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turned away and looked out the window.
    The rest of the ride to town was spent in silence.
     

CHAPTER 11
     
     
    Elizabeth talked with DCI Hood. Then she talked with the president. Two days later the team and Diego flew into Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut. In the back of the Gulfstream was an aluminum case with their pistols. They hadn't brought anything heavy with them. Their diplomatic passports in false names got them through customs without incident. They took rooms in a modern hotel in the heart of the city.
    Beirut was effectively divided into three zones, controlled by the different sectarian groups that kept the city and the country fragmented. The Sunni Muslims held the western part, the Christians the East. The Shia Muslims lived in the southern section, run by Iran's proxy Hezbollah. The difference between the three sections was enormous. Where the Sunnis and the Christians were in charge Beirut functioned much as other cities did, with more or less adequate services and a reasonable expectation of order and personal safety. Of course safety was relative. A lot depended on who you were and on which religion you belonged to.
    In the West and the East of the city people were mostly tolerant of each other, regardless of religion. In the South where Hezbollah held power, tolerance was not a word anyone used or understood. Southern Beirut was an entity unto itself. The government stayed away from the area and left the fanatical militant group alone. Nobody wanted another internal war no one could win.
    Lebanon's civil war had destroyed large parts of what had once been a beautiful, cosmopolitan city. Parts of downtown had been restored in an effort to preserve what was left of the Parisian style French architecture, and attempt to reassure a slowly reviving tourist trade that all was well. The effect was something that would have seemed at home on the strip in Las Vegas. The streets were clean and reasonably modern. The garbage was collected. The streetlights worked. That was more than could be said for the area south of the unofficial dividing line.
    Yusuf Abidi lived in the southern part of the city, on the top floor of a crumbling twelve story building. The bottom two floors were leased out to a charitable organization that formed a front for Hezbolla. It provided a convenient conduit for some of Abidi's shipments. Hezbolla was one of his best customers.
    Small arms, ammunition, explosives, heavy machine guns, Russian rocket launchers and the like were the staples of Yusuf's trade. From time to time, he negotiated larger deals for older models of Russian tanks, armored vehicles, antiaircraft batteries and heavy weapons, along with the occasional French fighter jet or two. Authentic end-user certificates purchased with large bribes protected the more obvious transactions.
    Most of the large items went to Africa, where regional warlords and dictators happily blew each other's people to pieces with Abidi's products. They had an insatiable appetite for AKs, of which there was an endless supply. The bread-and-butter of his business was the daily hardware of death in the Middle East. For Abidi, the rise of ISIS had been a gift from Allah.
    Business was booming. All in all, Abidi was a happy man. He wouldn't have been as happy if he'd known he was being watched.
    On the third day after they'd arrived Nick, Ronnie, Diego and Selena sat in a black Mercedes with tinted windows, watching the entrance to Abidi's building. The street in front of the building was narrow, in poor repair. Several seedy looking Hezbollah fighters lounged in front, their AKs openly displayed. The façade of the building was pockmarked where bullets had struck it sometime in the past. The architecture was completely forgettable. The building looked solid, unlike most of the others on the block. Under Hezbollah control Southern Beirut was a sprawling slum. The entire block looked like a perfect candidate for urban renewal. Nick kept the