The Network Read Online Free PDF Page B

cultured man with a sense of humour. He claimed to have been visiting relatives in the city when the war had started, and I had no reason to doubt his story. In the course of our interviews we’d talked about Lebanese food and wine, and the literary outputs of Gibran and Naimy. But a week after his arrival his interviews were taken over by a team from a newly formed unit I’d never even heard of. They wore civilian clothes and concealed sidearms, and their treatment of him grew too harsh for my liking. As E2 and translator I was obliged to be present, and after several days of seeing him manhandled and deprived of food I protested that under the definitions of the Geneva Convention his treatment was inhumane. I’d brought him cigarettes in his room and urged him to tell his interrogators what they needed to know. He’d always dismissed my suggestions with a mirthless laugh, claiming they would never give up. They will come for me, he said. I never understood what he’d meant. But this should all be ancient history, I’m thinking. This was all cleared up years ago.
    ‘Let’s go on, then,’ says the colonel. ‘On the morning of 9 February the facility is breached by persons unknown whose intention, you purport, is to kidnap Gemayel.’
    Purport? My left eye protests as the muscles try to open in surprise. ‘Persons unknown’ is a commando team with explosives and automatic weapons, the ammunition for which is later shown to be Israeli. They didn’t come for a tea party, I want to say. Unless they were planning to have one in a corridor of a prison facility filled with smoke from the plastic explosive they’d used to blow Gemayel’s door off its hinges while their screaming victim was being dragged out by his hair. Purport?
    ‘Let me ask: at the time when the facility was breached, what were your actions on in the event of a security failure? After the cessation of hostilities on 7 February were they not to issue a verbal challenge to any intruder? And did you issue a verbal challenge to the intruder?’
    ‘I can’t answer that question, sir.’ Because it’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard.
    ‘You did not.’
    Of course I fucking did not. When a man points an automatic weapon at you, you don’t engage him in conversation.
    ‘You shot and killed him instead. You fired eight rounds from your weapon into him.’ The colonel takes a sip of coffee. ‘There are some people – I’m not saying I’m one of them – who are still unhappy about that. There’s a family in Tel Aviv without a father, and there are people who want to know more about your motives that morning.’
    Motives? He’s pushing all my buttons now. My motives were to save my own life and prevent my prisoner from being kidnapped. There has never been any doubt about this – until now. I’ve relived the scene often enough. Relived the trauma, relived the debriefs, relived the guilt, relived the questions that cannot be answered.
    The assault team hadn’t expected to be challenged. They had planned for the guards at the entrance to the facility, who were disarmed and held at gunpoint at the outset of the raid, but not for two extra armed officers inside, who should have been quartered on the other side of the compound. I had slept in my office in my clothes after a late night of writing up reports, and across the corridor my best friend and fellow E2 had done the same. The first we knew of the raid was when the door to Gemayel’s cell was blown open with charges to the hinges and locks. I tripped the emergency lighting and ran with my weapon to the prisoners’ rooms, where the air was thick with shouts and smoke.
    It didn’t look like a tea party. I raised my Browning towards the figure in black who was dragging Gemayel out of his room. His weapon came up as he saw me, but for reasons I will never know he hesitated, allowing me in his second of doubt to fire. I kept firing until he went down. His partner returned a long burst from