Bride of a Bygone War (Beriut Trilogy 2) Page 8

  “He probably doesn’t anymore, and Faris knows it. One of these days, Bashir will find an excuse to replace him with a younger man who owes his loyalty to nobody but Bashir and is smarter, more ambitious, and more ruthless than Faris. So keep your eyes open and try to stay on good terms with the younger officers you meet.”

  “What would happen if Bashir fired Faris tomorrow?” Lukash probed. “Any chance that Bashir would cancel the expanded liaison program and send me packing?”

  “No way,” Pirelli responded emphatically. “Bashir’s already given the ambassador the green light for you to start work, so I doubt he’d back out at this point. But you have to remember that the biggest booster by far of having an Agency officer inside Phalange intelligence has been Faris himself. It’s probably part of a last-ditch effort to hold on to his job.”

  The Chevy turned left onto Avenue Charles Helou and headed toward the port. The avenue had once been a major artery from the largely Christian eastern suburbs into the heart of Beirut’s commercial district, and its broad median strip was still lined with two evenly spaced rows of palm trees. But most of the palms had been destroyed by fire, shelling, and lack of water during the Events, and only stumps remained the closer the two men approached to the port. What had once been an immaculately landscaped median, with carefully tended flowerbeds rivaling those found along the French Riviera, was now a barren strip of parched clay where only a few dust-caked palms and prickly pear cactuses eked out their survival.

  Lukash was so absorbed in observing how far the neighborhood had deteriorated since the outbreak of civil war that he failed to notice the chief of station clench his jaw and cast a sidelong glance at him.

  When Pirelli spoke again, a note of unease appeared in his voice. “Walt, in case we don’t have another chance to talk in private for a while, there’s one more thing we ought to discuss. Twombley tells me that the counterintelligence staff and the Office of Security have raised some questions about a certain lady friend of yours. A woman named Lorraine Ellis. Irish national, good-looking, early thirties. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

  Lukash nodded once in acknowledgment. His eyes focused on Pirelli for a long moment, then he looked out over the Mediterranean as the station chief continued.

  “A visiting fireman from Headquarters ran across this Ellis woman not long ago in Amman and ran a name trace on her. According to her Headquarters file, she’s the wife of a Syrian national who was ringleader of the plot to assassinate King Khalid a couple of years back. While her husband was off planning the operation, she was shacking up with one of our Arab agents. Anyway, the Saudis got wind of the plan somehow and made a couple of low-level arrests, but Ellis and her slimeball pal managed to get out of the country. Does any of this sound familiar to you?”

  Lukash nodded again.

  “Then you must realize how the rest of the story must look to folks at Headquarters: a couple of months after she flees Saudi Arabia, Ellis turns up in Jordan as an air hostess for Royal Jordanian Airlines. By the time traces come back, she has already joined the American Club, befriended at least three station employees, including the station chief’s secretary and ops support assistant, and is shacking up with a certain Arabic-speaking case officer. Am I right or not?” Pirelli turned to Lukash with a look of avuncular concern. “You’ve got to admit, Walt, if you were riding a counterintelligence desk back at Headquarters, you’d be just a little suspicious, eh?”

  “Let them suspect whatever they like,” Lukash answered calmly. “Yes, Lorraine lived with me for a while in Jordan. I made no attempt to conceal it; every expat in Amman knows Lorraine. But that’s over now. Lorraine is in Amman and I’m in Beirut. If Headquarters doesn’t believe I’ve severed ties with her, they can call me back to the States and ask me in person. A round-trip ticket to Washington and a few days of leave would suit me just fine.”

  “Don’t get huffy now, Walt. All Twombley wants from you is a short cable addressed to the Office of Security detailing your relationship with this Ellis woman. They want to know where she comes from, how you met her, who her friends are, what she might have learned about your work—you know, all the details that the security screws think they have a God-given right to ask. And when you finish with it, I suggest you write Lorraine Ellis a nice letter saying you’re being transferred to Madagascar or Zanzibar and expect to be out of touch for a few years. If you do as you’re told, Twombley assures me that he’ll make the whole episode go away. That’s all he wants from you, Walt; just help him out a bit.” Pirelli gazed into Lukash’s eyes as if to transmit the division chief’s will along the chain of command.

  “I’ll think it over,” Lukash answered.

  “All right, you do that. Take a day or two. But don’t wait too long. You have a good reputation in the division, Walt. You always put the government first, do what has to be done, and ask no questions. Headquarters likes that in a young officer. So don’t go raising any doubts about your attitude at this stage in the game, all right?”

  The Chevy turned off the main road and Lukash spotted the walled Phalange intelligence compound two blocks away, its high, black sheet-steel gate flanked by a pair of armored personnel carriers whose sides bore the stenciled green cedar-tree emblem of the Phalange. Pirelli stopped the car at the gate while the gatekeeper rolled back the sliding steel barrier.

  As soon as they entered, a bearded sentry waved at them from a concrete cubicle just inside the gate and directed them to a vacant parking spot opposite an unremarkable two-story stucco building that resembled a suburban middle school more than the headquarters of an intelligence organization engaged in a brutal civil war.

  Inside the reception area, a balding duty officer in a khaki safari suit stood with arms akimbo between two lanky teenage Egyptian tea boys dressed in olive drab fatigues several sizes too large. Pirelli greeted the Lebanese with a handshake, from which the latter withdrew his hand and touched his heart as if he were wiping his fingers on his shirt after some noxious contact. Only a fawning smile that lingered on the man’s face indicated that the gesture was one of respect rather than contempt.

  “Le directeur, s’il vous plait,” Pirelli announced in heavily accented French. His four-month conversational French course in Washington had been intended to get him through just such formulaic exchanges as this, and little more. As an afterthought, Pirelli pointed to Lukash and added, “Je vous presente mon confrère, Monsieur Lukash.”

  The Lebanese extended his hand to Lukash, who took it and asked in Arabic for the man’s name. The Lebanese had already replied before he realized that Lukash had not spoken in French. He did a double take worthy of Larry, Curly, or Moe. The sound of the foreigner’s distinctive Arabic accent also appeared to amuse the two Egyptians, the taller of whom, a dark-skinned Nubian whose bright eyes sparkled with intelligence, inquired boldly where Lukash came from.

  “America.”

  “But you talk like an Arab, siidi. Where did you learn to speak our language?”

  “Right here. My teacher was a Lebanese.”

  The Egyptians conferred in low voices, grinning like schoolchildren. “Say the word for tomato,” the taller of the two asked playfully.

  “Banadura.”

  The two Egyptians burst into laughter while the Lebanese desk officer stood red-faced before them.

  “Filistini!” the taller Egyptian exclaimed, pointing at Lukash as if he were a freak.

  “Don’t pay any attention to the boys,” the Lebanese reception officer insisted. “They have never before heard a European speak with a Palestinian accent. The only Palestinian voices they hear are those of the prisoners.” He turned to the larger boy and addressed him affectionately but firmly. “No more nonsense, now. Muhammad, take the foreigners to Major Elie’s office and tell him they are here to see Colonel Faris. Then ask them if they want any tea. Quickly, now. I have other work for you when you come back.”

  Muhammad led them up a metal stairway to the second floor and then do
wn a stone-tiled corridor painted the same drab shade of green that the people who decorate government buildings seem to favor everywhere from Washington to Baghdad. The teen stopped halfway down the corridor, knocked twice, and listened carefully with his ear pressed against the door before going in.

  He led the two Americans into an airy outer office furnished with nothing more than a cheap gray sheet-metal desk, a four-drawer safe, a linoleum-topped map table, and an overstuffed sofa covered in crimson velour. Behind the desk sat a Lebanese of about thirty or older in a tailored khaki safari suit. He was almost as tall as Lukash, broad at the shoulders, and darkly handsome behind his neatly trimmed beard, although he carried a few surplus kilos of fat around his midsection and had a severely receding hairline, which he attempted to conceal by combing strands of hair from one temple to another. He came out at once from behind the desk with his hand outstretched.

  Something about Major Elie’s smile looked oddly familiar, and it was only when he spoke in his low, gravelly voice that Lukash recalled how closely the man resembled Samir Bino, the Jordanian agent Lukash had handled in Saudi Arabia—the one who had both seduced Lorraine Ellis and collected the information that enabled Lukash to break up the Islamic fundamentalist operation to assassinate King Khalid. Although it had been two years since he had last seen Samir, he suddenly remembered how much he had enjoyed his weekly meetings with him.

  He and Samir had met at a party on the Saudi Arabian Airlines residential compound in Jeddah, where they had each hoped to meet British air hostesses and American contract nurses. To the disappointment of both men, the few single women in attendance were unattractive as well as vastly oversubscribed. Lukash remembered having struck up a conversation with Samir while pouring bootleg siddiqi into his paper cup and having been struck by the contradiction between the Arab’s tastes for alcohol, loose women, and rock and roll and his espousal of Islamic fundamentalist politics.

  Over the next few months, Samir often visited Lukash’s villa for a glass or two of scotch and an hour of English conversation. More than once he confessed that he considered himself under no obligation to forgo earthly pleasures in this life for the sake of paradise in the next. Lukash was not at all surprised when, after a long discussion of Saudi and Jordanian politics, Samir accepted his offer of an all-expenses-paid excursion to Bangkok in exchange for a confidential debriefing on Islamic fundamentalist groups in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

  Samir was so enthusiastic about his discoveries in the topless bars, live sex shows, and massage parlors of Patpong Street that in return for the promise of a second trip later in the year, he agreed to Lukash’s suggestion that he join a particularly virulent cell of anti-monarchy fanatics who met at the mosque that Samir attended sometimes on Mecca Road. The cell, led by a fellow Jordanian of Chechen descent, soon put Samir to work casing Saudi government buildings and observing the comings and goings of high-ranking Saudi officials and members of the royal family. Samir and Lukash both exulted in their success at stealing some of the clandestine group’s closely guarded secrets.

  The Phalangist major who now sat opposite Lukash possessed the same angular features and dark coloring as Samir, as well as the crow’s-feet wrinkles around his perpetually smiling eyes. Samir’s smile had been one of devilish mischief, as if he had just laid a snare and was waiting for you to fall into it. The major’s smile was more relaxed, as if you had already fallen in and he wanted to hear from you exactly how it felt.

  Lukash and Pirelli gave their names, and the Phalangist introduced himself in turn as Major Elie Musallam, chief of the External Branch of the intelligence service.

  “It’s odd we haven’t crossed paths before, Major,” Pirelli began in a routine effort to elicit Elie’s biographical information. “I thought I had met everybody in the External Branch.”

  The major let out a low laugh from somewhere deep in his chest. “For the past year I have had only rare occasion to appear at our headquarters. Until last week I was assigned to the third security zone in the mountains above Zahlé.”

  “Ah, yes,” Pirelli replied. “I recall Colonel Faris talking about your work against Syrian military intelligence—or at least I assume it was your work. The car bombing ring based in Shtaura? About two months ago?”

  “Yes, two of my men found the workshop where the Syrians fabricated concealment devices for the explosives. It required eight months of slow and painstaking work, but afterward we were able to trace each vehicle back to their shop. Now the bomb makers work for us—in our prison workshop, teaching us their methods.”

  Lukash nodded respectfully while shuddering inside at how the Phalange were likely to apply their newly discovered knowledge against their enemies.

  “And now that you are assigned to Headquarters?” Pirelli continued.

  “It’s different now. Since coming here, I follow the activities of Syrian intelligence from my office upstairs.”

  Lukash recognized in Elie’s voice the note of resignation that every experienced case officer feels when he leaves behind the autonomy of fieldwork and surrenders to the ordered rigidity of headquarters life.

  “I admit that I have not yet adapted fully to the new point of view. Here in the External Branch, we have far too little information coming directly from Damascus and far too much hearsay and speculation.” A note of polite irony was detectable in the major’s voice. “But our director has promised that this will change very soon.” He stepped toward the door. “Come, perhaps if you ask him, the director will be kind enough to explain how he expects this improvement to come about.”

  Major Elie beckoned his visitors to follow him into the director’s inner office, a spacious, sun-drenched room furnished identically to the outer office except for the addition of two armchairs of the same red velour and the substitution of a dark wood-veneer desk for the one of metal.

  “Welcome, welcome, Mr. Pirelli,” began Colonel Faris Nader, the director of Phalange intelligence, in a disconcertingly unctuous tone. “And Monsieur Lukash. It is a great pleasure to have you among us at last. My good friend Tom Twombley has given you the highest recommendation.”

  Lukash stepped forward to shake the colonel’s carefully manicured hand and found it surprisingly soft and weak. “You can call me Wali, Colonel. It’s sort of an Arabic version of Walter, my American name. And I would suggest that you divide by three anything Mr. Twombley tells you about me.”

  “Tom Twombley has been known to exaggerate from time to time,” Pirelli added with a smile.

  “But surely not about a matter of such importance,” Colonel Faris replied, only half in jest. “If Tom Twombley recommends someone to us, I feel there is no more need for questions. Khalas. Finis. Do you know why? Because Monsieur Twombley understands the situation here. He understands us, the Christian Lebanese, as well as we understand ourselves. Maybe better.

  “As I have told your ambassador many times,” the colonel went on, “your American government does not fully appreciate who its friends are in the Middle East. Billions of your American dollars go each year to Israel, and they are not even Christians! We Maronites have looked to the West for ten centuries—since the Crusades. It is time that America recognizes that we—the Lebanese Christians, the Phalange—are its truest friends in the Middle East.

  “I have told your ambassador and my friend Tom Twombley this simple truth: that the survival of every Christian and Jew in the Middle East depends on the fate of the Maronites in Lebanon. If the Syrians succeed in annexing Lebanon into a Greater Syria, not a single Christian or Jew in the region will be safe. Our churches and religious institutions will be razed or turned into mosques, the French and English languages will be eradicated from our schools and public life, our unique heritage will be purged from the history books, and the very idea of a separate Christian Lebanese race will be denied in the name of Pan-Arabism and Islam.

  “The campaign has already begun, and it is plain for anyone to see: the incessant sniping, the shellings, and these unh
oly car bombs everywhere, making life miserable for us. Do you think it is Lebanese who are committing these outrages against their fellow countrymen? Never believe it! Never! The Syrians are at the bottom of all these troubles. They have a plan and they will stay with it for as long as they must until the Lebanese people say at last, ‘Enough! We cannot endure any more of it. Bring in the Syrian army to occupy all of Lebanon, and let us have peace as a province of Greater Syria.’ Then—mark my words—the violence will end overnight and it will be obvious to everyone that the Syrians caused it from the very beginning.

  “Now, I tell you, the only way to end the reign of terror without destroying the Lebanese Christians as a race is to carry the battle to Damascus. As long as the battle is on Lebanese soil, Syrian losses can never be heavy enough to rid us of their occupation forces. I have stated this conclusion to the chief of the Mossad and to Monsieur Twombley, and I repeat it to you now. Your ambassador has always refused to accept these basic truths, but now that the new channel of communications between our two organizations has been opened, I hope that together we will be able to convince the new American president that we are right in this.”

  Ed Pirelli sat forward in his chair and waited for his host to finish. “Faris, before you say any more about carrying the battle to Damascus,” he began deliberately, “you’d better understand that our business here is intelligence gathering—no more, no less. If you want to work with us to recruit an agent in the Syrian Ministry of Defense or bug their presidential palace, we’re with you all the way. Joint operations, financial aid, technical assistance: they’re all yours. But the moment you try to involve us in a car bombing or an assassination against Syrian leaders, Washington will cut you and your outfit off so fast you won’t even hear a dial tone. Those are the ground rules. I don’t mean to be impolite about this, Colonel, but I’m afraid you’ll have to take it or leave it.”

  “Ah, my good friend, you misunderstand me,” Colonel Faris answered, evidently unfazed. “Not for a moment was I speaking of your involvement in terrorism. We Maronites would never stoop to terrorist methods. What I have in mind is merely the formation of contacts with Syrians who are already working against the villainous al-Asad regime and giving them whatever assistance we can render. What we need from you is merely replacements for the equipment that we would give to them. Today, radios are what they need most. Handheld units with voice privacy, like the Motorola units you gave us last week. With such equipment Syrian oppositionists would have much less reason to fear the regime’s security organs.”