“What kind of security do they have at night?”
“I’ve strolled around the camp after dark several times—they have a roadblock, manned by two recruits and one of the instructors, stationed here where the road curves uphill to the village and the camp. There’s a bunker with a heavy machine gun on top of the hill over the quarry which is manned during the day. I’ve never been able to get up there at night because the gate in the perimeter fence is locked and I didn’t want to raise suspicions by asking for the key.”
“We must assume it is manned at night. They’d be fools not to. The machine gun must be a priority target. What kind of communications do they have?”
“Don’t know really. Never saw the radio shack, or a radio for that matter. Spotted what looked like high frequency antennas on the top of the minaret of the mosque, so whatever they have must be somewhere around there.”
“We don’t want to bomb a mosque, so we’ll have to take that out by hand. Does Dr. al-Karim have a satellite phone?”
“Never saw one but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.”
“When will this round of training be finished.”
“I’ve told Dr. al-Karim I needed ten more days.”
“What happens then?”
“The graduating class goes off to the front to kill Israeli soldiers occupying the buffer zone in Lebanon. And a freshman class turns up to start a new cycle of training.”
“How many instructors and staff are in the camp?”
“Including transportation people, including the experts on small arms and martial arts, including Dr. al-Karim’s personal bodyguards, four that I’ve seen, I’d say roughly eighteen to twenty.”
Djamillah went over the photographs again, double checking the distances between buildings, the location of the gate in the perimeter fence, identifying the footpaths that crisscrossed the village and the Hezbollah camp. She produced a military map of the Bekaa to see what other forces Hezbollah might have in the general vicinity of the camp. “When the raid begins, you must somehow get to this spot”—she pointed to a well between the village and the Hezbollah camp. She handed Dante a white silk bandanna and he stuffed it into the pocket of his trousers. “Wear this around your neck so you can be easily identified.”
“How will I know when to expect the raid?”
“Exactly six hours before, two Israeli M-16s will fly by at an altitude high enough to leave contrails. They’ll come from north to south. When they are directly above the camp they will make ninety degree turns to the west.”
Djamillah slipped the photographs and the map back into the folder and wedged it into the seam of the cushion.
“Looks as if we’ve more or less covered the essentials,” Dante remarked.
“Not quite.” She stood up and began matter of factly stripping off her clothing; it was the first time in his life Dante had seen a woman undress when the act didn’t seem sensual. “You are supposed to be up here having sex with me. I think it would be prudent for you to be able to describe my clothing and my body.” She removed the blouse and the skirt and her underpants. “I have a small scar on the inside of my thigh, here. My pubic hair is trimmed for a bikini. I have a faded tattoo of a night moth under my right breast. And on my left arm you will see the scars of a smallpox vaccination that didn’t prevent me from getting smallpox, which accounts for the pockmarks on my face. When we came up here I locked the door and you put fifty dollars—two twenties and a ten—on the desk and weighed them down with the shell casing that’s on the floor over there. We both took off our clothing. You asked me to suck you—that was the expression you used—but I said I don’t do that. You stripped and sat down on the couch and I gave you a hand job and when you were erect I slipped on a condom and came on top of you. Please make note of the fact that I make love with my shoes on.” She began to dress again. “Now it’s your turn to strip, Irish, so that I can describe your body if I need to. Why do you hesitate? You are a professional. This is a matter of tradecraft.”
Dante shrugged and stood up and lowered his trousers. “As you can see, I am circumcised. My first American girlfriend talked me into having it done—she seemed to think there was less chance of her catching some venereal disease from me if I were circumcised.”
“Circumcised and well endowed, as they say. Do you have any scars?”
“Physical or mental?”
She didn’t think he was humorous. “I do not psychoanalyze my clients, I only fuck them.”
“No scars,” he said dryly.
She inspected his body from foot to head, and his clothing, then gestured for him to turn around. “You can put your clothes back on,” she finally said. She walked him to the door. “You are in a dangerous business, Irish.”
“I am addicted to fear,” he murmured. “I require a daily fix.”
“I do not believe you. If you did not believe in something you would not be here.” She offered her hand. “I admire your courage.”
He gripped her hand and held it for a moment. “And I am dazzled by yours. An Arab who risks—”
She tugged her hand free. “I am not an Arab,” she said fiercely. “I am a Lebanese Alawite.”
“And what the hell is an Alawite?”
“We’re a sliver of a people lost in a sea of Arab Muslims who consider us heretics and detest us. We had a state once—it was under the French Mandate when the Ottoman Empire broke up after the First World War. The Alawite state was called Latakia; my grandfather was a minister in the government. In 1937, against our will, Latakia became part of Syria. My grandfather was assassinated for opposing this. These days most of the Lebanese Alawites side with the Christians against the Muslims in the civil war. Our goal is to crush the Muslims—and this includes Hezbollah—in the hope of returning Lebanon to Christian rule. Our dream is to reestablish an Alawite state, a new Latakia on the Levantine shore washed by the Mediterranean.”
“I wish you good luck,” Dante said with elaborate formality. “What is it that Alawites believe that Muslims don’t?”
“Now is not the moment for such discussions—”
“You are a professional. This is a matter of tradecraft. I might be asked what we talked about after we had sex.”
Djamillah almost smiled. “It is our belief that the Milky Way is made up of the deified souls of Alawites who rose to heaven.”
“For the rest of my life I shall think of you when I look at the Milky Way,” he announced.
She unlocked the door and stepped aside. “In another incarnation,” she remarked solemnly, “it would have been agreeable to make love with you.”
“Maybe when all this is over—”
This time Djamillah did smile. “All this,” she said bitterly, “will never be over.”
Two days after his return from Beirut, Dante was squatting in the dirt at the bottom of the quarry, demonstrating to his nineteen apprentice bombers how to fill the body cavity of a dead dog with PETN, when there was a commotion at the gate of the perimeter fence above them. Several of Dr. al-Karim’s personal guards were tugging aside the razor wire. Horns blaring, two cars and a pick-up truck roared into the camp and pulled up in a swirl of dust. As the dust settled, gunmen wearing the distinctive checkered Hezbollah kaffiyah could be seen dragging someone wearing loose fitting striped pajamas and a hood over the head from the second car. Women from the village emerged from their homes and began filling the air with ululations of triumph. Lifting the hem of his burnoose, Abdullah trotted up the path until he was within earshot of the gunmen who had stayed behind to guard the vehicles and called out to them. One shouted an answer to his question and fired a clip from his Kalashnikov into the air. Abdullah turned back toward the quarry and, cupping his hands around his mouth, yelled, “God is great. They have captured an Isra’ili spy.”