*
Cam rented a white Toyota Corolla and drove south from the centre of Beirut to the mostly Muslim suburb of Bir-El-Abed. It was a jungle of ugly concrete apartment buildings interspersed with handsome mosques, each mosque on its broad lot, like a gracious specimen tree carefully cultivated in a clearing amid a crowded forest of rough pines. Poor though the country was, the traffic in the narrow streets was heavy, and the shops and street stalls were besieged by crowds. It was hot, and the Toyota had no air-conditioning, but Cam drove with the windows closed, fearful of contact with the unruly population.
He had visited the district once before, with a CIA guide, and he quickly found the street where Ayatollah Fadlallah lived. Cam drove slowly past the high-rise apartment building, then went all around the block and parked a hundred yards before the building on the opposite side of the road.
On the same street were several more apartment buildings, a cinema, and, most importantly, a mosque. Every afternoon at the same time, Fadlallah walked from his apartment building to the mosque for prayers.
That was when they would kill him.
No foul-ups, please, God, Cam prayed.
Along the short stretch of street Fadlallah would have to follow, cars were parked nose to tail at the kerb. One of those cars contained a bomb. Cam did not know which.
Somewhere nearby the trigger man was concealed, watching the street like Cam, waiting for the ayatollah. Cam scanned the cars and the overlooking windows. He did not spot the trigger man. That was good. The assassin was well concealed, as he should be.
Cam had been assured by the Saudis that no innocent bystanders would be hurt. Fadlallah was always surrounded by bodyguards: some of them would undoubtedly suffer injury, but they always kept the general public well away from their leader.
Cam worried whether the bomb’s effects could be predicted so accurately. But civilians were sometimes hurt in a war. Look at all the Japanese women and children killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the United States had been at war with Japan, which it was not with Lebanon; but Cam told himself that the same principle applied. If a few passers-by suffered cuts and bruises, the end surely justified the means.
Still, he was alarmed by the number of pedestrians. A car bomb was more suited to a lonely location. Here, a marksman with a high-powered rifle would have been a better choice.
Too late now.
He looked at his watch. Fadlallah was behind schedule. That was unnerving. Cam wished he would hurry.
There seemed to be a lot of women and girls on the street, and Cam wondered why. A minute later he figured out that they were coming out of the mosque. There must have been some special event for females, the Muslim equivalent of a mothers’ meeting. Unfortunately, they were crowding the damn street. The squad might have to abort the explosion.
Now Cam hoped that Fadlallah would be even later.
He scanned the cityscape again, looking for an alert man concealing some kind of radio-operated triggering mechanism. This time he thought he spotted the man. Three hundred yards away, opposite the mosque, a first-floor window stood open in the side wall of a tenement. Cam would not have noticed the man but for the fact that the afternoon sun, moving down the western sky, had shifted the shadows to reveal the figure. Cam could not make out the man’s features but recognized his body language: tense, poised, waiting, scared, two hands grasping something that might have been a transistor radio with a long retractable aerial, except that no one held on to a transistor radio for dear life.
More and more women came out of the mosque, some wearing only the hijab headscarf, others in the all-concealing burqa. They thronged the sidewalks in both directions. Soon, Cam hoped, the rush would be over.
He looked towards Fadlallah’s building and saw, to his horror, that the ayatollah was coming out, surrounded by six or seven other men.
Fadlallah was a small old man with a long white beard. He wore a round black hat and white robes. His face had an alert, intelligent expression, and he was smiling slightly at something a companion was saying as they left the building and turned into the street.
‘No,’ said Cam aloud. ‘Not now. Not now!’
He looked along the street. The pavements were still crowded with women and girls, talking, laughing, showing in their smiles and gestures the relief felt by people on leaving a holy place after a solemn service. Their duty was done, their souls were refreshed, and they were ready to resume the worldly life, looking forward to the evening ahead, to supper, conversation, amusement, family and friends.
Except that some of them were going to die.
Cam jumped out of his car.
He waved frantically towards the tenement widow where the trigger man lurked, but there was no response. It was hardly surprising: Cam was too far away, and the man was concentrating on Fadlallah.
Cam looked across the street. Fadlallah was walking away from Cam, towards the mosque and the assassin’s lair, at a brisk pace. The explosion had to be seconds away.
Cam ran along the street towards the tenement building, but his progress was slow because of the crowds of women. He drew curious and hostile looks, an obvious American running through a throng of Muslim women. He drew level with Fadlallah and saw one of the bodyguards point him out to another. Before many more seconds passed, someone would accost him.
He ran on, throwing caution to the winds. Fifty feet from the tenement he stopped, shouted, and waved at the assassin in the window. He could see the man clearly now, a young Arab with a wispy beard and a terrified expression. ‘Don’t do it!’ Cam yelled, knowing he was now hazarding his own life. ‘Abort, abort! For the love of God, abort!’
From behind, someone seized him by the shoulder and said something aggressive in harsh Arabic.
Then there was a tremendous bang.
Cam was thrown flat.
He was breathless, as if someone had hit him on the back with a plank. His head hurt. He could hear screams, men cursing, and the sliding sound of falling rubble. He rolled over, gasping, and struggled to his feet. He was alive and, as far as he could tell, not seriously hurt. An Arab man lay motionless at his feet, probably the person who had grabbed him by the shoulder. The man had taken the full force of the blast, his body shielding Cam, it seemed.
He looked across the street.
‘Oh, my Jesus,’ he said.
There were bodies everywhere, horribly twisted and bloodied and broken. Those not lying still were staggering, stanching wounds, screaming, and looking for their loved ones. Some people’s loose Middle-Eastern clothing had been blown away, and many of the women were half-naked in the true obscenity of violent death.
Two apartment buildings had their fronts destroyed, and masonry and household objects were still falling into the street, massive chunks of concrete alongside chairs and TV sets. Several buildings were burning. The road was littered with damaged cars, as if all the vehicles had been dropped from a height and had landed haphazardly.
Cam knew immediately that the bomb had been too large, far too large.
On the other side of the street he saw the white beard and black hat of Fadlallah who was being rushed back towards his building by his bodyguards. He appeared unhurt.
The mission had failed.
Cam stared at the carnage around him. How many had died? He guessed fifty, sixty, even seventy. And hundreds were injured.
He had to get out of there. In not many seconds people would start to think about who had done this. Even though his face was bruised and his suit was ripped, they would know he was American. He had to leave before it occurred to anyone that they had a chance of instant revenge.
He hurried back to his car. All the windows were smashed, but it looked as if it might go. He threw open the door. The seat was covered with broken glass. He pulled off his jacket and used it to sweep the seat free of shards. Then, in case he had missed any, he folded the jacket and placed it on the seat. He got in and turned the key.
The car started.
He pulled out, made a U-turn, and drove away.
He recalled Florence Geary’s statement, which at the time he had thought hysterically exaggerated. ‘By the laws of every civilized country it’s murder,’ she had said.
But it was not just murder. It was mass murder.
President Ronald Reagan was guilty.
And so was Cam Dewar.