Dynamite Fishermen (26 page)

* * *

Prosser drove through the backstreets of Antélias and Jall ed Dib for twenty minutes along a preset surveillance detection route before heading back toward the port. Because the meeting with Maroun had been so short, he had plenty of time to get back to the embassy. He made several leisurely detours to become more familiar with neighborhoods that he might want to use for dead drops, car pickups, or brief encounters with his agents.

Passing through the Dora commercial district once again, he overtook a column of eight empty tractor-trailers returning to the port to take on cargo and then came upon another dozen or more rigs queued up outside the port’s eastern gate. This was an auspicious sign, because if the port was still receiving trucks, it would almost certainly be safe for him to cross to West Beirut. He drove to the head of the queue, received a languid wave from the sentry, and entered the eastern side of the harbor complex.

Traffic was sparse along the main road that led west past rows of warehouses serving the port’s second and third basins. Prosser drove at moderate speed into the cobbled main square. Then he skirted the water’s edge to the corner of a battered pre-1975 corrugated metal warehouse and turned left sharply onto the apron of the port’s first basin.

Ahead and to his right was a narrow two-lane corridor leading west between an anti-sniper barrier of shipping containers stacked four high on one side and the water’s edge on the other. Although eastbound traffic was sparse and moved quickly, westbound traffic was already backed up for the corridor’s entire length. Prosser’s Renault was the last in a one-hundred-meter-long queue of cars and trucks waiting to enter the corridor. He reached back with his free hand for Monday’s
International Herald Tribune
and resigned himself to a long wait.

Within minutes of settling back to read the sports section, Prosser heard muffled pops of antiaircraft fire to the southwest. High in the sky he observed a pair of glinting warplanes unloading shiny metallic streamers and parachute flares one thousand meters higher than the puffs of black flak smoke that erupted in the skies above the city. As the antiaircraft fire spread to cover the skies directly overhead, the pops became thunderous booms, yet the warplanes never seemed to go anywhere near the black puffs.

Prosser watched a pair of the silvery aircraft circle around to the west and climb to rejoin another formation at a much higher altitude. The planes had to be Israeli, since the Israeli air force exercised total control of the airspace over western Lebanon, but from where he sat Prosser couldn’t tell whether they were mounting an air strike somewhere in the city or just carrying on the customary war of nerves against Beirut’s air defense network.

The hammering of heavy machine guns several hundred meters to the south brought Prosser’s thoughts back down to earth. Within seconds more machine guns entered the fray, spreading panic among the drivers trapped along the waterfront corridor. Horns blared furiously as cars and trucks slammed against the wall of shipping containers and against each other in the desperate attempt to turn themselves around within the congested space and put some distance between themselves and the gunfire. Some drivers abandoned the effort entirely and fled on foot to seek cover in nearby warehouses. Not far away, field artillery and mortars began to open fire.

As Prosser had not quite reached the two-lane corridor, he felt he had a fair chance of maneuvering the Renault back off the apron and onto the cobbled square before incoming artillery and mortar fire closed in upon him. Indeed, no sooner did he shift into reverse than two mortar rounds dropped into the water 150 meters away. The drivers behind him sized up the situation at once, and most of them succeeded in backing out onto the wider portion of the loading apron, where several cars could turn around at the same time. Prosser followed suit and within seconds was speeding back across the commercial port’s central plaza toward East Beirut.

After exiting through the eastern gate, Prosser pulled onto the shoulder along the ridge overlooking the harbor complex. The warplanes were gone now, as were the black puffs of flak smoke. He looked down over the central business district for signs of continuing battle, but despite the terrible din he could see no muzzle flashes or shell bursts—only pillars of smoke rising from the maze of crumbled walls and caved-in roofs.

Now that he was safe, Prosser wondered what had become of the drivers left trapped along the water’s edge. What would he have done in their place? It seemed clear that had he arrived on the apron just a few minutes earlier, he, too, would have been caught between the container barrier and the water’s edge. He decided that if the situation ever arose again, he would leave his car and run for cover. Any low spot would suffice to protect him against shrapnel, which was the worst hazard. As for a direct hit, the odds were a million to one against.

Prosser drove back to the Qarantina Bridge and headed south toward the Galerie Semaan crossing, surmising that the museum checkpoint would be closed because of the shelling. The neighborhoods he traversed now were far removed from the fighting, and their main roads bore the usual midday traffic, as did the Galerie Semaan crossing itself. Not until the Airport Circle did he begin to see any evidence that an aerial bombing might have occurred. There, stationed at varying intervals around the circle, were five 12.7-millimeter machine guns mounted on pickup trucks and four twin-barreled 23-millimeter antiaircraft cannons on flatbed trucks, all with barrels pointed skyward to await the warplanes’ return.

As Prosser made his way past the main entrance of the Sabra refugee camp, he spotted at least fifteen jeeps and Land Rovers heading east carrying uniformed conscripts with shaven heads, their eyes glassy with excitement and fear. Some waved their weapons wildly and fired into the air when their vehicles were forced to halt in the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

On Prosser’s right, forty or fifty forlorn civilians, mainly women and children, huddled under the concrete skeleton of an unfinished four-story building and stared out as if awaiting some signal that it was safe to emerge. Although no bombs or rockets appeared to have fallen anywhere near them, the din from the firing must have been horrendous, and the eyes of the small children clinging to their mothers seemed filled with unutterable terror.

About a kilometer and a half to the north, black columns of smoke rose and twisted toward the sky. Prosser heard the faint wailing of distant ambulances and wondered once again if aerial bombs had actually fallen on the city. He lowered his window and called out to a gray-bearded Arab dressed in a soiled jalabiyya and threadbare black waistcoat who stood at the side of the road to watch the twisting plumes of smoke.

“What happened, Uncle?” he asked the man in Arabic. “Where is that smoke coming from?”

“Fakhani and Tariq el Jedide,” the old man replied.

“But those are residential neighborhoods,” Prosser replied, more to himself than to the Arab.

The old man pulled a red plastic transistor radio from his waistcoat pocket and held it out for the foreigner to listen. “It is not me who says so. Listen, the Voice of Palestine. It says the Zionist planes struck at the offices of the Palestinian Resistance. Many hundreds have been killed. May Allah preserve them.” The old man shook his head in disbelief.

Meanwhile, Prosser pondered whether the Voice of Palestine intentionally inflated its casualty estimates or whether Israel could have cold-bloodedly laid waste to a crowded residential neighborhood in order to exact Lebanese-style revenge upon leaders of the Palestinian Resistance.

“Listen, listen! They say the raid was a failure!” the old man shouted excitedly, still holding the radio out to Prosser. “The announcer says the bombs were intended for Yasir Arafat and the leaders of the Resistance, but they all escaped without harm!
Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar
!”

“
Allahu akbar
, my ass,” Prosser replied under his breath, then moved on under the goad of car horns blaring behind him.

PART II

Chapter 20

Abu Khalil sipped his strong sweet Arabic coffee in the café near the corner of rue Tariq el Jedide and rue Sabra and waited for Lieutenant Fakhri to return from his reconnaissance. He already knew that Colonel Hisham’s office was on the second floor of the office building around the corner from where he sipped his coffee, but he wanted to know more about the structures surrounding it and the courtyard out back. Lieutenant Fakhri, who had once studied to be an architect, was good at this kind of work.

Abu Khalil rose from the table as soon as he saw his partner standing at the kiosk opposite the café and followed him into the alley a few meters away. “Is it suitable?” he asked the lieutenant.

“Perfect. Each room has a small balcony, and there are two exits to the rear of the courtyard.”

“And the security men?”

“I could see two at the entrance, but I believe there are no others except for those who work in the office. There is a tea boy, but he seems to serve the other tenants as well and is unarmed.”

“Good. Do you remember what you are to say?”

“Every word.”

“Then let us go,” Abu Khalil commanded. “I will enter from the opposite direction, a few steps behind you.”

Though both men had short, military-style haircuts and neatly trimmed mustaches, and both were dressed in dark trousers and open-necked tropical shirts worn loose around the waist, one would not have thought the bright-eyed and easygoing young lieutenant to be associated with the rough-hewn, hard-bitten Abu Khalil. Yet, ever since the two had fought side by side against the Israeli army during its three-month incursion into Lebanon in 1978, the younger man had been Abu Khalil’s most trusted aide and confidant.

The lieutenant, now nearing his twenty-fourth birthday, sometimes considered resuming his studies and leaving Palestine’s armed struggle to others, but after every clash and every looming threat to the Palestinian refugees who remained trapped without a future in Lebanon, he felt that dream slip further away. Abu Khalil treated him like a younger brother and had saved his life more times than he could count. Certainly as long as Abu Khalil needed him, Lieutenant Fakhri would stand by his commander and friend.

He stepped into the darkened foyer and then stood silently at the foot of the steps while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom and for Abu Khalil to follow. For several long seconds he ignored the demands of the two security men for his identity papers. Before their frustration rose to the level of anger, Abu Khalil entered the foyer behind his partner and slowly removed his dark glasses with an air of quiet authority.

“We are here to see the colonel,” he announced to the pair at the door, both lean, dark-skinned Gazans in their late twenties who looked like seasoned fighters, if not terribly astute security men. Each wore a mottled brown-and-tan camouflage uniform without insignia of rank or affiliation, and each wielded a Belgian FAL automatic rifle.

“Come, Abu Atef!” the taller guard called out to the tea boy while reaching out once again for the identity papers of his visitors.

“
Hawiyyatak
,” the guard insisted.

“
Maa fiish
,” Abu Khalil countered with a conclusive shake of his head. “The colonel is expecting us. Tell him Abu Khalil has come.”

The Egyptian tea boy, a lanky youth in his late teens, arrived and accepted the message for the colonel. He returned a short while later with an offer to escort the two visitors upstairs. As they followed him down the second-floor corridor past door after door that bore no number or marking, Lieutenant Fakhri leaned toward Abu Khalil so that he could be better heard.

“I don’t think any of these is occupied,” the lieutenant said in a low voice.

A barely perceptible smile formed on Abu Khalil’s face.

The tea boy knocked five times on the door before trying the handle. It was unlocked and he pushed open the door to let the two guests inside.

At the far end of the office sat Jamal al Ghawshah, alias Colonel Hisham, behind a gray sheet-metal desk, examining a set of maps spread out before him. The colonel was of average height and weight for a Levantine Arab, and as Abu Khalil had once told Prosser, his facial features were equally nondescript except for a thick black mustache and dark eyes of piercing intelligence that never seemed to blink. Like many Arabs nearing middle age, the crown of his head was nearly bald, but his hair was combed across the top to hide the bald spot. His white linen trousers, pale blue starched shirt, and lightweight navy blazer looked out of place in the untidy and sparsely furnished office.

The colonel was holding a magnifying glass over one of the maps when the tea boy ushered his guests inside. Upon their entering the room, he gathered the map sheets into a pile, turned the pile face down, and placed an electric fan on top before moving across the room to receive his visitors. Although the balcony door and casement windows behind the desk were both wide open, the small fan seemed wholly incapable of drawing fresh air into the enclosed space.

The three men greeted one another with the traditional kisses on both cheeks while the Egyptian tea boy gathered up empty glasses from around the room. Then the colonel invited his guests to sit on the sofa and ordered a new pot of mint tea with lemon slices. In the moment before the Egyptian closed the door behind him, Abu Khalil noticed the boy hesitate, as if waiting for further instructions, and saw the colonel signal by the faintest shake of his head that no other action need be taken.