The Levanter Part 18

'My Famagusta office could handle it indirectly.'

'Don't you know that Colonel Shikla's people monitor everything you send out?'

'I could make a change of course look like a price quotation.'

'That's hanky-panky. We don't want any mistakes. I'd sooner you used Miss Malandra.'

'How?'

'She goes to Rome every so often to see the lawyers for her family estate. About all that unusable land in the mezzo- giorno that they're still trying to unload for her, right?"

He waited for me to ask how he knew about that, but when I only nodded he went on.

'The moment you have the information, put her on a plane for Rome with it. Then send a wire to your Famagusta office authorising the payment of her hotel expenses in Nicosia if she stops over on the way back. No more. I'll know.'

'Will she stop over?'

'No. We'll pick up the message from her in Rome. She always stays at the Ha.s.sler, doesn't she? We'll contact her there giving your name. Right?'

'Supposing Ghaled objects. Don't forget, we're supposed to be under PAF orders.'

'He's really got you locked in, hasn't he? I should have thought it was easy enough. Don't tell him, and don't wire Famagusta until she's on the plane. Then play innocent if you have to. That shouldn't be too difficult.'

'Supposing I don't get the information, supposing there's some last minute change of plan.'

'Send Miss Malandra to tell us. Same routine.'

'It's all very chancy.'

'Whose fault is that? You're the one with access to the information.'

'You could shadow the Amalia and get the course change yourselves with what I've already told you.'

'Do you know the size of the Israeli navy?'

'Yes.'

'Well, talk sense Mr Howell. One fast patrol boat to make an interception, that's feasible. We might even send a destroyer at a pinch. But let's keep this thing in proportion. We're not the US Sixth Fleet and we have plenty to keep us busy as it is. Shadow one unarmed merchant ship all the way from Latakia? If I proposed that they'd think I'd gone round the bend.'

'Well, it's your skin, not mine. I just think we're leaving a lot to chance and introducing unnecessary complications.'

'Why? You send that innocent little wire to your office here and we'll act on it. We'll get your message then, in clear and with no possibility of error, within hours, very little more than the air-time from Damascus to Rome. What's complicated about it?'

I didn't answer immediately because I was by then confused as well as annoyed. What was annoying me, of course, in addition to the man gazing smugly across the desk, was the realisation that the Palestinian Action Force was not the only underground organisation to have infiltrated the Agence Howell without my knowing it. The source of the confusion had to do with Teresa. The thought of her being safely out of the way in Rome when the Ghaled thing became operational was more of a relief than I would have expected. Naturally, I a.s.sumed that there must be something wrong with the idea.

But I couldn't see what. In the end I nodded.

'Okay,' I said, and without thinking drank some more of the orangeade.

Barlev smiled his approval.

'Full of vitamin C, that stuff,' he said again. 'The right kind of sugar, too. Good for you, Mr Howell.'

Although I had been away three days and had no time to waste on travelling, I went to Beirut by air and returned to Damascus by road.

The truth was that, while I didn't just then feel up to going through the airport VIP routine, I was uneasily aware of the fact that if I arrived by air at Damascus without having given the usual advance notification, Dr Hawa might wonder why. That is the way in which contact with intelligence people affects me; I start looking over my shoulder, I become furtive. In their line of work I wouldn't last five minutes.

There was the usual back-log of office work waiting for me, but I made no attempt to tackle that with Teresa. Our extracurricular activities had precedence now.

I told her, more or less, what had happened with 'Barlev'. She listened calmly enough until I came to that part of the discussion which had concerned her. Then she became indignant.

'You mean to say that those Israelis have been prying into my affairs?'

'They pry into all their enemies' affairs, Teresa.'

'I am not their enemy.'

'Here we are all enemies. So they keep dossiers on us. It's no use getting cross.'

'But I am cross.'

'Not too cross to go to Rome I hope.'

'Oh I will go if I must, but these are private things. How could they know about them?'

'Land ownership, wills and trusteeships are matters of public record. They only have to look.'

'Well I do not like it.'

'If the worst that's going to happen to us is some slight invasion of privacy we won't be doing badly. So stop fuming and tell me your bad news.'

'First, you are to report to Issa. That is very urgent. Second, you are to call Abouti. That is also very urgent. Third, you are to speak at the earliest possible moment with Dr Hawa's Chef de Bureau. These are all connected urgencies I think.'

"The battery works directive?'

'Yes, but I could get no details. They will only talk to you.'

'I'll start with the Chef.'

He was his usual long-winded self, but we got to the point in the end. 'Concerning the new surveying and clearing work being carried out at your Green Circle site, Mr Howell, some questions have been raised.'

'By whom, Chef?'

'By, ah, that is to say in-ah-Certain Quarters.'

Certain Quarters was the accepted euphemism for Colonel Shikla and his merry men of the Internal Security Service.

'Questions?'

'As to the, ah, security arrangements and allocation of responsibilities to the local police. I understand that the questions have been raised particularly in connection with the night work.'

'Would it be convenient if night work could be suspended until these questions can be resolved at the appropriate level?'

'Yes, Mr Howell, it would indeed. I realise, and the Minister realises, that the work is urgent, but if, without undue inconvenience, there could be an accommodation, a temporary eas.e.m.e.nt... .?'

'I understand, Chef. You need say no more. It shall be attended to immediately.'

He was grateful. Life could be made very unpleasant for a Chef de Bureau when Certain Quarters did not get what they wanted from him.

I was encouraged by one thing: Ghaled, it seemed, had decided to accept my plea of impotence in the matter of the directive, and had applied to his allies in the ISS for protection. I was not, at any rate for the moment, unduly suspect.

However, I would have to act.

Abouti was inclined to be obstructive at first. As he was charging treble for the night work, and paying out for it, at best, time-and-a-half, my instruction to him to stop it was not well received.

'My dear, you asked for the utmost speed,' he wailed. 'I have allocated my best men to the job at the expense of other work. I must plan in order to do this for you. I cannot chop and change.'

'The difficulties are only temporary, my friend, only temporary I a.s.sure you.'

'They are not difficulties, my dear, only betises . I know all about it. I have Rashti's reports. An argument or two with your watchmen who are exceptionally stupid. An absurd dispute with the driver of your truck. That is all.'

I nearly said, 'What truck?' but a warning bell rang in my head just in time.

I said instead: 'Which truck? Which driver?'

'Which? You have so much night business, so many loadings from that place? Does it matter? Wait, Rashti is here. I will ask him.'

Ever cautious, he put his hand over the telephone while he spoke to Rashti. Then he came back on.

'He says the truck is a Mercedes diesel and that the driver is a little c.o.c.kroach whom he will crush with two fingers of his left hand if you will authorise him to do so.'

'Unfortunately, my dear friend, it is not so simple. As I said, the difficulties are only temporary. But the incidents to which you refer are not the difficulties we are concerned with now. These, which I think it better that we do not discuss on the telephone, have been created in Certain Quarters. There are matters of border security and police jurisdiction involved.'

Even Abouti could not shrug off Certain Quarters.

He was silent for a moment and then said, 'Ah,' three tunes in three different and highly expressive ways. After that he waited for me to cue him.

'A little patience?' I suggested.

'Yes, yes, my dear. In such circ.u.mstances one should not be hasty.'

'Good. We shall keep in touch then. But for the present no more night work. Agreed?'

'Agreed. I do not wish. . . .' He did not say what he did not wish, which was to be involved in any way with Certain Quarters. 'Yes, we will keep in touch," he ended and hung up.

'When were the fuse adapter rings delivered?' I asked Teresa.

'The day after you left for Famagusta."

That meant that somewhere - most probably in the battery works-the adapter rings were now being married by night to the Katyusha rocket bodies.

I didn't have many trucks in the Damascus area. There was a transport pool, based on the tile factory, which served the various cooperatives as and when needed. I used mostly Fiats. The biggest vehicle I had was a Berliet van generally used for handling the furniture shipments. I hadn't one Mercedes diesel. The 'little c.o.c.kroach'- Issa by the sound of it-was utilising some other unfortunate's transport to convey the Katyushas to their secret destination.

I didn't give the matter any more thought then. Barlev had said that it would have been surprising if Ghaled had not had a few Katyushas. It was no concern of mine where they were going; or so I thought in my innocence. I did, however, bear the Mercedes diesel truck in mind. That, too, was a pity.

'What about Ghaled?' Teresa asked; 'and reporting to Issa. They know you're back.'

I made up my mind. 'Tell Issa that there will be no more night work.'

'Just that?'

'No. Tell him also to convey a social invitation to our master.'

'Do we really have to?'

'Yes. I've got to get him off his own ground and on to ours. Dinner and backgammon the day after tomorrow, or, if that doesn't suit him, any other evening he chooses.'

'When will I be going to Rome?'

'That's why we're asking him to dinner-to see if we can find out.'

The following morning I drove to Latakia and saw our agent there.

His name was Mourad, Gamil Mourad, and if I speak of him in the past tense it is because he has recently severed all connection with the Agence Howell.

A shipping agent like Mourad is rarely the employee of a single company; generally he is in business on his own account, finding cargoes for and serving the interests of several owners, and handling all the paper work involved with discharging and loading: cargo manifests, bills of lading, insurance and so on. He is a sort of traffic manager.

I don't blame Mourad for disowning us. I didn't level with the old man and he has grounds for complaint; although, to be frank, I never knew a time when he did not complain. He was the complaining kind; it was his way of doing business. My father thought highly of him.

He was very fat, suffered from bronchial catarrh and always carried in his right hand a large bandanna square. This he used as a fly-whisk, a fan and an expander of gestures as well as a handkerchief.

When I saw him he was still brooding over the re-arrangement of schedules which had followed the, for him, extraordinary delay of Amalia in Tripoli. He made downward flapping motions with the bandanna to signify his displeasure.

'I did not realise,' he wheezed, 'that those Libyans had become so difficult.'

By 'difficult' he meant 'more than reasonably venal'.

'Now that they have oil,' I said, 'they all expect to become rich.'

'Oil! Ah yes.' In Syria, the only Arab country with no oil of its own, you can blame almost any commercial misfortune on oil. 'But such petty hara.s.sment is new.'

It was not only new, but had also proved extremely expensive to me personally. I had had to employ a man I knew to be a crook as intermediary and pay him five hundred dollars of my own money; this in addition to the Libyan bribes. He would keep his mouth shut for the time being because I had promised him further similar commissions, and because he would still be trying to figure out why I was sabotaging my own ships; but eventually he would talk. Even if he were not wholly believed, his tale would leave a certain smell in the air.

This delay has cost us money,' Mourad persisted.

'Perhaps this will make up for it. Here.' I gave him a list of the shipments I would be making from the cooperatives in the Amalia. They were substantial.

He shook his head over the list. 'Is this all?'