The Death Trade

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The man who called himself Ali LeBlanc surfaced from a deep sleep to cries of anguish, screams, gunfire, exploding grenades, and the roaring of many engines. It was the stuff of nightmare, but rising from the bed above the little café and moving to the window, he saw that this was no dream.

The previous evening he had left Tehran on the night plane to Iraq using his Iranian passport. His shabby canvas bag had a false bottom containing three passports, and he had chosen the French one for the flight from Baghdad to Aleppo. At an extortionate price, he had obtained a hire car to take him to Homs, and from there he intended to cross the border and proceed to Beirut. Its population of two million, its multiplicity of races and religions, would swallow him up. His Lebanese passport in the name of Ali LeBlanc indicated that he was of mixed French-Lebanese parentage, and a doctor, which was true enough, although he had not practiced for some years.

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