Dynamite Fishermen by Preston Fleming Page A

minutes early.”
    “Sorry for the short notice, but I wouldn’t have asked you to come if it weren’t important. On Wednesday you asked for our help in stopping the car-bombing campaign. Well, later this afternoon the embassy will be giving the Deuxiéme Bureau some important new information about the people behind the car bombs, and I expect that Phalange intelligence will be given the same information very soon afterward. I want you to find out what the Phalange does with the information—in particular, I’d like to know of any arrests they make or any retaliation they decide to carry out. And one more thing: if anyone is arrested, please try to get copies of the interrogation reports. Can you do it?”
    “Give me five days,” Maroun replied confidently. “There will be a meeting of the war council next week. I may be able to learn something then.”
    “How about Wednesday morning at nine thirty, at your brother-in-law’s apartment in Antélias? He’ll still be in South America for another few months, won’t he?”
    Maroun nodded. “Yes, the apartment will be empty through the summer at least. But just in case, look for me in the window before you enter. I will be standing at the southeast corner of the building if it is safe for you to come up.”
    He took a folded wad of onionskin typing paper from his handbag and gave it to Prosser. The pages were blank. “Here is something for you,” he said as he handed over the papers. “I wrote this using the new secret-writing technique you showed me. It discusses Bashir’s new reserve training and mobilization scheme for the planned blitzkrieg against West Beirut.”
    At that moment the elevator stopped at the building’s top floor, and the door opened onto a deserted hallway. Prosser pressed the button for the rue Hamra level and resumed speaking as soon as the door closed again. “Good. We can use it,” he said.
    He inspected the top two sheets quickly, refolded them, and put them in the breast pocket of his jacket. He then took a sealed envelope from the other breast pocket, tore open one end, and handed his companion a thick wad of Lebanese currency.
    “Your salary is in there for this month, plus the extra amount you requested for your son’s spring tuition. I’m sorry it took so long, but we hadn’t budgeted for it.”
    Maroun’s face brightened. “Thank you, my friend,” he said. “You have solved a very big worry for me.”
    “Don’t mention it,” Prosser replied. “Uh-oh, we’re almost there. Quick, do you have anything else before the doors open?”
    Maroun shook his head.
    “Then I’ll see you again on Wednesday. When they open, get out without me; I’m going on to the lower level.”
    “ Ma’assalama , Peter.”
    The door opened and the Lebanese left the elevator without looking back.
     
    * * *
     
    Prosser was barely a block away when he noticed a crowd of people gathered outside the Cinema Colisée on rue du Caire. The crowd watched impassively as four young men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles stood, weapons at the alert, flanking a white Range Rover and a silver Volvo sedan. While Prosser approached, the four men opened the doors to the cars and jumped in. An instant later the two cars began to pull away slowly from the curb.
    Prosser’s attention was drawn to a distraught-looking middle-age woman in a shapeless blue housedress and white headscarf who lunged at the Volvo, reaching through its open rear window as if to bring the car to a halt. A woman some twenty years younger, possibly her daughter, seized a door handle of the Range Rover trying to run alongside while crying some urgent but unintelligible appeal to the driver. She kept up the chase for twenty or thirty paces until a hairy fist brandishing a shining nickel-plated revolver reached out of the opposite side of the sedan and fired two shots in the air. The woman released her grip and came to a halt in the middle of the street, her chest heaving from the