During the original civil war, thirty years earlier, more than half a million people had lived in Beirut. His own grandparents had been among them, some of the many Americans who had resigned their teaching posts at the schools and university to fight with the beleaguered Christian militia. From all over the world volunteers had been drawn to Beirut, mercenaries and idealists, religious fanatics and out-of-work bodyguards, who fought and died for one or another of the rival factions.
Deep in their bunkers below the rubble they even managed to marry and raise their families. Ryan’s parents had been in their teens when they were murdered during the notorious Airport Massacre — in one of the worst of many atrocities, the Nationalist militia had executed their prisoners after promising them safe passage to Cyprus. Only the kindness of an Indian soldier in the UN force had saved Ryan’s life — he had found the baby boy and his sister in an abandoned apartment building, and then tracked down their adolescent aunt.
However tragic, Beirut had been worth fighting for, a city with street markets, stores and restaurants. There were churches and mosques filled with real congregations, not heaps of roof-tiles under an open sky. Now the civilian population had gone, leaving a few thousand armed combatants and their families hiding in the ruins. They were fed and supplied by the UN peacekeeping force, who turned a blind eye to the clandestine shipments of arms and ammunition, for fear of favouring one or another side in the conflict.
So a futile war dragged on, so pointless that the world’s news media had long since lost interest. Sometimes, in a ruined basement, Ryan came acoss a tattered copy of Time or Paris Match, filled with photographs of street-fighting and graphic reports on the agony of Beirut, a city then at the centre of the world’s concern. Now no one cared, and only the hereditary militias fought on, grappling across their empires of rubble.
But there was nothing pointless about the bullets. As they passed the shell of the old pro-government radio station there was a single shot from the ground-floor window.
‘Pull over, corporal! Get off the road!’ Pistol in hand, Gomez wrenched the steering wheel from Arkady and slewed the jeep into the shelter of a derelict bus.
Kneeling beside the flattened rear tyres, Ryan watched the UN spotter plane circle overhead. He waited for Gomez to flush out the sniper, probably a Nationalist fanatic trying to avenge the death of a brother or cousin. The Nationalist militia were based at Beirut Airport, a wilderness of weed-grown concrete on which no plane had landed for ten years, and rarely ventured into the centre of the city.
If a ceasefire was ever to take hold it would be here, somewhere along the old Green Line that divided Beirut, in this no-man’s-land between the main power bases — the Christians in north-east Beirut, the Nationalists and Fundamentalists in the south and west, the Royalists and Republicans in the south-east, with the International Brigade clinging to the fringes. But the real map of the city was endlessly redrawn by opportunist deals struck among the local commanders — a jeep bartered for a truckload of tomatoes, six rocket launchers for a video-recorder.
What ransom could buy a ceasefire?
‘Wake up, Ryan! Let’s move!’ Gomez emerged from the radio station with his prisoner, a jittery twelve-year-old in a hand-me-down Nationalist uniform. Gomez held the boy by his matted hair, then flung him into the back of the jeep. ‘Ryan, keep an eye on this animal — he bites. We’ll take him to interrogation.’
‘Right, captain. And if there’s anything left we’ll trade him for some new videos.’
Hands bound, the boy knelt on the floor of the jeep, weeping openly from fear and rage. Jabbing him with his rifle stock, Ryan was surprised by his own emotions. For all his hopes of a ceasefire, he felt a reflex of real hate for this overgrown child. Hate was what kept the war going. Even Dr Edwards had been infected by it, and he wasn’t alone. Ryan had seen the shining eyes of the UN observers as they photographed the latest atrocity victims, or debriefed the survivors of a cruel revenge attack, like prurient priests at confession. How could they put an end to the hate that was corrupting them all? Good God, he himself had begun to resent Angel Porrua for fighting with the Nationalists…
That evening Ryan rested on the balcony of Aunt Vera’s apartment overlooking the harbour in East Beirut. He watched the riding lights of the UN patrol craft out at sea, and thought about his plans for a ceasefire. Trying to forget the day’s fighting and Angel’s death, he listened to Louisa chattering in the kitchen over the sounds of pop music broadcast by a local radio station.
The balcony was virtually Ryan’s bedroom — he slept there in a hammock shielded from public view by the washing line and the plywood hutch he had built as a boy for his Dutch rabbit. Ryan could easily have moved to any one of the dozen empty apartments in the building, but he liked the intimacy of family life. The two rooms and kitchen were the only home he had ever known.
A young couple in an apartment across the street had recently adopted an orphan boy, and the sounds of his crying reminded Ryan that he at least was related by blood to the members of his family. In Beirut such blood ties were rare. Few of the young women soldiers ever conceived, and most children were war-orphans, though it puzzled Ryan where all these youngsters came from — somehow a secret family life survived in the basements and shantytowns on the outskirts of the city.
‘That’s the Rentons’ new little son.’ His sister strolled onto the balcony, brushing out the waist-long hair that spent its days in a military bun. ‘It’s a pity he cries a lot.’
‘At least he laughs more than he cries.’ An intriguing thought occurred to Ryan. ‘Tell me, Louisa — will Lieutenant Valentina and I have a child?’
‘A child? Did you hear that, Aunty? So what does Valentina think?’
‘I’ve no idea. As it happens, I’ve never spoken to her.’
‘Well, dear, I think you should ask her. She might lose something of her elegant composure.’
‘Only for a few seconds. She’s very regal.’
‘It only takes a few seconds to conceive a child. Or is she so special that she won’t even spare you those few seconds?’
‘She is very special.’
‘Who’s this?’ Aunt Vera hung their combat jackets over the balcony, gazing at them with almost maternal pride. ‘Are you talking about me, Ryan, or your sister?’
‘Someone far more special,’ Louisa rejoined. ‘His dream woman.’
‘You two are my dream women.’
This was literally the truth. The possibility that anything might happen to them appalled Ryan. In the street below the balcony a night-commando patrol had lined up and were checking their equipment — machine-pistols, grenades, packs loaded with booby-traps and detonators. They would crawl into the darkness of West Beirut, each a killing machine out to murder some aunt or sister on a balcony.
A UN medical orderly moved down the line, issuing morphine ampoules. For all the lives they saved, Ryan sometimes resented the blue helmets. They nursed the wounded, gave cash and comfort to the bereaved, arranged foster-parents for the orphans, but they were too nervous of taking sides. They ringed the city, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, and in a sense controlled everything that went on in Beirut. They could virtually bring the war to a halt, but Dr Edwards repeatedly told Ryan that any attempt by the peacekeeping force to live up to its name would lead the world’s powers to intervene militarily, for fear of destabilising the whole Middle East. So the fighting went on.
The night-commandos moved away, six soldiers on either side of the street, heading towards the intermittent clatter of gunfire.