The hideout apartment

An excerpt of my twelefth book "On both sides of the abyss".

The American embassy press attaché in Beirut Kenneth Collins or Ken as Amina knew him was very worried, after he visited at nine pm this very night Amina's hideout apartment and did not find her there. He sat waiting for her up to ten thirty pm and returned to his place very perturbed. He was sure that she is involved in some accident or worse that she was kidnapped by some local hoodlums. He did not believe that she left him and returned to her family in Damascus, for apart from being madly in love with him she told him that they'll kill her for having dishonored her family. There was nothing he could do but wait. The next day when he reached the embassy at one pm and sat in his office restless and nervous for a short while; he decided after hardly ten minutes to go out and have lunch in a restaurant in the vicinity of the hideout apartment, and listen to people talk for he spoke Arabic well enough.

There was no one he could consult with except the ambassador, but the ambassador was on leave; while he was responsible for that top secret project, the project Nur coordinated with the Israeli Mossad.

He hailed a cab and rode to the Gilgamesh restaurant that was very close to the hideout apartement, which he hired for Amina, where he was supposed to train her.

He chose a table near a group of half a dozen elderly locals that stopped chattering as soon as he crossed the restaurant's threshold. He did not have to carry a copy of the Al Nabad, Beirut's English language newspaper, his face and his tall figure gave him up as a Farangie (foreigner, derived from the word French) he ordered in English and avoided the suspicious looks of the locals sitting next to him. They resumed their excited chatter right afterwards.

He knew that if some crime took place in the restaurant's vicinity, the waiters will notice it and tell its details or whatever they knew to the guests, and it would turn into an endless loud and excited discussion. But the old timers that sat next to him were discussing local politics, Hezbollah armed gangs, the government weakness, the Christians' minority and so on and so forth.  

The food was not bad at all, but his stay there was a waist of time; and he could not visit the hideout apartment in broad daylight at this stage to check if Nur, which was Amina's 'Nom de Guerre' has returned. After all he had installed her in that apartment at one am a week ago, and came to visit her regularly after midnight. He hired the apartment through a third party, but he knew that after two or three weeks he'll have to visit her at day time openly to start her training, for all he cared whoever will notice his visits may conclude that she is his mistress; and she is in fact his mistress and he enjoyed very much her submissive company, and making love to her…

While driving back to the embassy on the cab's rear seat, he kept thinking of her and hoped he did not lose her.

I'll visit the place tonight again to see if she's returned, or check the place for some clue. Why didn't I check her place last night? He scolded himself with wonder. I'll wait up to the weekend, he decided after he recovered from his fit of anger; and if she won't return till then I'll fix a meeting in Istanbul with Jack of the Israeli embassy, and I'll tell him the bad news.

© Haim Kadman October 2013 " all rights reserved.