Enemy of Mine

up, probably wondering what she should do. I was wrong.

She stepped between us, looked Samir in the eye and said, “Pike’s family was murdered. Both his wife and child. For nothing. That’s why he changed the subject when you started talking about marriage. Don’t push his buttons about suffering. I promise you won’t like the results.”

I whipped my head to her. Samir’s mouth fell open.

She continued. “He has the same rage you do. He looks just like you when he gets worked up. He didn’t invade Lebanon; so don’t take it out on us.”

Samir looked from her to me. I said nothing, but my expression told him it was true. He sagged back into his chair. When he spoke, he was back to being the Samir I knew.

“I am sorry. Sorry for the both of us.”

I exhaled and sat down as well.

“That’s okay,” I said. “The rage is mostly gone now.” I smiled. “Jennifer was just trying to scare you.”

He scraped something off of his knee and said, “Maybe I can help anyway. I have sources. I can ask around.”

“No, no. This is like what we used to investigate. I’m not going to ask you about the price of bread in Tripoli. Don’t worry about it. It was good just seeing you. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Wait. I’m telling you I have sources. Just like I used to have. Let me help.”

I paused and looked at Jennifer; she shrugged, saying, What’s the harm?

“Okay. My government has heard about an assassination attempt here in Lebanon. The sticky point is that we can’t figure out the target. Some analysts say it’s Lebanese, and some say it’s American. With the new United States envoy to the Middle East doing his first tour, coupled with the peace process in Qatar, people are getting antsy. I just figured I’d see if you could help neck it down. See what you’ve heard.”

Surprised by the question, he said nothing for a moment, sizing me up as if for the first time, seeing things that should remain in the shadows.

“Because it would help in your archeological business?” he said. “Help you find sites? You and Jennifer?”

I held his eye for a moment, then said, “Because I was asked to check while I was here. Nothing more. A favor for friends in the government. Can you get that to the fusion cell?”

“No. My sources aren’t military ones.”

“Druze?”

He said nothing, simply looking at me, and it clicked. He’d gone completely over.

“Tell me you’re not with Hezbollah. You can’t possibly be with those murdering thugs.”

He grew indignant. “I am Druze, and will always be, but Hezbollah is a power. We have connected with them. They aren’t the murderers you say they are. They are the majority in our government now. I’m not with them, but I don’t fight them.”

“How on earth can you-a Druze-say that? They want an Islamic state, for God’s sake. They started the damn 2006 war! They’ve got a fucking theme park celebrating the destruction of your country. And you blame Israel…”

I stomped to the door, Jennifer right behind me. I opened it, turned around, and said, “They are your road to ruin, and you don’t even see it.”

“Pike, wait. No matter what you think of them, they can help. After the Hariri assassination they’ve become very sensitive to killings in Lebanon. They get blamed for them all. If what you say is true, they’ll want to stop it just as much as you do. And me. They have connections like nobody else in this country. They’ll be able to find out if it’s true or not. I promise they won’t want an American getting killed here. They want to consolidate political power, and that would only hurt them.”

“I can’t believe I just heard that come out of your mouth. They kill Hariri, the man putting your country back together, and now I should use their help because they got caught and don’t want to get blamed again. Do you hear yourself?”

“They didn’t kill Hariri. You can believe that. No way. That’s just what the Zionists want the world to believe. Either way, you have the same interests here.”

I didn’t like the stench of it, but he was right. Feed this to Hezbollah, and they’d get to the bottom of it. Unlike us, they’d just cut off some heads. The end-state was fine by me. The only question was whether they weren’t behind it in the first place. Odds were what he said was true. Hezbollah didn’t do a lot of kidnapping and killings of foreigners anymore, since they’d gotten hammered for the suspicions of killing Hariri-and since they’d assumed a majority in the government.

I decided I was willing to risk it…with some caveats.

“If you go to them, you’d better make damn sure you don’t mention me or Jennifer. Nothing about us, understand? You might trust those torturing Islamic fascists, but I sure as shit don’t.”

I gave him our cell number and walked out to the car, Jennifer in tow. To my back, Samir said, “I’ll call tomorrow.”

When I didn’t respond, he said, “Pike. I’m still Samir. I wouldn’t join a group of terrorists. Hezbollah doesn’t run around killing anymore. The civil war is long over. They don’t hire assassins.”

13

Infidel felt comfortable following the Druze. He had stuck to main thoroughfares and was now walking on foot down the Corniche, the long stretch of western coastline along Avenue de Paris. Full of fishermen and tourists, it was easy for the assassin to blend in. The only reason anyone came to the Corniche was to walk, so no destination was expected. He could follow all day long without arousing suspicion. Not that it mattered. The Druze seemed relaxed in the environment and showed no signs of attempting to sort out any surveillance efforts.

Yesterday, the assassin had met his contacts in Hezbollah at the same coffee shop they always used, in the heart of the Dahiyeh, surrounded by thugs. He was not a timid man, but he greatly feared being killed by mistake inside the stronghold. After all, he looked exactly like someone a paranoid foot soldier for Hezbollah would think was a U.S. spy. Someone to torture purely for the pleasure of it. He was thankful for the iron hold Hezbollah’s hierarchy had over their men. It was cultlike in its efficiency.

The meeting was strained, with a vibe that was different from previous encounters. He’d been paid and congratulated for his successful killing of the investigator, then told about a rumor of an attack in Lebanon, possibly against U.S. interests. A walk-in, a Druze no less, had brought information from an unknown source.

Ja’far and Majid had both professed innocence, but had heard of a meeting between Palestinian freedom fighters that they wanted to check out. The meeting was supposed to be a simple strategy session, but Hezbollah now wondered if it was something more. They wanted him to provide the Druze with equipment to record the meeting. Which was definitely strange.

Why waste effort on a recording? Why not just hammer them? Hezbollah certainly had the ability-and the will-if this meeting had a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping their political agenda. Killing Palestinians wouldn’t affect Hezbollah at all, unlike killing an investigator of the Tribunal-and they’d paid him for that easily.

He was sure there was something more going on, and he thought he knew what it was.

They’ve set something in motion and are afraid of losing control.

The meeting was in the port city of Sidon, a little less than an hour south of Beirut, but outside of Hezbollah- land. If he was right, it meant they were using Sunnis for the job-whatever it was-but the Sunni groups had nowhere near the discipline of Hezbollah. All rage and jihadist fervor.

And that’s why I’m being asked to help. They wanted him to provide the means to ensure that the Palestinian radicals weren’t just taking the money and about to screw up Hezbollah’s plans.

The one thing that confused him was the Druze connection. Why make up the story about an unknown source and a possible assassination attempt? Why not just say they’d heard about something strange going on and have him provide the equipment, like every other transaction they had done? The story held a ring of truth, and an unknown source providing information to Hezbollah scared him.

Doing some digging, he’d learned that the Druze had been an operator in a very elite section of the Lebanese