Betrayals (18 page)

“Nothing's going on,” insisted Janet. “Just chatting.”

“Who are you?”

“English,” tried Janet

“That wasn't what I asked. I can tell you're English.”

“Stone,” she said, trapped. “Janet Stone.”

“Why so much interest in the Lebanon?”

“No reason,” shrugged Janet, deciding against telling the woman anything. “Just chatting, like I said.” She straightened, to relieve the cramp from her legs.

“I don't know anyone who's mad enough to sail to Beirut,” insisted the woman. “And if I did, I'd be suspicious of them, because there's only one reason to go there and that's to smuggle. And my husband and I are not smugglers.”

A defense against an unvoiced accusation? wondered Janet. Or did the woman suspect her of being an
agent provocateur?
It was immaterial, either way. She said: “It was nice talking to you.”

The woman did not reply but remained gazing at her intently.

Janet started to walk away, realizing at once she was going in the wrong direction, further along the pontoon towards the open sea. There appeared to be no more occupied boats—and if there had been Janet realized she could not have attempted another conversation of the sort she'd just had with the woman, whom she guessed would have hurried along immediately to inquire after she'd finished—and to retrace her steps meant passing directly in front of her. Janet guessed the woman would be staring at her and saw that she was, when she turned at the pontoon head to walk back.

At the yacht Janet hesitated and said: “Bye now.”

The woman nodded, but didn't speak.

Janet continued on, tensed against a sensation going beyond helplessness, to hopelessness. Stop it! she demanded of herself. Stop it! stop it! stop it! She'd only just started …
hadn't
started … so it was infantile to become depressed because the first person to whom she'd tried to speak (and spoken to like some mental defective, at that) hadn't been the premier hostage-freeing tour operator of the Middle East. Worse than infantile: stupidly infantile. At the larger, linking pontoon Janet turned and looked back in the direction from which she'd just come: the bikini-clad woman on
Journey's End
was standing now, gazing towards her. For her own satisfaction—and not even sure what that satisfaction was—Janet slightly raised her hand and jiggled her fingers in the smallest of farewell waves before going consciously out of sight towards—and behind—the larger boats.

It was right that she should not become depressed so soon but just as important not to continue in the gauche manner in which she had just behaved. One more episode like that, coupled with the sort of gossip Janet guessed to be the glue that kept a marina like this bonded together, and her next encounter with the disbelieving Chief Inspector Zarpas would probably be in a police cell.

But how! Janet halted at the next out-thrust leg towards the sea, looking up along the larger boats but not making towards them yet.
Journey's End
, registered in Falmouth, she remembered: mistake upon mistake! It was always possible, of course, that an English-registered vessel with English-speaking occupants could have the sort of links she sought, but other registrations and other nationalities were far more likely. Such as? Cyprus, obviously. The Lebanon itself. Or Syrian. Or Greek. Turkish, too, although those would not be moored on this part of the island. Still too wide a spread, she thought, gazing generally over the marina: there had to be over a hundred yachts moored here at least. Janet tried to think of a way to narrow her search down to the most obvious choices, smiling when the idea came to her. Language, she decided. So what were the most likely languages? French had been the tongue of the Lebanon before the outbreak of the troubles, in the early 70s. But since then the country had been awash with Syrians and Iranians and Palestinians. Arabic, then, as a second choice: maybe no longer second, but equal. Janet felt a brief pop of encouraging relief: French and Arabic, and she spoke both of them.

Unwilling to be seen by the Englishwoman, Janet ignored the immediate pontoon, going on until the second before setting out along it behind the protective hedge of two sets of anchored and tethered vessels. As before she walked slowly, intent upon names and registrations. Up one side and down the other she walked, never once seeing a registration to fit her idea. Twice she heard French being spoken, both times from yachts identified from French ports, and Janet realized she had not reduced her search as effectively as she had imagined. Both vessels were crowded, with bathing-costumed groups already drunk, and she decided it was pointless attempting any sort of conversation.

On the last possible pontoon, three berths along, Janet saw a blue-and-white-hulled boat listing Latakia as its home port. The name,
Sea Mist
, was picked out in Arabic script below the title in Roman print, which Janet presumed was required by some international maritime agreement.

The sails were stowed but there was a man in the stern, hunched over what appeared to be an engine flap. He was balding and a sagging stomach hung over his belt, straining the T-shirt to contain it.

“Marhaba,” said Janet.

The glance was barely perceptible but Janet knew he had seen her. He gave no response. Her dismissal as a woman, Janet recognized. She said: “H
ather illak
?”

Without bothering to look up, the workman said: “No, it belongs to someone else.”

“
Heloo
.”

“It is adequate. How did a Western woman learn Arabic?” He looked up at last, curiosity winning, blatantly studying her body.

“I teach,” she replied, in English also.

“But not Arab ways,” he said, dismissive again. He moved to go back over the engine cowling.

“Syrian registered?” said Janet, stopping him.

“So?”

“Do you sail there often?”

“Of course.” He was leaning against the flap but not bothering with the engine now.

“I am told it is dangerous.”

“Not the Syrian coast.”

“Lebanon then?”

“Awaih, bas meen fara'a ma-oh Lubnan?
” he said, testing her by reverting to Arabic.

“Some care about the Lebanon,” Janet answered him at once.

“Not enough.”

“Do you ever sail there?”

The man lounged inside the yacht, looking at her for several moments, but not replying. Then he said: “The Lebanon, you mean?”

Janet nodded.

Again there was a hesitation. The pontoon heaved beneath her feet and she saw that the T-shirt was stained, not just with engine oil but with sweat-marks under the arms. With intentional awkwardness the man said: “I wouldn't know.”

Bastard, decided Janet. She thought of the word in Arabic, too, wondering how he would react if she openly called him
a'krout
. She said: “Some must”

“I suppose.”

“You worked this dock long?”

There was a shoulder lift, the only response.

Janet could feel the perspiration making its own pathway down her back: a lot of it was not because of the sun. Trying to stir his obvious chauvinism, Janet said: “It would take a brave man, to risk sailing there.”

“Or a fool,” he said, not responding to the taunt, either.

“Do you know such people?” demanded Janet, direct once more.

The exaggerated shrug came again. He was playing with her, Janet decided: acting out his own strange charade. “Perhaps you know where such people gather?” persisted Janet.

The man looked beyond her, generally towards the town. “Around,” he said.

It was time to be even more direct, Janet guessed: she had nothing to lose. She said: “I have £50, in sterling. I would give £50 to learn the names of places where such people gather.”

The man's lips parted, in a smile made unpleasant by two teeth missing in the front. “I have heard things,” he allowed.

“Like what?”

“You said £50?”

Janet took the money, two £20 notes and one £10, from her shoulder bag and folded them to make the amount look thicker. She did not offer the small bundle to the man.

He held out his hand.

“The names,” Janet insisted, keeping hers by her side.

The man said nothing, remaining with his palm outstretched. Janet peeled one £20 note from the remainder and passed it over the sliver of water separating them. The man just stopped himself snatching at it.

“There's the Marina Pub,” he said, jerking his head back towards Athens Street. “A place called the Rainbow, on Kitieus Street. I've heard another meeting place is the Archontissa restaurant, although at night, not during the day. And at night there's the Byzantium restaurant … it has a nightclub, too … and the Sanacosta. Mostly around the center of town although the Byzantium is out a bit, along Artemis Avenue.”

“I can find them,” said Janet, eagerly. She was about to pass over the rest of the money and then hesitated. “What about the name of a person?” she asked. “Do you know anyone?”

The man made a beckoning movement with his hand, for the other £30. As Janet gave it to him, there was a head shake of refusal. “Don't know any people,” he said.

“Thank you for the places, at least,” said Janet. It was actually working, she thought excitedly as she climbed from the marina. At last it was working, and she was getting somewhere! Not just one place but several. Surely from all the names she had she was going to be able to find somebody!

Because it was the nearest, Janet went first to the Marina Pub at the end of the pier. It was just past mid-day when she got there. It was already jostled with a combination of sun-pink tourists and weather-tanned occupants of the marina. Through the expansive windows, Janet could make out the yacht of the hostile Englishwoman, although she was no longer on the air mattress. The workman on the
Sea Mist
was back at the engine hatch.

Janet got a seat near one of the windows and ordered
kokkineli
rosé, gazing around. She wanted someone who was resident, on the marina at least, and Janet realized at once that at this time of the day the place was too crowded to make any guesses and certainly not any approaches. She made the wine last, finally ordering another, and—although she was not really hungry—justified her lingering occupation of the table by choosing a sandwich of spitted lamb, in an envelope of pita bread. It was almost three o'clock before the clientele thinned. She attempted to get into conversation with a group at the bar whom she overheard talking in both French and Arabic but was rebuffed. She got a friendlier reception from two men and a woman talking French but after half an hour of conversation discovered they were cruising from Cannes, had never been to the Lebanon and had no intention of attempting to do so.

Her hopes soared on her third approach. Almost at once the couple talked of being Lebanese, actually residents of Beirut. Eagerly—although not showing it—she let them lead the conversation, only occasionally risking the intrusion of a question, not wanting to hear the story that gradually emerged and even more unwilling as it did so to confront the gradual descent of her hopes. The man had been a high-rise store owner whose premises had been situated literally between the Maronite Christians and Sunni Moslems when the war broke out with those first shots in April, 1975, in the civil war which was not a civil war any longer because no one knew what it was any more. He had been cautious—a half-boastful smile at this stage of the history—although he had never imagined (“who could?”) it would degenerate into what it had now become. But they'd been able to get out so little of their capital: far too little. They'd already had their yacht (“good fortune when there was so little”) which was now their home. Their livelihood—the high-rise in the most desirable district of Beirut—they'd seen destroyed by the successive exchange of gunfire and mortar and artillery, until it had been cut from its multi-million (“multi-million in any currency you like”) size as if some giant hand had been slicing pieces off a special cake. They'd fled before the anarchy, of course: risked just one return. The formerly proud skyscraper had been a disappointing bump of concrete and steel, the girders and the rusting frames appropriately like the bones of something long dead and picked clean, like things were picked clean by vultures. They had two souvenirs: the front door key, and a fish mold the vultures had somehow, inexplicably, missed in the rubble. The woman said she'd never been able to use the mold again: how could she? Both smiled and accepted Janet's offer of more drinks, the woman
kokkineli
like Janet was drinking, the man
ouzo
which he milked white, with water, with obvious nostalgia.

Janet clung to the fact that she was establishing contact with Lebanese, and obstinately refused to accept the encounter as a failure. She was met with shrugs when she asked if they maintained contacts with anyone in Beirut. Still, deciding her sad story matched their sad story, she volunteered an account of herself and Sheridan.

Exiles know everything about the country—and the city—from which they were exiled, and the couple immediately recognized Sheridan's name. The woman clutched Janet's hand and said she was so sorry. Janet smiled her gratitude, as if it were the first time anyone had ever expressed regret.

“It won't work, what you're trying to do,” warned the man.

“I need guidance: a name,” cut off Janet, unwilling to get back on to the carousel.

“The only people who go back and forth are smugglers,” said the man. “There are a lot of shortages in Beirut: things people need. And for which they are willing to pay.”

“I'm looking for an intermediary, someone who knows. Not a priest.”

“I paid a man, once,” conceded the Lebanese. “It was before we went back ourselves. I wanted to know how badly damaged my block was …” He sniggered an unamused laugh. “Actually had thoughts of going back and trying to run it again! Can you believe that!”