Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (42 page)

She lunged
for her phone.

‘
Dubois.’

‘
It’s me. The
warheads have already landed. They are up at Deir Na’ee. Lynch has
identified a plane that flew from Santorini today, we have found
Falcon owns a facility near there. They must have taken them from
the boat and transferred them. What shall we do?’

‘
Wait.
Slowly. How is it Lynch is at Deir Na’ee?’

‘
He took a
helicopter.’

Dubois almost
shouted. ‘Is he mad?’

‘
He found the missiles,
Papa
.’

‘
Tell him to
come back immediately. Thank you, Nathalie.’

‘
What should
we do?’

‘
Find the
guidance systems in that damn network.’

Nathalie
dropped the handset. She ran her hand through her hair and walked
to the balcony to look out over
Ain
Mreisse
. They had failed. There were
nuclear warheads in Lebanon. She tried not to think of what might
happen next.

A message
flashed on her screen from Jean Meset.

‘
Found rogue
system. IBM Blue Giant. Attempting access now.’

Nathalie
tapped at her screen and sent back, ‘Odd. Not listed
anywhere.’

The world’s
biggest supercomputers are listed, the opportunity to boast about
how big yours really is being one everyone finds too good to pass
up. Nathalie opened a window, a status bar flashed and Jean Meset
appeared onscreen.

He spoke
French. ‘Hey, Nathalie. It’s the core research and development
mainframe. It’s big, very big and the latest configuration. This
should rank top twenty at least. Maybe top ten.’

‘
Jean, we
need to find out if that system contains the missile command and
control infrastructure.’

‘
It’s
certainly the machine you’d use for that. We’re trying to get in
now, but it’s very secure.’ Meset paused, distracted by events
off-camera. ‘One second, if you please.’

Nathalie
reached for her coffee while Meset clacked on his keyboard. It was
cold and she pulled a face.

‘
Here.’ Meset
looked pleased with himself. ‘See what you make of
this.’

Nathalie
opened the folder he sent, clicking on the first file. ‘Right.
What’s this?’

‘
It’s an
exact match for the two images we captured from the CCTV system.
It’s an intermediate-range missile system. The design is
American.’

‘
What’s its
range?’ Nathalie asked.

Meset nodded.
‘The original design was a ballistic missile system that sat
between tactical and medium-range use. We think this one has been
extended. The analysts in Paris are onto it, but a preliminary
guess would be somewhere around three thousand
kilometres.’

‘
Why would
they want a missile with such range to target Israel?’

Meset was
interrupted again, holding his hand up to his unseen colleague.
‘Sorry. About the range, I don’t know. This missile system had a
very sophisticated guidance system that didn’t rely on GPS, which
would make it hard to jam with electronic counter measures. I’m
sorry, I have to go. Is there anything else, Nathalie?’

‘
No thanks,
Jean. Let me know when you get into the big machine.’

His shy smile
in response was rather sweet, thought Nathalie. But her heart was
thumping in her chest for other reasons.

The jeep
bumped towards them on the broken concrete runway. Lynch turned
away from it, switched his mobile to silent and slipped it into his
boot. He gave up a silent thanks to God for his insistence on using
his slimline smartphone rather than the bulky ‘highly secure’ MI6
issue handset. He reached for the camera and slid out the memory
card.

‘
Whatever you
do, don’t piss them off,’ urged Nimr, climbing down from the
cockpit. ‘They’re headbangers, I’m tellin’ ya.’

The jeep
shrieked to a halt, side on to the Alouette. Four men, all wearing
camouflage fatigues and caps, jumped out. Lynch and Nimr waited in
front of the helicopter.

The first of
the men jabbed at them with the AK47 slung over his shoulder.
‘Hands up.’ They raised their hands. Lynch read the nametag on his
chest as he strode towards them:
Danni
.

‘
Turn around.
Spread. Now. Hands on the chopper.’

Lynch
staggered as one of the men patted him down roughly. The search was
thorough, but stopped at the top of his boots.
Amateur.

‘
Okay.’ They
turned. ‘What the fuck are you doing here? Who are you?’

Banging came
from the helicopter behind them, the fourth guy searching it. He
smiled winningly. ‘Depends who you are.’

The man
unholstered his pistol, clicking off the safety. He pointed the
Desert Eagle towards Lynch and fired. The bullet hit the Perspex of
the Alouette’s windshield, sending shards of plastic into the side
of Lynch’s face as he flinched away. Nimr shouted out, moved
forwards and then halted at the distinctive click-clack of AK47s
being cocked. Red-faced, the pistol still held out in front of him,
the man screamed, ‘I asked you who the fuck are you.’

Lynch
answered, his hand coming away from his cheek streaked with blood.
‘I’m a tourist. I chartered this guy to take me up into the
mountains. Someone shot at us.’

The gunman
twisted the pistol to point at Nimr, who stammered, ‘True, man,
true.’

‘
Liars. On
your knees.’

They sank to
their knees and their hands were pulled down behind and tied, the
distinctive little ‘zip’ sound of the cable ties coming an instant
before the pain as they were overtightened.

The crackle
of a radio. ‘Danni.’ A burst of Arabic, a response from the radio.
‘Okay.’

Lynch picked
out ‘Deir Na’ee’ in the stream of Arabic before it broke off. He
kept his eyes on the ground. A boot crunched on the broken
concrete. His chin was pulled up, gripped in the gunman’s big hand.
Blinking with the violence of the movement and the bright sun,
Lynch stared into a sneering face. The Desert Eagle was placed
against the top of his nose.

‘
A tourist
packing countermeasure flares? You think we’re fucking
idiots?’

Lynch shook
his head minutely, his eyes focused on the face above him. He
wished he could stop blinking, the cold metal of the gun triggering
the reaction. A click sounded, Lynch screwed his eyes shut. His
head was pushed back contemptuously.

‘
Oom wla,
’ the man commanded Lynch
and Nimr in Arabic. They staggered to their feet and were jabbed
towards the jeep by the butts of AK47s.

They drove up
the valley, climbing the face of Kalaa mountain, the road wet and
the ground white with snow. Lynch tried to lessen the pain of the
cable tie but moving his wrists worsened it, the rocking motion of
the jeep making him cry out in pain. The gunman barked at him to
shut up.

Deir Na’ee
looked more ramshackle from the ground. They drew up to a
barbed-wire fence where a surly-faced militia man raised the
barrier. A second barrier a hundred metres later was protected by
tank traps and a machine gun emplacement. Waved through again, they
drove through the big compound, warehouses to the left and right.
There was a building set into the side of the steep escarpment to
the left, jutting from the rock wall and fronted by huge picture
windows.

They arrived
at a large hangar backed into the mountain, the big double doors
opened for them by invisible hands. The area inside was a yawning
space, a roadway running down the centre of the steel-framed
building, leading to a far doorway in the back of the hangar. The
jeep’s engine roared, the noise bouncing back off the steel panels.
They approached the doorway and stopped, the engine idling as they
waited.

A red light
flashed above the studded heavy steel door and its two leaves
opened outwards to the intermittent loud beeping of an
alarm.

They drove
into the mountain, a long tunnel. They passed side tunnels, pulling
up at a loading bay several hundred metres in, Lynch guessed. They
were pulled from the jeep and marched through into a warehouse-like
area. Lynch had seen rooms like this on the compromised CCTV
system. That meant Nathalie’s team could see him now. He searched
for the camera, earning himself a ringing punch on the ear from
Danni. They marched into another corridor. Lynch was driven into a
side room with a brutal blow to his side from a rifle butt. His
knees gave way and he slid to the floor, gasping. The door slammed
behind him.

Lynch took
time to regain his breath, his eyes closed and his face upturned.
He drew a deep breath and opened his eyes to take in his
surroundings. The room was small, a shabby camp bed against the
wall. There was no window. Lynch got up from the floor, bent in a
painful, low crouch and reached into his boot for the mobile. He
overbalanced and fell on his side. He tried again by using the wall
to balance against as he reached into the boot with his tied
hands.

Held dn il
gone militia hold hamat. ok.

Lynch pressed
send. The door flew open. Two gunmen burst into the room, screaming
abuse. He leapt to his feet, unable to stop the mighty blow to his
face. A flurry of damaging punches to his stomach doubled him up.
He tried to retaliate, but his legs gave way again and he fell
backwards against the wall.

Danni towered
over him, the mobile held in his big hand, screaming
‘
Kiss ikhtak! Kiss ikhtak ya
kalb!
’

On the floor,
Lynch fought for breath, his pinioned arms painful behind his back,
knees drawn up, and his head lowered. The door slammed again. Lynch
thought of the grubby farmhouse near Batroun where he had found
Paul Stokes’ body. The stench of death and the buzzing of flies
came back to him.

THIRTY-FOUR

Yves Dubois
arrived at the fourteenth floor of the opulent Phoenicia
Intercontinental Hotel and headed straight for room 1430. He tapped
on the door, noting the service trolley outside the room two doors
down, the uniformed staff member apparently unhurried as he folded
a piece of linen and placed it in front of him. A guest walked up
the corridor towards Dubois, again in no particular hurry. Dubois
noted both men and, given who he was about to meet, he assumed both
were CIA operatives.

The door was
answered by a grey-haired man in shirtsleeves. ‘Yves. Good to see
you again.’

Dubois smiled
thinly. ‘Frank. Good to see you too. It must be, oh, years since we
had the chance to talk.’

‘
Come in,
come in. Don’t be a stranger now.’

Frank Coleman
was CIA station chief, Beirut, and a man whose past was intimately
intertwined with Dubois’ own. Coleman’s call had come out of the
blue, a surprise so total it had left Dubois in a state of shock.
He and Channing had argued bitterly about the decision to accept
Coleman’s request for a crash meeting. It was only when Dubois
agreed to absolve Channing of any knowledge of his decision to
agree to meet the CIA man that he had been able to talk Channing
down from his towering rage. The news that Maalouf had precise
knowledge of the cargo the
Arabian
Princess
carried hadn’t helped Channing’s
temper.

Dubois strode
past Coleman’s outstretched hand into the room.

‘
Buddy, this is Yves Dubois, an old friend and a good friend
to America.’ Coleman grinned, his teeth dazzling. The gesture never
quite reached the washed-out blue gaze even as Coleman gave the
impression of being in a rush to spread
bonhomie
on the world. Dubois held
his hand out to the man who had risen from the sofa, leaning over
the coffee table with a smile. He was stocky, pale but dark haired,
his brown eyes nervous and his greeting given with a fleeting,
uncertain smile.

‘
Hi. Buddy
Steele. Steel with an e on the end.’

‘
Can we get
you a coffee, Yves?’

Dubois sat.
‘No, thank you.’

Coleman took
the opposite armchair, Steele between them on the sofa. Coleman’s
smile made his crow’s feet wrinkle up. Sun damage, thought Dubois,
who sat with his hands clasped together, his forefingers against
his lips.

Coleman
picked up his mobile and tapped it against his palm. ‘I am so glad
you could join us today, Yves, and we truly appreciate your fitting
us in at such short notice. Especially as you are travelling so far
from home. Mind you, this place must seem like home to you after
all those years.’

Dubois
inclined his head in acknowledgement, watching Coleman’s face
transform into a picture of earnest friendliness.

‘
You’re
normally in Brussels these days, aren’t you? What brings you back
to Beirut? You on a nostalgia trip?’ Coleman laughed, alone. Steele
smiled dutifully, sitting back and draping his arm on the back of
the sofa.