Bride of a Bygone War (39 page)

“Stand aside and let me pass!” Hammouche demanded, his frustration mounting.

“You’re after the wrong man,” Pirelli insisted while continuing to position himself between the Lebanese and the terminal door. “The man who just went inside is not who you think he is.”

At that moment Hammouche stepped back, drew a Czech 75 pistol, and pointed it with both hands at Pirelli’s heart. “No, it is you who have the wrong man, I think!” Hammouche exclaimed.

Pirelli raised his hands and took a step back. “Calm down and lower the pistol,” he ordered.

But Victor Hammouche was determined not to let his quarry escape. He fired a warning shot over Pirelli’s head and stepped past him toward the terminal. “If you follow me I will shoot!” he warned as he left Pirelli behind.

By now convinced that Victor might indeed do him harm, Ed Pirelli retreated slowly toward the Renault, hands still held high and his eyes wide with fear.

Across the road and some fifty meters distant, a pair of Lebanese Internal Security Force troops heard the gunshot and tossed away their lit cigarettes. In a moment they spotted Victor Hammouche and set off toward him. When they had closed within ten meters they fired their M-16s in the air to gain his attention and ordered him to drop his weapon.

Seeing the two well-armed troops, Hammouche froze, and his face took on a panicked expression. He lowered the pistol and let it fall to the pavement.

Within moments, another half dozen ISF troops appeared as if from nowhere and marched Victor Hammouche off to a nearby sandbag bunker for questioning. An ISF officer and one troop remained behind to question Pirelli, who handed over his foreign ministry identity card and explained smoothly that the entire incident seemed to be an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. The ISF officer listened indulgently to Pirelli’s story for a few moments and permitted him to leave the airport with their apology for the unfortunate disturbance.

Pirelli pulled away in a dark mood, beset by black thoughts about what Lukash might do and say upon his return to Headquarters. As bad as Lukash’s career prospects looked, his own might not be much better once it all came out.

* * *

Conrad Prosser parked the station chief’s Audi sedan in the small section of the parking lot reserved for foreign diplomats. Not seeing Pirelli or the silver Renault, he set off at a brisk pace toward the departures terminal. Once inside, he paused to take in the entire scene at a glance, searching for familiar faces in the crowd as well as potential threats, and allowing his intuition to mark anything that might merit attention.

The departures terminal was packed with outbound passengers, family members, well-wishers, expediters, porters, and chauffeurs along with vast heaps of well-worn baggage. Along its perimeter walls, migrant workers from Egypt, the Sudan, and Yemen camped out, many for days at a time, awaiting their homeward flights. Failing to spot Lukash or Pirelli, Prosser waded through the mob toward the check-in counters for MEA’s Europe-bound flights.

He stopped first at the counter for the afternoon flight to London and interrupted a tall, lissome, thirty-something ticket agent who was busily sorting through bundles of tickets, cash, and credit-card receipts. The woman looked up briefly and, seeing that he was a foreigner and a reasonably attractive man close to her own age, put away her professional scowl and brought forth a serviceable smile.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” Prosser began, “but could you possibly do me a favor and confirm for me that check-in has closed for the two o’clock flight to London?”

The woman held up a document that Prosser took for the flight manifest. “
Oui, monsieur, c’est fermé
,” she responded curtly.

“I hate to trouble you further, miss, but I would be very grateful if I could ask you one more question,” he continued with as charming a smile as he could muster. “You see, a friend of mine, who happens to be an MEA employee, was planning to fly standby to London today, and I was hoping to arrive in time to see her off. Perhaps you might know her: Lorraine Ellis. She’s from Ireland. Anyway, I was delayed in traffic and I wondered if you might be able to tell me if my friend boarded the flight.”

At this, the ticket agent’s demeanor appeared to soften. “We had no standby passengers on today’s flight. It checked in full,” she replied. “Perhaps your friend rebooked to another destination.” The agent lowered her gaze as if to continue working, but then looked up again. “Or perhaps she will rebook for tomorrow’s flight. If so, you might find her yet,” she added with a hopeful smile.

Prosser thanked her warmly and moved down the line to the counter for the MEA flight to Rome. As he took his place in the first-class queue behind an elderly Italian couple and an elegantly suited Lebanese businessman, he heard footsteps approaching from behind. He turned and, to his surprise, found Muna Khalifé gazing up at him with an expression of mild reproach.

“You said you would ring me,” she said with a note of petulance. “I waited hours for your call.”

“I’m sorry. There was no opportunity—”

“Beirut is a modern city,” she interrupted. “Telephones can be found in every corner store.”

“I suppose so,” Prosser conceded. “My apologies for not responding. Anyway, you seem to have figured things out well enough without my help. May I ask what prompted you to come to the airport?”

“I received a call from my aunt Claudette, who advised me that the American embassy had booked a ticket for a passenger named William Conklin on today’s flight to Rome.”

“Your aunt is a resourceful woman,” Prosser answered, irritated that Claudette would divulge confidential travel information so readily.

“She also informed my uncle,” Muna broke in again. “I came because Uncle Victor’s heart is filled with such a vicious hatred for my husband that I feared for both men should they ever meet again. Can you help me?”

“How long have you been here?” Prosser questioned.

“Only a few minutes.”

“And you haven’t seen your husband here, either?”

She shook her head.

“Then let’s work together. First we should check with the agent to see if he’s boarded the flight to Rome, and then we can decide what to do about your uncle.”

Within a few minutes, the Italian couple and the Lebanese businessmen had checked in and were headed for passport control with their tickets. Upon reaching the head of the queue, Prosser handed the ticket agent his foreign ministry identification card and explained that he was from the American embassy and was responsible for assisting American citizens with emergency travel. He asked whether the American passenger William F. Conklin had checked in yet for the flight to Rome.

The agent, a plump Lebanese matron approaching fifty, listened attentively but hesitated before responding. “I would like to help you,” she replied sympathetically, “but, you see, we are forbidden to answer questions about passenger names.”

Prosser was considering which approach to try next when Muna stepped up to the counter beside him.

“I understand that you are not permitted to reveal passenger names, madame,” she began gently, “and I would not want to cause trouble for you or the airline. Still, perhaps there is a way for you to help us without breaking your rules. You see, the passenger is my husband. He is traveling to be at the bedside of his mother, who is gravely ill and not expected to live more than a day or two. I received a telephone call this afternoon from Bill’s father, who said that my mother-in-law is hanging on to life desperately in the hope of seeing her only son before she dies. I gave them my assurance that Bill would travel to Rome this afternoon and would be at his mother’s side in Philadelphia not later than tomorrow evening. Tell me, please—if not for my sake, then for the sake of a dying mother—is there any chance that my husband will arrive in Rome in time to catch his connecting flight to Philadelphia tomorrow morning?”

The ticket agent nodded sympathetically, and Prosser thought he detected a gleam in her dark eyes. “May God keep your promise for you, Mrs. Conklin,” she said. “Your husband left the counter not five minutes ago with his boarding pass. You may still find him at passport control if you go quickly.”

Muna offered the ticket agent her most heartfelt thanks and set off at once across the crowded hall toward passport control with Prosser in tow.

“Nice bit of work,” Prosser congratulated Muna when they had traveled several paces from the ticket counter. “But how did you know the story about his ailing mother?”

“My aunt,” she replied.

“Ah, of course,” Prosser reflected.

“Now, about my uncle Victor…” Muna began.

“I’ll watch for him outside,” Prosser volunteered. “You go on ahead to passport control and come find me when you’re done.”

She nodded her assent, and they went off in opposite directions.

By the time Muna arrived at the passport control section, the queue was nearly ten meters long. Toward the front, a few places ahead of the elderly Italian couple she had seen at the ticket counter, stood her husband. Quietly she fell in line beside him, took his left arm gently in hers, and squeezed his hand three times in greeting.

Walter Lukash turned to look at her. Surprise turned to relief and then to delight as he saw her familiar smile. He dropped his duffel, kissed her on both cheeks, and drew her into an embrace. “This is not at all the sort of meeting I intended for us,” he admitted, painfully aware of how such a departure must appear to her. “Honestly, Muna, I intended to stay longer.”

“I know, Bill,” she said. “I know what happened to you and Elie last night. Elie’s mother called me.”

“I’m so very sorry, Muna,” he continued, all at once feeling the full measure of his long-repressed remorse for having abandoned her and their unborn child five years before. And now he was leaving again, deserting her a second time—taking from her the one remaining man in her life who adored her and longed to offer her a fresh start in life.

“I did not come here to stop you,” she assured him. “I know it is no longer safe for you in Lebanon.”

“Yeah, now both sides are after me, and my own government isn’t so happy with me either. Another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

“It will pass, William, and better things will come of it. I did not come to reproach you. I came only to stop my uncle from harming you.”

Lukash looked at her without comprehending.

“My aunt Claudette knew of your travel plans and informed Uncle Victor that you would come here. His hatred for you has no limits. I came only to stop him from doing you harm under the pretext of upholding our family’s honor.”

“My debt to you is more than I can ever repay, Muna,” Lukash confessed. “How can I possibly begin to satisfy it?” he asked, approaching despair. “I would do anything. If you believe we can make a new start together, I am ready to try. We could live in the U.S., Europe, the Gulf, anywhere you like.”

Muna gave him an affectionate smile but shook her head. “Nothing is expected, nothing is demanded of you, Bill. What we started five years ago is finished. You and I are free. Go to America and begin your new life with my blessing. I, too, will leave Lebanon in the near future. I have decided to accept an offer of work from a former client in Dubai and will go soon. So, you see, my life moves on, also.”

As Muna spoke, Lukash looked over her shoulder and noticed a pair of muscular Arabs appearing to stare at him from a distance. Their closely cropped hair, military bearing, and loose-fitting batik shirts raised his suspicion that they might be from Syrian intelligence. Suddenly he felt a fresh sense of urgency to be on the other side of passport control.

But no sooner did the thought enter his head than the queue advanced, leaving Lukash face-to-face at last with the passport control officer. The young Lebanese took Lukash’s blue tourist passport and leafed through it, looking first at his name, date, place of birth, and photo, and then at the pages containing entry and exit stamps. He stopped at the page containing the only Lebanese entry stamp, dated January 1975, and no corresponding exit stamp.

“You are William Conklin?” the officer asked.

“Yes,” Lukash replied.

“You come here first time in 1975?”

“That is correct,” Lukash replied.

“You stay here five years, no leaving?”

“Yes,” Lukash lied.

“You are brave man, I think, no? You stay here through all our Events—five years shooting and bombing! Very brave man,” the officer affirmed. “May Allah preserve and keep you, my friend. This is your home—you are Lebanese!” The officer returned his passport with a respectful nod and waved the next passenger forward.

Lukash heaved a sigh of relief as he recovered his passport and stepped through the turnstile into the security zone. The moment he reached the other side, however, he remembered Muna and wheeled around to wish her farewell. But it was too late. He could not even catch a glimpse of her slender figure retreating through the crowd.

* * *

Lukash dreaded boarding commercial passenger flights in the Middle East. Though all seats were assigned, the boarding of most any flight at a Middle Eastern airport turned into a brawl, with as much jostling and elbow-throwing as a rugby scrum. Since the first-class section of today’s flight to Rome had checked in full, Lukash was relegated to coach, despite having paid a first-class fare. But rather than jeopardize his seat by complaining, he had reluctantly agreed to apply for a refund for the extra fare upon arriving at his destination.