The Beirut airport was at Khalde, on the coast seven miles south of the city. The terminal was a long white two-story building with louvered ground-floor windows and a modernistic but vaguely Arab-looking lattice over the broader windows on the upper floor. After presenting the entry visa he’d been given, and getting his passport stamped on one of the artfully few remaining blank pages, Hale shambled aimlessly out into the linoleum-floored lobby, blinking up at the painted airplane models hanging on wires from the high ceiling. He could smell his own stale sweat, and even though his shoes were too big for him to lift his feet comfortably, he walked outside to the car park; but the pine-scented afternoon breeze was chilly, and he soon pushed his way back in through the glass doors.
This was Lebanon, and the loudspeakers broadcast arrivals and departures in English and Arabic and French; and a pair of Maronite Catholic nuns who stepped past him nodded and said Bon jour instead of Sabah al khair. Hale echoed their greeting-guiltily, for he was a lapsed Catholic and had spent time the previous day talking with a creature whose name was Legion.
A big dark-bearded man by the auto-rentals desk was baring white teeth at him in a grin-he wore a blue-striped gown under a French-cut jacket, and a white kaffiyeh, and Hale thought he was probably an Arab, altogether-and now the man strode over and said, in English, “You flinched, Mr. Garner! Confess, you were taught by nuns.”
“Jesuits, actually,” said Hale. “Same general effect.”
The man laughed jovially and led Hale back out through the doors to the sidewalk. “That accidental encounter was a nice confirmation,” he said, his voice just loud enough for Hale to hear in the cold open air. “It is odd how many of the people destined for our wielding were tempered in the Church-Dzerzhinsky, Theo Maly, even our late friend Ishmael-and the SIS would never have the wit to cook us a Papist double out of their Anglican fish-pot.”
You don’t know Jimmie Theodora, thought Hale. “No,” he said tiredly, “they’re not running me. They’d like to run me.”
“And they would kill you afterward. This Volvo is ours,” he said, waving at a little gray station wagon among the ranks of Mercedes-Benzes and Oldsmobiles and Peugeots in the car park. “I tried to kill you, in 1948-I was with the Russians on the mountain, and if I had not been knocked unconscious by a British bullet, I think I would have been killed or driven mad. I am an Armenian-it is our mountain, not the Russians’ and not yours.”
The steering wheel was on the left side, American-style, and Hale pulled open the passenger door. “Nothing’s mine anymore,” he said over the roof to his companion before getting in and closing the door.
“True,” said the Armenian as he got in on his side, closed his door and started the engine. Hale noticed that the man’s breath reeked of garlic and licorice. “I am Hakob Mammalian, and I am your handler in this undertaking. I am not interested in killing you anymore.” He held out his big right hand toward Hale.
Hale smiled and shook the warm, dry hand. “You people killed three of my men that night, I think.”
Mammalian released Hale’s hand to shift the engine into reverse. “Consider what it was that you were trying to kill. The heart of the mountain! Do you still seek…vrej?”
The word, Hale knew, was Armenian for revenge. “Nothing’s mine anymore,” he said again. “I’m not after vrej.”
“Remember that Charles Garner has no grudges. Much will be his, soon.”
The road north to Beirut was a flat dirt track wide enough for two cars to pass comfortably. The lowering sun reflected off the Mediterranean to light the undersides of the clouds in gold, and the occasional roadside clusters of leafy cypresses threw blue shadows across the apricot-colored road.
“Charles Garner is a journalist,” Mammalian told Hale, “a sometime foreign correspondent for the London newspapers The Observer and The Economist. A brief biography of him and a book of tear-sheets of his articles are in your room at the Normandy Hotel for you to study, so that you can make small talk. He is not a real person, but an occasional pseudonym used by another member of our team, who is a genuine journalist; you are welcome to the Garner identity and career.”
Soon Hale could see the rocky beaches and the white office buildings of the Beirut promontory ahead of them, and within minutes they were driving along a new highway, with cliffs and the sea to their left and modern hotels and restaurants on their right. Hale stared at a place called Le Réverbère, which according to a sign was THE STEREO WITH A TOUCH OF PARIS.
“ Beirut is become an American city, indistinguishable,” Mammalian said, nodding. “Bowling alleys, and stereo clubs for the rock-and-roll and dancing. But it is, being in neutral Lebanon, the most wide-open city in the Middle East. No faction is truly in charge, not the Maronite Christians nor the Sunni Moslems, and nobody cares what you do if you keep your mouth shut about it; everyone is plotting something, and Nasser would not annex Lebanon if they begged him.” He glanced sideways at Hale. “Ishmael sent us a radio message before the two of you left his house on Friday morning-a brief radio message. Did you explain to him what offer Cassagnac made to you on Wednesday morning? Did you inform him of what are Whitehall ’s plans, what Whitehall knows about the mountain and its longevitous citizens?”
“Yes,” said Hale. “Fully.”
“Tonight you will tell it all again, to me, even more fully, with a wire recorder operating. We will drink a good deal of arak, I think.”
Hale suppressed a smile, for he knew now where the licorice smell came from. Arak was one of the anise-flavored liquors, like Pernod and absinthe. He had never cared for the taste, though, and he didn’t like the way the stuff turned milky white when water was added.
“I might stick to Scotch,” he said.
“Charles Garner drinks arak,” Mammalian said. “You must get used to it.”
They had taken a right turn inland, and Beirut suddenly didn’t look American at all. Latticed balconies fronted the windows above the narrow shops, the signs of which, except for the big Pepsi-Cola trademarks, were all in French and Arabic. Women in bright-colored European skirts and high heels stepped from the curb to the street to make way for flocks of sheep being herded along the sidewalks by Arab women in long black abas, and soldiers in black berets stood on the corners holding automatic rifles whose stocks were decorated with glued-on colored glass beads. At one intersection traffic was halted for a Christian funeral procession, noisy with wailing, and Hale stared at the bearded priests and the tall swaying crosses garlanded with flower blossoms, and on the air from the vent by his feet he caught a whiff of incense.
At last they reached the north shore. The curved front of the five-story Normandy Hotel stood in white splendor just across the street from the beach, between a stand of palm trees and a men’s hairdressing, manicure, and pedicure salon.
A valet hurried up when Hale and Mammalian climbed out of the Volvo, and as the car was driven away the Armenian led Hale up the steps and through the glass doors into the carpeted hotel lobby.
“You will want to shave and…freshen up,” observed Mammalian, “but we could certainly have a drink, first.”
Hale followed the man’s pointing finger and saw the hotel bar, off to the side of the lobby behind a beaded curtain.
“ Arak, I suppose,” he growled, nevertheless starting toward the bar archway. Anything at all, actually, he thought-any ethanol at all, at all. Hale reached the arch before Mammalian and pulled back the rattling curtain-and then he stopped, the breath stilled in his throat.