Beirut - An Explosive Thriller Read online

  Beirut - An Explosive Thriller

  Alexander McNabb

  Copyright © Alexander McNabb 2012

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition

  The Levant Cycle

  Olives – A Violent Romance

  Beirut – An Explosive Thriller

  Shemlan – A Deadly Tragedy (2013)

  What reviewers said about Olives – A Violent Romance

  “McNabb has created a world that is uniquely Arab and foreign at once. He obviously understands the region, its politics and its culture. And that is its greatest strength. It is able to draw in the reader early on, creating a world that is at once familiar and strange.”

  Joseph Mayton writing in BikyarMasr

  “The intensity of Paul and Aisha’s love story is the novel’s defining strength with their intimacy heating up to a feverish pitch as disasters escalate and put them at risk.”

  The National newspaper

  “If you take Tailor of Panama, add a sprinkle of Lawrence of Arabia, introduce rich and memorable characters, a modern concern about water scarcity, and bring up the speed, you will get Olives – A Violent Romance by Alexander McNabb. Reading this book was an absolute delight, with an intriguing ending that still keeps me thinking.”

  Hanging Out Globally

  My mother has put up with an awful lot from me over the years. This is for her.

  ONE

  The smell of death was everywhere. Gerald Lynch wrinkled his nose, his eyes adjusting to the darkness inside the villa. He picked his way through the rubbish, shaking his head at the clatter of Palmer’s blundering outside. The small washroom off the entrance hall had overflowed.

  Shit and death.

  Lynch tiptoed across the hallway and gingerly opened a door, yanking it shut against the buzzing cloud of flies. The next entrance led to the kitchen, the floor strewn with empty cans and water bottles, plastic cups, rotting food and, oddly, a number of dried teabags stuck to the ceiling, flicked up there when they had been hot and wet, their little yellow and red printed tags dangling from tea-stained strings.

  He winced as Palmer stumbled into the building.

  ‘Lynch?’

  Moving back into the hallway, Lynch found Palmer smoking in his white, open-necked shirt. The younger man had a linen jacket slung over his shoulder and a look of disgust on his reddened face. Lynch grabbed the fat arm, digging his fingers into soft flesh. He hissed, ‘Shut up, would you?’

  Palmer’s nervous laughter was a bark. ‘What, you think they’re here, do you? You reckon they’re hiding in the bog waiting for us? We wouldn’t have got within a mile of this place if they were still around.’

  Lynch shoved the young man away. ‘Shut up. And don’t touch anything.’

  Shaken by Lynch’s violence, he whined. ‘Okay. Anything for a quiet life. I wouldn’t have to be here at all if the Embassy hadn’t taken that call.’

  Lynch stole into the living room. The furniture was scattered; the terrazzo-tiled floor littered with clumps of stuffing from the destroyed sofa. He searched for the TV remote, gave up and walked over to the set. He pulled a pack of tissues from his pocket and wrapped one around his finger to switch the set on. The sound was almost deafening in the hot gloom: urgent Arabic, Hezbolla’s Al Manar channel. Snapping the set off, he turned to speak to Palmer, but the Embassy man had left. Whispering a curse, Lynch followed him to the bedroom doorway.

  ‘Christ,’ said Palmer.

  Lynch pushed past. The rich stench was appalling. The overturned bucket in the corner of the room spilled waste onto the burn-pocked carpet. Rusty streaks arced across the walls. Something darker, likely more shit, completed the artwork. Eyehooks were set into the wall at the opposite corner to the bucket, a long tangle of Day-Glo yellow rope coiled on the floor below them. The bed sheets were streaked with filth.

  Lynch flicked the newspaper on the floor with his foot: The Beirut Times, 22nd March. Five days old. He reached towards the piece of expensive-looking paper folded on the bed, halted by the sound of Palmer puking. Lynch wheeled, the rebuke dying on his lips as he took in the opened cupboard and the thing, once human, slumped inside. Pulling the paper tissue over his face, he shoved the retching man’s bulk aside and stared into the cupboard. The corpse stank, even through the scented tissue. Fat bluebottles crawled over sightless eyes. Dark rivulets crazed the marble white flesh. The slashed throat, an obscene second mouth, grinned blackly at them.

  Palmer stumbled from the room. Lynch stared at the body, his mind and heart racing, his stomach knotted. The shock numbed him, his lips drawn tight and an unpleasant pricking sensation in his eyes. He tensed against his stomach’s impulse. Unlike Palmer, he had done this before. Bending to pat down the pockets, he ran his fingers against the distended flesh and checked for documents. He turned to the bed and picked up the fold of paper. Opening it revealed the name ‘Paul Stokes’ in calligraphic script on the textured surface.

  The note was familiar, the parchment placed beside the victim of every murder ordered by Raymond Freij. The old man had inscribed dozens of them throughout the long Lebanese civil war, before cancer had written its own note in fine tendrils to crush his wracked body until he could breathe no more. Raymond was said to have had a teak Indian clerk’s desk he liked to sit at cross-legged to as he wrote each death warrant with a fine quill pen. The calculated flamboyance added to the fear and legendary status the warlord had courted. The humility of a babu’s desk, each death so ordered reduced perhaps, then, to a clerical error.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lynch. Truly.’ Palmer’s bulk framed in the doorway, his face turned away from the cupboard. His voice faltered. ‘I know Stokes was your agent.’

  Lynch reviewed the pathetic earthly remains of Paul Stokes, journalist and latterly spy, and smiled despite the lump in his throat. At least Paul was reunited with Aisha, the girl he had loved and lost so completely. Anger welled up in Lynch as he ran his thumb down the rough edge of the vellum in his hand.

  Freij. Like father, like son.

  Michel must have done this. Michel Freij, the joint head of the biggest defence technology company in the Arab world and Raymond Freij’s pride and joy. When cancer carried Raymond the great warlord away, it brought his son Michel the loyalty of countless Lebanese Christian mountain villages and towns. Michel also inherited his father’s sprawling business empire and the keys to a political career Michel had lost no time in developing. Stokes had been rattling Michel’s cage, a little job for Lynch on the side. And Michel had rattled back. Hard.

  Lynch strode outside, stooping to inhale the clean air. Palmer burst from the house a few seconds later, gasping. ‘So that’s it, is it? You just walk ... walk away now?’

  Lynch stared into the hills, dotted with gnarled trees, the sky bright blue above. He breathed in the warm Mediterranean spring air.

  Palmer manoeuvred to face him down. ‘Is that it? Job done, Gerry? Write off your joe and piss off back to your nice, comfy flat in Beirut? What was there to smile about back there? Stokes was a fucking human being. He was a good man, dammit.’

  ‘Don’t call me Gerry. It’s Gerald.’ Lynch handed
the boy a tissue and watched him blow his nose. Tears welled up in the washed-out blue eyes, the dark rings and puffiness around them at odds with his puppyfat features. Every man has the face he deserves by forty, thought Lynch. Oscar Wilde. At this rate, Palmer would look like a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig.

  ‘Th-thanks.’

  ‘Come on. Time to head back home. The Lebboes can clear this lot up.’

  Palmer pocketed his tissue. ‘Does Stokes’ death truly mean nothing to you, man? Are you intelligence people all so cold?’

  Lynch spoke gently, but his fists were clenched. ‘We all have different ways of dealing with events.’ He strode across the dusty roadway to the car and pulled open the door. He waited for Palmer to move, watching the boy support himself against the concrete wall, great dark patches under the arms and spine of his jacket. Palmer pushed towards the car as Lynch started the engine.

  In the dark quiet of the villa, a mouse started to move, scurrying across the warm tiles at the very moment Lynch, racing up the track onto the Saida Road with Palmer huddled beside him, decided to pay Michel Freij a personal visit.

  Lynch left the car with Palmer and jumped up the steps fronting the Freij Building. He shoved the glass doors open and strode across the echoing marble hall to the lifts. A woman got into the lift with him. She seemed nervous. He turned his glare back to the stainless steel doors as the robotic voice announced, ‘Executive Offices. Doors opening.’

  Lynch stormed through the open-plan office, ignoring the insistent flunkies asking him if they could help him. The brass placard glittered on the double doors to the ‘Executive Suite’. He slammed them behind him. The picture windows looked out over Beirut harbour, the blue sky reflected in the polished, minimalist office furniture. Lynch whirled to face the secretary standing behind her desk, a file pressed to her breasts. The desktop hosted a single hyper-thin screen and matte black keypad.

  ‘Where’s Michel Freij?’

  She snapped him a clinical smile, perfect teeth framed by pumped lips. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Freij is not in the office right now. Who can I tell him called?’

  Lynch’s voice was a low snarl. ‘I will ask you one more time nicely. Where is Michel?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr?’ She stepped back, her smile faded. ‘I think you had better leave.’

  She raised her head to call but Lynch moved fast around the desk and grabbed her throat. He pushed her hard against the shelving unit. The file flew from her hands, her face coloured under the pressure of his grip. Her painted nails scrabbled at his strong wrist.

  ‘Where the fuck is he?’

  He relaxed his grip enough for her to breathe, her voice gurgling. ‘G—Germany.’

  ‘Where in Germany?’

  ‘Berlin.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A meeting.’

  Lynch squeezed again, her creamy skin rucking under his hard fingers. ‘Who with?’

  ‘H—Hoffmann. That’s all I know. At the Landsee.’

  A man’s voice called. ‘What’s going on here?’

  Lynch let go of the woman. He turned to face the black-uniformed security guard, the badge glinting on his chest.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Lynch snarled, prowling forwards.

  The guard blocked the exit, slapping a black nightstick in his hand and smiling grimly. ‘You’re going nowhere.’

  Lynch kicked him hard in the crotch and brought his fist scything down to connect with the guard’s face, catching his downward momentum to drive the man to the floor. Lynch ground his foot into the writhing man’s stomach and stepped over him..

  Outside the smoked-glass building, Lynch caught his breath and scanned the busy street. His knuckles were raw, but he was feeling better about Stokes’ death already.

  TWO

  It was late in the afternoon as Gerald Lynch hopped along the uneven paving that lined Gouraud Street, the heart of Beirut’s bustling Gemayze area. He wore jeans and a leather jacket against the chill spring air, his hands in his pockets as he squeezed between the parked cars.

  Gouraud’s bars, as ever, welcomed those who wanted to party and forget the woes of a world where violence and conflict were a distant memory but a constant worry. Orphaned by Belfast’s troubles, Lynch appreciated Beirut’s fragile peace and sectarian divides, the hot embers under the white ash on the surface of a fire that looked, to the casual observer, as if it had gone out. Lynch scowled as he passed a poster carrying Michel Freij’s smiling face, encircled in strong black script: ‘One Leader. One Lebanon.’

  The sky was fading to the dull aubergine of dusk; the bars lining the street glowed a welcome. He glanced around, crossed a side street then peeled left off Gouraud to slip into the entrance of an ancient Ottoman building. The rusting iron railings on the ornate stone balconies wept streaks down the lichen-tinged walls. Bullet holes still peppered the stucco. Brick showed through where shell bursts and, in places, time had peeled off the tired facade.

  Lynch stole up the stone stairs to the first floor and paused by a battered red door, holding his ear to it for a second. He crouched to pick the lock with quiet efficiency. He rose a few seconds later, pushed into Paul Stokes’ flat and closed the door softly behind him. Like many apartments in Beirut, the drabness of the exterior belied the opulence inside. Stokes had rented the place from a Lebanese family living in the Gulf and it was furnished to their taste, packed with ornate furnishings, cut glass and deep-pile carpets. Tapestries lined the walls and gold statuary decorated the green marble fireplace.

  Stokes’ writing table stood against the window overlooking Gouraud’s busy length. His laptop was still open and switched on, the screensaver drawing neon swoops. Lynch picked up the voice recorder by the laptop and pressed ‘play’. The memory of the dead thing in the cupboard rushed back with Stokes’ voice and Lynch hit the stop button. He composed himself before pressing ‘play’ again to hear Stokes say, ‘Interview with Michel Freij. March fifteenth.’ The volume varied, Lynch guessed, as the recorder was moved to face the interviewee.

  Lynch placed the recorder on the inlaid rosewood coffee table in front of the sofa. He had sent Stokes to conduct this interview and prepared him with the information to use. It had been the young man’s death warrant. As the voices from the recorder played out their encounter, Lynch wandered over to the cabinet by the fireplace and poured himself a stiff scotch. He returned to the sofa as Freij was halfway through answering a question. Lynch folded himself into the sofa, the whisky burning in his throat as he listened.

  ‘My partnership with Selim Hussein started when we were at university. Selim is an unusually talented engineer and we quickly established Falcon Dynamics as a key contractor to the Lebanese military, particularly in the field of remotely operated devices such as drones. We have expanded that to a broad portfolio of defence and homeland security systems. The success of our partnership is precisely why I believe we, as a nation, can come together and join hands across any sectarian divide.’

  Stokes’ voice was measured. ‘Falcon Dynamics has been phenomenally successful, and now you have services and hardware contracts with the Saudis, the Syrians and the Egyptians. Will you target other markets, such as Europe?’

  ‘Yes, why not?’ Freij’s rich voice was expansive. ‘Our aim is to build the company. As you say, we have business in services, but also in security analysis and threat response procedures. We have major interests in software systems together with key partners in America and Germany and now we are growing our capabilities in tactical delivery systems. In all of these, we are at the forefront of developments and we can compete with European companies if we have a level playing field. Imagine, other Lebanese companies could follow this example, if provided with a government that would support innovation and entrepreneurialism.’

  Stokes shifted gear a little, his eagerness apparent. ‘But you already have one European subsidiary, don’t you?’

  There was a long silence. Freij’s voice was low. Lynch imagined the man’s frosty smile and quizzica
l expression. ‘I am sorry, I do not understand.’

  Stokes’ voice in the recording was louder, Lynch guessed as the journalist leaned towards Freij. ‘Two years ago, you launched the successful German online retail operation, kaufsmartz.com.’ Again, silence. Stokes pressed. ‘Did you not?’

  ‘What has this to do with our defence business, Mr Stokes?’

  Stokes’ voice was airy now as he moved in for the kill. They had rehearsed the question together and Lynch winced as he acknowledged ownership of the words that had resulted in the brutal death of the young journalist and, yes, Lynch’s agent. ‘Over the past two weeks, millions of transactions have taken place from customers in the Middle East ordering one product from Kaufsmartz, a door alarm device costing nine dollars ninety-five cents. That device is ostensibly manufactured by Falcon Dynamics.’

  Stokes paused and Freij shifted, a chair creaking. Lynch imagined him pushing the call button. Stokes became urgent. ‘Over eighty million dollars of orders took place in that period. It was a successful marketing campaign by any standard, wasn’t it? Mr Freij?’

  Michel Freij’s chair scraped back, his hands banged on the desktop as he shouted. ‘This interview is terminated.’

  Stokes was relentless. ‘Except there was no marketing campaign was there, Mr Freij? Every single transaction took place from one of twenty IP addresses in Beirut, every one of them owned by Falcon. Not one product has been shipped, has it Mr Freij? Because this was no online marketing success, it was hawala taken to the Internet age. You transferred eighty million dollars to yourselves in a flood of micro-transactions that bypassed all of the conventional financial controls and regulations you would normally be expected to comply with for a transfer of this size.’