Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (19 page)

Lynch fought
the urge to correct her.
It’s
Gerald
. He held his hands out, palms down
against her passion, ‘Okay, okay. Look, I’m sorry. We—’

The doorbell
sounded, its staccato repetitions stilling him. He took in
Nathalie’s silent response to his glance and padded up the corridor
to the echoes of its clamour.

He spoke
through the door. ‘Hello?’

Marcelle’s
urgent voice was throaty. ‘Lynch, open the fucking
door.’

Lynch tore
off the security chain, the door handle yanked from his hand. He
fell back as the door smashed against the wall. Marcelle stumbled
through, half-carrying the blood-smeared deadweight of a girl in
her arms. He lunged forward to take the burden, carried the girl
into the living room and laid her on the couch. She was badly
bruised, her lip split and a cut above her right eye, abrasions
across her cheeks where she had been smashed against a rough
surface. Her tumbling blonde hair was matted and stiff with so much
blood she smelled of iron. Feeling her head, Lynch winced as he
encountered the massive swelling at the side, carefully parting the
sticky hairs to find the moist lips of the ragged gash where her
skin had split like a tomato. One of her arms hung limply and her
breathing was ragged. Lynch pulled her smeared blouse open to show
the massive mauve bruising on the pale skin stretched over at least
one broken rib. Her breast was milky and full with dark, tight
nipples, obscenely beautiful amongst the bloodied cloth and
contused skin.

‘
What the
fuck?’

Marcelle
stooped, breathless, flinging a small memory key at Lynch. ‘Here.
This is what you wanted. This is all your fault, Lynch. Get her a
doctor.’

‘
Jesus,
Marcie, Couldn’t you find one?’

Marcelle
braced herself against the door and snarled at him. ‘Get her a
fucking doctor, Lynch. You know how. One who don’t talk about
whores who billionaires beat to death. Do it.’

She collapsed
against the frame, her cheek pressed to the painted wood. Nathalie
caught her as she slid, supporting her to guide her into a round
wicker seat. Marcelle’s harsh breathing slowed as Nathalie sat
beside her, stroking her hair.

Lynch talked
on the mobile. ‘This is Nikola. I need the
doktor
now,
bil bait
.’ He listened,
nodding.
‘Na’am. Daroori. Ta’al,
bsiraa.
y
alla
.’

Lynch used a
damp flannel to clean the girl up as best he could. They waited
silently together for the doorbell to ring, the long silences
broken by the girl’s ragged coughs and Marcelle’s low-voiced
reassurances. It seemed an age, but could only have been fifteen
minutes when the bell rang. Lynch opened the door to a small,
white-haired man in his late sixties wearing a tweed suit and thin,
gold-framed glasses.

‘
The
patient’s through here.’

Lynch grasped
the memory key Marcelle had thrown at him in his pocket, the little
chip containing the video of whatever had happened to this girl in
the room at Marcelle’s cathouse Lynch used to ‘burn’ the occasional
politician or business leader. It wasn’t the most up-to-date camera
SIS had, but then the last three candidates he had offered up to
Brian Channing for recruitment had all been turned down. Channing
wasn’t interested in Beirut these days; he was frying bigger fish
in the Gulf and playing European politics. Lynch’s thumb slipped on
the memory key and he realised he was sweating.

They moved
the girl to the other spare bedroom where the doctor worked for
over an hour. Lynch admired the fussy little man’s courage. He
finished treating the girl and rose, puffing himself up to his full
height. His combed-over wisps of white hair barely reached Lynch’s
chest.

‘
This is very
serious. You understand it is a matter for the police.’

Lynch looked
down at him kindly. ‘Yes, it likely is, but that is not our
arrangement.’

The doctor
pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his
glasses. ‘The girl has been seriously assaulted. This was not an
accident or any,’ he graced Lynch with a bitter little smile,
‘operational expediency.’

Lynch was as
gentle as he knew how, but his impatience was palpable. ‘No. No, it
wasn’t. But your help was necessary.’

The doctor’s
lined face cleared. ‘Ah, yes. My help is necessary. Then I can
sleep well tonight knowing I was, as you say,
necessary
.’

Lynch took
the old man’s arm as they went up the corridor, squeezing his
withered bicep through the thick tweed jacket. ‘We all do
everything we can,
Doktor
. Everything we can.
Even
in necessitas
.’

The old man
turned at the doorway, his lined face smoothed in repose. ‘Do they
all suffer for a
reason
, then, these poor faceless people you bring me to see,
Nikola?’

Lynch smiled
sympathetically down at the frail man facing him. ‘You are being
emotional,
doktor
. I ask for your help rarely and only when there is no
reasonable alternative.’

‘
And you sit
in judgement of what is reasonable, I see. The girl belongs in
hospital. She is very seriously injured. She is lucky to be alive.
She will need further attention.’

‘
Thank you,
Doktor
. We will transfer your fee as usual.’ Lynch pulled the door
open and waited for the old man to move but he shook his
head.

‘
No, no. Not
this time, thank you, Mr Nikola of the Russian Embassy. No fee.’ He
put on his hat, a shabby tweed trilby with a tatty Alpine feather
in its green band. ‘Please do not call me again. I will not do this
more.’

He strode out
of the door. Resolution had straightened the old man’s back. Lynch
closed the door and walked back to the living room where Marcelle
sat looking into a tumbler of whisky, her dark hair tumbling down
her shoulder as if she had arranged it. Which she probably had,
Lynch thought. He poured himself a glass and went to the balcony.
He clipped, then lit, a Cohiba and drew the smoke down as he gazed
across the streetlights and surrounding buildings to the distant
lights of the boats at sea. He really needed to stop smoking these
things. The spring air was cool.

The balcony
door slid open and the musk of Marcelle’s perfume carried on a waft
of warmth from the apartment. She put her hand on his hip, her
voice low. ‘Thank you. I was scared for her.’

‘
She’ll be
okay. What the hell happened?’

‘
You’ll see
on the video. He came by after lunchtime. He called ahead. He does
that sometimes, in the mid-afternoon. There was a rally this
morning, you know? He was on a real high, you could tell. He had
been drinking. After they made love, Mirielle asked him about this
place like you wanted. Michel went crazy, Lynch. Really crazy.
Okay, he likes a little roughhouse, but this was insane. My boys
are ex-army, yes? They are tough. There are three of them before
they stop him. His security they arrive then, with guns. It was
bad. Like those days, you know? The war. Like that again. They
nearly tore the place apart. I was scared of the police so I had
Hassan bring us here.’

He curled his
arm around her shoulder. ‘I didn’t realise this would happen,
Marcie. I’m sorry.’ He felt her moisture on his hand as he rubbed
her cheek. A car horn sounded twice on the street below, a pickup.
She broke free to drink from her glass and nestled her head against
his shoulder again.

He thought
about Stokes. Every time he sent someone in to find out something
about Freij and Hussein, they got hurt.
Maybe it’s time to go yourself, Gerald, and stop getting
others to do your dirty work.

Marcelle’s
voice was concerned. ‘Will she really be okay?’

‘
I think so.
The doctor wasn’t happy. She’ll need to rest, might need to see
someone else later. Is there somewhere you can take
her?’

Marcelle
nodded against Lynch’s hand. ‘Yes, but not tonight. Please not
tonight.’

‘
No, no. Not
tonight.’

Lynch flicked
his cigar butt over the railing to spin down into the darkness as
the balcony door opened. He turned with Marcelle to see Nathalie
framed in the soft light from the living room, her mouth open in
shock.

‘
How many
women do you need, Lynch?’

Marcelle
moved first, pulling her wrap closed. ‘Nathalie,
please.’

Lynch let
Marcelle follow Nathalie through the door. He admired Marcelle’s
red-painted toenails and lithe, gypsy feet. He stood on the balcony
and took a reflective drink from his glass, letting the sound of
raised voices from inside the apartment mingle with the night-time
sounds of the
Ain Mreisse
area, the traffic noises mixed with the clink of
glasses from the balcony of an apartment below. Laughter from a
party across the street carried on the cool breeze. He went inside
in time to hear the slam of Nathalie’s bedroom door. Marcelle stood
perplexed in the living room.

‘
Well?’

‘
She wouldn’t
talk to me. She’s a crazy one.’

The girl
Mirielle was sleeping, her breathing relaxed. Lynch turned off the
light and closed the bedroom door softly. Marcelle followed him
down to the kitchen. He pulled an ice tray from the freezer,
cracked a series of lumps into his glass, and filled it from the
stand of bottles in the living room. She held hers out and he
obliged. He took her hand and they held onto each other as they
strolled into the master bedroom.

Lynch woke.
The moonlight shone through the window across the bed; he’d
forgotten to draw the curtain. He lay, his mind racing with
inchoate thoughts, watching the rise and fall of Marcelle’s
breathing as the moonlight cast shadows down her elegant back. She
was half covered by the duvet, her leg bent so the smoothness of
her perfect skin glowed blue, a slope that led down into the
mysterious warmth in the shadows.

He crept out
of bed and into the living room. He opened his laptop and inserted
the memory key from his jeans pocket.

The camera in
Marcelle’s ‘special room’ had been there for three years, replacing
the microphone that had served for the ten years prior. London had
grudgingly sent a technician to replace the mike, but the camera
was obsolete, only recorded an hour of footage onto a memory key
and was relatively low resolution. Wireless connection was deemed
insecure and Lynch’s constant requests for an upgrade had
eventually earned a lecture from Channing on budget cuts. Little
wonder, he thought. Nobody gave a shit for anything he caught in
Marcelle’s little honey trap anyway, although Lynch took care not
to tell her. A little over a year ago, Marcelle had delivered some
juicy footage of a high-ranking member of the armed forces and a
couple of underage girls. Lynch’s proposal to burn the man had been
turned down by Channing, who had pointed out that 98 percent of
Lebanon’s pitiful armoury was supplied and maintained by the Yanks
and anything the Lebanese armed forces had to say in bed or out was
likely to have been dictated by the Americans.

The video
file opened. Michel Freij watched the girl strip. Freij tapped the
arm of his chair, grinding his cigarette out in the glass ashtray.
When she was ready, he was peremptory, gesturing at her to kneel on
the bed. He undid his belt and advanced on her. Facing the camera,
she had closed her eyes. Her face was pretty, milky skin and heavy
lashes. Freij’s voice was indistinct and Lynch cursed the old
equipment. He watched, mesmerised as Freij thrust, the girl’s eyes
snapping open and a cry forced from her lips.

Later, she
cradled Michel Freij’s head and stroked his hair. The sound was
still indistinct, but her mouth formed the words, ‘Deir Na’ee’.
Freij scrambled to his feet, shouting as the girl cowered. He
lashed at her with his fists then his heavy-buckled belt, looping
it around his knuckles and punching down at her pitiful, hunched
body. He screamed at her, a strange mixture of French and Arabic,
‘Who told you about that? Who told you to ask me about it,
whore?’

Indistinct
figures rushed the room, the amount of movement overwhelming the
ageing camera, the recording breaking up. The video file ended in
static. Lynch sat at the blank laptop screen, his face illuminated
by its dull light, until Marcelle softly called his name. She stood
in the doorway, wearing his shirt.

‘
Come back to
bed. Leave it.’

SEVENTEEN

The insistent
treble of his mobile woke Lynch. He scrabbled for the handset, his
face screwed up against the daylight streaming through the window.
A Beirut mobile, an unknown number.

He croaked.
‘Lynch.’

‘
Mr Lynch. I
trust you are well. It has been too long since we last
talked.’

Lynch sat up,
stilling Marcelle as she turned to speak, the duvet rustling. He
had last heard the voice on a video file: Michel Freij. ‘Too long
for you, maybe.’