Legends (13 page)

She tugged her hand free. “I am not an Arab,” she said fiercely. “I am a Lebanese Alawite.”

“And what the hell is an Alawite?”

“We’re a sliver of a people lost in a sea of Arab Muslims who consider us heretics and detest us. We had a state once it was under the French Mandate when the Ottoman Empire broke up after the First World War. The Alawite state was called Latakia; my grandfather was a minister in the government. In 1937, against our will, Latakia became part of Syria. My grandfather was assassinated for opposing this. These days most of the Lebanese Alawites side with the Christians against the Muslims in the civil war. Our goal is to crush the Muslims and this includes Hezbollah in the hope of returning Lebanon to Christian rule. Our dream is to reestablish an Alawite state, a new Latakia on the Levantine shore washed by the Mediterranean.”

“I wish you good luck,” Dante said with elaborate formality. “What is it that Alawites believe that Muslims don’t?”

“Now is not the moment for such discussions “

“You are a professional. This is a matter of tradecraft. I might be asked what we talked about after we had sex.”

Djamillah almost smiled. “It is our belief that the Milky Way is made up of the deified souls of Alawites who rose to heaven.”

“For the rest of my life I shall think of you when I look at the Milky Way,” he announced.

She unlocked the door and stepped aside. “In another incarnation,” she remarked solemnly, “it would have been agreeable to make love with you.”

“Maybe when all this is over “

This time Djamillah did smile. “All this,” she said bitterly, “will never be over.”

Two days after his return from Beirut, Dante was squatting in the dirt at the bottom of the quarry, demonstrating to his nineteen apprentice bombers how to fill the body cavity of a dead dog with PETN, when there was a commotion at the gate of the perimeter fence above them. Several of Dr. al-Karim’s personal guards were tugging aside the razor wire. Horns blaring, two cars and a pick-up truck roared into the camp and pulled up in a swirl of dust. As the dust settled, gunmen wearing the distinctive checkered Hezbollah kaffiyah could be seen dragging someone wearing loose fitting striped pajamas and a hood over the head from the second car. Women from the village emerged from their homes and began filling the air with ululations of triumph. Lifting the hem of his burnoose, Abdullah trotted up the path until he was within earshot of the gunmen who had stayed behind to guard the vehicles and called out to them. One shouted an answer to his question and fired a clip from his Kalashnikov into the air. Abdullah turned back toward the quarry and, cupping his hands around his mouth, yelled, “God is great. They have captured an Isra’ili spy.”

The apprentice bombers started talking excitedly among themselves. Dante, suddenly edgy, barked at them to pay attention to the demonstration. The students reacted to the tone of his voice even before Abdullah, scampering back down to the group, translated the words. Dante, wearing a surgical glove on his right hand, finished pulling the intestines through the slit he’d made in the dog’s stomach and began stuffing the packets of PETN wrapped in burlap, and then the radio-controlled detonator, into the cavity. Using a thick needle and a length of butchers cord, he sewed up the slit with large stitches. Standing, peeling off the surgical glove, he addressed Abdullah. “Tell them to position the dead dog so that its stomach is facing away from the enemy when he approaches.” One of the students raised his hand. Abdullah translated the question. “He says you, is a dead dog more suitable than the papier-mache rocks we learned to plant at the side of the road?”

“Tell him the Greeks couldn’t have used the Trojan horse trick twice,” Dante said. “Tell him the same goes for the Israelis. They’ll catch on very quickly to the fake rocks stuffed with explosives. So you need to invent other ruses. A dead dog lying in the middle of a road is so common that the Israeli jeeps will keep going. At which point “

Dr. al-Karim appeared above them on the rim of the quarry. He raised a bullhorn and called, “Mr. Pippen, I would like a word with you, if you please.”

Dante saluted lazily and started to climb the path. Halfway to the top he looked up and noticed that several of the Hezbollah gunmen had joined the imam. All of them had pulled their checkered kaffiyahs over their faces so that only their eyes were visible. Out of breath, Dante reached the top and approached Dr. al-Karim. Two of the gunmen slammed bullets into the chambers of their Kalashnikovs. The metallic sound caused Dante to stop in his tracks. He forced a light laugh through his lips. “Your warriors seem jittery today,” he remarked. “What’s going on?”

Without answering, Dr. al-Karim turned and stalked off toward his house. Two of the gunmen prodded Dante with the barrels of their rifles. He bristled. “You want me to follow him, all you have to do is ask. Politely.”

He trailed after the imam to the large house next to the mosque. When he reached the back of the house he found the door to Dr. al-Karim’s office ajar. One of the gunmen behind him gestured with his Kalashnikov. Shrugging, Dante kicked open the door with his toe and went in.

Time seemed to have stopped inside the room. Dr. al-Karim, his corpulent body frozen in the seat behind the desk, his eyes hardly blinking, stared at the Israeli spy, bound with strips of white masking tape to a straight-backed kitchen chair set in the middle of the floor. Muffled groans came from the prisoner’s mouth under the black hood. Dante noticed the thinness of the prisoner’s wrists and ankles and jumped to the conclusion that Hezbollah had arrested a teenage boy. The imam motioned for Dante to sit in the other straight-backed chair. Four of the gunmen took up positions along the wall behind him.

“Where did we leave off our last conversation?” Dr. al-Karim inquired stiffly.

“We were talking about the Greeks and Aristotle. You were condemning them for teaching that reason gives access to truth, as opposed to faith.”

“Precisely. We know what we know because of our faith in Allah and His Prophet, who guide us to the right way, the only way. It may be seen as a transgression when a lapsed Catholic like you does not accept this; normally a believer such as myself should attempt to convert you or, failing at that, expel you.” He glanced at the spy. “When one of our own turns his or her back on faith, it is a mortal sin, punishable by execution.”

The imam muttered an order in Arabic. One of the gunmen came up behind the Israeli spy and tugged off the hood. Dante caught his breath. Patches of Djamillah’s long dark hair were pasted to her scalp with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen shut, her lips were badly cut, several front teeth were missing. A large hoop earring dangled from one lobe; the skin on the other lobe hung loose, the result of having had the earring wrenched off without first undoing it.

“You do not deny that you know her?” Dr. al-Karim said.

Dante had trouble speaking. “I know her in the carnal sense of the word,” he finally replied, his voice barely audible. “Her name is Djamillah. She is the prostitute who worked the licensed tabernacle I visited in Beirut. She carted me off upstairs to what the Irish call the intensive care unit.”

“Djamillah is a pseudonym. She claims she cannot remember her real name but she is obviously lying; she is protecting members of her family against retribution. She was passing herself off as a prostitute in order to spy for the Jews. Aerial photographs of several training camps, ours included, were discovered hidden in the room she used. Some of the photographs had notations, in English, describing the camp layout. We suspect you may have provided her with these notations when you visited the bar in Beirut.”

A rasp of a whisper came from Djamillah’s cracked lips; she spoke slowly, struggling to pronounce certain consonants with her mouth open. “I told the ones… ones who questioned me… the Irishman was a client.”

“Who, then, made the notations on the photographs?” demanded the imam.

“The notations… were on the photographs when they… they were delivered to me.”

Dr. al-Karim nodded once. The gunman behind Djamillah slipped two fingers through the hoop of the remaining earring and pulled down hard on it. It severed the skin on the lobe and came free in a spurt of blood. Djamillah opened her mouth to scream, but passed out before the sound could emerge from her throat.

A pitcher of water was flung in her face. Her eyes twitched open and the muted scream lodged at the back of her throat like a fish bone exploded with savage force. Dante winced and turned away. Dr. al-Karim came around the desk and planted himself in front of Dante. “Who are you?” he demanded in a low growl.

“Pippen, Dante. Freelance, free-minded, free-spirited explosive expert of Irish origin, at your beck and call as long as you keep depositing checks in my offshore account.”

The imam circled the prisoner, looking at her but talking to Dante. “I would like to believe you are who you say, for your sake; for mine, as well.”

“Come on, now she must have seen dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in the room over the bar. Any one of them could have been her contact.”

“Were you intimate with her?” Yes.

“Does she have any distinguishing marks on her body?”

Dante described the small scar on the inside of her thigh, the trimmed pubic hair, the vaccination scar on her left arm, or was it her right he wasn’t sure. Ah, yes, there was also the faded tattoo of a night moth under her right breast. Dr. al-Karim turned to the prisoner and,

gripping the loose fitting shirt at the buttons, ripped it away from her body. He gazed at the faded tattoo under her breast, then flung the shirt closed, tucking the loose fabric under the strips of white masking tape.

“How much did you pay her?” the imam asked.

Dante thought a moment. “Fifty dollars.”

“What denomination bills?”

“Two twenties and a ten.”

“You handed her two twenties and a ten?”

Dante shook his head. “I put the bills on the desk. I weighed them down with a shell casing.”

“What was she wearing when you had sex with her?”

“Her shoes.”

“What were you wearing?”

“A condom.”

Dr. al-Karim watched Dane closely. “She, too, said you were wearing a condom on your circumcised penis. I assume you can explain how an Irish Catholic from Castletownbere came to be circumcised?”

Dante rolled his eyes in frustration. “Of course I can explain it. In a moment of intense stupidity, I let myself be talked into it by my first American girlfriend, who more or less made it a condition of sleeping with me. She’d somehow convinced herself she stood less chance of my passing on a venereal disease if I had my foreskin lopped off.”

“What was the girl’s name?”

“For Christ’s sake, you don’t really expect me to come up with the name of every girl I slept with.”

“Where was the operation performed?”

“Ah, that I remember. On the fourth floor of an ether-reeking clinic.” Dante supplied the clinic’s name and address.

The imam returned to the chair behind the desk. “Consider yourself under house arrest,” he informed Dante. “Clearly you are an expert in explosives. But I fear you may be working for someone other than Hezbollah. We will reexamine your curriculum vitae with a fine-toothed comb. We will send someone to Castletownbere on the Beara Peninsula, we will start with Mary McCullagh and the restaurant called The Bank and follow the trail from there. We will check to see if the New York clinic has a record of your circumcision.

If you have lied about a single detail …” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence.

As Dante rose to his feet a deep groan escaped from the prisoner. Everyone in the room turned to look at her. Her mouth agape, Djamillah hyperventilated and angled her head and, gasping for breath, fixed her one open eye on Dante. With some effort she managed to spit out, “You are … one lousy lover, Irish.” And then she smiled a crooked smile and gagged on the mordant laughter seeping from the back of her throat.

Back in his low room, with armed guards posted at the door, Dante sprawled on his cot and stared at the white washed ceiling, wondering if the stains of the crushed flies might convey bulletins from the front. And he recreated her voice in his skull; he could make out the words, forced with great effort through her bruised lips. You are one lousy lover, Irish.

At sunset Abdullah turned up at the door of his room. His manner had changed; it was written in his eyes that he no longer thought of Dante as a comrade in arms. “You are instructed to come with me,” he announced, and without waiting he turned and quit the room. Two gunmen with their kaffiyahs masking their faces and only their eyes visible fell in behind Dante as he followed Abdullah through the village to the Hezbollah camp’s perimeter fence. The gate in the fence had been dragged back and Abdullah signaled for Dante to follow him through it to the rim of the quarry. The nineteen apprentice bombers, along with the permanent staff and the Hezbollah gunmen who had brought the prisoner from Beirut were lined up along the rim. Across the quarry, her back to the setting sun, Djamillah was being bound to a stake by two of the gunmen. One of them hung a small khaki army satchel around her neck, then reached inside it to manipulate the wires and complete the electrical circuit. Djamillah’s knees buckled under her and she collapsed into the ropes holding her to the stake. As the gunmen left her side, the satchel dangling from its straps against her chest, Dr. al-Karim materialized alongside Dante. He was holding a small remote transmitter, which he offered to the Irishman. “Would you like the honor?”

Dante looked down at the transmitter. “She is not my enemy,” he said.

High above the Bekaa rift two Israeli jets, flying soundlessly, their contrails catching the last smudges of sunlight, appeared from the north. When they were directly over the Hezbollah camp they banked ninety degrees to the west. As they headed toward the sea the sound of their engines engulfed the camp.

The imam gazed across the quarry at the woman tied to the stake. Then, in an abrupt gesture, he raised the transmitter and rotated the switch until there was a hollow click and depressed it. For an instant that stretched into an eternity nothing happened. Dr. al-Karim, his brows knitted, was raising the transmitter to activate it again when, across the quarry, a dull blast stirred up a fume of mustard-colored smoke. When it dissipated, the woman had vanished and only the stump of the stake remained. Around the rim of the quarry the fedayeen began to wander off into the darkness that settled quickly over the Bekaa at this time of year. The imam produced the string of jade worry beads and began working them through his pudgy fingers. The gesture struck Dante as therapeutic. He noticed that Dr. al-Karim’s fingers and lips were trembling. Could it be that this was the first time he’d killed someone with his own hand?