The Levanter Read Online Free PDF

“I am glad of this opportunity of meeting you.”
    We sat down on the stools.
    “I regret,” he said, “that I am unable to offer you coffee here, but perhaps you will accept a glass of arrack and a cigarette.”
    He stumbled over the words and they were the last he said in English. Miss Hammad now took over as interpreter.
    A bottle of arrack and two glasses stood on the bench beside the tape recorders along with a pack of the cigarettes I usually smoke. Obviously the arrack, the glasses, and the cigarettes had been brought by her in the haversack.
    “Mr. Ghaled does not, of course, normally drink alcohol,” she said as she opened the bottle, “but he is not bigoted in these matters and as this is a private occasion he will join you in a glass of arrack made in Syria.”
    I happen to loathe arrack, wherever made, but this did not seem the moment to say so.
    “I am told that Syrian arrack is the best kind.”
    She translated this as she poured.
    Ghaled nodded and motioned to the glasses. We each picked one up and took ceremonial sips.
    “I will now prepare the tape recorders,” said Miss Hammad. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor now and went on talking alternately in English and Arabic as she set up the microphones and inserted the cassettes.
    “Each tape will record for thirty minutes at the slow speed, and I will warn you when I am about to change them. Perhaps it will be as well if I repeat the conditions under which the interview is conducted.”
    She did so. Ghaled said something.
    “Mr. Ghaled has no objections if Mr. Prescott wishes to take written notes to supplement the tape recording.”
    “Thank you.” I put my glass down and took out the scratch pad on which I had already made notes of the preliminary questions I would ask - the easy ones. I could feel Ghaled watching me as I thumbed through the pages; he was trying to weigh me. I took my time looking over the notes and lit a cigarette to extend the silence. If he became impatient, so much the better.
    It was Miss Hammad who became impatient.
    “If you will say something into the microphones to test them, Mr. Prescott, we can begin.”
    “It is an honour to be received by Mr. Ghaled.”
    She translated his reply. “It is gracious of Mr. Prescott to say so.”
    She played it back on the recorders. They were both working. She pressed the “Record” buttons again and said in English and Arabic: “Interview of the commander and leader of the Palestinian Action Force, Salah Ghaled, by Lewis Prescott, correspondent of the American Post-Tribune news service syndicate, meeting in the Republic of Lebanon on . . .” She looked at her watch to check the date before adding it.
    It was the fourteenth of May.
     

Chapter 2
    Michael Howell
     
     
    May 15 to 16
     
    On the fourteenth of May I was in Italy, and I wish to God I had stayed there.
    Even an airport strike - if it had delayed me for twenty-four hours or so - would have helped. At least my ignorance would have been preserved a little longer. With luck I might even have escaped direct involvement. But no. I went back on the fifteenth and walked straight into trouble.
    The fact that the poison had already been in the system then for over five months - ever since the man calling himself Yassin had come to work for me - was something I did not know. I have been accused of having turned a blind eye until circumstances forced me to do otherwise. Nothing could be further from the truth.
    Unfortunately, those who know me best, business friends, for example, have found the fact that I was both ignorant and innocent hard to accept. My admission that never once during those months had I had the slightest inkling of what was going on seems to them no more than a highly unconvincing, but in the circumstances necessary, claim to incompetence. Well, I can scarcely blame them, but I am sorry. That admission, which I certainly did not enjoy making and of which I am anything but proud, happens to be