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  “I understand.”

  He gravelled briefly, the best laugh he could scare up on short notice. “You understand? Your friend thought she understood. Harvard coursework might fly high in Washington, but here it puts you in a stinking cellar chained to a bed, which is where I’d bet she is now.”

  “You know where she is?”

  “If I knew where she was, I would not tell you. I said we wouldn’t help you. That doesn’t mean we’ll try to get you killed.”

  I was about to say ‘I understand’ again, but changed my mouth mid-mumble. “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Oh, I thought you understood.” Harbison leaned threateningly close to me, his tail against the edge of his desk, his arms crossed. “You don’t know what kind of place this is. We’re in the midst of an attempt to forge a new model for the people of Lebanon; that’s why your friend and the General came here. Some people don’t want peace. That’s why those two got taken. How much money do you think it will take to interest them in peace? What do you think they will use the money for, if you can convince them you have enough to buy back your friend? The General personally oversees a budget of about six billion dollars. How much do you think it will take to buy him out?”

  “I’m not here to interfere with your plans.”

  “I know what you’re here for. I’m in the knowledge business, Mr. Stutzer. But unlike your friend Professor Nusanti, I know how valuable knowledge is. I never give it away. That’s why I have more of it.”

  “You won’t share any with me?”

  He laughed again just like before, and I could tell now it was his sincere laugh, his stone-riot laugh. He went behind his desk and angled into his chair, still making sounds in his throat like he knew his laugh hadn’t convinced me, like he was practicing how to laugh, so he could get it right next time.

  “Mr. Stutzer, you might not realize it, but you are in a war zone. There used to be a country here, now there isn’t. This used to be an embassy, now it’s a base of operations. I won’t share anything with you except some advice. Trying to free your friend could get her killed, you killed, the General killed and our whole purpose here killed. You earned the right to get killed anywhere you want when you had the good fortune to be born on the way to Mercy Hospital in Ohio. But don’t expect my cooperation in getting yourself killed, or keeping you alive, if it will hurt the interests of our government here. Now do you understand?” He didn’t wait for me to respond, but hit his intercom. “Send in Commander Faid.” Harbison ignored me on his way to the door. He left it ajar and then sat back down.

  With the door a shade open, the man appearing behind it didn’t know whether to step in or knock, so he did both. Harbison interrupted this awkwardness by shouting, “Don’t stand around, Hussein. Come in, come in.”

  The man shuffled in clumsily; he seemed unused to shuffling. We were of a size and an age; even our moustaches looked alike. I stood and put my hand out to him. He took my fingers only and kept his eyes on the chief.

  “Hussein, this is Ron Stutzer. Mr. Stutzer, Hussein Faid, a commander in the Christian Front. Commander means he in charge of about twenty-five blocks in East Beirut, one of two or three dozen commanders we know about. The Christian Front is not exactly an army, Mr. Stutzer. It’s more like a private police force hired by the people in a particular neighborhood. We have taken over a number of abandoned houses in Hussein’s quadrant; it’s one of the nicer sections of Beirut, and Hussein and his men seek to keep it that way. We have decided to give you one of the smaller houses up in the hills, so you can save a bit on expenses. You might want to give Commander Faid half of what you would have spent in hotels. He offers the best protection in Beirut, if you decide you want to travel with a guard. A lot of people do.”

  Harbison stood, but stayed behind his desk. I could not help but realize I had to stand and leave with Hussein, my protector and my captor. “Don’t forget to call us every day, Mr. Stutzer. We’re busy people and this is a dangerous city. The only way we can be certain you are all right is if you let us know.”

  Hussein followed me into the hallway and shut the door. We stood shoulder to shoulder. Then his face wrinkled into a smile and bulged into a laugh. “That man is crazy,” he said. His accent was more British than anything else.

  “Crazy?”

  “It is the right word?”

  “I guess. I don’t know him.”

  “He’s very powerful. You had better stay in the house he has provided. You will be safest.”

  “And what do I owe you for my safety?”

  “How much days you plan to stay here?”

  “Ten maybe.”

  “And you bank in dollars?” I nodded. “It is simple then. One thousand dollars. If you will need a guard it will be more. I will take you home now.”

  “Let me stop here first.” We were at ‘Communications’ and I wanted to know what Andrea thought of my arrangement. The door was locked, so I knocked. A young black face peered at me through the two-inch crack. “Can I talk to Andrea?”

  He called back into the room. “Captain? A visitor!”

  Andrea came to the door. As she swung it open to walk through, I saw a room arrayed with lights, huge maps on the walls, consoles everywhere. It was the first color I’d seen since I arrived. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it. “I see they put you under guard.”

  “I kind of got that feeling myself.”

  “It’s not so bad, really. Just report in when you’re going somewhere.”

  “Great. But where should I go?”

  “With him first. I had someone pack your bags and bring them over; they’re just inside the door. Then I’d get settled, recover from the trip and study your maps.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, walk around town. Go to the beach. You want to meet me at the bar at the Paris Hotel tomorrow at six?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Good. Remember, keep your tail clean. People will be watching you.”

  45.

  After Hussein took me up to the house, a European sort of cottage really, with wood beams and stucco and real glass in the windows; after he introduced me to the mixture of Lebanese and Aryan boys who carried their guns just like the ones at the airport and checkpoints, but who were supposed to protect rather than trouble me; after one last warning from a busybody neighbor not to go downtown if I didn’t have to — after all this, I slept through the heat of the day, huddled away the rest of the day, and asked Hussein’s boys to bring me food before bed. What else could I do? I felt trapped and I was captive, though under better circumstances than Elizabeth. The Christian Front spied for the US, I gathered, and the Christians who lived in the luxurious houses in the hills of East Beirut paid protection to the Front for the privilege of being spied on. Me too, I realized. Studying my maps in the warm dusk, I realized that I became a hostage the very moment Elizabeth did.

  I woke — was it Sunday morning already? — from a fitful drowning sleep to a mixture of English and French wafting through the shuttered windows like distant bird calls. I dressed for the cool of the house and sweltered as I stepped out into the morning heat. The voices came no closer as I went out, but rather disappeared in the rumble of cars. Though the front of my small house faced a tangle of hilly roads, it backed against a ravine through which a main road cut. It tumbled straight out of the mountains into the center of town.

  One of the joys of capture is that help is never far. Two boys in familiar fatigues sat in a jeep in the shade in front of my house. One of them spoke passable English. “How can I get into town?”

  The two soldiers discussed it, and the one who spoke no English put the butt of his gun on the floor between his legs and bent over the muzzle to the radio. “We will call you a taxi,” the partner said. “Have you a passport?”

  I handed the passport to him and he studied
it while the radio hissed and spat in Arabic. “You would do better without this sometimes,” he said, flicking my commission with the back of his hand. “Take it out. Keep it apart. Then you will have it if it will do you good.” He pulled a small notebook from an open compartment in the jeep’s dash and compared my name to the list in the book.

  Over his shoulder, I sighted my entry before he did.

  H Ronald F. Stutzeir — $1000.

  I asked, “What’s the star for?”

  The boy yanked the commission out of my passport and folded it neatly. Handing both back, he said, “Because you are a special guest, Mr. Stutzeir. Please return before dark.” They must keep their cabs waiting nearby, because a stone-age Mercedes rattled up just then. “You should see our beautiful beach. Check in with us when you come back tonight.”

  46.

  My driver said, “I am Amir. Can you believe those clowns in their uniforms?”

  “Are they clowns?”

  “Anything in a uniform is a clown. In the circus you tell them by their clothes. It’s the same in Lebanon.”

  “You speak English very well.”

  “I should. I majored in it in college. University of Massachusetts.”

  “What are you doing back here?”

  “Your immigration service can be very diligent. I was born here.” He shrugged.

  “It must have changed a lot since then.”

  “What with the war?” My turn to shrug. “Sure, sure. But not so much the way you think. A lot of ugly old buildings blew up, one hundred thousand people are dead, half the population left, but the city still lives. You’ll see what it’s like downtown. That’s where we’re going, no?”

  “There or the beach.”

  “Let’s go to the beach.”

  So we drove on. The first checkpoint we hit was Christian Front. The guns came in the window, my passport went out, with my commission. As I took it back after a cursory review, Amir sped off. My arm, hooked over the front seat, kept me from rolling back. Once we were clear of the checkpoint, I saw him uncover his gun, which had been under an oily rag on the seat beside him. “I always carry this, but it doesn’t help to show it at the checkpoint, especially with the Christian Front. They look down their noses at the rest of the militias, even the army.” He made a spitting sound.

  “So why do you work for them?”

  Amir looked at me in the mirror. “Why do you say I work for them? No, you’re right. Because here you must work for someone, and the Christians are much more calm than the Islamic Jihad or even than the government. People say the Christian Front has no passion for killing, and no remorse about it either. But if I am dead, why do I care if the man who killed me feels remorse? So I work for the predictable people and maybe I stay alive longer. I do keep my friends in the other groups. I have family scattered all around; no cab driver knows this city better. You want something, I know where to get it.”

  “I want to find a hostage.”

  “Any hostage in particular?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re all in the same part of town. Dahya.”

  “Can you take me there? Not now. Tomorrow.”

  “I don’t like to go there.” He thought noisily and then said, “No, it’s all right. I’ll be your driver.”

  We passed another checkpoint, at the fabled Green Line. Regular Lebanese Armed Forces manned it, and there was a real booth with government insignia on it, but aside from that it was the same as the others: young boys with powerful toys, careless and threatening. I did not see whether Amir covered and uncovered his gun, but he seemed to know the boys with the guns. They waved us through into downtown, where the city became at once more cosmopolitan and pedestrian. Arabic replaced French and English in the store signs and posters, and the buildings and streets became more crowded, dirtier, older. I felt no threat, just the quease of uncertainty.

  “Tell me something. When do I need to get in a cab to get home by dark?”

  “This time of year? Nine, maybe nine-thirty.”

  “You meet me at nine in front of the Paris Hotel and on the way home we’ll work a deal for you to drive me while I’m here.”

  “It’s a deal already. We don’t need another ride to settle it.”

  47.

  Ten minutes after Amir let me go, I had no idea where I was. The signs of turmoil cropped up like mutants, a machine gun here, a shell-demolished building there, graffiti and posters of dark-eyed mullahs everywhere. But aside from the leery eyes the people of Beirut cast at anyone who draws near, the city limped along its business like any city suddenly reduced to half its population and a fraction of its glory. People drove by in expensive metal, guarded by boys in open jeeps. Carefully dressed women shopped in stores which never raised their grates from their windows. Something was wrong with Beirut, you could tell, but what was wrong was that it felt so strange without being all that different. I expected alien, alien I can deal with — you just let the natives lead. But people rushing in and out of cabs and buses, hurrying their bags and briefcases, all felt so common you could scream, until you realized they were hurrying because they might have just set a bomb somewhere, that the bags and briefcases might themselves be bombs about to be set, that the cabs and buses might be the next targets.

  I walked away from the sun. Amir had left me off at the Paris Hotel, so we could agree where to meet later. “You don’t know how important precision can be in Beirut,” he told me. “Precision is the difference between sleeping in your own bed tonight or shivering chained to a cot.” I explored the blocks around the hotel. A clot of LAF soldiers cadged a bottle from a bar and drank in an alley. Women wrapped head-to-toe in black stood silent as statues in the shadows of doorways. A man crouching against a wall cleaned his gun, looking at me as though he wished the gun was assembled and loaded. What in the world am I doing here? These people owe me nothing, no good will even. I don’t know what they are fighting for and I don’t care. I want to be home, eating pizza with Elizabeth, rubbing her feet after she’s had a long day running around the world putting out, or setting, fires.

  The sun directly overhead looked larger, more fierce. You could smell a lingering smoke when you passed some rubble, as though something foul had been burned. Even huge buildings, old buildings — still used, still occupied — bore signs of shell shock. On the corniche, the long swirl of sandy beach at the western edge of the city, stood a ten-storey hotel, windows and sometimes walls blown away, a dead hulk casting powerless eyes onto the Mediterranean.

  “I understand you can still call their worldwide reservations number and reserve a room.” A thin blond man in bathing suit, pale blue cover-up and red-framed glasses appeared beside me. “You’re overdressed for the beach.”

  “I wasn’t planning on coming here.”

  “That’s just as well. Keep them guessing.” His voice lilted, a light mixture of an English accent and gay affectation. “You must be new here.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “You’re being watched, but you have no guard.”

  I whipped my head around to look across the broad avenue that separates the beach walk from the rest of the city. A horde of innocuous-looking strangers drank simultaneously from demitasse cups at a café across the street.

  “Third table from the left is my guess.” I could only see the legs of a man and fingers grasping a newspaper. “I wouldn’t worry much about it. They just like to know who you are.”

  I held out my hand for a shake. “Ron Stutzer. From the US.”

  “Brian Bowman.” He gave a limp shake. “I’m from here.”

  “Here?”

  “East Beirut. My family has business interests in the Middle East.”

  “I’m staying up in the hills myself.”

  “With anyone? Or in an American safe-house?”

  “How safe are tho
se houses if everyone knows about them?”

  “Safe enough, if you pay your duty. But it’s very cramped up there. I like the beach much better.”

  “Even now?” I tried to guess his age. Twenty-two? Had the war gone on his whole life?

  “It’s actually a bit better now. A few years back every grain of sand was either mined or shelled. Of course that didn’t stop the sun-worshippers. The army cleans up the body parts and two hours later the people come back. I once got kicked while I was diving into the water, but the foot wasn’t attached to anyone. Must have been blown out to sea.”

  “I’m not sure I like this place.”

  “If gunpowder had never been invented, this place would be heaven. Liking Beirut only takes a little imagination.” He chuckled. “A lot of imagination. Follow me.”

  I held back. I didn’t know the man.

  Brian turned back to me. “We’re just going across the street to the café.”

  “But the man you say is following me is there.”

  “Right. So why make him work hard? We’ll sit next to him. Remember, I’m not interested in your answer, but when I ask you what you’re doing in Beirut, tell me you’re traveling for pleasure.” I followed him. “It gets them every time.”

  48.

  The bar of the Paris looked like any hotel bar, except the backbar had no mirrors. I was a moment late, because I taken time to exchange addresses and phone numbers with Brian. Andrea sat in a corner, two empty glasses in front of her. She gulped the third as I joined her.

  “The best gin-and-tonics. I don’t know why. They always tasted like gunpowder to me before.”

  “Maybe that’s why you like them.”

  “Maybe that’s why I like them here.”