Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (44 page)

A knock on
the office door snapped Channing’s eyes open. ‘Come.’

A plain girl
in her early twenties entered, handing a file to Channing with a
deferential murmur. His salacious eyes followed her leaving. He
grunted. ‘Now, Yves, let us take a look at what we’ve got sitting
under Frank Coleman’s little rock, shall we?’ He ambled over to the
desk, spreading the file out and picking through its contents. He
tapped at his notebook’s keyboard.

Dubois found
it difficult at times to keep up with Channing’s idiomatic drawl,
one of the many aspects to the man that got under his skin more
than he’d care to acknowledge in public. Channing liked to test his
patience and Dubois, as ever, waited so that he wouldn’t give the
man the pleasure of a reaction.

Channing
tutted. ‘So our buddy Buddy is a fully paid up Mossad hood. Kidon
boy. Speaks Arabic, long history of involvement in southern
Lebanon, AKA Amit Peled, Harry Stahlman and Rutger Stahl. He’s been
all over, has Buddy. Munich, Dubai, Gaza and Saida. A lot in Saida.
Funny you hadn’t come across him before, Yves. Used to be your
stamping ground, didn’t it? Saida?’

‘
I have never
met him before, no,’ Dubois shook his head, consigning the hazy
remembrance of a young Frank Coleman shouting at him back into the
past.

‘
Peled’s been
spotted snuggling up to a number of right-wing US groups recently,
suspected of involvement in a couple of operations that have caused
great embarrassment to the current government, starting with that
Hamas murder screw-up in Dubai.’ Channing became garrulous.
‘There’s talk of an ultraright-wing cabal in Israeli intelligence
and political circles and our boy fits the profile perfectly. Old
Sharon thought the sun shone out of Buddy’s little brown
arse.’

‘
The
Americans have run with the Israelis before. This is hardly news.
They have told us to get off their patch.’

‘
Oh, I don’t
think we’re going to do that,’ Channing drawled, reaching for his
mobile. ‘One second, Yves.’ He dialled, waited. ‘Karl, hi, it’s
Brian over in London. Well, not actually. In Beirut at the moment.
How’s Celia? Great, great. Look, Karl, I wonder if you could do me
a quick favour. We were having a look around over here and wondered
if you chaps had any ops running in Lebanon right now, particularly
anything going on with our friends from David’s Land? Sure, no
problem at all. Thanks, Karl.’

He dropped
the line with a look of smug satisfaction. ‘Now that, Yves, is why
you need to cultivate contacts.’

Dubois smiled
wanly and sat back as Channing continued to pick through the file
with his tender, thief’s fingers.

Brian
Channing let the mobile ring five times before answering it, the
nearest Dubois had ever come to snapping and shouting at the man to
react for the love of God.

‘
Channing.’ He listened for a time. ‘Can I take that as
Gospel, Karl? I mean, there’s no chance that anyone
particularly
clandestine
might be operating here? Under Frank Coleman’s
direct purview, for instance? Okay, thank you very much. No, no,
nothing at all.’ Channing held the phone between shoulder and cheek
as he scanned the papers in front of him. ‘No, Karl, absolutely
not. You know if we do, you’ll be the first to know. Be great to
catch up next time you guys are in London.’

Dubois
watched Channing’s grin, knowing that the smiles were purely for
the benefit of the man on the other end of the phone and feeling
that he had, somehow, to admire the way the man worked even as he
knew that Channing’s gain would always somehow end up being his
colleagues’ loss.

Dubois was
surprised at the look of fear that passed across Channing’s face as
he laid the mobile down on the desk like a playing card. Fear was
something he had never seen in the man before. Channing was about
cunning and determination, not fear. Dubois was silent as Channing
sat, his eyes closed.

‘
They’re
freelancing, Yves. The CIA has no operations running in this area
currently. Absolutely none. Coleman is retiring next week and is
off effective duty.’ Channing rose from the table and reached again
for the mobile. ‘The innocent questions I have just asked are about
to start creating fucking chaos in Washington. I suggest you talk
to your masters as I am about to talk to mine. If Maalouf is right,
the whole Middle East is about to go up in flames.’

Dubois nodded
and headed for the door. As he pulled it shut behind him,
Channing’s silky tones sounded. ‘Minister, it’s Brian Channing in
Beirut.’

THIRTY-SIX

The meeting
room deep in the heart of the Résidence des Pins was functional,
blue carpet tiles and scuffed white walls, the plastic-covered
table surrounded by a motley collection of swivel chairs. The
whiteboard on the wall was scuffed and grubby in the corners from
long use. There was a kettle and a tray with coffee packets, tea
bags, sugar and a tin of condensed milk.

Channing
stood by the projection of the ground plan of the Deir Na’ee
facility, his face stark in the projector’s light as he glanced
around the room. Ghassan Maalouf and Yves Dubois sat to his right,
to his left Jean Meset, the programmer from Nathalie’s team. The
young man’s face was bathed in the blue-grey light of the
screen.

‘
Okay, this
is the situation right now. The team here has access to the CCTV
systems in the Deir Na’ee complex and to the core security systems.
We are in effective control of Falcon Dynamics’ networks and can
shut them down if we so decide. The question I believe is timing.
The Lebanese Army is moving in. Ghassan?’

Maalouf got
to his feet. ‘The army is deploying units from Bahjat Ghanem, the
air force is readying Fourteenth Squadron, which has modified Bell
Hueys. It will be an hour before the army units are within range of
the complex at Deir Na’ee. We fear it will be too little, too late,
but sadly Lebanon is hampered militarily by lack of supply and
technology. We know that Freij’s militia is numerous, well armed
and entrenched in Kalaa, the area around the Deir Na’ee
facility.’

Channing
turned to Jean Meset. ‘Jean, where’s the missile guidance system?
Can we hack these missiles?’

Meset rose
with an odd bowing motion, his hands clasped together and
fidgeting. ‘We have missile analysts from Dassault and BAE working
on the data we have gathered on these units and we know that the
guidance system is highly sophisticated, but we haven’t been able
to find the control network. We think it might be totally
independent of the systems that we have gained access to. This
would be sensible, actually. We think it might be linked to the
supercomputer we have found. We have not gained access yet.’ He
turned to Maalouf. ‘Erm, you can tell your army guys that when
they’re ready we can open the automatic doors, but not any manual
ones. Obviously. I mean—’ He shuffled a little and glanced at
Channing. ‘We can’t take the networks down without losing control
of the access systems, so we have to leave them up for now. I would
suggest we open all doors then shut down the networks when the army
is arrived.’

Channing
nodded. ‘Thanks, Jean. Yves?’

Yves Dubois
stood. ‘As the European Union, we have no significant military
assets close by. There is a British airbase in Cyprus, but it is
set up for search and rescue helicopter missions, not for major
combined attacks. The British have the Armilla patrol in the Gulf,
which does have a combat aircraft capability and has been put on
high alert. We could call on support from the Turkish air force,
but there simply isn’t time. We believe these missiles could be
readied to fire imminently.’

‘
Guys,’ Jean
Meset’s voice was tight with excitement. ‘There are two prisoners
being brought into the building. Here.’

He twisted
his tablet screen and they watched Gerald Lynch, blindfolded and
bound, marched past the CCTV camera. The bald man walking next to
him stumbled, urged on by the gunman from behind.

The shock hit
Dubois, an icy blow. He turned to Channing, who was staring at the
screen. ‘What do we do?’

Channing was
silent for a moment. He glanced away from the screen, shaking his
head. ‘We must proceed as we can. The army goes in, the networks go
down. We try to find the missile guidance systems. I’m going to
make a couple of calls to America to see if they have any assets
close by.’

THIRTY-SEVEN

Marcelle
Aboud was sitting on the sofa in Michel Freij’s sumptuous office
when Lynch was marched in, Danni the gunman’s hand on his shoulder.
The heavy door slammed shut behind them. She was wearing a long red
dress, diamonds glittered above her full bust. Her smile at his
entrance turned to a look of concern.

He stared
around the big room. The walls were stone, a free-standing
fireplace divided the workspace from the sofas and a bar, the
flames dancing merrily. To the right was a massive picture window
looking out to the wintry mountains beyond, the huge pane of
floor-to-ceiling thick glass at least thirty feet wide to give a
breathtaking, vertiginous view of the snowy slopes of
Dannieh.

‘
Mr Lynch.’
Michel Freij was sitting at the big glass desk. He issued a command
to the gunman in Arabic and Lynch found himself shoved across the
rug-strewn wooden floor and into a black and chrome chair. The
movement made the cable tie on his wrists cut even deeper and he
fought to suppress the cry of pain in his throat.

Freij nodded
a dismissal. ‘Thank you, Danni.’

Freij was
wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, and jeans. His dark hair
was slicked back and his handsome face turned to Lynch with a
pleasant, relaxed smile.

Lynch’s
mobile was on the black mirrored surface of Freij’s desk. The only
other object on the obsidian surface was a slim black notebook
computer parked to one side. Freij followed his eyes.

‘
Yes, Mr
Lynch. Your mobile. I should have Danni punished for that
oversight, should I not?’ He smiled regretfully. ‘He is normally so
very ... effective.’

Lynch croaked
through his dry lips. ‘He’s just another thug, Michel. Like you,
but without the suit.’

Freij tapped
the desktop with his fingertip, which instantly became a display.
He swept a finger across an area of coloured symbols that Lynch
could only dimly make out from where he was sitting.

‘
There,’
Freij mused, scrolling the screen with a fingernail. ‘Yes, the
polls are once again excellent. Au contraire, then, Mr Lynch, this
‘thug’ is well on track to becoming the next president of Lebanon.
Marcelle, do you think you could be so kind to give Mr Lynch a
glass of water? He seems to have been in the wars.’

Marcelle
sashayed over to the bar and brought a heavy tumbler of water to
Lynch. She cradled his neck as he drank, leaning into him and
whispering, ‘There,’ when he had finished.

She took the
glass away and Lynch glared at Freij, his voice stronger. ‘What’s
she doing here?’

Freij feigned
surprise. ‘Marcelle? Oh, I invited her to join me for this moment.
I find this type of event so very
stimulating
. Marcelle is very good
at her job, Mr Lynch. You should save up and perhaps give her a try
one day. Although I understand it could be difficult on a British
civil service salary.’

Freij tapped
the desktop again. ‘It is over, Mr Lynch. As you so correctly
pointed out when you sent this text to your friend Ms Durand, the
Ilyushin is indeed gone from our airfield here. It flew to the
Baazaran Air Base with two mobile missile launchers, each armed
with a highly sophisticated medium range missile. These have both
deployed on schedule. You have been looking for two Russian Oka
class nuclear warheads, have you not? Let me fulfil your quest for
you. They are both at Baazaran. You have heard of
Baazaran?’

Lynch glared
at Freij, his breathing quickening with his anger.

‘
It is a
disused airbase in the mountains, in the area we call the Chouf.
The Druze made great use of it during the civil war and I am making
use of it now. Any Iranian retaliation will be, of course, directed
at the place the missiles originated.’ Freij chuckled. ‘Not a good
time to be Druze, I think.’

Lynch
struggled against the sharp-edged cable ties. ‘You’ll never get
away with this.’

‘
My God,
could you come up with nothing better than that?’ Freij kicked his
chair back and rounded the desk. ‘Is that it? Your last great
line?’ He gripped Lynch’s chin, forcing his face up to meet Freij’s
furious eyes. ‘You’re not going to escape, Lynch. You’re not going
to blow up my mountain retreat and walk away with the girl. You’re
too late and, if I may be frank, not very good.’

Freij let
Lynch’s head drop and strode to stand in front of the picture
window, a dark silhouette against the blue sky. ‘In a little under
five minutes, those missiles will launch and in under ten minutes
will be suborbital over Syria. This,
habibi
, is game over.’

Lynch’s
mobile buzzed on Freij’s desk. Freij turned from the glass. ‘What
could we have here, Mr Lynch?’