“He works with anyone if they have enough money,” Petrosian said.

“Levon, anything to drink?”

“No, thank you. My stomach is upset today.”

“So this Haddad,” Rapp said, “who gave him the order?”

“I am fairly certain it was your friends from Islamic Jihad, but I will know more later. I am having dinner with Haddad this evening.”

“His idea or yours?” Ridley asked.

“His … He is afraid he has offended me, which he has, of course. He knows he cannot simply come into my neighborhood and grab my friends. It would have been nice if you had told me Bill was coming. All of this could have been avoided.”

“I know … I already told you I was sorry. He was planning on seeing you today. He didn’t want word getting out that he was back.”

“And how did that work out for him?”

“I know … but just be careful with Haddad. We can’t afford to lose you.”

“I am always careful. It will be at a restaurant of my choosing, and I will make sure the street is blocked off. Trust me … he’s the one who needs to be nervous.”

“That’s what worries me. What if he’s desperate?”

“He has always been a desperate little man. He knows what he did this morning was wrong. He will be full of fear, and I will play on that fear to get every last piece of information from him.”

“Any idea where they took him?” Rapp asked.

“That is the question, isn’t it? Where did they take him?” Petrosian shuffled across the stone floor and out onto the veranda. “Beirut is not a small city. It is not like your New York or Chicago, but it is not small. Have you figured out how they found him?”

“No,” Ridley said. “He flew in last night shortly after nine. That’s all we know.”

“I have talked to the people at the hotel, and I am satisfied that they did not know who he was. Somebody must have spotted him at the airport. From the old days. He made a big enough impression in certain circles, and those little Palestinian rats do all the dirty work at the airport. Baggage and fueling … cleaning the planes and the terminal. They treat it like their own little syndicate,” Petrosian said with contempt. “I have heard rumors that some of the cab drivers are involved in a kidnapping ring.”

“Would they have any pull with Haddad?” Ridley asked, thinking of the police chief.

“No,” Petrosian answered as he flicked a long ash over the edge and onto the cars below. “That would have to be someone much higher up. My guess is the same people who grabbed your other man … the Schnoz … Isn’t that what you call him?”

“Yes. You mean Islamic Jihad?”

“Correct … with the help of a few others.”

“Anything else?”

“Little things here and there.” Petrosian paused and chewed on his lip for a moment. “Have you heard about this standoff at Martys’ Square?”

“I heard a little something yesterday, but not much.”

“It is a funny thing,” Petrosian said while looking off into the distance.

“What you talking about?” Rapp asked.

Ridley pointed to the north. “Follow the scar to the sea … one block short, you can see an open area. That’s Martyrs’ Square.”

“Before the war it was a beautiful place. Full of life,” Petrosian said in a sad voice.

“It was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the war,” Ridley added. “The buildings are all empty shells now.”

“Now that the cease-fire has held, certain groups have gotten the idea that it is time to grab land while they still can. The Maronites started earlier in the week and they began occupying the buildings along the east side of the square. The Muslims got word and started moving their people into a building on the west side.”

Rapp looked at the spit of land. He guessed it was around two miles away. “Does that mean a fight is brewing?”

“Part of me wishes they would all just kill each other so the rest of us can pick up the pieces and get back to where we were before this mess started, but I know that this is not the answer. We need the peace to hold.”

“And how does this Martyrs’ Square situation figure into our other problem?”

“It might not, but then again manpower is an issue.”

“Manpower?” Rapp asked, not understanding.

“These groups are like any organization. They have limited resources. They have to collect garbage, collect taxes, man their roadblocks, punish those who aren’t behaving … the list goes on and on. The point is, if they are forced to hold the west end of Martyrs’ Square they will be weak in other places.”

Rapp wondered how he could use that to his advantage. As the sun moved across the afternoon sky he got the sinking feeling that they were losing an opportunity. That if they didn’t act, didn’t do something bold and do it soon, Richards and Hurley would share the same fate of Bill Buckley.

CHAPTER 57

HURLEY had lost track of time. After the fingernail incident, they’d left him alone. Turned off the light and shut the door. He sat in the chair, his arms duct-taped to the armrests and his ankles to the two front legs. His chest and shoulders were also taped to the chair back. Big loops of silver tape, as if he were a mummy. For the first few hours he tried to catalogue everything he’d seen, said, and heard. Abu Radih was what he’d expected—a thin-skinned overwrought child in a man’s body. If he was lucky, he could provoke the man into killing him. That was the first priority. He had to enrage the man to the point where he defied the orders of the others. Go down fighting. He dozed off thinking of his own death. What a beautiful death it would be if he could pull it off. Exercise his will over a free man. Inflict enough mental pain on Radih to get him to do something he himself knew was wrong.

The thought brought a smile to his swollen lips, and then he let his chin rest on his chest and went to sleep. He awoke some time later. It could have been an hour, three hours, or half a day, and what did it really matter? The stink in the room was horrendous, but it was far better than the hood. He needed to go to the bathroom, so he whizzed right there, letting it splash over the seat of the chair onto the concrete floor. That helped him relax a little bit, but his fingers were starting to really sting, so he started talking to God to take his mind off the pain.

Hurley had no illusions about his potential for sainthood. He pretty much knew where he was headed when it was over, and yes, he did believe in the man upstairs and the man downstairs. He’d seen too much nasty shit in his life to think for a second that there wasn’t both good and evil in this world. Where he fit into that paradigm was a little more complicated. One of his favorite aphorisms involved sending Boy Scouts after bad men. Good people needed men like Hurley even if they couldn’t bring themselves to admit it. Maybe God would take pity on him. Maybe he wouldn’t.

Hurley bowed his head and asked for forgiveness for any of the innocent people he’d killed over the years, but that was as far as he was willing to go. The assholes, he would not apologize for. He then nodded off to sleep again. He awoke later to the sounds of a man screaming. He knew instantly that it was Richards. What they were doing to him, Hurley could only imagine. The screams came and went, rising and falling like waves crashing into the rocks. And then Hurley could tell by the steady rhythm what they were doing. They were electrocuting him and they weren’t bothering to ask questions. They were just trying to wear him down. Listening to the pain of one of his own men was the most difficult thing of all.

Hurley bowed his head again and asked God for the strength to kill these men. It went like this for four or five cycles. He tried not to obsess over the time. When he was awake, he tried to prepare himself for what would come next. With an almost endless string of awful possibilities, there was one in particular that had him worried, and when the door finally opened, it was if his captors had read his mind.