“Yes.”
“Well, we can remedy that. But so that there are no misunderstandings I will put plainly what I hope is now obvious to you. There will be no changes made here unless I say so. Specifically, Issa will not be dismissed. Nobody will be dismissed. I shall continue to use these facilities as a rear-echelon headquarters. Is that clear?”
I nodded.
“I asked you a question. I require an answer.”
“Yes, Mr. Ghaled.”
“Miss Malandra?”
“Yes, Mr. Ghaled.”
“Good. Now, I am going to take you some way into my confidence. You referred to Issa’s work, Mr. Howell, as amateur bomb-making. I realize that you were angry at the time and that your intention was to humiliate him. However, you were both right and wrong. Right, in that the processes we are obliged to employ at present are primitive. Wrong, in that we are concerned here with bomb-making. Our present concern is for the production of detonators of a certain kind, and in quantity. Lacking the proper apparatus, equipment for temperature control, and regulation of flow tables, for example, we must, having due regard for safety, do the best we can without it. You follow me?”
“I follow.”
“But why, you must be wondering, do we need detonators so urgently? Of what use are detonators without the explosives to detonate? The answer is that we have the explosives, but that our supplies of the means to use them have been cut off by our opponents in Cairo and elsewhere. Even some of our so-called friends have attempted to obstruct and control our operations in this underhand way. Weapons are delivered, but the necessary fuses, though promised, are unaccountably lost or delayed in transit. And when they do arrive, as often as not, they are unfilled, of the wrong type, or for some other reason useless. It is deliberate sabotage.”
An ingenious and wholly admirable form of sabotage, it seemed to me, but I nodded sympathetically.
“So,” he went on, “we must create our own sources of supply. That, Michael Howell, is where you will be coming in.”
“I, Mr. Ghaled?”
“You have knowledge and skills and resources at your disposal which can be of great value to us. Would you not agree?”
My smile must have looked sickly. “It seems to me, Mr. Ghaled, that you are already utilizing my resources, and Issa’s knowledge, to excellent effect. You have created a source of supply for the material you were lacking. My knowledge and skills, such as they are, don’t appear to be needed.”
“There you are quite mistaken,” he said firmly. “However, I shall not explain now. Naturally, I was not expecting this meeting with you this evening. If I had known about it in advance I would have been better prepared. As it is we shall have to postpone discussion of your work for us until tomorrow. I will be able them to tell you exactly and in detail what is required.” He stood up and we stood up, too. “Shall we say nine o’clock in the evening? Miss Malandra had better come, too. You may wish to take notes.”
“Very well.”
“There is one other matter to be dealt with.” He snapped his fingers loudly and the gunmen came in from the hall. “This man and this woman will be here again tomorrow night,” he told them. “They are to be treated as comrades.” He glanced at me. “Did you hear that, Mr. Howell?”
“Yes.”
“But do you understand? I used the word ‘comrades’.”
“I heard it. I hope they remember.”
“I see you don’t understand. Surely you cannot suppose that, after your discoveries here tonight, and our frank conversation, I can allow you to leave without, shall we say, making sure of you?”
I shrugged. “You have already made it abundantly clear that I have to be discreet, and why.”
“I am not talking of discretion now, but of loyalty and good faith.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand.”
“It must be obvious. You are a foreigner here, but in a privileged position. You are free to come and go more or less as you please. That is a situation which I may find it useful to exploit in the future, but in the meantime it permits you to have second thoughts. If, say, you were to decide that instead of meeting me tomorrow you would prefer to be in Beirut or Alexandria or Rome and withhold your cooperation, I would be forced to take steps that I would regret.”
He paused to make sure that I understood the threat. “As. I say,” he continued, “I would regret the necessity for such action. It would be expensive because we might have to go a long way to find you. Besides, we prefer to have you alive and working with us. You must see that there is only one solution to the problem. You and this woman here must become loyal and committed members of the Palestinian Action Force and subject to its discipline.”
“But we are foreigners,” I protested idiotically, “we could not… we…” I began to stammer.
He silenced me with a gesture. “Other foreigners have been granted membership, foreigners of both sexes.” He paused and then added coldly: “They consider themselves honoured to serve — honoured.”
I mumbled something about it all being so unexpected, which he ignored.
“You are not a Jew. Neither, I think, is Miss Malandra. There is therefore no obstacle. You will take the oath of loyalty in the Christian form, of course. Have you your passports with you?”
I had mine in my pocket. All Teresa had was her identity card. He took both passport and card.
“These will be photocopied for our files and returned to you tomorrow,” he said. “At that time you will also complete some paper formalities. However, the oath of loyalty can be administered now. I don’t suppose you keep a Bible in your office?”
“No.”
“Well, it is not absolutely necessary. You first, I think. Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I, Michael Howell, a Christian, swear by the Holy Trinity and on the scared book of Antioch, that of my own free will, with a whole heart and without inner reservation, I pledge my life and property to the service of the Palestinian Action Force, and swear …”
He was speaking in Arabic and in that language the words sounded odd. The reference to Antioch made it a Maronite oath, and as I was technically Greek Orthodox I suppose it didn’t really count for me; but my mother, who is a practicing Christian, would have had a fit. I don’t remember the exact wording of the rest of the rigmarole, but the substance of it was that I promised total and unquestioning obedience in perpetuity and recognized that the least faltering was punishable by death. The penalty for betrayal of the cause, described in rather sickening detail, was more complicated but had the same end result.
“In the presence of these fraternal witnesses,” Ghaled demanded finally, “you swear this?”
The fraternal gunmen looked at me expectantly.
“I swear it”
“You are accepted.”
He went through the whole thing again with Teresa. I thought that as a Catholic she might boggle at some of it, but she went through it briskly and impersonally, rather as if she were reading back from shorthand a letter that I had just dictated.
“I swear it.” By then she sounded slightly bored.
“You are accepted.” Ghaled got rid of the gunmen with another snap of the fingers and gave us a long look.
“Congratulations, comrades,” he said. “It is proper now for you to address me, respectfully, as Comrade Salah. Will you remember that?”
“Yes, Comrade Salah.”
He nodded graciously. “Until tomorrow night, then.”
We were dismissed.
It was not until we were in the car again that I realized how tired I was. My back was still painful. It had been a long day. I could try hopelessly to think of ways out of the predicament we were in, but I did not want to talk about it.
Unfortunately, Teresa did.
“What are we going to do?” she asked. There was more excitement than anxiety in her voice.