Legends

The woman who brought Dante breakfast appeared from the next room and set out plates filled with small honey-coated cakes and two glasses filled with mint leaves and boiling water. Nibbling on one of cakes as he waited for the mint tea to cool, Dante took in the Spartan furnishings of the imam’s study: framed photographs of the training camp’s fedayeen graduating classes (slightly askew, as if someone had dusted them and left them askew to show they’d been cleaned), a poster depicting the golden-domed Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem tacked to one wall, the Kalashnikov in a corner with a clip in it and a spare clip taped to the stock, the glass bowl on a low table with a single goldfish circling round and round as if it were looking for the exit, the copies of Newsweek stacked on the floor near the door. Dr. al-Karim scraped his chair around the table and, settling his bulk onto it facing his guest, warmed both his hands on the glass of mint tea.

Speaking softly, selecting his words carefully, the imam said: “There was a time when people held me in high esteem.”

“Judging from what I’ve seen, they still do.”

“How long, Mr. Pippen, will this last? How long do you think one can go on preaching that the destruction of your principal enemy is inevitable without it transpiring; without losing the credibility that is indispensable to continue as the spiritual leader of a community? This is the predicament I find myself in. I must continue to hold out hope that our sacrifices will be rewarded not only with martyrdom but with certain victory over the Isra’ili occupiers of Lebanon and Palestine, and the Jews who are conspiring to take over the world. But in time even the simplest of the fedayeen, sent to combat the enemy, observes through binoculars that the Isra’ilis still occupy their sandbagged fortresses in the south of Lebanon, that the wakes of their patrol boats still crisscross the waters off our coast, that the contrails of their jet aircraft still stain the sky over our heads.”

“Do you believe victory is inevitable?” Dante asked.

“I am convinced that the Jews will one day be seen, like the Christian Crusaders before them, as a footnote in the long flow of Arab history. This is written. Will it happen in my lifetime? Will it happen in the lifetime of my children?” Dr. al-Karim sipped at the tea, then, licking his lips to savor the taste of the mint, he leaned forward. “I can buy time, Mr. Pippen, if your talents provide me with some incremental measure of success. Our Hezbollah fighters, armed with conventional weapons, are unable to inflict casualties on the better armed Isra’ili soldiers occupying the zone in southern Lebanon. We attack them with mortars or artillery, fired from the heart of some Lebanese village so that the Isra’ilis are unable to riposte. Very occasionally, we manage to wound or kill one or two of them. For every one we kill, we lose twenty or thirty fedayeen when our enemies, with remarkably accurate intelligence, descend from their fortresses to raid our bases here in the Bekaa Valley, or closer to the front lines. They always seem to know where we are, and in what strength.” The imam shook his head. “We are like waves lapping against boulders on a shore—I cannot recruit and train and send into combat fighters by telling them that the boulders will, in a century or two, be washed smooth and reduced in size.”

“I suppose that’s why you retained my services,” Dante said.

“Is it true that you can mold your explosives to fit almost any receptacle?”

“Absolutely.”

“And detonate them from a great distance by radio command, as opposed to electrical wires stretched along the ground?”

Dante nodded emphatically. “Hard wire on the ground is more reliable, but radio-detonated explosions are more creative.”

“Precisely how do radio-detonated explosions work?”

“You need a transmitter—a cordless phone, a wireless intercom, a radio paging system—and a receiver, both tuned to the same frequency. The transmitter sends not just a signal but also an audio tone—known as electronic pulses—which are modulated by the transmitter and demodulated by the receiver. The receiver picks up the transmission, demodulates the audio tone, closes the electric circuit, which sends current to the blasting cap which, in turn, detonates the explosive charge.”

“With your expertise, could we disguise the explosives in what appears to be ordinary roadside rocks and explode them from, say, a hilltop a kilometer away as an Isra’ili patrol passes?”

“Child’s play,” Dante declared.

The imam slapped his knee in elation. “God willing, we will bloody the Isra’ilis, Mr. Pippen. God willing, the waves lapping against the shore will demolish the boulders in my lifetime. And when we have finished with the near enemy, we will turn our attention to the distant enemy.”

“The Israelis are obviously the near enemy,” Dante said. “But who is the distant enemy?”