The Levanter Part 12

'Unfortunately. . . .'

He held up his hand. 'No excuses. You will change your advice, you will do whatever is necessary. Just understand that under no circ.u.mstances may this headquarters be disturbed in any way for the next six weeks.'

'I will do my best.'

'Of course you will. But make certain that your best succeeds.' He paused. 'Have you any other surprises for me, comrade Michael?'

'Surprises?'

He frowned. 'Come now. I have already warned you once against trying to play your slippery little businessman tricks with me. What else have you to reveal?'

'Nothing, comrade Salah. I am merely trying to be open with you, not to play tricks.'

'I hope so for your sake. But to make quite sure, I am going to tell you what will be required of you in our forthcoming operation. In that way you will have ample time in which to overcome any difficulties you may foresee, or pretend to foresee, in carrying out your tasks. You will have no excuses for failure.'

'I have already said that I will do my best for you, comrade Salah.'

'I have heard you say it. I hope you are to be believed. We shall see.' He paused. 'Your company owns a motor ship, the Euridice Howell.'

It was a statement not a question, but I nodded. 'Yes, comrade Salah.'

'Carrying mixed cargoes regularly between five major ports-of-call - Famagusta, Iskenderun, Latakia, Beirut and Alexandria. Am I right?'

'Those are her most usual ports-of-call, yes, but she goes where the business takes her-Izmir, Brindisi and Tripoli- Genoa and Naples sometimes.'

'Nevertheless her captain acts on your orders.'

'He acts on our agents' orders. I don't give the orders personally.'

'But you could do so.'

'I could instruct our agents to do so, but that would be an unusual interference on my part. There would have to be some feasible commercial justification for it. If you could tell me what sort of orders you have in mind, comrade Salah, I would be better able to a.s.sess the possibilities.'

'Finding the commercial justification, as you call it, is your affair. I want the ship to sail from Latakia on or about July the second and to be on pa.s.sage to Alexandria in the vicinity of the thirty-second parallel during the evening of the third before midnight. That is all.'

'Carrying what cargo?'

'A normal cargo. The nature of it is immaterial. She will, however, be required to take on four pa.s.sengers in Latakia. During the night of the third the course and speed of the ship will, for a short time, be those dictated by the pa.s.sengers.'

I shook my head. 'You must know, comrade Salah, that no ship's master is going to take orders about the course and speed of his ship from pa.s.sengers."

'Not even if those orders are transmitted to him by the owners before sailing?'

I hesitated. 'That would depend on the orders. No captain is going to hazard his ship or his crew, and on that coast no Agence Howell captain would take even the smallest risk. In particular, he would take the greatest care,' I added meaningly, 'not to enter territorial waters.'

'He would not be required to enter territorial waters, nor to hazard his ship. The course would take him very slightly out of the normal shipping lanes for a period of two hours at reduced speed. Nothing more.'

I thought for a moment about the captain of the Euridice Howell. He was a middle-aged Greek, a dignified, highly respectable man with a plump wife and seven children. Ash.o.r.e as well as afloat he was a strict disciplinarian. The prospect of having to persuade this valued employee that Ghaled's orders about course and speed, however innocuous they might appear, were to be obeyed without question was not one that I cared to contemplate.

'Have you any special reason for using the Euridice?' I asked.

'Only that this is a normal pa.s.sage for her to make and that she is known to make it regularly.'

'We have other ships making it all the time. You said, comrade Salah, that rinding convincing commercial justification for this sailing at this precise time and with pa.s.sengers is my affair. I must tell you that with the Euridice Howell it would be difficult to find convincing justification. It is really a question of how discreet we have to be. If discretion does not matter. . . .'

'Of course it matters. There must be absolute discretion.

Then we should not use the Euridice.'

'What ship then?'

'I would like time to think about that, comrade Salah.' In fact I had already thought, but in terms of amenable captains rather than suitable ships. The captain I had in mind was a swashbuckling Tunisian who had been a prosperous hashish smuggler until business rivals had shot him up in his fast motor boat off the toe of Italy. After some time on the beach he had come to work for us. Touzani was an efficient captain, but although he had kept his nose clean with us, I suspected that he was still in touch with his former a.s.sociates. He wouldn't question strange orders, I thought, whatever he might think of them privately; and he would keep his mouth shut.

'Very well,' said Ghaled; 'but do not say that you have not been given sufficient time to make the necessary arrangements. As soon as you have the name of the ship you will inform me.'

'At once.'

'It must be an iron ship, you understand, and no smaller than the Euridice Howell.'

'She would be of about the same tonnage.'

'Progress reports on your various tasks should be made through comrade Issa who will also transmit further orders.'

'Then you may go now.'

'Yes, comrade Salah.'

We went. Teresa, tight-lipped, was obviously seething with various suppressed emotions. I a.s.sumed that the predominant ones would be senses of outrage and indignation directed against Ghaled. It wasn't until Ahmad and Musa had left us at the gate that I found that I had been mistaken. Her quarrel was with me.

'You think that he's insane, don't you?' she said abruptly. There was accusation in her voice.

The question disconcerted me. Until then I had thought of Ghaled as a violent and dangerous animal. It hadn't occurred to me to think about him in terms of sanity or insanity. I am not a psychiatrist.

I said as much.

'But you have been treating him as if he were insane, haven't you? Insane or stupid?'

'I certainly don't think he's stupid.'

'Hearing you this evening one would never have guessed it.'

'You mean I humoured him too obviously?'

'I mean that you humoured him one moment and challenged him the next. Worse, you pretended to be afraid of him and then demonstrated that you weren't.'

'Well, I am dammit! I am afraid of him.'

'You concealed the fact too well. Now, he doesn't know what to make of you. Are you to be trusted or aren't you? That's what he's wondering. Your att.i.tudes weren't consistent.'

I sighed. 'I'm not used to dealing with Ghaleds. What would you have done?'

'Given in on all points. Created no obstacles. Agreed to everything.'

'And then what?'

'Run. At least we can still do that. Get out as soon as we can.'

'And hide from his killer squads?'

'He was bluffing. What could he do to us in Rome?'

'Our businesses are in the Arab countries, and he knows it. We're also foreigners and vulnerable. There's no bluff about that.'

Then liquidate the businesses, Michael. Sell the ships. Your family wouldn't care. You'd all still be rich.'

I stared at her in amazement. She made a performance of shoving the key into the ignition, but wouldn't look at me.

'Liquidate because of Ghaled?' I demanded. 'Are you serious?'

She paused before answering. 'You've thought of it yourself,' she said; 'you know you have. And not just because of Ghaled and the PAF. You don't think the Agence Howell has a future in the Middle-East. You think that it has had its day. I know, Michael. I know very well.'

'Splendid! May I know how?'

'It's no good taking that tone with me, Michael. You must know that I, at least, am not stupid. What is all this business you are doing here but a process of liquidation? You won't admit it, but getting out is what you really want-on your own terms, of course, and in good order-but soon. The Howells have had a good run for their money, but for them there is no longer security of tenure in this part of the world. Your mother knows it, I am quite sure.'

'Mama?' I laughed.

'Certainly. She as good as told me so once, before I became persona non grata. She must have told you. The best suites in five-star French hotels, plenty of bridge with good players and remote control over the upbringing of her grandchildren - that's her plan for the future. Monaco in winter, Evian in summer, a Rolls-Royce and chauffeur and her Lebanese personal maid. You know it's true, Michael.'

'And you think I share my mother's tastes?"

'No,' she said, 'you'll always work. But not here. You don't often give yourself away, but you did this morning.'

'I did?'

'That one place where we could go to ground quickly and be absolutely safe from the PAF.'

'What about it?'

'It was Israel you were talking about, wasn't it?'

'It was. Naturally, that would only be a last resort,'

'Naturally. The presence of Michael Howell in Israel, as soon as it was known about, would make the trading position of the Agence Howell extremely difficult. Liquidation would no longer be a matter of choice. It would become involuntary.'

'I'm well aware of that. As I said, a last resort in an emergency situation.'

'But you did consider it. Bad for business, yes, but not out of the question even so. You see, Michael?'

I wasn't prepared to listen to much more. 'Do you want to run?' I demanded.

'Alone, you mean?'

I said nothing.

She persisted. 'Alone, leaving you to explain my defection to Ghaled?'

'You can if you want to.'

'That, Michael, is either unkind or silly.'

'I'm tired. Let's go home.'

'Very well.'

It wasn't until we were re-entering the city that she spoke again.

'What did Ghaled mean by the thirty-second parallel?' she asked.

I was thinking about metric thread tables and did not reply for a moment.

'Michael?' She started to repeat the question, when I answered her.

'Thirty-two degrees north is the approximate lat.i.tude of Tel Aviv,' I said.

Chapter 5.

TERESA MALANDRA.

May 18 to June 10 The reason why Michael is so difficult to understand -especially for journalists - is that he is not one person but a committee of several. There is, for instance, the Greek money-changer with thin fingers moving unceasingly as he makes lightning calculations on an abacus; there is the brooding, sad-eyed Armenian bazaar trader who pretends to be slow-witted, but is, in fact, devious beyond belief; there is the stuffy, no-nonsense Englishman trained as an engineer; there is the affable, silk-suited young man of affairs with smile lines at the corners of wide, limpid, con-man eyes; there is the mother-fixation managing director of the Agence Howell, defensive, sententious and given to speechifying; and there is the one I particularly like, who . . . but why go on? The Michael Howell committee is in permanent session, and, though the task of implementing its business decisions is generally delegated to just one of the members, the voices of the others are usually to be heard whispering in the background. Ghaled certainly detected the faint sounds of those prompting voices, but to begin with he positively identified only the engineer. About that member of the committee at least his judgement was correct; the Englishman's professional pride borders on the obsessional.

In the days that followed that second meeting with Salah Ghaled there seemed to be no more enthusiastic and devoted adherent to the cause of the Palestinian Action Force than comrade Michael. Within forty-eight hours the drawings and specifications of the fuse adapter ring had been completed and sent to the Beirut machine shop. A day later, after a telephone discussion, a price had been agreed and work on the sample ring put in hand. Meanwhile, the probable Howell shipping movements for the months of June and July had been a.n.a.lysed and a number of projections made. Then the possibilities of change and manipulation were explored.

It was like a mad chess problem.

On July 2 the MV Amalia Howell (4000 tons, Captain Touzani) must sail, possibly though not necessarily in ballast, from Latakia bound for Alexandria. Problem: bring this sailing about in not more than three moves, none of which may be observed by your opponent (in this case your own shipping agents) or, if observed, not recognised as moves.

Michael thought about it on and off for days. In the end he found a solution requiring only two moves: first, the contrived, temporary withdrawal of the Amalia's Deratisation Exemption Certificate (required under Article 17 of the International Sanitary Regulations) which would hold her idle in port for three or more days; second, a consequential re-arrangement of Howell freighter sailings which would send the Amalia, when released, to Ancona to pick up a cargo for Latakia. His eyes gleamed with pleasure as he went over the mechanics of it with me.

'Tell Issa to pa.s.s the news on,' he said finally. 'No details, just the name of the ship. You can tell him, too, that the sample ring will be in our hands on Monday next. Ghaled will want to see it. Request orders. We want to appear to be cooperating one hundred percent.'