The Levanter Part 21

'Miss Malandra's business in Rome is purely private. I gave her permission to go, I am afraid.'

'As a comrade she has no private business, and you have no right to give such permission. The request should have been reported and permission obtained from me. What is this business?'

'Her father's estate. She was left some land which is being sold, I think.'

'You mean she is rich?'

'There is some money. I don't know how much, comrade Salah.'

'Well, she shall tell us herself when she returns. Understand that, in future, permission to make journeys must always be obtained.'

'Yes, comrade Salah.'

'Now. You wanted a list. Here it is.'

I glanced at the paper he handed me. There were four names on it. One of them was Salah Ya.s.sin, the others I didn't know. I looked up.

'One question I must ask, comrade Salah,'

'What question? You have the list.'

The port authorities may ask to see papers. Will the papers these persons carry have the same names as those on this list?'

'Of course. We are not fools.'

'I only wish to be sure that all the arrangements I make will go smoothly, comrade Salah.'

'Quite right, comrade Michael. No, don't go. And don't stand there. Sit down.'

I obeyed and waited.

'Since you are so anxious that arrangements go smoothly there is another matter you can help us with.'

'Gladly, comrade Salah.'

For some reason my compliance annoyed him.

'Gladly, comrade Salah.' He mimicked my accent as he repeated it and added a servile whine. 'How easily the words come and what a lot of thoughts they hide. I can almost hear them, comrade Michael. I can almost hear them clicking away. What does he want now? What will it mean to me? Can I refuse? How much is it going to cost me? Click, click, click!'

I smiled amiably. 'Force of habit, I am afraid, comrade Salah. As you yourself said, I think like a businessman.' No harm now in reminding him of those lost backgammon games. 'And why not? That is what I am."

'And therefore superior to the stupid soldier, eh?'

Obviously he had needed no reminder from me about the lost games; they were still rankling. He probably had a slight hangover too.

'I know nothing of the soldier's art, comrade Salah.'

'No, you only see the surface of the plan. A s.h.i.+p, an electronic exploder, charges laid ash.o.r.e. The rest of the work you take for granted. The businessman thinks it all easy.'

'Far from it. I can imagine some of the difficulties.'

He snorted derisively so I went on.

'The explosive for the charges for instance. That had to be obtained and taken across the border into Israel. Not easy at all. Then, it had to be conveyed, disguised as something else no doubt, to a secret dump or dumps. Again not easy. The same is true of the detonators made here and the firing mechanisms. They, too, have had to reach their planned destinations, the right places at the right times. Then the charges have to be a.s.sembled, and, once a.s.sembled, planted without discovery in carefully chosen places. Even a businessman can see the complexities.'

'Very good.' He seemed slightly mollified but he still couldn't let it alone. 'You can imagine difficulties and complexities, but could you find solutions for them? If I ordered you to obtain a hundred airline flight bags, say twenty-five each of four of the airlines using the Tel Aviv airport at Lod, what would you say?'

'Is that what you wish me to do, comrade Salah?'

'If I did wish it what would you say? Bags from Pan-American, Swissair, KLM and Sabena, for example, twenty-five of each. Well?'

'I would say that it would be difficult. I would say that they would have to be stolen.'

"Then you would be wrong.' He was feeling better now. 'Quite wrong. It required careful planning and much thought, but they were all obtained quite legally.'

To contain the charges, I suppose.'

'Naturally. In all those crowded tourist coaches and hotels what could be more innocent than an airline flight bag waiting patiently for its owner to claim it?'

'I thought that all flight bags were searched at Lod.'

He sighed at my ignorance and simplicity. 'Flight bags are searched before Israeli-bound pa.s.sengers board the planes. Obviously ours will not be carried by arriving pa.s.sengers. They are already in the country, ready to be armed and distributed to their final destinations.'

'A most ingenious plan, comrade Salah.' It had, at least, the merit of simplicity. I wondered if Barlev had had the wit to deduce it from my account of the test. Probably not. I wasn't even certain that I had used the description 'flight bag'. I could have just said 'bag'. It had been a Pakistani bag anyway, and the Pakistani airline didn't fly to Israel. If they had used a Swissair or El Al bag I might have cottoned on but they hadn't; and in any case there was nothing I could do about it now. There was no way of getting the word to Barlev, even if it had been useful to do so. What could he have done at that stage? Banning all airline flight bags wouldn't have been a very practical proposition.

'Can you see any weaknesses?'

'None, comrade Salah, absolutely none.' If his organisation and planning were as good as he thought they were, it would be up to the Amalia Howell to inject the necessary weakness into the plan later.

'Unfortunately, not all our affairs go so well. Minor hitches occur. I was speaking to you last night about diesel engines. In that connection you can make yourself useful.'

For a moment I had an absurd vision of myself haggling with the Mercedes-Benz agency in Damascus over the price of a re-conditioned fuel pump. Then he went on.

'Do you know what a Rouad coaster is?'

'Yes, comrade Salah."

'Good. We have the use of one of these vessels. It is used to bring in supplies from the north.'

'I see.' And I thought I did see. Barlev had said that the PAF received supplies smuggled through Turkey.

'It has a diesel engine.'

'An auxiliary engine you mean?' The Rouad coaster is a schooner, a sailing vessel.

'An engine,' he said firmly. 'We cannot wait for fair winds in our work. It is with that engine that you will concern yourself.'

'This is the one with the defective fuel pump?'

'It was. We are not the fools you seem to think. Your brilliant suggestion that a new pump should be installed had been antic.i.p.ated. The new pump has already been fitted. However, the engine still does not work properly.'

'What kind of engine is this, what make?'

'Sulzer.'

'Where did the new pump come from?'

'Beirut.'

'Who fitted it?'

'A local mechanic. He said he knows these engines.'

'Local where? Latakia? Rouad?'

'Hareissoun. That is where the s.h.i.+p is berthed.'

Hareissoun is a scruffy little fis.h.i.+ng port just north of the Baniyas oil terminal. The chances of finding a competent diesel fitter there would be remote. I said so.

'What solution do you propose?'

'Let the vessel go to Latakia under sail. There is a man there who will do the job properly.'

'What man?'

'His name is Maghout. He is a foreman in the Chantier Naval Cayla by the South Basin.'

'Our s.h.i.+p must stay in Hareissoun. This man of yours must go to her there and do the work.'

'Unfortunately he is not my man, comrade Salah. I can't give him orders. I could make a request to Cayla.'

'The matter is now urgent. Would they act on your request?'

'You can't expect them to release Maghout at a moment's notice. He'd have to drop everything to go and do a job like that. It really would be simpler to take the vessel to him.'

That is out of the question. I have already told you so. If this Cayla will not oblige you, he will oblige us. I have my people in Latakia remember.'

'I remember.' They had once been going to plant bombs in Howell s.h.i.+ps.

'All this foreman Maghout has to do is diagnose the cause of the trouble and tell the man in Hareissoun what to do. Am I right?'

'I don't know, comrade Salah. The local man diagnosed a faulty fuel pump. He may have been wrong. The fault could be elsewhere. Other spares may be needed.'

'Exactly. It is a problem of organisation, a business matter. Go to Hareissoun tomorrow, comrade Michael. Consult with Hadaya, the s.h.i.+p's master. Consult with this local incompetent if necessary. Ask your questions, decide what is best to be done and coordinate the work. Report progress to me tomorrow night at this time. If you decide that you need this foreman from Latakia, let Issa know earlier so that Cayla may be approached at once. You understand?'

'I am not qualified to make judgements about engines, comrade Salah.'

'You are qualified to make use of those who can judge.' He smiled maliciously. 'Imagine that it is an Agence Howell s.h.i.+p in Hareissoun, one of those of which you have models. Imagine that this defective engine is costing your business money. The difficulties will very soon disappear, I think. Don't you?'

'I don't believe in magic, comrade Salah.'

'No, but you always do your best. That will be good enough.' He paused. 'Mr Hadaya, the master, will be warned to expect you tomorrow and told that you are acting for me in this matter. When you report to me, comrade Michael, I shall expect only good news.'

Early the following morning I drove to Hareissoun.

It wasn't an easy or pleasant drive, but I didn't mind. Strange as it may seem, I was, in spite of everything, rather looking forward to that day. In a sense I was making a sentimental journey.

The Ile de Rouad is a port south of Latakia which used to have a small s.h.i.+pyard. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, this yard began building 200-ton schooners and made itself something of a reputation in that part of the world. They were all-wood but very st.u.r.dy, fully-decked and Bermudian-rigged with two raked polemasts and a heavy bowsprit; useful little s.h.i.+ps. Although no new ones have been built for years, there are still quite a few of them coasting in the Levant.

When I was a small boy the Agence Howell owned three of these Rouad schooners and my father used to make a joke about them. He wasn't much given to making jokes about things we owned, so I have always remembered this one. It's a bit complicated, because you have to understand the background. All s.h.i.+ps have to have their bottoms cleaned from time to time. The ordinary small coaster is hauled out of the water on a skid-cradle so that the job can be done. At Rouad, however, they used to careen the schooners; that is, pull them over onto their sides in the water by the masts. Then, instead of sc.r.a.ping them clean, they would drench the exposed bottom side with kerosene, set light to it and burn off all the barnacles and muck. My father took me once to see them do it. That was where the joke came in. He said that the Agence Howell was 'burning its boats'. Not very funny, I admit, though it made me laugh at the time. The strange thing was that there were never any accidents; only the kerosene and the barnacles and the muck would burn. It must be harder to set a wooden hull alight than one would think.

So, I was looking forward to seeing a Rouad schooner again. On the outskirts of Hareissoun. I left the car and walked down to the harbour. I saw her masts first. She was moored by the stern at the mole. I went along to her.

I had forgotten how small these boats were. Seventy feet on the waterline isn't much and the high stem and ma.s.sive bowsprit made it seem even less. She must have been over forty years old. There were traces of paint on her topside but not many; she was a work boat and her paint-black, tarry stuff-was where it mattered, on the hull. She had no name of her own now. There was faded yellow lettering on her bow: Jeble, the name of her home port, and the Arabic numeral khansa: number five out of Jeble. Before being taken over by the PAF she had probably been sponge-fis.h.i.+ng. Now she was back to carrying cargo and lying low enough in the water to suggest that she had a full load aboard.

The old man I could see on deck was dressed like a fisherman and could have been the skipper, but when I called up to him he shouted to someone below.

The person who came on deck then was not at all the fisherman type. Except for the suit of blue dungarees that he was wearing he might have been the young headwaiter at the Semiramis Hotel, an impression reinforced by the fact that he was holding a clip-board in his hand like a menu.

'Mr Hadaya?' I asked.

'Mr Howell?'

'Yes.'

'Just a moment please.'

The old man shoved a rope ladder over the stern and I climbed up awkwardly. Hadaya helped me down on to the deck.

'A little inconvenient, I'm afraid,' he said, 'but we don't encourage visitors.'

'That's all right.'

He sounded like an Algerian. His dungarees were unb.u.t.toned to disclose a hairless chest and a gold chain with a gold ident.i.ty disk on it. A flashlight stuck out of his breast pocket. His smile was affable.

'May I say how surprised I am suddenly to be conversing with Mr Howell as a comrade.'

'Have we met before Mr Hadaya?'

'No, but once I very nearly worked for you. There was a vacancy for a second mate. Your regular man had broken a leg. In Bone that was. I applied but someone else got the berth.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It would only have been temporary.' He flashed the smile again. 'Like this one. Would you like to see the engine first or hear about it?'

'Hear about it, I think. What about this local mechanic? Is he still working?'

'No, I sent him away. He was well-recommended and he had a kit of tools. I let him remove the old pump and install the new one. With the old pump the engine had worked unevenly, but it had worked. With the new one it does not work at all. I think the timing is all wrong.'