Beirut Incident

Chapter 6

Number 173 Almendares Street. The odors, noises and activities in the building were external. Charlie answered the doorbell almost before I took my finger off the buzzer. Whoever he had been expecting, however, it wasn't me.

"Nick…! What are you doing here?"

It was a legitimate question. "Hi, Charlie," I said cheerfully as I pushed past him into the room. I sat down on one of the sofas in front of the coffee table, pulled a Galoise out of the half-crushed pack in my pocket and lit it with an ornate table lighter that looked as if it might have come from Hong Kong.

Charlie looked nervous as he closed the door, and after a moment of indecision, took a chair opposite me. "What's up, Nick?"

I grinned at him. "I've got another job for you, Charlie, and I want to talk to you a bit, too."

He assayed a small smile. It didn't come off too well. "I… uh… I can't talk much about things, Nick," he pleaded. "You know that."

He was right, of course. Half of Charlie's not inconsiderable value to the international underworld lay in his remarkable talents with a pen, a camera, a printing press, an airbrush, and an embossing kit. The other half lay in his absolute silence. If he ever talked about anything, he would be dead. Too many people in the Mideast would be too afraid that the next ones he talked about would be them. So silence was part of his stock in trade, and in my occasional brushes with Charlie I had never asked him to break it.

But life can be tough, I thought to myself. I had a moment's regret for what I was about to do, but I reminded myself that this was a presidential mission. The Charlie Harkinses of this world couldn't count for much.

"You should have told me you were working for the Dragon Lady, Charlie," I said conversationally.

He frowned as if he didn't know what the hell I was talking about "What do you mean… uh, Dragon Lady?"

"Come on, Charlie. Su Lao Lin."

"Su Lao Lin? Uh… who's she?" Fright played with his eyeballs.

"How long have you been working for her?"

"Me? Work for who?"

I sighed. I didn't have all night to play games. "Charlie," I said with exasperation. "She sent me over here. I need a whole new set of papers. I'm leaving for the States in the morning."

He stared at me, comprehension finally dawning on him. I watched his eyes as he worked it out in his mind. He knew I was an AXE agent. If Su Lao Lin had sent me over to get new papers, it meant that I had worked myself into the pipeline somehow. And if I had worked myself into the pipeline, it meant that that pipeline wouldn't be operating much longer. He looked around the room as if seeing the freshly painted walls, the green rug and the nice furniture all disappearing before his eyes.

He had figured things out correctly.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure, Charlie."

He sighed deeply. The fates were contriving against Charlie Harkins and he knew it. He had to let Su Lao Lin know that an AXE agent had broken through her security. But the AXE agent was right there in the room with him.

I didn't envy him.

Finally he made up his mind and sighed again. He reached for the telephone on the coffee table.

I leaned across the coffee table and slammed the palm of my hand hard across the bridge of his nose.

Tears welled in his eyes as he jerked backward. A trickle of blood ran from his left nostril. "I… have to call," he gasped. "I have to confirm that she sent you. If I didn't, she would know something was wrong. It's standard procedure."

He was undoubtedly right. There had to be some confirmation system, and the phone was as good a way as any. Now I had my own dilemma to contend with. If Charlie didn't call Su Lao Lin, she would know there was trouble somewhere. On the other hand, the last thing I wanted at that moment was Charlie on the phone with Su Lao Lin. I took Wilhelmina out of her holster with one hand and handed Charlie the telephone receiver with the other. "Here. Call her up, just as you would if I were one of your average Siciliano customers. Right?"

He nodded, frightened. "Sure, Nick."

I waved Wilhelmina under his nose. "I want you to hold the phone so I can hear her, too. And I don't want you to say anything I wouldn't approve of. Understand?"

Harkins nodded bleakly. He dialed a number, then held the receiver halfway across the table and we both leaned forward so that our heads were almost touching.

The Dragon Lady's soft, aristocratic lisp came through the receiver. "Yes?"

Harkins cleared his throat. "Uh… Miss Lao?"

"Yes."

"Uh… This is Charlie Harkins. I got a guy up here who says you sent him."

"Describe him, please."

Inches away from me, Charlie rolled his eyes. "Well, he's about six feet four inches tall and has black hair combed straight back, kind of a square jaw and… uh… well, real broad shoulders."

I smiled at Charlie and waggled the tip of Wilhelmina at him.

"His name is Nick Cartano," he went on.

"Yes, I sent him over." I could hear her loud and clear. "We'll need everything — identity papers, passport, travel permit. He's leaving in the morning."

"Yes ma'am," Charlie replied dutifully.

"Charlie…" There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Charlie, have you ever heard of this Cartano? I wasn't able to get much of a line on him."

I nodded fiercely and tucked the muzzle of Wilhelmina under Charlie's chin to emphasize my point.

"Uh… sure, Miss Lao," he said. "I guess I've heard of him around town a little. He's been into a little bit of everything, I guess."

"Good." She sounded delighted.

Charlie stared uselessly at the telephone. He looked at me, dying to blurt out some kind of a warning.

I made a slight move with Wilhelmina.

"Goodbye, Miss Lao," he said. He hung up with a shaking hand, and I reholstered Wilhelmina.

He might have passed along some coded warning, or left out a confirmatory code, but I doubted it. The situation he was now in was too bizarre for his part of the operation to have ever been anticipated with such elaborate security.

For the second time since my arrival in Beirut, I went through the processing records routine with Charlie. He was good, but abysmally slow, and this time it took almost three hours.

I spent a good deal of time wondering how I was going to get rid of him. It was a problem. With Charlie alive, I'd never make it to the airport, let alone back to the States. Even if I left him bound and gagged, he would eventually get free and my goose would be cooked, no matter where I was.

The answer, obviously, was to kill him. But I couldn't do that. I've killed many times in my career, and Charlie was certainly no jewel of humanity. But I had killed as a final act of the hunt — men I'd been in combat with, or had stalked, or been stalked by. That's one thing. But Charlie was something else again.

There didn't seem to be any other way. Charlie had to go. On the other hand, if Harkins came up dead or missing just after fixing up my papers, the Dragon Lady was going to think it very strange indeed. It was a pretty little dilemma.

Charlie, however, solved it for me.

I was examining my new set of documents — for Nick Canzoneri this time. Charlie always liked to stay as close as possible to the real name. "Saves you from not responding sometimes when you should," he explained.

The papers all seemed in good order. There was a passport stating that Nick Canzoneri had been born in the little Calabresian village of Fuzzio, a workman's permit and a driver's license from Milano, a picture of an indistinguishable young man and a girl holding hands in front of a Roman ruin and four whining letters from Nick Canzoneri's mother back in Fuzzio.

Charlie had done a good job.

Then, as I was bending over the coffee table, looking at my new papers, he picked up the small lamp from the end table and smashed it across my head.

The force of the blow knocked me off the couch and onto the coffee table. I could feel it splinter beneath me as I crashed to the floor, the world a red haze of shrieking pain. I wasn't unconscious, thanks to the fact that the lamp had smashed. Schmitz's Law: The disintegration of a moving object dispels its force of impact in direct proportion to the speed of disintegration.

But I was hurting.

As I crashed to the floor, I instinctively sprung off the palms of my hands, throwing myself to one side in a roll. As I did, something else — probably the other lamp — smashed down next to my head, barely missing me.

I was on my hands and knees now, shaking my head like a wounded dog, trying to clear my brain. It felt as if a small bomb had exploded inside it.

I still couldn't see clearly. But I couldn't remain in one place. Charlie would be on the attack. From my hands and knees, I ducked my head into the crook of my arms and did a forward roll. My feet hit flat on the floor and I flipped upright.

I crashed against a wall. The jolt seemed to help. As I instinctively ducked just to keep moving, my vision began to clear. I could feel warm blood gushing down my face. I leapt sideways. I didn't dare remain motionless until I found my enemy. Any move I might make might take me directly into him, but I couldn't stay still.

Then I found him.

He was coming around the corner of the couch after me, one hand on the back of the couch, the other held out from his side. It held a wicked looking curved knife. It must have come from the decorative Arabic scabbard I had seen hanging on the wall.

Charlie held the knife at waist height, pointed at my belly. His feet were widespread for balance. He advanced slowly.

My floundering gyrations may have saved my life, but they had also left me crowded into a corner with the couch along one wail and a heavy oaken table along the other.

Charlie blocked my only route of escape.

I pressed against the wall as he took another step forward, only about four feet away now. His thin lips compressed tightly. The final lunge was coming.

I had no recourse. I snapped Wilhelmina into my hand with an instinctive draw from the shoulder holster and fired.

The bullet caught Charlie full in the throat and he stood there a moment, brought up short by the shock of the Luger. A look of puzzled surprise spread over his face and he seemed to be looking at me as if I were a stranger. Then his eyes glazed over blankly and the blood spurted from the base of his throat. He fell over backward, the knife still clutched in his hand.

I stepped gingerly over his body and went into the bathroom to see if I could repair my face. If nothing else, cold water would clear my head.

It took me a half-hour over the washbasin and another twenty minutes over two steaming cups of black coffee that I made on Charlie's stove before I was ready to go. Then I picked up my Nick Canzoneri papers and headed back to the St. Georges. There were still the "special instructions" from Su Lao Lin before I could take off for the States.

And she had to be disposed of, too, before I left Beirut. I couldn't very well leave her there, pushing Siciliano hoods through the pipeline to the Mafia in New York. And since I was the last one she had sent to Charlie, his death wouldn't look so good for me.

I sighed as I rang for the elevator in the ornate St. Georges. I didn't want to kill the Dragon Lady any more than I had wanted to kill Charlie, but I had made one stop between his apartment in the Quarter and the hotel, and that stop would help me carry this part of the job out.

There was a softness in her eyes when Su Lao Lin opened the door for me, but it quickly turned to alarm as she looked at my damaged features. I had a strip of adhesive tape running across my temple over one eye were Harkins' lamp had cut a painful but actually superficial gouge, and that eye was swollen, probably discolored by now.

"Nick!" she cried. "What happened."

"It's okay," I reassured her, taking her in my arms. But she pulled back so that she could look up into my face. I remembered the fat Arab and the very young girl I had seen on my first trip up to Charlie's apartment. "I just got in between some Arab and his whore," I explained. "She hit me with a lamp instead of him."

She looked concerned. "You must take care of yourself, Nick… for me."

I shrugged. "I'm leaving for the States in the morning."

"I know, but I'll see you over there."

"Oh?" That was a jolt. I hadn't known she was planning to come to America.

Her smile was close to being demure. She put her head on my chest. "I just decided tonight, while you were gone. I'll be over there in a couple of weeks. Just to visit. I want to see Franzini anyway, and…" There was that mid-sentence pause again.

"And…" I prompted.

"…and we can spend some more time together." Her arms tightened around my neck. "Would you like that? Would you like to make love to me in the United States?"

"I'd like to make love to you anywhere."

She snuggled closer. "Then what are you waiting for?" Somehow, that emerald green chiffon thing she had been wearing when she answered the door had disappeared. She wriggled her bare body against me.

I picked her up and headed for the bedroom. We had the better part of the night ahead of us and I wasn't going to spend it in an office.

I didn't tell her she would never get to the States, and the next morning I constantly had to remind myself of the American G.I.'s Su Lao Lin had destroyed with her drug network before I could bring myself to do what I had to do.

I kissed her softly on the lips when I left the next morning.

The plastique bomb I had attached to the underside of the bed wouldn't go off for another hour and a half, and I was sure she would sleep that long, probably longer if for some reason the acid took longer to eat through to the detonator.

I had picked up the bomb on my way to the St. Georges after I had left Harkins' place. If you ever need a plastique bomb in a foreign city, the place to get it is from the local C.I.A. agent-in-residence — and you can almost always find the C.I.A. agent-in-residence posing as the local Associated Press man. In Beirut it was Irving Fein, a little round man with horn rimmed glasses and a passion for drawing inside straights.

We had run into each other more than a few times around the Middle East, but he'd been reluctant to provide me with the explosive without knowing who I intended to blow up, and without checking with his boss first. He finally acceded when I convinced him it was a direct order from the White House.

It really wasn't, of course, and I might find myself in trouble over that later, but the way I figured, Su Lao Lin was an enemy agent and she had to be destroyed.

She was also very good in bed. Which was why I'd kissed her goodbye before I left.