was too much, too
fast. The waves started to crash down on his head, a tide become a
torrent.

Anthony
Najimi gasped for air but there wasn’t enough in all the
world.

TWENTY-FIVE

Nathalie
hadn’t noticed the lengthening shadows fading to dusk outside. She
screwed her eyes shut as Lynch switched on the lights. His eyes
looked bruised in his pale face, but he smiled for her. ‘Hey,
bookworm. You been sitting there since I left you?’

She nodded.
He sloughed off his jacket and flung it on the back of a dining
chair. She gestured at her screen. ‘We have traced this PIL. It is
a company in Albania. Petrolifera Italo Libanese is owned by Sakhr
Investments, an offshore investment vehicle ultimately owned by
Selim Hussein and Michel Freij, together with other Lebanese
partners. Sakhr is Arabic for Falcon, but I think you know
this.’

Lynch sat
beside her. ‘Sure I do, but where’s the connection with Meier or
the warheads?’

‘
PIL has a
facility, an oil terminal near Vlorë in southern Albania. Scerri’s
phone records show a number of calls over the past month to numbers
in Vlorë, including the International Hotel, PIL’s offices and two
private numbers. The hotel holds a booking in Hoffmann’s name made
by Scerri. We are working with RENEA in Albania, their
counterterrorist army unit. They tell us both of the private
residences are now under surveillance.’

Lynch spoke
haltingly. ‘You think the idea is to load these warheads onto the
boat at this oil terminal?’

Nathalie
smiled at Lynch with what she hoped was the pitying smile a teacher
would bestow upon her slowest pupil. ‘Michel Freij flew out of
Beirut this morning to Tirana in his private jet. Once over
Albanian airspace, his pilot put in a request to divert to
Vlorë.’

‘
And the
boat? Where’s the boat?’

‘
We don’t
know.’ Nathalie looked embarrassed. ‘We cancelled the original
satellite tracking request to the Americans and it’s apparently
taking effort to convince them we are serious this time
around.’

‘
Is it now?’
Lynch rubbed his face in his hands. ‘Why does that not surprise
me?’

They sat at a
table for two overlooking the rocks at Raouché. The great stone
humps seemed to float on the moonlit sea. The lanterns hanging from
the weathered wood rafters cast a warm orange glow over the
red-checked tablecloths and Chianti bottle candlesticks. The wine
Lynch ordered arrived, two large claret glasses poured with
exaggerated panache by the white-aproned waiter.

They touched
glasses, Nathalie appreciating a sip of the expensive Vino Nobile.
Lynch gulped.

Nathalie
surveyed the restaurant, empty in the early evening. The Lebanese
eat late. ‘So what about you? What happened with Najimi? Enough
holding out on me.’

Lynch had
insisted they go to eat before he would share his day with her and
they strolled together down the street from Lynch’s apartment
in
Ain Mreisse
towards the sea. He made laughing small talk all the way. He
puzzled her, the way he was obviously under stress – the amount he
was drinking testament to that alone – and yet he insisted on being
flippant and irresponsible. At the same time, she sensed a burden
had been lifted from him.

‘
Najimi? Ah,
sure, just a heap of shit an’ piss. He’s nothing. He reckons
Falcon’s got a massive underground facility at Deir Na’ee in the
northern mountains where it develops high-tech missile systems with
American investment. It’s totally sealed off by the One Lebanon
militia. Sure, nothing interestin’ about the man at
all.’

He grinned
and she scanned his face, his blue eyes twinkling in his pale
features. She gave up trying to make sense of his words, laughing.
‘Shit, Lynch, you are teasing me.’

‘
Nope. He
sang like a canary. We have everything we need.’

‘
So what did
he sing?’

Lynch slid
the silver-cased voice recorder across the checked tablecloth.
‘Here, put this in yer handbag and ye can listen to it later. He
said all that and more. Freij is a hood, an honest-to-goodness
employee of Uncle Sam’s defence industry, a joint venture partner
with all sorts of big business interests. Selim’s the engineering
brains, Freij is the frontman. They’ve got huge research and
development, something like four hundred software engineers alone,
hardware development in drones and tactical missile systems. It’s
all sanctioned and signed off by the State Department, albeit
hush-hush. Falcon isn’t allowed to sell to the home market without
permission but they can sell outside their backyard. The whole
shebang is up there in the mountains surrounded by Christian
villages where nobody who doesn’t belong ever goes, hidden behind a
disused fruit cannery and named for a nunnery that has been a ruin
for more than a hundred years. Deir Na’ee, the lonely homeplace.’
Lynch sought her eyes. ‘And you know the best bit, Nathalie? The
very best bit?’

She shook her
head.

Lynch drained
his glass and waved it at the waiter. ‘That was the last place Paul
Stokes went before he was killed. He overflew Deir Na’ee with a
rogue chopper pilot called Marwan Nimr, a real gun-for-hire type.
He used to deal drugs, but got busted. Nimr was pals with Najimi.
And Najimi was one of the bastards who kidnapped Paul Stokes. Would
ye ever believe it?’

Nathalie
sipped at her wine, the candlelight glinting from the glass marked
with her fingerprints. She wore red nail varnish that, together
with her lipstick and her black hair, lent an air of fragile
elegance.

‘
You must
hate him very much, this Najimi.’

‘
No, no I
don’t,’ said Lynch. ‘Not anymore.’

Nathalie
wondered quite what that meant but a glance at his face in the
candlelight decided her against asking any more
questions.

It was late.
Lynch sat outside his favourite late night café in Marmara, smoking
apple
shisha
and
drinking
arak
.
Quite drunk by now, he was genial; well known to the locals who
cheerily greeted the
Ingleez
among them. He sat back and smoked the sweetened
tobacco, a little
pasha
or perhaps a caterpillar. The pile of charcoal
brightened on top of the little ceramic cup every time he inhaled.
He held the snaking pipe with its furry grip aside and blew the
smoke up into the air.

Lynch had
left Nathalie back in the apartment, online with her teams of
researchers and hackers working with the information he had
provided them from the interrogation of the intellectual, moralist
and murdering drug dealer Anthony Najimi, ‘Spike’ to his
friends.

They had
returned from their early dinner that evening, Nathalie refusing
Lynch’s offer of a drink with a shy smile and a half-lidded glance,
waving the little silver voice recorder at him. ‘No, I’ll listen to
this first. Work first, play later.’

Lynch had
wondered what
play later
meant, watching her swinging arse push against
the black cotton dress as she sashayed to her room in her high
heels. She had emerged from her room an hour later, ashen-faced,
hurling the recorder at him as he sat smoking a cigar and drinking
his whisky on the balcony.

‘
You
bastard.’

He caught it
neatly as it skittered off the white plastic table in front of him,
laughing. ‘Steady, girl, you could have damaged it. That’s British
government property, I’ll have you know.’

‘
How could
you have—’

‘
Shut up.’
Lynch raised his hand to her, his pointing forefinger moist from
the condensation on the glass he held. ‘I got the results. Your job
is to use them.’

‘
Don’t tell
me my job.’

‘
Fine. So
don’t tell me mine.’

The light
caught the tears running down her cheeks as she glared at him. ‘You
did not have to do it like that, not brutal like that. Not cruel
like that.’

Lynch was
pure fire, ardent anger. ‘He killed her, Nathalie. He made his way
into her fucking bed and then he injected her with a lethal dose of
heroin because Michel Freij wanted him to. Paid him to.’ Lynch
stumbled to his feet. ‘That part of his confession isn’t on the
recording. Neither is his account of lifting Paul Stokes and
imprisoning him before leaving him to the mercy of Freij’s
drugged-up thugs.’

She couldn’t
hold his burning stare. She dropped her gaze.

Lynch passed
her as she stared frozen at the little recorder on the plastic
table. He strode through the sliding door into the apartment and
picked up his jacket from the sofa in the living room. He turned to
her. ‘Don’t you dare judge me, Nathalie.’

She was
silent, her back to him.

‘
Fine,’ he
had said, as gently as he could. ‘I’m going out.’

Tony Chalhoub
pulled up a plastic chair. The sound brought Lynch from his
reverie. He glanced up at Chalhoub then picked up his
shisha
pipe and took a
toke. Chalhoub gestured at the waiter for a glass and poured
himself an
arak
out of Lynch’s bottle.

‘
Know
anything about the dead druggie at Marcie’s?’

Lynch’s pipe
bubbled as he took a long drag, his baleful red-eyed gaze on
Chalhoub. ‘Nope.’

‘
Thought you
might.’

‘
Know
anything about a flyboy called Marwan?’

‘
Christ.’ Chalhoub drank from his
arak
. ‘There’s a blast from the
past. Marwan Nimr, he’s locked up in Roumieh Prison, unless he got
time off for good behaviour. In which case he must have behaved
like an angel because he was doing something like a
twenty-stretch.’

‘
What
for?’

‘
Jesus, Lynch, I’ve got a dead man on my hands and the
hysterical madam of Beirut’s poshest brothel calling through her
Swarovski-covered iPhone contact list and you’re asking
me
questions?’

‘
Anthony
Najimi, AKA ‘Spike’, on the staff roster at AUB.’

Chalhoub
noted down the name. ‘So what happened to him?’

‘
What did
Nimr go down for?’

Chalhoub
sighed and slapped his notebook down on the table, looking to
heaven for succour. ‘He got caught, Lynch. It’s why most hoods go
to prison. Those that survive meeting members of Her Majesty’s
Britannic Government, of course.’

‘
I had nothing to do with him. He was in a hit-and-run
accident.’ Lynch took a pull of his
argileh
. ‘Out of interest, how did
he die?’

‘
Heroin. Odd,
that. The same way Leila died.’

Lynch had the
little plastic disposable mouthpiece of the
argileh
pipe between his lips, but
he didn’t draw on it. His gaze on Chalhoub was impassive. ‘Leila
who?’

Chalhoub held
Lynch’s eye, then gazed around the café. ‘Uncut laboratory grade.
He took what would have been a normal dose of street stuff. How’d
he get hyper-pure gear like that, do you think?’

‘
I wouldn’t
know, Tony. Sure, I’m just a jumped-up researcher in the commercial
section, you know that. What did Nimr go down for?’