Beirut - An Explosive Thriller Read online

  ‘No thanks, dude.’ Najimi turned back to his audience with a superior grin. ‘I only talk to Arabic newspapers.’

  There was a dutiful ripple of laughter around the table, which settled down to wait for Lynch’s next move. He made it.

  ‘Oh, that’s such a shame. I thought you might be interested in talking about a friend of mine called Paul Stokes. I don’t really care which fucking language you do it in. Do you remember Paul Stokes, Spike?’

  Najimi rose and turned to face Lynch, who gripped his beer bottle by the neck. Lynch’s voice was silky, his eyes boring into Najimi’s. ‘Or Deir Na’ee? Ring any bells with you? Or Leila Medawar?’

  Najimi’s furious expression froze, replaced by animal panic. His glance flicked across the room. He snarled, ‘Fuck you, man.’

  Flinging his drink in Lynch’s face, Najimi leapt for the door, sending a girl flying. Her glass tumbled to smash on the floor. Screaming broke out. Najimi threw a punch at Nathalie as she moved to cut him off. His shoulder caught the doorway a glancing blow. He sprinted through the tables scattered outside the bar.

  Lynch gave chase, a more powerful runner. He rounded the street corner downhill from the bar, grabbed a handful of Najimi’s shirt and pushed him into the side of a garage exit, using the ramp to pull the man round and slam him into the concrete wall. Najimi held his hand up to shield his face as Lynch hammered a series of twisting blows into the man’s face, chest and stomach.

  Nathalie caught up with them. She pulled Lynch away from the huddled figure on the dusty floor. Blood streaked from the man’s nostrils across his face in a dark parabola. ‘Christ, Lynch, leave him. What has taken over you?’

  Lynch wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, regaining his breath. ‘Nothing. We’ve got to get this pile of shit off the street. Hang on.’ He fished his mobile from his jacket pocket and dialled. ‘Marcie, I’ve got a problem. I need a room and a loan of Hassan. Sure. Thanks. Barométre. No, right now.’ He turned to Nathalie. ‘Done. He’ll be here in five minutes, there’s no traffic this late. If you go back up to the bar, he’ll be in a black Touareg. Bring him down here and I’ll take care of this fuckwit.’

  ‘Okay, but stop hitting him, yes?’

  ‘Sure, fine. Just go.’

  He listened to her fading footfalls for a few seconds. Turning to Najimi, he swung his boot into the man’s ribs, feeling the bone crack.

  ‘So I lied,’ Lynch spat. ‘That was for Leila.’

  Lynch helped Marcelle’s driver Hassan carry Anthony Najimi into the small room and let him down onto the bed. The movement forced a groan from the man’s broken mouth and renewed the flow of blood from his tissue-packed nose.

  Marcelle drew on her cigarette nervously. ‘Was this all because he slept with your Leila?’

  Nathalie wheeled to face Lynch. ‘Leila? The girl in the apartment?’

  ‘He’s too fond of secrets, habibti, is our Lynch.’ Marcelle chuckled nastily. ‘He was screwing a student chick from AUB. She walked out on him and even then he was fool enough to pay for a flat for her.’

  ‘Shut up, Marcie.’

  Marcelle gestured at Nathalie with her cigarette. ‘She walked out when you walked in, dear.’

  Nathalie shook her head. ‘How do you—’

  ‘Because I make it my business to know things. That piece of shit is a heroin dealer and he sells to a few of the girls. They sell it on to their clients. Sometimes they don’t have enough left. Then he takes payment in kind.’

  Lynch steadied himself against a chair, part of the room’s sparse, cheap furnishing, his hand gripping the plastic back. He had to clear his throat to speak. ‘He didn’t just sleep with Leila. He killed her for Freij. She was found injected with an overdose of heroin. There were signs she was tied, had struggled. One of Freij’s notes was beside her. Leila never touched junk. Ever. He was the last person she was seen alive with.’

  Marcelle’s calculating gaze weighed Lynch up. She nodded, her dark eyes dropping. ‘I’m sorry, Lynch. I didn’t know.’

  Lynch glanced at Nathalie, who was staring at Najimi moaning on the bed. Her voice was a whisper. ‘If I hadn’t come, she would never have moved away.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Lynch ran a hand over his tired face, his voice lowering. ‘It doesn’t matter. But the only reason this piece of shit is alive is that he’s key to finding out what Freij is up to.’ Lynch glared up at them both. ‘The only reason.’

  An Indonesian girl in a maid’s shift bustled into the room carrying an enamel bowl and a wad of cotton wool. She started to dab at Najimi’s broken face.

  ‘She’s good. Used to be a nurse. Come on, I need a drink.’ Marcelle led the way from the room, glancing back to her driver. ‘Look after him, Hassan. He’s not to go anywhere.’

  Hassan nodded and closed the door behind them.

  They followed Marcelle down the corridor and up a short flight of steps to her plush, modern office, the furnishings contemporary and minimalist, abstract art on the walls and coffee-table books scattered. The right-hand wall had an angled floor to ceiling window overlooking the club. Nathalie watched a skinny, pale girl on the stage pretending to masturbate with a teddy bear.

  Marcelle glided over to the drinks cabinet and poured whisky into two tumblers, handing one to Lynch, who helped himself to ice. She went over to the window, draping her hand on Nathalie’s shoulder and massaging it gently. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, no thanks,’ Nathalie said, her face reflecting the purple glow of the stage lights, the audience of Japanese businessmen, solitary figures and noisy groups of balding suits oblivious of her regard behind the one-way glass.

  Marcelle drawled, gesturing at the stage with her tumbler. ‘You like?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t actually.’ She turned away.

  Lynch poured another drink. ‘I’ll need your help, Marcie. We’ll have to keep him here for a while. Okay?’

  Marcelle rounded on Lynch. ‘Lynch, you’ve already had one of my girls near-killed.’ She searched his face. Whatever she read there, her mouth pursed in resolution. ‘You’re paying, Lynch. Five hundred a day.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Dollars.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking lire, Marcie. It’s fine. Just don’t let him go anywhere.’ Lynch topped his glass up. ‘Najimi was a dealer. Was he a user?’

  Marcelle sat down on the white leather sofa. ‘How do I know? Go ask him.’

  ‘Thanks, I will.’

  Lynch went back down the corridor and nodded at Hassan, who let him into the room. The maid had taken off Najimi’s shirt and had bandaged his ribs, the livid bruises already forming a patchwork across his torso. His eyes opened, one swollen and bloodshot, nestled in a livid, blackening bruise. Hassan had bound his feet with cable ties.

  Lynch reached over to his arm and wrenched it, making Najimi cry out. The track marks were there. It was a mess, the vein collapsed. The other arm was little better. He grabbed Najimi’s chin.

  ‘Leila Medawar. Why?’

  ‘I know nothing, man. I swear.’

  ‘Okay. You want to tell me about Deir Na’ee now or you want to wait until tomorrow when your skin’s crawling?’

  Najimi’s voice was a croak. ‘No. I know nothing.’

  ‘Kazab. Okay, you made your choice.’

  Lynch turned to Hassan. ‘Tie his hands. Gag him, too. He’ll start making a noise soon enough. Tell the Indonesian chick, “nil by mouth.” Got that?’

  Hassan nodded. Lynch returned to Marcelle’s office to find the two women sitting together, Marcelle’s hand on Nathalie’s thigh.

  ‘Kiss immak, don’t you ever knock?’

  He pretended not to notice Nathalie’s blush. ‘We’re going. We’ll be back in the morning.’

  Marcelle smiled down at Nathalie. ‘I look forward to it.’

  It had been a long day. Nathalie had disappeared into the bowels of the French Embassy where her team of hackers was trying to break, undetected, into Falcon’
s security system. Apparently the ‘undetected’ was the hard bit. Lynch had feigned interest. He himself had visited a number of people with dubious histories, including a dangerous foray into the heart of Chatila, the infamous Palestinian refugee camp. It had all come to nothing and Lynch could barely wait to get back to Marcelle’s club. When he did, he bounded up the stairs to find the dutiful Hassan on guard.

  Lynch nodded to Hassan, who opened the door. Anthony Najimi, gagged and lying on the bed, was mumbling. His skin had a sweaty sheen. There were livid red marks on his wrists where the cable ties had bitten into him. He strained against himself, his unfocused gaze roamed the room.

  Lynch grinned. ‘Good evening. How’s she hangin’?’

  Najimi jerked at the sound of a voice, then collapsed back on the bed, breathing heavily, his eyes screwed shut. Lynch sat on the side of the bed and removed the gag. He cupped the man’s head and offered him water, watching him gulp.

  Najimi gasped, water running down his chin. His breath stank. ‘Stop it. You know you can. Stop it. Give me some stuff, man.’

  ‘Here’s the deal.’ Lynch’s voice was a gentle whisper and Najimi had to crane his head painfully in order to hear. Lynch pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. It contained a disposable syringe and a small bag of white powder. He held it out. Najimi tried to reach for it, but Lynch pushed his shoulder, making him wince with pain at the grip on his tender skin.

  ‘Talk. You talk first.’

  Najimi’s bruised mouth worked as he held his tied hands out to Lynch, drool collecting on his cheek. ‘Jesus, man, have some fucking mercy. Look at what you’ve done to me.’

  Lynch’s smile was cold. ‘Mercy? You show Leila Medawar any mercy? You sell drugs to kids, Anthony. Don’t you presume to lecture me about mercy.’ Lynch got to his feet, looking down on the mess on the bed. ‘And for the record, son, I had my mercy glands removed a long time ago. So, Leila Medawar. Why?’

  ‘I know nothing, man.’

  Lynch slapped him. Najimi cried out. ‘Freij. Michel Freij made me. I was seeing her. She’d just split up with some guy. Freij gave me a choice, it was me or her. I chose her. No brainer, right?’

  ‘Sure,’ Lynch confided. ‘No brainer.’

  Najimi’s breathing was ragged. His eyes tracked Lynch moving the syringe to the other side of the room. Lynch returned to the bed but the tied man’s eyes stayed on the little bag of gear in the corner.

  ‘Now,’ Lynch said, sitting with his bended knee on the bed touching Najimi’s leg. ‘Deir Na’ee. What can you tell me about Deir Na’ee?’

  Najimi moaned and licked his lips, jerking his head painfully. ‘I don’t know anywhere called Deir Na’ee.’

  Lynch’s hard-handed slap bounced Najimi’s head off the mattress. His sodden hair flew up, suspended like a halo for an instant. He drew his legs and arms foetally into his stomach. Snot ran from his nose and onto the cotton sheet in a constant stream he didn’t bother to sniff up.

  ‘We’ve got all evening, you know,’ Lynch said. ‘It’s only you that can’t get what you need. I’m good, see?’ He called to Hassan and the door opened, the driver’s brown, lined face impassive, a flash from the door handle as the red stone on his crude signet ring caught the light.

  ‘Seer?’

  ‘Get me a scotch on the rocks. A double.’

  ‘Seer.’

  Lynch sat back, his tone conversational. ‘How did you first meet them, Anthony? Michel and Selim? You’re great pals, aren’t you?’

  Najimi glared sideways at him, his eyes fixed on the bag in the corner of the room, his words tumbling out between shuddering breaths. ‘AUB. At the university. They were hiring.’

  ‘Did they hire you?’

  Najimi shook his head, sniffing and swallowing with an effort.

  Lynch waited as the man on the bed gulped and gagged, heaving for breath. The bed was cast iron, the white-enamelled frame topped with dented brass ornamentation. It was Marcelle’s cheapest room, ill-favoured and above the kitchen to the back of the club. A faint stench of boiled vegetables and frying had soaked into the mean fittings.

  Najimi tossed his head back to flick the lank, damp hair from his eyes. ‘I heard you talk to the French chick. You’re British intelligence.’ He licked his lips. ‘We’re on the same side you know, man. My people are gonna be pretty pissed when they find out how you’ve treated me.’

  Lynch snorted. ‘Your people? Who might they be when they’re at home?’

  ‘That’s how I met Freij and Hussein. I was Michel’s bag man, see? Look, let me have some stuff. I’ll tell them I was hurt in an accident. They don’t need to know. You’ll be okay. I can fix it.’ His smile of triumph was cut short by a grimace as his lip split again. ‘Ah, shit.’ He sniffed again. ‘Come on, dude, we can sort this out—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Lynch said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What intelligence outfit would be stupid enough to trust a piece of shit like you?’

  Najimi was eager now, his battered face lit up with hope. ‘See? I knew you’d be okay with it in the end. It’s gonna be cool, it’s okay. I work for the CIA, dude. The Americans. I’m their man, see? Their man in the university, that’s me. Come on, man, the stuff. It’s cool, we’re on the same side. We’re good, no?’

  ‘Where’s Deir Na’ee?’

  The sweat was beading on Najimi’s high forehead, running down his cheek. He pawed at Lynch, nodding and smiling. ‘In Dannieh, in the mountains. It’s their big hideout, man. Their research place. All top secret, see? It’s where they do the heavy shit. Nobody gets near that place that Michel doesn’t know it. Big security, see?’

  Lynch spoke to himself. ‘How’s nobody heard of the place?’

  Najimi’s laugh was a broken, high-pitched cackle. ‘It’s the biggest secret in Lebanon, man. In the world. There’s more security around Kalaa than anywhere, man.’

  ‘Kalaa?’

  Najimi nodded. ‘Yeah. The mountain. Where it is. Deir Na’ee. Kalaa. It used to be a nunnery. The whole place belongs to the Freij militia. One Lebanon.’ He stretched an entreating hand. ‘Come on, man, give me the stuff.’

  ‘Soon enough.’ Lynch pulled a micro recorder from his pocket and switched it on. ‘But first take me through this one bit at a time. I’m feeling stupid.’

  The man they called Hassan had come into the room and cut his hands free. His wrists were sore but he didn’t notice, curled up in a ball on the bed and shivering, sniffing away as much of the constant tide of snot as he could, his hands shaking so hard he could barely focus on them when he did summon the energy to lift his head. His skin crawled, grey sago with cockroaches scuttling on its pliant surface, slipping off his bones in great strips of sloughing lifeless matter.

  Najimi cried out, the soft rasp of the linen on his ear. He had pissed himself, the warm pungency from his damp groin filled his nostrils. He forced his caked eyes open, focused on the sordid little room. The bag was there, where Lynch had tossed it in the corner. He regarded it for some time, starting to cry with the need for it, but too weak to make the effort to get to it. Eventually he focused, summoned his will and forced himself upright on shaking arms, groaning with the pain in his side. He pushed the plastic water bottle from the bedside table onto the floor. He slid to the floor as gently as he could, his legs still pinioned by nylon ties. He cried out from the pain in his bruised thighs and broken ribs.

  He fell too fast, crashing to the ground. He lay weeping with the pain and the need, the latter driving him to drag himself along the floor with his elbows, wriggling as much as he could despite the screaming of his bound ribs. Each breath too short to fill his aching lungs, he could hear his own ragged gasps and the rustle of his clothes on the faded rug.

  He cried with relief when he reached the little bag. With a last effort, he propped himself up to sit against the wall, his head lolling as he struggled to fight off the wave of tiredness enveloping him.

  Najimi woke with a start, the blessed relief of sleep replaced by
the shrieking of his jangling nerves. For a second he gazed around the room unseeing, trying to gain his sense of place. The pain and the sharpness of his need brought him back to the little bag.

  Licking his dry lips, he opened it. It was a neat and complete works, a spoon, cotton wool and a vial of alcohol, a tiny clip-seal bag of fine, off-white powder and a lighter. It even had a little metal stirrer. His hands shook so much he had to stop several times. He burned a small pile of powder on the spoon, adding a splash of the bottled water and stirred it up to mix the powder in. He pulled the plastic covering off the syringe and pushed it into a tiny wad of cotton wool in the middle of the liquid so there were no lumps in it as he drew up the plunger. He tied his arm with his belt, swabbed the bulging vein with alcohol and then slid the needle in, a moment that always caused a slight rise in his trousers, a penetration that he always wanted to see under a microscope so he could better appreciate its shiny metal perfection against the warm embrace of his skin and blood. He pressed the plunger slowly, withdrawing the needle and pressing the swab to the tiny welling of blood, the belt falling to the floor.

  He prepared to receive it, his eyes rolling back as his heart pumped and the first waves of the rush tumbled over each other like the tide coming in. The waves started to crash like a tsunami and his eyes snapped open with ecstasy and burgeoning fear. It was too much, too fast. The waves started to crash down on his head, a tide become a torrent.

  Anthony Najimi gasped for air but there wasn’t enough in all the world.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nathalie hadn’t noticed the lengthening shadows fading to dusk outside. She screwed her eyes shut as Lynch switched on the lights. His eyes looked bruised in his pale face, but he smiled for her. ‘Hey, bookworm. You been sitting there since I left you?’

  She nodded. He sloughed off his jacket and flung it on the back of a dining chair. She gestured at her screen. ‘We have traced this PIL. It is a company in Albania. Petrolifera Italo Libanese is owned by Sakhr Investments, an offshore investment vehicle ultimately owned by Selim Hussein and Michel Freij, together with other Lebanese partners. Sakhr is Arabic for Falcon, but I think you know this.’