Bride of a Bygone War (34 page)

The sun began to burn its way slowly through the thin cloud cover and the air temperature rose steadily. Lukash wondered about the temperature in the car’s trunk and prayed that the colonel would not wake up from the heat while the Mercedes was parked within a block or two of Lukash’s apartment building. Once he had his civilian clothes and his American passport, in a matter of minutes he could be back over the Green Line and into West Beirut, where no Phalangist would dare to follow.

Lukash climbed the eastern slope of Jebel Achrafiyé, driving through Place Sassine and past Café La Chasse on his way to the apartment building on rue Furn el Hayek. He made a rapid pass on the street behind the building, and his heart leaped at the familiar sight of his silver BMW. He made sure that no one was watching from any of the parked cars on either side of the block and then swung around and double-parked opposite a
shawarma
sandwich stand, whose young proprietor he had cultivated for just such an occasion as this.
 

Stepping past a polished red motorcycle parked at the curb, Lukash strode up to the counter in his olive drab parka, its hood pulled over his head. The proprietor, a tall, wiry youth of about twenty with broad shoulders and slender hips, dressed in jeans and a soiled white apron, gazed up at him with cautious deference.
 

“Michel, I need you to do me a favor.”

“Wali? Is that you?” the youth asked, startled to see his American customer dressed as a Phalangist fighter. “But why are you—?”
 

“Never mind,” Lukash interrupted. “I need you to help me get me something from my car. Could you bring me the black zippered bag in the trunk? It’s parked around the corner. If you do it right now, it’s worth fifty lira to you.”

The boy recovered his composure, pulled the apron over his head, and hung it from a nail on the door. “Perhaps someone’s boyfriend or husband is looking for you?” he asked with a knowing leer.

“Maybe,” Lukash answered mirthlessly as he handed over the keys. “It’s a silver BMW, license 613151. And if anyone tries to talk to you or follow you, just walk past the car without doing anything and come back here. I’ll pick the bag up later.”

Michel returned a few minutes later with a black parachute-cloth duffel and a broad grin on his face. No one had followed him, he said. Lukash took the bag, gave the youth a fifty-lira note, and drove off in the direction of the museum checkpoint.

As soon as the Mercedes was out of sight, the curly-haired shawarma stand operator stuffed the note into his apron pocket and picked up the telephone. “Monsieur Hammouche? This is Michel. I have seen him.”

* * *

Halfway down rue Sassine, on the south-facing slope of Achrafiyé, Lukash turned off the road and stopped the Mercedes behind a half-built stone wall. There he shed his uniform in the sedan’s backseat and dressed in his civilian clothes, patting his trouser pocket to confirm that his wallet was still there. He did the same to the breast pocket of his jacket and felt the stiff cover of his diplomatic passport.

Not until he was fifty meters from the bottom of the hill and about to enter the Corniche Pierre Gemayel did he notice a black-helmeted motorcyclist and passenger coming upon him from behind on a midsize motorcycle. He slowed down to let the cyclists pass, but the distance between the Mercedes and the motorcycle seemed to remain constant. Lukash turned right and watched the motorcyclists follow him into the traffic circle opposite the Palais de Justice.

Lukash went halfway around the traffic circle and returned the same way he had come. This time the motorcycle did not follow him. He continued eastward along the Corniche for nearly a kilometer and then stopped again at a takeout food shop. There he bought two cans of guava juice, guzzled them down immediately, and gave the cashier a coin to use her telephone.

He tried the embassy first. The economic counselor’s secretary answered the phone and reported that Pirelli was not expected in the office until early afternoon. On his next try, the receptionist for the political section blithely remarked that she had not seen Conrad Prosser all morning and suggested that Lukash try the phone at Prosser’s apartment. She recited the number and Lukash wrote it on the back of his hand. On the fourth ring someone picked up.

“Connie? What are you doing at home, man? Another one of those vodka hangovers?” Lukash forced a smile and tried to behave as if the call were purely social.

“No, I was just making myself a bite to eat before I drive a friend to the airport.”

“Amazing. I’m on the way there myself. Do you suppose you could take a few extra minutes and meet me on the way—say, in about twenty minutes? I’ll be parked on Avenue Camille Chamoun, between the Cité Sportive Stadium and the old parcel post building.”

The tone of Prosser’s reply was anything but accommodating. “Could we make it about an hour later, old pal? The person I’m taking to the airport has to catch a one o’clock flight, and I’ve got to swing by the embassy on the way. Unfortunately, the timing is already a bit tight. In fact, she’s someone you know.”

“Where is she going?”

“London.”

“Call her back and tell her to take a cab. Connie, I need to see you in twenty minutes. Please.” Lukash hung up the phone and gave another coin to the cashier.

Chapter 19

Prosser put the phone down and stared out the balcony toward the Corniche and the Mediterranean beyond. The call from Lukash had come only a few minutes after he had returned from his morning run. He had not yet had time to cool down, eat breakfast, shower, or dress. And now he would have to drive all the way to South Beirut and back before showing his face at the embassy. He wolfed down the slice of toast he had spread with jam before taking Lukash’s call and washed it down with the remains of a can of orange juice.

Just as he stepped out of the kitchen to take a shower, he remembered Lorraine and picked up the phone to dial.

“Don’t tell me,” she said upon answering his call. “Something has come up and you can’t take me to the airport.” As Prosser had feared, Lorraine Ellis’s Irish temper was flaring, and the morning had barely begun.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Lorraine, but I have to go out for a while, and I’m not sure how soon I can get back,” he replied. “I really hate to say this, but I think you’d best take a taxi to the airport. I’ll meet you there. When did you say the flight to London leaves?”

“It leaves at two, but it boards at half past one. Latest check-in is at one. Think you could meet me at passport control by then?”

“I’ll make a point of it,” he assured her.

“What about Walter?” she continued apprehensively.

“I really don’t know, Lorraine,” he answered abruptly “All I know is that I have to run. Ciao, I’ll see you at the airport.”

Prosser opened another can of orange juice and downed half of it before depositing the opened can in the refrigerator. Once again he took two steps toward the bathroom before the telephone rang. He put his hand on the receiver, scowled, and took a deep breath before picking it up, half expecting it to be another call from either Lukash or Lorraine.

But it was neither. The call was from Muna Khalifé.

“Is this Conrad?”

“Speaking,” he answered, caught off guard by her call and concerned that she might divulge information best left unsaid over the telephone.

“I would not have called, except…I have heard the most terrible news,” she began with evident distress in her voice.

“Tell me,” he replied.

“And I need to know if it is true,” she went on as if not having heard his answer. “The mother of a…mutual friend…has just been to see me. She claims that the Syrian army surprised a team of our boys last night in the mountains near Sannine.”

Muna paused, awaiting his response.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Muna, but I haven’t heard a thing. Of course, I haven’t been to the embassy yet this morning, so I’m at a bit of a loss.”

“No, you don’t understand, Conrad,” she insisted, raising her voice. “She is the mother of someone important. A friend at the war council informed her that her son was among those killed. And that an American expert was with them. You must tell me. Is it true? And the American…?”

“Muna, I don’t know,” he answered, eager to get off the line. “Listen, I’ll be at the embassy soon. Why don’t you call me there in an hour? Right now I’ve got to go.”

Without waiting for her response, Prosser hung up the phone and dashed to his closet to find some clothes. This already had the makings of a day to try one’s soul, he thought, and wondered what kind of a jam Lukash had gotten himself into this time.

Chapter 20

The moment Lukash stepped back out into the daylight from the takeout food shop he saw three young schoolboys gathered behind the Mercedes, ears cocked and legs tensed to take flight, as if they’d heard some strange and horrible sound coming from inside. He moved closer and heard it, too: a low moaning sound, not quite distinguishable as human.

“What’s the matter with you boys?” he chided them, coming up behind them by surprise. “Haven’t you ever heard a goat before? He is crying because he is unhappy at being served up for dinner. Perhaps one of you would like to volunteer to take his place?”

The boys looked at each other, at Lukash, at the Mercedes, then again at each other and ran off toward the nearby filling station shrieking with laughter and feigned terror. Lukash backed the car out of its parking slot and doubled back toward Palais de Justice Circle. He was not a hundred meters past the filling station when he noticed the two black-helmeted motorcycle riders behind him once again. He pushed the gas pedal to the floor, depressed the clutch, and shifted into fourth gear. Pulling into the passing lane, he overtook a tank truck, then a minibus, and finally a Toyota pickup before veering back into the center lane, which had reverted to its typically sluggish midday pace. Seeing him succeed at the maneuver, a BMW and a Renault followed his example and dropped in close behind him.

He pulled the .45 out of its holster and rolled down his window. If the motorcycle appeared in his mirror again, he would be ready to fire on it. The Phalange’s best chance to stop him had been outside his apartment. Now if the colonel’s men intended to stop him and rescue their leader, they had little time left. In a minute or two he would be inside the Lebanese army’s security zone, where the Phalange’s magic held no power. The army sentries who manned the checkpoints by the Lebanese National Museum, Muslims all, would quell any disturbance that bore so much as a whiff of the Phalange.

The Mercedes edged forward. He was only four or five car lengths from the nearest Lebanese army roadblock now. If he were arrested there, diplomatic immunity might actually count for something. But unless the colonel put up a sudden fuss in the trunk, Lukash did not expect to be stopped. The sentry would recognize that he was a foreigner and wave him through without even asking for a passport or a foreign ministry card.

Suddenly the delivery van directly in front of the old Mercedes came to an abrupt halt, and Lukash slammed his foot on the brakes. The heavy chassis pitched and bucked on its 1950s suspension, and in the same moment he thought of Faris Nader being tossed about in the trunk. Perhaps the thought had a telepathic effect, for in the next instant he heard a thumping from behind the rear seat and then a drawn-out and painful lowing like that of an injured cow. Lukash watched the line of vehicles ahead of him move forward again, and he made a mental estimate of how long the sentries would likely remain within earshot of the colonel’s moaning and thumping—five seconds, maybe a bit more.

He hung back and let the delivery van get a head start, intending to accelerate past the checkpoint upon coming into the proper range. But a middle-age woman with a beehive hairdo in the car directly behind him leapfrogged her Peugeot adroitly past him into the gap. He tried again, this time allowing a gap only half as large, but once more a driver pulled out from behind him into the open space. Again he let the interloper take the spot.

Meanwhile, the thumping grew more violent and began to jostle the Mercedes perceptibly on its soft leaf springs. Lukash felt beads of sweat gather on his upper lip and prayed that he could get past the Lebanese army sentries without being asked to open the trunk.

A horn blared behind him, then a second and a third. Lukash peered out the window at the side-view mirror and saw the black helmet coming up rapidly in the outside lane. But now his car was completely hemmed in, front and back, with no room to maneuver. He shifted into neutral, took his foot off the clutch, and wheeled around, .45 in hand.

The passenger on the motorcycle, now only two car lengths behind the Mercedes, raised a stiffened arm as if preparing to shoot. Lukash took aim at the rider in front and prepared to squeeze the trigger. But before he could let off the first round, the Subaru behind him blocked his line of sight, its driver having spotted the opening created when the line of traffic ahead of Lukash’s Mercedes resumed its forward movement.
 

In the driver’s haste to fill the gap, he had pulled out too quickly to notice the advancing motorcycle, which slammed into the Subaru’s rear bumper and sent its black-helmeted riders careening into a row of striped oil drums that bordered the two-lane corridor. All at once horns blared from every direction. The line of vehicles in front of the Mercedes advanced, while those behind stopped where the Subaru blocked both lanes.