Dynamite Fishermen (38 page)

When the ballad ended, the Radio Liban announcer identified himself and immediately played a second song by the Spanish star, then a third. Husayn had already taken his place in the queue at the Galerie Semaan crossing when the news came on. By force of habit, he tuned out the announcements of fighting along the Green Line, the lack of progress toward resolving the dockworkers’ strike, and the latest devaluation of the Lebanese lira, but when the announcer spoke the words “car bomb,” he listened closely to every word. What he heard was so diabolically simple that he was amazed he had not already thought of it.

“Following an explosion earlier this week at the western side of the Galerie Semaan crossing,” the announcer said, “the Internal Security Forces have been on the alert for a new type of car bomb. According to sources in the interior ministry, the Mercedes taxicab that exploded Tuesday inside the no-man’s-land was set to explode automatically when the driver opened any of the taxicab’s doors. Fortunately for the driver of this car bomb, when the cab ran into a ditch, he crawled out through a window.”

Husayn turned off the radio and followed the slow-moving line of vehicles to the edge of the no-man’s- land. He waited for a signal from the sentry and then raced across, paying careful note to the crater where fifty-five kilos of explosives had detonated along the right shoulder of the road on Tuesday. A moment later, a Syrian sentry waved him through the western checkpoint and a plan began to take shape in his mind.

* * *

Husayn spotted Rami’s silver Volvo 150 meters ahead, waiting at a petrol station for the Peugeot to pass. Another fifty meters beyond, the four-lane Damascus Highway narrowed into two lanes as it led through canyons of tightly packed apartment blocks. He drove past the Volvo and then veered suddenly into the vacant center lane left created by the merging lanes of traffic. Horns blared all around, but the other cars made way for him as he bullied his way into a spot at the head of the queue. Behind him drivers edged toward the center to prevent anyone else from attempting the same trick.

In his rearview mirror Jamal could see the Volvo twenty or thirty cars back and unable to catch up. The single lane of westbound vehicles moved with agonizing slowness but not so slowly that Rami or his companion could safely attempt overtaking him on foot. Each time he saw the brake light of the car in front of him light up, his heart froze. He had to maintain his lead until he reached Airport Circle.

The moment he saw a clear path ahead, he made the Peugeot jump the curb and sped along the sidewalk the remaining distance to the traffic circle. He shifted into third gear and cut in front of a Toyota pickup heavily laden with sand and then bottomed out the Peugeot’s suspension as it dropped back down onto the road.

The Avenue Camille Chamoun stretched before him like a runway, its four poured-concrete lanes standing by to launch him forward to safety. If only the Peugeot could outrun the Volvo for the remaining two kilometers to Pepsi Cola Circle, he could peel off into Fatah-land, where Rami’s Syrian protectors could not so easily help him. There would still be the risk of searches, but if he managed to steer around or bluff his way through those, he might just beat Major Jamal at his own game.

He shifted into fourth gear and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The Peugeot was hardly a sports car, but neither was the Volvo. The Peugeot gradually gained speed until the dial reached 150 kilometers per hour. He could see the Volvo behind him now. It was gaining on him, to be sure, but not quite fast enough to pose a threat, and he knew that unless an act of God intervened, he now had a clear shot to the circle.

Then Husayn spotted the convoy of flatbed lorries carrying tanks and armored vehicles. They were heading at right angles to the road from the Cité Sportive Stadium. “Another damned military parade,” he cursed. In the same breath he prayed that he would beat the first of them to the spot where the dirt road intersected the highway.

The driver of the first heavy transport pulled onto the asphalt highway with the nonchalance of someone who knows he has nothing to fear from a mere automobile, even one threatening to ram him from the rear at 150 kilometers an hour. The lorry trailing behind him followed suit and then edged into the passing lane to overtake the leader. Husayn saw the move and realized there was no longer any time to brake.

Husayn gripped the Peugeot’s steering wheel tightly, took aim, and shot between the two lorries at full power with only a few centimeters to spare on either side. A moment later the gap closed and both lanes were blocked behind him by the slow-moving transports. To get around them the Volvo would have to slow down and overtake them on the rubble-strewn shoulder. As he entered the traffic circle, Husayn caught a glimpse of the silver sedan veering onto the right shoulder.

When at last he reached the checkpoint, the tanned Fatah sentries in their smart camouflage jumpsuits and red berets waved him through without the slightest suspicion that inside the Peugeot were enough explosives to level an apartment block. Husayn waved back and could not suppress the silly grin of relief on his face as he entered the Palestinian enclave.

He had advanced no more than a block or two when suddenly the main street was mobbed with automobiles, pickup trucks, delivery vans, pushcarts, and motorbikes. The side streets were similarly thronged with pedestrians on their way home for the midday meal and siesta. Husayn tried to peer over and around the three-wheeled delivery cart directly ahead of him to determine the best way out of the main shopping area, but he could not see past it.

He thought that by now the Volvo would have reached the checkpoint he had just passed. Rami would likely send the second man ahead on foot once they became stuck in traffic. He had to turn off the main road soon if he was to be sure they would not spot him.

At the next side street, Husayn turned right and saw the Cité Sportive in the distance. He followed a horse-drawn
butagaz
cart to the first intersection and was beginning to think he was only a few minutes away from rejoining the Avenue Camille Chamoun when he heard a whoosh of air and felt the front end of the Peugeot list to starboard. Then came the telltale flapping of rubber on the pavement, and he realized that he had lost a tire.

All at once he was overcome with a blinding, mind-numbing panic. He was certain that if he stopped, scores of idle onlookers would converge on the car with offers to help change the tire. One or more of them would doubtless offer to steer while Husayn and the others pushed from behind, and in tugging on the door handle, someone would detonate the concealed explosives.

He had to keep moving, and at the same time, he had to find a place not far away where he could ditch the Peugeot with the least risk to innocent life. He kept the front of the car glued to the rear of the horse cart and prayed that it would turn aside and leave him a clear path to the stadium.

* * *

Husayn waited for the truck-mounted antiaircraft cannon to roll down the entrance ramp before making his approach. He ignored the shouts from the gatekeeper and raced up the ramp and into the center of the Cité Sportive Stadium surrounded by a sea of empty seats. Facing him on the playing field were three rows of new or nearly new military vehicles. He saw armored personnel carriers, heavy transport lorries, jeeps, flatbed-mounted multiple-rocket launchers, and even a quartet of light tanks. Such a display of armaments meant the PLO must have something important to celebrate, he surmised as he parked the Peugeot at the end of the first row of vehicles.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a pair of guards leave the rear of a troop carrier on the other side of the stadium and don their red berets. As he climbed into a nearby jeep and turned the ignition key, he saw them set off at a sprint in his direction. Then he stopped looking, put the stolen jeep into gear, and stepped on the gas.

The guards must be under orders not to shoot,
he thought as he flew down the nearest exit ramp from the stadium and took a hard bounce on the rutted dirt path that led across a parched field toward the Avenue Camille Chamoun. This time the thing to do was to head south, toward the airport, back to where the Syrians controlled the turf.

Husayn looked behind him and saw a pair of Range Rovers gaining on him. This time the Fatah men inside the sedans would not hesitate to fire, he expected. He floored the accelerator, but the jeep would go no faster. Then he looked behind him one more time and saw an enormous yellow-orange fireball rise from the center of the stadium. Suddenly the earth shook and the breath was forced from his lungs.

Chapter 26

Prosser peered out through the display window onto a crowded side street while waiting for the teenage salesgirl to fill his tin with pistachios. The shop was jammed with insistent Lebanese customers. Three of them in succession tried to pull the girl away from him before she finished weighing and wrapping his two kilos. She flashed him a coquettish smile and traded the bag of pistachios for the chit he had purchased from the cashier. She was a lovely girl, with a perfect white complexion, dark eyes, and shining black hair flowing straight and loose over her shoulders—an
Arménienne
, he guessed.

He thanked her and looked out the window one more time before moving toward the door. The unobstructed view of the street was the primary reason he had come to the shop. Buying the pistachios offered him cover for being in a position to observe one of his Shiite agents perform a dead drop directly across the street.

At last a bearded youth in tight-fitting jeans and a white T-shirt with a flashy designer logo came into view on the sidewalk at the end of the block. Prosser watched the Arab youngster come closer, pass the silver Renault parked directly opposite the store, slip an empty cigarette pack through the car’s slightly lowered rear window, and walk on, all without turning his head or breaking stride.

Inside the cigarette pack, Prosser knew, would be the young agent’s latest reporting on the Islamic fundamentalist movement in South Beirut. He had returned to Lebanon nearly a year ago after graduating from the agricultural program at UC Davis, and since the end of winter his reports had become more and more discouraging. They told of seething social and political unrest among South Beirut’s Shiite refugees and of charismatic clerics who promised the “Keys to Paradise” to any believer willing to martyr himself to rid Lebanon of pernicious Western influences. The agent warned of an imminent wave of Shiite terrorism inside Lebanon—possibly even an Islamic revolution of sorts—backed by Syrian weapons and Iranian money. To date, however, Washington hadn’t shown much interest.

Prosser left the nut shop, unlocked the Renault, and tossed the bag of pistachios onto the backseat. Without calling attention to the act, he picked up the empty Marlboro pack from the floor of the car and slipped it into his trouser pocket. From its weight he could tell that it was stuffed with ten or twelve sheets of ultrathin writing paper—a productive week’s work.

Prosser locked the car door and set off on foot again, stopping to inspect the window displays of the shops he passed and to assure himself that he was not being followed. It was shortly before five when he reached the Duke of Wellington Pub. Nearly all the tables were occupied, mostly by AUB students and westernized Lebanese along with a few Europeans. He recognized no one at the bar and scanned each table without success until he spotted the familiar face of Simon Grandy smiling at him from behind a newspaper in a corner booth.

“Say, there, Conrad, come have a pint with me,” the journalist called out cheerfully, signaling to the barkeep to draw a beer for Prosser.

“How have you been, Simon?” Prosser greeted him as he took a seat on the opposite bench. “Apart from last night, I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“I suppose it has been the better part of the summer already, hasn’t it? I’ve been on assignment in the Gulf—just returned yesterday from Basra. Bloody depressing over there, I’d say. That Iran-Iraq War makes Beirut and the southern security zone look like lawn bowling. It’s wholesale slaughter. All the same, I’m feeling a damn sight better now than the last time we shared a drink. By God, that was a bloody awful night.”

“Did you ever find out any more about who killed your friend Graham?”

“Not much, but there have been one or two developments since then.” He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “The morning after we met, I went to the British embassy and had a long talk with the consul. Most of it was about how to deal with Graham’s relatives and editors and how to handle the formalities involved with his death, but the consul also put me onto a lead or two.

“After a bit of nosing about, Graham’s story began to get a shade more intriguing. To start, it turned out that Graham was more active on the bedroom circuit than I had imagined. He was carrying on affairs with two women in West Beirut alone, both of whom, I should add, were already attached. One, it appears, was Caroline Hatch, Charles Hatch’s wife. Perhaps you knew him—he was one of the press officers at the British embassy.”

Prosser acknowledged the name with a nod.

“I knew Charles only in passing, from some backgrounders he gave,” Simon continued. “So I was more than a little surprised when he called me up to ask me to lunch and then proceeded to interrogate me about Graham before the soup was served. I told him very little, partly because I resented his cheek, and partly because I knew next to nothing about Graham’s private life. Then a few days later another chap from the embassy, by the name of Brown, of whom I had never heard before, asked me to stop by to see him at his office. Brown had still more questions and seemed particularly interested in the details of Graham’s relationship with Mrs. Hatch. Then he let out the news that the Hatches had returned to London rather abruptly…for personal reasons.”