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distance,
mushrooming grey clouds of smoke rose from behind rooftops, rising
high before being dispersed by the sea breeze; explosions still
reverberated, but grew distant, like receding thunder.
    Johnny Stone was barely aware of it. He was
occupied with something far closer to his heart than destruction -
the concise printout which had come over the AP wire in the
bunker-like press office less than an hour earlier. Every word was
engraved in his mind.
     
    NEW YORK, May 22 (AP) - Carleton Merlin,
the world-famous biographer and bestselling author whose
unauthorised works have included the lives of Frank Sinatra,
Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Stavros Niarchos,
Maria Callas, The Krupp Dynasty, and Pablo Picasso, was found dead
in his apartment here, police say.
    The cause of death was apparently
suicide.
    Mr Merlin is survived by a granddaughter,
Stephanie Merlin, the host and co-founder of the syndicated
television show, Half Hour . Funeral arrangements have
not yet been made.
     
    Johnny had known Carleton Merlin; liked to
think he'd known him well. And the man he knew would never have
committed suicide - not in a million years.
    Not Carleton Merlin, whose books had
consistently hit the number one spot on the world's non-fiction
bestseller lists, whose tenacious digging for details and truth and
secrets had made him one of the most widely read, respected - and
yes, feared - men in publishing.
    It was impossible to think of him as dead -
even more impossible to believe he could have taken his own
life.
    Johnny stared out through the windshield.
They had left the city centre behind. From here, the explosions
looked almost like benign puffballs, or dirty wads of cotton. It
would not be long before they'd reach the Syrian frontier, and then
Damascus. From there it was a hop to Amman via Alia, the Royal
Jordanian Airline, and another hop from Amman to Cairo. And from
Cairo to New York was a nonstop breeze.
    He smiled wryly to himself. If someone had
told him yesterday that he'd be leaving Sidon today because of
Stephanie Merlin, he would have said, 'You're crazy.' Stephanie was
part of the past, a chapter of his life that was closed. Written
off. There wouldn't - couldn't - be any picking up where they had
left off.
    Some things just weren't meant to be.
    Like Stephanie. And him.
    Stephanie. She would be - what? Twenty-seven
now? No, twenty-eight: she had been twenty-one when they'd met;
twenty- three when they'd each gone their separate ways.
    Had she changed much since then? he
wondered. Five years. These days, a lot could happen in that amount
of time.
    He stared out at the twisted pines and
walled-in gardens, flashing past, and already he was seeing
Stephanie again, his mind spinning - taking him back into the past
. . .
     
     
    Back to five years ago, to that fateful
Friday of the Memorial Day weekend. He had just returned from
Nicaragua after six wretched weeks spent tramping around in the
steaming jungle, where he'd documented another war, another
conflict of death and destruction.
    He'd called her at the NBC newsroom as soon
as he'd got in.
    'It's me,' he'd said from the hotel suite
high above Central Park.
    'Hello me,' she'd replied. He knew from her
voice that she was smiling: it was one of the Seven Wonders of the
World, that smile. It started from within and radiated outwards,
and could change the gloomiest day to pure golden sunshine.
    'I'm back.'
    'Obviously,' she laughed.
    'Miss me?' He was fishing.
    'Hmmmm,' she said noncommittally.
    'Look,' he said, 'when can we meet? My eyes
haven't seen your glorious body in well over a month and a half
now. One more day of deprivation, and I'm liable to regress to wet
dreams.'
    'You poor boy.' She made little tsk-tsk
noises. 'And here I was under the impression the Contras put
saltpetre in their food.'
    'Want me to prove they don't?'
    'It'll have to be late.'
    He rocked on his heels, the telephone in one
hand, the receiver in the other. He frowned out across