Bride of a Bygone War (21 page)

“I haven’t told Lorraine any of your secrets, Ed, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

“It’s not my secrets or yours we’re talking about here, Walt. They’re the government’s secrets, and Lorraine Ellis isn’t cleared for any of them. Have you drafted the cable yet that Tom Twombley wants from you—the one where you agree to drop her?”

Lukash shook his head and awaited further scolding.

“You realize, don’t you, that it’s going to look a hell of a lot worse for you now that she’s shown up over here? She’s not living with you again, is she?”

“Look, Ed,” Lukash protested. “I told her not to follow me and she promised me she wouldn’t. I had absolutely no idea she would come anyway.”

“Don’t bother with the excuses,” Pirelli said. “Just put it all in a cable to Headquarters. And this time make it perfectly clear that you’re cutting her off—unequivocally, absolutely, and once and for all. Can you do that?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“A try isn’t enough, Wally boy. I need a cable this time. On my desk, by the close of business on Friday. No excuses.”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Lukash objected. “Lorraine and I—”

Pirelli held up his hand. “No, not to me—to Twombley. By Friday.”

Chapter 12

The headlights of Major Elie Musallam’s fifteen-year-old Mercedes touring car peered through the clouds as if searching for some assurance that the pavement would still be intact around the next switchback. A bullet-scarred concrete milepost indicated that they were only four kilometers from Bikfaya, which was about half the distance to the winter resort of Qanat Bakiche. Now at an altitude of about eight hundred meters above sea level, the rain had already turned to sleet, and where the road hugged the windswept northern slopes of the Sannine Mountains, Lukash saw scattered patches of glare ice.

“After Bikfaya, we cannot rely on finding benzine,” Elie said. “A cousin of mine owns a filling station on the far edge of town; we will stop there. For us, there will be benzine regardless of rationing.”

Beyond the switchback the road widened and began a gradual descent past the boarded-up roadhouses and auto repair workshops that had once catered to a lively summer resort trade and now remained derelict awaiting the day when the fighting was over and the tourists returned. The road broadened into a sort of boulevard with a muddy median strip.
 

Through the mist Lukash could discern the outlines of massive limestone villas lining both sides of the town’s main street, each one with an identical red tile roof. “The town has a prosperous look to it,” he said. “Where did the money come from?”

Elie laughed. “Lebanon has no oil or gas. Most of these villas were built by émigrés who made their fortunes abroad as merchants, mainly in Africa and South America. The newer ones belong to Phalangists who profited from the war. If you don’t believe the Events have made some people rich, just look around you.”

He pointed toward the long stucco wall that extended an entire block to the right. “Behind that wall is the villa of Walid Nader, brother of the director of intelligence. Walid owns a company that imports munitions from Belgium and China.”

He downshifted and veered off to the right, where another broad thoroughfare continued in roughly the same easterly direction. “Look carefully ahead, behind the iron gate. The director built that villa last year for his wife. My cousin told me that it cost five million lira. He has six children, and each of them has a separate bedroom.”

“You mean he commutes from here to Beirut every day?”

“Sometimes. But he also owns a flat in Achrafiyé. I have visited him there. Other flats in the building cannot be bought for less than one million lira. It was his blessing from God to have married Shaykh Pierre Gemayel’s favorite cousin.”

They passed through the center of Bikfaya, where most shops had not yet rolled up their corrugated iron shutters for business. Then they continued to the far edge of town and pulled off the road at a grimy, one-story, cinder-block hut that faced a pair of ancient gas pumps bearing the faded logo of the state-owned gasoline company. A curly-haired teenage boy in a greasy red ski parka over navy overalls glowered at them from behind a battered aluminum storm door.

“I see my cousin’s oldest boy,” the major said. “Wait here while I arrange things with him.” Elie opened the door and a blast of frigid air forced its way into the Mercedes, scattering a handful of tiny ice crystals over Lukash’s black ski pants.
 

Lukash spread out the map on the dashboard. Not far beyond Bikfaya, he knew, they planned to leave the main highway and follow a secondary road to the market town of Baskinta, where Elie intended to install tire chains for the final ascent to Qanat Bakiche, perched some eighteen hundred meters above sea level. This winter resort village was now a major Phalange artillery base, from which the Christian militia’s U.S.-made 105-millimeter guns could provide covering fire for the Christian enclave of Zahlé, at the edge of the Bekaa Valley, or strike at Syrian positions in the heart of the Bekaa and along the Beirut-Damascus Highway. From Qanat Bakiche there was also a clear line of sight to the neighboring resorts of Farayya, Faqra, and Zaarour, the last now under Syrian occupation.

Lukash saw Major Elie leave the hut, his cousin’s oldest boy following directly behind. He considered for a moment staying in the car while the boy filled the tank but thought better of it and joined the two Lebanese at the pump. Many an agent recruitment could be traced back to a case officer taking the time to befriend a clerk or a receptionist or another little gray person who happened to have access to someone or something of intelligence interest.

“Jibran, this is my friend Monsieur Walter,” Elie told the boy. “He has never skied before in Lebanon, so I am taking him up the mountain to Bakiche. What do you know of the snow conditions there?”

“Of Bakiche I know nothing,” the boy answered woodenly. “Since November it has been impossible to reach the upper slopes without a special pass. Beyond the first roadblock it is a forbidden military zone.”

“Tell me, do you ski, Jibran?” Elie continued.

The boy’s face suddenly came alive. He nodded with enthusiasm.

“Would you like to have a pass to enter the military zone for skiing on the weekends? I’m told they run the téléski on Saturdays and Sundays.”

“But I do not belong to a Phalange unit, Major. How could I get such a pass?”

“Leave the matter to me, Jibran. All I ask of you is that you tell me the license plates of any other cars you see today traveling toward the Baskinta road with skis. And if anyone asks about us or follows us, say nothing and report it to me upon my return. Agreed?”

The teenager gave his best stiff-armed Fascist salute.

* * *

The brownish tracks of the snowplow were the only discernible features around them as they crawled up the mountain in first gear, the beat of the windshield wipers and the rhythmic jingling of tire chains offering the only distraction from the engine’s muffled snorts and growls. With each hundred meters in altitude, they plunged deeper into the dense clouds and found the snow piled higher on the sides of the road.

“Are you sure anybody is going to be up there when we arrive?” Lukash asked as the Mercedes narrowly missed the chiseled edge of a rock face at the top of a desperately tight hairpin turn. “The only other tracks belong to the snowplow, and it seems to have been on its way back down to Baskinta.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll be waiting for us,” Elie assured him. “They have probably already dug their equipment out from the snow and will be ready to begin the day’s work. Do you notice how the sky has lightened and the snow has stopped falling? Here the storm is almost over.”

Lukash looked up and saw that the major was right. While before they had seemed engulfed in a pale gray mist, now he could see the road ahead for at least fifty meters. A brilliant white glare began to envelop them.

Elie turned toward Lukash with a triumphant look. “Have you ever before had an entire mountain to yourself the morning after a snowstorm? Let us finish our work quickly and seize the chance to ski.”

After climbing for another three or four kilometers, they emerged above the clouds onto a sizable plateau, at the far end of which rose the peaks of the Sannine Range. Soon the road leveled out and they approached a settled strip of chalets and small pensions. A string of olive drab jeeps and pickup trucks lined the street where the snowplow had made a couple of extra passes to create two rows of parking spaces. The sky was now a deep azure, and the sunlight reflected with blinding power off the endless expanse of snow. Lukash reached into his breast pocket and retrieved a pair of mountain climber’s sunglasses with leather side coverings.

“It’s a pity we were compelled to close this place to skiers,” Elie began as he parked the Mercedes opposite a stone hut between the twin T-bars at the base of the piste. “As a boy, I came here every weekend from January through March. From our house in Beït Meri, the drive was little over an hour. Then, during the Events, we used this place as an artillery base to shell the leftists and Palestinians in their bases to the south. There is even a road that can be used to smuggle weapons over the mountains to Zahlé, in the Bekaa Valley. In winter a few men with snowmobiles can bring in enough shells and ammunition for an entire summer of fighting. The Syrians are helpless to stop us; they hold the mountains in summer, but in winter the heights are ours. While we Maronites are bred to the hardship of mountain winters, the Syrians cannot abide the cold.”

Elie pointed toward a range of minor peaks to the south. “Do you see the high mountain in the distance, the one with the
télésiège
leading to the summit? That is Zaarour, a winter resort that opened just after the Events. I skied there for two seasons, until the Syrians seized it for use as an artillery base last year. Not long ago there were four places to ski within an hour-and-a-half drive of Beirut; now there are only two.”

“So is that also why Qanat Bakiche was closed for skiing, because of the risk of Syrian shelling from Zaarour?”

Elie’s face took on a look of self-satisfaction. “Of course that is what we tell everyone. But come with me, and I will show you the real reason—a secret ten times more damaging to the Syrians than our artillery fire could possibly be.”

They buckled their ski boots and removed their skis from the overhead rack. As Elie had predicted, the T-bars were functioning but without an attendant anywhere in sight.

“Come, we will travel to the top and then climb a few hundred meters more on foot to our destination. After we finish our work and make the first descent by ski, there will be coffee and brandy for us below at the hut.
Yalla,
let’s go!”

They carried their skis to the lift, stepped into their bindings, and stood side by side to catch the next T-bar, an old-fashioned fixture of solid oak that stung Lukash’s gloved hand when he caught its heft. Suddenly the line grew taut and the two men were yanked forward so violently that they nearly sprawled across the pristine surface of the untracked snow.

Lukash looked down at the major’s skis, a new pair of the latest GS-cut racing skis from France. “Where did you get the new Rossignols? They don’t carry equipment like that in the local shops, do they?”

“Of course. Skiing is very popular here. Many of my friends buy new skis and bindings every year. As for me, this is the first new pair I have had since I returned from my studies in Grenoble after the Events.”

“I didn’t know you studied in France, Elie. What was your field?”

“Chemical engineering. But I did not stay in France long enough to earn my degree. When the fighting started in 1975, I had completed only two years. I came home to fight the Palestinians and never returned.”

“Have you ever thought of finishing your degree?”

Elie laughed. “Many times. Even when I was in Grenoble, I dreamed of studying at MIT. But the Events made it impossible to continue, even in France. You see, a friend of my father had given me a loan to study abroad, but his showroom and all his goods were destroyed during the first weeks of fighting in the commercial district. He lost everything.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Isn’t there any engineering school here in Lebanon where you could finish your degree?”

Elie let out a dry, mirthless laugh. “There is, in West Beirut. But until security conditions change...”

“I know what you mean. Wars have a way of wrecking all sorts of plans.”

Elie slipped the straps of his ski poles over his end of the T-bar and thrust his gloved hands into his jacket pockets. “I have often thought in these last days that I made a grave error—that I should have remained in France when the war started. The fighting would have gone forward in exactly the same way whether I was there or not. And now I would have an engineering degree from a French university and perhaps a job in France, a French wife, a French passport.”
 

He sighed and looked off into the distance toward the glistening snow-covered peaks to the east. “But I was a brave young fool; I thought the Christians of Lebanon needed me. I could not leave my relatives and close friends, and my beautiful Muna, defenseless against the Palestinians and the Communists and the Nasserists and the Shiites and all the other rabble who had taken over the western side of Beirut. Now five years have passed, and sometimes I feel that I play the fool every day that I remain here.