Dynamite Fishermen (39 page)

“Did he imply that Charles Hatch might have had something to do with the murder?” Prosser asked.

“Actually he was very careful about it. But that is precisely where it gets interesting. You see, from my own researches, I found out that Charles had topflight Palestinian connections and that he may have dropped a hint to some of his friends in Fatah during May or June that he would like to see Graham removed from the scene. In Britain, of course, that would be instigation to murder, but here who would bother to pursue it?”

“Is that what you think happened?”

“Let’s just say it wouldn’t surprise me,” the journalist answered with a knowing look. “Charles always did seem very much the odd bird.”

“Maybe I’m obtuse, Simon, but I never would have pictured Caroline Hatch as having a fling with somebody like Graham,” Prosser admitted. “He always looked so scruffy and down on his luck. For their own part, Caroline and Charles always fit the image of the perfect diplomatic couple: young, good-looking, intelligent, well bred, and quite devoted to each other. They were the last couple I would have expected to hit the rocks over something like this.”

“Perhaps so, Conrad, but my sources are very solid on that point. Besides, that’s not even the half of what was going on. As it turns out, one of the other women Graham was taking to bed was the mistress of a Palestinian merchant by the name of Zuhayri. It seems the Palestinian had set this bird up in an expensive flat in Ramlet el Baida for the times when he came in from the Gulf. Apparently when he found out about her affair with Graham, he hired a couple of killers to dispatch them both.”

“You mean the mistress was murdered, too?” Prosser asked in disbelief.

“Nobody I spoke with seems to know. A few thought she might be hiding out with her family in Sidon. A Dane with the Red Cross told me he had heard she managed somehow to get a visa to America. In any event, she seems to have taken leave from her UN job and disappeared right about the time Graham was murdered.”

“What sort of UN job? Where?”

“With one of the independent agencies, in economic research or the like. Her absence has been noted among the UN crowd, by the way. She seems to have had quite a following as an amateur oriental dancer.”

Prosser felt a spark of excitement. A few of the jumbled facts rattling around in his head were coming together to form a pattern. “Can you describe her?” he asked, trying not to appear overly interested.

“Only in general terms, since I’ve never seen her in person. But people I’ve spoken with say she is in her mid-twenties, attractively built, very bright, and rather outspoken for an Arab girl. As I said, I never met her, but one person described her as a stunner.”

“You wouldn’t happen to remember her name, would you?”

“No, I’d have to check my notes for that. But there is something else that might be useful.” Simon took a long drink of beer and sat back with an inscrutable smile.

“Which brings us, I suppose, to what you had in mind when you asked me to meet you here,” Prosser said.

“The world is full of coincidences, isn’t it?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.”

“No? Then explain this one: two days before Graham was killed, I happened to see him having dinner at the Coral Beach Hotel with a table of six or eight Arabs. Sitting next to him with her arm around his shoulder was the woman who sat next to you last night at Jean-Paul’s.”

“Which woman?” Prosser asked calmly. “There were two at the table.”

“I’m talking about the one with the red dress.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean the one in black and white? She works for the UN, and as it happens she just returned to Beirut a week ago from an extended shopping trip to New York. Around the time you and I ran into each other in the Hala Building lobby, I saw her perform a pretty fair belly-dance routine at a party.”

“Which was also around the time Graham was killed.”

“Let’s see…the party was on a Wednesday night, and Graham was shot on a Friday, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. Which means that the night you watched the woman in black and white doing the belly dance was the same night I saw the woman in red with Graham at the Coral Beach.”

Prosser suddenly felt his face flush. “Hold on, there’s something awry here,” he insisted. “It’s Layla, the girl dressed in black and white, who fits the description of the woman who was Graham’s and Zuhayri’s mistress, not Rima, the one in red. What you say just doesn’t make sense.”

“Layla, Rima, Roula, whatever their names, old boy, the bird I saw sitting with Graham was the smaller of the two women you were with last night. She wore a short red dress and had her hair pulled back behind her head and she sat to your right.”

“I’m sorry, but it still doesn’t add up,” Prosser repeated.

“Maybe you ought to sleep on it and get back to me once you’ve sorted it out.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Prosser answered darkly.

“Of course, old boy, but I will have to inform the British consul about it. He’s going to want to have a word with both women, I expect.”

Prosser frowned and bit his lip while he weighed his reply. “You’re quite right. The British consul has every right to question them. But look, I’m pressed for time right now and the weekend is nearly here. Do you suppose you might hold off telling your consul until Monday while I check around?”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Simon answered. “I won’t be in town tomorrow anyway. Why don’t you ring me first thing Monday morning and we’ll talk again.”

Chapter 27

Wave after wave lapped at the rocks skirting the seawall at the northwestern tip of Ras Beirut. The sun had disappeared below the horizon nearly a half hour earlier, sending most of the Corniche’s evening strollers on their way home. But Conrad Prosser remained at the railing listening to the soothing rhythm of the swells.

At last he lowered himself to the pavement and made a leisurely approach to the coffee van parked some fifty meters away, opposite the Riviera Hotel. The vendor, a deeply tanned Druze whose age could have been anything between thirty and fifty, operated an elaborate electric espresso machine that drew its power from a nearby streetlamp. Upon seeing Prosser’s approach, the vendor dumped out the old grounds, measured out enough coffee for a fresh batch, and opened a steam valve to prepare the first cup. In the distance the intermittent pops of faraway gunfire mingled with the clamor of automobile horns up and down the Corniche.

Prosser waited for the cup to fill with the viscous black liquid and then handed over a ten-lira note that the vendor stuffed carelessly into his shirt pocket before surrendering the merchandise and change. Prosser slowly turned back the way he had come. He was scarcely out of the shadow of the streetlamp when he noticed several musical car horns growing louder in an absurd musical duel, with one horn trumpeting “La Cucaracha” while the other blared out the opening bars of the theme from
The Godfather.
Meanwhile, the gunfire also grew louder and became identifiable as that of a lone rifleman firing in celebration.

Moments later a four-car wedding procession wheeled around the bend from the west, led by a stately but aging black Mercedes festooned with white ribbons, carnations, and toilet paper streamers. From its sunroof protruded the torso of a young Arab bride in a simple white gown and that of her pinstriped groom, like dolls atop a wedding cake, both giggling hysterically. Following closely behind were two Peugeots and a Fiat whose rust-eaten muffler made it sound like a two-ton truck. From time to time a mustachioed teenager in the Fiat’s front seat popped his head and shoulders through the open sunroof to unleash a staccato burst of gunfire from his Kalashnikov.

Prosser glanced at his watch. It was already five minutes past the scheduled meeting time, and Abu Khalil’s car was still nowhere in sight. This was the third consecutive alternate meeting the agent had missed, not to mention two paydays, something Prosser had never before known him to pass up. Now that the last of the alternate meeting times they had scheduled had come and gone, he had no other means of recontacting Abu Khalil except to wait for him to get in touch by signal.

Of all the times to be out of touch, he thought, this has to be the worst.
For the hundredth time, he wondered if Abu Khalil might still be alive yet unable to meet with him. Perhaps he had been transferred to South Lebanon or the Bekaa. Or perhaps he had been sent unexpectedly for an extended training course in Syria, Libya, the Soviet Union, or Eastern Europe.

Then Prosser thought of the air raid that Israel had unleashed on the Fakhani neighborhood the day Abu Khalil was to have met with Colonel Hisham. This was the most logical explanation for Abu Khalil’s absence, but he could not bring himself to accept it.

Prosser retraced his steps back to the coffee van and asked its proprietor to brew him another espresso. He no longer cared that his waiting might look suspicious. There was little chance Abu Khalil would appear, but he sensed that if he missed this chance, there might never be another.

Chapter 28

Friday

A thunderous crash rattled the office windows in their metal frames and brought Prosser bolt upright in his chair. It wasn’t a sonic boom—the report was too close by and too sharply defined. He listened for the second of the twin concussions that characterize a sonic boom, then came out from behind his desk and onto the balcony to squint out over the shimmering sea.

In the hazy distance beyond Phoenicia Street and the hotel district, two thin columns of black smoke grew taller and thicker and leaned at an oblique angle in the westerly breeze.
A couple of Phalangist shells intended for the former commercial district must have overshot their mark,
he thought. He listened to the chatter of gunfire and the crumps of rockets and grenades echoing among the distant walls of the no-man’s-land and wondered how far the battle would spread this time.

The sudden, insistent ringing of his telephone aroused Prosser from his thoughts. “Political section,” he said, picking up the receiver with one hand and closing the balcony door with the other.

“Mr. Prosser?” a young male voice asked in a Brooklyn accent.

“Speaking.”

“Sir, this is Sergeant Rocco at Post One. We’ve just received reports of new outbreaks of shelling along the Green Line; it looks like the trouble is spreading fast. The ambassador’s driver just came from the port and says the Syrian PLA has set up some of its big field pieces just east of us, near the Artisanat. Be advised, sir, the ambassador wants all nonessential personnel to leave the embassy as soon as possible and to stay in their residences until further notice.”

“Thanks, Sergeant. I’ll pass the word. I assume you’ve already called the defense attaché’s office?”

“Colonel Ross has already been informed, sir. I haven’t been able to reach Mr. Pirelli, though. If you see him, would you mind giving him the word and asking him to check in with Marine Post One?”

“Sure thing. And if there are any other messages for Mr. Pirelli or me, call me on this extension. I don’t expect the secretaries will be around much longer but I’ll be here.”

He hung up the receiver and returned to his typewriter to recapture the train of thought he had been following before the interruption. After rereading the last paragraph, he reached for the gazetteer lying facedown on his cluttered desk. “Naamé, Na’ma, Ni’mah…there it is,” he muttered and jotted down the coordinates of a village whose antiaircraft defenses were to be featured in the report he was drafting.

The telephone rang again.

“Con? It’s Harry.”

“
Sabah al khair, habibi.
It’s good to hear you’re up so early,” he replied. “What’s new?”

“Will you be in your office for a few more minutes?”

“Easily. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be here through lunch.”

“Good. I’ll be right up.”

He had not yet finished the paragraph when Harry trudged through the door carrying a slender, tan Samsonite briefcase and slumped wearily onto the worn leather easy chair.

Prosser continued to type, not looking up until he had finished the final sentence of the paragraph. “You look terrible, Harry,” he greeted the vice consul. “What’s the matter? Did Layla keep you going too late to get any sleep?”

“Don’t I wish,” Harry replied with a sigh. “There was the goddamnedest firefight outside my building at about two a.m. It went on for ten or fifteen minutes before the Syrians finally arrived to break it up, and then, just when I’d fallen back asleep, some jokers tossed off a couple of grenades. I didn’t get back to sleep until four. That wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had any shut-eye the night before. But no, that night we hadn’t been back from the Hamra Club more than twenty minutes when my phone rang. It was a gendarme captain calling from Damour to say that the Syrians were holding four suspected Israeli spies who claimed to be Western journalists. Two claimed to be Americans and insisted they knew me. He wanted to know if I’d drive down and vouch for them. Jesus bloody Christ...”

“How were you supposed to get to Damour when the ambassador won’t let us go past Khaldé?”

“Never mind. That’s a whole other story. Anyway, I got there, and after some haggling I managed to convince the captain that the Americans were journalist friends of mine and got him to bring all four of them up to the Hobeiche police station for identification. But that didn’t turn out to be so simple either, since none of the four geniuses had their passports with them and neither of the two Americans had bothered to register with the embassy. I finally got them released about half past three. Some night.”