Dynamite Fishermen (13 page)

“
Inshallah
, I will see my cousin again this weekend. Perhaps if I invite them out to dinner and a nightclub afterward, I will learn some more. It will not be cheap, of course, but...”

“Keep the receipts and I’ll pay them.”

Abu Khalil grasped Prosser’s hand. “Tommy, you are the best American they have ever sent me. On my life, I will do what I can to help. Perhaps by tomorrow night I will have something for you.”

Prosser suspected more than ever that Abu Khalil considered him a pushover. He would have to take a harder line for the next few months. And he could no longer put aside his misgivings about fabrication. The story about Colonel Hisham was far too convenient.

“Let’s call it a night, Abu Khalil. Right now I’m too tired to think straight. Look for me tomorrow at nine in the same place where you picked me up tonight.”

Chapter 8

It was a few minutes before ten when Prosser passed the front of the Saudi embassy and turned onto rue Maislin heading home. The two Lebanese police guards on duty behind the iron gate followed him warily with their eyes but did not stir from the chancery’s front steps.

As he approached the Hala Building he noticed at once that the night concierge, Abu Ali, was not at his usual post outside the lobby door. He spotted the old man’s hunched figure standing outside the steel door to the building’s west wing, slowly peeling off one key after the next in an effort to find the right one among the fifteen or twenty on his ring. Hovering over him was an exasperated European of early middle age who appeared moments away from seizing the keys from the old man and trying them in the lock himself. Hearing footsteps behind him, the European pivoted abruptly but relaxed upon seeing that it was Prosser.

“Excuse me, don’t you work for the American embassy?” the man asked nervously. There were gray circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were drained of color. Stringy blond hair hung limp and disheveled over the collar of his khaki bush shirt, which looked as if it had not been changed for several days.

“No point in denying it,” Prosser replied amiably. “And you’re the British journalist on the ninth floor, no?”

“Eighth, actually,” he corrected. “Forgive me for asking, but would you do me a small favor? Would you mind terribly coming with me to open up my flat? I’ve had a frightfully bad night, and I would really prefer not to go in alone.”

“No problem at all,” Prosser replied, though curious as to what the Englishman expected to find inside. He sent the concierge away and unlocked the steel door with his own key before following the journalist into the stairwell.

“I’ve just come from a place I hope I never see again,” the journalist said as he pushed the elevator button for the eighth floor.

“And where is that?”

“The morgue. A colleague...” He paused, took in a deep breath, and left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

“What happened?”

“I was at home. The police found my card in his wallet and called me to identify the body.” He inhaled deeply. “Foul play, quite foul indeed.”

The elevator stopped at the eighth floor and the two men got out. Prosser pressed the timer switch for the lights in the stairwell. “Oh, by the way, I’m Conrad Prosser,” he said when the light came on. He smiled and held out his hand.

The journalist took it and then looked aside sheepishly. “How very rude of me…I haven’t even introduced myself. Simon Grandy. I write for the
Financial Times
.”

“Fine newspaper. I wish I could say I’m a regular reader, but newspapers without photographs put me to sleep.”

“I see. A matter of taste, I suppose.”

“I suppose so,” Prosser replied, too tired to take offense.

Grandy looked up and smiled weakly. His hands trembled as he lifted the sisal doormat and found the key in the dust underneath. The steel door clanged as it opened.

“I suggest we go through the whole flat, back to front, just to be sure you don’t have company,” Prosser suggested, entering first. “I doubt anybody would have gotten past that steel vault door of yours—unless, of course, they happened to look under the mat.”

He left the journalist in the foyer and started down the corridor toward the rear bedrooms. The layout of the flat was identical to his own. He turned on the lights in each room and looked into the closets, behind the doors, and under the beds. He checked the rear balcony, then returned to the foyer and inspected the living room, dining room, kitchen, and front balcony.

“I suppose it was irrational of me to expect someone to be hiding behind the curtains,” Grandy admitted. “But I don’t really know what to expect anymore.”

“That’s all right,” Prosser assured him. “What you need now is to pour yourself a stiff drink and watch a video, read a good book, or do something else to take your mind off the whole affair. In the morning you’ll be as good as new.”

“Would you like to stay for a drink, Mr. Prosser?”

“Call me Conrad, for heaven’s sake.”

“What will you have, Conrad?”

“I’ll take some of that single malt whiskey over there,” he said, pointing to a bottle of Glenlivet on the buffet. “On the rocks, please.”

“Terribly sorry—no rocks tonight. Do you like it neat, or would you prefer something else?”

“Neat is fine.”

Grandy poured two tumblers halfway and handed one to his guest. “There you are.”

The two men carried their drinks onto the balcony and sat down in a pair of unpainted wicker armchairs.

“Bloody Lebanese,” Grandy cursed within seconds of taking his seat. “It’s not enough anymore for them to kill off each other; now they want to drag us foreigners into it. What’s the bloody purpose? I just don’t understand these bloody Arabs anymore.” His left hand was clenched tightly in his lap.

“The Lebanese don’t need a reason to fight, Simon. They’ve been massacring each other for so many years that it comes naturally. If they didn’t have modern weapons, they’d go back to slitting throats.” Prosser had intended the comment as hyperbole, but he realized it was too close to the truth to be amusing.

“Well, they’re bloody savages, and I’m sick of them all,” said Simon. “I’m sick of the suffering they bring on themselves and everyone else who’s stuck in their rotten country.”

Prosser took another sip of whiskey and decided to try a change of subject. “So how long have you been stuck here?” he asked.

The journalist let out a long whistling breath. “Three years last month. I came when the Syrians shelled Achrafiyé in 1978. After that my editors asked me to stay on for six more months, then for another six, and another six—and here I am. This is my fourth flat since I’ve been here. The first two were burned out.”

“How much longer do you think you’ll stay?”

“That’s rather iffy just now. My contract ends January next, and I haven’t decided yet whether to renew one last time. Lately I’ve been thinking I won’t.”

“What about your friend, the one who was killed. How long was he here?”

“Graham? Oh, I should say he had been here nearly as long as I have. I met him at the end of 1978. I didn’t know him terribly well, mind you. He and I tended to move in different circles.”

“Do you mind my asking how he was killed?”

“The doctors described it as multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Shot to a bloody pulp, if you ask me. There seems to have been a bit of a struggle before that, too. Although it’s odd: his notebook and cassette recorder were missing, but his wallet wasn’t even touched. Of course, the police have no idea at all why he was killed, much less who did it.” With an involuntary expression of disgust, Grandy shifted his gaze to the traffic on the Corniche below.

“You don’t suppose there was a political angle to it…” Prosser suggested.

“With Graham, anything is possible,” Grandy replied. “He was always chasing after the sexy story, digging up old dirt and going off to meet unsavory characters at odd hours. He was also quite the ladies’ man. That could have been it, too—jealous husband, jilted lover, that sort of thing.” He lifted his glass to take a drink but stopped short. He stared off into the distance with a thin smile on his lips, as if remembering an incident that illustrated his point.

“Did he publish anything particularly provocative lately—say, about the Syrians or the Palestinians?” Prosser asked. “Something they might have taken a strong objection to? Quite a few Arab writers have been put on ice for that sort of thing.”

“I suppose he might have, but I’m not aware that he did. You see, Graham had just come back from Damascus on Saturday. I recall that he had a theory about the Syrians being behind the car bombs and the sniping in the port, but he never wrote about it, as far as I know.”

“Well, it’s a sad thing to have to say, Simon, but I doubt if we’ll ever find out who killed your friend. This kind of thing has happened practically every day since the war started, and not a single person has hanged for it yet. You might as well forget the police here; they’re hopeless.”

Grandy took a long pull on his drink. The scotch had begun to loosen him up, and he suppressed a laugh. “The police! Even if you or I had airtight proof of who murdered poor Graham, the police wouldn’t bother to make the pinch. More likely than not, they’d race to sell the killer the tip that he was under suspicion.”

The two men sat silently for a while longer, sipping their whiskey and looking out to sea. Despite the late hour a few street merchants remained along the Corniche selling espresso to motorists making their way home. Not far away a pair of uniformed sentries paced back and forth outside the front gate of the PSP militia compound.

“I suppose you’ll be reporting your colleague’s death to the British embassy in the morning,” Prosser suggested. “He was British, wasn’t he?”

Grandy nodded.

“Well, if I hear anything, I’ll make sure it gets passed along to the British consul. When a journalist gets shot, it’s an ill omen for all of us.”

Prosser finished his drink and stood up to leave. Grandy also rose.

“Well, thanks again for the whiskey, Simon. I’d stay longer, but I have an early appointment tomorrow. Here’s my card. Let’s get together sometime.”

“Yes, let’s do,” the Englishman answered without enthusiasm.

They left the balcony and started across the living room.

“Pardon me for not having a card of my own to give you,” Grandy apologized when they reached the door. “I ran out of them last week. Wait a moment and I’ll write down my telephone number.” He wrote it on a blank index card and handed it over.

“This will do just fine,” Prosser said with a smile as he took the card. “To tell you the truth, Simon, I’m just as happy not to have one of your printed cards, considering what happened to the last guy who carried one around.”

Grandy forced a smile and held on to it until the heavy door banged shut behind his visitor.

Prosser walked down the four flights of stairs to his own apartment thinking about the murdered journalist and whether his death might signify that the time-honored taboo against murdering Western diplomats and journalists in Beirut had quietly lapsed. The fact that Graham’s notebook and cassette recorder were missing, and that he had suspected the Syrians of sponsoring the car bombings, pointed to a political murder. He wondered whether Abu Khalil could have been telling the truth when he reported that a foreign spy would soon be killed in West Beirut. If he was, could Graham have been the victim? Or was someone else, perhaps a real spy like himself, still being targeted for assassination?

Prosser opened the door to his apartment and tossed his notebook, keys, wallet, and the rest of the contents of his pockets on to the vestibule table. The answers would have to wait till tomorrow, he told himself, and went to the sideboard to pour himself one last shot of scotch.

Chapter 9

Saturday

Despite his well-muscled arms and shoulders, Conrad Prosser was not a long ball hitter. He had never been more than an average ballplayer as a boy and would probably have spent most innings warming the bench in any serious adult softball league back in the States. In Beirut’s fast-pitch softball league, however, he was one of the stronger members of the American embassy team. More often than not, he managed to get on base with a single, a double, or a walk and could hold his own as an infielder or catcher, which was his usual position.

So far during this season, the American embassy team had enjoyed a winning record. It occasionally beat the Marine Security Guard team, usually prevailed over the American University of Beirut’s varsity and the Canadian embassy teams, and almost always defeated the AUB faculty and the American Community School teams. After four innings on a clear, hot Saturday morning, the embassy was leading the AUB varsity in its eleventh game of the season by a score of 3 to 0.

The embassy pitcher, a balding man in his mid-fifties with bandy legs and a considerable paunch, had struck out the first batter and lured the second into swinging at an inside pitch and grounding out to the first baseman. The pitcher had struck out six batters so far and, in doing so, had displayed an impressive collection of fast balls, breaking curves, sinkers, and change-ups that might have given difficulty even to first-rate amateur ballplayers.