The Levanter Part 9

'I see you don't understand. Surely you cannot suppose that, after your discoveries here tonight, and our frank conversation, I can allow you to leave without, shall we say, making sure of you?'

I shrugged. 'You have already made it abundantly clear that I have to be discreet, and why.'

'I am not talking of discretion now, but of loyalty and good faith.'

'I'm afraid I still don't understand.'

'It must be obvious. You are a foreigner here, but in a privileged position. You are free to come and go more or less as you please. That is a situation which I may find it useful to exploit in the future, but in the meantime it permits you to have second thoughts. If, say, you were to decide that instead of meeting me tomorrow you would prefer to be in Beirut or Alexandria or Rome and withhold your co-operation, I would be forced to take steps that I would regret.'

He paused to make sure that I understood the threat. 'As I say,' he continued, 'I would regret the necessity for such action. It would be expensive because we might have to go a long way to find you. Besides, we prefer to have you alive and working with us. You must see that there is only one solution to the problem. You and this woman here must become loyal and committed members of the Palestinian Action Force and subject to its discipline.'

'But we are foreigners,' I protested idiotically, 'we could not . . . we. . . .' I began to stammer.

He silenced me with a gesture. 'Other foreigners have been granted members.h.i.+p, foreigners of both s.e.xes.' He paused and then added coldly: They consider themselves honoured to serve - honoured.'

I mumbled something about it all being so unexpected, which he ignored.

'You are not a Jew. Neither, I think, is Miss Malandra. There is therefore no obstacle. You will take the oath of loyalty in the Christian form of course. Have you your pa.s.sports with you?'

I had mine in my pocket. All Teresa had was her ident.i.ty card. He took both pa.s.sport and card.

'These will be photocopied for our files and returned to you tomorrow,' he said. 'At that time you will also complete some paper formalities. However, the oath of loyalty can be administered now. I don't suppose you keep a Bible in your office?'

'No.'

'Well, it is not absolutely necessary. You first, I think. Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I, Michael Howell, a Christian, swear by the Holy Trinity and on the sacred book of Antioch, that of my own free will, with a whole heart and without inner reservation, I pledge my life and property to the service of the Palestinian Action Force, and swear. . . .'

He was speaking in Arabic and in that language the words sounded odd. The reference to Antioch made it a Maronite oath, and as I was technically Greek Orthodox I suppose it didn't really count for me; but my mother, who is a practising Christian, would have had a fit. I don't remember the exact wording of the rest of the rigmarole, but the substance of it was that I promised total and unquestioning obedience in perpetuity and recognised that the least faltering was punishable by death. The penalty for betrayal of the cause, described in rather sickening detail, was more complicated but had the same end result.

'In the presence of these fraternal witnesses,' Ghaled demanded finally, 'you swear this?'

The fraternal gunmen looked at me expectantly.

'I swear it.'

'You are accepted.'

He went through the whole thing again with Teresa. I thought that as a Catholic she might boggle at some of it, but she went through it briskly and impersonally, rather as if she were reading back from shorthand a letter that I had just dictated.

'I swear it,' By then she sounded slightly bored.

'You are accepted.' Ghaled got rid of the gunmen with another snap of the fingers, and gave us a long look.

'Congratulations, comrades,' he said. 'It is proper now for you to address me, respectfully, as comrade Salah. Will you remember that?'

'Yes, comrade Salah.'

He nodded graciously. 'Until tomorrow night then.'

We were dismissed.

It was not until we were in the car again that I realised how tired I was. My back was still painful. It had been a long day. I could try hopelessly to think of ways out of the predicament we were in, but I did not want to talk about it.

Unfortunately, Teresa did.

'What are we going to do?' she asked. There was more excitement than anxiety in her voice.

'I haven't the slightest idea. At the moment all I want to do is go home and sleep.'

She drove in silence for half a minute.

'Shall you speak to Colonel s.h.i.+kla?'

'No.'

I did not elaborate. Colonel s.h.i.+kla was head of the Internal Security Service and an unpleasant man with a revolting reputation. I had met him socially, and in an effort to conceal my fear of him I had been too affable. He must have been accustomed to that sort of reaction for it had clearly amused him. The last thing I wanted was to meet him in his official capacity, even if it had made sense to do so.

But Teresa persisted. 'You could talk to him privately, unofficially.'

'Unofficially about Ghaled? Don't be silly. That sort of thing is s.h.i.+kla's business.'

'Officially then. If someone else were to find out, we'd be covered if you had told Colonel s.h.i.+kla.'

'We'd more likely end up in one of his interrogation rooms.'

'Why, if we'd told him the truth, everything?'

She was exasperating. 'Because,' I said loudly, 'that sort of man never believes that you've told him everything, even when you have. And let's a.s.sume that for once he does believe. What then? The ISS has to do something about Ghaled. They may not want to. I may have told them something that they would rather not have known officially. But let's also a.s.sume that they decide, reluctantly or not, that they have to act on our information. Where does that leave us?'

'We've covered ourselves.'

'With what? Transparent plastic? You don't think they're going to move against Ghaled without tipping him off first, do you? He'll have plenty of time to put our names at the top of the next purification list. You call that covering ourselves? Talk sense, comrade.'

She actually giggled. 'It's a funny feeling, isn't it, being a member of the PAF?'

'Funny?'

'Creepy, then. I wonder who those other foreign members are, what they're like. He said they were of both s.e.xes.'

'One of the women is almost certainly Melanie Hammad.'

'She had an article in one of the French fas.h.i.+on magazines this month-about kaftans. Nothing terrible seems to have happened to her.'

'She isn't in Syria making explosives.'

'It's Issa who is making them, not us.'

'But in our works.' I suddenly lost all patience. 'My G.o.d, woman! Don't you realise how serious this is, how dangerous?'

'Of course I do, Michael, but it's no use getting upset. You're tired now, but tomorrow you'll think of a way of dealing with the situation. You always do.'

I wasn't flattered by her confidence; I knew that it was misplaced. She thought that because I was usually able to solve business problems, outwit compet.i.tors, get round difficulties, bargain shrewdly and cope ,with men like Dr Hawa, I could handle Ghaled and the situation he had created. What she did not understand was that business skills are not always transferable, that when the commodity is violence and the man you are dealing with is an animal, they don't work.

I have not often been frightened. As a child I used to have nightmares and wake up screaming; but of the nightmares from which there is no escape through waking up I have had little experience. There were some bad moments, of course, during the Cyprus troubles of the 'fifties; but most of them were shared with the rest of the community and the dangers, though real enough, usually went away as suddenly and unpredictably as they had arrived. Ghaled, however, was not going to go away. For over twenty years he had dealt in death and violence, and would, presumably, go on doing so until he himself died violently.

Meanwhile, he frightened me. I admit it. He would always frighten me. I knew even then that the only way for me of 'dealing' with Ghaled would be to kill him. I didn't think, though, that I was going to get a chance to do so; nor did I believe that, given the chance, businessman Howell would ever consider taking it. I am not a man of violence.

A few hours sleep helped. When I woke up my back was sore but no longer very painful. I was able to review the position more or less calmly.

Ghaled had said that he had plans for me and spoken of exploiting my freedom to come and go as I pleased, which suggested that he meant to use me as a courier or go-between. But he had also talked about utilising my 'knowledge and skills and resources'. Until I knew what that meant there was no point in trying to make plans of my own.

I could, however, survey my defences, such as they were, and take a few obvious precautions.

I had to recognise that a time might come when I would have what Ghaled had described euphemistically as 'second thoughts.' In other words I might one day feel that, murder squads or no murder squads, I had to run for it. To do this I would need a pa.s.sport, plenty of ready cash, a packed bag and a place to go to ground.

The cash presented no problem and neither did the place to go to ground, though I would have to be desperate to use it. The doubtful quant.i.ty was the pa.s.sport. If Ghaled could take my pa.s.sport from me once 'to make sure of me, he was perfectly capable of doing so again. Clearly, Teresa and I would both have to have second pa.s.sports to put in our packed bags. Western consular officials in the Middle East are generally helpful about providing second pa.s.sports for business people who need them; those going to Israel, for example. An Israeli visa stamp invalidates a pa.s.sport in the Arab countries, and although the Israelis are very good about not stamping if asked not to do so, travellers sometimes forget to ask until it's too late.

I told Teresa to see about getting a second pa.s.sport from the Italian consul. Getting mine would be more complicated. Although Cyprus has diplomatic relations with Syria there was no Cypriot consul in Damascus at that time; so I telephoned our Famagusta office and instructed them to take the necessary action.

That done I ran a security check. What Ghaled had done at the battery works he could also have done at the tile factory and the hardware, furniture and electronic a.s.sembly plants. I could unknowingly be playing host to other PAF cells. If so, I wanted to know the worst. I gave Teresa the job of checking the purchase records for unusual items. I tackled the personnel records myself.

First, I got out Ghaled's employment file to see who had recommended him to us under the name of Ya.s.sin. The recommendation, I found, had come attached to the usual Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare docket and was signed by a staff captain in the office of the Internal Security Service.

So much for Teresa's bright idea about 'covering' ourselves with Colonel s.h.i.+kla! The Internal Security Service not only knew about Ghaled's activities but was also giving him a.s.sistance and protection.

Next I went through the files on some of the other men we employed to see if this same ISS captain had recommended anyone else. I didn't bother much with those actually engaged in production, bench workers and craftsmen; there were in any case too many of them for a thorough check. Instead, I concentrated on the night staffs and employees with keys in their charge.

I found two: one a maintenance man, the other a storekeeper. Both had been recommended by the ISS captain. Both worked in the hardware factory. They had been taken on at about the same time as Ghaled.

My first impulse was to get on to the works manager and tell him to fire them, but Teresa quite rightly objected. She must have slept better than I had.

'What reason will you give?"

'I'll find a reason.'

'If they really are Ghaled's men he will make you take them back, and then you will look foolish.'

'And your way I only feel foolish. All right. But I mean to know what they're up to. Has there been much theft of materials there?'

'No, but there is one unusual purchase item. An order came through from hardware for a set of screw taps and dies of a type that doesn't exist.'

'How do you know?'

'The tool suppliers wrote a letter, copy to us, that taps and dies for cutting the threads in question were not stocked by them, and, as far as they knew, not made. They suggested politely that there may have been a clerical error in the order.'

She showed it to me. I could see at once why the suppliers had thought that a mistake had been made. A machine shop apprentice in his first year would have known what was wrong with that order. I ran over in my mind the various items of hardware we manufactured and tried to think of a process or operation to which this attempted purchase of taps and dies might, however crazily, be linked. I could think of none.

The order had been signed by the works office chief clerk, so I telephoned him. He could not remember that particular order offhand but would consult his files and call me back. It was late afternoon before he did so, and he had nothing helpful to tell me. The order for tools had been one of a batch of orders presented for his signature by his a.s.sistant. No, the a.s.sistant did not remember who had put in the requisition; he was consulting his files. Meanwhile, the chief clerk informed me solemnly there was a note on the order saying that the suppliers were temporarily out of stock. I told him that they would be permanently out of stock and hung up. It was hopeless. I had to console myself with the thought that, if any hanky-panky was being attempted at the hardware factory, it was unlikely to succeed. Issa had at least known enough to order correctly the materials he needed. His counterpart at the hardware factory was obviously incompetent.

The other defensive measure I took began with a call to Dr Hawa's Chef de Bureau.

After some preliminary chit chat I referred to the report on the Italian car-battery project which I had delivered to Hawa the previous day, and asked whether the Minister had had tune to read it.

'It is on his desk, Mr Howell, but he has not yet completely studied it, I think. There have been distractions, a finance committee meeting.'

'Naturally,' I said, 'I would not expect the Ministry to have already reached a decision. I ask only because I find that I omitted to include with the report a supplementary memorandum concerning the possible location of the new plant. It does not in any way change the main conclusions of the report, but contains additional information and suggestions which the Minister may find useful. If I were to send you copies of the memorandum today, could it be attached to the main report which the Minister is studying?'

He made difficulties at first so as to give his eventual consent the appearance of a big favour, but that was normal. I promised that he should have the memorandum within the hour.

I dictated it to Teresa in ten minutes. At the end she gave me a worried look.

'Is this wise, Michael?'

'It gives us a card to play.'

'Ghaled won't like it.'

'I don't suppose he will-if I show it to him. I may not, but I want to have it up my sleeve, just in case it could be useful. Date it three days ago and show it as having been written in Milan. Make an extra copy with an Arabic translation.'

After the memorandum had gone off I tried for a time to concentrate on real work. Our agent in Athens was bidding on an important tile contract, and, faced by penalty clauses, was asking urgently for firm guarantees from us on the delivery dates. I could not afford to be careless or casual in reply to him; yet I found myself being both. It was Teresa who suggested finally, and to my relief, that I delayed replying for twenty-four hours and then cable him to make up for lost time.

That I should have been more concerned at that moment with my involvement in the PAF than with my obligations to the Agence Howell, its shareholders and its faithful employees was no doubt most regrettable. The responsible, seasoned man of affairs should be able to put first things first and keep a cool head. Obviously, then, I must be irresponsible and unseasoned. So be it. I am not much interested in the devil I know; but the devil I don't know gives me a pain in the neck. I knew what my obligations were to the business; what the PAF wanted from me I still had to find out.

We had martinis, as usual, but no wine or brandy. For one thing, I didn't want us to go to the meeting breathing evidence of what might be interpreted as an attempt to fortify ourselves; nor did 1 want to have to excuse myself to go to the lavatory while I was there. I don't know why I bothered. Probably, at that stage of the game, I was still, instinctively, thinking like a businessman in terms of bargaining sessions at which small psychological gains and losses counted. The idea that I was a member of the PAF pledged to do as I was told without argument took some getting used to.

It was a beautiful night, warm and still. The air in the courtyard was heavy with the scent of plants and there were bats flying. Suliman, the gardener, opened the gates for us. I told him that we might be late and not to wait up. He thought we were going to a party and wished us a happy evening.

We reached the battery works a little before nine and left the car outside as we had done the night before. This time the postern was unlocked, but as soon as we were inside the two gunmen came out of the darkness by the loading bay and shone a light on us. We stopped.

'Greetings, comrades.' It was the man with the broken teeth who had hit me in the back.

'Greetings,' I said.

He came forward slowly and then suddenly thrust forward the flashlight in his hand. I thought he was trying to jab it hi my face and started back.

He tutted reproachfully. 'This light belongs to you, comrade. You left it behind last night. The gla.s.s is broken, but it still works.'

'Thank you, but I have another.' I switched on the flashlight in my hand. 'You see?'

'You do not want this one?' He sounded hopeful.

'Not if it is of use to you, comrade.' I decided that it was time to start winning friends. 'But, as you say, the gla.s.s is broken. Why not take this light, which is unbroken, and I will use the broken one. Tomorrow I can get a new gla.s.s.'

'Thanks, comrade, many thanks.' We exchanged the flashlights. 'My name is Ahmad,' he said. His breath stank.

'And mine is Michael.'

'This is comrade Musa,' he pointed to his companion. 'He cannot speak because he has no voice box.'