Dynamite Fishermen (45 page)

Abu Ramzi looked at the photo of the handsome young man in the polo shirt and slipped it into one of the compartments of his leather pocketbook.

“If you like, I have no objection to your passing the photo to your Iraqi contacts,” Prosser continued. “But be very careful in telling them how you obtained it. They should be made to believe that it came from your own sources, of course.”

“That will be easy enough,” Abu Ramzi replied. “I will say that I obtained it through one of my relatives in Damascus, as I have done before. But if you want the photograph to reach the Iraqi government, why not pass it yourself?”

“Because when it is seen as coming from the American government, such information has political side effects,” Prosser explained. “We do not want to be seen as taking the side of Iraq against Syria, or of Syria against Iraq. Believe me, if we had the means to have this man arrested, we would. We simply want to stop Colonel Hisham and his people from doing any more damage, and Iraq seems to be in the best position at the moment to do it. Will you pass it along?”

“Yes, if I can find an Iraqi official left alive in Beirut to receive it,” he responded bitterly. “What I cannot promise is that Colonel Hisham or Zuhayri or the boy in the photo will be found. In their place I would have left Beirut by now and taken shelter in Damascus.”

“Well, do what you can, Abu Ramzi. And please forget where you found the photograph, okay?”

Chapter 33

Saturday

The sun was well above the horizon by the time Prosser rose from bed. He showered, dressed, ate a breakfast of cold cereal, and then retired to the living room sofa to rest awhile before setting about his weekend chores. Five pages into Graham Greene’s
The Confidential Agent,
he put the book aside and closed his eyes for acatnap .

About the same time, a blue Volvo station wagon slowly turned the corner in front of the Hala Building and pulled to a leisurely stop where a barrier of concrete-filled oil drums blocked access to the segment of rue Californie that passed behind the Saudi embassy compound. The Volvo’s driver, an attractive European woman in her late thirties with tawny hair worn tightly wound at the back of her neck, stared at the barricade as if surprised to find it blocking her path.

Catching sight of the Lebanese
gendarmerie’s
truck-mounted machine gun parked in the shade of the Saudi compound’s north wall, she realized that the roadblock could not be circumvented and began backing away toward the curb in an effort to make a three-point turn and return the way she had come. But her progress was slow, because each time someone entered or departed the Hala Building, she paused to look.

Perhaps because it was a Saturday, no concierge or Red Fursan bodyguard was on hand to notice her and direct her to move on. While making her second attempt to turn the Volvo around, she caught a glimpse of a white Mercedes sedan approaching from rue Maislin. A slender youth in blue jeans and a pale yellow polo shirt jumped out and strode purposefully into the lobby carrying a Kalashnikov automatic rifle at his side while the driver of the Mercedes backed the car into position just outside the parking lot gate. Meanwhile, the Lebanese gendarme manning the truck-mounted machine gun took another puff from his cigarette and continued to leaf through his morning tabloid.

Prosser was aroused from his nap by the nagging ring of his doorbell. Although he expected no visitors that morning, it was more out of curiosity than suspicion that he looked out the peephole and caught a split-second glimpse of Rami, the rejected visa applicant whose bandaged face still bore cuts and bruises inflicted by the Fursan bodyguards three days before.

The youth stood just far enough away from the door for Prosser to see the buttstock of the rifle held to his shoulder. Instantly Prosser flung himself aside into the tiny alcove off the vestibule.

Perhaps the assassin’s attention had momentarily strayed, or perhaps he had hesitated when he saw his victim’s face blocking the peephole. Whatever the reason, the delay was sufficient for Prosser to evade the first bullets as they blasted through the flimsy plywood door.

Not until he reached into the closet for a pistol did he realize that blood was dripping from his left arm and saw that the bullet had entered his left forearm and blasted a jagged hole on its way out.

Expecting the pain to break through at any moment, he drew the injured forearm across his stomach while reaching into the closet for the .45-caliber autoloader that he kept hidden on a high closet shelf. It was cocked with a round in the chamber—one hand would be enough to fire. He thumbed the safety down and fired three pairs of shots through the door—left, right, and center. Then he ejected the magazine with his thumb and tucked the pistol under his left armpit while his good hand searched the shelf for a fresh magazine. A moment later he found one and inserted it into the weapon.

Hearing nothing more from the stairwell for ten seconds or more, Prosser stretched himself out on the polished stone floor and slid on his back across the floor to the opposite side of the doorway. Once across, he stood to the left of the door and gave it a sharp kick. The youth responded with another burst of gunfire. The reports from the rifle seemed deafening, but above the din Prosser heard the tinkling of shattered glass as bullets ricocheted into lamps and mirrors and a pair of ceramic bowls.

Prosser responded with three more pairs of gunshots fired through the door at hip level. Then he heard a woman’s scream from the apartment across the hall. Through her hysterical shrieking he made out the clatter of feet retreating down the stairs. After tucking the pistol in his belt, he grabbed a third magazine from the closet shelf,and inserted it clumsily into the weapon.

Then he set off toward the rear bedroom, his wounded arm leaving a gruesome trail of blood, and took up a kneeling position behind the balcony railing, with the elbow of his shooting arm supported by his right knee. Once in position, he peered down over the edge and waited for Rami to come into view.

Although Prosser knew from his shallow breathing and the chills and nausea sweeping over him that he was slipping into a state of shock, the crippling pain he feared had not yet taken hold. If only he could keep it under control until Rami came out into the open, he would deal with his loss of blood later.

Prosser lined up his sights with the spot on the ground where he expected Rami to emerge from the doorway and counted: “One, two, three...” Just short of eight, Rami came out with the Kalashnikov held across his waist.

“
Yaa, Rami
!” Prosser called out.

The Palestinian stopped, wheeled around, and raised his rifle.

Prosser held the gunsight pattern lined up just below Rami’s ribcage and squeezed the trigger. The instant he fired, a spray of bullets from the assault rifle shattered the glass of the French door behind him, throwing off his aim. He leveled the pistol again as Rami ducked between parked cars to reach the waiting Mercedes.

Suddenly Prosser felt lightheaded and his rapid breathing disrupted his aim, but he was determined that his next shot would reach its target. He wondered for a moment whether the hollow-point slug would knock the youth down or possibly spin him around in a way that would prevent a follow-up shot but decided it didn’t matter so long as the first shot hit home.

He fired as Rami broke cover and, seeing no immediate result from the shot, glanced toward the Mercedes in time to see its driver, Maarouf Zuhayri, take aim at him with a German G-3 assault rifle. Prosser hit the deck a fraction of a second before the three-round burst exploded through a decorative glass panel on his left. The pain of falling on his wounded arm was nearly unbearable.

He rolled over onto his belly to take aim one more time, but before he could line up either of the two gunmen in his sights, he saw Rami knocked off his feet as if by an uppercut to the chin. The youth’s limbs jerked and twitched in midair like a scarecrow and then crumpled to the pavement a few paces short of the Mercedes’s open passenger door.

Only then did Prosser catch sight of the truck-mounted heavy machine gun parked behind the Saudi embassy, its barrel pointed at Rami’s inert body. On seeing what had happened, he turned again to see Zuhayri, who had by now tossed his weapon into the sedan, hopped into the driver’s seat and closed the door to make good his escape.

The Lebanese gendarme, a cigarette still dangling from the corner of his mouth, quickly swung the barrel of the heavy weapon around to track the Mercedes but waited too long to fire. All but one of his shots missed the fleeing sedan.

Prosser held his breath; ten meters more and Zuhayri would be out of the gendarme’s line of fire. He tossed off three more pistol shots at the Mercedes but none hit home.

At that moment he spotted Ulla Hamawi in her blue Volvo station wagon and recognized the driver of the waiting Mercedes as Maarouf Zuhayri. To Prosser’s surprise, it appeared that Zuhayri had not noticed her. But having seen Zuhayri fire on Prosser and attempt to drive away, Ulla threw the Volvo into gear and gunned it forward to block Zuhayri’s exit. The Mercedes screeched to a halt just short of colliding with her, and Zuhayri’s jaw dropped when he saw Ulla’s face staring grimly back at him through the windshield.

“Out of my way!” he raged, desperate to flee. He pounded the car’s horn as if to blast her out of his path.

Ulla switched off the ignition, locked the car doors and close the windows, and ducked as Zuhayri emerged from the Mercedes with his rifle leveled at her.

Meanwhile, the gendarme behind the truck-mounted machine gun held his fire.

“Please, Ulla, don’t make me shoot you!” Zuhayri shouted frantically as he pressed the rifle’s muzzle against the driver’s window. “Move your car!”

She climbed over the front seat onto the station wagon’s rear seat, and Zuhayri responded by blasting a gaping hole in the driver’s side window. He reached through the opening to unlock the door and climbed into the driver’s seat, only to find that Ulla had removed the key.

“Give me the bloody key!” he screamed at her. “Give it to me, or I’ll kill you!”

“Burn in hell!” she spat and clambered out the tailgate.

Zuhayri jumped out of the Volvo, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and took careful aim at Ulla as she fled toward the Hala Building’s entrance.

But he was too late. She tripped on the curb and fell sprawling toward the door. The shot went high, and before he could correct his aim, she crawled on her hands and knees around the corner to safety.

“Whore!” Zuyahyri shouted in Arabic. Then he ran back to the Mercedes, tossed the rifle onto the front seat, and put the car in gear. With a resourcefulness born of desperation, he slammed the heavy sedan into the rear end of the station wagon and spun it around until it was nearly out of his way. In a moment his path would be clear.

But Zuhayri had not reckoned with the Lebanese gendarme, who determined that his line of fire to the Mercedes was blocked only so long as the Mercedes remained behind the Volvo. The gunner lined up his sights with a spot two meters to the left of the Volvo and, when the Mercedes passed through the kill zone, raked it with a dozen armor-piercing rounds that blasted holes the size of silver dollars in its chassis. One of the shots took Zuhayri’s head off, and another set the fuel reservoir ablaze.

Prosser saw the Mercedes burst into flames but did not remain on the balcony to watch what followed. His arm was throbbing, his vision blurred, and nausea broke over him in waves. He shuffled back into the bedroom. Dropping the pistol on the bed, he sat staring at the trail of blood he had made across the tile floor. His fingers fumbled with the phone as he picked up the receiver and dialed.

“Harry?”

“Is that you, Con?”

“Can you get over here right away? I need help…fast.”

“You sound awful. Are you okay, pal?”

“I think so, but I’ve lost some blood. Get over here now, will you?”

“I’ll be right there; hang on, tiger.”

Prosser raised himself on wobbly knees and staggered to the closet to hide his pistol under a stack of shirts, then shuffled off to the living room to unlock the deadbolt. No sooner was it undone than the door swung open.

Prosser stepped back in alarm, fearing that a third assassin had concealed himself in the stairwell. At that moment Ulla stepped forward and caught him around the waist to guide him to the sofa. With the skill of someone who had done it before, she stripped the belt from his trousers and formed a tourniquet above the elbow of his injured arm. Then she laid the bloodied limb gently across his lap.

He opened his mouth to thank her, but in the same moment a fresh wave of nausea swept over him and everything faded from view.

Chapter 34

Wednesday

The liquor kiosks at the end of rue Venus were the only man-made structures amid the stones and stubble east of Raouché and the coastal road. They were constructed of nothing more than a few sheets of corrugated aluminum weighed down with cinder blocks, but they were thriving businesses, selling smuggled wines and spirits at lower prices than any supermarket or specialty store in West Beirut. In the gathering darkness of evening, Prosser surveyed the vast array of Scotch whiskeys, champagnes, cognacs, and cordials spread out before him and leaned forward to inspect their labels under the dim light of a hanging sixty-watt bulb.