Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (6 page)

Palmer
actually shuffled backwards before turning to leave. Lynch waited
for the snap of the front door lock and took his whisky back
outside where he finished his cigar in the growing darkness,
listening to the honking traffic on Beirut’s twilit streets. He
remembered Stokes unmanned and crying at Aisha Dajani’s funeral in
Amman. Her mother, Nour, standing by Stokes’ side and comforting
him as her daughter lay in the ground that had accepted her two
sons and her husband. Nour led away from the grave by the police
who had brought her to the funeral, a humanitarian
concession.

Lynch flicked
the butt of his cigar into the bushes below, watching its pinprick
of light spin into the darkness. He slipped inside to the bathroom
where, after a while, Leila came and helped him wash.

FIVE

Gerhardt
Hoffmann fiddled with his blue and silver Bulgari cufflink, feeling
the smooth cabochon stone as he gazed over the immaculate rolling
greens. The players wore heavy sweaters and jackets against the
spring cold. Their breath formed tiny clouds.

The waiter
laid down a long porcelain dish of canapés. ‘Chef’s compliments,
Herr Hoffmann.’

He started,
his eyes devouring the colourful line of delicacies arrayed on the
white china, and smiled. ‘Thank you, Hans. And please convey my
gratitude to Chef.’

Grunting,
Hoffmann took an artful pile of salmon and roe on black bread and
popped it into his mouth. After months of avoiding the Landsee, he
was now able to enjoy, once more, the privilege of dining in its
immaculate clubhouse. Life was good again. He sipped the excellent
Gewürztraminer and swallowed luxuriously.

The distant
cry of a golfer and the warm sun streaming through the glass bore
him back to his childhood, the cry of young voices in the trees and
the sun breaking through the woodland in blades of light. They
played simply back then, hide and seek and war games. Bigger than
his friends, Hoffmann had never won at hide and seek until the day
he stumbled across his hiding place, the heavy metal door in the
undergrowth. A clever child, he used a branch to lever the door
open and had the presence of mind to leave the lump of mossy wood
as a wedge in case it slammed shut and trapped him
inside.

He remembered
the cold gloom, the sound of dripping water and the looming shapes
in the darkness beyond the finger of grey light the gap in the door
let in. Days after, he had returned with a torch and his two
closest friends for safety in numbers. They fought over who went
first, almost dropping the torch in their fear. Emboldened by the
silence, fearful of the echoes, they crept farther down the iron
staircase and onto the wide concrete floor, huge doors to their
left and right. One of the nearest doors was open, marginally, and
they sidled in to prise open one of the stacks of crates. What they
found scared them so much they ran out, removed the prop and let
the door slam shut. They covered the whole thing up with
undergrowth again. As they stood in the clearing, shivering with
the cold and fear, they nicked their hands with Hoffmann’s knife
and took a blood oath never again to mention the dark cavern to
anyone except each other.

The distant
click of a teed-off golf ball and then, a few seconds later,
clapping brought Hoffmann back to the Landsee Golf Club. He scooped
up another canapé, a sesame toast of red tuna topped with a
delicate green wasabi rose. Michel Freij was late, Hoffmann noted
as he let the tastes mingle in his mouth. They were really rather
good, but then one had certain expectations of the best golf club
in Berlin, arguably in Germany. Perhaps, Hoffmann thought mildly,
in all of Europe.

Hoffmann
watched as the slim, dapper figure wove through the green and cream
striped chairs towards him. He pushed back his chair and got to his
feet to receive his guest with an outstretched hand and a
smile.

‘
Mr
Freij.’

Peter Meier,
a man who moved amongst the rich and powerful and so not easily
impressed, had said Michel Freij was the most powerful man in
Lebanon. Hoffmann found himself struck by the man’s forceful
charisma.

Freij bowed
slightly. ‘Herr Hoffmann. A pleasure, finally, to meet in
person.’

Hoffmann
gestured to the chair facing him. ‘Please.’

Freij lowered
his tall frame into the chair, placing his mobile onto the linen
and taking his napkin before the waiter could reach him. ‘A beer
please. Staropramen.’

The waiter
stuttered. ‘We do not have this beer, sir.’

Freij flicked
a glance at Hoffmann, sharing his disappointment with his host.
‘Oh. A shame. Then a wine. You have wine?’

‘
Certainly,
sir.’

Hoffmann
gestured at his frosted glass. ‘The Gewürztraminer is excellent, Mr
Freij.’

‘
I am sure it
is.’ Freij turned to the waiter. ‘You have Pouilly
Fumé?’

‘
Of course,
sir.’ The man flipped open the wine list and flourished it. Freij
nodded approval. ‘Excellent. The Asteroïde, then.’

The waiter
retired backwards. Freij plucked a canapé, to Hoffmann’s horror. He
had been looking forward to the smoked chicken breast topped with
aubergine mash and pomegranate seeds.

Hoffmann
cleared his throat. ‘The shipment has cleared Hamburg. We will be
delivering as per our agreement. I take it this is still convenient
to you?’

Peter Meier
had drilled him on the details until he had dreamed about them.
Hoffmann was word-perfect.

‘
That’s
good,’ said Freij, wiping his fingers on the napkin as he chewed.
‘We have made the deposit, of course. As per our
agreement.’

‘
So I
understand. Excellent. Can I recommend the business lunch menu? It
is pleasingly fast and yet delicious.’

Freij ordered
á la carte. He waited for the waiter to depart. ‘We are slightly
concerned regarding the delivery of the consignment. We ...
appreciate our partnership, but think it prudent to seek further
guarantees.’

Hoffmann
beamed. ‘We have already foreseen this eventuality. It is
appropriate, given the value of the cargo.’

The sommelier
arrived carrying an ice bucket. He pulled the bottle from the ice,
displaying it nestled in a white linen napkin. Freij waved his
approval and the man opened the wine, laying the cork on the linen
tablecloth. He poured a taste. Freij sniffed the wine briefly,
nodded and waited for his glass to be filled. He raised it to
Hoffmann, who returned the salute with a gracious smile that
disguised his dismay at the cost.

Facing almost
certain financial ruin had forced Hoffmann into a true appreciation
of the value of money and he had slipped into being a mean man, an
attribute Hilde had remarked upon with increasing bitterness in
recent months. Having teetered on the precipice, Hoffmann did not
intend to look into the abyss again, even for Hilde.

When the
manager of Deutsche Bank Hamburg had finally called to deliver the
intention to foreclose, Hoffmann was terror-stricken. He drove into
the night, stayed in a cheap motel in Frankfurt and drank himself
to sleep. The next morning, hung over and exhausted, desperation
drove him to see Hilde’s brother, Peter Meier. An influential man
whose business dealings were, Hoffmann knew, more colourful than
his own, Meier was rich as Croesus and infinitely resourceful,
worldlier than Hoffmann, and harder, too. A man you would want with
you in a fight to the finish. Hoffmann had reached the
finish.

Freij leaned
back as the waiter delivered his pan-fried foie gras. Hoffmann took
a green salad.

‘
Is Herr
Meier not joining us?’ asked Freij, placing a wobbling pink lump on
a slice of toasted brioche. Hoffmann watched as the manicured
fingers pushed it into the red-lipped maw framed by trimmed goatee
beard. The Hollywood perfect white teeth sliced into the warm liver
and left crumbs on the moist lips. He shuddered.

‘
Hoffmann?’

‘
Sorry,
sorry. No, he has been called away on an urgent matter. He asked me
to convey his sincere apologies, but to tell you he was looking
forward to meeting when we make the delivery.’

Freij laid
down his knife and fork. ‘I see. We were talking about additional
guarantees.’

Hoffmann had
reached Meier’s house in tears, begging for money. Ignoring his
pleas, Meier had painstakingly walked the desperate man through his
assets, sources of potential income and expectations of
remuneration. The cupboard was, as Meier had said when twisting the
knife, quite bare. Finally, crying like a child, Hoffmann had
remembered the game in the woods on what had been the East German
border all those years ago and the macabre contents of the bunker
they had found. He tossed it into the conversation as a joke, as a
desperate gambit to entertain Meier and buy some sort of
consideration: ‘Unless Soviet missiles have a value.’

Meier froze,
his voice chill. ‘Soviet missiles, you say?’

Hoffmann,
feeling foolish, told Meier of the bunker they had found as
children, their fearful pact made in the woods near Hřensko. The
great looming shapes in their cradles.

Meier was
ferocious. He grabbed Hoffmann’s arm. ‘Your troubles could well be
far behind you. Take me there. Now.’

Pleased to
finally engage Meier’s interest, Hoffmann was taken aback by the
man’s sudden passion, protesting, ‘Please, Peter, it is late. The
morning, surely?’

Meier
arranged the early morning drive into the forests of Hoffmann’s
childhood. Hoffmann had never imagined the sleek green missiles in
their stacked wooden crates would still be there, let alone could
be worth so much money, but Meier had been dismissive of them. He
had taken them as what he called the cherry on the cake. Meier’s
cake had been the two larger devices lying on their massive oiled
chassis, stored behind huge blast doors. Meier had hooked the
doors’ electronic locking mechanisms up to an aluminium suitcase he
carried from the car. It opened up to show a complex computer
screen. After a few minutes, the lock clicked open. Meier unhooked
the cables from the lock and heaved open the door to the hangar
full of looming, fearful shapes.

Two of the
brutal missiles had detachable warheads, a three-meter cone of
green. Meier stared, his breath coming in little gasps. ‘My
God.’

Hoffmann had
wondered quite who Meier’s God was.

The clamour
of his mobile tore Hoffmann back to the present. He excused himself
to take the short call and strolled across the restaurant floor.
Nodding and grinning, he cut the line and swaggered back to the
table. He placed his handset on the white linen, smiling at Freij
with a renewed confidence. ‘I am so sorry. We were talking about
guarantees, were we not?’

Freij nodded.
His slicked-back hair was receding at the temples. Together with
his goatee, it gave the man what Hoffmann rather thought of as a
vaguely Mephistophelean air.

Hoffmann
beamed and leaned back. ‘My own daughter Elli will be accompanying
the
Arabian Princess
personally. It is an exceptional guarantee, but then she is
an exceptional yacht, I think we can both agree.’ Hoffmann’s slow,
conspiratorial wink was accompanied by the broadest of grins. ‘I
think you could hardly wish for more assurance than
that.’

Hoffmann
basked in Freij’s appreciative little smile, marvelling once again
at Peter Meier’s exceptional ingenuity. Elli had gone against him,
and Hoffmann found her betrayal, like her mother’s before her, hard
to forgive.

Lynch
shivered as he passed the tumbles of purple hydrangeas up to the
door of the imposing Edwardian house. He pressed the doorbell and
waited, hunched against London’s damp fog. He had arrived that
morning, the five-hour Middle East Airlines flight to Heathrow was
overbooked and the staff bad-tempered. He missed Beirut already. It
was cold there this time of year, the Lebanese skiing season was in
full flow, but at least it was a clean cold with sunshine
brightening the days. London, on the other hand, was sheer misery,
the leaden moisture permeated his clothes, invading his every
breath. The trees dripped.

‘
Hello, sir.
What a surprise seeing you here.’ Yates, ancient and bowed, the
faithful family retainer of an intelligence service which had long
ago discarded faith and family.

Lynch
squeezed the old man’s shoulder as he passed. ‘Still here, old
friend?’

Yates had
never been a friend, but he chuckled like a fond father welcoming
the prodigal as he led Lynch to the sitting room. Brian Channing
was seated by the unlit fireplace. He gestured to the chair
opposite, a genial expression on his face that didn’t reach his
analytical eyes.

‘
Welcome back to Blighty, Lynch. Well, well. The youngest son
gone to the colonies. What can we get you? Tea? Too early for
a
chota peg
,
really.’

Chota
peg
. Christ. Channing still thought it was
trendy to be a young crusty. Mind you, he was putting on the years
now, good-looking for all that. ‘Scotch. On the rocks.’