A flare burst, half-lighting the street and across it a stairway. Without thinking she crossed the street and climbed the stairs, the light shifting up the steps as the flare fell. The flare died and darkness leaped out at her from the head of the stairs as she caught a glimpse of a vast low room of hunched machines.
She stepped into the room. No sound. Slowly then faster she walked down the aisle alongside the machines. They were like huge animals sleeping, making her afraid to wake them.
Another long low room to the right, then a corridor climbing beyond, then stairs to a dark passage; beyond it a broken door, another dark room.
Wind came through the broken door and chilled her back. She could just see the rectangle of greater darkness that was another door beyond. In between was dark shadow, lumpy, rubble maybe, from the roof through which the tiles had fallen, leaving only a few rafters with splintered crosspieces, a skeleton's ribs black against the sky.
Toward Ras Beirut a machine gun opened up, throaty bursts like migraine jolts, then a long twisting fusillade, answered by the metallic chatter of Kalashnikovs, the hot spat of Galils. She imagined the bullets smashing and clattering through shattered walls and piles of concrete, snatching innocent flesh by hazard, tearing and splattering it.
Someone came through the door behind her and stood, panting.
Whoever it was hadn't seen her. Or he'd seen her and was waiting. To see what she'd do.
She twisted round silently to face him, sinking to her knees to drop her profile from view. He hadn't seen her because he was just standing there. Now he was looking around – she saw the dark shadow of his head move. Automatic rifle in his right hand, smell of burnt oil and powder. Pale shirt, stink of his sweat, cigarette breath. Surely he must smell her too?
He coughed softly, his head moved, and he spat spraying her face. He lunged on ahead, down the corridor into the night.
When his footfalls had cleared the room ahead she followed, toeing her way in and around the smashed concrete, along a path many feet had hardened. Before the next door she halted, expecting him to be there. But he'd gone on, a stripe of moonlight skidding off his shoulder. Twenty yards ahead now, moving fast.
Three more rooms, rubble, splintered beams, starlight, silence, the quiet of roaches and rats, of all that feed on corpses. She imagined them eating, the little shreds of flesh, flesh that had made love, had held children and danced to music, then felt the chill of death.
Ahead a sudden scuffle, a gasp, grunts, three men at least, a voice: “Calm down, brother! Tell us, what religion are you?”
The man in the pale shirt kept gasping, trying to gain time to decide if these men who had grabbed him out of the darkness were Christian or Muslim, Druze or Hezbollah, Sunni or Shiite, Maronite, Syrian, Palestinian or Israeli.
“Answer right and I kiss you,” one of them said. “Answer wrong and you die.” The others closed up behind him, one's shape blocking the corridor. Rosa edged back into the rubble of the room, knelt down, reached under her raincoat and untied the sack of grenades.
“Just going to Rue Hamra,” whispered the man in the pale shirt. “Please, brothers.”
“What religion?”
“Truly, brother, I don't care about religion.”
“One last time, brother, before I shoot. What religion?”
“Allahah akbaar,” the man sighed.
Clink of pistol cocking. “Recount the faiths.”
“Do not hurt. Do not lie. Do not steal.”
“Which of those are you doing tonight?”
“I was just going to Rue Hamra. My family –”
“You are truly a Muslim, brother?”
“Truly.”
“You're in luck, brother: so are we.”
Rosa took three grenades from the sack, laying them side by side on the ground. She retied the sack tight around her abdomen, put a grenade in each pocket and took the third in her hand.
“Allah be praised,” the man in the pale shirt kept repeating. His voice was shivering. The other men were joking with him now, about his being almost shot for a Christian. “Those pigs!” he said, “eat their own children's entrails.”
“How do you know, brother?” one of the men laughed.
“Because I've made them do it.”
“Really, now?” One voice took interest. “Tell us.”
“No, not really. Just joking...”
“It is a joke, really,” another put in, softly. “The joke is that we're Christians.”
“And you're a filthy little Muslim,” said the first questioner, “who sucks his own cock.”
“Please, brother, oh God, please! I'll help you – I've got money –”
“Open his legs!” one said.
The man was screaming then moaning through something, then choking. “See!” one laughed. “I told you Muslims suck their own cocks!”
“That's homosexuality,” another said. “You know the sentence for that.”
“Certainly.” There was a sharp, three-shot burst.
Beretta parabellum, Rosa decided, 9 mm, Israeli issue. Thus perhaps truly Christians. No way could she go back up the shattered corridor without them seeing her shadow cross the opening where the roofs had fallen in. Stay here and sooner or later one of them would light a match, a flashlight, and see her. Or circle round, to take a piss, run right into her.
The grenade was a hard perfect weight in her hand. But even then could she be sure? Should she move back into the rubble by the wall of the room and wait for them to leave? She put down the grenade, cupped a hand over her wrist and slipped back the sleeve to check her watch: 21:42.
She felt behind her with her toe for a clear place in the broken concrete, stopped when it made a slight hiss against plaster and cement dust. She found another place for her foot, further back, slowly shifted her weight and moved a step backward.
7
RAIN STREAKED the windows. Holland is the only place on earth, Neill thought, where the rain comes down sideways.
In Beirut there’d be no rain now. The wind down from the hills, pine and lavender, the cafés on Rue Hamra full of espresso and cigars and sweet liquor and sex, the sounds of traffic, music, laughter.
No, Hamra's barricaded and bombed. And the only people who go out become the dead ones on the pavements.
“You've been married nineteen years,” Inneka said. “No one else I know, but for my parents, their generation, has stayed married so long. How are you going to explain divorcing to Edgar? Even worse, to Katerina?”
“They'd barely notice if I went.” He slid his hand slowly up the curve of her waist. So smooth, he thought, nothing stops you.
“I refuse to be the one who makes that happen. If you're going to break from her, do it for yourself, not me.”
“I'm crazy,” he let his hand fall, “to be thinking of going from one of you to the other.”
“You're the one you have to learn to live with, darling.”
They dressed in