End of Enemies

51

As Tanner’s plane was taking off from Heathrow, Stucky was leaving Ben-Gurion Airport in Avi Haron’s car. The windows were rolled down, and a breeze blew through the interior. In the distance Stucky could see the blue expanse of the Mediterranean Sea.

“How was your flight?” Haron asked him.

“Fine.” Stucky had taken an immediate dislike to Haron; he was too cheerful by half. “Why’s it so damned hot?”

“It is what we call hamseen… a warm, dry wind. It is Arabic for—”

“So where do we find this guy?”

“He is waiting for us in a cafe just outside the West Bank.”

“Waiting?”

Haron smiled. “Yes, Mr. Stucky. You see, we’ve done this before.”

The cafe, which lay within shouting distance of the West Bank checkpoint, was built of rough ochre stone and cedar supports. On the front terrace, rows of wooden benches were filled with customers.

Haron’s car and two Israeli Army jeeps screeched to a stop in front of the cafe, and a dozen soldiers leapt out. The patrons, all Arabs, hardly took notice, most continuing to drink their coffee and smoke from their hookahs.

“Stay here,” Haron said to Stucky.

Haron got out and marched onto the terrace. He went from table to table, examining faces and asking questions until he came to Hossein Asseal, who was sitting alone. Haron asked for his identification. Asseal shook his head.

“Take him,” Haron ordered.

Asseal was handcuffed, dragged to one of the jeeps, and thrown in the backseat. Haron got into the car and they pulled away. “See?” he told Stucky with a smile. “Simple.”

They watches Asseal through a one-way mirror. Seated across from him were a pair of interrogators, one Mossad, the other Shin Bet. All three were smiling and joking. The room was thick with cigarette smoke.

“How long do we hold him?” asked Haron.

“Four more hours should do.”

Haron nodded. “We’ll be done with his things within the hour. After that, it’s just a matter of satisfying appearances. Believe me, thirty minutes after we took him, half the West Bank knew.” Haron grinned. “Mr. Asseal is well-known, you see. He thinks of himself as quite the businessman.”

“Yeah, well, business is about to turn sour.”

Haron excused himself and stepped into the cell. He dismissed the interrogators. Once alone, he shook Asseal’s hand. “My old friend, how are you?”

“Better since your message, effendi. You said it was urgent, so here I am.”

Haron slid an eight-by-ten photograph across the table. “Do you remember this?”

“Of course. Khartoum. A fine day. It was helpful to you?”

“Very. You see the man in the middle, the Arab with the mustache? His name is Mustafa al-Baz. We believe he’s in Beirut. We want you to gather more information on his activities. Can you do it?”

Asseal frowned. “Of course, but Beirut it such a dangerous place….”

“Five thousand. Half now, half on delivery.”

“U.S. dollars?”

Haron nodded. “And a ten percent bonus if you can get the information within five days.”

“Five days? That is not much time. Forty percent.”

They haggled over the bonus until Haron agreed to twenty percent. “An extra thousand upon delivery.”

Asseal smiled. “Done.”

With Haron’s car in the lead, the convoy returned to Ben Gurion Airport via a circuitous route that took them through several Arab neighborhoods. Asseal, already mentally spending the $2,500 in his wallet, did not notice.

Others did, however.

At the terminal he was lifted bodily from the jeep, his handcuffs were removed, and his suitcase was dropped on the pavement. With a soldier on each arm, he was marched to the El Al ticket counter. Travelers in nearby lines stared momentarily, then turned away: Just another unwelcome Arab.

The soldiers released Asseal and shoved his briefcase into his chest.

“Good luck,” Haron whispered to him, gave a wink, and walked away.

This was to be their second and final call to Abu Azhar.

Though he wouldn’t call it respect, Latham had developed a certain regard for Fayyad. Since his capture the Jordanian hadn’t once tried to defend the things he’d done; he was resigned, Latham thought. Similarly, he hadn’t requested anything in return for his cooperation, save one. He wanted to see Judith. Latham agreed to pass along the request but made no guarantees. This, too, Fayyad accepted without comment.

Once the recorders were running, Latham had the technician dial the Nicosia front number. The procedure was the same as last time. An hour after Fayyad’s initial message, they received a call and another booth number, which they quickly cross-referenced and routed to the safe house switchboard.

Abu Azhar picked up on Fayyad’s third ring.

“You recall the man from Angola we spoke of?” Fayyad said.

“Yes.”

“His name is Hossein Asseal. He has worked for both American and Israeli firms. The former has asked him for a referral on one of our employees.”

“He is coming here?”

“That is what we’ve been told.”

“When?” asked Azhar.

“He’s either already left Tel Aviv or will be very soon. He should be arriving evening or early morning, your time.”

As Hossein Asseal was leaving Tel Aviv, Tanner was just touching down at Beirut International Airport. Once the jet taxied to a stop, he sat staring out the window until most of the passengers collected their carry-ons, then stood up and headed toward the exit. He got a perfunctory “Enjoy Beirut, sir,” from the flight attendant and started down the stairs.

Immediately the odor washed over him: the unmistakable scent of Beirut. Someone had once described it as a mixture of “cooking spices, gunpowder, dashed hopes, and barely controlled terror.” It fit. It was the tawattur—the tension — that epitomized Lebanon.

He shouldered his duffel and joined the queue to Customs.

The terminal was a cultural smorgasbord. Shiites stood beside Christians, who bantered with Druze, who laughed with Armenian Jews. On a dark street they might be enemies; here they were neighbors. Ahead, a young Lebanese woman in denim shorts and a pink T-shirt emblazoned with Hot Stuff stood behind a Sunni Muslim woman dressed in a black aba and veil. Amid the cacophony of voices, Tanner could hear snippets of French, Arabic, and English. A different world.

It took an hour to reach the desk and thirty seconds to be cleared. For whatever reason, most Lebanese love journalists, and they hold a special affinity for the Canadian variety, who they believe to be nonimperialist and therefore neutral.

Tanner bought half a dozen newspapers from the gift shop, two of them large-circulation journals, al-Liwa and Monday Morning, the other four propaganda sheets for several of Beirut’s dominant factions. These, he hoped, would give him a feel for the climate of the city.

The taxi stand was bustling, so he found a bench and sat down. Several vendors and cabbies approached him with their pitch, but he declined.

Before long, a battered yellow taxi with a Playboy air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror screeched to the curb. A rotund Arab in a starched white dish-dash hopped onto the sidewalk, bartered unsuccessfully with several customers, then stopped before Tanner.

“Taxi, sir? Very clean, fair price.”

Tanner shrugged. “Why not?”

Within minutes they were speeding north into Beirut proper. The road was littered with abandoned cars and the occasional armored personnel carrier. In a nearby field, children scampered over a charred T-64 tank; a hundred yards away sat a refugee camp, little more than a cluster of tents and shanties bordered by a sewage canal in which more children splashed and played.

Just north of the sports stadium, the driver pointed over a rubble-strewn berm. “Sabra. Chatila.” Briggs knew the words well.

In September of 1970, Phalangist agents tipped off the Israelis that the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps were in fact PLO staging areas for Fatah guerillas. The Israeli army surrounded the area but refused to enter, instead allowing the Phalange Militia to round up the guerillas. What followed was a massacre that took the lives of almost 900 Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. Soon afterward, Sabra and Chatila became a rallying cry for anti-Zionist terrorist groups.

As the taxi turned onto the Corniche Mazra, the driver said, “I was so happy to receive your call, Briggs. It is splendid to once again see you.”

Tanner reached forward and squeezed Safir Nourani’s shoulder. “And you, my friend. How have you been?”

“Very well.”

“Your family?”

“Happy and safe.”

“The city?”

“Ahhh. Himyit.” Roughly translated, it meant “things are getting warm.” Given Safir’s penchant for understatement, it meant the city was very dangerous. As proof, Safir pointed to a pair of bullet holes in his windshield. “Just yesterday.”

“You can give me a rundown later,” said Tanner. “First, how about one of your famous whirlwind tours?”

“Muslim side or Christian side?”

“Muslim.”

“Malesh! Hold on!”

Without so much as a turn signal or a beep of the horn, Safir swung his taxi around a pair of cars, then screeched onto Boulevard Verdun, heading north toward the old lighthouse and the Corniche.

“I see you haven’t lost your touch,” Tanner said, clutching the door handle.

“Thank you, effendi!”

Safir Nourani was a self-proclaimed “closet Druze,” living and working in the city, while still retaining ties to Druze enclaves in the Chouf Mountains. Druze were a secretive and close-knit offshoot sect of Islam, with a reputation of being fierce fighters when crossed.

Tanner and Safir (who’d been recommended to Tanner by his old mentor Ned Billings) had been friends for eight years, having met when Briggs and his team had slipped into northern Lebanon to gather intelligence on Pasdaran activity in Baalbek. Safir had served not only as their guide but also as their eyes and ears. If there was news worth knowing, Safir had it.

For the next hour, he took Tanner through the city while giving a running monologue of what had changed and what had not: Here was a supermarket gutted by a mortar attack; there a French cultural minister was kidnapped last month; three car bombs on this street last week; there a sniper killed four people two days ago. Safir’s account was a laundry list of terror, events most people only read about but Beirutis lived every day.

They passed through a dozen hajez, or checkpoints, each manned by teenagers carrying AK-47s, the weapon of choice for the Beiruti musallahheen. So far, Tanner had seen neither police nor soldiers. If tradition held, the authorities were holed up in their barracks, waiting for the problems to work themselves out.

At each hajez, they were cleared through as Safir produced the correct password: sometimes a shouted slogan, sometimes a bit of torn paper taken from that particular group’s propaganda sheet, and sometimes a smile and “Keef al haal!”

At a checkpoint near the Museum Crossing, a gunman demanded money for safe passage and reached into Tanner’s jacket. Without thinking, Briggs grabbed the hand. A dozen AKs jutted through the car’s windows. After two minutes of debate, Safir appeased the leader with a warm Coca-Cola from the glove compartment, then drove away.

“Please excuse, effendi, but that was unwise of you.”

“I know. Sorry. I’m still trying to acclimate.”

“I understand.” Safir swerved to miss a crater; the Playboy air freshener twirled. “So: Can I assume you will need my services while you are here?”

“If you’re available.”

“For you, of course.”

“As for—”

“No, no. Money is not discussed between friends. You will pay me what you think is fair. We will not discuss it again.”

They followed the Corniche to American University, then on to Hamra, Beirut’s commercial center. Here there were boutiques, shoe shops, markets: everything a western business district had save the rubble-strewn streets and bullet-ridden walls.

“Seen enough?” asked Safir.

“Yes. I’m at the Commodore. Is it still the same?”

“The Commodore never changes, effendi. It is bomb-proof, that place.”

He dropped Tanner at the doors and promised to return at eight.

Milling inside the lobby were a dozen or so journalists, all wearing either the thousand yard stare or the cheerful such-is-life visage that Beirut eventually foists on its visitors. A pair of saloon-style doors led to the bar, and through them Tanner could hear laughing. The birthplace for many an alcoholic, the Commodore’s bar saw brisk business.

The clerk rang for the bellman, then told Tanner he must check in with the local media liaison, in this case a chain-smoking PLO man Briggs found in a small back office. Next week, Tanner knew, the liaison might be an Amal soldier or a PFLP thug. It all depended on who had the muscle.

“Passport,” the PLO man said. Tanner handed it over. The man studied it for a long minute, then squinted at Tanner. “American?”

“Canadian.”

“You have media pass?”

“No,” Tanner said. “I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“How long?”

“Five days, maybe a week.”

“One week, fifty dollars. American.”

Tanner counted out the money and laid a twenty on top of it. “For your help.” In the Mideast it was called baksheesh-—socially acceptable bribery.

Now the man was all smiles. “You need help again, you see me. Ragheb.”

Tanner found his room surprisingly clean, with a view of the Corniche from the balcony. It was a perfect Mediterranean afternoon, warm with a slight breeze blowing off the ocean.

He scanned the shoreline until he found Pigeon Rocks, then traced backward, looking for the apartment building in which he and his parents had lived. After five minutes of searching, he realized it was gone, probably the victim of a bombing or a fire.

He suddenly felt very alone.

After showering and setting his watch alarm for seven P.M., Briggs connected the cell phone to the Palm Pilot, sent an encoded message to Stucky saying he was on the ground, then switched channels to the GPS system.

After a few seconds, a map of Beirut appeared on the screen. Displayed were the six key landmarks he’d asked the CIA tech people to program into the Palm Pilot: American University, the National Museum, the airport, Tal Zaatar, the old Soviet embassy, and the junction of Tripoli Road and the Beirut River. Using these, he could navigate most of the city.

He hit the XMIT key. A red X — his current position — appeared south of American University. It was right where it should be.

“Time to see if the Israelis came through,” he murmured.

He punched the RCV key. A few seconds passed, then a red square appeared near the Beirut Airport.

The fly had arrived.