Mike Bond Bound. Mike Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ Christian cemetery crushed under whole flattened buildings, and think how primitive and vicious they were, back then.

      The souk was gone.

      Acres and acres of crushed buildings and vanished streets that once had been an ancient bazaar of shops, tenements, whorehouses, jewelry stores, ateliers, bars, hashish and opium dens, French bakeries, locksmiths and lawyers' offices, goldsmiths and smugglers, with its Phoenician walls and Roman streets and Crusader alleys sticky underfoot with centuries of blood.

      There was no street where he once had lived on the top floor over La Croissant de Paris, in the little room with the worn silk bedspread over the mattress on the pine floor, with the French window letting in the night, Layla young and tanned in his arms.

      But where did they go? If even where they'd been was gone, where were they?

      He felt nauseous and wanted to sit down and throw up or weep, it was the same thing. Three men were coming downhill through the rubble; instead of turning aside he walked straight past them and they did not stop him.

      There was a firefight somewhere, to the south, the salvos tailing off and erupting again. Rockets began to swish over, coming from the dark tall hulk of the Holiday Inn – Hezbollah, maybe, firing at Phalange. Pieces of sharp thin metal were falling, and a soft rain.

      THOUGH LAYLA matters most, Mohammed thought, Rosa’s the one who saved me. He picked up his gun. “Wait till I come back.”

      “Giving orders already? Now you've had me?”

      “Go first, then, if you like.”

      “We'll both go.” She tightened the coat over the nurse's uniform, scrunched out of the cave mouth and turned right along a string of rocks overseeing the trail. He waited a minute, then went left, also working toward the trail.

      No one was visible across the whole broad ridge of snowy dark boulders. The other men's tracks had been softened by wind and half-filled with new snow. Mohammed followed them and met Rosa in the middle. Girl-like, she cocked up her head. “Let me go a hundred yards ahead?”

      “Who's giving orders now?”

      “We spread the ambush distance, and you're clear of mine shrapnel, if I hit one.”

      “I'd be the world's worst coward!”

      “You're the one I came here to protect, not me.”

      He moved past. “Just stay in my steps, a good way behind.”

      There's no point in worrying about the mines, he'd wanted to say, because if it's fated for me to step on one then, in'salah, I will. It won't do any good to worry. And if I do step on one, I'll be either dead or maimed, and if I'm maimed you'll have to shoot me.

      Chances were there would be no mines in this path, only elsewhere. Chances were those men had mined below, then come up this path. She'd said they were carrying shovels but he hadn't seen them. No experience – she'd take anything for a shovel.

      NICOLAS’ and Samantha's house was dark. Neill let himself in the back door and climbed the stairs to his room. Loudspeakers echoed in the street. He lit a candle and sat on the bed, poured a glass of Black Label, put out the candle. If Layla was going to send for him, it wouldn't be tonight. It was damn cold, the wind sucking through the empty windows, constant rumblings of war. Your heart gets numb, all these dying people weighing it down. He saw the woman's burning face, felt it melting on his hand, saw his building in the souk explode, him and Layla inside it. He went to the window. Only two flights if he fell but the concrete down there could crush your skull. No point in worrying about jumping because he wasn't going to jump. The dark hole leered up at him. You will if I want you to, it seemed to say.

      And if he'd been with Layla, all these years? He saw her walking up the path toward College Hall past Marquand House, so slender and unconsciously lithe in her slim skirt and blouse and long dark hair, with a new black bag over one shoulder, smiling toward him, into the sun. He saw her in the crowded souk, holding up a dented brass coffee-maker with a carved bone handle. “It's real Bedouin!” she whispers in English, so the grizzled Druze shopkeeper won't understand.

      Downstairs the back door squealed, Nicolas and Samantha's footsteps in the corridor. He put the Black Label under the pillow, lit the candle, and went down.

      Nicolas and Samantha were holding each other, broke apart as he came into the room. “What's new?” he said, slowing, trying to sound jovial.

      “It fell through.”

      Neill snickered, wanting to inoculate them against defeat. “It would've been what – the seventeenth failed ceasefire?”

      “It's not that. Every day without fighting's a success.”

      Neill started to speak, held it. A fist hammered on the plank front door. Nicolas waved them down on the floor, went into the hall. “Who is it?”

      “Hamid! For Dickson. Get him out here!”

      Nicolas looked at him helplessly. “Maybe you shouldn't go.”

      “It's to see her,” Neill answered. “Any message?”

      “No,” Nicolas smiled. “Not after all these years.”

      “Be careful,” Samantha said.

      Neill went down the back stairs and round through the dark garden. When he got to the pavement it wasn't Hamid but two mujihadeen. “Let's go,” one said in English, jerking his gun.

      “Where's Hamid?”

      “You're coming with us.”

      “Hamid sent you?” he said in Arabic.

      “Don't be such a pussy,” the first answered. “Who else would want you?”

      “Wait!” Neill gestured at the house. “Let me tell them –”

      “Nothing doing.”

      They fitted a black hood over Neill's head and walked him into the street. “Beat it!” one called, and someone's steps scrambled away, high heels.

      “Don't!” a woman screamed.

      “He's just going for a visit,” the mujihadeen said. “He'll be right back.”

      They trotted him down the street, tripping over cracks in the concrete. One gripped his burned hand and when he tried to pull away held tighter. They stopped, a car door snapped open and they shoved him in between them, a wide plastic seat smelling of fish oil, rust and dust. The car lurched forward pinning him to the back of the seat. A Mercedes diesel’s rough roar, the shocks gone, wheels banging in holes, jolting him left, then right, up the hill and over the top, down and up other streets, no end, once an ambulance screaming by, the smell of hot honey and spices – a shop somewhere. He tried to remember the turns but lost track, the car bottomed through ruts then jerked to a stop, a hurried conversation with someone through the driver's window. It lurched forward, uphill, always uphill now, stink of open-air sewers, burned rubbish, dead animals – he was back in Shatila.

      Up an alley, round something in the middle of the street, the driver cursing, the car tipped, sliding Neill against СКАЧАТЬ