"Why? Until we've interrogated him, we'll know nothing more."

"A very unfortunate turn of events."

"True. Mr. Clayton had a promising future with the Agency. We'll miss the loss of his talents. But we will not miss the questionable talents — and the lectures on democracy — of Captain Powell."

Powell emptied the drawers of his desk into a cardboard box. The pens, the .45 ACP cartridges, the jagged crescent of shrapnel, the bundle of paperback Korans — all the tools and mementos of his short and difficult career with the Central Intelligence Agency went into a box with Arabic scrawl and the picture of a peach.

Outside the Plexiglas windows of the Agency's East Beirut annex, 155mm artillery shells screamed through the gray morning. Explosions came from the port. Seconds later, the booms of the guns firing came from the Shuf Mountains above Beirut. Both the Phalangists and the Lebanese army had headquarters at the port. Powell went to the window of the west-facing office and tried to look to the northwest. But he couldn't see the target of the shelling.

"Your friends are murdering Christians again," Fisher said from the door. A blond pink-faced man of forty, Fisher had relayed the cable from Washington. "Guess it's a going-away bang for you."

"I don't have any friends with cannons."

"So you say. Here's your ticket to Washington." Fisher dropped an El Al folder in Powell's box of belongings. "Tell it to them."

Powell handed it back to him. "I'll book my own flight. Cancel this one."

"You're going out through Cyprus?"

"I don't know. Maybe they'll open the airport. I'm in no rush."

"Washington wants to debrief you immediately. Repeat, immediately."

"But I don't work for the Agency anymore. If I understand that cable correctly, I'm on my own time now."

"You're out of Beirut, that's what it means. As to your reassignment to another station, Langley didn't cable that information."

"Don't dodge it. I'm out. So I can leave when and how I want. And if I want."

"You want to stay on?" asked an incredulous Fisher.

Powell shrugged. He checked through the drawers a last time. Fisher glanced at the box of objects and books. Seeing the Korans, he started away. "Don't leave just yet," he said. "There's a detail I need confirmed."

"What?"

"Checking a translation." Fisher went to his office and returned with a file of reports. "That Libyan. In a lounge he made a comment..."

"Where?"

Fisher ignored the question. "He made a comment in Arabic that one of our people overheard. Our man translated it, but just to be sure, I had him quote in Arabic also. Look at this, what does that mean?"

Scanning the handwritten script, Powell considered it a moment, then asked, "What was the context?"

"There was a news clip on the television of the President. The ragheads made a series of threats..."

"Ragheads?" Powell interrupted. "You mean, Muslims? Or Palestinians? Or Syrians? Iranians? Libyans? Maybe Aunt Jemima? Who exactly is a raghead?"

"Muslims, whoever, they're all the same. One of them said, 'If the infidel offends thee, strike down the infidel with a sword.' "

"Talk's cheap."

"And the Libyan said, 'The sword rises.' "

"What else?"

"Then the Libyan left for his appointment. You know the rest."

"He said that just before Clayton got wasted?"

"Only minutes before the ambush. Is that quote translated correctly?"

Powell nodded. "The sword rises."

Akbar and Hussain led Powell up flight after flight of steel stairs. Artillery and rocket-propelled grenades had punched holes through the reinforced concrete of the stairwell walls. Though workers had cleaned away the debris and repaired the damage the high-explosive and armor-piercing warheads had inflicted on the steel stairs, the gaping holes in the walls remained — some only a hand's width wide, others a meter in diameter. Winter wind and freezing rain came through the holes.

At one landing, Powell found himself staring into storm clouds where an entire section of wall was gone. The stairs and railings had been rewelded and gaps bridged with scrap steel and pipe. Holding onto the rail, Powell looked straight down to the slums and ruined districts of Beirut.

"This is a new one," Powell said to his friends.

"Quite a view, huh?" Akbar asked. "Think I could open a restaurant? Call it the 'Stairway to Heaven.' Hot night spot. Look out at the lights, all that?"

"What lights?" Hussain asked.

"The lights of the city!" Akbar looked at Hussain with surprise. "You didn't listen to the radio this morning. The government announced the restoration of electricity to West Beirut. In forty-eight hours..."

They laughed. Continuing to the next landing, they stopped at the sandbagged post of two sentries. The teenage guards glanced at the handwritten pass Akbar displayed. The pass had the photos of all three men. But this did not satisfy their suspicions. The guards looked at Powell. They studied his face. They noted the Galil SAR and the American Colt .45 he carried. They looked at the Shia uniform he wore. "Who are you?" they demanded.

Akbar answered. "He's one of us. Does not the pass bear his photo and name? Perhaps you should summon our commander for a verification."

"We will." A teenager swung open the door and called into the corridor.

A group of armed men crowded the door. A tall dapper officer in faded fatigues and a beret stepped forward.

"My friend!" He gave Powell a quick embrace and ushered him into the corridor. The uniformed militiamen made way for the two men.

Sayed Ahamed headed a unit of Amal fighters operating in the area of the International Airport. Not a professional soldier, Ahamed had returned from a college in New York with a degree in urban engineering. However, in the chaos and hatred of the Lebanese civil war, no government office would consider the application of a Muslim. Rather than travel to the Gulf states in search of work, Ahamed stayed to fight for the creation of a modern, nonsectarian Lebanon.

Powell had met him when they worked together as coordinators of the Marine patrols, Powell mapping the routes of the Marine platoons through the Shia neighborhoods, Ahamed arranging the preparations for the patrols. In the days and hours preceding the patrols, Ahamed and his units acted as advance men, scouting the narrow streets, questioning residents, watching for outsiders. This prevented incidents. However, after the American administration ordered the guns of its naval force off the Lebanon coast to fire in support of the Christian forces, the Marines — and any friend of the Marines — lost the goodwill of the Shia people. Families gave shelter to anti-American fundamentalist gunmen. Snipers fired on Marines. Ahamed could no longer send in his men without casualties. The Marines abandoned the patrols due to the extreme risk.

In the months that followed, the Marines became prisoners within their compound, under fire from every extremist sect and gang. The militias fought an endless battle of unreported skirmishes with units of the Palestine Liberation Army, the Islamic Amal splinter group, the Iranians, the Druze and Syrian terror teams, infiltrating with the goal of murdering

Marines. The Syrians and Iranians finally resorted to a truck bomb to penetrate the concentric rings of Christian security, Shia security, then the few Marines with unloaded rifles who manned the gates to the compound. Hundreds of United States Marines died. The two friends — Ahamed from a village in the Shuf Mountains and Powell from a one-drugstore town in Texas — refused to hate each other for the mistakes of fools educated at Harvard and Yale.

"The others are waiting," Ahamed told Powell, his arm around his American friend's shoulders.