Bride of a Bygone War (6 page)

An irregular series of muffled pops interrupted his reverie. They sounded like grenades or mortar rounds landing in the next neighborhood. Then the crackle of small arms fire arose from no place in particular and before long seemed to be all around him. He tried to separate out each constituent sound, but soon his concentration lapsed and he drifted back into sleep.

In his dreams Lukash found himself back on the sand-swept lane between the dun-colored walls, watching mother and child step toward the gaping rear door of the Land Rover. The woman turned, as if startled by the presence of someone behind her, and focused a reproachful glare upon him. Lukash started, opened his eyes, and took a deep breath. He felt the same sense of impotence, of utter inconsequentiality, that he had felt outside the Sabra refugee camp on the way north from the airport. He thought he had known what to do then, but he no longer felt quite so confident.

He rose a second time and strode across the room to the coffee table. Beside his tumbler of whiskey was the black pigskin shaving kit. He upended it and poured its contents onto the table. Taking up a steel nail file, he slipped it between the leather bottom of the kit and its leather sides and worked it around until he heard a click and the bottom swung open.

A small manila envelope and a blue-jacketed U.S. tourist passport fell onto the glass table. Setting the passport aside, he pried open the envelope’s metal clasp and carefully emptied its contents into his hand. First to fall out was a slim gold wedding band engraved on the inside with the initials, M.R.K. and W.F.C., and a date, 3-15-76. He slipped the ring onto his finger, slowly removed it, and then set it aside.

Then he slipped from the envelope a delicate gold chain, handmade in the traditional style of the Arab goldsmiths of Aleppo. He stretched it out to full length between his hands and laid it out on the glass tabletop.

Finally he removed a glossy black-and-white photo of the type sold by itinerant photographers in Lebanese nightclubs. It showed a jubilant party of six gathered around a circular table. How long had it been since he’d last looked at the photo? Three years? Four? The resemblance between the woman beside him in the photo and the woman he had seen in his dream was uncanny. Now that he was back in Beirut, the memories were returning. If he were going to stay here much longer, there would be no avoiding them.

Lukash gently scooped up the ring and the chain, dropped them into the envelope, and did the same for the photo after one last penetrating look. Then he returned the envelope and passport to their cavity in the false bottom of the shaving kit, pressed the bottom shut, and replaced the razor, toothbrush, soap dish, and other toiletries.

At last he returned to bed, thrust the memories out of his mind, and fell back into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter 3

A Lebanese army officer in an old-fashioned leather tank driver’s helmet and goggles peered out the hatch of a parked Panhard armored car and followed Conrad Prosser with his eyes as Prosser’s Renault climbed through the pine forest toward the gate of the American ambassador’s residence. The steep mountain road from the Damascus Highway to Yarzé was always heavily patrolled, not so much for the ambassador’s benefit as for that of his nearest neighbor, the Lebanese minister of defense.

Prosser downshifted when he saw the stretch of parked cars that lined the road outside the residence gate. Nearly all of them were chauffeur-driven Mercedes and BMW town cars with liveried drivers who passed their idleness by playing cards with one another on the polished hoods of their splendid driving machines. In the fading glow of the setting sun, Prosser scanned the diplomatic license plates and made mental notes of the numerical country codes he recognized and those he did not. First was the Egyptian ambassador’s black Mercedes, just behind it the French chargé d’affaires’s cigar-shaped Citroën, and three spaces farther along was the Argentinean ambassador’s silver Jaguar. It was rather a high-toned crowd for an evening of Dixieland jazz, he thought.

As soon as Prosser reached the gate, a uniformed guard popped out from the whitewashed sentry box and pulled open the rivet-studded sheet-metal gate. He returned Prosser’s nod of acknowledgment with a ragged salute and wasted no time in closing the gate as soon as the Renault was inside.

Prosser parked in the staff lot, tucked well out of sight behind the residence, then backtracked along the service road to the building’s monumental white marble façade, terraced gardens, and sweeping panorama of the Bay of Beirut to the north and west. Noting that the receiving line had already dispersed, he shut the front door quietly behind him and advanced through the entry hall. All at once a low, rhythmic chant, accompanied by the steady beat of tom-toms and the clacking of wood on wood, reached his ears from the sitting room ahead. Dixieland jazz it was not.

“Conrad, you’re just in time. They started only moments ago.”

It was Muriel Benson, Ambassador Ravenel’s secretary, looking surprisingly elegant in a sleeveless black cocktail frock that flattered her ample but shapely figure. Tonight was Muriel’s night to play hostess, as the ambassador’s wife was away on her quarterly shopping excursion to Florence and Rome. Muriel was playing the role for all it was worth.

“Come along quickly, now, and I’ll find you a seat. You won’t believe these people, Conrad, really you won’t. Yesterday the ambassador was nearly apoplectic when Damascus cabled that the jazz quartet was canceling, and all we could get for tonight was the Great Plains Indian Dancers. Imagine Red Indian dancers, here, of all places! I thought the ambassador was going to drive across the border and personally wring the information officer’s neck. But you should listen to him now. ‘Everybody has Dixieland bands these days,’ is what I heard him tell the minister of defense a few moments ago. ‘The French have them. Even the Russians have their pale imitation, but only America has honest-to-God Red Indians!’”

“Do you suppose the minister knows the difference between a Red Indian and the other kind?”

“Don’t be silly. Hollywood Westerns are as popular over here as they are in Kansas City or Pittsburgh. John Wayne is practically canonized among the Maronites, and Clint Eastwood is box office gold on both sides of town. But come along, now, Conrad, have a seat. The show is only an hour long and you’ve already missed the first two numbers.”

The dancers were very much as Prosser imagined they would be, draped in buffalo hide and decorated with war paint and dancing a samba-like step inside a circle of five chanting elders. He soon lost interest and let his eyes wander around the room. At Ed Pirelli’s urging, the ambassador had promised to add to the guest list the names of three or four junior Arab diplomats for station officers to meet and, if possible, invite to lunch or drinks to assess them as possible recruitment targets.

Prosser spotted a few younger Arabs in dark suits who looked like the ones he was after and etched their facial features in his memory so that he could approach them during dessert after the show. As he scanned the faces in the crowd, he also kept his eyes open for good-looking women. Such an occasion was not to be entirely wasted on business.

“The next dance in our program tells the story of two tribes.” One of the dancers was speaking now, a tall, imposing young man with high cheekbones, a hawkish nose, and shoulder-length straight black hair tied loosely behind his neck with a rawhide thong. Yet as Prosser watched him speak, the prominent nose seemed less Native American than Semitic and his accent less Great Plains than White Plains.

“The two tribes summered for many generations on opposite sides of a Great River that produced an abundance of fish and attracted great herds of buffalo, flocks of waterfowl, and more than enough game for ten tribes. Still, from time to time, each tribe would send raiding parties against the other to steal horses, food, and women. As a result, those on both sides of the river who had lost family members or valuable property became accustomed to taking their revenge. And so the raids became ever larger and more frequent, until at last it came to war.

“Summer after summer the fighting continued, ceasing only in the winter when the tribes went to their separate retreats. At last the chief of the first tribe called upon the Great Spirit to bring a scourge upon the other and to remove it forever from the banks of the Great River. Soon the chief’s prayer was answered, and the White Man made war on the second tribe and drove it from the opposite side of the river to a place many days’ ride to the south. At this the chief ordered a feast of thanks to the Great Spirit, but no sooner did the first tribe sit down to its feast than the White Man’s army returned and massacred the gathering down to the last man, woman, and child.”

The young Indian, if that is really what he was, paused and scanned the faces of his audience as if he were telling the story for the first time and had found a particularly sympathetic listener.

“I see that your city has a river. They tell me that fighting often rages between tribes to the east and west of the river and that revenge has taken root in many hearts. I counsel you: remember the story of our ancestors and learn from our errors.”

He abruptly broke off his speech, gave a nod to the drummers, and took up a monotonous wailing chant. The Lebanese government officials and foreign diplomats in the room exchanged meaningful glances with their wives and colleagues.

The River Dance was a sluggish, swaying affair, and the river that it conjured up in Prosser’s mind was shallow and murky, with malodorous marshes along both banks. His attention wandered and he caught sight of a slender, frizzy-haired brunette in a green silk dress, obviously not an Arab, four rows ahead and to his right. There was something about her that he recognized even from behind, and he wished she would turn around even slightly so that he could see her in full profile.

All at once Prosser became aware of a low rumble coming from the open French doors in the foyer. It rose rapidly into an insistent roar that mounted and fell in waves and from time to time resembled the crackle of radio static. A few heads in the rows ahead of him glanced nervously behind them, as if to determine whether anyone else had noticed that Beirut’s monthlong East-West cease-fire had just collapsed.

Prosser let his mind wander during the remaining dance number, pondering first whether tonight’s battle in the commercial district would stand in the way of his plans to cross the Green Line early the next morning. Having decided it probably would not, he went on to size up which of the young Arab diplomats in the room looked most approachable. If he could elicit from just one of them his date and place of birth, previous postings, current areas of responsibility, and a few trivial bits of personal background, he would have enough for a name-trace request that would create for Headquarters the illusion of movement on the agent-recruiting front.

At last the drums of the Great Plains Indians fell silent and the dancers’ shuffling feet ceased to stir. They took their final bow and disappeared into the guest quarters of the residence to change out of their costumes and join the audience for dessert and coffee. Prosser tried to imagine a conversation between a Plains Indian, born and raised on a parched reservation somewhere in Oklahoma or South Dakota, and a Lebanese plutocrat whose time was divided evenly between Beirut, Paris, Cannes, and Mégève.

“Have you seen the ambassador?” He felt a gentle tug at his elbow and found a pale and jittery Muriel Benson at his side. She was at the head of the milling crowd that had begun to file past him toward the dining room, where cake, cookies, and coffee were being served.

Prosser shook his head. “Would you like me to look for him?”

“Would you mind terribly? Tell him Raymond needs him in the kitchen right away,” she whispered. “There’s a problem with the cake.”

“The cake? Golly, I’ll let him know right away, Muriel. I’m sure he’ll want to drop whatever he’s doing.”

Muriel ignored the sarcasm. “You are such a dear, Conrad.”

Prosser let the crowd file by. The ambassador was nowhere in sight. At last he followed the other guests into the dining room and lined up at the bar behind an impeccably suited Arab with a Vandyke beard whom he recognized from Pirelli’s description as the first secretary of the Saudi Arabian embassy. The Saudis had made themselves particularly scarce in Beirut since a carload of pro-Iranian fanatics had winged one of their economic attachés during a recent kidnap attempt. With their own civil war temporarily in abatement, the Lebanese had felt compelled to take on the conflict of their distant neighbors, Iran and Iraq.

Prosser watched with keen interest to see whether the Saudi, whose culture demanded strict adherence to the strictures of Islam, ordered fruit juice or scotch at the bar. If the latter, he resolved to pursue him for all he was worth. If the former, he would make a beeline for the Egyptian in the corner swirling a snifter of cognac.

But before the outcome was clear, Prosser’s attention was drawn to the sight of Raymond, the ambassador’s moon-faced Lebanese chef, entering the room with a gigantic sheet cake decorated as Old Glory. The ambassador followed him into the room with his customary pomp, two steps back, with Muriel at his heels. No sooner did he pass through the door, however, than he stopped short. His face grew crimson, and it became apparent that the chief of mission was seething with some suppressed rage. At the same time, Muriel’s usual bright-eyed, capable air seemed to have deserted her. A titter of embarrassed laughter arose from among the guests standing around the dining room table as the cake was laid to rest.