Agents of Innocence

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Fuad heard the bomb twice. What stayed in his mind long afterward was the reverberation of the explosion, sounding in real life a fraction of a second after he heard it on the telephone. In that moment, which contained at once the past and the future, Fuad thought of Rogers and said a prayer.

Fuad was at a restaurant called Au Vieux Quartier in East Beirut, calling his hotel in West Beirut to check for a message, when he heard it through the earpiece. The roar of an explosion-loud even for Beirut-travelling through the telephone wires at near the speed of light. A millisecond later, in the time it took the sound waves to travel from West to East, he heard the roar in his other ear.

“A bomb!” shouted the frightened desk clerk into the phone.

“Can you see where the smoke is coming from?” asked Fuad. There was a pause as the clerk ran into the street to check.

“From the Corniche,” said the clerk breathlessly when he returned. “Near the American Embassy.”

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