The Ghost’s ears were ringing from the blast. Having lived his entire life in Beirut, his body had reacted instantly, hitting the floor even before his conscious mind knew why.
The initial shock over, he peeked from underneath his table, seeing the carnage across the cafe. So far, nobody in the restaurant had reacted. Still shocked, they simply cowered and whimpered. He saw the briefcase the men had brought lying underneath a body, apparently intact.
When initially given the meeting location, inside the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp, he’d been happy with the choice. Reflecting on the location after he’d left the Dahiyeh, the Ghost had balked, telling the Hezbollah leadership he’d meet, but on neutral terrain. They’d come up with this cafe, but he still wasn’t completely satisfied.
He’d decided to send someone else to the meeting. Someone with the physical characteristics the men would be expecting. A tough guy with a swagger. He knew the main identification method would be the glasses his bad genetics forced on him. It had been very little effort to find someone in the camp who met the specifications and needed money. He’d given him instructions and paid him up front, sending him into the meeting wearing glasses with thick lenses.
He didn’t worry about missing out on any discussions, because he’d specified that all information was to be passed to him in hard form. Initially, before he’d come up with his doppelganger plan, it was simply because he didn’t want to spend a single second more than he had to with these men. He trusted them about as much as he would the Mossad. It looked like that mistrust had just saved his life.
He’d think about the whys of the attack later, but knew one thing: There was a leak somewhere. He was willing to bet it was with the Sunnis and not Hezbollah. In Lebanon the fragmented Palestinian groups had always tended to fire before aiming. He could well imagine how many people knew about this meeting because of their bragging.
Seeing the waitstaff starting to recover, he duckwalked over to the table, screaming for someone to help him and beginning to conduct triage on the shattered bodies in the blast. He rolled one man over, ostensibly checking for signs of life, but in reality exposing the briefcase. He waited for the crowd to gather, as he knew it would.
Seconds later, he was surrounded by a plethora of people all shouting instructions, one splashing water from an ice bucket on the small fire, another throwing chairs and tables out of the way to clear the area.
He leaned over and closed his hands on the briefcase, the handle slick with the blood from the man who had been lying on it.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder, asking if the meat he was leaning over was alive. He said no and stood up.
He pushed through the crowd and reached the street, gripping the briefcase tightly in his hands.