Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (18 page)

Freij waited
as a tide of applause broke across the square, acknowledging it
with a magisterial wave. The sound died, a few whistles then
silence. In his dark blue suit, Freij held the lectern, his head
bowed. Lynch could almost feel the indrawn breaths of the crowd,
the sense of anticipation.

Freij raised
his head, throwing his hand towards Sannine’s white
peak.

‘
Lebanon’s tragedy is that we have been weak. We have too long
been subject to the forces around us, we have too long been others’
battleground. We have been forced to depend on others for
protection as foreign armies clash on our soil. No longer. Lebanon
will rebuild herself as a nation, a nation of unity and prosperity,
of fairness and equality because we will be capable of repelling
all outside interests, of defending our shores against all force.
Our new Lebanon will be a nation of strength, capable of deterring
others from interfering in our rights and sovereignty. Never again
will war be waged on us in the name of another nation’s security or
interests. Lebanon shall have peace because she demands peace. And
she shall be strong enough to
make
demands.’

The crowd
erupted, roaring approbation. The air filled with flags, scarves
and waving hands. The sound of clapping echoed off the buildings.
Lynch managed to turn in the press, his arm around Nathalie keeping
them together as they forged their way through the tightly packed
crowd, returning the smiles and grins of the people they passed.
Freij was speaking again, in Arabic, his voice rising and falling,
his tone urgent and declamatory.

Another wave
of cheers rippled through the square as Freij embarked on a series
of rhetorical questions, his voice low, raising in enquiry and each
time answering, after a perfectly timed pause, in the negative:
‘
La
.’ The crowd
rustled in reaction to his voice, breaking into cacophonous
applause and cheering.

Lynch and
Nathalie finally pushed through to the top edge of the square,
standing by the imposing bulk of the Al Amine Mosque to gaze down
over the huge sea of people to the blue Mediterranean
beyond.

Nathalie
pointed to their right. ‘Lynch, look.’

A noisy crowd
was pushing its way down Gouraud Street and starting to burst into
the square, blowing air horns and chanting. They carried green
banners daubed with flowing white Arabic script. Towards the back
of the insurgent crowd, Lynch could make out placards with a
turbaned, white-bearded mullah on them. Others carried black flags.
They were joined by another flow striding down Damascus Street, the
leaders’ faces wrapped in black scarves.

Scanning the
scene, Lynch did a little double take. A face he recalled drew his
eyes back to the shadow of a shopfront by the entrance to Gouraud.
Their eyes met, the other man’s gaze dropped. A trench coat and
green tartan scarf. The man turned away and walked uphill through
the sparser crowd along the square’s edge. Frank Coleman, by the
grace of God, thought Lynch as he lost the big man’s figure. Lynch
lost no love on the CIA’s station chief in Beirut, an old hand
who’d been stooging around the Middle East since the civil war.
Lynch shrugged off his curiosity. Coleman had a nose for trouble
and there was certainly trouble breaking out today. He searched the
streets behind them, assuring himself of a safe exit and started to
pull Nathalie back. The crowd rippled as the new wave of marchers
pushed into it like a wave breaking against a sandcastle. The wail
of sirens echoed from the streets uphill of them.

Two black
Lincolns pushed across the crowded square, blocking Gouraud Two
more backed across nearby Damascus Street, stemming the flow of new
entrants into the square. The packed knots of demonstrators
jostling for position tried to retreat, confronted by a flow of One
Lebanon militia wearing combat fatigues and brandishing laths.
Their arms started to rise and fall, the leaders of the incursion
cut off by the Lincolns and falling to the hammering sticks.
Between the two black cars on Gouraud, Lynch glimpsed many more
uniformed men beating the demonstrators up towards Gemayzeh and
away from the crowded square, many running from the relentless
beating of the militia, their banners dropping.

The screams
of the beaten demonstrators were drowned by Freij’s echoing voice
as he started the run to the finish, calling out to the crowd as
they cheered, raising his voice above their cheers to tease more
noisy support from them. They gave it, crying out and punching the
air, their voices combined in chanting his name. He finished with a
flourish and the square rang to the sound of thousands of voices
calling out, the roar drowning the sound only Lynch caught because
he had been waiting for it: automatic gunfire.

Lynch pulled
Nathalie away from the square. ‘Come on, time to get out of here.
They’re shooting.’

‘
Who are
they? They’re not Lebanese Army, for sure.’

Lynch strode
ahead, passing through the people walking towards the square,
latecomers curious as to the fuss. ‘Freij’s militia. Those
demonstrators looked like one of the Shia parties, possibly
Hezbollah, but I’m not sure. Those militia guys were brutal
altogether.’

A surge in
the crowd parted them. Lynch caught a glimpse of a face he
recognised, a man in militia uniform. He scanned the blur of faces
for Nathalie, struggling to place the man even as he craned to get
a glimpse of her black hair and pale skin. He spotted her across
the sea of people being ushered by a group of uniformed men. She
turned her head anxiously but her arm was gripped and her head
jerked back. She was engulfed by the crowd. Lynch was jostled hard.
He elbowed his way after Nathalie. A hand gripped his right arm. He
turned. That face again. He placed it, the thugs who had ransacked
Stokes’ apartment, the car that had followed him from the airport.
Forage Cap’s friend. The one he hadn’t shot. Looking at the
reddened face of the man shouting, he reflected what a pleasure it
would have been.

The man’s
lips were spittle-flecked. ‘You must come with us.’

He felt
another hand clamp on his left arm. He let both arms stay loose. A
hand scrabbled in his jacket for his holster. Lynch moved fast,
head-butting the man to his right, feeling cartilage breaking as
his head bore down onto the top of the man’s nose. The grip on his
arm loosened and Lynch drove his fist into the man to his left.
Lynch wheeled to send the man flying over his outstretched leg,
following through with a powerful lip-splitting blow. Lynch span to
forge ahead into the crowd, his gun drawn. He cried out Nathalie’s
name. He caught glimpses of her ahead, but was constantly
frustrated by the press of people. The clashes on the side streets
caused waves in the crowd, unpredictable eddies of people fleeing
the conflict at the exits to the square. Lynch fancied he could
smell the growing fear, tension on people’s faces, wide eyes and
flared nostrils as the sound of screams mingled with the crack of
gunfire. The crowd was thickest around the group of black Lincolns.
For a second it parted and Lynch glimpsed Nathalie struggling in
the grip of two militiamen. He redoubled his effort to push through
the crowd, earning himself several blows on his shoulders and back
from aggrieved people he shoved out of his way.

Lynch turned
to see the man whose nose he’d broken was following him through the
crowd, shoving people aside with his big, bloody hands and leaving
a swath of outraged expressions and stained clothing in his wake.
Lynch held the gun out, a double-handed grip. The man saw the
gesture and stopped, fear replacing anger on a face half-covered by
the hand holding his nose. Lynch gestured him back with the gun,
the crowd parting miraculously as they saw the weapon, to leave an
empty corridor between Lynch and the blood-spattered militiaman.
For the second time in days, the man held his hands out in
supplication. Lynch lowered the gun to point at the man’s leg, the
movement earning a look of terror. Lynch turned and pushed toward
the Lincolns.

One of them
moved, squeezing its way through the crowd and sounding its horn.
Lynch lashed out at the people in his way as he struggled through
the panicked press of bodies trying to avoid the big car. Moving
fast along its black slab sides, he shot out the front tyre and
pushed to the back of the car to take out the rear and driver’s
side tyres. Lynch wrenched open the driver’s door and shoved the
Walther into the man’s shocked face. ‘Stop the car.
Now.’

The
blown-apart tyres flapped on the tarmac. The driver braked hard,
slamming Lynch against the open door. He recovered too slowly, the
driver’s foot lashed out and caught him hard in the stomach. Lynch
doubled up, instinct made him reach to catch the foot. He pulled
hard and twisted to yank the man from his seat. Lynch hit him a
crushing blow on the cheek with the pistol and the man dropped to
the ground. He jumped into the driver’s seat and shoved his gun
into the face of the nervous young militiaman in the back of the
car next to Nathalie. Lynch barked, ‘Get the fuck out now or I’ll
shoot your fucking face off.’

After a
second’s hesitation, the militiaman opened the door. He turned to
speak and Lynch fired, the report deafening in the car’s confined
space. Nathalie screamed. The militiaman dropped out, his hands
over his head, a neat hole drilled in the roof just above
him.

Lynch slammed
the SUV into gear and leant on the horn, the crowd angry and
fearful as he drove into them, the broken tyres slapping, the heavy
car harder to control. The flop of tyre was replaced by the screech
of metal as the big car forged through the fleeing press on its
rims. The crowd thinned beyond the edge of the square and Lynch put
his foot down, struggling with the steering wheel. Reaching Debbas
Square, Lynch gave up and pulled the Lincoln to a halt, its
battered wheel rims smoking. He helped Nathalie get down and they
jogged uphill, Lynch checking behind them for signs of
pursuit.

He holstered
his gun.

SIXTEEN

Lynch and
Nathalie returned to the apartment after the rally and cleaned up,
both coming down from the tension high, laughing too much and still
a little breathless. Nathalie left with a French Embassy driver to
join her digital surveillance team. Lynch went down to Manara to
meet an informant who knew a lot less about Michel Freij and Falcon
Dynamics than he had made out when they talked on the phone. After
returning, Lynch settled down to spend the afternoon going through
Paul Stokes’ laptop. He worked systematically, jotting down
directory names as he pored through them looking for anything that
Stokes might have kept there.

Flicking
through Stokes’ memoir again, unable to stay away like a man whose
eyes are drawn to a car crash, Lynch hadn’t noticed the light
failing and now it was evening. He closed the document, stretched
and hobbled over to switch the light on, hours of crouching over a
keyboard taking their toll.

Nathalie
pushed the apartment door open with her back, heaving the four
bulging jute bags of shopping to kick the door shut behind her. She
staggered down the corridor to the kitchen. Lynch reached her as
she hoisted her loot onto the kitchen worktop.

He laughed.
‘What on earth are you up to?’

She blew on
her reddened fingers. ‘I’m cooking dinner tonight. I decided. I had
one of the security guys go shopping for me.’ She smiled impishly.
‘Isn’t that what security guys are for?’

Lynch was
wide-eyed. ‘Cooking? At a time like this?’

Nathalie
smiled defensively. ‘Yes, cooking. I am French and it is time you
ate decent food. To thank you for saving my life.’

Why not,
indeed
. Lynch tried to contain the little
surge of anger her presumption had caused in him. He desperately
missed Leila, his dark, clever dissident girl. Nathalie Durand was
entertaining, intelligent company, graceful and, yes, beautiful.
But Leila was wild, angry and bursting with the challenge and
certainty of rebellious youth. And she was
his
, given to him and part of his
inner life, a secret within a life already lived in secret.
Nathalie was only a colleague operating within cover.

Leila hadn’t
returned a single call since she walked out. Lynch had checked with
the concierge and yes, she moved in to the flat in Hamra. Yes, she
had indeed taken male company, the old crone told Lynch, laughing
dirtily and pocketing the fifty thousand lire tip.

Lynch
banished the thought and threw his hands up. ‘Sure, why
not?’

Nathalie
smiled bravely. ‘Why not? You are too enthusiastic,
Lynch.’

‘
Sorry, I
didn’t mean to bring you down. It’s just that I had a life here
before—’

‘
Before what?
Before I came? Before she walked out?’

Lynch
steadied himself against the wooden worktop. ‘How did
you—’

‘
She left herself behind, Gerry. She’s all over this place.
Whatever has happened between you, I cannot help. But I am here to
do a job. If I need to stay in a hotel, tell me and I will find
some way. If not, I will try to have a life as well I can as I do
this job. But staying here was supposed to be cover, no? You
remember this thing, this
cover
?’