"You absolutely positive no one's got our frequency?"

"Absolutely." A balding middle-aged man, Ronald Clayton headed a Central Intelligence Agency surveillance unit assigned to watch the terrorist forces operating in Beirut. An informer had brought Clayton information on a meeting between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and a Libyan diplomat. Tonight they would follow the diplomat to the meeting place and attempt to identify the leader of the Iranian group.

Powell rolled up his window. "He's so stupid..."

"But he's the boss." Akbar eased the Mercedes around the corner and parked on the boulevard. He turned up the CB radio and listened to the voices and static on the channel. When they heard a voice speak in an unintelligible chaos of languages, Akbar started the car.

Clayton's voice came from the walkie-talkie. "Get ready."

Without acknowledging the instructions, Powell nodded to Akbar. They slowly cruised north on the boulevard. Few cars risked the uncertain safety of the latest cease-fire. They saw only two other vehicles on the dark street.

This section of the city had no electricity. No streetlights illuminated the roadway. No traffic signals flashed at the intersections. Buildings stood black against the darkness of the storm-gray night.

In the vacant lots, fires and lanterns lit the tents of the homeless. Groups of men with rifles gathered under shelters of plastic sheets to warm themselves around oil-drum stoves.

Past the burned-out businesses and tenement buildings, past the gutted, skeletal ruins of hotels, past the Green Line dividing the city, the skyline of East Beirut stood electric against the night. Thousands of lights marked executive suites and apartments. Swirls of neon marked the theatres, nightclubs, billboards for liquor and perfume. But for the dispossessed of West Beirut — Shias, Sunnis, Druze, Christians — the lights of the wealthy Maronite Christians meant nothing. The war had forced the peasants from the poverty of their mountain villages and thrown them into the poverty and devastation of West Beirut. They had always suffered poverty. The Maronite overlords of Lebanon had always flaunted wealth. In a Beirut divided by an arbitrary frontier called the Green Line, the traditions of Lebanon continued.