The Levanter (34 page)

The Villa Howell near Famagusta does not look very big from the outside, but when you get inside you know that you are in a wealthy house. It has that “old-money” look: everything is very good, nothing is very new-except, possibly, the swimming pool - and it is all slightly, pleasantly, untidy. I had been told that Mr. Howell’s mother and his wife and children were all in Cannes for the summer, so I was not surprised to find Miss Malandra there with the master of the house.

They were in beach clothes by the swimming pool, where, Judging from the files scattered about them, they had been working. I was invited to take off my jacket and tie, offered swimming trunks if I would feel more comfortable, and a champagne cocktail. I refused the swimming trunks but accepted the cocktail.

Miss Malandra served it. Lunch would be at one thirty, she said. There would be ample time for a second drink. Then we got down to brass tacks.

Or, rather, Michael Howell got down to brass tacks, with a denunciation that lasted for twenty minutes of the iniquities of the press. Frank Edwards had warned me to expect this, so at first I let it flow; but when he began to quote from an article written by Melanie Hammad for a Cairo paper and read long extracts from it, I had to interrupt.

“Mr. Howell, I’m afraid I don’t understand Arabic.”

“Ah, sorry. Well, I can tell you what she says about me in English. Hashemite lackey, running dog, murderous viper, jackal, hyena, defiler of youth. Those are some of the nicer things she has to say.”

“Nicer?”

“When she comes to my crucifixion of Ghaled she is horrible. She says I wash my hands in Palestinian blood. And look at this. The name of Howell is the name of everything that is vile in our society. Only fire can cleanse us of this evil.’” He flung the paper down in disgust.

“Well, it’s what you would expect, isn’t it, Mr. Howell?”

“Expect?”

“Of Miss Hammad. I hear, by the way, that with Ghaled gone, she has transferred her allegiance from the PAF to the Popular Front.”

“But she is still inciting people to assassinate me. I must tell you, Mr. Prescott, that this sort of thing is very bad indeed for business.”

The anticlimax took me by surprise. “Only for business, Mr. Howell?”

“
Only
you say! Do you realize that Howell ships are now being boycotted in some ports? I can tell you that Touzani is very worried.”

“Touzani? Is this Captain Touzani?”

“Of course. He is to be our new marine superintendent. The present one is almost due for his pension and Touzani has earned the promotion. But it comes at a bad time. He is saying that we may have to take the Howell name off our ships.”

“I realize the importance of the Howell name as a business symbol, naturally,’’ I said, “but what I would like to discuss with you is your own personal position, the position of Michael Howell.”

“The two are inseparable, Mr. Prescott.”

“Are they? It wasn’t the Agence Howell who joined the PAF, it was Michael Howell. And it was Michael Howell who called for naval assistance against pirates off the coast of Israel.”

“But sailing in a ship owned by the Agence Howell. And yes - why not say it? - those detonators which exploded in Nazareth were made and packed in the Agence Howell Green Circle factory.”

I tried a fresh approach.

“On the subject of detonators, Mr. Howell, I have brought you some important information that you may not already have. Frank Edwards got hold of it in
Israel. At least we think that it’s important. The trouble is that we don’t understand it. You may.”

I handed him the photostat that Frank had given me. It was of a short news item.

In the late afternoon of July 2, two houses on the outskirts of an Arab village near the Israeli airport of Lod had been shattered by a dynamite explosion. Damage was also done to the nearby village. From the extent of the damage it was estimated that as much as two hundred kilos of explosive had been involved. Parts of six bodies had been found in the ruins, though this figure could only be estimated. Also found, scattered over a wide area by the explosion, were a number of plastic flight bags belonging to foreign airlines using Lod airport. Neither the police nor the military had issued any statement concerning the cause of the explosion.

He read it through and nodded. “I guessed it was something like that.”

“Something like what, Mr. Howell?”

“As you must know, Ghaled planned to plant these bombs of his in airline flight bags and fire them with electronic triggers by radio. He had the transmitter on board the
Amalia
in that music box. Well, I gave the Israelis one of those triggers to analyse and test. Obviously they succeeded in working out the frequencies he was using.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“Do you know anything about making bombs, Mr. Prescott? No, I don’t suppose so. I had to find out, too. The thing is this. You have the explosive, you have the detonator with a battery to fire it, and you have the electronic trigger that’s going to make it all work at the right time. But these things all have to be connected up, ‘armed’ is the word. Am I making sense to you?”

“Yes.”

“With some bombs, say a single bomb in a suitcase, you might have a little secret switch on the outside so that you could leave the final arming until the very last moment. But if you are making a hundred bombs and packing them in plastic flight bags you can’t have switches. Too complicated, and they would show. You have to arm the bombs beforehand, before you start planting them where they are to explode. You have to arm them where you assemble them, in other words. So you see what happened?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Well, as soon as the Israelis had worked out the radio code being used to operate the triggers they used it. Easy, really. All they had to do was order one of their military radio transmitters to send out a strong continuous signal on the trigger frequencies and keep sending twenty-four hours a day. Then, the moment the PAF started arming the bombs - boom! - up would go the lot. Even if the bombs hadn’t all been in one place it would still have worked, because the triggers were all exactly the same. Then, you would have had two or three smaller explosions instead of one big one.”

“You say you guessed that this would happen?”

“Much later, yes. Too late.” He suddenly became indignant and started wagging his finger at me. “If the Israelis had had the common decency to let me know, things might have been easier. I consider that their behaviour to me throughout has been absolutely appalling. Not one word have those ingrates uttered. Not a single word! For them I don’t exist. Silence!”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Howell. If you’re so worried about the Howell name in the Arab world I would have thought that the last thing you would want would be a public acknowledgment from Israel. It seems to me that they’re simply being tactful.”

That really incensed him.

“Tactful! Have you read those French and West German smears? ‘Eichmann in the Levant?’ - that was one of their captions. All right, they put a question mark after it, but how would you like that, Mr. Prescott? ‘Pro-Arab businessman made bombs for terrorists’. That was another. ‘Green Circle man plotted Tel Aviv massacre’. ‘Howell money behind terrorists’. One of them even made out that Ghaled was
my
lieutenant, that he was only a figure-head and that
I
am the PAF! And the Israelis say nothing,
nothing!
”

“But surely if you hope to re-establish your position with the Arabs ...”

“I have no such hope. My position there is hopeless. Israeli provocateur, spy, traitor, informer, assassin - that’s what they’ve decided. Even if they were allowed to hear the truth, none of them would believe it. I
can face facts, Mr. Prescott. My family has been doing business in the Levant for three quarters of a century. Facing facts is in the blood. We’re finished there now. I know that. Touzani’s right We’re going to have to form a new company without the Howell name showing, buy up the ships and reregister them. There’s no other way. The rest of our business will go for a song. That can’t be helped. It’s past and done with. We’ve cut our losses. But what about the future? What about Europe?”

“Europe, Mr. Howell?”

He flung out his arms in amazement at my inability to grasp the obvious. “Well, naturally we’re going into Europe. We must. We can’t have capital lying around idle. Bonds at seven percent? Ridiculous! No, Italy’s the place. We already have land in the
mezzo-giorno,
or rather Teresa has. The company is buying it. Our plans are all made. Do you know about the
mezzo-giorno,
Mr. Prescott? Very farsighted the Italian government is being. Tax incentives, low-interest development loans, favourable amortization agreements - it’s all there for the asking, including the labour. I already have five projects mapped out. Howell (Italia) S.A., that’s what we’ll be, right in the Common Market. But why should I have to go to the Italian government and negotiate the deals with all this smearing going on, with this cloud of suspicion and distrust hanging over me?”

“Mr. Howell,” I said weakly, “that’s why I’m sitting here. That’s what I’ve come about. So that we can talk about the cloud.”

Miss Malandra handed me another champagne cocktail. If she had decided that I needed it just then, she was absolutely right.

“What I would like from you, Mr. Howell,” I went on, “is a brief, simple recital of the facts of the case as you know them. Not a reply to the charges - most of them are fantastic anyway - not an argument, not a polemic, but a dispassionate statement of the facts.”

He beamed at me. “Mr. Prescott, I always try to think ahead. The statement is already prepared. Teresa has it there ready for you. I dictated it when I knew that you were coming to see me.”

Miss Malandra handed it to me solemnly. Her eyes meeting mine over it were quite expressionless. She really is extraordinarily beautiful.

The statement weighed at least two pounds. It was well over a hundred pages long. I opened it at random and read an estimate of the Agence Howell’s losses the previous year, item by item, on the Green Circle dry-battery operation. I shut it again.

“What I had in mind Mr. Howell, if I may repeat myself, is a brief, simple recital of the facts. On three or four pages, say.”

He pursed his lips. “Bare facts are not truth, Mr. Prescott. You want the truth, I take it. There it is.”

Hopeless.

“I see what you mean, Mr. Howell. I’d like to take this away, then, and read it if I may.”

“That was the idea. Keep it for reference, Mr. Prescott. I have other copies. But read it and then, if you have any questions, I will gladly answer them.”

“Thank you. But speaking of questions, Mr. Howell, there is one that I would very much like to ask you now, if I may.”

“Certainly.”

“Did you kill Salah Ghaled?”

He thought about it for a moment and then smiled. “Teresa says that sometimes I am not one man but a committee. Why don’t we ask her?” He turned his smile in her direction. “Teresa, my dear, have you ever noticed among the committee members a murderer?”

She returned the smile, but I thought that there was an appraising look in her eyes. “No, Michael No, I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a murderer.”

“There is your answer, Mr. Prescott.”

“Not quite, Mr. Howell. I didn’t ask if you murdered him. I asked if you killed him.”

“I am not a man of violence, Mr. Prescott.”

No wonder he had trouble with newsmen.

“That still doesn’t answer the question. Did you or did you not kill him, Mr. Howell?”

“Intentionally, you mean?”

“Yes.”

He blinked. “That’s a strange question to ask a man in his own house.”

“The question has been asked outside.”

“And answered in an Israeli court.”

“I think not, Mr. Howell In Israel three men were on trial for piracy. You were not even called upon to give evidence.”

“I made a deposition.”

“Relative to the piracy charges, yes. You were not cross-examined on the deposition and you didn’t answer any questions. No wonder there’s a cloud, Mr. Howell.”

“Let me explain how it was,” he said.

“Thank you.”

But he had taken off his glasses and was polishing them on the tail of his sports shirt. Only when he had replaced his glasses did he go on.

“When the Israelis didn’t intercept us off Caesarea but gave us that new course to steer instead, I guessed that they might have found a way of dealing with the bomb threat. As it turns out they had. That piece you showed me about the explosion confirms that. But
I
did not know, at least not for certain. How could I? Nor did I know for certain the effective range of that transmitter in the music box. Well, after Ghaled had shot Captain Touzani he went straight to the box. So I went after him with Touzani’s revolver in my hand. When I saw that he was setting the box up to transmit I fired at it to put it out of action. I fired at it three times.”

“But two of the bullets hit Ghaled in the chest.’’

“Yes.”

“How many bullets hit the box?”

“I can’t be sure. It was smashed anyway. The Israelis took it away. They may know.”

“Are you saying that the shots that killed Ghaled ricocheted off the box?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, Mr. Prescott.” He leaned forward, glass in hand, his eyes wide with candour. “I know nothing about such things. You see I had never before in my life fired a revolver. Indeed, I had never fired a gun of any kind.”

“The music box was a small target to begin on. Ghaled was a large one. Your feelings toward him at that moment can’t have been very friendly.”

“My feelings toward him were never at any time friendly. I detested him.”

“And he had just shot your captain.”

“And young Aziz was shooting at the first mate, who was shooting back at him. A lot of shooting went on in a very short space of time.”

“It just happened that the gun you were holding accidentally shot Ghaled?”

“It could only have been an accident, Mr. Prescott. I was aiming at the music box.”