“Hekmatyar says send a hundred men. Fifty rocket grenades. Or we can't hold all night.”
“Tell him to pull back now. To Soutros Soustani.”
Another rocket hit upstairs and the old man clasped his ears. Rosa shoved him aside, yelled at Mohammed, “I'll shut your snipers up. Give me a gun!”
“My son's there,” the old man said, “with Hekmatyar.”
“He'll pull back now. To safety.”
Rosa snatched Mohammed's arm. “You're abandoning the Green Line?”
“I don't have the men to hold it.”
“Put the wounded here?” someone called.
“Basement!” Mohammed yelled. Another rocket smashed through the upstairs and out the back, exploding in air, pieces howling down.
“Who's on the roof?”
“Dead!”
“Who's upstairs?”
“None.”
“Got to go!” someone was saying, over and over. “Go!”
Rosa shook Mohammed's arm. “Give me a gun!”
“The basement,” someone yelled.
“No!” Mohammed thundered through the plaster dust and echoing explosions. “I want an outpost here!”
She snatched his beard in both hands and shook it. “Do you want to kill those snipers?”
“Quiet!” he snapped.
“It's Christians in the Life Building,” she seethed, “with antitank rockets and a fifty caliber! Give me a gun, and I'll get them!”
“You?” Hassan was coughing from the dust. “You?”
“If I get them,” she said to Mohammed, “will you follow my plan?”
Another rocket hit and he pushed her down. “Go back to Mount Hermon, Rosa! Leave us to fight.”
WET COBBLES HISSED AND RATTLED under the tires, a cat's eyes flashed from beneath a parked Citroen, a big dog bent over a trash can – then André saw it was an old man. “You're going to kill yourself with those cigarettes,” he said to Monique.
“Can't stop,” she said.
“If someone said stop or they'd shoot you, wouldn't you stop?”
“You always think one more won't hurt you.”
He pushed the button to open her window a crack, to suck her cigarette smoke out. “Funny it's what we love that kills us.”
“Sometimes I think it's the reverse: we kill what we love.” She took a last drag on the cigarette, tossed it out of the window. “You ever think where you want to be when you die?”
“Buried?”
“I want to be in Corsica, a rocky hill high over the sea. I told Hermann that, but he couldn't give a damn – thinks we're all going to live forever.”
He turned into Rue Etienne Marcel, shifted into second, letting the car snap them back, slid his hand up her short skirt, the lovely silky thigh perfect against his palm. “I like the sea.”
She put her hand over his. “You'd be buried there?”
“Down with the fish and octopus, the sharks, flesh of their flesh.”
A taxi shot out of a side street and he braked hard, the Alpine sideskidding. Should have switched the rear tires, he reminded himself angrily.
“That's it, isn't it?” She pointed up at a crooked tower over the narrow twisting street. “The tour de Jean sans Peur?”
“He built it with a fortified room at the top, to spend his nights.”
“Who'd he kill? I forgot.”
“His cousin, the Duke of Orleans, in the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois.”
“Imagine, never daring to sleep, for fear you'll be knifed to death.”
“He was killed anyway, by the Armagnacs.” He geared down, hit the high beams. “Has to be here.” On one side of the next street, tall leaning stone façades, on the other a wall two stories high with a great red carved door. André pulled up on the paved drive, and sounded the horn and the door swung open.
Inside, cars were parked in a broad cobbled square lit by the tall windows of a great house with a double curving stone staircase. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don't say who I am.”
12
THE MAP WAS BLOODY and torn across Shatila, Rosa noticed. Where they'd slaughtered so many. For an instant war seemed insane, like facing a mirror and smashing your image till you bleed to death. Here at Rue Weygand the map was worn by many fingers having moved across it, fingers seeking ways out, ambushes, corners, dead ends, ways to get caught and ways not to, the brutal business of death. How far can that rocket reach? How long can he breathe with a 7.62 through his lungs?
“It's a firestorm,” the boy was saying. He was dirty and thin, a tail of keffiyeh over long curly blond hair, a Christian cross chained to his neck in case of capture. He couldn't stop his lips from shaking; he kept pinching them with his fingers, and the tears were streaking his cheeks, making him seem even younger. Every time he started to talk his lips would shiver and the tears ran.
“You don't have to go back,” Mohammed said.
A rocket came down clattering over by the Serail, only half blew. “Send us more men.”
“There aren't any.”
“Here?” The boy glanced round. Bullets drummed into the front wall; upstairs someone fired back.
“I have ten men for a command that should have fifty,” Mohammed said. “Every man I take from here risks losing a hundred elsewhere.”
“I understand.”
Mohammed hugged him across the shoulders, pulling him close, touched his forehead to the boy's temple. “Go quickly and carefully.” He stood back. “Look at me!” When the boy glanced up, Mohammed looked straight into his eyes. “I order you not to die.”
The boy glanced down as if contrite.
“And tell Abou Hamid,” Mohammed said, “to pull back to Riad Solh, except for the one building that makes the L at the corner. Tell him no matter what don't lose it. Retreat to it if you have to, but don't lose it.”
“If we do, we can't get across –”
A bullet snapped overhead but Mohammed did not duck. “Keep the three buildings around it – you'll see, there's three in a box. They're all stone with small windows. If you keep the upper stories you can sweep the streets and nobody's going to come in, and until they get the Israelis or the Americans on you you're OK. Keep the M60 on the top floor of the building on the right and one Katyusha the next floor down in the middle. Two riflemen at least in the place on the left, one top, one middle.”
A man with a bandaged head came in, winded from the climb. He hugged Mohammed and the boy, one guard.
'Go on,” Mohammed told the boy. “Tell them no rock 'n roll.”
“Full automatic? We don't have the ammo.”
“Do you want to speak to Al-Safa?” the radio man called.
Mohammed took the phone. “Allah!” He turned to the boy. “I'll be there at midnight.”
“Don't come –”
“Tell them to pull back,” Mohammed said into the phone.
“We lost the fifty caliber,” the bandaged man said.
“You what?” Mohammed put down the phone.
“A