Something had been overlooked. Something so obvious that any minute it was going to punch its way out of the glove compartment like a jack-in-the-box and smash into Raful’s face.
A jumbo jet trundled overhead, aligned for a landing on runway one-eight. Above the whine-roar of its engines the beep from the radio could have passed unnoticed, but Ehud heard. Static, the Hebrew code urgent and unhappy. Ehud swearing.
“What?”
Raful shrieked; then, more rationally, “Tell me.”
“They’ve lost the convoy.”
“How?”
“What does it matter?” Ehud spat. His fists pounded on the steering wheel. Then he was on the radio again, and this time Raful did not need to have the code translated, the meaning was so obvious: Wake up, watch, you’ll have no advance warning, don’t let them slip past….
Everything covered. Just about every fucking damn thing
“What do we do, stay here or …?” “Wait.” Ehud was calm again now. “We listen and we watch.” One oh-five precisely.
“They have to get to the airport.” Ehud was speaking almost under his breath. “Their plane leaves at three thirty-five; we know they have left the apartment; we know they are on their way.”
Yes, thought Raful; and one thing you do not mention there, Ehud: We do not know where they are.
He swallowed again. His mouth tasted of dried fish. When he looked through the windshield he saw only the row of tatty shrubs marking the center of the two-lane highway, white houses on a hillside, cars, an endless stream of traffic moving to and fro between city and airport, with nothing except sun flashes off varicolored metals to distinguish one from another.
Suddenly, for no reason, he remembered the apple jam. He saw himself sitting at a rickety table with its view of a sunlit bay and he could taste jam superimposing itself over the dry fish that coated his tongue, everything so beautiful, everything
covered,
and he wanted to vomit.
The radio:
Beep, beep, beep.
Ehud snatched it up. Another voice, measured and cool; no code this time. “Coming around the back of Burj al-Barajinah, north crossing.”
Before the cool voice could finish, Ehud was hurtling south down the highway, chasing a Boeing 707 on its glide path into the wind. Raful wound down his window and clutched the door handle, ready for a quick exit. Seconds away now. Ehud overtook a coach on its blind side, horn screaming. Ninety miles an hour, closing, everything covered again, closing, closing....
Raful found time to notice that his heart was pulsing away like an electric motor, that his mouth was awash with saliva no longer tasting of fish. As Ehud rattled in front of a lorry, forcing it onto the hard shoulder, the jam, that magical jam, came oozing back onto his palate untainted and he laughed aloud.
And now, straight ahead, he could see the start of things. Two black BMWs traveling along the outer lane, bunched up, fast, a quarter of a mile ahead with several vehicles between them and their pursuers. Traffic lights visible, green traffic lights. On the left, beyond the guardrail, a shantytown of corrugated iron roofs. A gap opening; Ehud insinuating them through it with a demented blast of the horn and rubber left on the road to mark their passage; the lights rushing toward them, still green.
Ehud tucked the Mercedes in behind the rear BMW and braked. Raful could see an arm stretched along the back seat of the car in front. Man, turning to see who was tail-gating them; second man, also in the back seat, his head also now in profile,
spotted—
Fortunately Ehud realized that in the same instant, and roared up the hard shoulder to shove the Mercedes in between the two BMWs. As Raful fought to recover his balance he saw jagged movement from the car in front—a pale face, a boy’s face—but then he was too busy with the Uzi to think about that;
every war has its
tragic casualties:
he leaned out the window, faced back toward the bodyguards’ BMW,
fire!
—three rounds,
inside,
out, five rounds more—Ehud swearing as he wrestled with one hand for his own Uzi, tucked away on the floor, no time to retrieve it when the “Go” came through….
Bullets splintered their rear window. Raful ducked while Ehud somehow managed to keep them going straight at seventy miles an hour, no damage, everything covered, keep it coming … outside the window, keep low profile, squeeze,
fire! …
and this time he was rewarded by the sight of the rear BMW swerving madly, left-right, left-right, until at last it broke away from the lane altogether, rocketing across the roadway to climb the barrier, turn on its side, and skate alongside the road for a few meters before smashing into an illegally parked ten-ton truck and so coming to a very final halt.
Now there remained only the one BMW, and everything was, it really was, at last,
covered.
They were nearly at the crossroads where the two Israeli “knights” awaited them. Now the lights had changed to red, but the BMW in front sounded its horn in an endless note, kept going, kept going hell for leather for the junction, headlamps ablaze, and Raful was checking his magazine, ensuring the safety was off, Raful was nearly there, his triumphal march already begun, when the beige E-type Jaguar pulled out of the side road as planned, everything as planned,
everything covered
—and this Jaguar rammed into the BMW, sending it careering across the road, its trunk flying open, suitcases bouncing in the dust, the car itself stopping almost against the fender of a bus coming down the opposite lane.
Shouting. Screaming. People running this way and that like so many chickens with their heads cut off, a woman shrieking over and over, “Fire, fire, my God, fire!” Four men, strong, resourceful, converging on the wrecked BMW. Four Uzis, but no one saw them or remembered them until later; then, of course, nobody had seen anything else, but now all they saw was a quartet of would-be rescuers. The offside front door of the BMW opened and an arm unfurled, just as the first of the four men reached the car and fired a burst into the driver’s head. Just to make sure that the unfurling arm wasn’t a trick; how Raful admired these people!
From inside the car came a noise like a cap gun going off: bodyguard in the front seat, valiant defender to the last; another ripple of automatic fire, silence.
People, other people, innocents, ten of them, twenty maybe, had come as close as the suitcase nearest to the wreckage. They did not know what was happening, saw only a road accident. Then at last they registered the Uzis. Then they understood and melted away, like a line of crisp-coated snow retreating in the first flush of spring. This was Lebanon, this was Beirut, this was the Palestinian refugee camp of Burj al-Barajinah. This was war.
A profound, malignant silence enveloped the sunlit scene; and Raful was back in his movie. A star. He saw himself, as if from a distance, walk toward the shattered BMW, Ehud a few paces ahead of him. They carried their Uzis upright, a little apart from their torsos, fingers through the trigger guards. Everything covered, as never before. Revenge, seconds away now. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
goel!
Yea, Sara and Esther, verily, Lord,
to everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
The movie lacked a convincing soundtrack and it was slow, proceeding frame by frame. On the outer fringes of the screen, Raful became aware of figures flowing down the road from the ten-ton truck against which the other BMW had run aground. Little green men; no, wrong, men in green clothes. All wearing the same kind of green clothes. Men carrying things, men still too far away to worry about....
Ehud, five steps ahead, bringing his Uzi to the horizontal. The two Israeli “knights” were already on their way back to the E-type Jaguar; now they had reached it, now they were trying to start its engine. Now they had succeeded; no need for the backup car, after all. Now, Raful said to himself, we are ready to flee the moment God’s purpose has been accomplished.
Ehud, opening the back door of the BMW. Ehud, bending down to get a clean line of fire. Ehud spinning back, the Uzi jerked from his hand, grayness and gore splattering everywhere. Raful, looking down stupidly at his slacks, wringing wet and hot, as if he’d peed in his pants, black-red pee.
Whang
of a bullet whistling past his head, more bullets, suddenly nothing covered at all....
His mind connected, even as he ran. Simple, really. The rear BMW, the one containing Hanifs bodyguards, had run smack into a lorry carrying Phalangist soldiers, now so close he could recognize the insignia on their green uniforms, a triangular cedar tree with the words
Kata’ib Lubnaniya,
and the Phalangists were coming to butcher the Israelis who’d started it all.
But it wasn’t the soldiers who had killed Ehud. His head had been blown off from
inside
the front BMW.
Raful threw his Uzi into the Jaguar’s back seat and somersaulted after it as the driver stamped the accelerator down to the floor. The leading Phalangists had found their range and the Jaguar’s bodywork sang to the tune of lead on chrome. By some miracle the gas tank escaped a hit. They were doing sixty before the driver shifted out of second gear. The shots died away. Raful crawled up off the floor. He had wrecked his knee and was suffering from concussion. His trousers were soaked through with Ehud Chafets’s life blood. Ehud Chafets was dead.
Leila Hanif was not.
C
HAFIQ!
Good evening,
dear
Chafiq.” He did not rise at once, and that frightened Celestine. As she crossed Hakkim’s priceless Bukhara carpet the size of a small domestic swimming pool her mind was busy with all kinds of calculations, but they were muddied by his failure to stand up and waddle around his desk to meet her. By the time she was halfway to him he had rectified the omission—they met in the middle of the carpet with kisses that landed three inches from the nearest flesh—but by then she already knew she was in trouble.
“Darling, dearest,
madame … et comment vas-tu?”
“Ça va, merci. Shu haida, chéri? How’s business, darling?” Arabic, French, English, all of them together and none: that was to be their mode of communication. What a country, she thought, as he lowered her tenderly into an overstuffed buttoned armchair; no wonder we can’t agree on a thing.
He’d already taken his own place of mastery, behind the desk, and now he could afford to smile. “Business? Wonderful. Booming.”
He pronounced it “bombing,” which rather spoiled the effect.
“And you are married, since we last met? Congratulations.” “Ah, so many thanks.”
And another thing, she thought. He should be surprised to see me, yet he isn’t.
“Obviously the events haven’t troubled you, Chafiq.” She glanced around the ornate Ottoman room from which he oversaw his empire, all the time monitoring his reaction to her use of the phrase
al-hawadess,
“the events.” Among true children of Lebanon there was never a war, only “events.”
“Too much fighting,” he said genially, “is bad. A little fighting …” He wagged his head from side to side while he pursed his lips; because he was small and round and had a thin mustache that would only grow in patches, the effect was merely to make him resemble a clown. Someone ought to have taken him aside and told him that his best bet was to look serious, always. When Chafiq Hakkim was serious his eyes and their surrounds were composed of lines and angles, with no soft curves to cushion their resemblance to scalpel blades. Then he might look hard, and unpleasant, and dangerous; but silly, no.
She remembered how she had never liked him, feeling only a vehement distrust which went back far, farther even than those evenings when he would fondle sleepy little Halib on his lap, pretending to read him a story while one of his flabby hands fidgeted over the boy’s crotch. But she had to start somewhere, and Banker Hakkim was nearest. So.
“What brings Celestine to Beirut now of all times?” He lit a cigarette, not offering her one—it was forgivable, just; he knew she did not care for Turkish tobacco—and sat back to view her through the smoke like a voyeur seeking the illusory protection of a bead curtain, jacket buttoned across his paunch in a tight X-shaped crease.
“I happened to be passing,” she said; and they both laughed at the ceiling for a dutiful couple of seconds. “I need to talk about my investments.” She rubbed the thumb and first two fingers of her right hand together.
“I see. A private matter.” Hakkim’s voice had become a little slurred, reminding her that business, to him, was the one true drug.
“And since it’s also a family matter, who should I turn to but you?”
Her smile was intended to be disarming, but her heart beat uncomfortably fast. Although she was a wealthy woman, today she had come as a suppliant, wearing a plain black dress produced by Azizza from God knew where, plus sensible shoes that lived permanently in her suitcase. And here, in this high-ceilinged room with its two priceless chandeliers, quantities of ugly furniture, and French windows overlooking East Beirut, she felt the contest to be unequal. And he had not stood up to greet her when the servant ushered her in.
“A family matter: perhaps your son …?”
“Oh, let’s leave him to count his billions,” she said carelessly. “You know how he never can be bothered with buying anything smaller than a Swiss canton.”
He pushed his chair back a fraction and crossed his fat little legs, resting his hands on his lap in such a way that smoke seemed to rise out of his crotch. The notion of Hakkim’s cock being on fire delighted Celestine, even at such a dangerous corner.
“So it’s buying?”
“Yes. This plane that my granddaughter borrowed for a trip to Yemen.”
He had been raising the cigarette to his lips, but now he stopped. Celestine knew he had been thrown off balance. No, not just that. Chafiq was scared.
“You wish to purchase … the
plane?”
He laughed uneasily.
“Of course not. I wish to purchase the freedom of two of the passengers.”
Looking at his face, she knew the right course was to stop. Let this newly nervous man make the running. Stonewall, be a typical Lebanese client, give nothing, say less.
What she actually did was lean forward to rest her arms on his desk and talk too quickly. “Look, Chafiq, we’ve been friends since God made Ararat; I’m going to come clean with you, all right?”
He waved the fingers of his right hand, not lifting it from the desk’s leather inlay.
“She’s got my great-grandson, Robbie. And Colin, the father. I want them out.”
“And you think I can help? My dear madame, while I find it flattering that you should—”
“Chafiq, Chafiq!” She rapped the desk with her knuckles. “Excuse me; over here, hello, it’s Celestine. I don’t just think you can help, I know you can. You are a power broker of supreme importance in the region.”
Her flattery served to diminish his fear a little. She watched him puff and swell and she thought, Men, what would we do without them? How could anything be arranged without men?
“You know these people inside out, Chafiq. They’ll talk to you, even when they won’t talk to anyone else. Now, these Iranians the Iraqis are holding … can we buy them off? Find out whether money can fix this thing and, if so, how much is needed, because I’ll pay cash within the hour.”
He made her wait a long time for his reply. Her head felt light; a curious spasm of nausea shook its way through her lower abdomen. She would have liked to ask for a glass of water, but she had asked for enough already today; and besides, she knew that water alone could not cure what was wrong with her. The human heart, how weak it was. In how many ways was it weak.
“It is … well, let me say just this. It is not, I think, utterly impossible.” Again, that ambivalent wave of the fingers, still anchored to the desk. He was scared, yes, but another factor had begun to operate beneath the fear. Chafiq could sense a lurking advantage.
“You think something could be done?” Exultation ballooned inside her.
“Look,” he said, suddenly every bit the confidential banker: hands folded, body leaning forward, head slightly tilted; what a man of affairs, she thought. “Look. This hijack, it’s really no more than an Iranian-backed piece of troublemaking, mm?”
She nodded eagerly. She would have nodded in the same way if he’d asked her to roll up her skirts and show him her bottom.
“So who needs Iran, when the chips are down?” His face clouded. “Of course, there may be … other considerations.”
“Such as?”
“We don’t know what Leila knows, do we? But we have to assume she’s found out about Robbie and the father being on board. I mean, they’re two days into the operation.”
“The operation?”
“Yes.”
“You mean the hijack?”
“Yes.”
No, she thought. No.
“You think she won’t release Robbie?”
“I think, my dear, we can only ask, eh?” He patted the edge of his desk with his palms and stood up. “No, no, stay there, please!”
When he disappeared behind her back she was too busy with unpleasant speculations to consider what he might be up to. Chief among her worries was how much Hakkim really knew about this hijack. Azizza had half overheard a telephone conversation that might mean something or nothing. But if he was actively involved …
Her fears for Robbie had been temporarily overshadowed by the pressures of dealing with Hakkim. Now that she was alone again, however, her nightmare vision of the boy’s fate came back with a vengeance. It would be sweltering on the plane, and although there had been rumors of allowing supplies to be brought in, so far they amounted to nothing more than that: rumors. Lack of food, lack, dear God, of water….
“And now, my very dear Celestine …” Hakkim’s rusty voice came from over by the door. She half turned in her chair, but its high back prevented her from seeing him at once.
“… we can ask someone in the know, and he will tell us the situation.”
He sounded so pleased with himself it did not occur to her he might have betrayed his old friend and client; she lived in a world where such things happened, but almost exclusively to others. So when she rose and turned to find her son, Feisal, just a few paces away from her it came like a blow to the solar plexus.
She should have listened to Azizza. Hakkim and her son had never been close in the past, but now the banker stood with one hand on Feisal’s shoulder, indicating allegiance as clearly as any medieval knight who sported his lady’s favor. He was no longer smiling.
“You’ve been out of circulation for a long time,” he said. His voice was still jovial, although she listened in vain for any hint of apology. “I have more pressing contemporary obligations.”
But Feisal said nothing at all, not even when four thugs came running through the double doors to surround his own mother.
Every time Andrew Nunn put down the phone it rang again immediately; he scarcely had a moment to write up his notes before being obliged to strike off at a tangent from the direction of a moment ago. This went on until around eleven-thirty when the phone at last fell quiet, making him wonder if the instrument had broken under strain; he ordered dinner from room service more as a check than from hunger. Dinner came and still the phone just sat there, brooding and quiet; so he just sat there too, eating in silence, glad of a respite from interruptions and the sound of his own voice.
Tomorrow would be worse, because they were coming to install more phones. He would have staff to help out, but the next twenty-four hours were going to be unadulterated murder.
The moment he’d finished his meal he undressed, for sleep would be in short supply from now on. But even as he lay down and prepared to switch out the bedside light he paused, irresolute, and looked again at the phone.
That afternoon he’d been given an annotated copy of the plane’s passenger list. Leila Hanifs ex-husband and their son were aboard NQ 033 when it took off from Bahrain. Now the question which taxed Nunn was this: Did she know they’d be passengers when she commandeered the flight?
Was that
why
she’d commandeered it?
Such a ridiculous notion, but it steadfastly refused to budge from his mind.
Without quite knowing why or how, he found himself dialing the number of the house in St. John’s Wood. He hesitated over the final digit. If she wasn’t in, if she sounded breathless, what would he assume, how would he feel, could he take it? Oh, balls. His forefinger stabbed down hard on the button.
Anne-Marie answered very quickly.
“Darling,” he murmured. “How’s tricks, hmm?”
“Dodo, is that you?”
After a slight pause she laughed, and something frisked in the pit of Nunn’s stomach. Living most of the year in Jak, he didn’t hear women’s laughter too often. Not unless he paid for it, anyway.
“I mean, Dodo, where are you?”
He told her.
“Bahrain? Good grief, why?”
He skirted round that one rather neatly, he thought.
“Well, don’t get bitten by sand flies.” Another of her merry laughs, another pause. “Rather sad, you being so near and yet so far. I suppose there’s no chance of a quick trip to London?”
Gosh, he thought; but perhaps she was between boyfriends at the moment and felt lonely. “Not in the foreseeable future.”
“Pity.” The line resonated silence. “I miss you, Dodo.”
That stumped him. Anne-Marie hadn’t said such a thing for ages. Nor had he, for that matter. A chap just didn’t, really. And yet…
“Me too,” he said awkwardly, because a bod couldn’t very well let his wife down just when she was making efforts to build the jolly old bridge. Although that didn’t explain why he suddenly took it upon himself to add, “I miss you a lot, actually. Heck of a lot. Listen, my dear, I want to ask you something.”
“Fire away.”
“How’s Michael?” Michael was their son.
“Fine. Great. I’ll give him your love, shall I?”
“You do that. Actually it’s Michael I’m calling about, in a way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If Michael … if our son were in any kind of trouble, say he was kidnapped or went missing or something …”
“What on
earth?
Dodo, are you there?”
“Yes. Look, suppose Mike took a header of some kind … how far would you be prepared to go to bail him out?”
A long pause. Then she said, “You phoned to ask me that?”
“Partly.”
“What a waste of money.”
“Mm? Why?”
“I mean, the answer’s so obvious. I’d go all the way to hell to refuel and then on from there. Dodo, are you all
right?”
He chuckled. “As much as ever, Annie.”
Silence. Nunn couldn’t think how to end this call. He’d initiated it; now he must terminate it, but there weren’t any words to say what was in his heart so he simply said, “Take care of yourself, old thing, got to go now.”
“You too, Dodo.”
She did not want him to put down the phone. He hesitated. They both did. She was the one who finally severed the connection. Nunn replaced the receiver on its rest. He did so with unwonted reluctance.
The phone rang.
“Yes?”
Now the line had a funny sound to it: ultra-long-distance, bad satellite. A very faint voice was saying, “Mumble mumble Kroll Associates mumble.”
Nunn sat bolt upright in bed, all tiredness gone. “Put him through.”
“Andrew?”
“Jerry! Have you got it?”
“Some of it. Do you have a pen?”