Beirut - An Explosive Thriller Read online

  They sat in the coffee shop of Duggan’s hotel, Elli jittery and Duggan intrigued. It was late and they were alone. The red upholstered chairs and dark wood fittings marked a hotel overdue for a refit. He ordered coffees and a club sandwich to share. When the food arrived, Elli grabbed a tranche of sandwich. She balanced the sandwich in one hand, trying to cover her over-large mouthful with the other. Duggan spoke in German, grateful for his fluency. ‘It’s been tough, then.’

  She nodded, reaching for a napkin, then her coffee. He waited for her to wash down the food. ‘Yes. I am trying to be polite for you.’

  He pushed the plate at her. ‘Don’t bother. Eat.’

  ‘Alone?’

  He smiled, picked up a fry and dipped it in ketchup. ‘No. But I think your need is perhaps greater than mine.’

  She paused, uncertain, the food held up to her mouth. He looked away, beckoned the waiter and ordered a bottle of sparkling water, fussing over the brands the hotel offered precisely so she could have some time to eat, his glances confirming she was famished and yet desperate to maintain some sort of decorum.

  Finally she leaned back and wiped her mouth. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It is nothing.’

  She appraised him, the corner of her mouth turned up a little. She wiped her hands, checked her chipped nails and frowned. She leaned forwards, her chin on her clasped hands. Her blue eyes caught the light. ‘So who is Charles, the gallant knight who rescues fallen women and threatens to arrest them?’

  ‘I work for British Customs and Excise.’ He thought the words sounded pompous, the formality at odds with her amused interest in him. ‘I had some business in Hamburg.’ He leaned forward. ‘Now, tell me about your father.’

  Duggan sensed her nervousness, her constant glances across to the reception and the revolving door to the street. It was quiet, the night staff on reception murmuring. She pressed her hands together and rocked as she talked.

  ‘My father owns a business, he is an entrepreneur. The business makes luxury boats for rich people. He has built this business from nothing by working hard. He and my mother lived in a caravan at the boatyard. That was where I was born, in a caravan. I am a gypsy, you see?’

  He nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘Five years ago my mother walked out. My father was having an affair with a woman he met during an inquest into an accident at the boatyard. This woman was married but she was very attractive and much younger than her husband. She was younger than my father, too. Her name is Hilde. Her husband died, which was very convenient for her, because she was free then to put her claws further into my father. He carried on the affair with Hilde for two years before my mother found out. When she did, my father told her to live with this affair. He started to invite this Hilde to visit even when my mother was still in the house. She could not stand it. After she left, Hilde moved in. Am I boring you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Go on.’

  ‘She was fast, this Hilde. She liked eating in fancy places and she loved to buy horses and diamonds and she paid surgeons to make herself perfect for her ‘little Gerty’. I hated to hear my father called this. I hated her. She gambled. His business suffered, all the time with her wanting this and wanting that, this expensive holiday, that expensive car. They gambled together. He gave her everything until Luxe Marine was rotten and there was debt. The market had changed but my father wasn’t looking. The orders stopped coming. He owed millions. He was desperate. He needed money and the bank would not help him anymore. He knew where there was a store of guns and bombs from the cold war, from when he played as a child. He decided to try and sell this store and the bitch’s brother helped him to find a buyer, because he is involved in such things and he has a taste for fine things like she does.’

  He watched her as she talked to herself, her anger or perhaps the warmth of the lobby bringing red spots to her pale cheeks, her full lips moistened by her flicking tongue.

  ‘The night Meier came to the house with the news he had found a buyer in Beirut, I was listening at the door. I didn’t like the smell of him and wanted to know what he was getting up to. He opened the door and discovered me. He hit me in the face. My father did nothing to protect me. He joined Meier in shouting at me. They locked me in my room, but I escaped across the roof.’

  ‘Meier is Hilde’s brother?’

  She blinked. ‘Yes, yes he is.’

  ‘So how do you know your father is trying to kill you?’

  Elli sighed. ‘I stayed in a hotel that night and went to work the next day, as usual. I didn’t think to be scared, but there were men there who tried to make me get into their car when I left the office. I ran away, but there were more men at the hotel waiting for me, in the car park. One of them had a gun and this is how I finally realised my life is in danger.’

  Duggan shifted in his chair. ‘Why did you stay in Hamburg? Why not flee to, oh, I don’t know, Berlin?’

  ‘They plan to move these bombs in one of my father’s boats, the ones he makes. They are big yachts for the luxury market, thirty metres and more. I have a friend in the ports department here who will tell me when this boat comes downstream through Hamburg. When it does, I will recognise it and tell the police. Until then, I have to live. So I sell myself.’

  It was said so simply he almost missed it. In these four words, she gave up everything that was hers to keep and award for love. Duggan felt old-fashioned and stupid. He ran his hand across his forehead to clear his conflicting thoughts. How could someone throw away so much with so little consideration?

  ‘Could you not have borrowed from your friend?’

  ‘No. I cannot even meet him. It is too dangerous. I call him every day from a different place.’

  ‘Why did you not go straight to the authorities?’

  She looked up at him with such simple candour, he wanted to reach out to her. ‘I am scared, Charles. I can’t trust them. Meier has connections. I have no proof. Only with proof will they listen to me.’

  ‘I understand. I think.’ He rubbed his face. ‘Look, it is late. We shall go to the authorities in the morning, I will talk to my liaison here. We can start to discover what’s going on and make sure you’re safe. For now, I think it best you stay here with me. Nothing funny. I shall sleep on the sofa, you can take the bedroom.’

  He rose and offered his hand, which she took, turning it to examine it closely. Elli squeezed and let go, following him to the lift. She dropped her gaze as they rose silently, following Duggan out of the lift and down the corridor. He opened the bedroom door for her and followed her into the room.

  She turned to him. ‘You have been very kind. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s nothing. This is the bedroom. Is there anything you would like?’

  ‘Do you mind if I wash? I still feel dirty from the road.’

  ‘Please.’

  As the shower started, he pulled the winter over-blanket and spare pillow from the cupboard and made up the sofa as best he could. He took his mobile charger from the bedroom. Coming back with it, he met her, wrapped in a towel and wearing hotel slippers, her clothes held against her in a bundle. She smelled of lemons. Her short hair was damp and she laughed at him.

  ‘You look like you have seen a ghost.’

  He smiled. ‘Good night, Elli.’

  ‘Good night, Charles.’

  She walked to the bedroom and he watched her slim legs and the slow swing of the towel on her shapely body, silhouetted against the bedroom lights for a second. The door closed behind her and he sighed, wondering how much of Elli Hoffmann’s wild story he could believe. He washed and turned in, fidgeting as he tried to fit his long frame into the short sofa.

  FOUR

  Lynch sipped his beer, screwing up his face as he surveyed the minimalist surfaces around him. The purple mood lighting highlighted the bottles in alcoves across the wall. The bar was quiet, but Lynch knew it would soon fill up with the eager, loud voices of young bucks competing for the attention of scantily clad girls with pu
mped tits and lips.

  ‘Why do you drink in these places, Tony?’

  Tony Chalhoub sighed as he leaned on the bar. His voice was gravelly, his accent spiced by a curl of French. ‘I’m Lebanese, Gerald. I suffer from the inherent need to celebrate life with each passing moment. You should take the glass rod out of your British ass and try it sometime.’

  Chalhoub, the deputy head of Lebanon’s police intelligence division, raised his bottle to clink against Lynch’s. Lynch laughed and shook his head at his friend’s taunting. Over the years, the two had shared good times, information, cases and even on one occasion, long ago, women.

  ‘That’s a filthy habit.’

  Chalhoub lit the cigarette, blowing smoke high into the air. ‘What the fuck happened at Michel Freij’s place, Gerald? His office manager has lodged a formal complaint. I had to burn valuable markers to get the police case dropped.’

  ‘GCHQ in Cheltenham picked up a number of Internet microbursts which turned out to be a stream of small payments to a company in Germany about ten days ago. Looking at it from the German side, it would have seemed like ordinary international e-commerce traffic, but we tracked the payments back to a tiny range of IP addresses, all here in Beirut. Each of the bank accounts they used had received transfers from a British Virgin Islands company. It was clever stuff, virtually undetectable unless you are looking very hard for it. The BVI company is Falcon Finance, a subsidiary of Falcon Dynamics. Falcon is a Lebanese defence systems company – Selim Hussein and Michel Freij.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Eighty million US.’

  ‘And the German company?’

  ‘An e-commerce website, sells home security stuff and gadgets. And it belongs to Michel bloody Freij and his fat friend. Another Falcon subsidiary.’

  ‘So what’s the problem? It’s their money, isn’t it?’

  ‘Come on, Tony. Don’t be bloody daft. They laundered offshore money to Germany using a complex Internet scam. Why? To avoid regulators? Us?’

  Chalhoub shook his head, his hand raised in negation, the smoke trailing from his cigarette. ‘No way, José. These people are legit, Gerald. They don’t need to launder money. Falcon Dynamics is a highly respected company and close to the government here as well as the Americans. Freij and Hussein are heroes. They’re the successful business partnership that transcended sectarianism and outdid the Israelis at their own game, the defence business. Christ, Michel Freij is running for president. And he’ll do it, too. This One Lebanon party of his is already strong in the coalition and they’re likely going to piss the elections next year. He’s untouchable.’

  ‘I don’t care. They’re fucking crooks. My masters want to know why Falcon sneaked eighty million dollars into Europe through the back door. And I want to know why they’d kill to protect that reason.’

  Chalhoub paused. ‘Kill?’ He peered at Lynch across the frosted green neck of the bottle he had been about to drink from, understanding dawning on his baggy-eyed features. ‘This dead journalist. Stokes. He’s one of yours.’

  Lynch drank, nodding. ‘The dead journalist is one of mine.’

  ‘Now I get it,’ Chalhoub drew on his cigarette. ‘Finally. You must think I’m slow, yes?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Kazab. Liar. You were trying to flush them out, but they bit you on the ass.’

  Lynch signalled the barman for another Almaza. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘This Stokes guy. He was close?’

  Lynch studied the label on his beer bottle intently. ‘Yes, yes he was. Move on, Tony.’

  ‘How are you so sure it was Freij?’

  ‘They left a little note with his name on. A little vellum note in fine calligraphy.’

  Chalhoub whistled. ‘That was Raymond Freij’s thing, wasn’t it? The little notes? You think Michel’s started doing the same his father used to? That’s crazy, Gerald. It just points the way straight back to him.’

  ‘I went to Stokes’ apartment yesterday. Two militia thugs let themselves in just after me. They had a key. There were no keys or papers left on Stokes’ body. I followed them up into Ashrafieh.’ Lynch pushed a scrap of paper across to Chalhoub. ‘Here. It’s a new building in Abdul Wahab El Inglezi Street. There are a large number of high-tech CCTV cameras watching it. Check it out, but I bet you a hundred bucks it’s something to do with Freij.’

  Chalhoub folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. ‘Okay. I’ve got your little white Irish butt covered, but you can’t go around beating up security guards in billionaire presidential candidates’ offices. Not even in Beirut. I got the case dropped, but we’ll still be lodging a formal protest with H.E.’

  Lynch winced. H.E. was His Excellency, the British Ambassador to Beirut, Sir St John Winterton. He raised his bottle in a tight-lipped toast to the last crusty old cold war era twit left in the diplomatic service and drew a deep breath. ‘Fine, Tony. We all do what we have to do. Sorry for the trouble.’

  ‘I understand. Anything I can do to help, let me know. I’ll check out the address.’ Chalhoub patted Lynch on the arm. ‘Don’t go near General Security with this. Anything to do with Freij and Falcon is off limits and loaded with a cocktail of sectarianism, wasta, bribery, and vested interests. They’ll just fuck you around, pass any information onto Michel and Selim and then shaft you. The Yanks will stamp on your ass, too. Those boys are way off limits. Way, way off.’

  Lynch scraped his hand over the stubble on his chin. He gazed into the mirror behind the stacked bottles. He was pale, the dark patches either side of his nose circling down to underpin the fleshy bags padding the bottom of his eyes. His open shirt was a washed-out blue and his collar was worn. He caught Chalhoub’s sympathetic gaze.

  Chalhoub slid off his bar stool. ‘Come on, Gerald. You should get some rest.’

  Lynch nodded, drained his bottle and banged it down on the bar top. ‘You’re right, Tony. I’m beat. Thanks for the shoulder and the hint about Michel and company. I’ll back off a bit until we have formal guidance from London. I was just pissed off they killed my boy.’

  Lynch patted his friend’s shoulder, palm-slapping Chalhoub’s bodyguard on his way into the night with its cicadas and the smell of apple shisha smoke on the breeze carried along with snatches of conversation and the clink of glasses.

  Lynch flagged down a servees, the ancient Mercedes taxi squeaking and groaning its way across the busy traffic until they reached Ain Mreisseh. Force of habit had him pay off the grubby old driver ten minutes’ walk from his apartment and take to the streets alone and watchful.

  Lynch froze at his apartment door. A sliver of light shone under it. He had switched the lights off before he left. He paused to catch his breath and slipped open the door. He crept down the hallway lined with books, framed photographs and Bedouin artefacts, his hand ready under his jacket, the butt of the P99 cool against his fingers. The muted notes of violin music sounded. He glanced at the black iPod in the cradle of the Bose speaker and relaxed.

  She was reading, curled up on the rattan chair by the open door to the balcony, her poetry notebook at her side. She glanced up, her faraway eyes focusing on the present and her full lips smiling.

  ‘Lynch. You’re done snooping for the day?’

  Leila Medawar, student activist, dissident, blogger and poet to the leftist anti-sectarian intelligentsia. Born into wealth and privilege, she was heart-rendingly idealistic. Lynch sighed at the sight of her, beautiful dark-haired Leila, lover of freedom, equality and British spies. Well, spy.

  Lynch had been looking into a student protest that threatened to march against the British Embassy, a boring little job he was only taking half-seriously. Leila was one of the ringleaders. Her defiant eyes had caught his across the student bar and held them. A week later they were lying together in his bed, her hair a tumble of brown curls across the pillow, and sweat glistening on her full breasts. The memory made him randy for her. He kissed her, a brief touch of the lips then a second, lingering, open-
mouthed melting. She laughed and ran her hand back through her hair.

  ‘You are dirty minded always, Lynch.’

  He caressed her cheek. ‘Thanks for washing up. Sure, you didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘An Arab girl, Lynch. It’s what you wanted, no?’

  Lynch regarded her seriously. ‘Just let me know, Leila, before you come round. We discussed that before. Anyway, I thought you were studying.’

  ‘I got bored. Beside, you live like a pig, so I thought at least I would clean the sty. Why don’t you get a cleaner?’

  Lynch snorted as he poured a whisky. ‘It’s not very secure, is it, hiring cleaners?’

  ‘You fuck activists, so why not have a decent hard working Sri Lanki in the house too?’

  He acknowledged her point with a sardonic tilt of his glass, the ice clinking. In truth, most of what he did would trigger an outbreak of kittens back in London. Gerald Lynch was quite aware he wasn’t a textbook SIS operative. Then again, the Levant was hardly a textbook market.

  He pulled a Siglo IV from his beloved walnut humidor and clipped it. She gestured to him to bring her a drink and he did so, heavy on the ice the way she liked it, and in the Orrefors tumbler she brought to his flat the evening after they first made love, pulling it from her silver-studded handbag and plonking it down on the side table with a diffident, ‘This is what I drink my scotch from.’

  Lynch had never asked her why. Questions weren’t part of the deal between them. Sitting down at Stokes’ laptop, he searched the recent documents history and pulled up a file of the contacts Paul had made chasing after Michel Freij, the little job he had been doing for Lynch that had cost him his life. The last entries were in bold text, ‘Spike’ and ‘Deir Na’ee’.

  Lynch called across to Leila. ‘Where’s Deir Na’ee?’

  She uncurled and came to him, looking over his shoulder at the screen, her blouse opening to show the warm brown mound of her breast. ‘Deir Na’ee? The lonely home? Sounds like something up in the Bekaa. Never heard of it. Try Googling it. Might be a village somewhere.’